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Travis Baldree talks Torchlight MMO
Runic Games and Torchlight designer Travis Baldree open up about their Torchlight MMORPG in the new issue of PC Gamer that hits newsstands this week. The hit single-player game will serve as inspiration for a solo-able massively multiplayer title. "Our vision is to have an MMO that plays as close to single player as we can get it. It will have the same focus on relatively fast action: carving your way through hordes of monsters with a large number of hugely devastating skills. The game has to be solo-able, but players will have to have skills that make them useful in a party and make them work together," Baldree says. The title will also feature a microtransaction payment model, which, ironically enough, its creator despises. "I will never, ever buy a microtransaction item," Baldtree states. "I'm that kind of player. And the game has to be enjoyable for me, too. We don't want our monetisation stuff to offer ways to skip the game because the game is boring." Check out the teaser announcement on PC Gamer's website.
This week on the MMO Report
The MMO Report this week is chocked full of pre-E3 goodness, and Casey Schreiner wants to tell you all about it! How are you preparing for E3? Casey and the rest of the MMO Report crew are staying up late and gaming early. Although, they took time out of their exhausting schedule of coffee and mouse clicking to fill our heads with the latest SWTOR Advance Classes propaganda and Guild Wars 2 world changing events. Because most of us are computer inept, WoW demanded Casey give pun-filled detailed instructions on how to sign up for the Cataclysm beta. If you play it back slowly, you can follow along. Casey expresses his soft-spot for Torchlight especially when Perfect World and Runic form a bond. Plus, viewers predict the future of MMOs and feel around in Casey's Mailbag. All this and more in G4TV's The MMO Report. Oh! Don't forget to snag your fart/laugh ringtone.
Torchlight sales surpass 500,000 units
Gamasutra reports that in the weeks preceding its launch on the shiny new Steam for Mac client, Runic Games' top-down RPG Torchlight hit a pretty substantial milestone. Since its launch last October the game, which typically sells for $20, has been purchased over 500,000 times. We imagine Perfect World, the game's publishing partner that recently purchased a majority stake in Runic, is pleased as punch about reaching the sales milestone. You should be, too -- in honor of hitting the half-million mark, and in celebration of the game's launch on Mac, you can grab Torchlight on Steam for $10 for a limited time.
Perfect World Entertainment invests in Torchlight MMO
Torchlight received quite a bit of attention last year when Runic Games announced that they would be releasing the game as a single-player, with an eye for MMO development in the next 18 months or so. Since then, Torchlight has done very well for itself: Runic Games recently announced that they had sold over 500,000 units. The success inspired confidence in publisher Perfect World Entertainment, who solidified their commitment by purchasing an $8.4 million majority stake in Runic Games. PWE -- best known for their Perfect World MMO and more recently Battle of the Immortals -- is the publisher of the Torchlight MMO and the game itself can be found under the Perfect World banner. PWE hopes that the combined expertise of the two companies will spell success for both: "By collaborating more closely with Runic's professional team, we seek to combine their creativity and expertise in game development with our deep understanding of the online game market to create global titles."
Perfect World grabs majority share in Torchlight developer
Perfect World, a China-based developer and publisher of several MMOs, revealed today it has acquired "a majority stake" in Runic Games for approximately $8.4 million. Runic is the studio that spawned from the ashes of Hellgate: London's Flagship Studios and is best-known for Torchlight, its single-player Diablo-inspired action-RPG. Previously, in April 2009, Runic had entered an agreement that made Perfect World the exclusive worldwide publisher of Torchlight. Considering Perfect World is primarily an MMO publisher, it's fairly obvious the company gobbled up the majority stake in Runic in anticipation of the developer's Torchlight MMO, which is reportedly about two years away. With this acquisition, Perfect World has stated that it seeks to "create global titles" -- so more Hot Dance Party MMOs then?
Steam for Mac, Portal, Torchlight out tomorrow
Tomorrow's the big day: Valve's Steam platform is officially coming to the Mac, and it's bringing two of my favorite games along with it. Portal is the first one -- hopefully if you're a gamer you've already played it, but it was my absolute favorite game of 2007 and one of the best games I've played in the last five years. Runic Games' terrific Torchlight is also along for the ride. It's a Diablo-style hack and slash game (created by a few ex-Blizzard guys) that is another must-play. The best part is that both of these are "Steam Play" titles, which means that if you already own them on Steam for Windows, you own them on Steam for Mac as well. Engadget posted a nice roundup recently of Steam for Mac impressions, but the bottom line is that it's exactly the same as the PC version, so if you've used it on Windows, you'll know what you're in for. And on the eve of the occasion, Wired has a funny little writeup of how these games will differ on Apple's platform. For instance, Portal's GLaDOS voiceover will actually replaced with Steve Jobs, and the portal guns available in the game will only create entrances, not exits. At first, Steve will tell you that exits aren't really necessary, but then they'll later be patched in via software in three to six months. Funny.
Steam for Mac rolls out tomorrow, Portal and Torchlight in tow
With PC games continuously losing retail shelf space and Mac games having little shelf space to begin with, Steam presents the first significant distribution platform, digital or otherwise, the Mac gaming platform has seen in years (ever?). It remains to be seen if Steam for Mac and Steamworks – the platform's suite of tools covering everything from copy protection, anti-cheat support, and key-based authentication to Steam community, Steam Cloud, and microtransactions – will be enough to encourage publishers to incur the added expense of porting games to the Mac OS X platform but tomorrow's launch offerings are certainly promising. Valve says that, in addition to the games launching tomorrow, on "subsequent Wednesdays, additional collections of Mac titles will become available, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac." The first collection will highlight "Steam Play," meaning games that work on all "Steam supported platforms," currently Windows and Mac OS. Valve identified its own Portal and the Diablo-esque Torchlight as launch titles, the only two to be officially announced. The Steam for Mac beta client reveals over three dozen "Mac games," all currently available via Steam on Windows. Notable entries include LucasArts classics like The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and Loom, some of Telltale's episodic offerings, including the most recent installment of Sam & Max and the entire first season of Tales of Monkey Island, and several PopCap titles, like Peggle Deluxe, Peggle Nights, and Bejeweled 2. Also listed and currently playable (unlike every other listing in the Mac beta, short of Portal) is Team Fortress 2, though it's curiously not mentioned in Valve's press release which heralds Portal as "the first of Valve's Source engine based games available on the Mac." Notably still missing from this list are Valve's Half-Life and Left 4 Dead series, PopCap's already-Mac-compatible Plants vs. Zombies, and plenty of other Mac-compatible titles currently on Steam. This forum thread has a nice list of potential Steam Mac games, and we've asked Valve to comment on how many of the currently listed games will be available tomorrow. Check out of a screenshot of the Mac store, as it looks today in its beta state, after the break.
Torchlight only $5 on Steam, you should buy it
Joystiq editors generally agree, Torchlight is one delightful little game. Anyone who enjoys a good dungeon-crawling action RPG should really give it a try, especially those looking for something to pass the time between now and Diablo 3. While it was already reasonably priced at $20, Steam has slashed the price to a ridiculously low $5 until Monday. At that price it's a definite, solid buy. Seriously, there's no need for deliberation here. Just go buy it.
Runic Games 'putting serious effort' into console Torchlight
Speaking to The Rumble Pack, Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer declared that his company is actively pursuing a console port of its PC action RPG, Torchlight. "We're going to put some serious effort into it -- pretty quick -- getting Torchlight onto consoles," said Schaefer. "There's a lot of really cool things about the console world, too, that would work well with our game," he added, "So, we are definitely going to be going in that direction." He offered no specifics on the project, saying only that the company is "talking to a million people" and that it's "something we definitely want to do. We were quite taken with Torchlight when it released on PC last year -- the game landed more than a few of our staff's best of 2009 lists -- so here's hoping we'll get some more details soon.
Best of the Rest: Richard's Picks of 2009
Halo Wars Say what you will about the game's simplicity, or the brevity of the single-player campaign, but Ensemble Studios absolutely nailed console real-time strategy with Halo Wars. The controls work beautifully, allowing for the kind of granular management required in RTS games, and yet they remain simple enough for almost anyone to get the hang of the game. Add great online multiplayer and it's one tasty proposition. Frankly, I was so addicted to the Skirmish mode when reviewing the game that it ate into my work hours. Remembering that makes it harder to face the fact that Ensemble was shuttered once work on the game was complete. I can only hope that Robot is given the chance to further the series, or at least work the controls into an entirely new game.
Torchlight gets big Steam update, half-price weekend
Valve knows you, conservative Steam user. You've been holding out for a discount on the already low-priced Torchlight from Runic Games, using the game's lack of Achievements and Steam Cloud support as an excuse to do so, haven't you? Haven't you?! It's alright (and we're sorry for yelling)! But we had to get your attention to tell you that Steam's benevolent overlords are already thinking a few steps ahead, adding the aforementioned Cheevos and Cloud support in an update last night as well as dropping the game's price by 50% for the duration of the weekend. For $9.99, you can venture into the land of Torchlight and click to your heart's content -- there's even a demo if you're so inclined. The deal last's until Monday, so let's hope you're an expedient Steam user as well as a conservative one. %Gallery-72098%
Runic Games interview, part 3
There's no Diablo III release date yet, but does its release concern you in terms of your playerbase? Baldree: Honestly, we tried to go a different way. We knew Diablo III was going to come out eventually, and we know it's going to be fantastic and amazing, but we wanted to make a game that sat in a different slot, so we chose to make a single-player mod-able game and then an MMO with a persistent world. We tried to go on both sides of Diablo. Schaefer: Diablo III has the controversy with the new artwork being too colorful and not having the somber, gothic tone of the old Diablo games. We went way further, and again, in a conscious attempt to be different. We didn't want to be Diablo. We wanted to be in that genre and do well the things that Diablo does well, but it's a different style. It feels different. Speaking of color, did you have any debate using colors, since many RPG players like the dark, gloomy color schemes? Baldree: We definitely talked about it, but I think we were all on board with going for a more, broadly accessible look. It took us a few months to hone in on exactly what we wanted to do. I think the Pixar angle is really the best comparison. Pixar has a style that is really broadly appealing. Who doesn't like a Pixar movie? It's cartoony without feeling juvenile, which is what we were kind of hoping to aim for. We tried to reinforce that with the sound of the music. We intentionally didn't make cartoony music. Schaefer: I think that we should disclose that we were looking for an art style that was conducive to a low tech approach. One that didn't need all kinds of fancy shaders to look good and didn't have to approach realism, just because we're a team that is two percent the size of Blizzard's, if that, and we need to be more efficient. Baldree: We have about 25 or 26 people now. We really wanted the game to run on everything we could get it to run on too. So having lower system requirements was one of our internal mandates, and the art style really fit in well with that. To Diablo fans specifically, why do you think they should care about this game? Schaefer: Um... we're available for sale and you could play today! (laughs) Baldree: I think some of the main advantages are it's $20 and it's got a full modding suite, so if there's something you wanted to play around with, you can. Schaefer: Everyone's a critic about the Diablo style of gameplay too. Everyone's like, "They should've done this or done this this way or fix this mechanic here." Now people can go and do that (in Torchlight). And I suspect we're going to have lower system of requirements than Diablo III. Baldree: Another thing is, if you like these kinds of games, you'll enjoy it. And yeah, we're going to buy Diablo III and play it in the office. I love the genre, so I love it when games arrive in it. A lot of people are wondering what Blizzard's next MMO is, and for a time, people suspected it could be "World of Diablo." Would you say this is, in a way, the Diablo MMO that some people were hoping for? Schaefer: Um, yeah. As far as I know, (Diablo III) is doing more of the Battle.net matchmaking-style session that Diablo II had. So yeah, (Torchlight) is the action-RPG MMO. People seem to keep trying to make the WoW killer... Baldree: Yeah, we're not really interested in that. Schaefer: Frankly, that's a terrible idea, to try and make a WoW killer. They put well over $100 million into the budget right now, 10 years, and 200 of the best developers in the world. Why would you try to beat that? Baldree: What we used to say about Mythos is that we wanted it to be the game you would play while waiting for your WoW raid to start. (laughs) Do you think it's just dangerous for a developer to shoot that high? Or do you think it's just a ratio of budget to the amount of users you expect? Schaefer: It's just a losing game because, not only are the resources incredible that you have to put into it, but then you have to make something that's actually better. Baldree: I think we went down that road in a smaller scale at Flagship. Rather than do that this time around, we went with wanting to build on a smaller success and work our way up, instead of trying to slay Goliath the first time out. Do you see this game ever coming to consoles? A lot of MMOs these days are trying to make that jump. Baldree: We talked a lot about it. I think it would be really neat. I think the first person to do a free-to-play MMO on Xbox Live that uses points for in-game purchases is going to do really well. Schaefer: We'd like that to be us but it won't be an in-house project. That would be something we would have to outsource, and there's a lot of logistical issues. It's on our wish list, but it's not something we're directly pursuing right now. What can we expect from Torchlight in the near future, before the MMO? Schaefer: Lots and lots of mod community action. We left a lot of room in the game for people to be creative and do wonderful things. We had a tiny team here, but there's hundreds of modders out there. So we're hoping that they come out with some really cool stuff over time now. Baldree: For our part, we'll be spending a lot of time with the modding community, injecting assets, being helpful, offering advice, showing how things work. What have you guys learned from your time at Blizzard and then Flagship for Torchlight? Schaefer: Well, I can speak to Blizzard. From Blizzard, we definitely just picked up a real appreciation for production values and making sure whatever you're doing, you're doing really well, even if it's at the expense of cutting lots of features just make sure what you're doing is super tight, super polished and don't release it until it's there. That was the biggest thing from Blizzard that I think we took. From Flagship, the lessons were myriad from there, but really a lot of it was don't try to do everything for everybody. Start with manageable tasks, start with attainable goals, and just pay a lot of attention to budget, efficiency, team size and partners. Baldree: Basically, starting Runic and working on Torchlight, what we wanted to do was choose something that we thought we could do and excel at with the time and resources we had. And that also fits in with the single-player game. What we had to work with was a small but really good team. Do you think of the online PC games market is still healthy despite naysayers? Schaefer: I think so. I think we went through a little rut where there just wasn't a horribly compelling product being made, because everyone was trying to make WoW killers. (laughs) Baldree: I think it's definitely changed a lot, and it's not the same market it was years ago, that's for sure. Schaefer: It seems you're seeing more clever things come down the pipe nowadays. Like Torchlight? Schaefer: Yes, exactly! (laughs) Torchlight is available now for $20. The retail version of the game will in stores on January 5th and is available for pre-order at Gamestop and Amazon. Runic Games also says they're currently working on a Mac version.
Runic Games interview, part 2
What business model are you going with for the MMO? Schaefer: Right now we're looking at free-to-play: item sales and free download. We like that model because we think subscriptions are just too restrictive. Everyone's got a (World of Warcraft) subscription already, so who wants to put more money on their credit card every month whether or not they play the game? So we like the item sales model. Having said that, it's two years until it releases and that's an eternity in this industry, so we reserve the right to change that. (laughs) The economy isn't in good shape either. Do you think that's also a good reason to go free-to-play? Schaefer: It is internationally. The question is, would (free-to-play games) get adopted in the U.S.? Baldree: The nice thing about (free-to-play) is that it's a low barrier to entry. You get in and try out our game. And we'd like everything about the game to be that way. We don't want you to have a high-end rig to have to run it; we want it to be something people can easily try out. Schaefer: And we don't want you to have to buy a $60 box so that you can start paying the subscription to play the game. Do you think the free-to-play market is getting too crowded though? Schaefer: I think consumers are business-model agnostic. They'll get word of mouth that some game is cool and that's what they'll play. Baldree: I think we just have to make a really good game. That's the most important thing. Schaefer: Right. And if it says, "Hey, come check out this game, you don't have to pay anything to try it out," I think that works. Now item sales is more challenging from a design perspective than subscriptions. With item sales, you have the whole issue of having to balance out what you're selling and not angering the free guys, not angering the pay guys and making everyone happy with it. And it's certainly possible, but it is more work. Baldree: In the end, I think the game has to come first and if we make a really good game, regardless of what we do business model-wise, it'll work. What kind of items will we be paying for? Baldree: A lot of things we talked about are things that really still encourage you to play the game. We really don't want to charge people to skip the game. Schaefer: Right, we don't want you to buy a cool sword. We want to make it so that the guy who pays has a little better chance to find the cool sword than the free guy. Baldree: And we don't have that much interest in grinding; we want you to just play and have a good time. A good example is one of the things we were going to be doing with Mythos. We had the concept of cartography. You could buy maps that would make a private instance for you and all of your buddies, and you could control the properties of those areas. So you could say, "I want this to have more champions" or "I want it to be luckier so I can get slightly better loot." These were options you could change for small amounts of money. So you could have one person who would spend a buck and create an epic map for you and your party to go into. Schaefer: Right, so everyone can participate; you just got to get one guy in your party to buy the map. Baldree: Things like high-end balance and guild-housing and cosmetic features. We really don't want to be selling the biggest, shiniest sword in the game for money and then have people buy that because it just doesn't feel fair or right. Schaefer: That's not fun for anybody. Let's go back to the beginning though. How did the idea for Torchlight come about? Baldree: A lot of us worked on all of the Diablo games, and all of us have worked on action-RPGs for a lot of years. And we were working on an action-RPG, Mythos, when (Flagship Studios) closed. So I think it was kind of just a momentum thing. We wanted to finish what we started with the Mythos project, and we thought we were on to something pretty cool with that so we didn't really debate it much. When we started the new studio, we were like, "Let's get a real cool-looking action-RPG going as fast as possible." And having worked on Mythos and Diablo, did you try to differentiate Torchlight from those games? What did you take from those projects and what did you try to avoid? Baldree: We definitely wanted to approach it with a different visual style and tone, because we're really not trying to make Diablo. We're making a game in that genre, so we consciously went for a more Pixar kind of look to things. Overall, the look of the game isn't quite as grim. Schaefer: I think also we brought a lot of lessons from the development of action-RPGs from those projects. We learned a lot about the process of making them and how to do them efficiently, and I think we've applied those lessons to the single-player version and will apply the lessons from the single-player version to the MMO. I think every time you do it, you get a little better at it. Obviously, just from having worked on Diablo and creating a game in the same genre, people are going to make inevitable comparisons to the past Diablo games and the upcoming Diablo III. How do you feel about those comparisons? Schaefer: I think it can't do anything but help. I mean, Diablo III is a relatively high-profile project with some pretty significant expectations, so as long as the comparisons aren't discouraging we're pretty happy with it. And obviously that is going to be the comparison. I think one of the reasons we've picked this genre is we feel that there aren't enough games in it. There are a million games that play like WoW, but there really aren't a lot of good action-RPGs or MMOs out there. So yeah, obviously, Diablo is the biggest one and therefore we're compared to that. But I think that's kind of testament to the fact that there aren't that many good ones. Can you comment on some of Torchlight's similarities to Diablo? Schaefer: I think there are interface conventions that are not just from Diablo and Torchlight that people use because there's no point in reinventing something that everyone already knows how to use and is already comfortable with. It's kind of just frustrating to figure out how interface works or how a skill tree functions when everyone already knows the standard way to do it. So we didn't want to reinvent how you control one of these games or what they look like, we just wanted to give you a new and fresh take on it. And Diablo certainly didn't invent a lot of those things that people would say are striking similarities. We consciously used things from other games that worked and felt right. And I think every game does that. How many games use the WASD keys and mouse look controls? It's because it's good, and it works. People know how to do it. Baldree: I think it gets down to the fact that the genre right now doesn't have that many games in it. Right now you have Borderlands, Rage and Fallout 3. All of which are post-apocalyptic, semi-RPG shooters. But the genre is so large at this point that the internal comparisons aren't made as much. Fair enough... but you could've added a pants slot! Baldree: (laughs) The pants slot comes in the MMO! Page 3 of the Runic Games interview
Runic Games talks Torchlight, the upcoming MMO, Diablo comparisons, more
Can't wait for Diablo III? Try Torchlight. The single-player action-RPG, available for just 20 bucks via digital distribution, has got PC gamers talking. But why should Massively readers care, you ask? Because eventually, in about two years or so, developer Runic Games will make it a full-fleged MMO. We spoke with Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer, who worked on the Diablo series, and lead designer Travis Baldree about what they plan for the Torchlight MMO, what they learned from their time at Flagship Studios, and if their game will be the World of Diablo we've all been waiting for.
Developer round table: MMO betas, page 3
What defines a successful MMO beta? The two main reasons being that final scalability testing requires lots of people and MMOs require better balance than single-player games. The team needs to have enough bandwidth to actually implement changes based on feedback (they can't be so completely swamped trying to put in the rest of the scheduled features that they don't have time to even read, much less implement, player feedback).
Torchlight dev speaks about Blizzard competition, MMO plans
Max Schaefer, co-founder of Torchlight developer Runic Games (and former Blizzard North staffer) recently sat down for the most terrifying interview of his life. In an interview with German gaming news site PCGames.de, Schaefer was buffeted with strongly-worded interrogatives, at one point being told to "Defend yourself!" The harsh questioning was worth it -- Schaefer opened up about similarities between his studio's game and Diablo, explaining, "we plead guilty to trying to perfect a style of game we've worked on since the early 90's." The more intriguing part of the interview came when Schaefer discussed the future of the series -- a future which involves a free-to-play MMORPG based in the world of Torchlight. Just because the game won't put a hurt on your wallet doesn't mean Runic Games is skimping out; according to Schaefer, the Torchlight MMO will be a large production, complete with "a lot of customization, an overworld, random and instanced dungeons, PVP, and much more!" Schaefer added that the MMO is still about two years out. The studio plans to go into pre-production as soon as it squashes all the bugs in the offline version of Torchlight, and hopes to have the game reach the community with alpha and beta testing phases "as quickly as possible."
Torchlight begins retail excursion on Jan. 5, 2010
Encore Software and developer Runic Games have announced plans to enchant its relationship by entering an exclusive publishing agreement that will send the addictive download-only PC title Torchlight to retail stores on January 5, 2010 for a MSRP of $19.99. Combining skills like so many elemental gems, Runic's design posse includes members from the original team that developed titles like Diablo and Diablo II (anyone ever heard of those?).Torchlight -- which recently released free editing tools to its users -- is currently available for PC via its website. A Mac version is planned for sometime in 2010. Sometime, meaning "not soon enough."
Torchlight editor 'TorchED' released, full of modding riches
Now may be the perfect time to come up from the deepest bowels of Torchlight's dungeons to take a breather from all of your greedy hoarding, as Shacknews reports the game's mod tools are now available. Runic Games originally announced the tool set would be a separate download following the late-October release of the game and the dev has made good on that promise, gifting us all with TorchED. TorchED allows one to manage all aspects of the game, from creating custom levels to modifying skills right down to quest construction. For you budding quest composers out there, Runic offers a list of tips to get your mod on that you may wish to check out. [Via Shacknews]
Torchlight to explore retail shelves in January
Torchlight, the action-RPG from Runic Games, is available right now via the game's official site or Steam. However, early next year, the game will also be available at brick-and-mortar shops, Joystiq sister site Big Download confirms. The news comes from Runic Games' head of PR, who says that a boxed version will hack and slash its way to retail shelves sometime in early January. Currently, Torchlight is only compatible with Windows, but the team is hard at work getting it ready for Macs and is also preparing the game's first patch and mod tools. If you fancy yourself a fan of the Diablo series and have Steam, then give the demo a chance -- Torchlight was created in part by Diablo and Diablo II co-designers Max and Erich Schaefer, after all. %Gallery-72098%
The Digital Continuum: Torchlight my fire
For the past week I've been delving deep into the dungeons of Runic Games' Torchlight and found the experience to be nothing short of joyous. Granted, like many other people I also wish some kind of co-op shipped with the game (even over LAN) but thankfully the developer's next project will be an MMO built upon the foundation laid down by last week's release. My joy for this game most definitely bleeds into its MMO incarnation, which has led to far too much thinking on additions I'd like to see made. So this week, I'm going to get them all off my chest in the hopes that I'll stop obsessing over them. Of course, there's never a guarantee with these things.
