We started with 17 people, subletting an office that fit us all just fine, but since then we’ve grown to 26. Suddenly, the office is a bit tighter and it’s not cool to play movies on the futon after hours when it’s next to the desk of someone working late. Happily, this growth spurt has coincided with our lease being up, ergo, moving!

The new office is half a block away, pretty much kitty-corner from where we are now. There’s a peek-a-boo view of the Sound (that’s a fancy realtor term for “you can see it between the other buildings and parking structures”) and it will let us stretch our legs a bit and even put that TV and futon in a separate room of their own.

For the full post and move pictures, go check out the post on the official site!

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As always, Travis refused to commit to anything, but the Max responded to the question of “Will we see a Torchlight 2″ with an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Perhaps we have some announcements waiting for us in the future? Check out the video on Kotaku’s site and judge for yourself!

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This week is a content booster, a pack of monsters made or collected together by AttackGorilla, an avid mod maker in the community. The monster pack includes:

• 3 Dragonkin variants
• zebramatt’s Children of the Damned monsters
• Corrupted soldier (4 variations and 4 champion variations)
• Sub Crawler (fire)
• 2 Mummy varieties
• Black Widow Spider
• Ravenous Ratlin
• Dark Varkolyn
• 4 Skeleton varieties
• 2 Goblin Predator varieties

If you are tired of killing the same old monsters over and over again, I highly suggest you give this mod a try! You can find it by clicking the picture above or right here.

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However Wonder has just posted that Torchlight has won the Debut Game Award at this year’s Game Developer Conference.

Here is a small snippet from the livefeed from Kotaku:

8:28	McWhertor:  Debuts are important, Spector says, as they tend to represent the state of the art. They might just be the next big thing.

8:28	McWhertor:  The nominees are….

8:29	McWhertor:  Zeno Clash, League of Legends, Torchlight, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, The Maw

8:29	McWhertor:  Of those five, Torchlight and Spider got the most applause.

8:29	Crecente:  Wow, the crowd goes wild

8:29	McWhertor:  And Torchlight wins it, proving that everyone still love a good Diablo clone.

8:30	McWhertor:  “Wow, that was unexpected.” say the aware recipients.

8:30	McWhertor:  They are “aware” of their award. You know what I mean!

Well done to the team at Runic! They deserved it!

Matt Tanwanteng, Engineer

I love just seeing all these different ideas take shape in our game. Most recently, Matt Nguyen’s Spirit Dancer class is a fun class that has a distinct feel from the original three, largely due to it’s abilities that allow the class to continue moving through attacks. There’s a full set of varied skills, and one specialized variant feels quite unique from the others.

I’m looking forward to the Decimator robot, a full class mod with a new skillset, a new model, and animations, as well as a new helper robot pet.

If you want to see more of the mods Runic is playing, check it out right here!

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Best RPG
Torchlight
The year 2010 could well be known as the one where causal gaming went mainstream, and Torchlight winning the RPG category is certainly another fine example of this trend. The dungeon-delving title looks great, plays smoothly on almost any hardware, and offers some great Diablo-style gameplay that is both easy to learn and challenging to conquer. For a title on sale for $20 to compete and beat the big boys in the RPG field shows how great this game is. It’s the little RPG that slayed the giants.
See our Review.

You can see the rest of the awards right here.

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Here are some of the topics in the podcast, mixed in among the puns and other jokes. Apparently Max is a funny guy!

• Torchlight going on consoles
• Torchlight less likely on facebook
• Talk about Max’s history
• How to apply at Runic Games
• Shared Overworld in the MMO
• More examples of how instancing could be done
• Lots of talk about possible “end-game” content in regards to retirement

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I will draw to your attention the one piece of new information: The Torchlight MMO will have some kind of Retirement System. The possibility of one has been speculated, but Max comes out and says that it will be included in the next game.

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This week’s Mod Spotlight is a very small one, and yet can change the way you play the game. Gold Sharing Service allows you to trade in your gold for an item which you can trade in later to receive the exact same value. Why would you ever want to do this? Well, plenty of reasons come to mind, but the main reason is to allow you to trade gold between your characters. You also could use it as a way to preserve your gold before going into situations where you may die a lot. Just go to the portal near the Shared Stash and go inside for a gold scroll!

You can get Gold Sharing Service right here.

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Marsh shared this laugh-out-loud story about one of Erich’s culinary experiences:

HOST – “This is a herbal soup..”
ERICH “I’ll try it..”
Erich takes a bite …
ERICH – “Oh my God that was the grossest thing I have ever eaten. It exploded in my mouth.”
HOST – “Yes, the soup has cow penises in it.”

They found out later that wasn’t all it had in it, but we’ll leave the finer details to your imagination. Let’s just say that dining in a foreign country often is an adventure, and sometimes it’s a reality TV challenge.

Go check out the official site for more pictures and comments!

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