Torchlight 2 state of the game with Max Schaefer.

The diablo 3 beta does not represent the final game at all. Most of the key features that make a diablo game a diablo game aren't in the beta. The gameplay is tight, but just like the first act of normal diablo 2, it's really easy and not much loot.

Yeah, and they didn't really seem to have much character to them. They were all pretty much the same with maybe a slight twist on graphics. They were really long and bland lacking landmarks or amazingly cool stuff hidden inside of them. Even still, thinking about the game gives me the itch to play it.

when loot started to appear duplicated , I quickly lost interest.

I think you have that a little backwards. TL2 is getting delayed because their main competition is also getting delayed.

[deleted]

Yeah, they have a small team working on it. It's not confirmed to be at release. If anything, it'll come out well after the PC version does.

Soon soon or Valve-time Soon?

According to their interviews, they're not even remotely interested in doing it either as it's beyond the scope of the game. It's a small time game for a small time publisher, and they're perfectly happy with that.

the game logic is run on the Blizzard server

Oh, that's just bloody brilliant, isn't it? Now there's no point me buying the damn game. Guaranteed 250 ms ping in India to play a single-player game. Maybe after the pirates crack the game I'll buy it so I can play it properly.

Always online DRM is because the game logic is run on the Blizzard server, which has upsides such as preventing duping, server-side storage of characters, and easily jumping into co-op games. That said, lag in single player games is dumb and not being able to play offline will very occasionally affect me.

And the fact that LAN is abolished along with the possibility of running a modded server, something TL2 fully supports with it's SDK. If you never ran a modded D2 server, you definitely missed out on some awesome fun.

Mods didn't make D2 the game that it was, and mods for TL were kinda silly as well. While nice, not a deal breaker for me.

Ah, you missed out then I see, the mods for D2 was what kept in in focus for me and my pals for these years. So to us, it's definitely a selling point.

Alternatively, you can sell crap you don't need. This has the additional benefit of making third party item sellers redundant and moves it into an environment where you aren't risking getting scammed.

Yeah, and if you believe that (about not being scammed) I have a bridge to sell you too. There has never and will never be an online auction system that is foolproof towards manipulation. This is detrimental to the game and only serves Blizzards accounting department, not the players.

In D2, when you assigned stat points, you either did it optimally, or you screwed it up a little bit. If the only possible non-optimal route is screwing up your character, why not just remove stat points? Also, there are potions, and they're very necessary for higher difficulties. Health Globes just help keep the combat moving.

Yes, exactly! you had to actually THINK and PLAN in order to customize your character, you could have all kinds of crazy builds which were specced for various insane things. You had options, with this, all you have is standards. Why they didn't simply implement a hybrid system to cater to both playing styles is beyond me to be honest.

The graphics are pretty dark a lot of the time, and you really shouldn't be making this claim when comparing to Torchlight, which is far more wow-esque in it's graphics. Certainly some of the members of the team worked on some version of WoW, but you make a pretty broad claim regarding "the WoW team" producing D3. I should also mention that some of the Torchlight team came from Blizzard North.

I also made that a point in the TL reference that it's a minus too, I'm definitely not a fan of cartoonish graphics and I hope that either game will get a modded graphics overhaul. (but in D3s heavily regulated world, it seems VERY unlikely)

Borrowing skill mechanics from WoW is hardly surprising. You could even make the case that WoW borrowed skills from Diablo 2, or that Torchlight borrowed skills from other games.

Well, I don't like WoWs design as that is made only to get you to stay in game for as long as possible, therefore the skills are smoothed out and balanced differently to cater to that playing style.

WoW != Diablo, I wish more people would get that through their heads.

Which part was biased and in what way? This is based off the interviews and facts posted about the two games and can be readily accessed if you would just bother to google it.

Edit: I even simplified it for you by adding links, now go read and be terrified that your favourite game is being turned into crap.

No; if that were true WoW would also be "buy-to-win".

Real money auction house is very much buy-to-win. And not present in WoW.

Skill trees may be simplified, but when you combined the skills with gems there are more combinations possible then D2/D1

Erm, no. A Diablo 2 character had 30 skills, each with 20 levels. That is quite a lot of different combinations. Diablo 3 is going to have to contain a very large amount of gems in order to allow anywhere near the same amount of combinations.

That said, chessplate is ridiculously biased in his post, but his points still stands in most cases.

Please, that's such a bullshit reason. If you've seen any in game screenshot, or seen any videos you'd know that's such a horse shit statement.

Except I've seen both and agree with it.

To be fair, they might not be that bright, but they really are glowy, and many of the colors used are very vivid. I, at least, can easily tell the color palette of D3 from D2. They're very, very different.

• No support for mods (there will never be support for mods)

Maybe, to early to say.

It's pretty clear that allowing mods means that cheating would become a problem again and Blizzard has said before that they wouldn't like that to happen. Furthermore, having mods means that the auction house is redundant as everyone can simply mod items or run a modded server, which is definitely not supported by Blizzard.

Bright and glowy WoW style graphics, which makes sense as it's the WoW team that's produced this game Please, that's such a bullshit reason. If you've seen any in game screenshot, or seen any videos you'd know that's such a horse shit statement.

Maybe to you, but to me whose been a huge fan of the graphics direction that D1 and D2 had, this just seems wrong to me when I see the screenshots posted. To me, it's a huge letdown as I expected much more details than these. And as I said, TL2 will also feature this graphics style which is also a minus for that game too, so i consider that a minus for both games.

WoW influenced classes which have little to do with the original grim nature of the Diablo universe

So you mean, classes influenced by fantasy RPG? Like every other game ever?

If you compare the classes between D3 and TL2, you'll find that the classes used in TL2 are more towards standard D&D rules while D3 draws heavily on the simplified WoW classes.

I was REALLY looking forward to Diablo III for the longest time as no other PC RPG has given me quite the rush that both D1 and D2 gave me. But when I started hearing rumors about Blizzard trying to aggressively monetize the franchise, I refused to believe it at first. But after I saw what they did to SCII, I started to read up on D3 development and I became horrified when I saw that they're watering down the game for console while simultaneously removing the flexibility that D2 had.

Meanwhile, TL2 came out of nowhere and pretty much advertised all the things I would have wanted for D3... so naturally my hope lies with that game now. So from a purely technical standpoint, TL2 has everything D3 should have, but due to Blizzards economical decisions, this will never happen with their product.

I think that's the precise reason why TL2 feel more like the old ages of Diablo, call me an old fart if you will, but I really don't fancy the direction D3 is heading right now as it's not feeling like a Diablo game anymore.

If you like it, then more power to you, but for me, these aren't good points in my book.

How is any of my information "bad" when the developers themselves have gone on record to state it in person?

As for me being fanboy, that kind of seems an odd thing to say when I'm essentially ignoring D3 (which I had such hopes for) in favour for a completely new game franchise.

Perhaps it was that way to you, but to me I valued the option of having a build that wasn't foolproof. Players these days are getting increasingly coddled by simplified gaming mechanics to the point where it's beginning to become absurd. The extreme "press X to win" is soon the norm and I see the signs in D3 that this is the case which really turns me off from it as I expected them to take the intricacies in D2 and build upon them further.

But now it seems that nobody wants anything but a simple hack and slash with some fancy menues to drag and drop predefined gems and that makes me even more sad to be honest.

I played through TL twice and never played Diablo yet this is incredibly biased. No mods and no single player are the only negatives in your list - TL will have more simplified gameplay, less content, smaller community, more cartoony graphics, and less depth overall. Let's be realistic, TL2 will be a great game but it will not match D3.

Your comment actually seems biased as you have absolutely no proof of that, yet I can very simply point to something like this to prove my point as the devs have THEMSELVES gone on record to prove this. Seriously, I could go through my whole list and point to articles proving every statement I've made. Can you?

Edit: And I just did that to every statement now, so yeah, I'm "biased" right?

On the other hand, Diablo 3 is 80 fucking dollars that go to Blizzard and Kotick.

I'll pass on that thank you very much.

Extremely shallow. Repetitive, linear dungeons with no variety. Little plot. Equipment sets that are useless because you rarely find more than one or two pieces of them before you've outlevelled them. Overall a very poorly designed Diablo clone, unlike, say, Titan Quest.