See, this is why the internet is ruining games. If we didn't have to hear about every little developer blog and what thier thought process was, guys like the OP can just enjoy teh game for whats it worth. It was never a promise, but just something that they considered when making the game.

Yeah, it was never a promise. They always qualify things when in the process of development. But not all gamers see that, or remember later on what features have been dropped or modified. The same thing happened with Mass Effect and the interrupting dialogue option (now, thankfully, a confirmed feature in ME2). They showed off the option, were still working on it, and eventually dropped it. But people were disappointed when the first game didn't have it. Borderlands was a decent game, and sold well. A sequel is almost certainly in the works (has it been confirmed yet?) in which case you can be reasonably sure they're at least revisiting the idea now that they know the first game was a success. Perhaps Borderlands 2 will have the feature. I have to admit, I'd probably have liked the game more if that feature had been included.

Knowing how face-fuckingly annoying is the lack of a Diablo-style active map/sandbox radar, I'd put the lack of the topic's title feature in the "merit" tab.

When they say a game is in development they means it's in development, nothing is a promise. Huge amounts of content can be cut from a game in a relatively short space of time, it's just the nature of video game development.

The randomly generated areas of diablo are not really one of its stronger elements. Case in point: the jungles of Diablo 2 act 3. If you have played through the game you know what im saying.

I don't think it necessarily took away from the overall strength of Borderlands, but it totally would have been awesome. But how can you really do that with a huge 3D environment?

Look at Hellgate: London at a games failing attempt to do random 3-D level design.  

" Look at Hellgate: London at a games failing attempt to do random 3-D level design.   "

" @JCGamer said:
" Look at Hellgate: London at a games failing attempt to do random 3-D level design.   "I don't think that game is first person, though. It'd be entirely different to do randomized FPS  levels rather than a top-down Diablo-esque game.  "

They realised that randomly generated levels are fucking terrible?

Of course, most of the randomisation in Diablo 2 wasn't really random when it came to the maps. There were maybe three or four different orientations of the map, but they cycled through. I played through most of the game years ago, and then maybe the year before last I started a new file and gamed it so that the same map that I remembered and was familiar with was there. It was consistently the same throughout the game.
 
Considering that Borderlands is much more complex than Diablo, it woud be much harder to do even two different versions of the map. Plus that cuts out the possibility of having set pieces, and it would raise HUGE problems for online co-op, even before you get to the point where the newly randomised map would have to be shared with the second player.
 
Designed maps are just better.