and i really cant understand those of you who praise diablo 1 so much (for other than nostalgia reasons), imo its nothing but a demo of diablo2. is it cuz so many kids play it? someone mentioned story? ..c'mon d2 has more story than that, and who cares about story in a dungeon crawl game anyway?
Hey, different people just have different tastes, you know, and yours is no better than mine or than any other. That can also be applied for every person out there, including me :).
In my opinion, I don't care for Diablo 1, but I can understand people might enjoy a simpler game just because sometimes one wants to have a simple time, without worrying. And about story, well - I certainly enjoy a good dungeon crawl because of gameplay mechanics, items, characters, replayability, etc., but if it also has a nice story, it's just better! That's why I spent so many hours playing ADoM :P.
But sometimes it's true that you just want to get into the game and go screw up the story, so just add a "skip cutscene" option :P.
and the d2 skill tree is the most brilliant one i've seen yet, an absolute must in my book!
With this I agree with you: a well done skill tree, balanced so every skill can be useful in a certain build, it's very fun to use in order to get a nice character from the ground up. In this case, Diablo 2 (the latest version, that is also the most polished one, as you noted out) is a good example to follow. Also, another thing I like about it is that it's not overly complicated because skills are presented step by step, and you can have "higher-tier" skills without worrying that they are not balanced with other, "lower" skills.
The downside is that a narrow skill tree (be it intentional or unintentional, like having lots of useless skills) or a skill tree with lots of prerequisites just kills the replayability, because you are often forced down on the same route on each game which is boring. Also it's important that no skill becomes useless on the course of one game, or you just get that sensation of having wasted your points.
But since Kornel has so good ideas for his games, go skill tree, go!