Runic Games are revealing some details on the MMO rendition of the smash-hit dungeon crawler Torchlight in the newest issue of PC Gamer.

From what we can gather so far, the Torchlight MMO will be Free to Play (witn an item shop), and the design goal is to create an MMO that "feels like a singleplayer game". As Runic Games president Travis Baldree explains below:

"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.”

Much more is promised to be revealed in the new PC Gamer that should be hitting store shelves this Thursday.

View the original article here.

[Thanks AmazingAvery for the tip!]

Please be the same or similar graphic engine so I can play on Laptop...

AKA lame. TOo bad!

"The game has to be solo-able, but players will have to have skills that make them useful in a party"...

that useful-party-skill business must be the innovational part than.

cause there's not even one of those modern WoW-style and f2p MMOs out there that does not feel like a single player game.

Will it be appropriate to call it an MMO, I wonder

Sounds kinda like they're just taking the single player experience and adding multiplayer to it and calling it an MMO. I have my doubts, but I'll reserve judgement till I hear more.

I suppose theyre aiming to recreate Torchlight the single player game but allow you to experience it with other players when you choose to, and have skills to enhance the fact you have another person with you. The single player game was great, so this still sounds good to me.

Can't wait to test beta. :)

I wish they just wouldn't call it an MMO. It's more like a multiplayer function of an already awesome game; sort of silly to try and shoehorn-label it into something that it's not.

Dungeon Runner 2?

too bad, i liked the Single player, too bad they gonna "all crap" at once.

lol expect the exact same game with a multiplayer mode..and call it mmorpg..they will not make a game from beginning ...

I could see the addition of multiplayer functionality having a one-time cost, but a subscription?  Wouldn't be justifiable IMO.

Eh, MMOs are sorta synonymous with multiplayer gaming with a lobby, inventory and trade system. Stop freaking out over the terminology, peeps.

That being said, this TL's got a lot of balancing to do. Game is fun because it is broken as all hell, but broken isn't fun in a MMO context because people have an intrinsic need to feel special with equity attached.

Originally posted by Arioc

Sounds kinda like they're just taking the single player experience and adding multiplayer to it and calling it an MMO. I have my doubts, but I'll reserve judgement till I hear more.

Yes, there was another game that tried that and failed hard. It was called Hellgate: London. Bill Roper slapped the "MMO" moniker on it solely as a cash grab. Unfortunately, people wised up real quick when they realized they were paying a sub for a simple multiplayer addon, and the game ( and company ) tanked. We even have a new term because of that incident: flagshipped ( Flagship was the developer ).

Originally posted by MikeB

... and the design goal is to create an MMO that "feels like a singleplayer game".

We have lots of games like this already.

Looking forward to this...agree it seems more likely it will be a MOG than an MMOG but hey, they might surprise us. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was a game about huge dungeons with large populations of rampaging heroes moving about. As it is, even if it's just a conventional multiplayer enhancement (probably with hub towns like Guild Wars) to the Torchlight single player format I'll still be happy to at least get on and play with my wife and friends.

Literally not one piece of new information in this article. For those wondering if it will be an MMO or not, if you played or read anything about Mythos before Flagship went down, and took Flagship Seattle with it, you can already guess exactly how this game will play.

Im still looking foward to it, really the only thing worth waiting on atm, IMO of course.

Originally posted by Unreal024

Literally not one piece of new information in this article. For those wondering if it will be an MMO or not, if you played or read anything about Mythos before Flagship went down, and took Flagship Seattle with it, you can already guess exactly how this game will play.

Im still looking foward to it, really the only thing worth waiting on atm, IMO of course.

Mythos was designed as an mmo right from the beginning, Torchlight is a singleplayer game being "retrofitted". Big difference between the two.

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by Unreal024

Literally not one piece of new information in this article. For those wondering if it will be an MMO or not, if you played or read anything about Mythos before Flagship went down, and took Flagship Seattle with it, you can already guess exactly how this game will play.

Im still looking foward to it, really the only thing worth waiting on atm, IMO of course.

Mythos was designed as an mmo right from the beginning, Torchlight is a singleplayer game being "retrofitted". Big difference between the two.

 Well, actually Torchlight has been designed as an MMO from the beginning. The singleplayer was created using code and assets from the ongoing developement of the MMO. This was the biggest reason for the singleplayer not having multiplayer, along with Runic not wanting to run servers.

The singleplayer was an introduction to the Torchlight world and lore, and a paycheck for Runic employees. Contrary to popular belief, the singleplayer was not a way to fund the development of the MMO. Perfect World Entertainment has been fully funding the development of the MMO from the beginning.

And, even if none of this were true, I dont really see Runic (Flagship Seattle) deviating too much from the formula they had in the Mythos beta. It worked, and most importantly it was fun.

I logged a good amount of time in the solo game and i just couldnt keep re-rolling alts when it felt so lonely, a simple multi player function would have made this game the one to beat for some time now but with this F2P coming out i guess i gotta stick with other RPG's for now cause i aint supporting no CS, especially considering the majority of them dont have the players interest at heart.