Interview Torchlight: The single-player MMO

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Torchlight

<p>Apparently the guys from Flagship Studios didn't just disappear when Flagship went down. Instead they joined forces with&nbsp;FATE designer Travis Baldree and with their powers combines created Runic Games. <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/newswire?story=23442">Their first game is Torchlight, an MMO that's coming out as a single-player product first</a>:</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"<em>Torchlight</em> is an action RPG, kind of in a similar vein that we were working on previously with the <em>Mythos</em> project," Schaefer tells Gamasutra. "It's evocative of that same style of gameplay; there are a lot of <em>Diablo</em> vets on the team."</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">[...]</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Schaefer says the team knew intuitively that the subscription model was "wrong" not only because it limits the number of player accounts, but it also locks the player into the game and obligates them to play continually else waste money.</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">[...]</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The team has an interesting launch strategy for <em>Torchlight</em>; to gradually introduce to universe to a Western audience more familiar with the <em>Diablo</em> style of gameplay in a single-player context, Runic will launch a U.S. and Europe-only single-player version this year, ahead of the full MMO.</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"The single-player version is already really fun to play; we know we're onto something good because people just stay late at work and sit and play it. It's already got this addictive, really slick, fun feel to it."</p>
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<p>Will it need an unlock code?</p>
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<p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com">GameBanshee</a></p>

 

[Fat Dragon]

A shitty RPG on the way it seems, big surprise what with all the high-quality ones that have been pouring out nonstop lately.

 

[Turok]

All developert dream with make a MMO that give then continue work and income??

 

[Jaesun]

"We always want you thinking that you've just got to go to one more room and do one more dungeon to find the coolest item -- and hopefully look up and it's three o'clock in the morning," he says.

Has Rex made a website for this yet?

 

[WalterKinde]

I guess Hellgate wasnt enough of an example for these guys.
You are either 100% MMO or you are not.
Dont try to milk the buying public by being in between esp if you are not prepared to give 120% in production value, tech support etc.

 

[Micmu]

Well, at least give them a credit for originality. They're not calling this Hellgate II after all.

 

[X40c]

Well, at least give them a credit for originality. They're not calling this Hellgate II after all.

Oh man, has the RPG genre really sunk so deep into shit? "Oh, its okay that Bethseda is releasing another Fallout rape, atleast they're not calling it Fallout 4, so we should give them credit for originality."
Even reading the obituaries in the morning newspaper is less depressing than the cRPG scene. I'm amazed that there haven't been any sprees of murder-suicides over this, yet...

 

[Thrasher]

I predict this will be a slow sad death of a failure.

The MMO obsession is all about greed.

The action RPG slant is for legitimizing the team for funding sources.

No cohesive innovative game design - just marketing - and lots of bs.

For example - "There are not many action-RPGs out there"...

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'd like a Hellgate style game actually. Hellgate sucked because of it's horrible production. The 'writing', the horrible lag, the generic flat characters and world. I think the basic idea was a good one, it just needs to be made by a team that isn't pants-on-head retarded.

 

[WalterKinde]

Thats why i said you need 120% production values along with 120% for tech support when something goes wrong.
And so far havent seen that from any dev or publisher.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Blizzard could pull it off, maybe valve. A console juggernaut company could too, but they'd never stray that far from their cash cows this generation.

 

[bhlaab]

That's a cool idea but when will people get the hint that mmos that arent world of warcraft are doomed from the beginning

 

[poocolator]

The smell... the fucking smell... it never goes away

 

[SerratedBiz]

"We always want you thinking that you've just got to go to one more room and do one more dungeon to find the coolest item -- and hopefully look up and it's three o'clock in the morning," he says.

You find a moldy piece of hype.

>look hype

This old, moldy piece of hype looks like it's been partially digested. Maybe it's been down the throats of one too many people. In any case, it looks inedible.

"Since this is a new IP and a whole new thing, we have a little bit more leeway to have our own flavor on it. Dragon's Lair meets The Incredibles, I think, would be the most accurate way to describe us."

What zee fuck?

One of the things that we pride ourselves in the games that we make is that it isn't built into the game that you have to sit and grind for four hours to do a particular mission, or to get something done.

Mhmm. If you're the kind that likes your characters weak, that is.

 

[Chefe]

The only thing that makes MMOs remotely tolerable is the multiplayer aspect. Why the hell would you want to fetch 10 boar hides alone?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, you wouldn't. It's just a requirement to maintain the server population.

It's doubtful they'll realize this and make a single player MMO that doesn't require asinine grinding though.

The idea has potential though: Think about a world the size off WoW, styled after your favourite game, with quests that make sense. Would be pretty fucking cool. And so massive you'd have to start a dozen characters to see it all. Character race/class A1 would have a totally different game than character B2.

Probably won't happen in our lifetime though. Maybe after MMOs become as easy to make as roguelikes.

 

[poocolator]

Such things exist: they're called private servers. Figure out how to set one up, and you have pretty much free reign if you wish.

For example, look up WoW private servers, and you'll find links to top 100 free private servers (freely available-- no paying). Maybe one day I'll try it out but WoW never looked like my cup of tea.

 

[Lurkar]

How the christ do they get investors?

 

[Chefe]

How the christ do they get investors?

When you're creating a game and looking for investors, there is most likely a stockpile of pitches that go something like this (choose one):

"It features many of the same mechanics featured in the popular Grand Theft Auto."
"It is similar in scope and design to the massively multiplayer World of Warcraft."
"It bears a striking resemblance to Blizzard's hit Diablo, but has a few amazing innovations."
"It offers several vast improvements to the classic Age of Empires formula."
"It's like Halo and Gears of War, but set in the World War II period."
"It's just like Wing Commander and... what? Oh, okay. I'll show myself out."

 

[Damned Registrations]

Such things exist: they're called private servers. Figure out how to set one up, and you have pretty much free reign if you wish.

For example, look up WoW private servers, and you'll find links to top 100 free private servers (freely available-- no paying). Maybe one day I'll try it out but WoW never looked like my cup of tea.

I've played on a couple actually. The problem is that most are basically people turning the xp and drop rates to stupid levels without changing anything else. It makes for a somewhat interesting hiking simulator ala Morrowind, but theres no actual gameplay anymore. Anything you can kill will give you such massive rewards there's no incentive to do anything. You're either gaining levels stupidly fast or fighting things that can't scratch you and offer no rewards at all. Hopefully eventually someone will have a cool mod for it made though, with rebalanced characters and enemies, and quests that aren't 'go kill X and return to me for the fourth time'. Actually, even those quests would be cool, if the respawn rate were tuned (or completely turned off) so that you actually felt like you'd just wiped out the invading tribe, and there were actually a change in the gameworld to go with it (Like whatever group you did the quest for adding new npcs to the area and starting a village or outpost or something.) Wiping out 10 of the infinite number of goblins in the valley of foo and recieving a ring of +2 generic stat you have 66 in already rather sucks though.

 

[Thrasher]

One of these days I should play the free trial for a month, but the cartoonish inhabitants and world design turn me off. Plus the gameplay seems boring.... Nevermind.

 

[poocolator]

One of these days I should play the free trial for a month, but the cartoonish inhabitants and world design turn me off. Plus the gameplay seems boring.... Nevermind.

This is exactly my issue, too.
A couple of years back, at work a buddy of mine tried to get me hooked on WoW, but I just never bothered installing it.

 

[Thrasher]

It's the shit.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Some mmo's can be interesting, but what always turns me off is the grinding... Grind levels, grind gear, grind grind grind grind GRIND.

Geez, it'd be more productive to sit down and make your own flour instead of spending hours doing an instance or some other grind related activity.

 

[Thrasher]

grinding=boring