What are the developers of TQ doing now?

[Tichy]

What happened after the closing of Iron Lore Entertainment? I hope they're around somewhere.

IMO, Blizzard should hire them to make Diablo 3. Either way, Blizzard needs to study TQ if they're planning to come out with Diablo 3. TQ:IT is the reigning king of the "Diablo" genre in my opinion, and it's a shame that there won't be an official sequel.

I hope that the developers of TQ are able to find another outlet for their creative visions. I'm still new to TQ but it's an amazing game and the team behind it deserves a chance to top themselves.

[Diogenes]

IMO, Blizzard should hire them to make Diablo 3.

With all due respect, that would make a lot of people, myself included, a little disappointed. Titan Quest is a stylish, competent piece of software, but it really isn't a whole lot more than a watered down version of Diablo II with a few superficial albeit well conceived additions (monster infrequents, Multi-classing) to mitigate how uncreative some of the abilities are in comparison (Corpse Explosion versus Ternion Attack). That isn't a knock against it, because it doesn't presume to be anything else, and I get the feeling that Iron Lore was inhibited a great deal by the engine they chose, but calling Immortal Throne the "reigning king" of a genre it has done almost nothing to forward is of questionable accuracy. The prince du jour, perhaps.

Although I do agree with your general sentiment. I wish the team formerly known as Iron Lore nothing but success.

[Serisan]

I would like to further add to the positives from TQ:

-Better paced gameplay. Diablo 2 gameplay was frenetic at best. Ever play a Frenzy Barbarian? +150-200% run speed makes gameplay... difficult... at best. Many of the cooldowns on abilities seem better tuned than their Diablo 2 counterparts, which is nice, along with the possibility (inevitability?) of the cooldowns being reduced through gear. Lastly, leveling never feels like it ramps from instant to forever. Yes, leveling is slow at higher levels, but I've yet to feel that it wasn't built with a fair amount of consistency. You could level in 8 kills in Diablo 2 for the first level up. That's ridiculous.

-A more immersive storyline. How many Deckard Cain talks do you listen to? Sure, I don't listen to a lot of the chats now in TQ, but I at least didn't get so sick of their voices yet as to click and run, then look at the quest log on my first run through the game. The storyline is better wrought, which brings a much more heroic feel to the game. Consider your first trip through the underworld and the buildup to get to Elysium. What's the comparison? Getting to The Ancients? Which feels like a real accomplishment?

-Monster encounters. Ok, so in Diablo 2, we were looking at Blood Raven, The Countess, Andariel, Radamant, Duriel, The Council of the Zakarum, Mephisto, Izual, Diablo, The Ancients, and Baal as meaningful encounters. You can really scratch Izual right out of there, as it's only meaningful for the quest. There isn't really a whole lot of trickery to these encounters. In fact, if you just stacked the appropriate resists, even in normal, they couldn't do meaningful damage to you and, unlike many encounters in TQ, they had nothing to avoid, really. A level 20 could go toe to toe with Diablo in normal as long as they had 75 Fire and 75 Lightning resist and a belt full of potions. Compare this to, say, any single act and you have roughly as many meaningful encounters (especially on Legendary, with additions like Talus and Hydra in act 1). Remember: Blood Raven is completely optional after normal, not even giving a reward for completion. Let's, for example, look at act 3: Chimaera, Barmanu, Gargantuan Yeti, Bandiri, Yaoguai (or however you spell the bull boss name), and the Telkine. 6 major fights, which is equivalent to 2-3 acts of Diablo 2. Each one of them is significantly different.

-Boss difficulty: Going further with the monster thing, bosses actually require effort in TQ. They have multiple abilities, many of them unique to themselves. They require effort to kill (even on Hell and in bad gear, Baal was a pansy). You have to move and think to kill them if you don't have optimal gear. Again, you can't claim this about Diablo 2 bosses on any difficulty. In fact, I daresay that Andariel on normal was the hardest boss in Diablo 2.

Mechanically, TQ is more interesting. Multiclassing (as mentioned above) is a huge part of the replayability. TQ has worked its way into my collection as a game that won't get put down. It's simply great and, with the improvements made by the community since IL's disbanding, it's getting even better.

[Ivaron]

Originally Posted by Serisan

I would like to further add to the positives from TQ:

-Better paced gameplay. Diablo 2 gameplay was frenetic at best. Ever play a Frenzy Barbarian? +150-200% run speed makes gameplay... difficult... at best.

I actually liked that.
[quote]Many of the cooldowns on abilities seem better tuned than their Diablo 2 counterparts, which is nice, along with the possibility (inevitability?) of the cooldowns being reduced through gear.[quote]I completely agree here.
[quote]Lastly, leveling never feels like it ramps from instant to forever. Yes, leveling is slow at higher levels, but I've yet to feel that it wasn't built with a fair amount of consistency.[quote]Also very true. I hated that in Diablo 2, you could go on to level 99, but it would just take ages to get there.. what's the point?

You could level in 8 kills in Diablo 2 for the first level up. That's ridiculous.

Well, that didn't really bother me. I thought it was nice. In TQ, you level up around the time you kill the Satyr Shaman. In D2, you level up during the Den of Evil. I mean.. it's kinda the same.

-A more immersive storyline. How many Deckard Cain talks do you listen to? Sure, I don't listen to a lot of the chats now in TQ, but I at least didn't get so sick of their voices yet as to click and run, then look at the quest log on my first run through the game. The storyline is better wrought, which brings a much more heroic feel to the game. Consider your first trip through the underworld and the buildup to get to Elysium. What's the comparison? Getting to The Ancients? Which feels like a real accomplishment?

Eh.. I agree that getting to Elysium feels much more like a real accomplishment than getting to the Ancients. But I don't agree that the storyline is better. In TQ, alot of the random stories are stuff they took from already existing mythologies. There's nothing wrong with that, but it just means those can be discarded as they didn't make them up. The story in Diablo may seem a bit dim at first, but there's alot of background to it. As for TQ, alot of the story is pretty much taken from Diablo. You gotta a Titan that can destroy Gods.. That kinda sucks, really. And after that, you kill a God who was supposed to be weaker than the Titan, but apparently isn't. And c'mon, Hades as a bad guy? That's not really a good story in my book.
Besides, look at the acts, they're pretty much stolen from D2:
D2 | TQ
Act 1: Grasslands | Grasslands
Act 2: Desert | Desert
Act 3: Jungle | Jungle / Mountains
Act 4: Hell | Hades
Act 5: Mountains | -

And yes.. Deckard Cain talking endlessly gets annoying. I have to say I like the Order of Prometheus guiding you trough the story alot better than the only remaining member of the Horadrim doing it. So I'd say.. The story in D2 is better, but the way the story unfolds is better in TQ.

-Monster encounters. Ok, so in Diablo 2, we were looking at Blood Raven, The Countess, Andariel, Radamant, Duriel, The Council of the Zakarum, Mephisto, Izual, Diablo, The Ancients, and Baal as meaningful encounters. You can really scratch Izual right out of there, as it's only meaningful for the quest.

Yeah.. You can also scratch out Mephisto, he's a wimp.

There isn't really a whole lot of trickery to these encounters. In fact, if you just stacked the appropriate resists, even in normal, they couldn't do meaningful damage to you and, unlike many encounters in TQ, they had nothing to avoid, really.

First of all, in Diablo it's alot more difficult to get the right resistances than it is in TQ. In TQ, getting 0% recharge time is about as easy as it was in D2 to get those resistances.
I'd agree that, for instance, there was alot more time to keep whacking at Diablo than there's time to keep whacking at that Titan guy (for some reason, I can't think of his name atm.. :/). So the battles are more dynamic in TQ, but that's to be expected, it's a newer game. But I still think Diablo is alot harder to beat than the Titan guy. It took alot longer to kill him, and his red lightning attack is alot less avoidable than the "rocks falling from the sky" attack the Titan guy has.
And let's not forgot how fast-paced the battle against the ancients was.. and you had to kill them in one go. And how about that traitor in the expansion of D2? He was really tough.

A level 20 could go toe to toe with Diablo in normal as long as they had 75 Fire and 75 Lightning resist and a belt full of potions. Compare this to, say, any single act and you have roughly as many meaningful encounters (especially on Legendary, with additions like Talus and Hydra in act 1). Remember: Blood Raven is completely optional after normal, not even giving a reward for completion. Let's, for example, look at act 3: Chimaera, Barmanu, Gargantuan Yeti, Bandiri, Yaoguai (or however you spell the bull boss name), and the Telkine. 6 major fights, which is equivalent to 2-3 acts of Diablo 2. Each one of them is significantly different.

True, there's more bosses and more different bosses in TQ. But in D2, the normal encounters are alot more difficult than they are in TQ. So it balances out. In TQ, you're just running around killing things, even those archers aren't really all that hard, until you encounter a boss. That's when it becomes difficult. In Diablo, all encounters were difficult, and you had the chance to die in each one of them. How many times, in TQ, did you actually have to run away from a group of regular enemies? Compare that to D2, where this happened every other group you met.

-Boss difficulty: Going further with the monster thing, bosses actually require effort in TQ. They have multiple abilities, many of them unique to themselves. They require effort to kill (even on Hell and in bad gear, Baal was a pansy). You have to move and think to kill them if you don't have optimal gear. Again, you can't claim this about Diablo 2 bosses on any difficulty. In fact, I daresay that Andariel on normal was the hardest boss in Diablo 2.

I completely disagree with this. I think it's the other way around. Maybe it's because I was younger when I played D2, but I think the bosses in TQ are all way too easy, whereas in D2 they were pretty dang hard. Baal wasn't really a pansy, either. He took alot of time to kill, and also had that duplicate ability. And you had to run away during the fights and recover, where in TQ you can just run around a bit until you're back to full health, easily outmanouvering the boss's attacks.

Mechanically, TQ is more interesting. Multiclassing (as mentioned above) is a huge part of the replayability.

Yes. Multiclassing is definately incredible. I like it alot. But, I also think it makes things hard to balance. Some classes in TQ are just too good compared to others.

'Course, TQ is better than D2. But if you compare it to how good D2 was when that came out, no.. It's far from as ingenuitive and renewing to the ARPG genre.

And another thing that speaks for Diablo, is that the sounds effects and music were alot better. It really felt like something was screaming in anguish when you killed an enemy.

[ClosetChemist]

Originally Posted by Ivaron

And another thing that speaks for Diablo, is that the sounds effects and music were alot better. It really felt like something was screaming in anguish when you killed an enemy.

Of course, in TQ you really feel like you will scream in anguish if you have to listen to one more Manead death wail!

[Tichy]

Well, it looks like I inadvertently started a TQ vs. Diablo thread.. lol. Well, I agree with everything Serisan said. I absolutely believe TQ is a superior game, but that takes nothing away from Blizzard. Diablo 2 came first and TQ obviously learned a lot from it, and improved upon it.

Blizzard needs to learn similarly from TQ and improve upon it, if they want Diablo 3 to be the best game out there.

[Serisan]

I completely disagree with this. I think it's the other way around. Maybe it's because I was younger when I played D2, but I think the bosses in TQ are all way too easy, whereas in D2 they were pretty dang hard. Baal wasn't really a pansy, either. He took alot of time to kill, and also had that duplicate ability. And you had to run away during the fights and recover, where in TQ you can just run around a bit until you're back to full health, easily outmanouvering the boss's attacks.

The likelihood is that you're a better gamer now than when you first played D2. Go back and play it again. See what happens. My first experience with Baal was something like this:

Oh, they put in an event before you can fight him? Interesting...ok, so Fallen...whatever. Mummies and skellies, well, that sucks for the lack of leech targets...LE council guy *yawn*... Balrogs *yawn*... There's another wave? OH SWEET JEBUS!

*3 deaths later*

Ok, so Baal ran through the portal...time to go whoop him some. FRENZY BARB, HO!

The followup kills on Hell were similar, but involved a Charge Bolt Zon, a straight fire sorc (which was extremely easy, even after immunities were added into the game), Hammerdin...basically anything that wasn't a Druid, Assassin, or Necro (the classes I disliked). All of the toons I walked in there with could easily solo him, regardless of difficulty.

True, there's more bosses and more different bosses in TQ. But in D2, the normal encounters are alot more difficult than they are in TQ. So it balances out. In TQ, you're just running around killing things, even those archers aren't really all that hard, until you encounter a boss. That's when it becomes difficult. In Diablo, all encounters were difficult, and you had the chance to die in each one of them. How many times, in TQ, did you actually have to run away from a group of regular enemies? Compare that to D2, where this happened every other group you met.

I run from standard packs in TQ constantly. I never had a reason to in D2, save for kiting classes that, guess what, ran around. Honestly, I installed D2 about 3 weeks before I dusted off my TQ discs. I was bored to tears so fast, as I got a toon into Hell in about a weekend.

Seriously, I think that your skills as a gamer improved between D2 and TQ. Yes, D2 was amazingly innovative at the time. TQ trumped it significantly in mechanics and play depth.

[Tichy]

Originally Posted by Serisan

Seriously, I think that your skills as a gamer improved between D2 and TQ. Yes, D2 was amazingly innovative at the time. TQ trumped it significantly in mechanics and play depth.

Agreed. I actually discovered TQ recently after I had reinstalled Diablo 2 but found that it just wasn't satisfying anymore. I know we all have great memories of D2, but gameplay-wise, it is fairly dated.

[Ivaron]

Hmm, I dunno.
I remember my first character in D2 was a Necromancer. This may have also influenced my judgement of D2 being a hard game, hehe.. Necromancers suck. Especially against Andariel on Normal.
I also had a Barbarian, and I found him to have it very easy. I didn't much like that, actually.. Same story for the Sorceress and Amazon. Than I had a Druid (couldn't really judge how well he played, I got too bored of his playing style) and an Assassin (definately a very hard class to prevent from dying). I liked the Assassin most, it made the game a bit harder, and it was very rewarding playstyle. So I played her the most.

I don't really think my skills as a gamer improved, because since D2 I have played quite a few ARPG, but never for more than about 3 days until I got bored of them. So I hardly had time to improve my skills
But I'm older now, and that definately matters.

Still, some things don't add up. You say, for instance, that you think Andariel on Normal was the hardest boss in D2. The only time I had a problem with Andariel was with my Necromancer. All the other classes I played, Andariel was a cake walk. Duriel was easy too. Mephisto was maybe the easiest, once you know how to beat him.
Diablo was only hard because he takes so long to take down. Every once in a awhile, he will shoot a red lightning attack that you just can't dodge. My resistances always seemed to be too low for that attack.. And then he'd headbutt me and slash me, and I'd die.
The Overseer guy in the expansion, and the small "dungeons/hell portals" in act V were kinda hard for me too. The traitor guy, the Ancients, and the last wave before Baal were the hardest encounters in the game, imo.
Baal was the same story as Diablo; took so long to take down, that once in awhile he'd get a lucky shot.
As for random encounters, I always thought act I was easy, although near the end it gets just a bit harder. Act II was the hardest, with those numerous undead guys, and those Vipers were really dreadful. Act III was just... annoying. Those stupid Flayers kept walking away until eventually you'd attracted so many enemies you just couldn't survive anymore. Near the end of Act III, it became quite easy. Than you'd walk into that fortress thing and encounter those caster/priest guys, who were pretty darn hard. Act IV was actually not that bad.. Pretty easy after act II and III. Act V was a mix of really easy enemies, really cool enemies, and pretty darn hard enemies.

What you're describing is a totally different experience than what I had :/
Might be because we played different characters, though.

But seriously, I almost never have to run away from normal enemies in TQ, unless it's Machae Archers (rarely), Tigermen (sometimes) and Dragonians (most of the time).
If I compare that to walking into a room of a tomb in D2 and seeing like 5-8 of those raise dead guys with a whole lot of skeletons and other undeads.. I still think D2 was a harder game.
I'd see how hard it is now, but I broke one of the cd's so can't install it anymore

[McGyverForTehWin]

About D2 bosses I want to add the smith in Act IV, Hephasto, he was a pain thorugh and through with his 200% run speed and one-shot attack. He was particularly hard for melee classes like Paladin and Barbarian (Barbarians had the, imao, coolest skill in any ARPG: Jumping); my Paladin was repeatedly one-shoted and driven back to the stairs where I would respawn, collect my corpse and have just enough time to get two or three hits on him before I was killed again.
The battle lated for about half an hour before I finally managed to bust a cap in his behind but it was after thirty deaths or so. Now imagine if D2 bosses would regen when you died

Hephasto and the Minions of Destruction (fifth and final spawn before Baal) were without doubt the most difficult of all D2 monsters.

-Boss difficulty: Going further with the monster thing, bosses actually require effort in TQ. They have multiple abilities, many of them unique to themselves. They require effort to kill (even on Hell and in bad gear, Baal was a pansy). You have to move and think to kill them if you don't have optimal gear. Again, you can't claim this about Diablo 2 bosses on any difficulty. In fact, I daresay that Andariel on normal was the hardest boss in Diablo 2.

I don't see that. Granted, the TQ bosses have a variety of attacks and skills (not just a massive chain lightning) but they are either pointless show-offs or dodgeable one-shots. Take for instance Mr. T, the head honcho and baddest of the TQ bosses: You run in, dodge the chain lightning and flame-thrower, raise your Battle Standard, dodge the falling rocks and the turn It into chop-suey in eight seconds flat.

It's not BGII where you must have a well thought-trough strategy and timing, it's just dodging and whacking