Not meaning to be a dick here, but use your computer and do a little research on your own. Runic have done dozens of interviews since beta and even quite a few during E3, and hell since there was no NDA during beta, pretty sure you could find a ton of beta footage on YouTube. Put a little effort into discovering games.

They hid it well. It was linked in their blog post, on the main site, announcing the per-orders. Not sure why they only really advertise the steam one with a big button.

Not anything in specific at all. Since I thought of the first one as very repetitive and eventually boring, I was wondering if they added some major gameplay element. If anything they need something to differentiate from the competition at least.
Anyway the game probably isn't for me, so I don't want to trouble you looking for an answer in such a vague question. I will find out at some point in the distant future.

While you have a point there, the reason why I didn't bother to do my research is that the first one was very boring to me, so I wasn't all that thrilled to look for the sequel. Also I already have watched few youtube videos but it wasn't possible to discern any substantial gameplay differences. So I asked for an opinion from the people that are excited about the game, assuming they must have a good reason for it. Is that good enough explanation for you or you still don't mean to be a dick? :)

Well, from what I played of the beta the main differences between the 1 and the 2 and things that can make 2 more interesting are :

- You are more "free", it's not longer "go down" bellow Torchlight, it's basically smaller dungeons (some only 1 or 2 level) accessible from an over world level. Of course it's not an "open world" or anything like that as you still have to advance the plot to "unlock" the different section of the map but it makes the exploring more interesting.

- You have more side quest, it's no longer only "go to level 20 and kill xxx" or "go to level 15 and fetch me the whatever-ember stone" it's a little more varied, you have some "random" quest that appears in the wilderness and also some of those side quest give you access to new dungeon with more "personalities" than the ones in T1 with their own monsters and their own "decor".

- The skills also looks more "interesting" and varied, it's not like in T1 : find the two or three skills that are actually useful and stick with them; but I haven't played enough to be sure if this first impression is really true.

- It's not really something "new" per se, but something that I enjoyed in T1 when compared to some of the competition (Yes Diablo I am talking about you) is that you can actually choose your difficulty level from the start and more important you can actually play at higher difficulty level without having to farm/grind for two millennium until a "one chance out of six trillion unique object with enough magic attributes to allow you to survive for more that 10 seconds" appears.

In conclusion I looks like an improvement of the first game but nothing earth shattering either, in the end it's still a "diablo"-like, so if you don't like this sort of games then T2 is not for you.

Is anybody in the US planning on doing a group buy for this? I would be very interested in participating in such.

This guy summed it up decently (other than leaving out the addition of multiplayer).
Pretty much there is suppose to be more variety (keep in mind people have only played part of the game as it is not out and has only been available as a beta).
TotalBiscuit did a decent video on it, though I think it is a bit long.

Thanks for the summary, I really appreciate it.
Diablo-like games is certainly not my favourite genre, but I do enjoy playing one once in a while. In fact most of the points you mention as improved in T2 are what I disliked in T1, so it looks like it is worth checking out.

I'm going to check the TotalBiscuit video Immoli mentions as well, thanks for pointing that out.

Apparently, my money isn't good enough for them. I wasn't going to buy it initially anyways, but it kind of pisses me off when publishers refuse to offer games for sale in my region.

I know that China has a reputation for piracy, but seriously, if they won't even sell to us, I'm not exactly sure that's the solution.

Anyways, I'll still buy the game, but I'll take it as a hint to wait a while as I have a huge back log of games.

Yeah I overlooked that during my perusal of the sight, thanks for the heads up :)