To make my point let me take you back to the two big changes I first noticed between Ultima 5 and 4 - they added a daylight/nighttime effect, so that half the time you could see only about 20 percent of the screen; and secondly, monsters in dungeon areas could now be killed for good - no more going through the Abyss five times to get to the end questions and having to kill everything all over again (not to mention you could save everywhere). I hated the night-time addition but loved the permanent monster kill.Diablo II has eliminated the permanent monster kill that was in Diablo I, and has also added night lighting effects (grumble). Furthermore, you can also only save the game upon exit (this prevents taking advantage of some of the game features, such as you can gamble with the Wirt character - although gambling isn't mentioned at all AFAIK in the manual!), and when you restart you're in town, with all monsters everywhere resurrected. In this respect the single player mode is no different than playing online (and its no wonder, since your single player character can play on open battle.net).
That's two big suckys for me to get past. Nevertheless, I'm enjoying the clickfest so far (and learning tricks similar to shooting the barrels in Doom, such as first kill the Goblin Shamans who resurrect slain Goblins!) – there's a new skills tree that's vaguely interesting (although it feels like I'm building up for a nuke silo in Starcraft somewhat), as my Barbarian has already learned the Bash skill ("C'mon Marge, its fun to bash things!") – quite useful for wielding two weapons at once. The inventory and items, and especially the belt, are improved, and there's a permanent "stash" you can keep in town. Once you complete quests, they're done permanently, but like I said, you can go back and re-kill the monsters upon re-load for more experience. But because you start each game in town, there's no possibility of accomplishing anything in a quick few minute play sessions, unlike in Diablo I, although eventually there’s permanent town portals called waygates. Another neat thing is that I just got my first mercenary – an NPC who will fight along side you.
The e-bay laugh of the day is:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=377058007
- John 
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/
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) was the #1 seller at 
I doubt I'll want to get it any time soon though ... too many other games I am more interested in (Drakan, Thief II) and not enough time for them 
Back in my day, an RPG ....