Never gave up on D3 so I don't know what you're referring to Evilpoptart.
It sounds like Diablo was never for you in the first place. This patch and expansion will bring a lot of the original players back, but they'll give up soon once they realise that, like all Blizzard games, you have to put in a shit-load of time to actually get anywhere or have a gaming experience that is worth something.
This is not a casual game, and never will be.
To be fair I gave Diablo III the hugest chance I could and I won't hide the fact I do hold a bitter grudge for this game. I put 6 months into this game before I threw in the towel. I went through the worst of the worst thinking it would get better and all Blizzard did was continue ignore and piss people off. I played Diablo II extensively and hindsight poured my life into that game for the longest time. When it comes to a franchise like Diablo I am a hardcore Diablo fan and have always treated the game as such, I wasn't playing it "casually" and in fact the opposite. I dove into this game head first and did enjoy the game while it was still good. Few reasons why I feel this way. Launch day was a DISASTER I was one of the VERY few who was able to stay logged in. The following weeks of constant error messages, servers not responding were getting increasingly annoying, but were understandable for just launched. When did you start play F4U57? Once 1.0.3 Screw everybody patch hit with HUGE nerf's to all classes, nerf's to the economy, higher repair costs, and the most infuriating changes were drop rates and the removal of smashed pot drops why even bother continuing? This isn't WoW and trying to force a franchise like Diablo to fit into WoW's model was just asking for disaster. I wasted 4 years of my life to that dick measuring contest known as WoW too.
Lets face it with the nerf after nerf after nerf it was all for the auction house. Blizzard being Blizzard wasn't going to admit any wrong doing when most of its player base were screaming at all of the unnecessary changes that were taking place The auction house ruined the game. Period. When you go through an entire game and STRUGGLE to get enough gold just to do repairs on your armor and STRUGGLE to find ANY gear upgrades (other than going to the auction house) when the game doesn't give you but shit for drops, limits your gold, and is FORCING you to use a auction house, that is a broken game. Its no secret people started to leave is MASS droves very quickly. It just wasn't worth the HUGE grind to get anywhere in the game thus no longer fun to play.
Diablo's gameplay was all about the finding loot progressing your character, and having fun with different builds and play styles. They drove all of it into the ground and now are finally realizing their huge mistake and playing clean up on something they should have done right from the beginning. Personally I don't think they will get all their original players back, there are bigger and better things that people have moved onto and really at this point its all hype and damage control once again. Its Blizzard I expect nothing less from them.