Soldiers of the Wasteland

After a week of speculation and playing the guessing game, Runic Games have finally revealed their secret and announced that Torchlight will be getting a sequel that is set to hit the shelves in Spring 2011.

By far, the most exciting aspect of the sequel is the inclusion of multi-player – a feature that fans have been begging for since the release of the original Torchlight. The actual number of players that can play together in one game has yet to be determined, but Travis Baldree told PC Gamer that it could be anywhere from four, to six, to seven.

Another exciting feature is the addition of all new classes. At present only two classes have been revealed.

One is the Outlander, who sounds like somewhat of a loner making his own way through the world and who makes use of ranged weaponry and low magic. The other is the Railman who has been described as an engineer melee warrior class, who retains the steam-punk mechanical feel that was present in the original game.

Among other things, character customisation is now possible, a number of overworld areas have been included for you to explore and the user interface has been redesigned and made more intuitive. Old favourites like the retirement system, pets and fishing are making a return as well.

To read the complete list of key features, head on over to the Torchlight II official website.

Maeyan, the Lead Developer on the Revival project, has announced that the project which was to port the game assets into another engine and bring back multiplayer capabilities, has been canceled.

Due to the overwhelming amount of work and time that would be required to complete the project, the team have scaled back their efforts to just continue to support and develop the single player modifications of the game.

At the moment the team are working on an SDK for Hellgate which aims to make the process of modifying the game easier for those who want to.

You can read Maeyan’s announcement on the Revival forums.

Thanks to thegreatcthulhu for bringing this news to our attention.

The latest LifeNet Fallen Earth podcast has recently gone online with the well known Chosen featuring as a special guest.

In it the guys primarily discuss the upcoming Blood Sports content patch (v1.4) as well as touching on the current hot topic concerning the recent restructuring of Icarus Studios.

About 48 minutes into the podcast, Chosen discusses how he got into gaming, how he met Tiggs which led to his start at Hellgate: London and the skills he was able to pick up before it’s eventual demise. He then goes on to mention a community of ex-Hellgaters who currently play Fallen Earth – namely the Soldiers of the Wasteland!

So thanks for the props Chosen. If you would like to hear the podcast for yourself you can download or listen to it at blogtalkradio.com.

Apologies for not making this post sooner.

The Hellgate: Revival 1.2.1 patch has been out for some time now, I just never got around to uploading it here. Initially it was released with a few minor bugs but has since been updated and is now a stable build.

To see the patch notes for 1.2.1 (including those for 1.2.0) please see the related thread on the Revival forums. You may also download the 1.2.1 patch from that thread or from our downloads page.

At present, all signs are pointing towards the release of Hellgate: Resurrection (Hanbitsoft/T3 Entertainment’s re-release of Hellgate: London) in the US sometime in the near future.

But the name isn’t the only aspect of Hellgate that will be changed when Resurrection is released – we will see content from the unreleased Abyss chronicles and the new Tokyo update, as well as quest, game play, class and item changes.

So to keep everyone up to date with the changes associated with Hellgate: Resurrection, SotW member and Hellgate aficionado thegreatcthulhu has kindly posted a detailed FAQ on our forums listing answers to most of the questions you’re dying to ask.

It’s a good read and covers a lot of information about the game, but if there are more questions you want to know the answer to, simply register on the forums and ask!