rip off from d3? [Archive] - Diablo 3 & Diablo 2 Forums

Visage

21-06-2009, 01:15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwz6jP9Qz60

KTang

21-06-2009, 01:34

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/torchlight-debuts/

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=724363&highlight=torchlight

I never played the Mythos/Fate mentioned in the discussion thread, but the setting does look a lot like the cathedral we see in the D3 previews. Apparently the game is more similar to the two I mentioned. And also, I believe I saw the guy using a gun at one point...I can't quite see how guns would fit into Diablo ;)

Looked briefly at Mythos, seems similar actually. Not sure about calling hacking and slacking skeletons a similarity to D3 though, just the catherdral-colour and layout.

KT

Visage

21-06-2009, 01:36

yah i saw a gun also.. but its just so similar to d3 with 1/10 the budget

Krugar

21-06-2009, 03:36

Mythos, and particularly Fate, were essentially Diablo clones. This is fine if you ask me. Nothing wrong in taking a successful recipe and serve your own dish.

But Runic is made up of the same lead folks at Blizzard North responsible for Diablo 2. Particularly the two Schaefer brothers.

And Huston we have a problem...

These gentleman, after leaving Blizzard, proceeded to start Flagship Studios with the poor sod Bill Roper. They tried to do Mythos which never saw the light of the day. What did saw the light of day was Hellgate: London. And we all know the disaster this game was. So with two fails, their own company answered according to the respectable laws of the universe; It went bankrupt.

Not happy (naturally) they start Runic Games. Having milked Bill Roper, it's not the time to try and milk Travis Baldree, the creator of Fate, a mildly successful Diablo clone. They now present us with another Diablo clone, which again I see no problem whatsoever. But...

You can guess from my acidic commentary above, I'm not trusting one pixel of my money to these folks until I read about Torchlight by anyone foolish enough to blindly buy it.

These two gentleman, the Schaefer brothers did give us one great game, Diablo. That's theirs and theirs alone (along with David Brevick). No one can take that from them. Blizzard bought their company shortly before the release of Diablo. So it's important to remember Diablo is not really a Blizzard creation.

But the vastly more successful Diablo II was a different matter altogether. That's Blizzard baby and a completely different game to Diablo. The brothers where just two of 5 designers and Blizzard/Vivendi were on top of production.

Somehow the story of the Schaefer brothers (along with their... ermm... suspicious leaving of Blizzard North*) doesn't help me trust their work. If I'm proved to be wrong, I'll happily put my foot where my mouth is and play Torchlight because I do like what I'm seeing. But I also liked Hellgate: London before it was released...

...

* I never bought the "we want to do something new" argument. Fact is since they left Blizzard they did nothing else then Diablo clones (Mythos, Hellgate and now Torchlight). And while some may argue Hellgate wasn't, I'd say it is. Some good ideas there. A shame they screwed it. And that's precisely what they seem to be good at.

Flux

21-06-2009, 04:59

These two gentleman, the Schaefer brothers did give us one great game, Diablo. That's theirs and theirs alone (along with David Brevick). No one can take that from them. Blizzard bought their company shortly before the release of Diablo. So it's important to remember Diablo is not really a Blizzard creation.

But the vastly more successful Diablo II was a different matter altogether. That's Blizzard baby and a completely different game to Diablo. The brothers where just two of 5 designers and Blizzard/Vivendi were on top of production

Not to exactly disagree, but Dave Brevik was far and away the chief architect of D1 and D2, with much formative assistance from the Schaefers. (He was equally to credit for the design concept of HGL, for better or worse.) There was some consideration given to calling it "Dave Brevik's Diablo II" since it was back in the "John Romero's Doom" and "Sid Meyer's Civilization" etc. Dave nixed that since he didn't want it to not be a group project/credit (I talked about that with Ben Boos, though it didn't get into his interivew (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/ben-boos-interview-and-swords-contest/). I don't think Blizzard would have gone along with that, even if Bliz North had decided to argue for it.)

I was able to conduct long interviews with Dave and both Schaefers about Diablo story stuff a couple of years ago while they were still at Flagship, and it was interesting to hear them talk about those early days. (Albeit 10+ years later, so memories might have been drifting a bit.) I did the interviews for my senior project (and because I wanted to talk about that stuff), so I can't post the full transcripts. But here's a click of Dave talking about the invention of D1, just for fun.

Dave: I originally designed the game and came up with the idea when I was in high school. It got modified over and over again through the years, and eventually in college I played a game called Angband. It was originally called Moria, but it got renamed to Angband, which was Tolkien-esque. It's the mines of Moria, just like in the movies when they go into the caves. I guess it's in book 2, but anyway.

So yeah, the idea was we were going to go against this Greater Evil. In the game you went after the Balrog, so we needed to come up with the equivalent of a Balrog, which in the game is called Diablo. Which is named after, I lived at the base of Mt. Diablo in the East Bay, and I knew what the name meant (Spanish for "devil"), and, "We're just going to call our monster Diablo."

So when Erich (Schaefer) and I were working on it, he was doing a lot of the art design and things like that, and we started coming up with a list of the monsters we wanted to get, and it wasn't really intentional that Erich and I sort of leaned towards a gothic feel to the world. It was like, we're going to have this main bad guy in the one town, and the town's going to be kind of this English countryside, church-y, small village feel to it, and we're going to have this bad guy Diablo. Erich just started making up monsters, and we're going to have skeletons and zombies and things like that, and we came up with the Skeleton King and we started putting them in the game and people just started latching onto that. There was kind of a general transition into it. The story and the lore grew as we designed the game. It wasn't like we sat down and came up with a game and started making art for the story. It was almost like the reverse, we came up with the art and game and we put a story into it.

Krugar

21-06-2009, 06:09

Interesting stuff you have there. You are right on all accounts. As soon as you mentioned it, it dawn on me my mistake of moving David to the background. Ugly forgetfulness.

I'm not so sure as to II however. I can surely understand the importance of him in the whole development process. Both practically and spiritually. But with 5 lead designers, it has always been Hedlung name that standout as the real mind behind Diablo II -- and not so much David despite what the credits list says.

I'd like to get this straight though.

Kentalicious

21-06-2009, 10:48

correct me if im wrong.. but isnt mythos by the same people who made diablo 2 that left blizzard to make their own company?

Firvagor

21-06-2009, 17:36

correct me if im wrong.. but isnt mythos by the same people who made diablo 2 that left blizzard to make their own company?
Read the rest of the thread.

Mythos was supposed to be more of an MMO, and Torchlight will also have an MMO component at some point, which set them apart from Diablo. While they're very similar in many other respects, seeing that they're former Blizzard guys it makes sense that they would try using a similar formula. Mythos was (planned to be at release) free, and IIRC Torchlight is also supposed to be free with some sort of premium shop, which isn't really a point, but just thought I'd bring it up anyway. I'll gladly play a potentially good clone for free. :D

qOcOp

21-06-2009, 23:24

Looks too cartoony. Looks too much like WoW. Not dark enough.

stillman

22-06-2009, 14:54

Yeah, it's a d3 clone. Big time. Imo, it says a lot about the people who make these games. Desperate. Anything for a quick buck. Therefore, we can guess it's going to be a low quality game and not worth the time or money.

Edit: talking about OP link.

Starving_Poet

22-06-2009, 16:21

I hate to break it to you guys, but a blue-light cobblestone dungeon is going to look the same in ANY game. :)

Krugar

22-06-2009, 17:34

I hate to break it to you guys, but a blue-light cobblestone dungeon is going to look the same in ANY game. :)

Touché! :thumbup:

Risingred

22-06-2009, 17:52

I played Mythos for quite a while. Torchlight looks to be the spiritual successor since Mythos never really got a chance to be released.

It wasn't a horrible game. I wouldn't call it a Diablo 3 ripoff...but I would compare it more to fate, which Torchlight appears to take some cues from.

Yes, it had guns and very strange classes which weren't fully fleshed out.
This game convinced me that there is no way to do a light radius in 3D and NOT have it look stupid.

The starting area in Mythos looked exactly like the human starting area in World of WarCraft, down to the quest-giver outside the church with the yellow "!" over his head.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned warrior epic.

lazylink

22-06-2009, 18:46

Mythos is not a D3 clone, Mythos was in beta before D3 was announced.

I was in the closed and open beta for the game, it was pretty fun, fast action. The items were interesting and the skills were fun to use.

Putz

22-06-2009, 18:54

I hate to break it to you guys, but a blue-light cobblestone dungeon is going to look the same in ANY game. :)

Much like a game in the rpg genre that's click and kill isn't a clone. It'll be the same game play regardless.

Felix

22-06-2009, 22:42

As the above poster said Mythos was well on it´s way as hellgate was taking it´s fall and those at Hellgate realised people liked their lefthand work Mythos much better than their main.

It was in Beta and everything that came out on forums was wholeheartedly positive. As a DII incarnate I was at last beginning to believe in a worthy successor.

Then they went bankrupt and I thought that was the end of Mythos too, but if not we may see the first really good Diablo II clone come out aside Diablo III.

In the name of Zod

23-06-2009, 19:33

Risingred

23-06-2009, 19:51

Mythos sounds like another DN:F to me. Problem is competition, the game is getting old already and it should have been out by now. I mean 'Starting in 2007, the game had been in an ongoing closed beta testing stage,' - from wikipedia. That's nonsense.

Mythos was nearing completion but ultimately axed when Flagship went out of business.

In addition, Mythos was not a typical video game release, and it was also kind of the child of Flagship. Hellgate London actually served to test out fan reaction and other aspects of gameplay that would then end up in Mythos.

Valindria

25-06-2009, 00:19

Maybe I am mistaken but this is how I remember it:

I thought they made mythos to 1st test the mulitplayer parts (Ping0). Then later decided they would make it a full game and hired people to work on it. So then Flagship was paying to develop HG:L and Mythos and not getting money on either (well not very much from HG:L). They cut Mythos 1st, then closed FSS/ rights to the IP went to Hanbit.

It's too bad. HG:L had such potential.

Risingred

25-06-2009, 00:51

The problem was a flawed subscription system, imo, for HG:L. The gameplay was getting better with added content but they couldn't keep up with costs. Then Mythos was designed on a similar financial model. : /

Krugar

25-06-2009, 01:48

It's too bad. HG:L had such potential.

There's still potential. Mythos, and especially Hellgate: London may still see a comeback.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23027
http://hanbitgame-espresso.blogspot.com/2009/01/hgld-updates.html

We will see. In any case I'm always up for a new playa in da hood. Thumbs Up to HanbitSoft.

Firvagor

25-06-2009, 02:54

There's still potential. Mythos, and especially Hellgate: London may still see a comeback.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23027
http://hanbitgame-espresso.blogspot.com/2009/01/hgld-updates.html

We will see. In any case I'm always up for a new playa in da hood. Thumbs Up to HanbitSoft.
As much as I'd like it to make a comeback, the rumors are a bit old (Namco Bandai was always getting in the way) and the news on it has died down.
There's a team of developers working on recreating it with the Torque Engine, dubbing it Hellgate: Revival (http://www.hellgateaus.net/forum/).

sreda

27-06-2009, 01:10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwz6jP9Qz60

It's so cute, everything is more cartoony. It's definitely a rip from D3, the same monsters, environment, and skills of the barbarian ripped off.

Risingred

27-06-2009, 02:56

It's so cute, everything is more cartoony. It's definitely a rip from D3, the same monsters, environment, and skills of the barbarian ripped off.

I actually don't mind the graphics...it's the gameplay that concerns me. I played Mythos enough to not want to play it again. But I plan on checking this game out when it releases sometime later this year.

Hratli

27-06-2009, 08:10

Hey guys,

I personally know a bunch of the guys on this team and have been able to play it recently, and wanted to clear up a few things. I have a ton of respect for Flux's work on diabloii.net and also thought Med Dragon was the best of the crew at diablofans before coming here, so I thought that it was worth the effort, in terms of this being a quality site (though the servers are really f'in slow).

Anyhow, first the negatives:

"A rip-off of D3" - Well, anyone who got to play the game at E3 for more than 5 minutes will tell you how bizarre that is. This game is all about the pets, your character can spend half of his time fishing, the art style is a hundred times less realistic, your character gets a gun (!) early in the game, there's absolutely no over-the-top gore, and, most crucially, it really is just as cool a title as a platform for modding as it is a game itself. Of course, it has the Schaefer brothers on it as well as Matt Uelman on the music, so it will have some of the qualities they brought to their earlier titles. But it doesn't have any of the other 50 or so people that helped develop Diablo II in the Bay Area, or any of the guys in Irvine who helped on it.

"I can't trust the guys that made Hellgate" - That's also really stupid. 90% of the team on this had almost nothing to do with Hellgate. The Schaefer brothers and Peter Hu are the only guys on the team who were at the SF Flagship office. Almost all of the game is being developed in Seattle by a team led by Travis Baldree.

"It looks too cartoony" - That's a valid point, the art style is definitely not as dark and bloody as the original Diablo, and some people won't be truly happy at anything less gross-out than the original Butcher's room. Runic wants a really broad, global audience, and I think this is a conscious choice not to damage that with a gore-fest. Personally, I think the gameplay is so good that even people with this reservation will enjoy it, and also think that the music of the Diablo series gave it more of a dark, horror feeling than anything else, and that is definitely in the mix on this title.

Now, the easy part, the positives:

- The game already rocks:

http://www.rpgfan.com/features/e3-2009/awards/index2.html#pc

- It will almost certainly be out in 2009

- It will cost less than half of your average new game release

- The modding kit built-in sounds like it could be even more popular than the game itself (and may well lead to some awesome player-created mods very quickly).

- The community already shows signs of being super-cool, with tons of interaction from the team itself.

http://www.runicgamesfansite.com/

May the spirits of Skatsim watch over and protect you,

Hratli

Mackan

27-06-2009, 11:51

"It looks too cartoony" - That's a valid point, the art style is definitely not as dark and bloody as the original Diablo, and some people won't be truly happy at anything less gross-out than the original Butcher's room. Runic wants a really broad, global audience, and I think this is a conscious choice not to damage that with a gore-fest. Personally, I think the gameplay is so good that even people with this reservation will enjoy it, and also think that the music of the Diablo series gave it more of a dark, horror feeling than anything else, and that is definitely in the mix on this title.

Just curious, what kind of broad audience would this game get that the Diablo series could not? Looking at the success of the Diablo series, you would think it's successful enough, i.e reached out to an enough audience out there. How come the Shaefer brothers like to shift their focus from Diablo's more horror-like style to Torchlight's more generic 'kids can play this'- style?

With that said, this kind of game is probably the only one that you can develop in one year, their options might have been limited, being a new startup company.

Risingred

27-06-2009, 13:28

Hey guys,

I personally know a bunch of the guys on this team and have been able to play it recently, and wanted to clear up a few things.

Hratli

Does it play like mythos? Because it looks like it does.

Funkopotamus

27-06-2009, 16:25

I think I can agree with this art style, even though I've complained about the D3 style and this is even further away from D1 or D2. From the knowledge I gained from one of Flux' posts about the Shaefer brothers' age when they conceived Diablo 1, when I was that age I drew a lot of similar gothy stuff. Maybe that's one of the things that hooked me. And nowadays I still doodle but it's usually more silly stuff. Sometimes I combine the two! That just gets confusing though.

Firvagor

27-06-2009, 17:00

Almost all of the game is being developed in Seattle by a team led by Travis Baldree.

I think he was (or at least seemed like) the main PR guy on the HG:L forums, debunking rumors and giving us an inside scoop what was really going on. Hopefully this won't change.

- The community already shows signs of being super-cool, with tons of interaction from the team itself.

That's something I loved about Mythos. There was a lot of community interaction, letting us know that they're at least taking our thoughts into consideration.

Does it play like mythos? Because it looks like it does.
I'm interested in this as well.

Risingred

27-06-2009, 18:40

I think he was (or at least seemed like) the main PR guy on the HG:L forums, debunking rumors and giving us an inside scoop what was really going on. Hopefully this won't change.

Oh yeah, he was scopes, wasn't he? Was that his handle? I don't remember. He was a really awesome guy, if it's the same guy. He'd even come online to announce stuff and then play with us in our parties. :D
Really nice, funny guy.

Firvagor

27-06-2009, 18:44

Oh yeah, he was scopes, wasn't he? Was that his handle? I don't remember. He was a really awesome guy, if it's the same guy. He'd even come online to announce stuff and then play with us in our parties. :D
Really nice, funny guy.
Well, there was him, too, but I'm pretty sure his username was something like TBaldree. Same personality, anyway. :p

Risingred

27-06-2009, 18:47

Ah, yeah, that's right. Scopes was kind of like a nice version of GFrazier then. "Community manager" or whatever.
I never had any interaction with Travis.

Hratli

27-06-2009, 19:15

"Just curious, what kind of broad audience would this game get that the Diablo series could not?"

Well, the Diablo series, I believe, was rated "M" throughout, so that automatically means a limited audience. This is less true in the US than in places like Germany and especially China. I think the idea with the single-player game is to make it a guilt-free download for everyone. A guy who played it at E3 mentioned to me that the game's mod-friendly aspect would be a really cool way to get his kids into game design. Even though I personally loved the horror stuff in the original Diablo, I can see how you would be a little less excited about your 8-year old spending all day making his own dungeons if impaled bodies on spikes were an option.

"...With that said..."

Yeah, I think the idea is to get something out there with a little bit of the pressure that comes with a smaller budget and less time. It is ironic, but there is such a thing as too much time to make a title... What is the name of this site again? ;)

"Does it play like mythos?"

Well, it has a bunch of guys from that team, including the lead. I didn't personally play mythos - the year the beta was up was at a time where I couldn't do much gaming - but I did play a decent amount of "fate". This game seems like it has elements of Diablo and Fate, but has its own style and pacing. On the whole, I'd say the action is more like Diablo than D2 or Fate - it is really about trying to get you whacking skeletons and piling up loot within the first minute.

"Oh yeah, he was scopes, wasn't he?"

I think you guys are mixing up Evan "Scapes" Berman

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/evan-%22scapes%22-berman/5/682/745

and Travis Baldree

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,130074/

Travis has appeared on forums many times and done some interviews, but he's really more a programmer, designer and team lead than a PR person. Insiders in the games business have always been impressed with his range (he even has an art and audio credit on "fate"), and I think many industry insiders see this game as being exciting in terms of being his first game with a real full-fledged team.

Risingred

27-06-2009, 19:27

On the whole, I'd say the action is more like Diablo than D2 or Fate
"Oh yeah, he was scopes, wasn't he?"

...aaaaaaand, sold. Diablo I is my favorite game of all time.

I think you guys are mixing up Evan "Scapes" Berman

Scapes. That's right. I have a horrible memory, thank you.

Yes, the dungeon editor is what has me the most excited. It's never really been (successfully) done in an ARPG that I've seen. Should be great.

Firvagor

28-06-2009, 17:18

Travis has appeared on forums many times and done some interviews, but he's really more a programmer, designer and team lead than a PR person. Insiders in the games business have always been impressed with his range (he even has an art and audio credit on "fate"), and I think many industry insiders see this game as being exciting in terms of being his first game with a real full-fledged team.
Yeah, I knew he was a "jack of all trades" of sorts, but I guess what I meant was that he was also one of the announcers with inside news. With the mention of Scapes, I also remember him quite clearly, also being active on the forums posting patch notes and such, the one who joined games and took part in server crashing attempts (portal spamming in particular).

amerikhan

29-06-2009, 14:11

In regards to the OP it looks like Torchlight is a D3 single player clone which plans to release before D3 and even turn to develop into a MMORPG 1-2 years after its initial release. Even if Torchlight is a cartoony D3 clone I have no doubt that this game will become a competitor (mainly in its MMOG stage) with Diablo 3. Die hard fans of Diablo probably won't choose to play Torchlight over Diablo 3 at the time both games are released but I can defiantly see gamers choosing to play a D3-esque game that's out before D3's release.

Risingred

29-06-2009, 20:13