Torchlight II - ARPGs' Slow Evolution @ RPS

April 17th, 2012, 04:23

Rock, Paper, Shotgun talks to Runic CEO Max Schaefer about the competition with Diablo III and the potential stagnation of the genre. Turns out the "launching one month after Diablo III" thing was a bit of a misunderstanding:

So, first up, that whole “release a month after Diablo” thing? That wasn’t exactly what he wanted people to take away from his spiel. Here’s what Schaefer told me:
“It was sort of a misunderstood comment. What we were really talking about there is if the release were to come simultaneously with Diablo, naturally we’d want to wait 30 days just to let the hype die down. The bottom line is we’re gonna work on the game until it’s at the stage we want it to be at and then release it – with the caveat that, if that happens right on top of Diablo, we’d give it a bit of a wide berth.”
“So it really wasn’t saying what we want to do is release a month after. We’re gonna work on the game until it’s to our satisfaction and then hopefully release it right away. I mean, we don’t want to sit on a game for any reason, and we don’t want to rush one out before we think it’s ready either.”

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Dhruin

Watcher

Super Moderator
RPGWatch Team

#1

Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 11,965

April 17th, 2012, 04:23

in other words, yeah, they'll be sitting on the game for no reason for *more* than a month after diablo

:/

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choovuck

Traveler

#2

Join Date: Jun 2011
Posts: 15

April 17th, 2012, 10:12

Originally Posted by choovuck
in other words, yeah, they'll be sitting on the game for no reason for *more* than a month after diablo

:/

I don't understand that from the article.

From how I read it it's more like (psuedo code because I find that easiest for logical expression):

Code:

if (Game == Done) {
  while (DiabloRelease <= Today <= DiabloRelease+1month) {
    wait;
    }
  release.Game();
}

Ie, they'll release it when it's done, unless it happens to be done within a month of Diablo's release, when they'll delay.

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kalniel

SasqWatch

#3

Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,720

April 17th, 2012, 16:44

I told ya, it'd be madness to launch simultaneously with Diablo3. I'm just happy that Schaefer is not mad.

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blackcanopus

Dark Sun

#4

Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 262

April 17th, 2012, 23:22

They could always, you know, release before D3 and steal some of its thunder. Just seems like things worked out for the timing to be bad in any case.

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epithumia

thiefmissions.com

#5

Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 65

April 18th, 2012, 15:09

Originally Posted by epithumia
They could always, you know, release before D3 and steal some of its thunder.

Nah, I'd rather they release it when it's ready. I think Torchlight will sell well despite it being released just after Diablo. There seems to be a little bit of hype about it here and there, despite it being drowned out in the sea of Diablo 3. Torchlight sold a million copies and I think Torchlight 2 will improve on that by offering a different experience to Diablo 3.

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