I assume that if Blizz kept 90% of its employees it likely kept most or all of the employees that would otherwise do kickass startups. If it didn't, then there is something very wrong with its layoff process!
Red 5 Studios is beta testing their AAA title Firefall right now. Many ex-blizzard folks (WoW Lead Mark Kern, etc.) are at the core of Red 5 and it's rumored that Blizzard's big unannounced MMO project Titan may share some of the core gameplay elements of Firefall ("skill based" TF2 style gameplay with MMO persistent world effects).
Trine was a fun little fantasy arcade scroller. Side to side action. A platformer.
Torchlight is a dungeon crawler in the vein of diablo. Lots of equipment dropping, items to get, etc, as opposed to the more platformer-style of Trine.
Very, very different games that happen to be set in the same fantasy genre.
Torchlight is a highly overrated Diablo 1 clone. The game has barely any story. The side quest system literally repeats "Kill the monster on level 5" "Kill the monster on level 10" "Kill the monster on level 15" etc.
The game has some okay graphics and the loot system is decent. If you enjoy looting corpses for a slightly upgraded item over and over in a noxiously repetitive manner then I say go for it.
Five people in my office bough the game. I played it on very hard and beat it. I was the only person to reach the end despite everyone else playing on normal difficulty.
I beat the game out of spite. I never felt so angry at a game before but my sheer hatred of it drove me to finish.
I guarantee most positive reviews come from people who did not finish the game. It's just not fun after the first 10, 20, 30, 40, infinite floors in the same dungeon.
I enjoyed it a lot. Sure it's not a AAA title - but it's good, mindless fun. Especially given its extremely appealing price point. (And, yes, I haven't finished it.)
Only to a point, if someone is good enough a smart company will reshuffle someone truly exceptional into another part of the company. Though one would have to be REALLY stand out in such a large company to get that treatment.
I think you're right -- I don't think this is more than a blip on the radar. However, when layoffs start happening, others start to think about leaving too, so it's far more than 60 developers in the end.