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  1. #1

    What is the true Diablo 2 Successor: Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2?

    In this corner: Blizzard's Diablo 3.
    - Blizzard released product, supported on Battle.net v2.0 and integrated with all of their other account features
    - Continues the lore and storyline left off from Diablo 2 from 10 years ago
    - Same style of gameplay, top down isometric rogue-like dungeon crawler with random loot
    - The first Diablo title developed in-house under the Blizzard name

    In the other corner: Runicgame's Torchlight 2.
    - Runicgames includes many of the original designers and producers of Diablo and Diablo 2, who came from Blizzard North -- the company Blizzard bought 6 months before they launched the original Diablo.
    - Matt Uelmen is writing the soundtrack, with the same Slovakian orchestra he used from Diablo 1 and 2.
    - Online play similar to the original battle.net: free to play, no cash shop or cash based auction house.


    My argument:
    - Diablo was never an in-house developed IP for Blizzard; it was acquired and rebranded. All 4 Diablo expansions were Blizzard North products. Blizzard North was closed after the proposed Diablo 3 (circa 2003-2005) was rejected by Vivendi for reasons unknown.*
    - Many of the original designers and producers from Blizzard North are now at Runic Games. No one left at Blizzard working on Diablo 3 have previous Diablo experience.
    - Matt Uelmen, after doing soundtracks for WoW Vanilla and most of The Burning Crusade, left Blizzard. He's now doing the soundtrack to Torchlight.
    - The 'spiritual' successor for Diablo is not Diablo 3, but is Torchlight -- the design ethos, the music, the gameplay, the multiplayer approach, and the lack of 'integration' with Activision's account management.

    What's your opinion?


    *My guess: Diablo 3 didn't include monthly revenue as their new cash cow WoW did.

  2. #2
    Even though many original people that created Diablo created Torchlight, the game was still meh at best. Boring, soulless grind and i wont even mention those "quests". Soundtrack didnt help, it was boring and if i didnt read it i wouldnt believe it was from Uelmen.

  3. #3
    Miss Doctor Lady Bear Sunshine's Avatar
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    Keep the RMAH discussion in the existing threads, please.

  4. #4
    I am Murloc! Anjerith's Avatar
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    I personally have never seen a reason for Diablo 2, LoD pretty soundly ended the storyline. Because of this view, no game (regardless of who makes it) can really be a successor to Diablo in my mind for the same reason.


    I'll play Diablo 3, but I am going to approach it as a parallel universe style of game.

  5. #5
    Torchlight was boring and didn't have crisp controls, you didn't really feel that your items yielded power either.

    Blizzard has a huge team with basically unlimited resources (within reason ) and years and years of experience.

    So my choice would fall on Diablo 3, because Blizzard employees in other companies, doesn't make them Blizzard. It's the company and leadership and their constant strive for quality that makes them so good. Not to mention they got some of the best minds in the industry because of their track record.
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  6. #6
    I definitely feel it's Diablo 3. Diablo 3 is set in the same world, it simply has much the same... feel. It's darker, it's much more grim. Torchlight is like Diablo's lighthearted cousin. I don't feel that Torchlight shares Diablo's aesthetics at all, it looks wildly different to me.

    As for your claim that nobody who worked on Diablo 2 is working on Diablo 3 now... well, no offense, but that's just wrong. :P I'd like to see a source on that, but I know it's wrong, because I spoke to one of the creative development heads at BlizzCon, and he talked about what it was like compared to Diablo 2 to work on 3. They were just about to reveal the Monk class at the time.

    ---------- Post added 2011-08-09 at 11:37 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Anjerith View Post
    I personally have never seen a reason for Diablo 2, LoD pretty soundly ended the storyline. Because of this view, no game (regardless of who makes it) can really be a successor to Diablo in my mind for the same reason.


    I'll play Diablo 3, but I am going to approach it as a parallel universe style of game.
    Well, considering the end of LoD shattered the boundaries between the realms when the Worldstone was destroyed, that's not much of a definitive end to me. :P

  7. #7
    I am Murloc! Anjerith's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius View Post
    I definitely feel it's Diablo 3. Diablo 3 is set in the same world, it simply has much the same... feel. It's darker, it's much more grim. Torchlight is like Diablo's lighthearted cousin. I don't feel that Torchlight shares Diablo's aesthetics at all, it looks wildly different to me.

    As for your claim that nobody who worked on Diablo 2 is working on Diablo 3 now... well, no offense, but that's just wrong. :P I'd like to see a source on that, but I know it's wrong, because I spoke to one of the creative development heads at BlizzCon, and he talked about what it was like compared to Diablo 2 to work on 3. They were just about to reveal the Monk class at the time.

    ---------- Post added 2011-08-09 at 11:37 AM ----------


    Well, considering the end of LoD shattered the boundaries between the realms when the Worldstone was destroyed, that's not much of a definitive end to me. :P
    Yea I took it as the world was just going to collapse on itself. Hey, what can I say - sometimes I like bad endings!

  8. #8
    Well it depends. I suppose what I'll consider the successor to diablo 2 will be the one that actually has talent trees. That reason alone got me to decide I wasn't interested in D3 anymore.

    On a side note I loved torchlight. I wish it were longer and had more features and whatnot but I can't assume their budget was amazing despite being a production team from D1 and D2 I believe runic may not have had the money to allow for a lengthy development.

    Edit:
    It's the company and leadership and their constant strive for quality that makes them so good.
    I really haven't seen this here as of late. And I think the removal of talent trees combined with the 'you must be online to play' pushes the steak into blizzards proverbial heart on this one. If they allow you to inspect other players armor then I'm going to go ahead and say that torchlight 2 will be diablos successor for certain.
    Last edited by Xenryusho; 2011-08-09 at 06:46 PM.

  9. #9
    Diablo 3, by a freaking landslide. Diablo 2 revolutionized the ARPG genre, Diablo 3 will do the same. Torchlight 2 sounds like a remake. Remakes are not what Blizzard ever does, so people inevitably be mad, when they get a different game.

  10. #10
    Pit Lord Protoman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xenryusho View Post
    I really haven't seen this here as of late. And I think the removal of talent trees combined with the 'you must be online to play' pushes the steak into blizzards proverbial heart on this one. If they allow you to inspect other players armor then I'm going to go ahead and say that torchlight 2 will be diablos successor for certain.
    You think gear inspection will ruin the game, or be too much like WoW or something? Would you rather do it the old way and trade with someone and just put all your gear in the trade slots to show people what you are wearing? Seems unnecessary when you can just click inspect.....

    If you think people will judge you based on the gear you have you are still in a WoW mentality and not diablo.....all you need to do in diablo is rush rush rush. There is no gear score or gear check because there are no raids to try and get into.

    "online to play" is necessary to prevent hacking. It does suck i admit, I enjoy solo'ing myself but i'm almost never without an internet connection when I actually have to game. For a trade heavy game online use is needed.

    Removal of talent trees was a surprise, but in the end not a big deal. Different, unique builds were cool, like hammerdin or auradin or whatever....but once you got to the last difficulty everything came down to cookie cutter specs anyways since you had to have builds that inc resists, dec enemy resists, and had attacks that would actually be effective, and had to max out all 4 skills for synergy bonuses..you didn't have much variation in the end. I would still have preferred a trimmed down, simple talent tree to none at all but the diff skills will be enough variation.


    To answer the question.....Torchlight 2 has more cartoony graphics, only 4 classes, and probably less in depth gameplay. I would say D3 is the sucessor and like someone said is trying to revolutionize the genre instead of t2 which is just remaking it.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by probert View Post
    *My guess: Diablo 3 didn't include monthly revenue as their new cash cow WoW did.
    Neither does Starcraft.

  12. #12
    I played Diablo 1 and 2 in offline single player. I played them when they were released, not years and years later.

    Because of that torchlight 1 and 2 are the real successors to the spirit of diablo 1 and 2, for me.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by unholytestament View Post
    Neither does Starcraft.
    ​Woooooooooosh

  14. #14
    D3, torchlight for all its good things... had alot of bad, unit A.I. was dumber then bricks, some spells didn't work half the time, and the complete inability to respec was moronic to say the least.
    seeing as it was made by the same people who worked on D1 & D2 im thinking they were fired for a reason.
    heres hoping they learned from their mistakes.

  15. #15
    i miss matt uelmen

  16. #16
    You know, I can't help but laugh at the folks who think the removal of talent trees "ruins the spirit of Diablo".

    Only Diablo 2 had talent trees. The first one did not. It was a huge gameplay change to add them. To expect further sequels to not have similar gameplay changes is idiotic.
    Quote Originally Posted by maldias View Post
    seeing as it was made by the same people who worked on D1 & D2 im thinking they were fired for a reason.
    This is what I am thinking as well.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by probert View Post
    *My guess: Diablo 3 didn't include monthly revenue as their new cash cow WoW did.
    This. Anyone who even remotely considers Blizzard to be anything but a soulless, robotic corporation out for profit needs a brain-check - corporations want to maximize profits, especially big ones, and Pay 2 Win was inevitably going to come sooner or later, chinese goldfarmers and whatnot had nothing to do with it, it's just to cover their asses. Of course, they don't consider the long-term consequences, but corporations aren't known for having smart management.
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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by maldias View Post
    seeing as it was made by the same people who worked on D1 & D2 im thinking they were fired for a reason.
    I'm pretty sure they quit. Considering Runic Games (the company that makes Torchlight), was created by the co-founders of Blizzard North (the guys who made Diablo 1, 2, and LoD), I'm going with Torchlight 2. Torchlight 1 had a much, much lower budget so they had to do what they could with what they had, and it was still damn good (at least IMO). From what I've seen what they're doing with Torchlight 2, I'm going with that for the "true" Diablo successor, I know I'm playing it and I might not get D3.

    redit: Not to mention that they will probably include things like offline single player and keep the ability to mod the game (because the mods players have come up with are amazing).

  19. #19
    Torchlight 2...but I'm still going crazy for Diablo 3.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by edgecrusherO0 View Post
    redit: Not to mention that they will probably include things like offline single player and keep the ability to mod the game (because the mods players have come up with are amazing).
    Exactly why I think I'm going to like Torchlight 2 more than Diablo 3, they've taken a lot of feedback from the first one and improved on it.
    So far they've confirmed a offline singleplayer, online multiplayer, ability to mod the game.
    Those are all pretty huge features and only one of them will be in D3.

    (I gotta admit the solo campaign of D3 will probably be much better though, on the first playthrough at least because Blizzard is really good at that stuff, but pretty sure it's not going to keep me longterm, Torchlight 2 might.)

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