Torchlight is a Diablo III like game that cost 19.95 you can buy it on Steam and was a lot of fun.  It worked on Mac and PC.  Wheeee.  It is made by a smaller company called Runic Games which the last place I read (on the Internet, every thing on the Internet is true or you can’t put it on the Internet) had 30 employees.  I coughed when I saw that.  I hope to hell they are outsourcing their data center and server and user support…….  Otherwise they are not getting any sleep anytime soon…..  Maybe years…..

A few or more months ago it was announced Torchlight 2 was in development.  People have waited a while and there were lots of oohs and aaahs and pent up WHERE IS IT? September 20th, yesterday was launch date.  Insert much rejoicing here.

Torchlight 2 is a much more complex product than the original Torchlight.  When the developer that Torchlight 2 would support MULTI-PLAYA,  LAN play, and online servers I was happily surprised.  Remembering it is a 19.95 title……  That is a lot of game for 20 bucks.  Exciting Stuff.  (Remember that 30 employees stuff….. exciting and scary)

So the eldest under 18 in the house bought a 4 pack for himself, his brother and friends.  And he downloaded the software from Steam yesterday and was surprised that on launch day the online play servers didn’t work.  He has never played WoW on patch day either.  He didn’t play Diablo III on it’s first day either.

As someone with 25+ years in IT infrastructure I know from hands on experience any time you roll out something big, no matter how much you test it, you can’t test for everything.  Too many variables.  Too complex.  Finding 10 or 20 thousand people to help you test is called a live Beta.  Last night things did not work but….

I read a lot of whiners complaining that it should have worked at launch in the steam forums. Let them whine!  Ok, stop now, you have whined enough.

It is a $19.95 game that you will eventually use for 100 hours at least if you are any kind of gamer.  The two hour movie you took your significant other two last Friday was 3 times that with 2 tickets, popcorn and a drink…. Please…….  Shut up and wait a bit.

I am sure the servers will be working soon.  I am not worried about my 19.95, even the single player game is fun enough…..  I don’t feel cheated.  I am 49 years old and maybe I have learned some patience.

Rant mode off….

Go kill some ratlings….