Oh well, at least I got to see them twice with the core lineup intact and saw a lot of the big dogs played.
Which core lineup?
I assume you mean the latest one. They've had two bassists since they started putting out full releases.
I am noticing that the people who have complained about Diego making minimal contributions to Virus are generally the ones most negative about his departure, which I find odd. But then maybe I've got more of a picture of what Diego is like from being closer to some of the band for a long time.
I couldn't really say anything about what went wrong in the last couple of years, mainly because I only know snippets so couldn't fairly paint a full picture, plus the bits and pieces I do know it wouldn't be appropriate to talk about anyway. It's quite possible there really was an element of creative differences (which I usually see as a euphemism).
But what I do know is that there were some issues for years. Not sure I've ever posted about this before, but now that he's left I kinda don't mind doing so. In particular, at least when it came to the live setting, Diego never pulled his weight. Definitely as far back as Visions, possibly even the Aquarius tour when he'd only just joined, the band were small and didn't have any crew at all so they needed to set everything up themselves. They would all pitch in to do this as a team, apart from Diego who as far as I know (and observed myself once) refused to help out. So regardless of exactly what happened in the last two years, I feel quite strongly that Diego leaving is a good thing for the band.
In terms of his contributions to Haken, I'm thankfully comfortable separating my opinions on those from my opinions on him. I loved his sound design work on Affinity, and I like As Death Embraces a lot too. So I'm glad for those contributions, but nothing else of his really stands out and I've always found his lead playing very bland.