I had some roommates in college that played Diable II like beasts. Once, when they thought they were online but weren't, we heard a scream through the wall, "Fuck! I'm not getting any experience from this!"
We laughed for a while at that one while we browsed videos of people getting hurt on ebaum's world.
Diablo II is actually the one game I return to, time and time again - but not really so much for the game as the socialisation.
I've never had a battle.net account - instead I've always played co-operative LAN with friends. The madness and the glory, the "oh shit" moments where you start cursing under your breath and everybody else piles over to where you are to help, and the tactical analysis over pizza - that's what Diablo II's about for me.
I think the advent of MMORPGs with voice communication has made them much more social - a friend of mine who's a serious WoW player spends as much time talking about his guildmates as he does about the gameplay.
You basically described my life during junior high. That same type of phenomenon happened often before I finally convinced my Mom to upgrade to DSL, with the excuse that I could find homework help on AOL even quicker, which is true, but I had ulterior motives. I really just wanted to play Starcraft online with real people without a crappy connection.
I was a single child and had zero friends within a 3-mile radius. Video games were a close friend back then.
We laughed for a while at that one while we browsed videos of people getting hurt on ebaum's world.