Torchlight II - Delayed to 2012?
 

Travis Baldree has posted a development update at the Torchlight II site, essentially saying the game will be delayed to 2012:
Thanks Frozen Fireball, via Eurogamer.
More information.

Oh Travis…you really dropped the ball on this one.

Instead of launching way before Diablo 3 and getting all the masses that were hungry for Diablo like game, and needed something to play until the release.

Now you will launch head to head to Diablo. And get handfull of hardcore devote fanboys…


Bad business decision if i ever seen one…

Yes, next year they will go head to head with Kingdoms of Amalur, Diablo3,Mass Effect 3, Terra, The Secret World, Max Payne 3, The darkness 2, etc. Along with whatever DLC or expansion we get for Skyrim. Bad decision.

Of course, next month should be Knights of the old Republic. Maybe they should hold off till summer. I don't see anything on the release calender then. I don't know why game companies don't have stuff on shelves for holidays though. Seems to me they are missing out on a lot of potential revenue.

Personally, I applaud their decision to make sure the game is as polished and bug-free as possible.

Too many games are rushed out the door for marketing strategy reasons. If they beat Diablo III to market but have a low-quality, buggy or unpolished game - that could hurt them more in the long-term.

No.

Diablo 3 is build to last.
With its strong focus on multiplayer, and agressive real money auction house.
Blizzard expects people to play it at least as long as Diablo 2

If Torchlight 2 launched with less features , or less polish. They could sell and patch features and polish as free expansion/DLC ( and we all love free )

Now they will never get proper chance to sell. When D3 launches,
What will be a reason to play another exactly the same game but inferior ?

This will definitely be interesting to watch if they go head to head with Diablo III. I'll be getting both but I hope Torchlight II doesn't get pushed into obscurity during the inevitable landslide of media attention that Diablo III will generate.

During that media attention I hope to god that the servers blow. The nerdrage will be glorious :) We need something to stop trend toward online singleplayer games.

I'll probably still buy the dang thing because my mom loves Diablo. It's one of the few games she'll play multiplayer. Arcanum and KOTOR are the other games she loves, but D2 was the only route to go for MP. Other than that she just loves her Big Fish Games *shiver* I have no clue as to why she likes those throw away fast food type of games.

Despite my feelings on this MP SP nonsense, I've got to hand it to Blizzard they did an excellent job with the multiplayer in D2. I'm in Taiwan and my mom's in America yet we almost never had any problems. The occasional connection drop, but that's it.

There's no question that Torchlight II being released well before D3 would have given it a huge sales boost. But I'll never criticize a company for taking extra time to finish their game. Releasing now and patching later works if you have a solid game with a few issues that need to be worked out, but not so much if your game still has serious flaws that needs to be addressed. Just look at Elemental.

When was it decided that Torchlight II is going to be inferior to Diablo 3? Neither of them have even been released yet, it's a little early to assign review scores ( unless you work for gamespot ). From the previews and feature lists I've seen so far, Torchlight II is a lot more likely to get my money than Diablo 3 is.

Besides, they should just ignore the timing of the release. I remember thinking Blizzard must have been pissed that Torchlight came out and it was as popular as it was "right before" Diablo 3 came out. That of course was years ago already and now we're talking about Torchlight II competing with it. I'd never hold off on a purchase of a competing game because I expect something from Blizzard to be coming out soon, that could leave you without a game to play for years.

Right - while its true that D3 and Torchlight II are both action RPGs utilizing the same basic Diablo formula, they are not the "same game" - and any judgement of relative quality is premature. Torchlight II offers features that D3 doesn't have, and vice versa. Also the lore and feel are very different between the games.

I for one am interested in both!

Have you played Torchlight? That's when it was decided.

I never understood the attention Torchlight got. It's barely better than Fate and I hated that game. The game is repetitive even more so than most action-rpgs. I tried to like it and thought it might get better the farther down I got, but to me it never did get any better. It was the same thing over and over again. I'd rather play Sacred 1 &2.

I know these are the same guys that did Diablo, but they left all the Diablo magic out of this game and for some reason copied Fate. Odd choice considering Fate felt more like a game for children.

This is exactly how I feel about Fable and Torchlite. Could never get myself to like the repetitiveness in there. Played Fable for maybe 80% of the game (and there was really no difference between all those levels), because I was always hoping that something different might happen, but then simply stopped playing being bored to death.

Edit: Its Fate not Fable here and below…

Started the demo for Torchlite and stopped after one or two levels because it was exactly the same as Fable.

For me Diablo 2 has clearly more of a story than Fable or Torchlite.

So for me personally Diablo 3 is more promising than Torchlight 2, since I am more the Story type of player.

That said I believe that Torchlite 2 can be a "danger" to Diablo 3. Those people who like the repetive addicting gameplay without story (I can understand that despite not feeling it myself) and want to play a Singleplayer game of this type may get a better service from Torchlight 2 than from Diablo with its Multiplayer/Always Online tendencies.

That's fascinating. Never in a million years would I put Diablo and "story" in the same sentence while describing the game. Now "magic" or "Diablo Magic" I can totally understand and relate to. There was something about Diablo 2 and Diablo the first that had me personally hooked from start to finish. Torchlight grabbed me in much the same way. I am totally going to buy both and I will enjoy them both very much, I guarantee it.

I am a backwoods redneck American who doesn't know how to spell, however, so I've got to root for the little guy. I'm pulling for Runic and hope they do well in the face of the 3 ton elephant that is Diablo.

LOL, you are right. When comparing Diablo with an RPG I wouldn't have such idea either. But compared with Fable (Edit: Fate, not Fable) or Torchlite…:cm:

I'm forced to agree there. I really wanted to like Torchlight, I like the stylized graphics and I like Diablo style action RPGs. But at some point you realize that your just spamming the same attack over and over while drinking a potion anytime your health or mana dips. There isn't much variety and actual game play it's just overly simplistic and lacking in challenge. Torchlight II would need ALOT of improvements before it was even in the same realm as say Titan's Quest (which I also thought was worse then Diablo 2, though at least a solid try).

Now there will always be people who prefer the cute simplistic gameplay of Torchlight over something darker and more challenging and that's fine. And Torchlight 2 could be a huge improvement, there's certainly a lot to work with. So when the games finally come out there will probably be people who think that Torchlight 2 is a better quality game then Diablo 3 is. But in general I think Torchlight 2 has a lot more to fear from Diablo 3 then the other way around.

I'd like nothing better than to eat my words about Torchlight 2. I like these guys who made Diablo and Hellgate (same guys right?). I enjoyed the hell out of Hellgate, pun intended ;), but Fate….err I mean Torchlight, was just the same thing over and over again. It barely had any character customization and every level felt the same.

Diablo had all kinds of character customization. Even Hellgate had it too, but Torchlight….no, not for me. I would prefer to buy T2 over Diablo 3 just for the fact that they won't force me online, but unless people here say they love T2 like they did with Two Worlds 2 then I'm going to pass. I was going to pass on 2W2 as well until people started saying how different it was and how it was actually good this time around.

I've played Fate and I've played Torchlight and hated it. That's twice I've been bitten. I'll be damned if I'm bitten a third time.

These are all fair and just comments in my opinion. I don't really agree that Diablo offers any more depth of character customization but I would agree that it has more "fine tuning" I suppose is the best way to put that.

Both games are very much "check your brain at the door before playing" games for me and I have to admit that I enjoy both "franchises" very much for that reason. Both are focused around getting great gear for your toons and, honestly, how is the core, bulk, gameplay any different? Use your best gear, spam a few different attacks/combos and swill potions like a drunken bard on Christmas Eve.

:)

I can't really explain it better than just showing you :)

Alchemist build

Vanquisher build

Destroyer build

Diablo 2 builds

Amazon alone has so many builds associated with her. All of them offer something different.

If you notice in the alchemist build, the guy posting says there is no real difference between spells. He wasn't saying it in a bad way, but that about sums up why I don't like Torchlight. There is no difference.

BTW, I've been saying FABLE, when I meant FATE. Sorry about that. Both of them are about on the same "fun" level for me though :), but Torchlight is most definitely like FATE not Fable.

Oh, true and I made the same mistake. Of course fate is the Torchlight predecessor. :blush:

Well it's not like Diablo 2 was exactly rocket science. But it did at least require you to use different abilities and strategies for different situations. It wasn't deep by any stretch, but you had to sometimes hit and run or use abilities to kill certain enemies in the back or use mobility to lure enemies away. If you just always ran in and used the same tactic you would die.

In Torchlight though this was exactly what you did. My Destroyer had exactly one ability that he used. There was virtually never a reason to use anything other then that one ability. Fights were never complicated enough to require me to do anything except run up to the enemies one at a time and spam that ability until they were dead.