An RPG party?

[Jason]

So, the Torchlight discussion thread got the idea circulating in my head, and I thought I'd gather some opinion on the matter - anyone fancy throwing together a party of some kind for a run through an 'action' RPG?

Of course, we'd need to agree on a game.

It should be reasonably inexpensive, as we're all cheapskates. ;)
It should have some kind of co-op, obviously. :p
And it should be reasonably easy to dip in and out of, as obviously we're not all always going to be available at the same time.

Any suggestions?

Obviously Diablo II ticks most of those boxes, with the added detail that it's by all accounts something of a classic. I also own Titan Quest, but I don't know too much about it, as I haven't played it.

[Landy]

Like i mentioned before, how about Sacred?

[Rob]

I have Diablo II and Titan Quest. On steam you can grab Titan Quest for $9.99!

[MyNameDidntFit]

I've got D2 (with LoD) and I have TQ lying around somewhere... as I recall I'm not too much a fan of it, but that was ages ago and I barely remember it.

[Jason]

Right, so we have nominations for D2, Titan Quest and Sacred.

I've never played any of those, although Sacred has pretty mediocre metacritic reviews (Metacritic is my god, by the way), but CKS thinks highly enough of it to recommend it, so I'm willing to accept his word. :)
Titan Quest has good reviews, but to the best of my knowledge no-one has played it, so it's a bit of a gamble. Steam tells me it has multi-player though.
Finally, it's D2 - it's a classic, but quite a few of us have played it to death already, meaning they'd essentially be holding the noob's hands through the game and fighting off hordes of demons with their pinky fingers while me and Konrad hide in the corner screaming "No, not the face!".

[MyNameDidntFit]

Titan Quest has good reviews, but to the best of my knowledge no-one has played it, so it's a bit of a gamble.
I've played, and have, it. It's a reasonable game but I never really thought of it as being on level with Diablo 2. I haven't played it in a long time so I only remember my general opinion of it and not the detailed reasons for said opinion.

[Jason]

How many players can D2 support in a single party? Also, how likely are we to be able to find a game that isn't going to be modded up to the point where it's unrecognisable?

[MyNameDidntFit]

You... don't know how Battle.net works? Ay-ay-ay.

You log on to Battle.net (in game, free, etc) and then you can either join games others have created or create your own. I'm not sure on the maximum players but it's well and truly above any number we'll need. You can set a password on the game, too, so that it's just us.

I can show you the ropes some time, if you wish (though I'll have to find and install it).

[Jason]

Yeah, sounds good. I'll need to get a copy of D2 from amazon or something as well, I guess. It's £10 for Direct Download from Blizzard, and there's no way I'm paying that for a >10 year old game.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Then you wont like that you'll want to get the expansion (D2: Lord of Destruction) too...

[Jason]

Eh, I can get D2 and LOD both brand new for about £10 on amazon. That's not too bad. I didn't realise it was 2002... I thought it was WAY before that!

[Rob]

Buy them from amazon the register the keys on your battlenet account so you save money and still get the ability to download the games if you lose/damg the discs.

[Jason]

Yeah, that was my thinking. It never hurts to be sure. Especially with a 6 year-old daughter running round the place...

[Rob]

My ping to Europe is about 200ms which is definitely good enough for the games we are going to be playing. I would like to play through D2 again but I never finished Titan Quest. Maybe we can hit TQ up later on.

[Landy]

I got TQ, but I doubt that i will be getting D2.

[Rob]

Then TQ looks to be #1 on our list right now. If that works for everyone then we should try and get a time slot figured out. Weekends are more flexible for me. Also a voice client would be nice.

[Jason]

I'll be working for the next weekend or two, but after that I'll be free. :)

[Landy]

Like I've mentioned before, i got a Ventrilo server :)

[eLusive]

Titan Quest reminds me a bit of WoW and RuneScape...
I don't think my availability times co-incide with your own.. what time zones are you guys located?

[MyNameDidntFit]

I'm GMT+8. Provided I'm not doing anything I can be awake at pretty much any hour of the day for a good bit of gaming. I shall have to see if I can dig up my copy of TQ.

As for voice, I've never much liked Vent, but if that's what others want to use I'll use it (personally I prefer Skype).

[Rob]

I'm GMT -8 (US West Coast). For the next few weekends I am open just about anytime but we will have to check in the day before to see.

[Landy]

Gmt +1 here.

[Jason]

Bang on GMT here, but like MNDF, time of day isn't a big problem for me if I'm not working the next day.

[Konrad]

Titan Quest, eh? How many players can we have on a single party/group/team?

TQ and it's expansion are on a 50% steam sale, so I could pick it up if you folks decide to play it because i'd very much like to get in on it.

I'm GMT -5, but I'm willing to stay up pretty late, especially this week while winter break lasts.

[Jason]

My sources (Google) tell me that it supports 2-6, but apparently there's a console command that allows up to 8 players.

EDIT for Konrad and MNDF: I noticed that Kenny is playing it on Steam. I'll throw him a message at some point and see what he thinks.

[Landy]

For future reference: Here is the Vent info

[Jason]

I asked Kenny about TQ, and here's his reply:

Titan's quest is a pretty straight forward Diablo clone, definitely worth the $10 it's going for currently. I'm currently running through the game with my brother, after the game Torchlight (a GREAT, though only single player clone) got us thinking about this style of game. I'd say if anyone enjoys Diablo, they should enjoy TQ. It doesn't do much outside of the box, but what it does it does well.

[MyNameDidntFit]

EDIT for Konrad and MNDF:
Why is edit for me? :/ I have the game...


... oh! I just remembered my favourite thing about the game: you had buttons to only show up certain classes of loot on the ground.

[Jason]

Yeah, but you're Australian, so I figured I'd best remind you in case you got drunk and forgot.

[MyNameDidntFit]

If there wasn't a bourbon and cola beside my keyboard right now, I'd totally try to claim that I'm not an alcoholic...

[Konrad]

SHOULD I BUY IT NAO?

Im kind of hoping ill see the game on one of 'em daily steam sales tihngamajig so I might wait until January 3rd.

[Jason]

Sounds like an idea. I'm not available over the next couple of weekends anyway, and I think Rob said he was busy for the next week or so as well, so there's no rush to run out and get it now.

[CemeteryGates]

I'm GMT-6, I believe.
I have Diablo 2 and I can get LoD too.
I'm avaliable every day except for Monday and Wednesday afternoon in my time.

[Rob]

If someone wants to set a weekend time that works for them then ill try and make it. I'd set it up but the next few weeks are going to be very hectic for me.

[Jason]

Ok, well I'll make an executive decision let's take a preliminary aim at Saturday the 16th of January, as I'm not working that weekend.

If we aim for a time of roughly 2300GMT (1800 EST), is that going to cause any particular problems for anyone? I figured it's not too late for me to get a good 2-3 hour session in without collapsing at my keyboard, it means MNDF won't have to get up at quite such a stupid time in the morning, and it's a reasonably social time for the US-based gamers.

Obviously if there are any problems we can work around them. :)

Oh, and just for confirmation, we'll start with Titan Quest, as two or three of us already own it, and it's currently going cheap on Steam for those of us that don't. The game can accommodate 6 players, and I'll check it out either tonight or tomorrow to get an idea of the classes and stuff so we don't all end up as mages. :p

So who's actually seriously considering this?

[MyNameDidntFit]

Me and my legion of ping are in.

[Jason]

I had a look at some of the classes, and it appears that at the start of the game you choose two 'masteries' (ex: 'Warfare' and 'Earth', and draw your skills from them to give you your specific class - in this case, a battlemage.)

There's a list of all the potential classes you can have here (http://titanquestvault.ign.com/static.php?page=classes), although somewhat irritatingly it doesn't go into detail on what each class can do.

[Rob]

I put this in my calendar and Sat looks clear from here. If anyone notices that im online and wants to test this out send me a message on Steam.

[Konrad]

Fffffffuuuuu-


I forgot to get this thing on the Steam sales. I have to give it a long hard thought whether it's worth 20$... If it catches on with you guys I probably will, so let me know if it's a blast.

[MyNameDidntFit]

... still need to dig mine up from the depths of the warp...

[Jason]

I had a quick dash on this the other night just to get used to the controls and so on. It seems ok so far, although I'm not especially far into it - I've got to the point where I have to fight the centaur king-type thing so I can speak with the General, and to be honest, it's raping me. Guess I need to do a little levelling up before I take that one on.

[Jason]

Gents, I'm going to have to be a pain and call a raincheck for this particular saturday. The snow hit us pretty hard over here, and I haven't seen the good lady for the best part of two weeks, and saturday is going to be the first chance we get to go out.

As much as she puts up with my gaming, I think if I told her we were staying in so I could play an RPG, I'd probably be beaten to death with my mouse. :p

However, I'm open to suggestions for another date/time.

[Rob]

Is anyone else still interested in playing this weekend? My wife is about a week out from her due date and we are finishing up a remodel of our house so I probably can't find the time as well. For now I say we should push this out a week or two. Does that work for you guys?

[MyNameDidntFit]

Any time works for me, really. Unless we hit March. Once we hit March the likelihood is I will be AWOL for a good two months.

[Rob]

Ok then we are moving this to Saturday the 23rd unless something comes up... :D

[Rob]

In case we ever play Titan Quest the gold edition is going for $4.99 right now on steam. It's hard to pass up if you didn't get it during the xmas sale.

[Konrad]

I was thinking I'd buy it, but only if we actually get a few games going since I don't care for the genre myself.

[Jason]

Good find, Rob. :)
I should point out at this point that we're still open to anyone else who fancies joining us - no date has been officially decided yet, but we'll likely be playing Titan Quest, which as Rob has pointed out, is currently just $5 on Steam.

[happysister]

this idea was brilliant, but it looks like nothing happened. :/ i would totally be up for something like this, though the only action RPG i have atm is the Magicka demo. >_> i haven't exactly dove too far into this branch of RPGs before, so i'm not really sure what's out there.

[Jason]

It's not multiplayer, but if you're looking for a good entry-level Action RPG, you could do a lot, lot LOT worse than checking out Torchlight. It's a fantastic little game.
As for an RPG party, I'm still game for it if we can find a game we all have/don't mind playing. :)

[happysister]

Torchlight looks like something i could get into. from the looks of one of the trailers, the gameplay looks really similar to an Action MMORPG i used to play.

[happysister]

after playing through the demo, i am quite disappointed. very, very disappointed. why in heaven's name is there no multiplayer support? -_- this game is just too epic. i wanna enjoy it with people. D:

[Jason]

I know, it's heartbreaking that such an awesome little game would have no multiplayer support at all.
The good news is that work on Torchlight 2 is well underway, as well as persistent rumours about a Torchlight MMO. Either way, I can't see them making the same mistake again, especially after the popularity of the first one - it's just been released on Xbox Live to favourable reviews as well.

[happysister]

ooooooh. i certainly hope that the sequel would have multiplayer support. if anything, the MMO would, providing the rumors are true.