More complexity

Nov 19, 2009 21:31 GMT  ·  By

Torchlight has been one of the surprise hits of 2009. The game offers an experience pretty similar to that delivered by the initial Diablo, but with a few very interesting twists, like allowing players to recruit pets that can cast spells and sell loot. It was created by a team of dedicated role playing game veterans, some of who also worked on Diablo, and their ultimate goal is to actually create a MMO based on the same technology, set to arrive at some point in 2011.

Max Schaefer, who is the leader of the development team at Runic Games, has told a German PC-oriented site that “We meant to design a tight, clean title that has polish and performance rather than build a sprawling, feature-laden RPG that would take years to develop. The MMO will have more classes, more customizable characters, and more total content, so there should be plenty for Torchlight gamers to look forward to.”

The team at Runic Games is now working on eliminating all the problems remaining with the single player Torchlight experience and will then move to begin creating the MMO full time. Schaefer says that amongst the big features they are preparing to introduce are “a lot of customization, an overworld, random and instanced dungeons, PVP and much more.” The team is also promising that the whole experience will be free to play and supported through advertising and, probably, micro transactions.

Runic is also stating that those who are now engaged in playing Torchlight will be offered a chance to actually be involved in the testing phase for the alpha and the beta stages, offering ideas and feedback to the development team. The studio would not comment on whether they plan to implement a multiplayer component into Torchlight.