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Diablo 3 Dev Talks Multiplayer Options, Long Dev Cycle
AusGamers spoke with Blizzard's Jay Wilson recently about Diablo 3's multiplayer experience. Among other things, Wilson said the developers were making an effort to encourage cooperative gameplay. For example, each player within a particular game will see different loot drops from monsters, which prevents competition over who can click an item the fastest, and encourages trading. He also mentions that a team is already working on methods to prevent cheating, and he discusses why Blizzard games tend to be announced so long before they're completed. "One of the reasons why we actually prefer a really long window before we release a game is because we want a lot of feedback; we want to hear what people like and don't like about it; we want to give them several opportunities to play it before release."
Diablo wasn't significantly different in multiplayer. D2 was even less different. In D3 you will presumably have the option of playing by yourself. Hell, you can even do that in "multiplayer" mode if you join a game by yourself and don't let others in. Alternatively, you could check out multiplayer and see if you like it any better in D3. *shrug*