If you bought vanilla d3 it's worth the download to see how the game has changed through the patches. I'd agree though that they botched D3 so badly initially that blizzard games are no longer just impulse buys to me. That said, I recently downloaded the game again for the first time since a month~ after launch, and it has definitely changed for the better. It feels good to play now. Removing the auction house was _such_ a good thing for so many different reasons. (Least not of which was the fact that it was an awful webapp bolted into the client. Lowest quality shovel development I've ever seen out of blizzard. Did they contract it out?).
I don't know if it's true, but I heard that they fired the majority of original game development management. That was cathartic to hear, since it's easy to dehumanize people you've never met.
I think the biggest thing that missed the mark with D3 was the fact that the developers misunderstood the appeal of D2. The rare loot hunting was a huge component, but it was only fun because it existed as a layer upon a really great character development system. Abilities were varied and neat, especially after 1.11. You'd make your first character, it'd be garbage. You'd join a game with a fOrb sorc and it would impress you enough to try to make that yourself. You'd play that for a while and see a meteor sorceress blowing up bosses.. So you'd want to try that. A decade later you're still playing, gearing out your hardcore warcry barbarian.
D3 completely shortcircuited this cycle. You can switch your build instantaneously, nearly any time. Sure this is convenient, but it completely removes the recognition you'd get for doing something unique, because there's no commitment behind your choices. Seeing a level 99 sorceress that was using enchant and charged bolt was impressive. Now if you see some other player doing something unique, click click click I'm the same as them now! An hour later the novelty has worn off.
Replay value was based on building new and different characters. You farmed loot to prop up the crazy garbage characters you wanted to make. Not to mention that the gearing setup at launch in D3 was abysmal. There was nothing interesting about it. "This gear has more strength than what I'm wearing, better equip it" was the choice you'd be making 99% of the time. In D2 if you were the aforementioned maniacle charged bolt sorceress, commited to the craft. You'd spend a lot time trying to find a white, 2 slot staff with +4 to charged bolt on it so you could put a rune word in that shit and have like +4 billion to charged bolt.
The skills in D3 are pretty flat, the build landscape pretty boring and unspecialized. The gear effects things detatched from your build. (They fixed this somewhat though , the gear is a little more interesting now, even though the system begs you to ignore the interesting parts). Really uncanny how much blizz missed the mark. I wonder how many of the design team even played D2?
