Schaefer: Torchlight 3 coming sooner than Diablo III
Max Schaefer, director of developer Runic Games, is convinced that his firm will have completed the third part of the RPG Torchlight before his former employer Blizzard has finished Diablo III. Torchlight II has yet to be released.
Schaefer boast this opposite website Joystiq. “It’s not even meant as a joke; I seriously think we’re going to make it. I’ll be the first to buy Diablo III; I’m a big fan. I just know how it goes.” Schaefer is referring to his time at Blizzard. He worked on both Diablo and Diablo II, but left developer Blizzard Entertainment in 2003. Blizzard has been working on Diablo III since then, whose release date is not yet known despite its long production run.
Runic Games announced the second part of the RPG Torchlight in early August, which should be released in early 2011. That is remarkably soon after the release of the first part, which appeared at the end of 2009. Schaefer thinks his company can work so quickly because he deliberately keeps the team small; the director does not want to employ more than 40 people. In addition, the expectations for games from Runic are lower than those from Blizzard.
Schaefer analyzes: “They have an impossible task. Blizzard can’t get away with a game like Torchlight. If they release a single player game, a slightly stripped-down $20 RPG, people would be thinking, What the hell is going on with Blizzard? “They don’t have that luxury; everything has to be super epic, more epic than anything that came before, more than World of Warcraft. They’re in a difficult position because of that. I don’t envy them; it has to be perfect.”
Blizzard has a reputation for working on games for a long time. Both the recently launched StarCraft II and Diablo III have been in the works for over five years. The developer follows the motto ‘It’s done when it’s done’ and continues to work on games until the company is completely satisfied. The developer also has the financial means to be able to tinker with his games for that long. Although Blizzard has never commented on it, Diablo III is expected to hit the market in 2011. That leaves Schaefer with little time to make Torchlight III. The director of Runic is probably betting on a further delay and a release of Diablo III in 2012.