So I broke down today....

[FoxBat]

I can see by the reaction of so many players that this Inferno concept as a playground for pro gamers doesn't work.

Path of Exile devs posted a recent blog about some things they've been foisting on their beta testers for endgame:

Action RPGs typically have three difficulty levels. The player plays through the game several times using the same character, with the challenge ramping up each time. Right back at the start of the project, we thought it would be a great idea to add a fourth difficulty level that was really challenging so that players would have something to aim to beat.

When we tested this, we found that players reacted really badly to a sudden brick wall of difficult content that they were unable to progress in. We tried changing it to a steady ramp of difficulty, but then players found isolated areas where the monster AI was more abusable and farmed those with specific builds to get rewards with little risk.

http://www.pathofexile.com/news/2012-06-...diary-maps

Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it?

Both PoE and TL2 seem to be shooting on a multiplayer variant on the infinite dungeon idea. Basically players can choose from a variety of "maps" of varying difficulty which portal you to levels the same old tilesets, but are completely divorced from the game story.

In substance I'm not sure it's that different, but how you present things has a big effect on how most players will perceive the game. For some reason I'm expecting Blizzard will take some of these lessons to heart as they get further into developing the first expansion.