After a fraught development cycle, the storied Torchlight III entered Steam Early Access on 13 June 2020.
From the website:
It’s been centuries since the events of Torchlight II , and the Ember Empire is in decline. In Torchlight III , Novastraia is again under threat of invasion and it’s up to you to defend against the Netherim and its allies. Gather your wits and brave the frontier to find fame, glory, and a new adventure!
TRAVEL THE FRONTIER
Explore the wilderness, party with friends, use magical maps to enter unknown dungeons, or show off your spoils in town! There’s always something to do in the Frontier.
BUILD & UPGRADE YOUR FORT
It’s time to rebuild – and that includes you! Enjoy your very own fort where you can upgrade your gear, and renovate your fort to show off to your friends and the world. Build monuments of power, pet stables, and more!
ALL-NEW CLASSES
One of the hallmarks of the Torchlight series is its unique character classes and designs, and Torchlight III is no exception. Select a class below to learn more!
As a Dusk Mage, you must command powerful forces of darkness and light, carefully maintaining a balance lest you are consumed by one or the other.
The Forged builds up steam power before unleashing a devastating explosive attack.
A Railmaster relies on their powerful train when exploring the Frontier, that and a really, really big hammer.
The Sharpshooter strikes with a combination of ranged weapons and magical trinkets that unleash powerful spirits.
COLLECT EPIC GEAR
Whether it’s armor, weapons, dyes, recipes, ember cores, or even new pets…there’s always more to find as you battle through dungeons and take on dangerous foes. Every randomly-generated area can be replayed over and over again since each instance brings different items. Want even more epic gear? Take on a contract to earn Fame and unlock elite items.
BUILD YOUR HERO
With four classes to choose from, utilize class-specific mechanics to maximize your damage and your odds of survival. Gather epic gear and customize your load out to work with your hero’s unique make-up.
Im gonna wait a while, I know people are dying to play it hence the login errors. Ive been following their progress, they knew there was a demand, but not like this!
Also, keep in mind that there will be a full whipe before release. I have been following it as well and was ready to buy it last night and then I saw all the issues: servers, planned whipe. I might still get it in a few days time though. I am BURNING to play the railmaster.
I don’t know much about it at all, but the frustration and unhappiness can be seen all over the place today. Must be very frustrating for you all, and the rest of the Torchlight fans. They are being eviscerated in the Steam Reviews, and all because of the server issues. They really shouldn’t have gone with multiplayer only for their early access launch. Hindsight and all that.
I feel for the devs too though - must be incredibly hard to be watching Reddit and Twitter and Steam, all excited as your project goes live, only to be flooded by some really nasty, unpleasant and unnecessarily rude comments and remarks by your “fans”. Gamers really are some of the most entitled douchebags on the planet.
Well yes and no. The gaming industry is the only one I know of that creates products half done and half working. Think about it. Imagine going to a restaurant and getting your meal and half is missing or… some parts are off, taste REAL bad or are even poisonous. Imagine going to watch an blockbuster movie and it stops halfway and a message comes up saying: buy a season pass for this movie and you can see the rest in 3 months.
Imagine buying a loaf of bread with a warning label: Warning, this is a new type of loaf, we are not sure how well it is baked or tastes so we are giving it to you as a discount. We promise future loaves will be better, welcome to early access baking!
Imagine buying car and the wheels are missing with a sign on it saying: We apologise for the inconvenience but our wheel manufacturer is offline currently due to the demand for wheels. Come back in a day or so to get your wheels.
So no wonder people get REALLy unhappy when the promise is not there, the product is not working.
That being said, people also need to learn to protest and complain in a more civilised manner. If you scream and shout that you are unhappy, people tend to ignore you. Make a rational argument and it gets more traction. Well this is how it should work anyways. The world is collapsing into a flaming inferno of liberal screaming and shouting at the moment, so maybe I am wrong. The age of the screaming cry babies is upon us.
Edit: consider this: it is my day to day duty to make sure our software works properly. I slave, labour and love testing to make sure people can use our product without issues. I just do not understand how they did NOT stress test with projected numbers. From my experience, I assume that they did but the corporate business analysts ignored them and said: Ship it!
Part of the problem is the nomenclature that the industry uses for marketing.
“Steam Early Access” creates a certain expectation. Playable, but still in development, is the association I’d wager that most people make.
But that’s the wrong way to think about it (and, in fairness, the devs / publisher / Steam only have themselves to blame here for the wording they choose to use).
What this is, is a pre-order that gives you instant access to the open beta.
I think @SigStart is exactly right here. If the Early Access info was a lot clearer about what to expect, things would be better.
I know @Shrike didn’t intend his post this way, but honestly, if this was the clearly posted description on a loaf of bread and I still chose to buy it, I wouldn’t be any position to complain.
Perhaps provide the baker with some polite, constructive criticism and feedback so that he can possibly improve his bread on the next batch, sure. But bitch vociferously about how ripped off I feel, suggesting that the baker was directly responsible for me and my family of 10 going hungry and probably starving to death due to his incompetence and uselessness, and then giving his bakery a 1-star Yelp rating with the comment that “it’s 1 star more than this terrible bakery deserves!”? That’s not fair, or right.
Unfortunately a LOT of games are released, fully released with a plethora of bugs and issues. Many of them from well known and very big development studios. Now this is not early access I am talking about and we as gamers eat it up, encourage it with our wallets.
Day 2 - Early Access Update: We are continuing to work on server issues! Thank you all for your patience.
We believe we have isolated the root cause of the problem, and we are working now to resolve it.
Not all players are experiencing these issues, but those who are will see problems most often while zoning. This includes any type of zoning, meaning zoning from a character select screen in-game will also give you troubles.
Also check to make sure you aren’t trying to create a character with non-English letters. These characters aren’t currently supported.
Thanks to everyone who has joined us so far on this Early Access journey and many apologies to those who have encountered difficulties. The team is hard at work right now on getting you all into the game!
What the heck is going on here??? People having civil, concise and well thought out statements and counter arguments!!! This is nit what the internet is supposed to be guys! I want flame wars and name calling!
All sides here make great points. Well done chaps and chicks!
Welp. My fibre provider made short work of that plan… My Internet is down. Whole area, looks like. Trying to get hold of my ISP to escalate to the FNO.
. If I don’t get in today, I’ll refund and try again another time.