nixy

I'm going to have to agree with most of the points made in the comments, and few made in the actual article. As someone who holds the specific genre in incredibly high esteem, my nerd rage is flaring.
Diablo is not "king of all roguelikes" any more than Dwarf Fortress is, which a large part of the community would say has a better claim to the title based on the permadeath alone. If I had to pick one, Rogue itself is an obvious choice, for being the first to combine its specific defining attributes in a way that really caught on. If anything, Diablo-clones are a subgenre of roguelikes the same way Doom-clones are a subgenre of first-person shooters. (points at Torchlight)
I'm going to have to give serious credit to omicron1 for so eloquently defending the things that make the genre so distinctive. It's obvious the author of the article isn't the kind of gamer who can appreciate a proper RL for what it is, as evidenced by his blatant dismissal of Dungeons of Dredmor for its adherence to form. It's obvious that the shorter play sessions of Desktop Dungeons and the action-based gameplay and imagery of the Binding of Isaac simply had more sway, and that's fine.
But to someone unfamiliar with the genre, what the author's glazed over entirely with the tone of the article is that the heavily stat-based traditional roguelikes offer tactical gameplay that was unprecedented for its time, and still outpaces many modern games in terms of replayability. What's been unspoken through the whole article is the fact that the feature sets of these games were sacrificing graphics for dynamic enemy AI, terrain modification, randomly generated item and enemy placement, and combat systems on par with their tabletop counterparts back when people were still playing Asteroids in arcades. They're literally almost entirely gameplay, and it's a shame that the article dropped the ball on a genre with so much to offer that gets so little coverage.

As a veteran of the first round of Game Crazy closures, my heart goes out to the other employees who will soon be feeling it. That place was a second home for most of us.

Also, Roger Dunlap? The president of the company couldn't even drop the bomb himself? Man up, Sherif.

Choji. I know, I know, he's dumb, but he reminds me of my chunky little brother, and it makes him kinda endearing.

My face lit up when I saw "Valve signed Left 4 Dead poster." I didn't read about that online!

Please see my first post.

My favourite holiday moment was Thanksgiving of 2005, when my car died. While I waited for my parents to come get me, I accidentally killed my car battery playing my PS1.

I've always been a fan of the chainsaw. Something about the blood spatter on the screen does it for me every time.

Yoyo!

Every no-scope bulltrue in Halo is a sign of my manliness and dominion. Greatest accomplishment ever.

Still Fable 2!