I think that's a bunch of shit though D2 was never that hard and yeah you could bot or trade your way to some bullshit runes or duped gear but it totally wasn't needed at all. You could find cool shit all the time. I found tons of sets and shit in D2 running shit like Meph or whatever and had fun twinking out lower characters and trying new builds. Diablo 3 was never that hard but it was tedious as fuck unless you used the AH all the time. Maybe it was due to the game of the game but I don't remember D2 being as tedious as D3 at any point.
Diablo 3 was hard early on but it isn't hard anymore. As I said, after the first few Inferno nerfs the game was beatable by just about anyone, with or without use of the auction house.
I agree that the itemization in Diablo 2 was much more fun. It was great having twinks, low level duels, etc. There's some of that in Diablo 3 but it's more difficult to find due to the way groups work. In Diablo 2 you could just make a game with what you wanted to do, in Diablo 3 your options are very limited which sucks. You basically have to use sources outside of the game if you want to twink duel or anything fun like that.
The game isn't tedious though, well no more tedious than Diablo 2 is. It was fun when it was released and difficult, it's fun now that you can mow down huge groups of monsters in the high density areas.
Honestly I don't get your argument. So what, it's too easy to get good gear in Diablo 3 due to the auction house, but it was better in Diablo 2 where you could do Meph runs over and over again with a garbage Sorc (yourself, no botting...) and get good gear? Or is it too hard to get good items in Diablo 3 because they are so expensive and you don't have enough gold and don't want to spend money, and in Diablo 2 it was too hard because you had to let your bot run for a month and then trade the items for things that you wanted for good gear?
Both ways seem like they could be considered tedious and lame to me. It just depends on your perspective. Myself, I don't see much of a difference between the two games. If people want to use the AH and spend money then that's great, go for it. If people want to run bots all day, that's great, go for it. If people want to play self-found no-AH then good for them. If people want to do Meph runs themselves all day, that's awesome too. None of those things affect me or how I play the games and have fun.