Blizzard really missed what made Diablo 2 special. Most of the changes they are talking about sound good, but all of the changes they have implemented thus far have actually been quite terrible.
First up, gearing is no where near as fun as it was in D2. Because rares are the best items, and getting a perfectly rolled rare is almost impossible, there will ALWAYS be better items to get in every single slot. In D2, as in WoW, there were BiS items for just about every slot for the build you were going after, and getting one of these pieces made all of the tedium that came before seem worth it. In D3 you will farm for hours and hours and end up with nothing but a handful of things to sell on the AH that will get you a little closer to the 10 million gold item that will bump a couple stats by a couple points. Their legendary change will help, but unless they up the drop rate significantly and have a large number of BiS pieces for each character, it won't do much.
The second big flaw is that the level cap is so easy to hit and then you still have a quarter of the game to go at cap, meaning if you are playing in inferno and get terrible drops you aren't even gaining experience to make your character more powerful that way. I don't recall the exact level you finished hell in D2, but I think it was around 60? Leaving you with 39 levels to gain while you were farming for gear, a huge added incentive.
And finally, what makes the end game so fun in D2 and other games in the genre is feeling POWERFUL. In D2, as some classes you could become incredibly powerful without any consideration to gear. In D3, every single ability is dependent on your gear, add to that the fact that Inferno is designed as a challenge, and outside of a gear set that is 100 million gold or more in value, you feel weak. It's also worth mentioning that about 90% of all of the class changes that have been implemented since launch have been nerfs. While they have said they intend on buffing lesser used skills, all they have actually done is nerf the most common skills.
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