I had a rather serious addiction issue with Diablo 2 for a fairly long time, and have since got over it (and no, I didn't go to "Diablo addicts anonymous"), and I recently went back on... and pretty much realised that its all about treasure hunting. Sure HackAndSlash comes at the expense of good gameplay in most cases (ie. spellcasting, or something other than just rapid-fire mouse clicking) but after the first couple of weeks, I wasn't really concerned about how the baddies looked or how they were animated when they died... just what kind of succulent booty I could pilliage from their tattered remains.
Thats my theory on it anyway... see the reason I kept playing was because I wanted the best stuff, and that seems to be what everyone wants. Blizzard (diablo creators) did it well, they were obviously thinking ahead, when they made items which would only drop in the last levels of the game, and had a chance of about 1 in 10,000... or something equally ludicrous.
It sure kept me enthralled for over a year... I'm so embarassed about it now
