I hope you people realise that the game design is lead by Jay Wilson. He is not known for making carbon copies of previous games, but he loves to change pretty much all the mechanics in a game. Also, its not the WoW team who made this game, but the influence is certainly there.

He turned RTS conventional designs upside down with Dawn of War 1 at Relic, with emphasis on map control, squad system, cover and morale system. Then, a few years later, he changed the RTS formula entirely again with Company of Heroes by adding features like destructible environments, directional armor for tanks, command tree, even more emphasis on map control and so on.

Due to Jay's previous work on Relic, i never expected that Diablo 3 will be exactly the same as Diablo 2. He likes to change things around, a lot, by removing some of the defining features of a ARPG like stats allocation and skill points. As far as i know, Jay Wilson wants to innovate the genre, not keeping the ARPG stale like how boring most MMO are these days. Also, in my opinion, this is a very healthy sign for the ARPG genre, as pretty much all major ARPG developers are trying to break away from the old design.

With my 20 hours of playtime in Diablo 3, i say, he did a pretty good job.Most changes like the "stupid" skill unlock tree or no stats allocation has been pretty good changes for me so far, even though it seem a bit dumb downed on paper. In practise, it works very well, at least for me. I have also enjoyed the art style, which looks whole lot like a faded watercolor paint drawing, while the atmosphere is awesome. I'll take back the complaint on the art style is not gritty or Diablo enough.

I still have my criticism on the game, namely the Always Online shit with lots of sugar coating. It's annoying. In addition to that, i felt that the game does have some serious problem, especially in terms of longevity as the Jeweler and Blacksmith could not offer enough depth and longevity as Diablo 2's gambling system or how the archaic skill system. Something is missing here, but i dont know how to fix it.

If you are really disappointed with Diablo 3, buy Torchlight 2 then because the game feels hell lot more like Diablo 2 than Diablo 3 to Diablo 2. And the game is made by some of the founders of Blizzard North/ Condor Games. The pet and skill system is pretty amazing too, as far as i can tell in the beta.

Or just wait for Grim Dawn, if you want some really difficult ARPG game, with some new innovations like faction system, open world design like Skyrim and unforgiving gameplay.

I pretty much pre-ordered/ bought all 3 of them, because each of the game offer something radically different on the table.

Lol, more like juggling between Torchlight 2 Beta and D3. Both are awesome in their own ways and at least ARPG havent get to the point of modern military shooter staleness. Feel like Diablo 3 is taking most of my time from Torchlight 2.

I got a level 25 Monk, a level 17 Demon Hunter and a level 13 Barbarian. Considered quite slow if you compare with other people. And i spent so much time wondering around each map to explore everything.

In my opinion, i find the CS community to be very negative to any changes which i dont think what the gaming industry should be. Games should be constantly iterating, not being stale. I bet with you, even if Valve upgrade the CS 1.6 with the Dota 2 engine, they will still complain because the graphics is different.

I have played CS:GO Beta, briefly, and i really like some of the changes so far. De_Dust 2 looks awesome, by the way.

I do not think anyone should be attached to a particular game, as there are always flaws in a game that can be rectified with a sequel. The most important thing is, no game is perfect, regardless which developer made it. As much as i want a classic Need for Speed remake, i mean Need for Speed 2, not the garbage Hot Pursuit 2010, it will never happen. I have moved on since, to find another awesome racing game.

Torchlight 2 is indeed great so far in the Beta. There one notable thing that i really liked is the smooth movement system in coop while Diablo 3 has some sort of microlag when you move, attack or casting spell. Engineer class is really fun to play, as i like those small deployables that he can summon.

I think Runic improved on the music by leaps and bounds in Torchlight 2, as it is a lot darker and atmospheric now. I find Torchlight 1 to be a bit too cheerful, feels like playing Worms ARPG or something, because the art style feels similar to Worms for me.