Torchlight MMO to be released in two years

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 13th November 2009
Comments (10) Stumble
Torchlight MMO to be released in two years

Runic Games has said that development will start on the Torchlight MMO soon, though the release is still a way off.

Max Schaefer, boss of Torchlight developer Runic Games, has said the development will start on the successor to the Diablo-clone soon and that the next step for the series will be a free to play MMO.

Chatting to a German site, Max said that the team hoped to have the MMO ready for release in about two years from now.

"The MMO will be in pre-production as soon as we finalise issues from launching the single-player," Schaefer said. "It will feature a lot of customization, an overworld, random and instanced dungeons, PVP and much more!"

He also confirmed that the Torchlight community, which is very active and currently busy tinkering with the free modding tools released yesterday, would definitely be invited to help shape the game through the alpha and beta stages.

"It will be indeed free to play, and will be out in about 2 years. We like to get alpha and beta versions up and running as quickly as possible, though, so hopefully we'll have a lot of community interaction during the development cycle."

According to Schaefer, the plan with Torchlight was always to create a focused singleplayer dungeon crawler that would help establish a franchise and model that the team could then expand into larger projects.

You can check out our full Torchlight review for more information, or let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Quote NuTech 13th November 2009, 13:33
Also Torchlight was the 5th best seller for both Steam and Direct2Drive last week. So glad this game is doing well, it's unbelievably good value for money and such simple fun.

Not sure how an MMO will work, but eager to see the direction they go with it.
Quote UncertainGod 13th November 2009, 13:59
It was fifth on revenue as well, not on quantity sold which means with it being much cheaper than the games above it in the list that it's probably selling more copies than them.
Quote Jamie 13th November 2009, 14:06
I am buying this game as soon as I have my PC back together.
Quote bowman 13th November 2009, 14:44
Free to play? Say no more. Stupid sub fee muhmorpergers are gonna see the folly of their ways soon enough.

Downloading Torchlight now too.
Quote Redbeaver 13th November 2009, 16:45
free???? wow... if they can pull this one off correctly, i hope they'll beat the other crappy free-banner-MMO in the market, lol....

man, i am impressed with the fact that more and more web content is becoming free tho.. i can't imagine in 10 years where 99% of web content is free, since prolly content provider/designer are paid by the government who manage our taxes.... wow that'll b cool.
Quote NuTech 13th November 2009, 17:21
Try not to get too excited by the whole 'free' part. If the Torchlight MMO does indeed get released, it will probably be micro-transaction based. No doubt trying to have any type of meaningful experience will result in the expenditure of money.

Not necessarily a terrible thing, but something to note when you see the word 'free' getting thrown about.

Personally, for a MMO to interest me (which they rarely do), I much prefer the fixed fee model. Some some may consider them of questionable value, but I prefer the even playing field.

You only have to do a quick search for recent news about facebook-esque games that feature micro-transactions or shady cross promotions to see what it can lead to. Hopefully Runic Games won't also succumb to such things.
Quote Star*Dagger 13th November 2009, 17:43
Get used to paying regularly for PC gaming content, 60% of PC games will be episodic or MMOs with some sort of fee system. I have no problem with this as long as they provide a quality product.

S¤D
Quote NuTech 13th November 2009, 18:08
Quote:
Originally Posted by Star*Dagger
60% of PC games will be episodic or MMOs with some sort of fee system.
Really? When? Now? 10 years time?

Come on, don't pull numbers out of the air like that. So far the only company that has really made a (moderate) success out of multiple episodic ventures is Telltale Games. Even then the majority of their content and revenue comes from nostalgic gamers in need of Lucas Arts classics.

Episodic games (as a release and distribution model), as a whole, has been a failure. Filled with unfinished products, cancelled concepts and pissed off gamers realising they ultimately end up paying more for less.
Quote Star*Dagger 13th November 2009, 20:55
Half Life 2 is a failure? I'd call it the very definition of success, and every Tomcat, Dickwad and Hairy MBA exec in comptuer gaming is trying to find "The Next Big Thang" in MMOs.

Sorry i didn't cite the study, I thought it was big news a year ago or so. I think their time frame was 5 years, a year ago. The thing is, as a PC Gamer you WANT episodic and MMOs to be a working model. Going back to the bad old days of broken games that get patched whenever, IF ever the company gets around to it, is not something I want. The devs of EVE online will fix bugs withing days to weeks from the original posting or petition. Try getting that level of service and care from a one off game.

Yours in Half Life 2 EPISODE 3 waiting,
Star¤Dagger

P.S. and if you think WoW is a big deal, take ALL the subs for all the MMOs and then multiply that by their respective monthly fees.
Quote NuTech 13th November 2009, 21:37
Quote:
Originally Posted by Star*Dagger
Half Life 2 is a failure? I'd call it the very definition of success, and every Tomcat, Dickwad and Hairy MBA exec in comptuer gaming is trying to find "The Next Big Thang" in MMOs.

Sorry i didn't cite the study, I thought it was big news a year ago or so. I think their time frame was 5 years, a year ago. The thing is, as a PC Gamer you WANT episodic and MMOs to be a working model. Going back to the bad old days of broken games that get patched whenever, IF ever the company gets around to it, is not something I want. The devs of EVE online will fix bugs withing days to weeks from the original posting or petition. Try getting that level of service and care from a one off game.

Yours in Half Life 2 EPISODE 3 waiting,
Star¤Dagger

P.S. and if you think WoW is a big deal, take ALL the subs for all the MMOs and then multiply that by their respective monthly fees.
I had a feeling Half Life 2 might get mentioned. While it might have 'Episode' in the title, Half Life 2 is in no way, shape or form episodic. They are expansion packs/sequels released if and when Valve feels like it. There was no episode plan, release schedule or pricing structure to speak of.

It's like calling the Star Wars movie franchise episodic just because of their titles. They're just sequels.

Again if you want to see actual episodic games check out Telltale Games or the failed SiN episodes. Also I fail to see what episodic games or MMO's have to do with PC games getting patched. If anything, PC game patching is improving because of game consoles. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 come with hard disks that support patching, giving developers more reason to support their product now more than ever.
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