Torchlight, the freshman entry from Runic Games, excited many PC gamers.  Developed by the minds behind Diablo, Diablo II, Fate and Mythos, the game caters to the dungeon crawler, loot collector in all of us.  Featuring the best aspects of the past gems, and numerous tweaks and refinements, a pet that sells your loot for you, the budget title has sold like hotcakes.

From day one, Runic Games stated its intention to expand Torchlight from a then upcoming single-player title to an MMOG.  Perfect World Entertainment, a free-to-play publisher we’ve discussed previously, believed in the company’s idea and agreed to publish the MMOG.  After the rapid success, numerous awards and over 500,000 sales of Torchlight, Perfect World Entertainment has upped the ante.  The publisher is now a majority stakeholder in Runic Games after sinking $8.4 million into the company.

Interested in seeing what the company may produce?  You can grab Torchlight for the budget price of $19.99 from Amazon (tag team with Fate for free shipping), or hope it goes on sale on Steam again.

One of the main problems that all players have faced in basically every MMORPG to date is what items to store and when to get rid of them. Developers continue to restrict the amount of room players have in order to store items, which in turn has caused players to create “bank” characters to transfer their loot. Lets take a closer look.

Storage Space

There are many different levels of storage space and this varies from game to game, but basically there’s three levels.

Level 1 is personal storage that you carry around you at all times. Usually this is very limited and allows you to keep just enough items with maybe some room to store loot.

- This is the most important storage space for may reasons. One, it saves the player the most amount of time by having items they need at all times. There’s no need to run to a bank or chest to get the item/s you need, then run all the way back to where you just were. It also is for most people the primary way of making money. The more open space you have the more loot you can carry that you can in-turn sell to vendors.

Level 2 is personal storage that you do not carry around. This is often a bank or a person chest where you can store more loot that you might not need at all times. Most games allow you to purchase even more space if you need it.

- While important, I dislike using this space. It’s just too much of a hassle to have to go all the way to a bank or chest to get your stuff. If I want to go work on my profession (LOTRO), I first have to go to the bank to pick up my items, then I have to go to a working table and gain XP. Once I’m done, I have to go back to the bank and store my stuff there and pickup my other items. The same back and forth running is basically part of whenever you need an item from this storage area. Having a group of people waiting on you because you have to go all the way to your secondary storage space to pickup some item sucks. It sucks even more when you realize that you left one of your quest item in your bank and have to do the run to and fro just to finish a quest where you’re already there.

Level 3 is guild storage. Many games now allow guilds to purchase houses and other forms of guild space that offer even more storage for its members as well as an easy why to trade items.

- Guild storage can be at the same place as your secondary storage or it came be in a completely different area, but where ever it is it’s the most useless storage space out of the three. Any guild with any member base will completely fill the space within 5 mins. My guild in LOTRO is quite small and we’ve ran out of space on day 1. When I find an item I know someone might need, I’d like to put it in our guild storage, however it’s full, so I need to take something out, most likely something I don’t want or need which then takes up my space.

Bank Characters

In order to combat this restricted space players have been creating “bank” characters, characters that are strictly used for the extra storage space. Some people might have only 1 extra character while others might have 5-6 characters to hold all their high end loot. But it’s not just individuals that are creating extra characters for the additional space, guilds have started to create sub-guilds in order to get more room. Large guilds break up into sub-guilds that are based on levels. So for instance a sub guild can be level 1 – 25, 26 – 49 and 50, which would be the actual main guild. A large guild such as the one in this example might have 2 sub-guilds so that they can store items of that level in the sub-guild and not take room up in the main guild that would be reserved for guildies that have reached the max level.

So why do developers insist on limiting our space? Why do they force us to use these retarded methods of storing loot when they can just make everyone happy by increasing storage? The only reason I can think of is to keep the gaming economy in-check as well as to offer some realism since unlimited space is impossible. However how many people do you know that can carry 5 swords, full set of armor, 50 potions, scrolls, food, camp equipment and about 20 different quest items. So the realism argument gets thrown out in my opinion.

Give us more space!

I think developers need to get over the limited storage space, no one likes it. There should be 2 types of storage. Personal storage that I have at all times and guild storage. Personal storage should be large enough where not only can I carry everything that I can ever need, but also have plenty of room for loot. No need to ever waste my time running to a bank. Guild storage should nearly be unlimited, if you have a guild with 500 members, you obviously will need more that 100 slots of storage space.

Common devs, stop wasting our time making us constantly run back and forth for no reason.

So, it’s actually 9:30am when I am writing this and all the little names are in crumpled up bits of paper in a box to my right. I know, I promised you guys it would be done in a bowler hat not a box, but, you see, I am moving later this week and I accidentally packed my bowler hat so the box will have to do. If anybody is seriously upset you can call our complaint hotline at: 1(325)234-9876. Operators are standing by. . . no they aren’t. Don’t actually call that number because I literally just made it up off the top of my head right now. To any person that owns that number and is accidentally called by disgruntled contestants complainng about some hat and/or box, I’m sorry. . . you can go ahead and call this number so as to reach our comments/complaints operator: 1(678)432-7654. Sorry, I lied again. . . we don’t have a number. :( You see the horrible conditions Mike makes us work in, we don’t even get telephones!

Wow, ok so now you know what its like to begin writing a blog that you can’t actually publish for a half hour. I would normally go ahead and pull the contestants names right now, but there might maybe possibly just be one more entry in these last 15 minutes.

Now, without further ado (it is 10am now :) ), the contest winners are:

• Joshua Tompkins
• Dan

Congratulations to those winners! WhooOOooOOO! I seriously hope both of youo enjoy Mythos. Feel free to give me a hoot while in game if you are lonely, my Mythos characters are Wrenches, and Bloodface. I could be on either one at some point today.

Also, as a side note, we had no people disqualified during this contest, which is a good good thing! I was a bit worried when I went to sleep with 3 contestants and then woke up to find over a dozen. Which leads me to another side note, we got 17 contestants! Not a bad start for a first ever contest that we in no way advertised at all. I think we all deserve a hearty pat on the back. I can’t wait until we begin offering real prizes like actual games. . . maybe an Age of Conan contest when it gets released? We’ll see. . . enjoy Mythos guys.

P.S. Both invites were sent out to the email addresses provided. If, for some reason, you don’t get yours then their must have been a problem with your email address. We don’t have anymore to hand out at this time so it’s not like we can just send you another one.

About a week ago I did a short piece on Mythos, being developed by Flagship Studios. It was sort of a pre-preview that entailed very little information because, well to be honest Flagship has decided not to make the website accessible to anybody who is not in the beta. Good thing for you, and me, then that I was accepted into the beta and am now able to give you guys a proper preview! Also a good thing that the NDA was lifted a couple months ago. :)

In typical fashion, I started my character in the world of Uld by choosing his race: Satyr, Gremlin, or Human. Naturally, I chose to be a Gremlin (they are PURPLE!). From there I went on to choose my class. Currently, there are only 3 classes available: Bloodletter (a melee class), Gadgeteer (hunter/ranged class), and Pyromancer (spellcaster). Deciding to go with a theme I decided on Gadgeteer simply because whenever I feel a bit purple I also feel a bit firey. After all the customization (hair, face, etc.) I was finally ready and set to make my appearance in the world, which after a quick tutorial quest, sent me to Stonehill. For players looking for some extra adventure there is also the option of choosing Elite mode (which makes everything harder) and Hardcore mode (which means if you die your character is gone), for some real spice you can turn em both on. (Pardon the grainy images, JPEG is too big a file size)

Stonehill is the main gathering point in the game, from what I can tell. It is the Ogrimmar/Iron Forge of Mythos, if that helps at all. You’ll start your game here and, for at least the first 10 levels, you’ll be doing a number of quests from here. It’s a pretty nice town that is very beautiful and very active. After gathering some quests I was off to do battle in the lands of Uld.

The first thing you’ll notice about Mythos is how similar the game plays and feels to Diablo 2. Seriously, when I say this game is a Diablo 2 clone I very seriously mean it. The game allows you to map skills to your left and right mouse buttons, the left being primarily for weapon skills and the right being for everything else. The movement in the game is very much the same as Diablo 2 as well, where you click is where you’ll go. If you hold down the left mouse button your character will continue to go in that direction. A brilliant system that works just as well in Mythos as it has in every other game that has employed it successfully.

Upon doing a few quests and leveling up a few times you’ll notice some more stark similarities between Diablo 2 and it’s soon to be released twin brother Mythos. Upon each “ding” you’ll get 5 stat points and 2 skill points. The 5 stat points can be put into any of the 4 stats: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Wisdom. Each one of these stats does something different, and much like Diablo, depending on your class and play-style you’ll want to put your points into different stats. In addition to the stats, you’ll also notice that each class has 3 skill trees from which to choose various skills. As a gadgeteer my skill trees were: Marksman, Grenadier, and Tinker. After reviewing each tree for a few minutes I decided to mainly pursue the Tinker skill tree which allows me access to sentries, notably a flame sentry. :)

Continuing on in pure and utter Diablo delight I ambled my way through many dungeons and went through many quests. Some of them were fun and some were mediocre, but at no time did I think: “this is a poor Diablo clone” because if anything the new vibrant graphics and identical gameplay made it an even better game. For those still not convinced that this game is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2 you’ll be happy to also jot down that the game has randomized dungeons, hordes of monsters, and more loot than you could ever have hoped for. Top all this off with an inventory system that allows for identify charms, town portals, and gemstones to slot into items and you have got yourself one awesome Diablo-esque game.

Bottom line is that Mythos is an awesome game. Anybody who loved the Diablo games of yesteryears will enjoy Mythos equally as much, if not more so, because of near identical gameplay. Toss the gameplay in with new quests, more storylines, and an overall feel that Mythos is a world as opposed to a single player game with an optional online mode and you have yourself a game that is sure to be a smash hit amongst fans. The best part about it? It will be 100% free to download and play. I’ll be the first to admit that because I have only played the first 10 levels of the game there is still a lot I have yet to see, maybe the game gets horribly repetitive after level 11. Maybe the game gets unbearable after you complete a certain quest. I don’t yet know these things. What I do know is that you will, at the very least, get some enjoyment out of the beginning parts of the game. So what are you waiting for? Beta sign-ups are just a click away. Screenies below:

P.S. Once again, sorry for the grainy images. For some reason I couldn’t upload JPEGs and had to downgrade em to GIFs, the game really is beautiful. :)