Okay, then not 30 years but 3. Warhammer got published 1983.
Yes but that does not mean that Castlevania is not the obvious choice for influence.
TBH, the obvious choice for influence is Bram Stokerâs Dracula book. 
Thatâs the whole transylvania = vampires = X-sylvania and so on. But the artwork down to the exact same butresses, same castles, even the black coach driving on the streets below, the arrogant lord vampires sipping their wine while the peasants below pay a tithe to them, and so on - thatâs Warhammer universe carbon copy.
Many tropes were inspired by him, sure, but even a lot of it predates him. The whole of Ardenweald for example is based upon celtic-rooted pagan lore that Tolkien himself took bits of and bastardized other bits.
A common issue (not saying this what youâre doing just to be clear) in fantasy circles these days is mistaking Tolkienâs depiction as âthe canonâ when he switched up a lot of lore regarding elves and faefolk by turning them into beings whom seem to be somewhat cordial with humans and generally âwise and distantâ. Despite pretty much all the fae and elf lore that he would probably have drawn inspiration from depicts these creatures as mischievous and potentially malevolent depending on their mood.
This said, Tolkien has influenced âa lotâ of fantasy lore since, particularly those games that depict elves as being âfriends of humansâ etc, as this was largely his thing. But the notion of elves and a forest kinship, magic and sylvan overtones, all of that predates him by a large margin and comes from a huge variety of sources.
The whole pale, blonde and tall elves though, thatâs largely his influence. Lore on elves prior to Tolkien didnât always depict them as fair at all, in fact many of them were quite unsettling to look at and theyâd beguile humans using their magic rather than because they were charming or good looking.
This is what I meant earlier about plausibility. If someone makes a game and has a nature-like race that has words like âsylvanâ associated with them, itâs really hard to prove them copied someone else, because there is a truckton of lore readily available from sources that predate any contemporary writer that could be used to arrive at such a race, and proving otherwise is hard.
So it goes for vampire lore. Even if GW did the armies of Sylvania thing, youâre going to have a tough time proving someone who writes vampires in a game with gothic castles and aristocratic vibes wasnât drawing inspiration from Dracula lore given the precedent in that lore is that.
But if we take something like blizzardâs trolls (as I mentioned earlier) there is literally no other examples in lore or myth anywhere of trolls using voodoo or similar magic, or speaking in such a way, or having that kind of tribal spirit-religion culture. This is very much blizzardâs brainchild so if someone writes trolls in a similar way at a later date, theyâre going to have a very difficult time proving they didnât copy Blizzard as there is literally no other source for such an idea they can claim they got the idea from.
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I have completed both PoTD and HoH.
While Torghast does remind me of them, I have to say that the act of doing it doesnât feel the same. Here is why:
You can wipe in PoTD and HoH but only if you donât want to complete the content in its entirety. After a certain point a wipe means game over. You donât get to go back in and continue from where you left off to reach the last floor. PoTD has 200 floors and HoH has 100 so you can imagine how much time you feel you wasted when you wipe. You can leave and come back later if you didnât wipe. You donât have to do all 100/200 floors in one go. You just canât wipe and save your progress after a certain point.
Gear has no bearing on your performance in PoTD and HoH. Instead you have a special auto-equipped weapon and you can increase its strength from opening chests.
Traps are very different. In PoTD and HoH traps are invisible aside from very specific circumstances. When you step on one it can polymorph you, silence you or spawn a gigantic amount of mobs. Stepping in a trap can quickly lead to a wipe on the higher floors. And yes they are often located right in the centre of a pack of mobs. Some chests can be mimics that can debuff you.
You do not get silly powers that make your combat performance insane in PoTD and HoH. No boosts to haste, no extra stuff your class abilities can do, nothing like that. You actually experience far more debuffs than buffs. You can transform into a monster but it has a very short duration and its abilities are not class based. You can summon a monster to clear the floor but thatâs not a buff. All it does is appear, do a special move, and then leave.
The goodies from PoTD and HoH are almost entirely cosmetic. So you donât need to go there to boost your performance elsewhere in the game. You can get a nice weapon but it is not the only or the best source for a weapon. People usually get it for mog purposes.
And finally, PoTD and HoH is entirely optional content. They have a place in the lore of the game, but theyâre not part of the main questline. If you donât want to do them, you donât have to.
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Honestly Torghast reminds me much more of Diablo.
The aesthetic reminds me so much of the Reaper of Souls expansion.
The crazy powerups and the often silly ways they trigger is very similar to how gear bonuses work in Diablo.
One wipe isnât game over, you can just respawn and try again.
You can see traps, and the traps that are there are quite similar to those in Diablo.
You can break pots! Might seem silly but it is something I associate with that game.
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Everything is heavy inspired from somewhere else.
Odyn, Thorim, Loken and straight up Freja. And all the other Titan+Ulduar bosses. Straight up norse mythology
Bwonsamdi - Baron Samedi
Nerâzul - Nurgel 40k
CâThun - Cthulhu, and all those other old gods and the names i cant type.
There are just afew of the top of my head, that not only in name but also in theme and story are straigh up a copy.
Kinda hard for a dude from 1300 years ago to sue Blizz for copying some stories he wrote down in Scandinavia.
As for the other stuff. Sometimes it seems very suspect and like someone should sue. Which im sure blizz has been through and have great lawyers at hand.
Not like blizzard are creating brand new stuff. They never really did.
It all began as some dudes that wanted a video game for their table top fantasies i believe.
Letâs see. Area with giant tree as the heart of things, people being born by dreaming in pods and then waking up, wild hunt as their goal, lead by godlike lady in fancy dress from her private chamber upstairs of the grove. Oh and nightmare is corrupting things in the area. Now how can you think this has any similarity to Ardenweald? 
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100% agree.
Well first thing I thought off when I entered Bastion and saw the npcâs was the Exalted in GW2 hahaâŚ
Not true. You save progress and many repeat the same level bracket of 10 floors as it gives the most xp. You never have to reset back to level one unless your group wiped on its first try of the 10 levels. It saves your progress every 10 levels and you are free to repeat any of the brackets you have previously completed.
For instance we run 21-30 of heaven on high for the fastest xp gain.
There is also a solo leaderboard people clear all of it weekly.
There are also buffs inside HoH⌠you can summon a primal if you find Magicite in the dungeon.
You can also turn into powerful monsters in Palace of the Dead.
Gear has no bearing because you get armor/weapon that you only have while inside, levelling it up enables you to take on harder floors.
A high fantasy universe is inspired by and therefore a recombination of other high fantasy universes?
Oh, the humanity!
Many of these universes are inspired by tabletop RPGâs, and those in turn also by fantasy tales like LotR and mythology.
Thereâs nothing weird about this.
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Shows how much I have done the casual version then because I really did not know this lol.
Thatâs not really a buff though. Thatâs summoning something.
Yea I did say this.
More of a transformation than a buff. Depends on how you look at it I suppose. It also only lasts for a very short time and itâs certainly not a class based buff, but the ones in Torghast very often are.
Anyway I donât feel like Torghast is a rip-off of PoTD and HoH. At least for me it doesnât feel the same while Iâm doing it.
EDIT: I edited my post with your corrections, thanks for the reminder about wiping. I truly had entirely forgotten about it. My buddies and I almost only ever did PoTD and HoH with the intention of entirely completing it.
You think itâs a stretch to think they stole a levelling grind called renown from another game with a levelling grind called renown?
I donât think you know what stretch means 
Never seen any self respecting developer rip off ArenaNet.
They had an excellent, niche dark fantasy MMO and let it die to rehash generic plagiarized high fantasy in their âF2P Modern Wardrobe Simulatorâ MMO where they now recycle and butcher their dark, mature fantasy lore with derp story telling.
If weâre going that route than basically everything came from LotR.
Itâs fantasy and itâs ok to take cool stuff from all around that genre and adapt it for your own story.
I find Torghast has more in common with tartarus from the Persona series than PotD/HoH.
Including a âReaperâ who chases you, although in the persona series, it chases you if you spend too much time on one floor whereas in Torghast it chases you if you have too many deaths (so Iâve been told)
He also twisted a lot of myth and legend to create the hackneyed ideas that people have about Fantasy to this day, to fit his own personal views. He was obviously successful, but how many Fantasy genres actually break away from his false motif of Dwarves, Humans and Elves always banding together against the âForces of Darknessâ TM? Oddly Blizzard have, perhaps by accident.
100% correct. Tolkien most certainly did not invent it.
No, it really didnât. Lord of the Rings was not the only fantasy series, and also did a proper hatchet job on pre-existing tales and myths.
The Tuatha de Danaan, Aos Sidhe, Twlwyth Teg, Svartalfar, Dvergr, Trolls, Orcs, Kobolds and Goblins and Ogres would like to wave and say âHi! We were doing business long before Tolkien put pen to paper!â
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Of course there was fantasy before Tolkien .
But Who really knows that stuff? Exactly , no one . Go around asking people if they know about the mythological stuff you mentioned. I guarantee no one will know.
If you mention LotR however, they will at least have heard the name and know that itâs fantasy.
Tolkienâs work became what is today because it is simply amazing.
Itâs only natural for future creators to be inspired by other works of fiction and adapt them.
You do realise that some people are super interested in mythology, right? And thatâs far from unusual in a gaming community for a game in a fantasy setting, right?
I do and Iâm sure itâs like 5% of earths population.
Fact is, Lord of the Rings is more popular than any of those