Estrogen
You sound bitter. Are you okay?
What? Estrogen just sees an image of a cave, and wonders, hmm, there must be some chests having some nice equipment and/or other valuables.
Then some people comments how blizzard destroyed RPG gaming.
And then Estrogen is the one that is bitter? Don't get it.
Well he insulted Alrik but that was it. I don't why he did that, perhaps the two have some feud going on between each other that I have missed from another topic. TBH I don't really care.
I think the only thing Diablo made popular was loot-collecting, killing monsters and fast-paced action combat. It didn't heavily influence the RPG genre. Ultima did that (Alrik, you're supposed to be a master RPG geek, I thought you would have known this?) with it's top-down perceptive, dialogue choices and freedom of choice.
Loot-RPG's are said to be influenced by Diablo and some of these games are often referred to as "Diablo clones" but games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Icewind Dale, Fallout and Neverwinter Nights were influenced by table-top RPG's and Ultima (along with other classic RPG's). First Person RPG's such as TES and Arx Fatalis were influenced by Ultima Underworld (with Arx actually being intended as a spiritual successor). It is said that First Person Shooter RPG's were influenced by Deus Ex which in turn was influenced by System Shock which in turn has influenced games such as Bioshock and Dishonored (Deus Ex also influenced the later one).
So I wouldn't say Blizzard have really been that influential in the RPG genre. In the RPG-loot genre, yes (they popularized it) but everywhere else, no. Most RPG's nowadays cite Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Fallout or Planescape as inspiration whereas shooter RPG's cite Deus Ex or System Shock as inspirations.
