runic-games posts

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.

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!

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.

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.

Today is the launch of Runic Games' Torchlight, although you probably know them best as the guys who worked on Mythos. The MMO version of Torchlight isn't out for another 18 months or so, but you can get a taste of it as of today, which is of course the game's release date -- imagine that!

Not only is the game developed by the former Mythos team, it's also headed by Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II. Speaking of those games, we hope you liked their music, because the same man who wrote it worked on Torchlight as well. The pedigree is definitely high, and from our hands-on experience it shines through exceedingly well.

So will you be getting Torchlight? At the low price of $20, it's not a hard sell considering the quality of the game. Plus, with full mod tools being included in that price, free fan-made content should be falling down from the heavens in no time flat.

Runic Games announced at the Penny Arcade Expo today that Torchlight is slated for an October 27th launch, with Perfect World as the game's publisher. Torchlight will be a fully downloadable game, sold at $19.99. Massively had a look at Torchlight at E3 2009 and noted the game is influenced by titles like Diablo and Fate, which should come as little surprise given that the Runic Games is headed up by CEO Max Schaefer (co-designer of Diablo) and President Travis Baldree (designer of Fate).

Runic Games now has a "Meet the NPCs of Torchlight" page up on the game's official site and will be giving fans an early peek at the game at PAX 2009. For the rest of us who can't be there, they'll also be on Twitter with updates from the expo.

Things are stirring behind the scenes in the world of Mythos, the little MMO that could. A newly launched site offers a very small teaser, but also, a closed beta registration form which is of far more interest. While Mythos was much-loved in its previous form, we don't doubt the followers of the Diablo-esque dungeon-crawler are keen to see if the magic is still there in HanbitSoft's re-envisioning.

If you're not up on the history of this title, now (at its new beginning) seems a good time for us to sum things up. It started out as a way for Flagship Studios to test their networking technology for the then-upcoming Hellgate: London, but soon grew into a popular game in its own right through a widespread closed beta test. It was all set to transition from experiment to fully-fledged title and move into open beta when the well-documented trouble at Flagship derailed the whole thing.

However, Flagship's Korean publisher HanbitSoft acquired the game's license and decided to make use of it. They reassured eager fans only a few months ago that Mythos would be re-born better than ever. Only time will tell if that's true, but with this new closed beta registration, it shouldn't be too long before a select group finds out for themselves. In the meantime, all of the old Mythos devs will be working away on Torchlight at Runic Games. Torchlight undoubtedly stands to be significant competition for Mythos in the future, but it won't be ready (in its MMO form at least) any time soon.

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.

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.

Earlier last month we learned a bit more regarding a resurrection of the Mythos team in a new project entitled Torchlight. Apparently, this game will begin life as a single-player game, then eventually branch out into an MMO. Although not much is known about this MMO and how much Mythos influence it will hold, a recent interview at Gamasutra sheds a bit more light on what we can expect from Runic Games.

The Torchlight MMO is said to be modeled after a Diablo-style game mechanic. With the 22-person Runic Games team being comprised of mostly Diablo and Mythos vets, the familiarity will certainly be there. "Obviously it's the same style, but again, they're working on an established IP that has its own look, and its own story and its own tone, and they're not doing, as far as I know, a traditional MMO," says co-creator Max Schaefer. "[It's] more in the BattleNet style that Diablo II was in."

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.