Hellgate:London

[Kevin]

Look at character slots! Diablo had one account, one character. Diablo II expanded this to 8 characters per account. Guild Wars only had 5 (!) upon release, with only an additional 2 slots per PAID Expansion pack (if you linked them; 4 slots if you didn't, which sort of defeated the purpose of "expansion content"). Eventually Guild Wars opted for paid character slots (at $10 apiece, no less), but that took them over two expansions to produce.

Umm I played at least 5 different D1 toons online on battle.net. Yes account name = character name but you could just make another toon/account no big deal, it was unlimited, you were not limited to one. Single player didn't have a limit. Same with D2 it was essentially unlimited for online because I could make Gnollguy2 and put my 8 variations of the necro on that account if I wanted and my sorcs could be on the gnollguy account and I could have my paladin and barbarian on the GGtheMad account, etc. and it was unlimited for single player or maybe it capped at 99.

So yes it's a major difference and it's a real one. You had UNLIMITED toons in D1 and D2 if you went through the very minor hassle of making a new account when you filled up slots and you were unlimited in single player. If Hellgate was unlimited in single player but limited for online that would be a different story but from what I see that isn't the case. I could be wrong I haven't looked all that hard at it.