Definitely.

The campaign ranks as Halo's best, in my opinion. Not only does it have great level design, the story is fantastic as well as self-contained (I love all the games, but 2 and 3 are parts of a whole and don't work that well as individual stories). Spartan Ops was good fun - certainly nothing amazing, but I'm looking forward to future installments and the fact that 343i is providing 9 more episodes completely free is great.

And holy crap, the multiplayer. I played Halo: CE's multiplayer a lot back in the day, and Halo 2's multiplayer completely stole my teenage years. After that, I felt the quality declined; I was never really able to get into 3 or Reach. I was worried about 4's multiplayer due to all of the customization, but boy am I wrong (and I'm glad to be!). The multiplayer is a freaking blast.

I picked this game up a couple of days ago. Since then, it's pretty much devoured all of my freetime. It's a shame that this game won't ever get the recognition that it deserves due to the fact that people are graphics whores and the game is on the Wii. Seriously, though - some of the vistas in this game are literally jaw-dropping. Any developer who says good graphics are determined by the number of pixels needs to be shown this game. 

Anyway, I'm currently level 39/40 with about 28 hours playtime. I just reached the Eryth Sea. I'm wondering roughly how far I am through the game. It's so great that I never want it to end, but I have a feeling I'm around 1/3 of the way through it or so. I've been doing every single sidequest that I can get my hands on. I check back at Colony 6 semi-frequently, but lately new quests haven't been appearing there. I'm hoping I can really get to rebuilding after I meet the empire. 

Diablo 3 is extremely fun. I've had a great time playing in the past week.

However, it won't last. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there just isn't the motivation to keep going. As I progress through Inferno, I feel like I'm simply progressing toward the end of the game, rather than beating the game for the sake of being able to farm gear constantly. To me, there really just doesn't feel like there's any reason to play beyond beating the game. I don't know what it is that Diablo 2 had that made me play it for so long, but whatever it is it's simply not in Diablo 3.

One problem is definitely leveling. In Diablo 2, beyond just farming, I had the motivation to keep going because I always needed experience. I got quite a few characters into the low 90s, but I never once got a level 99. In Diablo 3, though, you've hit 60 before you know it, which just puts everyone on the same playing field with the ridiculously boring gear that they have.

You're missing the underlying problem, which is greed and DRM. It's easy just to turn a blind eye when DRM is there but isn't actively interfering with what you're doing. Take Steam, for example. I'm sure most people don't even think of it as DRM, but it most certainly is. I had an unfortunate incident about half a year ago where my account got suspended, which made me lose access to several hundred dollar's worth of games. Games that, if I'd bought them at the store, I would be able to play. Games that are completely uneffected by payment disputes. In the end, I got the payment dispute resolved (Steam finally more or less admitted that they'd made a mistake and I hadn't done anything wrong, although they certainly didn't say it so blatantly), but for over two months I didn't have access to any of my games.

The same problem exists with all online DRM. You don't really own Diablo III; you've simply purchased a spot on Blizzard servers to play it. They'll store "your" characters there so that you can play "your" game when you want, but in the end it's all theirs.

DRM, along with online DLC, had good intentions when it began. Unfortunately, though, both have become corrupted and are now a plague on modern gaming. Sure, in the end a few hours of lost play is just a little inconvinience, but think of it this way: a few years ago, you wouldn't have ever had to deal with this issue. Why should we have to go through the hassle of dealing with it now?

Stuff like this is simple for pirates to get around. Someone makes a hack, then everyone downloads it along with the game off of a Torent site. Suddenly, the pirates are able to play singleplayer offline with absolutely no interruptions, while we're the ones being victimized (despite the fact that the online-only is supposed to prevent pirating).

During Path of Exile's open beta weekend, it attracted about 5,000 players if I recall. The Diablo 3 open beta got near 2 million, I think? There is no way in hell that PoE seriously challenges Diablo 3. That's not to say it's any better or worse of a game. It's simply the fact that, no matter what happens, PoE is never going to be able to attract the number of people that Diablo will.

No clue. 8.5 or 9.0 is my guess. There are some things I'm still on the fence on, such as the skill system, but overall I think it's going to be a good game.

Pros of skill system:

-More skills to use overall. Far vaster selection than Diablo 2 ever offered for each class.

-Variations to those same skills. In Diablo, more talent points simply meant more damage or a wider area. With runes or glyphs or whatever the hell they're calling them, you can completely revamp what a certain skill does.

-Allows expansions to give existing classes more skills.

Cons:

-Everyone has every skill. No real point, beyond HC/ladder, to make more than one of each class.

-No real adventure. Of course, after being experience in Diablo 2 you knew what to spend your points in, but the first several times you jumped into the game you had no clue what was good, and so you ended up with some crazy builds. This is why most people remember Diablo 2 being difficult at first; because we spent our talents erratically, rather than the game actually being difficult.

Doesn't matter:

-People complaining about cookie cutter builds. Compared to what? Necromancers who spent all their points in poison, Paladins who weren't Hammerdins, sorceresses who effectively utilized fire, ice, and lightning? People not dumping the vast majority of their points into Vitality when they figured out that health is more important than anything?

Play both. Path of Exile is absolutely free, and will never have a pay-to-win cash shop. There are some great things about the game, and I enjoyed the beta quite a bit. However, it does lack some things:

-Skill tree (more of a forest) allows for a lot of variation, however, it and skill gems makes it so that your class doesn't really matter that much.

-Combat is much slower paced than in Diablo.

-Less charm to the quests. While Diablo is far from a great storytelling game, the quests in the Path of Exile beta were extremely lame. I had no clue what the hell I was even working toward.