Game Design Essentials: 20 Mysterious Games
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Diablo's random dungeons and look, and non-respawning monsters, produce another mining game. Unlike the other random dungeon games discussed here, the check on exploring the dungeon at the player's leisure is entirely the monsters: there's not much in the way of environmental obstacles to get in the way.
Frankly, the Diablo games diminish many of the cooler things about random dungeon exploration games. Unknown items don't exist, as overall types share similar appearances but random functions. One is given to wonder why identification is even in the game: unknown items can be used, but only get their basic effects. The result is simply to force the player to return to base more often to get stuff ID'd. There is no chance of figuring out an item through use or experimentation, and there are no unknown potion or scroll types -- not in the roguelike style.
In their defense, it's possible the developers did this because to implement true roguelike object identification requires permadeath to avoid reload abuse, and that's a change many mainstream players won't enjoy. And in a heavily multiplayer game, the penalty for using a bad magic item isn't so bad since there are other players to help out. And it's good that they do away with Rogue's food system. It's not so bad in Rogue, but food has no place in these games' structure.
