3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
1. Does not detract from gameplay and will only serve to improve the users experience.
2. This one Torchlight does have an advantage, although D2 was fun for many years before needing to switch to mods for a fresh gaming experience. If D3 can provide the same amount of fun for the same longevity it wont be much of an issue.
3. I'm not familiar with T2's customization yet so I can't comment, but I do think D3 will have enough variety to keep the replay value high enough for a long time.
4. Lan's are a thing of the past. All the Lan parties I have been to lately still have online capability so this wont have any effect.
5. This only effects 0.00001% of the gaming population, but for those of us with internet, this will have no effect on our gaming experience.
6. lol. If you don't think a game that allows trading wont have gold farmers then you have been living with a blindfold on the past decade.
7. While I do expect a quality soundrack from both games, comparing them before hearing them is simply biased speculation.
8. I expect to pay 50-60 for a quality game. I don't see the problem here.
9. How do you know T2's and D3's loot already? We have only seen glimpses but not the complete picture, so this is pure speculation not grounded in facts.
If neither is "open world" like WoW, then bots and farmers won't really hurt anything other than PvP. The people that spend money will level faster and have uber gears faster, sure. We all remember LoD yea? People bought runewords and such from sites and it made PvP ridiculous.
What grabbed me with the Diablo series was the loot system. It's just getting more immense and I like seeing all the possibilities available in the game, and the way characters look with the Unique and Set items all together. I'm hoping D3 will take advantage of the money being put in to really capture unique identities to help separate the way avatars look while wearing armor.
(I always hoped that we'd be able to get that "Admin" armor you saw in Blizznet chats. You know, the silver one that just looked like it's ready to tear through Baal in a millisecond.)
"What's up with this? I try to be a nice guy, all I ask for in return's help. When my plans work and ur crying, I'll be laffin!"
Originally posted by Athillian Originally posted by SaintViktor 1. No Real Money Auction house. 2. Torchlight 2 is modable. 3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization. 4. Lan is supported. 5. Single player offline play is supported. 6. No gold farmers! 7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack. 8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3. 9. Better loot 10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
You are very wrong in many of those cases.
Except not.
Diablo3 has been confirmed to have NO OFFLINE AT ALL. Your characters are saved in servers and you play in servers, no matter solo or alone. Its not Starcraft2's "activation online but a guest mode available" thing. Its bassically single-player wow. Diablo3 has been confirmed to have RMT market. Official one. Torchlight2 Has already confirmed to support mods. Diablo3 won't support and ban any kind of modding activity. Torchlight 2 has more customization. Why? Alongside character face/etc selection, Torchlight2 allows statpoint allocation, skillpoint allocation and etc. Diablo3 has completley removed statpoints and skillpoints. Matt Uelman IS doing TL2 soundtrack and NOT D3 soundtrack. TL2 will cost around ~20-30$, while D3 will be 60$+, not to mention what you will spend in pay-to-win market to be competitive, not to mention paid dlc and whatever else Bobby Kottick will think off. D3 loot is focused on crafting, while TL2 uses Diablo-style looting, which already makes it better than D3. And yes, Runic is bassically Condor Entertainment, ala the people who created, thought up and released Diablo, Diablo2 and Diablo2:LoD. D3 currently has a whopping ONE person from original crew working on it as PR guy.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY # ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED # A MASKED CRY ADORING # A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
How can anyone argue with a person that is convinced that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer WoW?
Oh, and the earth is flat too!
Other than the fact of playing with friends there is no other incentive to group in Diablo 3. Loot drops just the same as if you was playing coop. Everything about Diablo 3 is being built around the RMAH and dumbing it down so anyone can do it. Sound familiar ?
I think diablo 3 will be better for the simple fact its diablo.. and i don't mind not allowing mods or having to be online to play single player. makes the game all the better when it comes to not allowing people to have cheated characters.
You know, I hardly knew what Torchlight was a few days ago and I was really looking forward to D3. However, then I read about what Blizzard was doing with D3 and Torchlight 2 started to look a whole lot better.
No offline mode sucks, the RMAH is basically just a way for Blizzard to "resolve" RMT by legitimizing taxing it, but the number one thing that makes me hate D3 is...NO MODS.
I really think people underestimate the impact that mods have on PC games. Good mods can literally elevate a "good" game to the realm of absolute classic greatness. Don't believe me? Consider this...
Quake 1 mod - Team Fortress: Most people know about TF2, but the ORIGINAL Team Fortress introduced the class based multiplayer FPS to the world. It was extremely innovative and paved the way for many other big games.
Half Life 1 mod - Counterstrike: This EXTREMELY popular mod popularized competitive tactical shooters.
Warcraft 3 mod - Defense of the Ancients: Spawned an entirely new genre of games! No LoL or HoN without this beauty.
This doesn't even count the HUGE amount of mods that just generally make games better. Games like the Elder Scrolls series, DIABLO series, Starcraft series...all had tons of mods that just made the games more fun to play.
So yeah. When Blizzard says that they are disallowing mods it kind of pisses me off. Mods have been a MAJOR source of innovation in the gaming industry for decades now. Disallowing them just seems like an incredibly arrogant way to try to profit more from DLC by eliminating the competition that could probably do things better than you anyway.
Especially when devs deliver the mod tools which are essentially the very tools they used to create the game, meaning modders have absolutely free hands in developing content for TL2. New classes? New lands? New skills? Go right ahead, you can even attach new game assets (models, sound, textures, etc), provided you have them. It's not difficult to imagine what community could and most likely will do with these tools given to them.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
How can anyone argue with a person that is convinced that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer WoW?
Oh, and the earth is flat too!
Other than the fact of playing with friends there is no other incentive to group in Diablo 3. Loot drops just the same as if you was playing coop. Everything about Diablo 3 is being built around the RMAH and dumbing it down so anyone can do it. Sound familiar ?
WoW has a real money Auction House? I'm playing and I really didn't know about this... I knew that you could some mounts and whatnot, but where do I go to buy money and gold? As a casual player with a good amount of money, I'm all about paying real money to ehance my experience. And No, I'm not being sarcastic.
How can anyone argue with a person that is convinced that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer WoW?
Oh, and the earth is flat too!
Other than the fact of playing with friends there is no other incentive to group in Diablo 3. Loot drops just the same as if you was playing coop. Everything about Diablo 3 is being built around the RMAH and dumbing it down so anyone can do it. Sound familiar ?
Don't insult my intelligence. All you're doing is taking one aspect, compare it, then call both games the same. Tisk.
Do I really need to explain the differences (The VAST differences) between an MMO and an aRPG?
3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
I'm a mature gamer, and I'm far more interested in Torchlight 2 than I am in Diablo 3. If blood, gore, and demons are what you think mature gamers need to make a game playable, or to hold their attention, I think you're severely mistaken or haven't played many games. You're also making a blanket statement generalization that you have no evidence to reinforce.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
I'm a mature gamer, and I'm far more interested in Torchlight 2 than I am in Diablo 3. If blood, gore, and demons are what you think mature gamers need to make a game playable, or to hold their attention, I think you're severely mistaken or haven't played many games. You're also making a blanket statement generalization that you have no evidence to reinforce.
Define your sense of maturity. Torchlight looks like going through effin' up smurf village. Diablo 3, while it has a stupid Warcraft-influenced color palette, still has elements like God of War in it, where limbs get severed and people get broken. When I play an action game, I need something visceral to hold by attention
I'd say I have played about 25,000 games before, not that it matters. Maybe somewhere between 3000 to 5000 video games, which I think is about about 3 new games a week since I started playing back in 1981.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
TL 2 all the way, Blizzard can keep the crap D III is. No customization, no talent trees, no custom stats and no death penalty compared with gay graphics its horrible what Blizzard is doing with this former great franchise.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
TL 2 all the way, Blizzard can keep the crap D III is. No customization, no talent trees, no custom stats and no death penalty compared with gay graphics its horrible what Blizzard is doing with this former great franchise.
character customization on a top-down ARPG isn't important. considering your character is covered in armor most of the time you can't see it anyways.
custom stats? they weren't custom in the first place. people went online and copied stat builds that were most popular/best for the class.
gay graphics? more detail than any ARPG i've seen. destructible environments. this statement is just LOL. torchlight 2 looks like it should be on the OG playstation compared to diablo 3's graphics.
Diablo 3 will do well simply because it's diablo. Fans of the series will gladly eat up anything blizzard shoves in their mouths, even if it has the consistency of poo.
Personally though I don't plan on buying D3, due to the recent issues already covered in the other thread here on this topic. I haven't really kept up with development of either games, but i'm dead certain i'm not going to support what Blizzard is doing with their game.
After some thought, personally I won't dismiss Diablo's new system until I get to see it in action, to experience it.
I dont care a rats about DRM, really. A passive and extremely minor issue if your one of the few hermits in todays age without an internet connection.
About the AH, well, it's my understanding is that the auction house in Diablo 3 will only be player to player. Blizzard will not be selling any items directly. Though the slipperly slope is there, so is the benefit of the doubt.
So if If it's just a nice implementation of a user-friendly and player-base only AH where you can buy D3 items from another player for in-game gold or RMT, no big deal, as everyone can participate and drive the economy. However, if Blizzard intends to use it as an outlet to sell anything, including game-enhancing gear and items for RMT, then that is when I take huge issue with it.
After some thought, personally I won't dismiss Diablo's new system until I get to see it in action, to experience it.
I dont care a rats about DRM, really. A passive and extremely minor issue if your one of the few hermits in todays age without an internet connection.
About the AH, well, it's my understanding is that the auction house in Diablo 3 will only be player to player. Blizzard will not be selling any items directly. Though the slipperly slope is there, so is the benefit of the doubt.
So if If it's just a nice implementation of a user-friendly and player-base only AH where you can buy D3 items from another player for in-game gold or RMT, no big deal, as everyone can participate and drive the economy. However, if Blizzard intends to use it as an outlet to sell anything, including game-enhancing gear and items for RMT, then that is when I take huge issue with it.
the game itself is not affected at all by these new implementations. they're simply trying new ways to stop old problems.
and you're right about the AH. it is simply an outlet for players to sell unwanted or unusable items. there will be an auction house to buy things for gold (which will actually have a value in this game), and then there will be one that will use Real Money Transactions. Blizzard will take a flat rate cut off the top of each purchase on the RMT AH, which is to be expected considering it's their intellectual property you are selling.
3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
Are you sure there will be blood and gore in Diablo 3? I know they removed the pentagrams, crosses, and anything else that could be considered "religious". They've tried to make the game as politically correct and inoffensive as possible.
I love Torchlight but TL2 is not going to be in the same league as Diablo 3. The truth is that no ARPG has even been in the same league as Diablo 2. Sorry TL fans.
3. Torchlight 2 will have superior character customization.
4. Lan is supported.
5. Single player offline play is supported.
6. No gold farmers!
7. Matt Uelmen is doing the Torchlight 2 soundtrack.
8. It will be much cheaper to buy compared to Diablo 3.
9. Better loot
10. Runic games has 2 of the original creators of Diablo games, they know arpgs!
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
Are you sure there will be blood and gore in Diablo 3? I know they removed the pentagrams, crosses, and anything else that could be considered "religious". They've tried to make the game as politically correct and inoffensive as possible.
Comments
1. Does not detract from gameplay and will only serve to improve the users experience.
2. This one Torchlight does have an advantage, although D2 was fun for many years before needing to switch to mods for a fresh gaming experience. If D3 can provide the same amount of fun for the same longevity it wont be much of an issue.
3. I'm not familiar with T2's customization yet so I can't comment, but I do think D3 will have enough variety to keep the replay value high enough for a long time.
4. Lan's are a thing of the past. All the Lan parties I have been to lately still have online capability so this wont have any effect.
5. This only effects 0.00001% of the gaming population, but for those of us with internet, this will have no effect on our gaming experience.
6. lol. If you don't think a game that allows trading wont have gold farmers then you have been living with a blindfold on the past decade.
7. While I do expect a quality soundrack from both games, comparing them before hearing them is simply biased speculation.
8. I expect to pay 50-60 for a quality game. I don't see the problem here.
9. How do you know T2's and D3's loot already? We have only seen glimpses but not the complete picture, so this is pure speculation not grounded in facts.
10. D3 has people that know the genre too!
the only person who can say if its better or worse is the person playing it.
If you like one more than the other, there it is. Some will agree some will disagree. It's all what YOU like.
You are very wrong in many of those cases.
"HEY EVERYONE, LET'S COPY BLIZZARD LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!"
If neither is "open world" like WoW, then bots and farmers won't really hurt anything other than PvP. The people that spend money will level faster and have uber gears faster, sure. We all remember LoD yea? People bought runewords and such from sites and it made PvP ridiculous.
What grabbed me with the Diablo series was the loot system. It's just getting more immense and I like seeing all the possibilities available in the game, and the way characters look with the Unique and Set items all together. I'm hoping D3 will take advantage of the money being put in to really capture unique identities to help separate the way avatars look while wearing armor.
(I always hoped that we'd be able to get that "Admin" armor you saw in Blizznet chats. You know, the silver one that just looked like it's ready to tear through Baal in a millisecond.)
"What's up with this? I try to be a nice guy, all I ask for in return's help. When my plans work and ur crying, I'll be laffin!"
Except not.
Diablo3 has been confirmed to have NO OFFLINE AT ALL. Your characters are saved in servers and you play in servers, no matter solo or alone. Its not Starcraft2's "activation online but a guest mode available" thing. Its bassically single-player wow.
Diablo3 has been confirmed to have RMT market. Official one.
Torchlight2 Has already confirmed to support mods. Diablo3 won't support and ban any kind of modding activity.
Torchlight 2 has more customization. Why? Alongside character face/etc selection, Torchlight2 allows statpoint allocation, skillpoint allocation and etc. Diablo3 has completley removed statpoints and skillpoints.
Matt Uelman IS doing TL2 soundtrack and NOT D3 soundtrack.
TL2 will cost around ~20-30$, while D3 will be 60$+, not to mention what you will spend in pay-to-win market to be competitive, not to mention paid dlc and whatever else Bobby Kottick will think off.
D3 loot is focused on crafting, while TL2 uses Diablo-style looting, which already makes it better than D3.
And yes, Runic is bassically Condor Entertainment, ala the people who created, thought up and released Diablo, Diablo2 and Diablo2:LoD. D3 currently has a whopping ONE person from original crew working on it as PR guy.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
How can anyone argue with a person that is convinced that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer WoW?
Oh, and the earth is flat too!
Not really gonna get into this thread, but that response simply wins.
Other than the fact of playing with friends there is no other incentive to group in Diablo 3. Loot drops just the same as if you was playing coop. Everything about Diablo 3 is being built around the RMAH and dumbing it down so anyone can do it. Sound familiar ?
I think diablo 3 will be better for the simple fact its diablo.. and i don't mind not allowing mods or having to be online to play single player. makes the game all the better when it comes to not allowing people to have cheated characters.
You know, I hardly knew what Torchlight was a few days ago and I was really looking forward to D3. However, then I read about what Blizzard was doing with D3 and Torchlight 2 started to look a whole lot better.
No offline mode sucks, the RMAH is basically just a way for Blizzard to "resolve" RMT by legitimizing taxing it, but the number one thing that makes me hate D3 is...NO MODS.
I really think people underestimate the impact that mods have on PC games. Good mods can literally elevate a "good" game to the realm of absolute classic greatness. Don't believe me? Consider this...
Quake 1 mod - Team Fortress: Most people know about TF2, but the ORIGINAL Team Fortress introduced the class based multiplayer FPS to the world. It was extremely innovative and paved the way for many other big games.
Half Life 1 mod - Counterstrike: This EXTREMELY popular mod popularized competitive tactical shooters.
Warcraft 3 mod - Defense of the Ancients: Spawned an entirely new genre of games! No LoL or HoN without this beauty.
This doesn't even count the HUGE amount of mods that just generally make games better. Games like the Elder Scrolls series, DIABLO series, Starcraft series...all had tons of mods that just made the games more fun to play.
So yeah. When Blizzard says that they are disallowing mods it kind of pisses me off. Mods have been a MAJOR source of innovation in the gaming industry for decades now. Disallowing them just seems like an incredibly arrogant way to try to profit more from DLC by eliminating the competition that could probably do things better than you anyway.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Especially when devs deliver the mod tools which are essentially the very tools they used to create the game, meaning modders have absolutely free hands in developing content for TL2. New classes? New lands? New skills? Go right ahead, you can even attach new game assets (models, sound, textures, etc), provided you have them. It's not difficult to imagine what community could and most likely will do with these tools given to them.
WoW has a real money Auction House? I'm playing and I really didn't know about this... I knew that you could some mounts and whatnot, but where do I go to buy money and gold? As a casual player with a good amount of money, I'm all about paying real money to ehance my experience. And No, I'm not being sarcastic.
Don't insult my intelligence. All you're doing is taking one aspect, compare it, then call both games the same. Tisk.
Do I really need to explain the differences (The VAST differences) between an MMO and an aRPG?
Why you are wrong:
1. No blood.
2. No Gore.
3. No Demons.
While I do not agree with a lot of how Blizzard is fucking up this series, I still think these three elements are crucial to a good dungeon crawler. When Dungeon Siege was actually good, it had it. Baldur's Gate had it. All of the diablo games have it. Games that don't (ie Torchlight and Mythos) really can't hold the interest of a mature gamer.
/thread.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
I'm a mature gamer, and I'm far more interested in Torchlight 2 than I am in Diablo 3. If blood, gore, and demons are what you think mature gamers need to make a game playable, or to hold their attention, I think you're severely mistaken or haven't played many games. You're also making a blanket statement generalization that you have no evidence to reinforce.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Define your sense of maturity. Torchlight looks like going through effin' up smurf village. Diablo 3, while it has a stupid Warcraft-influenced color palette, still has elements like God of War in it, where limbs get severed and people get broken. When I play an action game, I need something visceral to hold by attention
I'd say I have played about 25,000 games before, not that it matters. Maybe somewhere between 3000 to 5000 video games, which I think is about about 3 new games a week since I started playing back in 1981.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
TL 2 all the way, Blizzard can keep the crap D III is. No customization, no talent trees, no custom stats and no death penalty compared with gay graphics its horrible what Blizzard is doing with this former great franchise.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
character customization on a top-down ARPG isn't important. considering your character is covered in armor most of the time you can't see it anyways.
custom stats? they weren't custom in the first place. people went online and copied stat builds that were most popular/best for the class.
gay graphics? more detail than any ARPG i've seen. destructible environments. this statement is just LOL. torchlight 2 looks like it should be on the OG playstation compared to diablo 3's graphics.
Diablo 3 will do well simply because it's diablo. Fans of the series will gladly eat up anything blizzard shoves in their mouths, even if it has the consistency of poo.
Personally though I don't plan on buying D3, due to the recent issues already covered in the other thread here on this topic. I haven't really kept up with development of either games, but i'm dead certain i'm not going to support what Blizzard is doing with their game.
After some thought, personally I won't dismiss Diablo's new system until I get to see it in action, to experience it.
I dont care a rats about DRM, really. A passive and extremely minor issue if your one of the few hermits in todays age without an internet connection.
About the AH, well, it's my understanding is that the auction house in Diablo 3 will only be player to player. Blizzard will not be selling any items directly. Though the slipperly slope is there, so is the benefit of the doubt.
So if If it's just a nice implementation of a user-friendly and player-base only AH where you can buy D3 items from another player for in-game gold or RMT, no big deal, as everyone can participate and drive the economy. However, if Blizzard intends to use it as an outlet to sell anything, including game-enhancing gear and items for RMT, then that is when I take huge issue with it.
the game itself is not affected at all by these new implementations. they're simply trying new ways to stop old problems.
and you're right about the AH. it is simply an outlet for players to sell unwanted or unusable items. there will be an auction house to buy things for gold (which will actually have a value in this game), and then there will be one that will use Real Money Transactions. Blizzard will take a flat rate cut off the top of each purchase on the RMT AH, which is to be expected considering it's their intellectual property you are selling.
Are you sure there will be blood and gore in Diablo 3? I know they removed the pentagrams, crosses, and anything else that could be considered "religious". They've tried to make the game as politically correct and inoffensive as possible.
I love Torchlight but TL2 is not going to be in the same league as Diablo 3. The truth is that no ARPG has even been in the same league as Diablo 2. Sorry TL fans.
Here is a Beta Video from D3 on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVJmGA8azh0
I see a lot of blood, as usual for the series.
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
- John Galt