Some of you here may have played Torchlight. A fun and simplistic throw back to the original Diablo, developed by the original people behind the first Diablo game. Wasn't much to it; it was pretty much Diablo 1 with some Diablo 2 concepts but it was a very polished and enjoyable single player experience.
Runic has much larger ambitions for the sequel and looking to improve and expand upon what was seen in the first game in every possible way; furthermore Torchlight II will feature multiplayer; and while Runic has no plans for a dedicated official server, they do have plans to release software that will allow people to host their own private servers... TL1 fans may remember the world editor and very flexible and powerful modding support that spawned some great of original maps and mods; you could pretty much change or add anything including brand new classes without replacing existing classes... Well Runic plans to expand upon that with TL2 with a new and improved updated world editor that will offer more power and also be more polished and user friendly.
The game is slated to be released late spring sometime. So what does this give us? An amazing multiplayer diablo-style experience with official support the legally host private servers and all powerful world editor that offers far more power and flexability for mods and user created content then Diablo 2 ever had to offer.
Given that Diablo 3 has confirmed no official support for modding and no option for multiplayer outside of their official battle.net 2.0 "one server to rule them all" It seems far more likely that my next project will move from Diablo 3 to Torchlight 2; unless Blizzard surprises us all.
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