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I've never really understood the appeal of Diablo's endless, repetitive style of play - insert World of Warcraft joke here. The whole gameplay system revolves around the acquisition of items. Said items make you a more effective killing machine, enabling you to acquire more items, and so on. In Diablo III, you literally experience every bit of content the game has to offer by level 30 (or sooner, depending on how quickly you progress through Normal difficulty). From there, you slog through the content another two times to hit 60, which opens up exactly nothing new except the Inferno difficulty. The only thing you're potentially gearing up for is the PvP system, which Blizzard has already stated will be a "for fun" addition and not a balanced potential eSport.
Bottom line, people are getting bored with the game; I took a monk into Act 4 Inferno, wondered why I was still playing, and stopped logging on about two months ago. Player numbers are steadily falling, with some estimates from July putting the number at about a 65% drop-off. Fewer players means fewer items are being picked up, which hits Blizzard where it hurts - the wallet. Blizzard takes a 15% cut of every item sold on the real-money auction house (RMAH), so their potential income stream dries up a little bit more every time someone steps away from the game.
