The guy talking is clueless about Diablo. The first sentence let me know this:
"As the lead content designer on Diablo III, Kevin Martens has learned a lot over the past two years. "
I am sorry you did not have two critically acclaimed games to look back on and see how to improve upon them.... oh wait, you did.
It took a lot of beating out of the gate because the storyline was awful (Cain died and ruined the game for people I know. Oh, he was killed by a crappy fairy), inferno was just "doubled" and gear needed to progress was only obtainable by a few classes.
Diablo 3 should not require an internet connection all the time. It should be able to be played offline. (I would still have only played it online personally.)
The AH (RM / gold) was one of the best things to come to D3. The messed up part was basing loot around the AH instead of basing the AH around the loot. They got it backwards and messed up the economy themself. I hated in Diablo 2 using the trade channel for a long time trying to find something I wanted from a person and hope they wanted what I had. It is why cash is a currency instead of arts and crafts you can make.
They listened to fan feedback about loot, unfortunately it took two years to get it about right. Loot itemization was the massive flaw in this game (centered around the AH). They FINALLY started to address it in a good way, but BoA is awful for this game....
Randomness was one of the key things about Diablo, and they ruined that to get a natural RPG feel to the game. No, just no.
Yeah, I stopped reading after that.
Blizzard needs someone to just come out and say something like this:
We made a game we thought was good, but the game is not deserving of a Diablo name whatsoever. With the release of the expansion we expect this game to thrive and become much better as time goes on.
They could have called this game anything other than Diablo and it would have not have received the flack it did.
I had a level 100 paragon Barb (114 on my account now) and played this game a lot as I enjoyed this game as a game and saw the lack of "Diablo" in the game.
From what I did see in the hour I tried my Barb out, I liked the new layout and loot drops. They have made some improvements. I feel they neutered the Barb, the reason I bought D3 was to WW everything to death fast and efficient. I did not mind perma wrath, but I could see the need for change. Slowing the Barb down to where it is so slow to kill now is ridiculous. Fury generation is awful. I may try my Monk. I have no desire to play my Wizard, Witch Doctor or Demon Hunter.