Torchlight Frontiers, the persistent world multiplayer successor to beloved action RPG Torchlight 2, was originally announced to be coming in 2019. But with just over a month left in the year, Echtra Games founder Max Schaefer told PC Gamer this weekend that Torchlight Frontiers wasn't going to make that deadline and would be delayed into 2020.

During a Path of Exile fan convention in New Zealand this weekend, I had the rare opportunity to talk with Diablo's original creators and Blizzard North co-founders David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer. During that interview Max Schaefer also broke the news that Torchlight Frontiers wouldn't be releasing in the "2019 time frame that was indicated two and a half years ago."

"We have not updated that yet which we probably should," Schaefer laughed. "But we don't have really specific things to say. We're doing some changes to the game right now that is kind of hard to pin down. We don't really have better information to give yet. So that's kind of why we've been waiting. But obviously it's not going to make it right away. It's plugging along and it's getting better every day. And we're really excited about it. It's just we're kind of waiting for the right time to like, come out with another big news dump about what's going on."

First announced back in August of 2018, Torchlight Frontiers takes the colorful look of Torchlight into a "a shared, persistent, and dynamically generated world" that sounds an awful lot like what Diablo 4 is also trying—albeit without the cute dog sidekicks and a lot more satanic symbolism.

Frontiers is being developed by Schaefer's new studio, Echtra Games, which was founded after the demise of his previous company and Torchlight 2's original developer, Runic Games.

Of course, Schaefer is also one of the co-founders of Blizzard North and created Diablo alongside his brother Erich Schaefer and David Brevik. The full interview will be published on PC Gamer later this week and includes their thoughts on Diablo 4's release and Blizzard's recent controversies, some of which we've already published.