Torchlight Frontiers becomes Torchlight 3, not F2P anymore

Perfect World has just made a surprising announcement, revealing that Torchlight Frontiers is no more. In its place you'll get Torchlight 3, which is the same game… except it's not. There are quite a few caveats coming with the change, one of them being the change from free-to-play to buy-to-play.  That's right, the Torchlight 3 premium business model change is a fact, so you'll have to buy it when it releases on Steam this summer.

Another major change coming with Torchlight 3 is the decision to drop the shared-world MMO aspect and deliver a linear progression system closer to what you know from Torchlight 1 and 2. You can play Torchlight 3 offline or online and explore a campaign where you discover the frontiers in a linear approach.

“When we started developing Torchlight Frontiers, we were focused on creating a shared-world experience,” said Max Schaefer, CEO of Echtra Games and co-founder of the Torchlight franchise. “During development, you often discover what type of product a game was meant to be and we found Torchlight Frontiers was meant to be a true successor to Torchlight I & II. Based on this and extensive feedback from our Alpha testers, we decided it was time to take the game back to its roots and model it after the classic Torchlight games that ARPG fans have come to love. We’d like to thank our dedicated player base for supporting us and providing such insightful feedback during early development.”

The Torchlight 3 release date is set for summer 2020 on Steam, but you'll get a chance to play the closed alpha starting January 29.

This decision was surely impacted by player feedback, but also by the upcoming release of another free-to-play action RPG from publisher Perfect World, Magic Legends. Having two free-to-play games competing could be a bad move, and the outcome was that a Torchlight 3 premium release is now in the plans. Do you think that this was the right move?