Runic Games

We've got less than a day left before we launch Torchlight II and we wanted to answer any questions you might have about the game, life, or anything you want. Here's our . Ask away! ;)

Participating in today's discussion:

• Max Schaefer

• Erich Schaefer

• Travis Baldree

• Marsh Lefler

• Matt Tanwanteng

• Justin Miller

• Adam Perin

• Brock Jones

• Patrick Blank

• Jason Beck

• Falcor

• and more!

Edit: That's it, everyone. Thanks for your questions! We'll see you tomorrow for launch.

We've got members of the Runic Games dev team here to answer questions about , game development, and more! We'll be participating from the Runic account and signing off with our names/initials. Participating are:

• Patrick Blank

• Ole Ciliox

• John Dunbar

• Ben Evans

• Allen Fong

• Kochun Hu

• Jason Lamb

• Marsh Lefler

• Rick Lesley

• Matt Munroe

• Kristina Ness

• Wonder Russell

• Sierra Soleil

• Brian Ward

• Joey Ziegler

My Proof:

Edit: Thanks for your questions – that's all for now! Hob releases tomorrow on , , and . Also, you can join our official Discord server here:

I just recently asked how I could respec my level 23 Ember Mage because I'd royally screwed up his build something fierce. Before getting notice that doing so would have branded the character a cheater.. I went ahead and did it... because I was so eager to get it done. (Eager.. I know.) Then I got the warning. Well shit.

Let's see.

This is a level 23 Ember Mage that I've been playing with my brother since the start of the game, we're maybe a little ways into Act 2, ... and my character has been branded a cheater.

I have four options.

1:

Reroll.

2:

Cry about it.

3.

Rage quit.

4.

Something I don't think will work... because it's 11:41 PM EST. E-Mail Travis Baldree &/Or Runic Games support and bawl my eyes out like a six year old kid who has just recently had their candy taken away from them and admit they were a cheater.

Option 1 went over for about... 20 minutes.. cut to 12:10 AM EST.

I severely screwed up my character, so I thought I'd respec him using the console command to respec him.

I didn't know this would brand him a cheater.

This makes me sad because my brother and I have been playing the game together from the very, very start.

If I sent you my character saves, I don't know which ones he is.. He's named Minifig, the Embermage that's level 23, could you please, please clear him as a cheater?

All I wanted to do was fix my skills because they were so badly broken. :(

20 seconds later I get a nice little message in my inbox:

Here he is, de-cheated-

Travis

Please don't abuse this wonderful company people. They're wonderful and awesome people and deserve to have our love and respect, and most of all our money. They'll get mine from here on out.

Thank you again Travis, if you ever read this, you've got a life long customer here.

I've really, really, really given this a lot of thought. I've been part of the community since I first discovered Torchlight back in 2009. It was the day the game went on sale and from the moment I first played the demo (which I almost skipped by-it was a classic double take moment and the name is what got me to give it another look) I was hooked. Since then I've been a pretty big part of the Torchlight community (at least according to most of those in it who I'd consider an even bigger part of it) and have even gotten to know some of the devs. Which is why this is really hard for me to write but the more I try to support this game and encourage people to give it a chance the more I question what I'm doing. It helps that I've had some pretty legit callouts questioning wtf I'm doing.

My big issue is (surprise, surprise) monetization. It's clearly a paytowin system. As long as you're selling boosts and other means of giving people a way to make leveling easier it's going to be pay to win. It doesn't matter that there is no 'winning' or traditional leveling system. A lot of people are going to see others passing them by in gear and having cool stuff'ness without playing as long or putting in as much effort as 'beating' them at something. Even if they're not the competitive type. I know I would. The very thought of people getting cool stuff quick while I have to slog through and hope to get something as cool sucks.

Plus I can already tell the game is tuned to make people pay for things like speeding up crafting. You can't tell me crafting logs takes half an hour or whatever and that you're not making it take so long because at some point you're going to offer people the chance to pay to speed it up. That's just cheesy. It's exploitive.

I love Torchlight and do not want it to become just another cash-grabby whoever has the most money to spend on it is first and enjoys it most game. There are tons of ways of being pay to win that don't involve gameplay but even then those involve reducing things like customization options and forcing people to pay for those. I don't have good feelings about this game and don't think it's going to be as successful as you hope and that makes me feel terrible.

Edit: I have no idea why that picture is being pulled for the icon and shown in the mobile site. That's former-Runic Games awesome PR person Wonder holding a sick Falcor - The pet from Torchlight 2.

Edit 2: The live portion is this is just about to wrap up. I'll be checking back in over the following days to answer anything else that might come up. Thanks for coming!

Edit 3: I am still answering questions, if you want to leave them. Just not live. :)

Ask Me Anything!

I have run a for Runic Games for the past nine years. was the company behind Torchlight 1 and 2, and in late September released a new single player game called Hob. Earlier this month Runic Game’s parent company, Perfect World, . This was the second studio closed by Perfect World this month, with Motiga (creators of Gigantic) closing only a few days earlier. Some may see these closures as simply two more casualties of game publisher’s short-sighted business practices. Rarely do we hear about how these actions impact gamers. I’m open to questions about how the closure has affected my community, along with any other questions you may have.

I bit of background on Runic Games Fansite and my experience of over the past nine years.

• I’ve run the site from the final glory days of forums, through the rise and fall of sites like Digg (which eventually led to sites like Reddit), and watched social media become a major source of how people get gaming news.

• I had to teach myself everything about running a website and a server from basically nothing.

• I’ve watched the way mods are shared and distributed change and the effect that has had on modding communities and fansites

• When Steam Workshop was added support for TL2, we started seeing our community drift away and visitor count less. I feel like this effect was felt by financially many other community sites as well, which may have led to other shutdowns.

• I started the site when I was engaged and have since gotten married and had two children.

• I’ve had a close relationship with many of the wonderful people at Runic Games.

• One year ago, I technically from going under.

• I’m totally open to any questions about my work with and relationship with since I sold the website to them.

• Today, Runic Games Fansite is the only place you can find virtually every mod for Torchlight 1, and the main source of non-Steam Torchlight 2 mods.

One last point I’d like to make clear: The site isn’t going anywhere. The folks at ModDrop have assured me they will continue to sponsor my site as long as the company is in business. They’ve also assured me that if anything happens to the company, I can preserve the mods so everyone in the community can continue to enjoy them.

They came up in recently and it made me wonder what they are doing. Torchlight II was released in September two years ago.

I know the MMO was sort of not happening at one point but now that they're owned by Perfect World is that what they're up to?

We're just over a week to go before the release I know you're very busy, and putting in over time on finishing up the game.

In fact, you're so busy, you're probably not even going to see this post.

I just wanted to take a moment though, to say "THANK YOU!" from all of us. Thank you for putting in the extra hours in development and polishing.

Thank you for listening to those of us who still enjoy classic LAN play.

And most importantly--thank you for being so communicative with your players. Your willingness to take the time to tell us what's happening each week is something that sets you apart from other game companies--and we appreciate it.

So once again, thank you for all your doing!

Brian here, from Runic Games. We made the Torchlight series back in the day and have been busy working on Hob, our upcoming ever since. We’re showing off brand new areas at PAX East next month and we'd like for you to join us so we're giving away some badges. I hear they're tough to come by these days!

Here's how to enter:

• We made a Hob coloring book you can download .

• Fill the images with color! Print them out and color them with crayons. Open them up in your favorite image editor and paint them. Turn them into a 3D diorama. Go nuts. It's up to you.

• Do one page, or do them all. Enter as often as you like. Really, we're just looking for some entertainment here.

• Post your entries as replies to this thread. Imgur is probably the easiest place for your uploads.

We're accepting entries until 2pm PST on Tuesday 2/21.

Winners will be announced in this subreddit based on our selection within a day or so after the contest closes. Transportation and lodgings not included. Good luck!

Verification:

Edit:

Edit 2: You all have some mad coloring skills! We've contacted all the winners and posted your amazing work to our . Congrats Everyone!

I remember playing the original torchlight on xbox 360 and playing torchlight 2 on pc. I was going through the catalog of the psn store for some goos couch co-op games and thought wouldn't it be fun if we could play torchlight 2 with a buddy over PSN.