2013 - Play this game.

2020 - Play this game every league. New Vulkan Renderer fixes performance from all the bloat they've added over the years.

Wish I could devote the same time I could 7 years ago, but I still manage to hit 90 every league.

2021 - Warranted backlash on the current league. PR nightmare for GGG that rivals Afghanistan. That said, as someone who has played this for TEN years, I survived the nerfs and had a hell of time this league. There is a huge amount of content which is incredibly difficult for a newbie to learn, but every league you learn a lot, forget a little, then do it all over again while adjusting to the meta. I imagine next league will have an influx when the D2R people get bored.

I could write quite a bit about this game and my experiences. I can tell you that over the course of its life I've spent probably ~$600 on it. Which divided by 10 yrs ain't much. The hours on steam don't show the thousands of hours i've had before the steam client even existed. Even with them being bought out by tencent I still don't regret it. Even with them catering to the streamer crowd (and all the wokeness that comes with it), I still don't regret it. Even with them muting me for a week for daring to mention politics in a specific global chat that 99.9999% of people wouldn't go to without doing so purposely, i still don't regret supporting the game. Its good. It has problems, but its good.

To an outsider, play the campaign. If you want more, pay $20-$50 and get all the "mandatory" stash tabs then get into mapping and "end game". From there on out you'll either be hooked or had your fill. Anything you spend past that is frivolous.

2022-2024 - Last ~4 leagues have been very polarizing. They've also been some of the most powerful chars I've made. Current league is just loot loot loot. Really opened up options. In most leagues atleast 2 league's content would be 1/4 the profitability of the next less worse thing. And there would be 1-2 clear winners. While abyss is crazy this league, the wisps made all juiced content juicier. With everyone able to get rich if they want to, other content rises in value because people have divs to spend. The end result is a much more balanced economy. GGG needs to figure out how to nerf the loot (not too much) but keep the profitability of other content decent.
Hoping they continue with new Trans Gems. Stupid name, especially given the more inventive old alt-gem names. The idea mechanically is very interesting and poe though. Basically standardized gem affix system (Prefix Mechanic) (Core Skill) (Suffix Mechanic).

What worries me is GGG getting ADD and just not making them anymore for 1-forever years.
Like what happened with revamped uniques - Initial update of 50 (40 bad), then another 20 (15 bad), then ... 3(2 bad)
Or updating league content - this finally happened (mostly) with the atlas tree but we waited 6 years for it to start happening. Some content still could use a QoL sweep/update - like Delve.

They put out a performance update this league that took me from 90fps - 60 while doing juiced content, to jet engine running pc with fps dips. Did full reinstall, drivers, etc etc. Tried every renderer. Tried deleting shaders for all three, tried playing a bunch to fill them up and wait for fps to smooth out. It is still wonky ♥♥♥♥. Some people have had the opposite happen (♥♥♥♥ before, great now). I dunno. Just my anecdotal experience. They ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with things for no discernible improvement, given many people have my experience.