I find the game just too laggy to play effectively online. Especially a melee character.
I went back to it about a year or so ago and actually played single player. It was surprisingly rewarding. I had never played the game through completely solo. Used 2 add-ons to make the single player experience a bit easier. One was unlimited stash space which could be shared between your single player characters. The other was to have the "Diablo Walks the Earth" event randomly occur in game without having to sell SOJs (let's be honest, I wasn't going to find enough). I was trying to complete the Holy Grail challenge which was to find every unique/set item in the game. I eventually burned out long before I got close to completing the challenge but I had a lot of fun getting there. Ended up with a ~90 Sorc and a ~80 Paladin (for uber tristram).