Torchlight Ups the Ante
Has the recent product of ex- Blizzard North and Flagship Studios employees led to a period of constructive silence for the Diablo III team? Torchlight, in many respects a child of the Diablo series as any official game, has been garnering the fanhood of many of our own members, perhaps due to its vast similarities in style, gameplay, and mechanics to older Diablo games and even Diablo III, itself. A recent article at MMO News asks all this and more.
For a good number of weeks now the DiabloFans staff has been struggling to find solid, unique, and valuable news. It's proved a distinctly challenging task, however, as very little has been released, as opposed to the massive flood of information we have been getting for months. Could this be the Diablo team treading lightly, so as to avoid announcing anything fragile? MMO News says that because of this observation, common among all Diablo news sites, that "Blizzard has made up its mind to reform the game system thoroughly".
Or could this simply be the usual calm before the storm? A similar slow came after StarCraft II's unveiling at the World Wide Invitational, which was followed by a good amount of updates straight from Blizzard and then reached a veritable freeze. Is it too soon to make the call?
Even a little bit helps a ton.
To me, Torchlight is the perfect example of how certain things must change. It takes more than D2 than what we expect from D3.
I wish TL did hold me for a bit, but really, 2 days and thats it, I will probably not play this game again except for mods.
I don't it as unusual that they don't release informations on D3.. why would they? Just wait...
i predict 3 more expansion releases of World of War Crap before we even get a beta on SCII, let alone an estimated release date for D3. i'm done waiting. last time i check this site for a while. enjoy the empty void blizzard keeps giving us, when promising so much more.
Me too... Torchlight has VERY little replay value, unlike D2. I didn't even manage to play through all the races, it just seemed pointless after playing through the game the first time. The questline is so boring it hurts:
1. Accept Quest
2. Kill "insert name here"-monster
3. Collect reward
4. Accept new quest
5. Repeat
It has a few good ideas, but it's far from being something the Diablo-series ever was.
On the news subject: I think Blizz is trying out a new marketing strategy, I mean if they were to release even the slightest bit of news at this point, the whole Diablo community would explode once again and a new hype cycle would begin. As we all know hype sells games!
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Yes, it does have the diablo feel. HMMMM I WONDER HOW?? Copy Paste diablo 2 gameplay, music.. Add a few innovations and a cartoony 3d engine. Voila, you just made Torchlight.
I've got the full game. I've played about 5 hours to complete it. Though, without a multiplayer there is nothing real to play for. Its worth trying out, heck I had a good time playing it untill the end. But after that its just pointless to continue.
This game is no competition for Diablo3. You can look at it like a placeholder, even the MMO version will be. We all know when the real deal hits the shelves all other RPG games(including Torchlight) will be left out to rot in the ditch.
All in All, im happy Torchlight will launched.. Blizzard will take the few good things out of it, and make Diablo3 even more awesome. Just wait a bit, like we've all been doing the last 10 years. We'll get our share of news when they're ready to release some again.
The way that I HOPE it has affected the development of D3 is to make the designers rethink their graphics. People complained about the cartoony, exaggerated look of D3 when it was unveiled, but now we see that Torchlight has taken that look even further.
Therefore, I HOPE that the developers of D3 feel a need (even if only a subconscious need) to distance the look of D3 from Torchlight.
If you need something to do while waiting, TL is OKEY! Titan Quest altso, but as many write - there is no replay value or multiplayer!
Thats what I wanted to say.. D3 FTW. TL will be easy to surpass in all aspects!
Not to mention that Torchlight took 11 months to produce and is a pre-product created for brief money collection prior to a bigger product (the MMO) and I don't even know how long DIII took to produce...
I never liked D2 so for me Torchlight > currently existing Diablo series, simply much more enjoyable to play because the little amount of content that they had done, they done right, fully, and completely, while D1 is simply a bit overplayed and limited these days (especially without Hellfire) and DII is half baked and incomplete beyond imagination.
D3 needs to be a complete, finished product with D2's content for me to consider it a proper sequel and for it to beat even something like Torchlight or Nox. Although, most people would just buy it because it's "Diablo" so the whole argument is irrelevant.
Regardless, Blizzard has nothing to worry about. I don't really consider Torchlight and DIII to belong in the same competition zone, anyway. One is for SP-players/modders, the other is for multiplayer people. The Torchlight MMO is another subject entirely, though.
However, Runic's MMO is going to be serious competition for WoW when it comes out. I see Runic impacting Blizz more on the WoW side than the Diablo side, honestly. I still don't see how WoW has been the industry idol for so long.