I was also very surprised by the lack of polish visible in the first 15 minutes of gameplay. It’s still a very good looking game but there are enough rough edges that it’s noticeable and doesn’t seem up to Blizzard’s old standards.
For me, it didn't feel polished until few patches in... Necromancers, and Challenge Rifts, and Seasonal Content were what made Diablo 3 for me.
At launch, D3 was pretty dull. We ran through it, and were bored a day later. All it really had was Adventure Mode, and most of the sets were relatively weak.
Farming was just slow and tedious. Never felt rewarding to run around a low-density world map... the abilities and speed tuning was just off. To be honest, it was pretty boring.
A lot of people quit after getting to max level. Diablo was always a "dungeon grinder" but the grind just wasn't enjoyable. Like at all. At launch the grind just sucked.
There was this quirky little auction house, but it felt like a bolt-on after thought. I don't think anyone really used it.
Over time they really sped up the game play considerably with high-density Rift maps. All the set synergy, and class combo synergy, started to kick in. Adding The Cube, and The Vault, and a bunch of fun little things that sped up the game.
Arguably, inventory management didn't get "slightly less crappy" until fairly recently -- maybe a year ago? I forget when they added Search.
So yeah, like now it's polished. But 11 years ago at launch it certainly had some rough spots!
for what its worth, the person you're replying to is using "polish" in the narrow sense of look and feel. D3 was quite polished at launch, but had no real depth to it, as you say.
What they fixed along the years was the endgame gameplay, but even day one, it was a really polished game, and the first 10 hours or so were solid.
It broke down after that. The auction house that broke the looting dynamic, the lack of items with interesting effects, the limited amount of procedural generation, the focus on a single number (DPS), plus the usual balancing issues.
If you took the game just for the main campaign and stopped after that, you would have a great time. But most people don't play hack and slash like that, especially not the most vocal players.
