Torchlight II Announced For 2011

Runic Games has announced a sequel to the popular action RPG Torchlight, planned for release in Spring 2011. One notable improvement from the first game is Torchlight II's inclusion of online co-op play, with LAN support and a matchmaking system. "The sequel will feature an updated version of the Torchlight editor, randomized overworld areas complete with weather effects, random dungeons, a selection of pets, fishing, limitless loot, and a retirement system which will allow users to retire an older character and bestow some benefits of it to a newly created character." An MMO set in the Torchlight world is still in development.

Comments

Re:I played through Torchlight last weekend

[Seumas]

It's a great game, but I grow weary of the recent trend where every franchise must have an annual release.

Re:I played through Torchlight last weekend

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'd have said it's more like Diablo 1 in those respects.

Which is a game I loved, but the state of the art really moved past it. I was excited about Torchlight but got bored of it pretty fast.

Re:Built with Ogre3D

[Tridus]

People keep saying that, but when have Linux games ever actually done well commercially?

Timing

[TheJokeExplainer]

Runic really *really* needs to be able to release this way before Diablo III comes out.

Torchlight 1 was excellent for scratching the Diablo itch except that it painfully lacked multiplayer/coop -> that was what made the Diablo series really really fun and was very sorely missed. All in all that was my only Torchlight gripe, and was why I stopped playing it after a while. Collecting randomized bling ain't as fun if you can't show 'em off and trade 'em with others.

If this comes out at roughly the same time as Diablo III, it'll not only be a problem of gaining wallets+mindshare, but also the big one of timeshare.

People playing other games means less time playing your game, and with multi-player games, critical mass of players is very very important. It's really frustrating at how there aren't enough players to play with who have decent pings if you're in Asia, like with Streetfighter IV on PC and Borderlands.

If there aren't enough players online to play with, it'll make the game a little less attractive.

Anyway, Runic did a good job with Torchlight. The modest system requirements were a big plus too as it allowed you to run it on netbooks with less horsepower. Hope they're able to push the sequel out the window in time to avoid being slaughtered by Diablo III.

Re:Timing

[morari]

Torchlight was fun, but I quickly lost interest in it because there was no real driving force. When you talk about Diablo, you have a pretty interesting story and story related quests that drive your interest. Torchlight didn't have that. I really do think that multiplayer could have fixed this issue for me, and I suppose I'll get the chance to see with the sequel. I do hope that this time around, Netbook Mode actually means that it'll run on a netbook.

Re:Timing

[morari]

I agree. Certain games do not benefit from multiplayer. A basic hack-n-slash dungeon crawl like Torchlight is practically begging for it though. With as little story as there is in the game, playing with friends is the only thing that would really keep me interested. The game's mechanics are there and fun, but the driving force of interest isn't quite.

I thought that I'd have fun playing the original Torchlight in little chunks while I was on the go with my netbook (Toshiba Mini NB305). Unfortunately, I found that the proclaimed "Netbook Mode" coupled with the lowest settings possible still made the game unbearably choppy during combat with more than two or three opponents. So I play Diablo II: Lord of Destruction on my netbook instead. :P

Re:I played through Torchlight last weekend

[drzhivago]

Torchlight didn't have, as far as I know of, a compendium site that listed every possible drop you could get. I've recently come to the realization that that is one of the major differences between Diablo (2) and it. Having a list of what you could get gives you goals that keep you playing.

Instead I played through the main "story" of Torchlight and stopped right after. Random dungeons with unknown loot was not a good enough reason to keep playing.