Now that the single player version of Runic Games' Torchlight has been released, Carolyn Koh spoke with Travis Baldree, John Dunbar and Jason Beck about their plans to turn the game into an MMO.

Torchlight is a single-player Action-RPG game and the first offering of indie studio Runic Games founded by Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree. Do those guys sound familiar? Only if you played Mythos and Hellgate: London or knew about Blizzard North. Both were part of (now closed) Flagship Studios. These are the gentlemen with Diablo/Diablo II / Fate Action-RPG and Hellgate: London / Mythos MMOGs under their belt. Within months of Flagship Studios going down, we received news of Runic Games opening and a new Fate-like, Diablo-esque Action-RPG in the works with plans for taking it to MMOG.

Torchlight looked and played well in demos at conventions. It was easy to get into, with a simple interface, good sound and music, and good looking. Released on October 27th, it has received acclaim from many critics and I was curious to know how a game like Torchlight would be developed into an MMOG.

Read Discussing the Torchlight MMO.

It will never see the light of day...........get it....see what I did there.......see the light of day.......HA ! I kill me !

 lol @ ed!

I have played the single player game and while it is fun, I am not sure how it work out in a MMO. Maybe I am picturing it wrong but I see it having looks similar to The Chronicles of Spellborn. The big question i guess is what will be the expectations or what will work in the years ahead when they are planning on releasing this into the MMO market?

Torchlight is great :)

I was never a real fan of Diablo (only played both parts with friends to the end, no farming), but i TL was entertaining.

But I agree that it will be hard to make a MMO on that basment that binds you long enough and of course let some players pay for MTs.

We'lll see how it works out. If anyone has played Mythos then they probably should expect it to be similar to that. Hopefully withint he next 6 months we get a sneak peek of what it is going to look like. I expect it to be a fun solid mmo to play.

I tried the demo of this game and absolutely loved it.

It has that 'classic' feel to it that you get with simple but effective games like Pacman and Tetris.

I assume the early release of the offline game is to generate funds for the development of the MMO version. If this is the case, I really hope people buy it. It's great value imho and an MMO version could be fantastic.

The Diablo parallels are obvious and only time will tell whether the two games will compete and if so, which will come out on top. I loved the Diablo series but I'll always play what I like the most, regardless of who made it.

These guys have some great ideas. None of them are particularly radical, but the fact that they are seriously considering implementing is what gives me confidence in this game. Too many games come out now promising goodies only to deliver them poorly implemented and at the expense of something more important.

This game reminds me of another game - Earth Eternal - in it's approach. I really like that game too because even though technically it's quite basic, the core game and the features are extremely good.

My one concern with this game is the 2-year development phase for the MMO! Crickey, that's ages! Now I'm sure some software dev guru can tell me that given what they're aiming to achieve, etc that's to be expected. However, it still looks bad on paper and things in this industry move rapidly. I just hope their cool ideas aren't old news by the time they see the light of day.

Aryas

Torchlight is a great game! If anyone has played Diablo or Mythos then you know what this game is all about. If you played Mythos then you have an idea how the MMO will work. People are already going crazy over at the forums about ways to make the game Co-op. The Modders are putting out tons of great ideas and new mods. The mod tools come out soon and a new patch is going live soon.

My biggest issue with what i read about the MMO is the pvp part. I am not into pvp. I hope it is set up where we can participate in pvp if we want instead of having to get ganked every few minutes by some kid. The one main thing I read that really got me thinking is they are already discussing new classes!  That sounds awesome!

I wonder if we'll see a hardcore mode in the MMO.

 About what I thought, and wanted from the MMO. Simply a casual place where I can show my leet gear, challenge others to see if I'm better, chat, duel, or team up with some buds. With the way Torchlight plays, I don't see this as an issue, rather a good way to do it.

HAha, i talked to a buddy and said, omg i want a MMO with gameplay like Torchlight with 3rd person view...and now maybe it comes!!! joy! hope it will be 3rd person view, but i dont mind the view in torchlight, i love the game!!

I liked torchlight, but really after 5 minutes it felt so much like a downgraded diablo II I stopped playing.  I'm looking forward to trying the map modding tools though, I saw a youtube of the developer showing how to use them and it seems very cool.  Sorta like warcraft III map editor, but for diablo II.  And I am a huge fan of pets, so I like how they are emphasizing that.  But really the only reason they have to emphasize it is the fact that the pet is the only thing torchlight has over games like D2.

In the end, it would be funner to go get my D2 cds out any play again.

Looking forward to the MMO though, that might be cool but not sure how it would beat D3, which will be cool too and probably similar feel although its not a MMO, a torchlight MMO would be highly soloable and instanced, which practically sounds like a CORPG.

Why does this game get so much hype when it's 2 years off? 

Kinda looks to me like a cell-shaded Diablo 3, which makes sense since Schaefer is behind it. Looks like a decent candidate for a cross platform MMO possibly? I'm dying to get my hands on an MMO I can play on my PS3. ^^

I really like the games these guys have made in the past, and love that it seems Torchlight has some of the feel FATE had. The pet system, fun side stuff like fishing etc. I actually hadn't realized until recently that it was by Runic Games. I was interested in Torchlight before, but now I am very enthusiastic. Their games always seem, at least to me, to have that, "Stay up incredibly late without even realizing it, just because you're having fun doing stuff" play factor. I hope that the proposed MMO would have that same charm.

I actually like the fact that the MMO may feel more like a Co-op rpg than a truly massive online rpg. I dunno why but I enjoy that feel to a game, and think that sort of feeling has been lacking lately.  I actually hope they stick to Torchlight style graphics and view rather than the more typical graphics style you see in any number of current MMOS. It would keep it unique, as it should be.

Really hope that the MMO does happen, and will be looking forward to it with baited breath.

for the first time in so long that I cant remember, I actually feel bad for playing a pirated version of TL.

I cant wait til payday, I really hope the box comes full with cool stuff

I like this game a lot and I'm having a great time with it. If they do decide to make an mmo version I just hope it isn't f2p.

The pets option was a cool feature but as a summoner I found that I had more minions than I did in Titan's Quest which is great. Very fun game and I've been looking for a good dungeon crawler for a long time. I hate to say it but I like it better than Dungeon Siege II, Titan's Quest and Baulder's Gate. It's a very short game but how it plays is so well done I would want to see an expansion with new areas.

 Sounds like it would be a generic MMO.   Add a little different artwork. Skill trees, achievements, pve dungeons, pve gear grinding and pvp and maybe maybe region based pvp.   Same old shit with different artwork.   Although best of luck, I hope to be proven wrong. 

If any devs of Torchlight reads this hope u realize what a big mistake u do with the item shop?

Make monthly fee keep the game alive and balanced

Make item shop let the game die slowly while the players fade waste irl money for xp potions or whatever u had in mind its not gonna work...

For those who never played/heard of Mythos, let me assure you that this team has the ability to make an amazing MMO out of torchlight. Mythos was planned as a F2P and combined the best elements of a diablo-style game with the socialization of a MMORPG. It was very similar to the Guild Wars style; large numbers of players gather in town instances, and adventure maps are spawned as instances for parties to play in.

When surfing the Mythos forums during its beta, you can't imagine how engaging and responsive the developers were to the community. Calling their development a labor of love isn't so far from the truth. Many of us followed the studio from bankruptcy to the creation of Runic Games.

By buying Torchlight now you are contributing to the funding and development of their MMO... so please keep the support rolling!

I bought the game. I loved the demo and it is obvious in the game what they want to keep from Diablo, and what they want to improve. This is not a game that is trying to be overly complex like some MMOs, because it is focusing on the action. It is about killing hordes and hordes of mobs and loving the hell out of it. I like my complicated games, and my real virtual worlds, as you can tell by my signature, perhaps, but there is something to be said for a game like Torchlight as an MMO. I really do not see it working like a typical MMO, but as someone said, much more in the Guild Wars style like Mythos. You gather in a "safe" place to talk, trade, etc., and then you team up and go out into the dangerous world to smash up the enemy. I think this should be put into the same camp as GW, in which some people claim it is not an MMO, but I would happily pay a subscription for a well-executed Diablo style world to play around in, but it would have to be in addition to my "base" MMO, or, as I said, the virtual world I play in.

I'm glad these guys have put out an engaging game for some income while they work on the bigger project. I think Mythos would have worked out much better for them had they started out with it instead of Hellgate. As it was, it suffered because of Hellgate's failure.

It's nice that these guys didn't just give up because of that failure.

 Mythos was a much better game IMO , and you cant make an MMO out of this type of game , ask Dungeon Runners..

If it had multi player ala Diablo 2... I would be all over this. However, single player games just don't do it for me anymore.  Here that devs? Get multiplayer going and I'll buy your game!

I have played Torchlight the single player game. It is definitely a fun hacknslash game. I really don't like the pets but oh well. : )

They have only just released the solo game and we get a ‘interview’ to hear about their plans to turn it into a MMO? Come on this is just like the Dragon Age article, pure advertising for the company. MMORPG.com really needs to focus on MMO’s this is getting silly now.