is the difference between ranked and open, just modding? and is there anyway to make my open guy ranked so i dont have to start over

I believe opened will have hacked items. There are less people on open because of that. And no, there is no way to move your guy over. It's really best to always play on ranked. It's like playing non ladder and ladder in D2.

Ranked has hosted events etc, for instance there's a Halloween event starting this Monday!

And no, you can't transfer from Ranked <-> Open, gonna have to start again D:

If you want some starting capital for your Ranked char I'd be happy to supply some ^ ^ http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=58265776&f=216