[Magistrate]

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.

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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?

[Psyxix]

Sooner or later there is bound to be some information released from blizzard either officially or from a probable leak. We can't even get information on patch 1.13 and that's not supposed to be a secret! Therefore, I won't except anything from them this month.

[Pryda]

We can hope its the calm before a storm but who knows. I doubt Blizzard is reforming the game much because of TL, because, lets be honest, TL hasn't introduced anything mindblowingly innovative or industry changing.

[dunhac82]

It would be great if that were the case...I mean honestly we have had just about nil since Blizzcon. Maybe they are holding back so they can just blow the socks off of TL fans (which in my opinion is just a blatant cartoony rip-off of D3...I still might check it out though). Either way, we are in a dire need of some friggin news here..hell even nothing on patch 1.13 for almost a month now.

[XXLaw]

Been playing this for a while now, I have to say - You can just feel that the people behind Diablo have worked at this. ^^
Great game, recommend to all Diablo fans.

[necronergal]

One thing I would like to see is some videos of the Barbarian and the Witch doctor. Like how we saw videos about the Wizard and Monk.

Even a little bit helps a ton.

[luc1027]

mmm It's seem to be ... boring. As Pryda said they not introduced something new. It's like a copie and paste from a game like that, with 3d engine and many beautiful color that invade the screen. And 3d engine don't look pretty fine... And I don't know what kind of world it is but I have some difficulty to immerse into the world with a gun in a medieval game... I really dislike that... Anyway I don't see the function of skill so I can't say it's a poor designed game. If it's some skills vomited on the table, not polished and not balanced, the game doesn't have any interest to play it.

[SFJake]

XXLaw said:

Been playing this for a while now, I have to say - You can just feel that the people behind Diablo have worked at this. ^^
Great game, recommend to all Diablo fans.

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...

[Legilimens]

I played the demo for Torchlight and from what I played it seemed like a mini-Diablo 3 or a Diablo clone (diablo walks the earth! ahhhh). I don't think Blizzard is nervous or hesitant because of Torchlight...It is plausable that they are changing some things around and that's why they haven't released content, or it might just be that they are saving stuff since there's a long way to go before D3's release. Anyway you look at it is just speculation. All we can do is wait.

[luc1027]

I happy TL release before d3... Blizzard always copie, check, spy, analysis others game like what they work on. They always bring more and made better than others. They use errors of others on his advantage. It's like that you be able to do a good game.

[arowman]

this ridiculous amount of time and ridiculous timed release of information has made my expectations way too high. it's been 10 friggen YEARS, and they can't get us a game. they can't even give us a beta for the game that's going to be released first before diablo! blizzard this is TRULY sad.

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.

[Dingler]

SFJake said:

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.

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!

This post has been edited by Dingler: 05 November 2009 - 08:32 PM

[Guasti]

Dingler said:

1. Accept Quest
2. Kill "insert name here"-monster
3. Collect reward
4. Accept new quest
5. Repeat

that music 0_0 soo stolen, and btw i have the demo on my computer, this game is just what it says above. uninterresting.

[Ophion]

Blizzard does not have to be worried about this little single player game, but they might get problems if the MMO version becomes good. It could really challenge WoW with its sucky 'spam-buttons-123456789-until-enemy-dies-without-even-moving' and 'run-run-run-runsomemore-run-run...getamount-ride-ride-ride-ride...'.

It would be a dream come true; a Diablo MMO :P

[reform]

What a ridiculous article. It's worse than amateur, infact I'd not be surprised if the "rumour" infact began with this hopeless article.

It's true that many of the Torchlight staff worked on diablo 3 in its early stages, and it goes without saying that the best elements of Torchlight will exist in Diablo III (for example, the "followers" in D3 will almost certainly work in a similar way to the Torchlight pet), but this was never any kind of secret that the remaining D3 team were oblivious to.

Torchlight has rushed the game out because it needs the early revenue to put out physical copies of the game and to make the MMO possible, and to make sure they don't have to compete with D3.

D3 was already going to be in the works for at least another year, and they're not going to start again just because of torchlight.

This post has been edited by reform: 05 November 2009 - 10:08 PM

[Lydeck]

reform said:

What a ridiculous article. It's worse than amateur, infact I'd not be surprised if the "rumour" infact began with this hopeless article.

It's true that many of the Torchlight staff worked on diablo 3 in its early stages, and it goes without saying that the best elements of Torchlight will exist in Diablo III (for example, the "followers" in D3 will almost certainly work in a similar way to the Torchlight pet), but this was never any kind of secret that the remaining D3 team were oblivious to.

Torchlight has rushed the game out because it needs the early revenue to put out physical copies of the game and to make the MMO possible, and to make sure they don't have to compete with D3.

D3 was already going to be in the works for at least another year, and they're not going to start again just because of torchlight.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

[kefka666333abc123]

There is no way in hell that torchlight is upping any ante........its a good game and its got that diablo feel that so many other diablo clones lack(obviously due to the fact that the team is full of old diablo devs.....) But theres nothing in the game that really takes this genre forward in anyway whatsoever

[reform]

kefka666333abc123 said:

But theres nothing in the game that really takes this genre forward in anyway whatsoever

That's not strictly true.

It would be fairer to say "Theres nothing in the game that really takes this genre forward which diablo III won't also have".

[Astion]

Oh get real.....

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.

This post has been edited by Astion: 05 November 2009 - 11:00 PM

[Nightguy1]

I'm glad that Torchlight is out now, and that it looks and plays the way it does. I honestly think that it HAS affected the development of D3, if only in a small way.

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.