As for Try Again, the minimap was wiped and my spells were not there (I'm not sure about other stuff, I didn't check), so I assume it was like a new game.
The build was from yesterday morning.
Diablo 2 is one of the very few games where I don't mind starting in a hub area - usually I prefer a good gameplay kick off instead of overwhelming amount of NPCs. I need to think about it some more.