Sounds like a cash shop to me, at least a hybrid one. Virtual items and gameplay enhancements can be purchased from the Auction House using real money, of which Blizzard profits from; a revenue generator.
The difference is Blizzard isn't the one selling it. All auction houses profit from the selling of goods. Otherwise they would go broke. Virtual property may muddle it a bit but it doesn't change the fundamental mechanic.
Here's where I see "spin". Blizzard "is" profiting from it; they are "enabling" and "profiting", by taking cash for each item that is placed up on the AH, from all AH sales that enable virtual items and gameplay enhancements.
Torchlight 2 is mechanically and feature equivilant to Diablo 2, and it's being made by many of the people who made Diablo 1 and 2. Diablo 3 is being made by entirely different and noname developers under the Blizzard corporate brand.
Torchlight 2 is arguably more of a successor to the Diablo franchise than Diablo 3 is.
I might be wrong but have you all forgot the past, and cant analyze why Blizzard have such a huge success in ALL games that they have developed so far?
About the past, comes to my mind a few games made by former Blizzard developers, some of the team that made Diablo some from the WoW team.
Hellgate, Mythos,Torchlight 1 amongst others. Now NCSOFT are making a new one also advertising "by the former team of WoW".
Have these games been a HUGE success like Diablo, warcraft or WoW? i think the answer is clear, NO. I am not saying that those were bad games, but was they GREAT? Sorry but something was missing, and they weren’t.
Now we are expecting that Torchlight 2 will be as good or even better than Diablo 3, will be? We can only see when we start playing both. But the true the "old developers of Blizzard" so far haven’t been a good indicator.
We can also analyze Torlight 1 that is from the same company and with some of developers that are making Torchlight 2, was Torchlight a huge success and an amazing game, sorry but wasn’t. Wasn’t a bad game, but very similar to another RPG game called FATE.
At the same time if we analyze Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo and compare to the versions 2 of those games, they become a lot better, a few may not like some changes, but almost everyone agree that they are better.
We can also analyze the time of development of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2, Diablo 3 in 2006 already had screenshots of the game play and only this month went Closed BETA we are talking about almost 6 years of development, in that time I am sure they tested and changed the game to make sure that will be a game with quality. Torchlight 2 development started after Torchlight 1 will have less than 2 years of development.
Just like Leonard Boyarsky main developer of Fallout 1 and 2 that joined Diablo3 team stated in an interview, in Blizzard the developers have the time to finish and polish the games, in other companies they don’t have that time.And we have seen how many games could been a sucess if they had a few mote time to finish and polish tehy games.
To finish, will Torlight 2 be a good game, I think so and the 20€ will be nice. Will Diablo 3 be a huge success, it will for sure, if Torchlight will be better , I really doubt that, at least if we analyze everything, but only when we play both we will be 100% sure which one will be better.
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Here's where I see "spin". Blizzard "is" profiting from it; they are "enabling" and "profiting", by taking cash for each item that is placed up on the AH, from all AH sales that enable virtual items and gameplay enhancements.
So yea, it is a Cash Shop, if even a Hybrid.
I might be wrong but have you all forgot the past, and cant analyze why Blizzard have such a huge success in ALL games that they have developed so far?
About the past, comes to my mind a few games made by former Blizzard developers, some of the team that made Diablo some from the WoW team.
Hellgate, Mythos,Torchlight 1 amongst others. Now NCSOFT are making a new one also advertising "by the former team of WoW".
Have these games been a HUGE success like Diablo, warcraft or WoW? i think the answer is clear, NO. I am not saying that those were bad games, but was they GREAT? Sorry but something was missing, and they weren’t.
Now we are expecting that Torchlight 2 will be as good or even better than Diablo 3, will be? We can only see when we start playing both. But the true the "old developers of Blizzard" so far haven’t been a good indicator.
We can also analyze Torlight 1 that is from the same company and with some of developers that are making Torchlight 2, was Torchlight a huge success and an amazing game, sorry but wasn’t. Wasn’t a bad game, but very similar to another RPG game called FATE.
At the same time if we analyze Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo and compare to the versions 2 of those games, they become a lot better, a few may not like some changes, but almost everyone agree that they are better.
We can also analyze the time of development of Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2, Diablo 3 in 2006 already had screenshots of the game play and only this month went Closed BETA we are talking about almost 6 years of development, in that time I am sure they tested and changed the game to make sure that will be a game with quality. Torchlight 2 development started after Torchlight 1 will have less than 2 years of development.
Just like Leonard Boyarsky main developer of Fallout 1 and 2 that joined Diablo3 team stated in an interview, in Blizzard the developers have the time to finish and polish the games, in other companies they don’t have that time.And we have seen how many games could been a sucess if they had a few mote time to finish and polish tehy games.
To finish, will Torlight 2 be a good game, I think so and the 20€ will be nice. Will Diablo 3 be a huge success, it will for sure, if Torchlight will be better , I really doubt that, at least if we analyze everything, but only when we play both we will be 100% sure which one will be better.