D3 was being bashed by some of my fellow beta testers, but frankly I think their comments came mostly out of an unacknowledged jaded viewpoint. The last Diablo was released in 2000 - how can they expect it to feel the same? They are not the gamers they were 12 years ago.
Frankly, Diablo was never a great game, in my opinion, just a good one. Now that you know I'm not a lover of the game, just a "liker", I can make the comment that this one is far better than D2 in every way, and you can put that in perspective
. I'll play it mostly because it was part of the Annual Pass deal (you signed a contract guaranteeing that you'd pay for a year's worth of World of Warcraft to get 3 benefits. If you were certain you'd be paying for another year, these things were essentially free). I'm essentially playing the game for free. If I had to buy it, I wouldn't bother.
It IS fun though, and I'm glad I was able to get it for a price I was willing to pay; I will play it through at least once, certainly. And, I'm not recommending against paying full retail, I do think the game will be worth the price for the overwhelming majority of players.
The word of caution I give is to all those players with fond memories; the fact is, you are a seasoned vet gamer now, and no company is going to release a game that the average person can't play; pros are always left in the lurch to some degree. There is a "hardmode", but unless they tweak it from the beta, it isn't enough harder to warrant the "hardmode" label, the only thing that lives up to that is the fact that it is a permadeath mode. Die, end of story for that character, create a new one. That's a step in the right direction, in my opinion, but I think I'd rather have a much harder mode than a permadeath mode, and a chance to choose both.
If you haven't played the previous games - I recommend you don't go back, they are just too dated (I had played the original, but not D2, so I did get a copy recently and played it. Let me put it this way - I got almost to the end, then my beta access became available, and I didn't bother to finish it.) You'll miss the occasional reference to old characters, but frankly I don't think it's worth the effort to play D2 to "get it", those references don't make any real difference to the quality of the story.