Coming from the desginers who made Diablo, Mythos, Mythos II and Fate, we're expecting quite a lot from their new title, Torchlight. This classic Diablo style 2D hack-and-slasher can in every way be considered the spiritual successor to Mythos, and in some ways even more closer to the original Diablo. For instance, Torchlight is a town with another world underneath it -- that and it's going to be a single player RPG before it goes MMO. But rest assured, it will go MMO in a year to a year and a half.

First, we'll discuss features that will exist at singleplayer launch later this year, then we'll cover the new elements planned when the game expands into a massively multiplayer game. Check it all out after the jump along with gameplay footage, complete with Felicia Day of The Guild trying her hand at a beta version of the Action RPG.

There's a lengthy interview with Bill Roper over at Gamasutra, and it's well worth spending a few minutes reading it if you're at all interested in the games industry. From his time at Blizzard, to helming Flagship Studios, and now his relatively new position at Cryptic, Roper has seen and heard a lot, and the interview is all about him having a chance to share his "hard-won wisdom".

When Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London came up, Roper was quick to point out that the venture as a whole was not an entirely bad experience, or one that he'd prefer to forget; rather, there was a lot of learning to be had from going through it: "I can say, 'These are the things that were amazingly successful at Blizzard and how they worked. And these were the things that were amazingly unsuccessful at Flagship.' And so, I think I learned as much from the failure, if not more, than the successes."

The full interview covers a lot more than just Flagship, and even if you aren't familiar with Roper, it's interesting to hear the industry insights of a veteran.

Mythos seems to hold a cult fan status among those who were lucky enough to play the game before last year's Flagship kerfuffle unceremoniously halted the games' production -- and with good reason. The game was a lot of fun, as all those cult fans know. Which is why we're torn about this news.

It appears as though Hanbitsoft -- the Korean developer who picked up the rights to Mythos last year -- has come out and said they fully intend to bring the game back into the world. They've also said they realize the game is basically inspired fully by Diablo, and plan to, "-put in more content for more exciting multiplayer." That's great and all, but we worry that the beta that we played last year and this retooled Korean flavored version aren't going to elicit the same kind of excitement.

This is also compounded by the fact that, well, the original Mythos team has already formed Runic Games and will be presenting their spiritual successor to Mythos, entitled Torchlight, at E3 in just about a month. Now, while Torchlight is only a single player RPG for the time being, Runic has clearly stated their plans to build it into an MMO down the road. So for now, with one game the closer, we'll just decide to be excited for E3 come early June.

A few of us on the Massively staff were gutted when Mythos became a casualty of the Flagship Studios closure. We later learned that some of the former Mythos devs had formed a new studio called Runic Games; just the other day we picked up on a partnership between Runic Games and Perfect World to release a new title called Torchlight. Aside from this, we'd heard precious little about what's in the works at Runic Games, but an interview we've come across sheds some more light on what the former Mythos devs have been up to.

Travis Baldree from Runic Games discusses how they're building Torchlight as an MMO, although its first incarnation will be a single player title, one that actively supports modders. The interview also discusses the story and art of Torchlight, as well as its music, programming, and the toolsets which will be made available to players. In fact, Runic Games' Greg Brown says, "Hopefully, nearly everything I've been working on will be usable by players who want to modify the game." If you were interested by what you saw of Mythos and want to know what those devs have in store for gamers with Torchlight, you'll want to give the interview a read at the Runic Insider site.

Perfect World Entertainment, the MMO portal of the self-titled Perfect World International and Ether Saga Online, has announced a partnership between themselves and the phoenix game studio Runic Games for the publishing rights of the upcoming MMO, Torchlight.

This is a large step forward for Runic Games, the previous Mythos game team of the now defunct Flagship Studios. Their agreement with Perfect World is for global publishing rights, meaning Torchlight could be seeing an international release.

Little is currently known about Torchlight, other than the game will be focusing on a single city and centered around the acquisition of a magical ore that imbues equipment with power, but also has a downside to it as well. The game has a bit of a cartoony, playful character to it, as seen in some early concept art shown on the main Runic Games website.

Scarcely a fraction of gamers are involved in MMOGs. The percentage is a little higher if you're a gamer over 25, but below that, the odds are that only 1-2% of gamers are into MMOGs. But the gamer market is expanding. That is, the number of gamers who are involved in MMOGs is growing at a rate less than a twentieth of the growth of the hobby.

Or to put it another way, the pool of potential customers is growing much larger than the customers the industry already has, if only the industry can find a way to make MMO gaming, as a hobby, more attractive to gamers who have hitherto shown little or no interest in it.

There are several approaches the industry has and is attempting in order to reach out into that broader pool of would-be players.

Still confused on the true status of Hellgate: London? Well, let us help confuse you a bit more. According to Korean publisher HanbitSoft, they're interested in resurrecting the game in the U.S. and Europe, but their hands are tied by Namco Bandai. Of course HanbitSoft acquired the title from Flagship, who was the original developer of the game. On top of this, the game is alive and well in Korea under HanbitSoft's domain.

Maybe Kee Young Kim, CEO of HanbitSoft, can explain it better: "HanbitSoft does own the intellectual property of Hellgate: London and is interested in providing the game in the US and Europe, but is unable to do so at this time because Namco Bandai has the publishing rights for those regions." Any way you look at it, it seems Hellgate: London is trying hard to come back to its loyal fans.

It's up! It's down! It's up! It's down! It's... sideways?

That's the story for the ever growing saga of Hellgate: London in a nutshell. This time, however, it's not coming back and there should be no more rumors that it is coming back. HanbitSoft, the Asian publisher of the game, has finally clarified to GameCyte that they do not have the publishing rights to Hellgate: London in the United States or Europe, just in Asia, excluding Japan.

Currently those rights are held by Namco-Bandai, who have made the decision to shut down the Hellgate servers as of February 1st.

So it's not coming back. Even though it will still have press releases in English and have updates being made by a US developer, it's not coming back. However, if you really want to play, we suggest moving to Asia, as it will still be going strong over there.

The show is now over for the Hellgate: London that we once knew. The game's servers and the official website have poofed, and stranded fans will now turn their attention towards HanbitSoft's grand plans to revive the troubled title in a free-to-play format, complete with new content and gameplay changes. HanbitSoft's press release did not specify a date for the re-launch, nor did it say which territories it will be servicing, so we're looking at a bit of downtime for the moment.

Scott from the Pumping Irony blog has written about his time spent online during Hellgate's final hours. Plenty of players turned up to see the "end of the world", and many donated their soon-to-be-worthless in-game currency to the War Drive NPC, granting buffs to the masses. Scott's transcript of the last few moments of chat are an indication of the kind of solidarity and sadness that the most faithful fans displayed as their world was crumbling around them. It's all on HanbitSoft now to save these folks from their Hellgate-less existence.

MMO-centric website Allakhazam is running an interesting piece on Champions Online. Tamat, the site's Editor-in-Chief, caught up with Bill Roper, the Design Director for Champions Online at Cryptic Studios. The interview ranges from what Roper does at Cryptic to some of mistakes learned along the way -- particularly in the wake of what happened with Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London.

The interview covers a good range of topics, discussing Roper's transition from the business side of an MMO developer to focusing on creating a game, and how trying to compete with WoW isn't a concern for Cryptic with Champions Online. Roper also discusses the idea of bringing some of the original pen and paper Champions Online system to the MMO. He says, "We're including the core concepts of talents, perks, and even exposing the stats system to a degree. We've streamlined some of the concepts of the game to make it more accessible to a broader range of players, but without losing the beauty of what makes Champions the great game and IP it is."

Have a look at the full interview with Cryptic's Bill Roper over at Allakhazam for more on the directions Champions Online will be taking.

Always named in the popular lists of "Failures for 2007/2008", Hellgate: London may not be dying off as easily as we thought. As reported by Gamasutra, HanbitSoft has announced that they will be keeping the game alive as a free-to-play model after the initial closure date of January 31st, 2009. They can do this (despite Namco-Bandai's decision to close the game) because they own the IP, engines and source codes for the Flagship Studios title.

In November of last year, we touched on this a bit, as HanbitSoft mentioned their continued efforts with the game, which might even include an expansion. At that time, the rumor was that it would be available only in Asia, yet this newest announcement is for global availability. This brings up an interesting thought though: If Hellgate: London can do it, can the others?

One of the blog posts over at the Hellforge community that is getting some traction is Agamemnon's look back at the MMO failures of 2008. Included are looks into why Tabula Rasa, Hellgate: London, Age of Conan, and Pirates of the Burning Sea either outright failed (in the case of Tabula Rasa and Hellgate) or were unable to get the subscriber numbers they expected with their launches.

What separates this blog post from the myriad of other posts on the same subject is that the article ends with the many things that these games all did wrong and other developers should learn from. Little things, like listening closely to the feedback from your beta testers, fostering a community, and learning to stay away from the concept of "we'll patch it to perfection." It's a good analysis of the many failures of other games, and a kind tip of the hat to the things an MMO can do right, such as Mythic's openness with Warhammer Online.

A special edition of Ask Cryptic for Champions Online is out now and it features Bill Roper answering all sorts of highly interesting questions. The most interesting answer from Bill concerns his involvement with the game, as it's now beyond concept and initial design stages. Apparently, Bill's past experience at Blizzard involved coming in during the polish and release phase of a game -- which is something he was never involved in at Flagship. That and the continued support for future content will be Bill's role at Cryptic with concern to Champions Online. Oh, he also expresses an interest in doing voice work for the infamously awesome Foxbat. Intriguing.

The other thing we took away from this was that the game is getting pretty close to beta, which would mean that it's on track for an early 2009 release date. We must admit our shock at the possibility, as most MMOs suffer at least one delay during the development process. Could this one prove to be an exception to the rule? We certainly hope so.

Even though former Blizzard veteran and Flagship CEO Bill Roper just recently joined Cryptic Studios as a design director, it hasn't taken them long to sit him down and put together a brand new "Meet The Team" segment for his position with the Champions Online team. If you haven't read many (or any) of these often interesting interviews just yet, we highly recommend giving this one a chance. Not only does Bill speak about his time with Blizzard, but also the essential lessons he's taken from being the CEO of Flagship and how he plans on applying them to his work at Cryptic.

Attentive readers will notice that the interview also hints at the progress of Champions Online. With Bill discussing his interest in implementing the crafting system, which isn't in the game yet, but also mentioning that the title is pretty far along. Most MMOs in development experience a delay or two, but by the sounds of it we may actually get to play this one on time.

With the future of Hellgate: London on thin ice, it should be no surprise that Flagship Studios co-founder and CEO, Bill Roper, has sought greener pastures. As was just announced, Roper has joined Cryptic Studios as their new Design Director for Champions Online. Cryptic's CEO John Needham is optimistic about the acquisition: "Bill brings a ton of creative energy to the Cryptic office and we're thrilled to have him join our team. His years of gaming and online experience are huge assets to all of our projects, and Bill will assist us in furthering our studio's vision to create innovative, exciting MMO gameplay. "

These years of gaming and online experience Needham mentions include a long list of impressive titles. Not only did Roper work as a producer and developer on many classics like the Warcraft trilogy, StarCraft and Diablo, but he also dabbled in some voiceover work for many of these games as well. Roper is now a key asset for Champions Online, and we look forward to more news on his work with the game.