14 DAY TRIAL // Seeing how Blizzard has already pinned a May release date onto its long awaited Diablo III, many of the genre’s fans are awaiting a launch date for Torchlight II, the other big dungeon crawler title that’s coming from Runic Games.
According to the studio’s CEO, Max Schaefer, he and his team aren’t ready to present a release date but he admits that an ideal launch will happen shortly after Diablo III.
"Well, I'm sure you've noticed Diablo has announced a date. So, we don't want to fall right on that," Schaefer told Joystiq during last weekend’s PAX East conference in Boston. "The real answer is when [Torchlight 2] is finished, is Diablo 3 right now? Then we'll wait."
Schaefer elaborated on his words, saying that an ideal time for the launch of another dungeon crawler would be a month later, sometime in June.
The CEO did emphasize that Runic doesn’t want to overtake Blizzard in a hurry, so its goal is to make sure that Torchlight II, a lower-priced, yet full-fledged game, will be able to take on Diablo III, a title that’s been in development for quite some time, and costs $60/€60.
The executive also mentions that he doesn’t want Torchlight II to attract people just because it's lower priced than Diablo. Features like offline playing, modding or support for LAN are more than worth checking out, in Schaefer’s opinion.
"Be patient,” he said, as a message to fans. “Our total development time on this game is going to be about two years, which is not unreasonably long for this type of game. We're going as fast as we can. It'll be worth the wait, it'll totally be worth the wait. In the long run, people will be happy we took this extra time."
In the meantime, expect to hear more details about Torchlight II, including new videos like the ones that popped up last week, which showcased your companion animals and the Berserker’s Fury move.