I just like playing Diablo 2 with as little grinding as possible on /players 8, in Hell I might lower the players setting depending on how I'm doing. I did some MFing on one b.net ladder, but I never had luck with unique Mephisto hell drops whereas decent uniques kept dropping from stuff like Nightmare A5 (my first Mal) or some random dungeon I did just for fun (first SoJ dropped for me from Dark Elder in Ancient Tunnels). I participated quite a bit in the very niche Diablo 1 PvP, but never ended up getting enough gear to do the same in D2.
About the only thing I'd wish would be acknowledged in retrospective is that D2LoD remains perfectly playable as a regular hack'n'slash game. You can beat Hell with any class if your build is good or if you're patient with either farming lower-level areas or taking a while to clear the areas. It was nice because it was multiple facets of player skill and dedication - you could make a cookie-cutter Sorceress or Javazon and speedrun through acts without issue, maintaining decent killspeed in Hell, or you could use all sorts of nifty tricks to let builds with less base damage (pretty much any physical character) shine. Or you could just grind if you wanted to.
I kinda dislike it when people are like "game becomes borderline unplayable in Hell, forces you to grind". It really doesn't if you exhibit any of the traits I outlined above. And Hell being an actual test of mettle is just nice. You're not obliged to 3-dot every single character you start, just as you aren't obliged to enter the extreme late-game in any game of this sort. If you lose interest in a character in Hell or even Nightmare (though I find Nightmare easier than Normal for most builds due to late-tree abilities' insane scaling), parking them wherever is a perfectly fine choice.