From Gamasutra's Diablo II post mortem (some lessons for DMs and P&P game designers here, methinks):
"Both Diablo and Diablo II provide a constant source of simple pleasures, many of which are perhaps too basic and obvious to mention in evaluations and reviews, but which are fundamental to their success. We used the term "kill/reward" to describe our basic gameplay. Players continually kill monsters and get rewarded with treasure and experience. But the rewards don't stop there. We offer a steady stream of goals and accomplishments to entice the player to keep playing. There's always a quest that is almost finished, a waypoint almost reached, an experience level almost achieved, and a dungeon nearly cleared out. On a smaller scale, we tried to make every single action fun. Moving around inventory items produces pleasing sounds. Monsters die in spectacular fashion, like piñatas exploding in a shower of goodies. We strove for overkill in this sense, in that players are constantly on the verge of something great - only a few mouse-clicks away from a dozen interesting things."
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