I played a recent season, and got pretty far in the completion checklist with a few characters in hardcore mode. Overall the experience is just mediocre, but the game itself is quite polished, which means the design itself is flawed.

There's something about character progression that seems very shallow. The overall feel and experience of the game is closer to an arcade action game like Gauntlet (3d version) that has repetitive levels as oppose to an ARPG with RNG content that has endless replay value like D2.

Yeah, played 2 characters to 60 at launch, then one more to 60 just after they killed the auction house. May have improved it since then, but I still felt like spirit of Diablo 2 was missing even after the auction house was killed and they revamped the loot system.