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Perfect World Entertainment invests in Torchlight MMO

by Rubi Bayer on May 18th 2010 10:00AM

Torchlight received quite a bit of attention last year when Runic Games announced that they would be releasing the game as a single-player, with an eye for MMO development in the next 18 months or so. Since then, Torchlight has done very well for itself: Runic Games recently announced that they had sold over 500,000 units.

The success inspired confidence in publisher Perfect World Entertainment, who solidified their commitment by purchasing an $8.4 million majority stake in Runic Games. PWE -- best known for their Perfect World MMO and more recently Battle of the Immortals -- is the publisher of the Torchlight MMO and the game itself can be found under the Perfect World banner. PWE hopes that the combined expertise of the two companies will spell success for both: "By collaborating more closely with Runic's professional team, we seek to combine their creativity and expertise in game development with our deep understanding of the online game market to create global titles."

Source

Tags: perfect-world-entertainment, PWE, runic-games, torchlight, torchlight-mmo

Reader Comments (17)

Torchlight is a fantastic game, I'm interested to see how the development of the MMO goes. I like PWE (Playing BoI ATM) & Runic Games, i have high hopes for the Torhclight MMO.

For great success! I for one welcome our new isometric overlords.

"Our deep understanding of the online game market to create global titles." Make me smile so they will get bigger xp bars and a cash shop!......

Oh well do not really care about this game Diablo 3 is only a year or so away and Starcraft 2 only a few months!

Way more than a year. Blizz said it will NOT be released in 2011. Think more like mid to late 2012 for D3, sadly. Torchlight MMO will be great to tide us over until then.

Torchlight is not even on the level that is Diablo 2... for me that is!

I do not like the sound of this. Getting involved with one of the largest cash shop trolls in the market spells doom for their MMO.

Me neither.

For Perfect World to have a controlling interest in this game just doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

Sounds good to me. Good for a developer to have lots of monetary backup.

I saw this on PW's site yesterday and thought I was seeing things... I know they make okay games, good quality, can't say anything about their cash shop model though.

Hope it's good stuff!

how are you guys taking this as good news?

...torchlight was sold and was promised to give you access to the mmo if you bought it. Yet now, one of the worst cash shop mmo companies out there is taking it over.

I for one am not excited to have to pay $$ for more than one bag slot. FUN.

You seem to overlook the simple fact that torchMMO was always intended to be published and managed by PWE. ;]

The only thing that changed is that Runic now has 8 million dollars bigger budget than before ;P

You really don't keep appraised of gaming news do you?

PW was ALWAYS making the Torchlight MMO, you can find the press releases from over a year ago talking about it.

The only thing that has changed is that Runic now answered to some suit in China.

And personally, I thought Torchlight was meh at best, Mythos was better and Diablo is still the king.

With PW's resources, I'm guessing we can get a Torchlight MMO up and running pretty soon. As long as the game retains the quality of their single-player game, I'll be very happy to spend some time with this.

Isn't Battle of the Immortals already a Torchlight-class MMO?

Torchlight MMO was always meant to be a microtransaction title as was Mythos, there is really no reason to complain about it. I think they could have done way worse than PWI (although i hope it doesn't get buried under their other titles).

I'm pretty excited about it.

well the singleplayer is fun and only cost me $5 so i don't care if they screw the mmo really. i already got my $5 worth out of it.

PWE already puts out some of the better F2P's currently available imo. So I'm thinking that the Runic crew is going to make them even better, with more of type of play and features Western players have come to expect.

Perfect World Entertainment invests in Torchlight MMO

Reader Comments (17)

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:33AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:29AM TheJackman said

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:32AM swarmofcats said

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:38AM TheJackman said

Posted: May 18th 2010 10:59AM Bartlebe said

Posted: May 18th 2010 12:33PM Tom in VA said

Posted: May 18th 2010 11:22AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2010 11:21AM Cendres said

Posted: May 18th 2010 11:35AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2010 1:39PM Kitanishi said

Posted: May 18th 2010 11:48AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2010 11:56AM Bhima said

Posted: May 18th 2010 12:11PM Haleth said

Posted: May 18th 2010 12:12PM Dumac said

Posted: May 18th 2010 2:35PM karnisov said

Posted: May 19th 2010 10:40AM Dogorox said

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