Crate Entertainment (Grim Dawn) designer 'Medierra' has made some fascinating comments about the publisher interference in the design of Titan Quest in a thread about the recent Rock, Paper, Shotgun interview. Here's an excerpt:

One example of this would be the mandate that enemies not use language or build anything that would make them seem like they had more than animal intelligence. It was felt by one of the higher-ups that people might feel wrong killing enemies that displayed any obvious intelligence. I guess somehow it is wrong to fight intelligent enemies but okay to slaughter dumb animals? We also weren't originally allowed to have humans die, ever, in the game and no human corpses.

One area where this handicapped us was in the creation of environmental assets that visually demonstrated the enemy's war against humanity. We originally wanted to create enemy siege-works outside Athens but were told that would make the enemies seem too intelligent. It was a struggle just to monster camp assets. All of the ruins were also removed from Greece at one point because someone was afraid that players might not understand why, if the game took place in ancient times, that there would still be ruins... I had to fight for both of these things. Without them, Greece would have just been a featureless expanse of wilderness with occasional human towns that never really appeared to be in any serious danger.

At the same time, we were told that enemies should seem like noble adversaries, not evil or demonic creatures. It was highly controversial when the designs for the Limos and Arachnids were first presented. I had to personally fight to get those approved because they were considered too grotesque and scary looking even though they were based on actually mythology. Undead and the Spirit Mastery were also a struggle to get in the game. I was told that Spirit Mastery was too "Necromancery and evil". We managed to push a few more things like that through over the course of development but it was always frowned upon.

Basically, my belief is that Titan Quest never had as much style and character as it could have because we were afraid to do anything even remotely controversial. When I first designed the skill masteries, they were all based on Olympian gods, with skills modeled after the powers or attributes associated with different gods in mythology. This was rejected because it was potentially too religious and people might not want to feel like they were worshiping mythological gods to receive their powers.

We ended up with a game set in Greek mythology that barely contained any actual mythology other than the inspiration for some of the monsters and dialog on peripheral story-teller NPCs stuck off to the side in the towns. The first quest I put in the game, when we were prototyping it for THQ was modeled after one of the 12 labors of Heracles. The Erymanthian Board was terrorizing a town and the hunters they sent after it hadn't returned. You had to ascend mount Erymanthos, discover the wreckage of the hunter's camp, and then continue on to the snow-capped summit to battle the monstrous board. Of course, I was told we couldn't have snow on the summit because people might not realize it snowed in Greece and then later the whole quest vanished and was replaced by generic crap like retrieving a dowry ring so some chick can get married while monsters are overrunning the world.

Has it really been four years already?  Eurogamer has a retrospective on Titan Quest, penned by John Walker:

Five years ago, a year before Titan Quest was released, I went to Boston to visit developers Iron Lore. The game was still very much in little pieces, scattered around the office, being meticulously stitched together by a fantastic team. Boss Brian Sullivan had created his studio by handpicking developers and designers he found interesting, a combination of old hands and - interestingly - a selection of young former Nintendo game developers.

Amongst the veterans was artist and animator Rich Sullivan (no relation), formerly of Looking Glass, who had a corner of the office unlike any other I've seen, combining technologies covering tens of thousands of years of techniques from state-of-the-art tablets to the crude tools of sculpture. Having spent some time working in animation he told me that he'd been forced to learn the more modern methods, but would always insist on beginning his character design in clay. Extraordinary sculptures surrounded him, from pristine Roman helmets to grotesque, distorted, monstrous faces.

Michael Fitch - one of THQ's producers on Titan Quest - has let rip with frustrations on PC game development in a post at QT3.  Clearly, the closure of Iron Lore is driving the anger but it's still an interesting read:

Greetings:
So, ILE shut down. This is tangentially related to that, not why they shut down, but part of why it was such a difficult freaking slog trying not to. It's a rough, rough world out there for independent studios who want to make big games, even worse if you're single-team and don't have a successful franchise to ride or a wealthy benefactor. Trying to make it on PC product is even tougher, and here's why.

Piracy. Yeah, that's right, I said it. No, I don't want to re-hash the endless "piracy spreads awareness", "I only pirate because there's no demo", "people who pirate wouldn't buy the game anyway" round-robin. Been there, done that. I do want to point to a couple of things, though.

One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it's a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that's right. There was a security check there.

So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of shit on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

One guy went so far as to say he'd bought the retail game and it was having the exact same crashes, so it must be the game itself. This was one of the most vocal detractors, and we got into it a little bit. He swore up and down that he'd done everything above-board, installed it on a clean machine, updated everything, still getting the same crashes. It was our fault, we were stupid, our programmers didn't know how to make games - some other guy asked "do they code with their feet?". About a week later, he realized that he'd forgotten to re-install his BIOS update after he wiped the machine. He fixed that, all his crashes went away. At least he was man enough to admit it.

So, for a game that doesn't have a Madden-sized advertising budget, word of mouth is your biggest hope, and here we are, before the game even releases, getting bashed to hell and gone by people who can't even be bothered to actually pay for the game. What was the ultimate impact of that? Hard to measure, but it did get mentioned in several reviews. Think about that the next time you read "we didn't have any problems running the game, but there are reports on the internet that people are having crashes."

Two, the numbers on piracy are really astonishing. The research I've seen pegs the piracy rate at between 70-85% on PC in the US, 90%+ in Europe, off the charts in Asia. I didn't believe it at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can't believe that there's that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually payed for them.

Let's dig a little deeper there. So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what's the difference in income? Just about double. That's right, double. That's easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That's definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% - 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game - who would actually buy the game, that's still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that's big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit.

Titan Quest did okay. We didn't lose money on it. But if even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. You can bitch all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can't change how people behave... whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren't so rampant on the PC. That's a fact.

Enough about piracy. Let's talk about hardware vendors. Trying to make a game for PC is a freaking nightmare, and these guys make it harder all the time. Integrated video chips; integrated audio. These were two of our biggest headaches. Not only does this crap make people think - and wrongly - that they have a gaming-capable PC when they don't, the drive to get the cheapest components inevitably means you've got hardware out there with little or no driver support, marginal adherence to standards, and sometimes bizarre conflicts with other hardware.

And it just keeps getting worse. CD/DVD drives with bad firmware, video cards that look like they should be a step-up from a previous generation, but actually aren't, drivers that need to be constantly updated, separate rendering paths for optimizing on different chips, oh my god. Put together consumers who want the cheapest equipment possible with the best performance, manufacturers who don't give a shit what happens to their equipment once they ship it, and assemblers who need to work their margins everywhere possible, and you get a lot of shitty hardware out there, in innumerable configurations that you can't possibly test against. But, it's always the game's fault when something doesn't work.

Even if you get over the hump on hardware compatibility - and god knows, the hardware vendors are constantly making it worse - if you can, you still need to deal with software conflicts. There are a lot of apps running on people's machines that they're not even aware of, or have become such a part of the computer they don't even think of them as being apps anymore. IM that's always on; peer-to-peer clients running in the background; not to mention the various adware and malware crap that people pick up doing things they really shouldn't. Trying to run a CPU and memory heavy app in that environment is a nightmare. But, again, it's always the game's fault if it doesn't work.

Which brings me to the audience. There's a lot of stupid people out there. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of very savvy people out there, too, and there were some great folks in the TQ community who helped us out a lot. But, there's a lot of stupid people. Basic, basic stuff, like updating your drivers, or de-fragging your hard drive, or having antivirus so your machine isn't a teetering pile of rogue programs. PC folks want to have the freedom to do whatever the hell they want with their machines, and god help them they will do it; more power to them, really. But god forbid something that they've done - or failed to do - creates a problem with your game. There are few better examples of the "it can't possibly be my fault" culture in the west than gaming forums.

And while I'm at it, I don't want to spare the reviewers either. We had one reviewer - I won't name names, you can find it if you look hard enough - who missed the fact that you can teleport from wherever you are in TQ back to any of the major towns you've visited. So, this guy was hand-carting all of his stuff back to town every time his inventory was full. Through the entire game. Now, not only was this in the manual, and in the roll-over tooltips for the UI, but it was also in the tutorial, the very first time you walk past one of these giant pads that lights up like a beacon to the heavens. Nonetheless, he missed it, and he commented in his review how tedious this was and how much he missed being able to portal back to town. When we - and lots of our fans - pointed out that this was the reviewer's fault, not the game's, they amended the review. But, they didn't change the score. Do you honestly think that not having to run back to town all the time to sell your stuff wouldn't have made the game a better experience?

We had another reviewer who got crashes on both the original and the expansion pack. We worked with him to figure out what was going on; the first time, it was an obscure peripheral that was causing the crash, a classic hardware conflict for a type of hardware that very, very few people have. The second time, it was in a pre-release build that we had told him was pre-release. After identifying the problem, getting him around it, and verifying that the bug was a known issue and had been fixed in the interim, he still ran the story with a prominent mention of this bug. With friends like that...

Alright, I'm done. Making PC products is not all fun and games. It's an uphill slog, definitely. I'm a lifelong PC gamer, and hope to continue to work on PC games in the future, but man, they sure don't make it easy.

Best,
Michael.

Mike "V" Verrette has posted on the Titan Quest forums at IGN that the v1.3 patch has been released and is "available in game".  Hit the link for the notes.

Iron Lore's Mike "V" Verrette has posted in the official Titan Quest forums about an upcoming v1.3 patch:

Hello All,

I know everyone is anticipating the release of TQIT next week. I just wanted to remind everyone that if you have any unsupported MODS installed that have altered any .exe, .dll or database files you should perform a clean install of Titan Quest before installing the expansion. Reinstalling the original game will not uninstall any of your characters.

I should also be posting the patch notes for version 1.3 in the near future. Most of these changes involve prepping TQ for the expansion, but there were some tweaks made to Typhon and boss drops that I think a lot of players will be happy with

This patch is not essential for installing TQIT - your game will be updated in the installation process. I also want to make it clear that you do not need to purchase TQIT to get the 1.3 patch. It will be available as an in game update just as the previous patches have been.

Thanks - and we shall see you in Hades!!!

FiringSquad has news that a THQ financial conference call has revealed a Titan Quest expansion is in the works, with a planned release date of Q1 2007.  No other details were revealed bu we'll keep an eye out for the official annoucement.

Titan Quest Vault: What had been the most widely criticized aspect of the game and do you take that into consideration for future development of the game?

---V---: The most criticized aspect of the game is the lack of secured servers and secure persistent characters - and honesty we did anticipate that would be the case. That was a feature we have wanted to include right from the beginning but it was just well beyond the scope of what we had time and budget for with this project. A lot of people may not realize that when we originally signed on with THQ to build Titan Quest, Iron Lore was an eight man team and through the course of development we grew to 38 people. While a lot of those people have considerable history in the game industry, this is Iron Lore's first project. So to build a complete team, a game and graphics engine from scratch, and put together an action RPG with 40 hours of gameplay was a tremendous undertaking. Knowing all that, we put a lot of time an energy into character development and our skill system, and I think that has really paid off for us.

Hello Everyone,

Patch 1.2 is now live. It is a little larger than previous patches so it may take a bit longer to download and patch. Please remember that if you have been running unofficial mods which modify any of the game files or resource archives (including the main game text archives) you will need to restore your original files or the game will not patch properly.

As always we will be closely monitoring the forums over the next couple of days adn will be interested to hear the discussion on the new balance patch.

Unfortunately, TQ does suffer from one thing that every RPG needs to have; NPC interaction and ultimately, character direction! One thing I've always enjoyed about RPGs such as Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate was having the option of being good, evil or somewhere in between. There's almost always more than one way to end a quest or direct a conversation and define who your character really is. Unfortunately, TQ does not offer this kind of game at all. It seems your character is going to be a goody goody, whether you like it or not. In my opinion, this is what could have possibly made Titan Quest game of the year. A much broader and bustling world, similar to Neverwinter Nights, with NPCs that have side quests other than 'save me/my family/my sibling' and a few different ways to treat them.

The next patch is finishing up in testing and will be available for download next week. This patch is primarily a crash and performance patch - we also fixed many of the quest issues people were having. For people still having issues connecting and staying connected in multiplayer games there was a substantial change made to our packet optimization which should help out as well. The gameplay and balance patch which has been in discussion on the boards will be following in a few weeks. I just didn't want there to be any confusion. These are two seperate patches.

Hello Everyone!

The next patch is finishing up in testing and will be available for download next week. This patch is primarily a crash and performance patch - we also fixed many of the quest issues people were having. For people still having issues connecting and staying connected in multiplayer games there was a substantial change made to our packet optimization which should help out as well. The gameplay and balance patch which has been in discussion on the boards will be following in a few weeks. I just didn't want there to be any confusion. These are two seperate patches.

• the best Diablo clone so far
  
• coop is a lot of fun
  
• online play disqualifies itself because the data is stored on the player's PC.

Overall, Titan Quest is a fun, action-filled hack-and-slash marathon that will keep those who like this style of game playing through the end. While they did include some multiplayer functionality, it is still entirely too early to see how the create-your-own-world functionality will pan out. Still, playing the single player campaign online is certainly one way to ensure you get to experiment with the other character types. While somewhat of a bear in terms of system requirements, I was able to play the game with most of the graphical options turned up making for a very beautiful and occasionally relaxing experience. Boasting over 30 hours of play time, multiple difficulty levels and an online component, Titan Quest offers enough gameplay content to make it worth a look.

Hello Everyone,

Haven't made a general post in a while so I thought I would grab the podium and let everyone know what the crew over at Iron Lore is slaving away on. We have made some progress with some of the random crashes some people have been having. Thanks to all those that have sent us the exception logs - they have been very helpful. We also have had some insight to some of the multiplayer connection issues with certain routers and have made some progress in that area as well.

Moving forward we are starting to address some of the game balance issues and will continue to look at any remaining crash issues that we come across as well as take a hard look at improving the performance on some systems.

We are not ready yet to disclose any patch specifics, but be assured that work on the next patch is progressing steadily.

Also on a positive note, GameSpot still has us listed in the top 10 of the US weekly sales charts and the word on the street is that the game is still doing extremely well in Europe also.

Overall I enjoyed Titan Quest and recommend it to those people who liked the character building and item hunting of Diablo 2 and other games of that style. It is a beautiful game with great looking environments, effects, and has a fantastic music and sound effects. The class progression and character building is indeed one of the strongest aspects of the game and one that could definitely help the longevity of the game in some people's libraries. But if you are thinking of playing the game looking for a great RPG or an excellent multiplayer experience, then I am afraid you will find the game lacking as these are not among its strongest assets. Finally, one area I did not get a chance to test out was the ability to mod the game. I know it exists and in fact there are guides released by THQ on the subject. Several editors ship with the game and are in the game folder, such as ArtManager, ModelCompiler, MapCompiler, QuestEditor and so forth so the game does appear to be highly moddable, which may also help increase its longevity among fans.

Final Verdict
Although it has its flaws, Titan Quest makes for a decent package when you factor in online co-op and the packaged world editor. If those things do not interest you, however, then what you are left with is a good looking game with a great setting and some original monsters that is linear, repetitive, and easy to exploit. And that is the long answer.

This is a pretty straight forward game, left and right click will be your biggest friends for the entire forty some hour storyline. While the storyline is as good as any, we all know you didn't buy this game for the story.

In the end, go get this game. While nothing about it besides the gameplay screams out astounding, that's what games are all about right? Who cares what it looks like, and sometimes pocks to even the storyline. Give me fun, or give me death. Thankfully, you'll get tons of both in this game.

Multiplayer is just as entertaining, robustly implemented and populated well by other players. The major problem in this gorgeous epic is stability. The game crashed more than any other in recent memory and complained about the DVD not being present when it was clearly identified by Windows. While some have had no problems, many others on the official forums have complained about similar issues. A new patch supposedly ameliorates these concerns, but remains the sole caveat in recommending this game. The game is long, challenging, and worth replaying alone and with others, if you can keep it running.

Just wanted to give everyone a patch update for the weekend. The next patch is in the testing phase and we hope to get it out to everyone next week. One of the big things we have done with this patch is implement a logging system which will help you help us identify the source of the crashes that some folks are still seeing. We did identify and fix some issues related to crashes caused by low video memory on some machines. There are also a few fixes coming that the Mod community should be happy about.

(***Pardon errors due to online translator!***)We have a rounded game. Everything in it is clearly good. It is a very long, intense, (???) game and well done. The addiction level is very high and the graphical level at which it arrived, (???). The underlying history surrounds everything and on the basis of it, they have created one of the best RPG games to date.

• Gameplay Monthly - 8.4/10
• Out of Eight - 7/8

Virgil once penned the infamous line timeo Danaos et dona ferentis - I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts. But those fearing that this will be a hopeless Diablo rip-off with a twist of Hercules need not worry. Titan Quest is what fans of the genre have been waiting for - a game that pays tribute to the rules established by its peers and suitably expands on them with contemporary graphics and physics. Whilst the game is filled with bugs, they aren't totally game-breaking by any means, and patches should improve this area. Titan Quest won't win prizes for originality, and it won't stretch your brain, but it's fun and addictive to play. Snobby RPG fans need not apply - you have your Oblivion. The rest of us though, can enjoy the new king of Hack ' n' Slash RPGs.

Just wanted to give people an update on where things are. Work on the second patch is underway; we'll get you patch notes soon. Gameplay tweaks (balancing characters/skills/etc.) are not a priority item for this patch; we're focused on technical issues people are having with the game and the editor.

We're continuing to track all of the bug reports that people are posting to the forum. If we don't respond to your post specifically, that doesn't mean we aren't paying attention.

With no strict class system that limits your abilities and with the open structure of the skill tree, you can really make your character your own. With a second skill mastery coming in at level eight picking the perfect combination for your style of gameplay will take a good amount of planning combined with trial and error. I can honestly say that I find this game highly addictive and I would recommend this game to anyone that was a fan of Diablo 2 and is looking for new experience with a similar game.

The game itself is linear, but absolutely massive. The main quest alone will set you back 40 hours. Battling through the game and taking on the powerful enemies is fun in itself, but it's made all the more enjoyable if played with friends. You can play Titan Quest with up to six other players in cooperative mode, although you still need to beat the game on Normal mode to go Epic, and Epic to play Legendary. The great thing about multiplayer is that you play the single player story as a party. No unique characters to make and no limit as to what you can and can't do. So you can jump into multiplayer with two other players, finish a few quests, save, and then jump back into single player just where you left off! Unfortunately, the co-op multiplayer implementation is rather basic. Iron Lore have decided not to include closed servers and the multiplayer is met with a number of slow downs during matches (Ed.note: I recommend you to turn graphics effects off).

Following in the footsteps of its forefathers, Titan Quest holds to a formula of locales, of stats and skills, and of destruction. Yet somehow at the same time, it has escaped that formula set down so long ago in many ways. The game offers a hell of a lot of fun, and with a very different enemy than we're used to seeing. With eight interesting classes and the ability to multiclass, plus dozens of hours of fun this is a title worth recommending to anyone still silently hoping for Diablo III.

Combat is extremely fluid and familiar to anyone who is a fan of the genre. Point on monster, click button, kill monster. Move mouse in the direction you want to go, and you're there. Hold it down and keep going. Titan Quest is very easy at first (the only challenging moments in Normal difficulty come near the end), but in Epic and Legendary mode, tactics do come into play. You can pull monsters out of a pack with a spell or arrow, kite around bosses and do more than just run in and kill everything. Sure, mass destruction is fun at first, but after around 20 hours of not dying, it's fun to actually be challenged. Case in point: I died seven times in Normal difficulty mode over the span of 30-hours. In Epic, I died seven times in the hour. Titan Quest uses a series of markers that save your progress, so there's no real downtime to speak of should your hero fall. There are manual saves as well, although it will still load you up at the closest marker.

The patch is live. Keep in mind that the server is likely going to get stormed from all over the world and initial download speeds may be slow as a result. If you do get a slow speed or the download stops before completion, please do not immediately cancel and re-start as this only increases the load on the server.

Most players will be able to get the patch from the "Updates" button on the main menu. You can also download the stand-alone patch at this location:
http://titanquestvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Other.Detail&id=5

Patch Notes
This patch updates Titan Quest from v1.01 to v1.08
A- Fixed crash caused by teleporting in multiplayer after players used Rally skill
A- Fixed NPC dialogue windows closing when NPC moves to avoid other characters
A- Fixed bug with different relic bonuses for different players in multiplayer
A- Fixed relic completion sounds propagating to all clients in multiplayer
A- Fixed multiplayer lobby UI error with sort arrow
A- Fixed a multiplayer lobby crash
A- Fixed internet connection problem with custom maps
A- Fixed a memory leak
A- Improves multiplayer connection reliability
A- Improves multiplayer performance
A- Improves item auto-placement in inventory
A- Added character back-up functionality
A- Added option to disable compatibility check***

***If you have supported hardware but cannot start the game due to a failed compatibility check, you will need to download the stand-alone patch and install it (save to disk, then double-click to execute). Once the patch has been applied, you will need to edit your options.txt file in My Documents/My Games/Titan Quest/Settings, and add a new line to the bottom that reads:
skipCompatibilityChecks = true

Note: Bypassing the compatibility check will allow the game to start with non-supported hardware, but you may still encounter fatal errors as a result. As a reminder, integrated graphics and graphics cards without PS 1.1 capability are not officially supported.

Best,
Eyejinx.

Edit:
Patch Download Links:
http://titanquestvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Other.Detail&id=5
http://www.fileplanet.com/165204/160000/fileinfo/Titan-Quest-1.08-official-patch!

GB: On the flip side, what aspects of Titan Quest are you most proud of? What do you feel are the game's greatest strengths?

Mike: The aspect that I am the most proud of is the team we were able to build during Titan Quest's development. The folks here at Iron Lore are some of the most dedicated and talented people that I have ever had the opportunity to work with and I am extremely excited moving forward because now the team is in place and we can focus solely on development.

What does help to redeem the game's failings in multiplayer is the inclusion of a full set of tools for creating your own levels and quests; a really ambitious modder could theoretically recreate the whole game with new maps and even some original ideas for monster placement, but time will tell if the community really picks this one up. I've seen many games with great modding tools and plenty of players on launch, yet no one really bothered with making any mods at all. It seems like a good possible bonus, but I wouldn't buy this game on the possibility of mods alone.

Patch Notes

Fixed crash caused by teleporting in multiplayer after players used Rally skill

Fixed NPC dialogue windows closing when NPC moves to avoid other characters

Fixed bug with different relic bonuses for different players in multiplayer

Fixed relic completion sounds propagating to all clients in multiplayer

Fixed multiplayer lobby UI error with sort arrow

Fixed a multiplayer lobby crash

Fixed internet connection problem with custom maps

Fixed a memory leak

Improves multiplayer connection reliability

Improves multiplayer performance

Improves item auto-placement in inventory

Added character back-up functionality

Added option to disable compatibility check

Most players will be able to get the patch from the "Updates" button on the main menu. If you have a supported hardware configuration and are unable to start the game due to a failed compatibility check, you will need to download the stand-alone patch. We will provide a separate URL for this.

We are still working on fixes for various other crashes that people are experiencing. The posts that people have been making on the forums about their detailed system specs have given us a good data set to work with, and we are in the process of assembling hardware and reproducing the issues that people are having. We are also working on an improved error reporting system, which we hope to roll out in the near future.

For the latest information on workarounds and fixes, and to report issues, please go to the Titan Quest Vault Tech Support forums: http://vnboards.ign.com/titan_quest_tech_support/b23097/p1

Improved auto-placement of inventory items
Fixed NPC dialogue windows closing when NPC moves to avoid other characters
Added character back-up functionality which will help prevent corrupted characters
Improved multiplayer stability and performance

Developers Iron Lore - whose head Brian Sullivan was also the brains behind Age Of Empires - have tried to create a top-down clickfest of epic proportions, unburdened by the likes of party management, confusing class and skill systems, complex storytelling and, well, anything else that interferes too much with the real business of destroying evil beasties.

Want an example? Take the first thing you do in the game: create a character. While most RPGs ask you to choose a race, class, skill-set, some stats and perhaps even model yourself a face, all Titan Quest asks is that you choose a man or a woman and a colour for his or her tunic. That's it. No need to pick out hair dye and choose whether or not they keep their nails in good condition - you decide if you want your character to have breasts or not and five seconds later you're in, looking down at your character standing in some ancient Greek countryside.

While I dont have an exact date yet I can tell everyone that we have fixed the following in the upcoming patch:

Character Corruption on Saved Games Caused By Crashes
Smarter (Improved) Inventory Placement when you pick up Items
Dialog Windows Closing when Bumping NPCs
Improved Multiplayer Performance on 5 & 6 Player Games

We are looking into the crash bugs being reported. It has been difficult because of the known issues with people trying to circumvent the SECUROM software and trying to get data from those experiencing legit crashes. I just want to let everyone know that these crashes are our highest priority and even though we cant respond to everyone reporting a crash bug we are collecting all the data from you folks and are working towards a solution.

Thank you all for your patience.

I would like to announce a complete list of the Titan Quest masteries and the progress of corresponding skills al my "Firopolis" project. All lists are in German and English language.

German: http://www.firopolis.de/forum/index.php/topic,593.msg1248.html#msg1248

English:
http://www.firopolis.de/forum/index.php/topic,593.msg1249.html#msg1249

The game is almost exactly like Diablo II or its facsimiles, in gameplay, feel, and playfulness. There are notable differences, however, and most of them are actually good. The most obvious difference is that, instead of roaming through the typical mythical medieval lands, you're in ancient Rome. So instead of killing off zombies and skeletons, you're ridding the world of deadly sea turtles and pigs. It's kind of funny to think about when you summon Lich Kings to help you dispatch the more difficult, slow moving turtles that are kicking your butt. You also fight mythical beasts like satyrs, cyclops, and centaurs, of course, and the variety of monsters and their abilities (melee, distance, and magical) keeps the game interesting.

Just when you thought that the world had seen the last Diablo clone, along comes what might be one of the best yet. Iron Lore's Titan Quest is about as close as we're going to get to revisiting the maniacally paced click 'n slash gameplay popularized by Blizzard's iconic series in the near future, and as such, it's a good thing that it manages to replicate all of its addictive qualities so well.

It's with a pleasant sense of shock that most gamers will receive THQ's new, painfully obvious Diablo clone Titan Quest. That shock will come from the fact that developer Iron Lore genuinely does not try to fix what ain't broke. The game doesn't come at you with a lot of new features or frenetic marketing hype about how it's the next giant leap forward in action-RPGs. Titan Quest knows it's derivative. It revels in being derivative. But Titan Quest is better for it, because it focuses on being good instead of obsessing about being original.

THQ Inc. (Nasdaq: THQI - News) today announced that Titan Quest(TM), the epic and immersive action Role-Playing Game (RPG) developed by Brian Sullivan's (co-creator of Age of Empires) Iron Lore Entertainment, has shipped to retail outlets worldwide. Lauded for its next-generation graphics and original story penned by Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace, Titan Quest is available exclusively for Windows PC at a suggested retail price of $49.99.

Let's get this out of the way up front: Titan Quest is no Diablo. It's similar in many ways to Blizzard's masterpiece and it's obviously aimed at the same people who enjoy that sort of glib frantic action RPG clickery. In some ways, it's every bit as good as Diablo. In other ways, it's better. In yet others, it's not as good. But overall, it's very much its own thing, with refreshing and unique gameplay that stands on its own, and dazzling technology that elevates it head-and-shoulders above anything it resembles.

Since it seems unlikely that Blizzard itself is going to produce a new Diablo game anytime soon, Titan Quest really is the next-best thing. The gradual approach to character creation taken here is welcome, and the sheer scope of the single-player campaign, coupled with the cooperative play and tools to create your own campaign, means that players willing to commit to the experience will have a wealth of content to keep themselves busy with. There's no shame in modeling your game after the genre-defining Diablo franchise, which capably streamlined the PC RPG into something faster and more accessible, but some of Titan Quest's holdovers seem a bit antiquated. It doesn't take action RPGs to a whole new level or anything, but you'll probably have fun with it if you've enjoyed these kinds of games in the past.

While everything looks and sounds nice, one must wonder whether or not the game plays well and what new it brings to the already dense action-RPG market on the PC. Titan Quest plays out very similarly to the bulk of action RPGs on the PC. The player will explore towns, gain quests, and set out to complete them. After partaking in some quests, a larger quest will come to either seek out a fearsome enemy or to move on to a new area. As the player fights enemies, equipment will be acquired in many different varieties, which can be customized from parts dropped by certain enemies, equipped as is, or sold at various stores in town. While all of this sounds very hackneyed, it should be noted that the change of location from fantasy to mythical creates a compelling world that is both familiar and alien, and one that is exciting to explore. Fighting is still done through point and click, and the bar at the bottom holds access to skills and items, which can also be hot keyed for easy access, which is nothing special but welcome at the same time. The controls are all solid, and there were no real issues with hit detection, as everything seems to be polished up rather nicely.

We've launched a fully searchable equipment database for Titan Quest, and have kicked it off with over sixty Epic and Legendary items available in the game. To find what you're looking for, you can either use our Advanced Search page, browse a categorized list, or page through the game's set items. The database will be expanded on a regular basis, so check back often!

If I'm harsh on Titan Quest, perhaps it's because I expected something clearly better than D2 to come out of the subgenre, after several years of opportunity -- and Iron Lore looked like a good fit. I recommend grabbing the demo, and if you like it, you'll probably like the game, too. If you find yourself a little disenchanted, though, it's probably not just you. I think it looks impressive and offers a ton of content, and there are certainly worse games with which to spend your summer days (and there are worse games coming out of new development houses). I find, however, that there's a bit too much churn to keep me hooked the whole way through. I thought the pyramids were a cool, atmospheric segment of the game, but they were more the exception than the norm. Read the rest here.

Q3: With the popularity of recent films and television programs focused on ancient Greek or Roman civilizations, do you think gamers now have an expectation of what a game set in that era should sound like?

Well, maybe. If I'm correct, most of the movies about ancient Greece and Rome are pretty much focused on war or gladiators, and most of them star Russell Crowe. (All of them, right?) If players are expecting swords and raging battle sounds all around them, I think they will be pleasantly satisfied. There will be plenty of armor-bashing, sword-slashing gladiator moments while playing Titan Quest. I think what will surprise players the most is actually some of the music, because there's more "history" in the score than you typically get in Greek and Roman-oriented blockbuster movies. The voice-overs are also a great part of the history in the game because you've got storytellers in every major town and city - they'll fill you in on each culture's myths, and even offer their own culturally-biased perspectives on what's going wrong with their world. I think the audio in the game will please players, yet teach them a little at the same time.

Aside from this, multiplayer plays pretty smoothly -- your fellow members show up in a list on the left-hand side and on the compass map in the upper right. Trading is a simple act of right-clicking on the player's name in that list and selecting "trade." The trade UI should be familiar to anyone who's played Diablo or World of Warcraft -- just click-and-drag an item into the window, select the trade button, and wait for the other player to accept the transaction. As in WoW, mousing over an item will produce a pop-up window that compares that item to what you're already wearing, so you don't have to switch between windows to see if what you want is actually better than what you have.

Anatomy of a Brigand - Hunting / Rogue Masteries

The hunter, by his nature, is a stealthy and cunning individual given to using natural and man-made elements to slow, trap or weaken his quarry. The perfect complement to a hunter is the rogue, which emphasizes many of the same skills. With these two masteries in sync, a Brigand is born.

As you play through, you should look for equipment that modifies your strength and dexterity, but I'd also recommend looking for items and relics and charms that increase your attack speed and pierce damage.

If you choose this path, it will take some patience to reach the very pinnacle of your power, especially if you follow the path of the hunter before that of the rogue.

The Pacifist - Storm / Defense Masteries

The "Paladin" class, created by the unlikely combination of Storm and Defense masteries, may not seem like an obvious choice but it's one that can prove quite effective for those with patience. I decided to try this rather odd pairing for fun, and created a primarily retaliation damage-based character... that is to say, a character focused on skills that damage enemies back after they hit you.

This build gains power slowly, and by level 12, I wondered if it was going to be too weak to be much fun. However, I soon got over the hump and a world of hurt opened up for my enemies. It was hilarious watching monsters my own level killing themselves on me.

The first event will be a one-day on Saturday, July 1 at 50 select iGames member centers across North America, including Canada and Mexico. The second event will be an Expanded Showcase from July 3-16, allowing fans one free hour over a two-week period to sample the game.

Alongside the game itself, the highlight of the one-day premiere will be special launch competitions, with gamers battling it out for such prizes as a an Alienware� system, custom NVIDIA t-shirts, EVGA GeForce 7900 GT graphics cards, Intel Pentium D Processors, Altec Lansing headsets and Antec PC cases. Free Game T-shirts and other goodies will be raffled off for all attendees.

I really enjoy playing this mastery combination. I have my pets to help me out and keep me company, my teammates love me, and I can do a tremendous amount of hurt. The use of the healing skill and pets is tactical, and I like some tactics in my combat. See you on the battlefield!

Jonric: How much technical knowledge is required to use it (the level editor- editor's comment), and in what ways are you planning to support users?

Tom Potter: Of course, to make a level really stand out, you need to know how to use all of the more advanced options. And by their nature, advanced options might be more difficult for casual users to grasp initially - like editing water parameters, adding fog layers - so we'll be moderating forums and helping people through any problems they might encounter. We're making tutorial videos to supplement the text instructions that ship with the game. We'll also be supporting the editor in any Titan Quest updates or future products. We're dying to get feedback from everyone, and I've got my own huge wish list, so expect the editor to get better and better with time.

We have gone gold! It has been an extremely long road with a lot of long nights to get here, but Titan Quest is finally complete.

I am very happy with the final product. There are certainly some areas where I would like to spend time and make the game even cooler, but the final product met or exceeded all of our original goals.

First is the look of the game. We set out to make a photo-realistic outdoor scene in our new 3D engine, and the final result takes your breath away. The world is very detailed: you can see individual blades of grass and flowers, you can see individual pebbles on the ground and each leaf even casts a shadow on the ground. The world is also very interactive, with the grass and brush moving out of your way as you walk through them, trees swaying in the wind, water moving and splashing as you run through it, and ambient creatures such as birds and butterflies moving in the world. This all has the effect of making a tremendously immersive world.

The setting of ancient Greece, Egypt and China allows for some very interesting quests. The villages are full of quest givers, and no sooner have you started than you are quickly levelling-up. The monsters come in all shapes and sizes with some being impossibly huge. Expect to see hags, draconians, tiger men, croc men, mummies, djinn and many other creatures of legend. In the footage we saw of the later stages of the game, creatures also attack you on savage mounts that must be defeated first to get at the rider.

The main objective we have tasked our gameplay designers with is finding out what makes an action RPG fun. Our first step was to get rid of a lot of things that are not fun, such as spending a lot of time traveling to and from town to sell your wares and micromanaging inventory, and instead focusing on the action and adventure elements that really drive action RPGs. We created flexible character classes and modifiable skills to let players really customize their characters to match their play style. To make the loot-collection part of the game even more exciting, we added a lot of unique equipment, each with hand-entered stats and art. And we kept the action and combat fast-paced and visceral, because that is what fans of this genre love about these games.

On the epic front, it's hard to get more dramatically grandiose subject matter than Titan Quest's source material. For those of you who've misplaced your ragged copies of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Titans were the race of gods who gave birth to the Olympians and later came to regret giving into the urge to procreate. Written by Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace, the story leads your hero from a small village on to Sparta, Egypt and China before the single-player quest comes to an end. The idea, according to the Iron Lore folks, is to explore material that's both exotic and accessible, so as to please action-RPG fans while not alienating potential newcomers whose favorite Achilles ever is Brad Pitt.

With so many RPGs feeling old and tired before you've even played them, thanks in large part to their traditional fantasy setting, we're looking forward to fighting more satyrs, mummies, Egyptian statues, demons, harpies. A mythological setting let the audience use a pre-arranged batch of knowledge, rather than a given world's particular quirks having to be revealed to you via clunky exposition or disorienting flashbacks. It's surprising that more Roman and Greek action games have sprouted up in the wake of God of War, but there you go. Since Titan Quest is slated to come out this month, it has the field to itself for a while yet. Stay tuned as we stake out our mailbox for the review copy.

Although it sounds ethereal and high-minded, the spirit mastery is going to be familiar to anyone that's played as a necromancer in any role-playing game. Instead of encouraging your enemies to seek salvation, you're going to be blasting them with life-stealing plagues, lower their resistance to damage with skills like necrosis, and force them to flee for their lives with visions of death. In addition, your powers over the undead will allow you to spread the joy to your teammates, allowing everyone near you to increase the damage they deal to undead enemies and reduce the damage that they take in return.

Titan Quest has been on the drawing board for almost six years and has been in full production for more than two. In the very early years it was Brian Sullivan setting the vision for the product, with the help of cofounder Paul Chieffo, Max McGuire (programmer extraordinaire), Rich Sullivan (lead concept artist), and Josh McHugh (artist). In those early years, that group, with the help of a few others, worked in a small, windowless office we now call "The Dungeon." Iron Lore, led by President Brian Sullivan, has grown into a dedicated team of 38 developers with talent, patience, passion, and a love for games. Since it signed on as our publisher, THQ's superb professionals have helped us steer Titan Quest toward its fast-approaching launch date.