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Torchlight


deanb
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Torchlight.jpg

 

 

So I've been playing the Torchlight II beta last few days(not officially mind, but it's a beta). Compared to the first Torchlight, which I've yet to beat due to being a bit of a grind, it's a vast improvement. Shame Torchlight II is the sequel and not the début title. A large chunk of it is pretty similar to the first Torchlight in the bare bones of it all. You still have a pet(though now you can have lizards n birds n bulldogs n such), the classes are largely the same (with the addition of an engineer class and a slight tweak to the existing ones), menus still act the same etc. However the levels are now much more varied, there is an actual story there rather than just "go downwards level after level after level occasionally returning to the town" that Torchlight has. Which I'd say is where I kinda take issue with Torchlight. All it was was about getting new items n beating the shit out of new things. Obviously the MP is a new feature, but due to the nature of the beta I can't give that a spin but it seems like a game that'll be kick ass for co-op. It's a game certainly on my radar.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Oh maybe it isn't. Huh says 23 hours for me too, but that'd mean it wouldn't be unlocking until 6PM, which is a fucking retarded time to unlock a game.

 

edit(ish): Yup looking around they're not posting the game until they're up wide awake n able to fix anything that goes wrong. And of course instead of having a phased timezone related midnight release which means an hour for each timezone to allow things to have a nice gentle roll out they're waiting until everyone globally can all go onto their now MP-powered game all at once. Which of course won't lead to anything going wrong that they're wanting to avoid in the first place. And on top of that you've folks in Europe and beyond that'll have to wait until evening/night to be able to play, that's a fair chunk of the day gone.

 

edit2: They're massively unhelpful on Twitter too https://twitter.com/RunicGames/statuses/248485764952899584

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Yeah the pre-load went up some days ago. I'm just currently trying to seemingly pull teeth on getting a time out of them. You'd have thought with less than 24hrs to go they'd be able to be a bit more specific than "when we're awake". All I can work out from now is that I am probably not playing this game tonight.

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Dean you sure do get worked up over stupid shit. Which is kind of funny because you point out a good reason as to why it would unlock in the morning for the states but still seem to be pissed.

 

Anyways, yeah, it's been pre-loaded for days (with incremental updates.) It'll get released when it gets released.

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It's a good reason to flip the switch globally all at once and thus, as we know happens with all games that flip the switch at once, it all crashes and then everyone has fun times?

If this was a console release, even without the midnight launch(that Steam can do), it would still be able to pop out n get your game at 9am. By 6PM all the shops selling the game would be shut. It's 2012, it's a PC game from a studio with experience in launching PC games. Doing phased midnight launches on Steam isn't a new fangled arcane thing.

 

I get worked up about stupid shit because it's stupid shit. This isn't some intricate issues of party politics and manifesto clashes and the balance of power within a coalition. This is a fucking launch of a game in the 21st century on Steam. It's not the complex rocket science that Runic seem to be thinking it is.

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Runic is a Seattle based company so it makes sense that they will launch the game just before noon when their staff can handle technical support and deal with any issues that come up. Most people game in the evening so at first they will deal with peak EU hours and then later in the day they'd get hit with all of the NA users. I don't see what's wrong with wanting to be awake for your own games launch. Especially one that has a MP mode.

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"Especially one that has an MP mode." is pretty much the main reason to not wait until you can flip the switch on all at once. It has had a fairly large beta test and many months of refinement since, this isn't a game they should have to sit and nurse into health on launch day. They should be able to just go "Launch" and away we go. Instead they'll go launch and then it'll crash the servers. So at least there's the bonus on it not requiring always online (but would negate the sequel having MP), though it still has to get past Steams launch hiccups.

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They're not in their offices at 4PM? A rolling midnight launch would have had them in their offices at 7am local to them, and given them the whole work day to sort things out, with only NA left post-reasonable office hours. By which point you'd hope with a full work day behind them to fix the issues they're expecting to crop up, that they'd be sorted. And given a rolling launch that'd open the game up to just a slither of players at once, if they can fix any issues quick then no one else would be much the wiser thus given say 80% or so of the player-base a great launch experience. Thus they could clock off for the day safe in the knowledge that NA customers can sit back n launch n play their nice n polished game (or delay later launches to fix it up, maybe pushing back to a 10AM NA launch if shit really hits the fan).

 

Whereas now if during the singular global launch the issues they are expecting do crop up, issues that could take a full work day to sort out, it means that they inconvenience...well every single one of their playerbase. And if it takes..well just a couple hours, to fix they may have well have not said it'll be coming out on 20th cos for most of the world it'll be the 21st instead. Wooh, go 21st century global launches. You'd think is some tidgy sea faring 17th century island could master timezones you'd think it wouldn't be so hard in the 21st century.

 

Given their bravado in the face of Error 28 you'd think they'd want to aim for the smoothest launch possible instead of potentially looking like a group of hypocrites and maybe proving the folks right that questioned why a small time dev was being compared with the likes of Blizzard.

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First?

time_zones_map.gif

 

Also why should non-American countries be able to play the game at a reasonable time? Maybe because our money is as good as (and in some case better) than Americas? You can go have a chit chat with Maritan if you're wanting to think that way on the whole "why give a shit about other countries?".

 

And as noted, given midnight Sydney is 7am Seattle time they would be awake and able to carry out a midnight launch just fine and awake, unless they wake up at weirder times to everyone else.

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You'll be able to play it at whatever time you want after it's released. Also, who said anything about not giving a shit about other countries? My issue is you thinking that you deserve some sort of special treatment.

 

Also, if they launched at 7, that means being in the offices before 7, and they likely just don't want to fuck with their work day too much. They're not exactly a large studio.

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I've not called for any special treatment to non-NA countries. Midnight launches, or even 9am launches, aren't exactly "special". But evening/night-time launches are kinda shitty launch windows for a game.

 

Oh no, turning up to work at 6am! What a horrible horrible endeavour, my god how could any human ever cope to do that! I would never wish that upon anyone, it's just barbaric to think of such things.

Sure they're no Codemasters(incidentally doing a game coming out at midnight 20th September), but they're not some singular indie dude releasing his first game. They're a reasonable sized studio composed of industry veterans who have experience of working with Steam already. I highly doubt a midnight (or reasonably timed) launch is beyond them. Especially since they're a studio that's still planning to develop an MMO. Time management skills aren't that hard to develop.

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