Diablo III game director Josh Mosqueira spoke at GDC, offering a bit of a postmortem on the launch of Blizzard's action/RPG sequel. Here's a video and PCGamesN recaps the talk. While the drastic changes the game has undergone over time shows how many problems it had from the start, it's interesting to see the company's take on things, as the realization that things were broken dawned on them about as soon as the game officially launched. Here's a bit:

The servers wasn’t the only issue with Diablo III at launch. Diablo III was abrupt and merciless in its difficulty, and it was causing players to adopt some very strange, and un-fun behaviours. “The game was so hard,” said Josh, “that instead of being these epic heroes, fighting against the forces of darkness, you were a Barbarian smashing pots. That’s right - the best heroes in Sanctuary were farming terra-cotta, because it was more efficient and less difficult than fighting monsters”

And when the game actually did give you loot, the chance at finding something worthwhile was miniscule. “When [you] were getting loot, getting bags full of yellows and legendaries, you would know as you clicked on every single one, that you weren’t going to get an upgrade.

“A true story: on my live character - my awesome Barbarian - it took me 104 hours before I found my first legendary. And do you know what it was? A quiver. Something was wrong there, and I remember that moment - what happened?”