It honestly sounds like you expected Diablo 3 to be Diablo 2 with better graphics and/or you had a fixed idea of what it would be like and it's not.
You've made a lot of points in your post, but I'll just quote this one. I didn't expect Diablo 3 to be the same as its predecessor; in fact, I think it improves on Diablo 2 in a number of ways. I originally wasn't keen on the personalised loot system, but I actually think it works very well and keeps things simple.
However, whilst each argument you raise for removing consequence from the game is appealing on its own merits, together they sum to an experience which I find quite meaningless. I wouldn't want to go back to Diablo 2's spec system where if you make a single mistake there's an argument for restarting your character, but I would have liked to have seen some consequence stemming from a player's actions.
For example, the skill system would work perfectly well for me if runes were bind on pick up items that needed to be found, and which were then consumed on a respec. This would encourage people to think carefully about their skill choices, whilst enabling them to change if they should so choose. It would even encourage players to start more than one character to control for those prohibitively expensive runes (so you can have multiple builds set up). To get around the issue of trying out the skills, you could have runes freely available as per the present system in Normal difficulty mode.
I should point out, that the present skill system is probably targeted at people just like me. Those gamer that don't really play anything anymore due to having far too little time. I'm either out doing something in town or working late every night of the week, and my weekends are generally very busy too. I don't have time to build second versions of existing characters, but I would still have preferred to have been required to, just to make the one that I do make mean a little more.
HC mode has never held any appeal for me, and I think the dilution of the strategic element of Diablo 3's combat, means that I don't think I would enjoy it. The best consequence of death that my friend and I came up with, was to punch one another very hard on the shoulder whenever we were taken down. Childish, I know, but it did serve to disincentivise dying rather more than the actual game does!
I don't want to convince anyone not to buy the game; that's not really the purpose behind my posts. It's just really to express my disappointment at how Diablo 3 turned out after so many years in development. I'm not going to play again properly until Blizzard make some serious amendments to the game, and if they don't, well at least my non-gaming friends will be happy as I'll be chilling out with them more than I thought I would!
