Torchlight 2 Announced for Spring 2011

At PAX Prime last year, several of our staff got their first look at Torchlight, and immediately fell in love. The developers were even lovely enough to do a special on our Podcast, and it was one of my favorite episodes.

When they said they were going to have an MMO/Multiplayer version out within a year, my heart did several backflips, almost kicking out my ribs. If you read our review of the game or played it and noticed that the only thing that could possibly make it better is multiplayer, you understand why I’m so excited for the announcement of Torchlight 2.

Runic Games will be debuting a pre-alpha build of the game at Gamescom (August 18-22) and PAX Prime (September 3-5), so if you’re going to either of those conventions I’ll be extremely jealous of you. You’ll be getting to play my — and several other staff member’s — most anticipated game of the next few months.

I’ll surely picking this up on Day 1, regardless of Blizzard possibly announcing Diablo 3 for the same launch window at Blizzcon. As much as I want Diablo 3, Torchlight has held my attention much more than Diablo 2 has been able to lately. I can’t speak for the rest of the gaming world though, so hopefully you’ll make good choices and not fuel the Kotick rage-engine, no matter how much nostalgia we have for Diablo. (Besides, a lot of the lead designers for Diablo and Diablo 2 are working on Tochlight 2 anyway!)