We’re not dead yet…I think I’ll go for a walk now…

Well this is a turn of events.  Even though FlagShip studios has been reported to have closed it’s doors for the past 3-4 days, NOW Bill Roper (CEO to Flagship) has come out saying, We’re not dead yet.. we only needed to layoff most of our workforce.

Though the good news of this story is if you paid for the game; you’re now playing for free, but Flagship is no longer taking new subscribers.

Now what this is telling me is, like I said before, that Flagship bite off more then it could chew.  Promising the world and only delivering about 30% of it.  The game concept was flawed, the execution of the game play was very flawed and the lack of people signing up said that.   Though 1 million subscribers also states that the game was starting to come into its own. 

But the bottom line is all investors know and care about.  they don’t understand how long it can take to make a good game these days because all of us want flashy graphics, real-time Internet support and all these bells and whistles that really don’t mean much of anything but we’ve been programmed to expect it.  Gone are the days where 3 people can make a game to earn enough money to buy a Ferrari.. in a different color.. one for each day of the week.  (yeah Romano.. )

But even with the best game, if you can’t turn around a profit in time in the numbers you’ve promised your investors your game goes down the tube.

So I guess the real question here is what killed Flagship?  Bad Games?  Bad management?  Investors that just didn’t believe in their product anymore?

 

7/21/08 update:
I’ve not been able to test this yet, but from the reports coming from around the net, the Mythos servers have gone offline…  So not dead yet.. just dying..

Hellgate: London Patch 2.0 and 2.1 information.

[HellgateGuru] is reporting some information about what’s in store for Patch 2.0 and 2.1.  an official forum posts states:

Discover that which awaits you in the Abyss, brave Hellgaters! The Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) is rapidly taking shape and form and we’re ready to share some of its most exciting offerings with you. As Hellgate: London’s second major content update, the Abyss Chronicles boasts an impressive and lengthy list of new features including a major class rebalance, new environments, new enemies, new skills, new bosses, and new inventory slots . Then there’s the Consignment House, Attribute Respec Vendor, item linking, achievement rewards, and lots more. Suffice to say, the Abyss Chronicle is big. Very big.

Plans are already underway for the patches beyond the Abyss Chronicles. A small content summary for Patch 2.1 has been included as well. This update will open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London in the form of ranked player versus player (PvP) gameplay. Originally slated for release with the Abyss Chronicles, the decision to release new PvP content as part of a supplemental patch was brought about by a desire to introduce five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture The Flag. Together, these features will provide a robust PvP experience within the Hellgate: London universe.

We are hoping to get a Patch 2.0 build into Test Center next week, but we will see what happens.

Hellgate: London v1.0 patch notes.

You there in the back; stop that snickering! Here are the Stonehendge patch (version 1.0) notes in case you were curious. Grats on losing the beta tag (oh, just kidding). The update should be out this week.

In other HGL news, Flagship has announced that Jan. 31st is the deadline to become a founder’s club member for Hellgate London should you want to be a premium member for life without paying a monthly fee.

In an effort to provide Hellgaters who would like to subscribe to Hellgate: London but can’t use our current payment methods, subscribing via PayPal and PayByCash is now possible. While this was mentioned in our recent press release about the launch of Stonehenge, we wanted to also mention that the Founder’s Offer will be coming to an end on January 31st.This is to allow those who couldn’t use our original payment options a window of time to select it. The Founder’s Offer is a one-time payment which grants a lifetime subscription to Hellgate: London and is made available to those players who pre-ordered the game.

Our upcoming content update, the Stonehenge Chronicles, features new environments, monsters, and items exclusively for Hellgate: London subscribers.

Thanks Blue’s News.

[Via VE3D]

What Happened with… HellGate: London

I still play HellGate and very much enjoy the game play, the game itself has a lot of serious problems.   From the looks of the Game Flagship centered around the core game play (which is a good thing) however they left out much of the interface that would make the game an MMO.   HellGate (at this point) lacks just about every tool possible to make it an MMO.
for a game touted to be a cross between a first person shooter and an MMO paying homage to the Diablo series, HellGate lacks in some of the most basic elements of an MMO.
like none of the developers had ever played an MMO.

This article goes into depth about the negative aspects of HellGate: London and what the developers should have done, or be doing,  in order to make the game the best it could possible be while keeping the ‘feel’ of the game the same.

HellGate: London Evoker Skill list.

While starting up a FAQ system for games I ran across a post from hellgatepalladium describing in detail the Evoker skills per level and I thought that it would make a great edition to the the games FAQ.    So with a note back to HellGatePalladium on each of the pages, I’ve broken down the list into separate lists based on level and posted them up all on web pages.

it’s a work in progress.. so bare with me as things change and get moved around. =)

[HellGate: London - Evoker Skills]

Hellgate: London 0.7 Goes live…

Patch 0.7 Notes:  December 20, 2007

 

Memory Usage

• Memory manager rewritten for better performance and stability.
• Fixed a UI-related memory leak.
• Fixed a clothing and armor texture-related memory issue.

 

User Interface

• New Looking For Group interface that allows players to more easily find each other for creating specific groups.
• Reorganized the De-modificator, Augmentrex, and Nanoforge interfaces to appear in the left-hand panel area.
• Added an auto-transparency feature to the chat window.
• Players can skip all logo splash-screens with a single click.

 

Nightmare Difficulty

• The difficulty of Nightmare has been rebalanced. More overall experience is earned in Nightmare levels, scaling of group experience and difficulty has been improved, and the overall level progression has been adjusted.

 

Skills

• Fixed skills being added to and/or removed from Shift activation when swapping weapons.
• Investing a skill point into an Aura skill will no longer automatically cause it to activate.

 

Templar

• Taunt skills are no longer reduced in effectiveness when in a group.

Blademaster

• Path of Righteousness now applies damage from offhand melee weapons.

 

Guardian

• Prayer of Retribution can now be used while poisoned.
• Prayer of Healing can no longer be used while poisoned.

 

Cabalists

• The Summon Ember and Summon Fire Elemental skills no longer conflict when granted through items.

 

Evokers

• Fixed a bug that caused Drain Power to charge an upfront power cost.
• Tempest’s targeting range has been increased and properly loses targets that move out of range.
• Fixed a bug which prevented Boneshards from having any effect on every other cast.
• Fixed a bug which prevented Evokers from using any other skills for two seconds after casting Boneshards.

 

Summoners

• Hand of Nostrom correctly adds more beams as the skill level increases.
• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the Warper minion icon to not display.
• Master of the Flame skill effects now display properly in the skill description tooltip.

 

Hunters

 

Engineers

• Engineer Drone behavior improved.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Repair Drone to be used at no cost.
• Drones will now level properly along with their owner. Existing Drones that are below your character’s level will automatically be raised to the correct level.
• Drones now receive correct health bonuses with skill level after they are re-summoned.

 

Marksmen

• Overshield now gives the correct amount of shields.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Homing Shot from activating properly.

 

Quests

• Fixed a bug with the Cannon Street Rails quest.
• Fixed a bug in the Helping Hands and Triage quests where Maxim and Arphaun occupy the same place.
• Fixed a bug with the Regular Customer quest where Slaughterbeast occasionally wouldn’t spawn as expected.
• Characters stuck in the Holborn station after completing the game in normal mode should be able to progress.

 

Items

• Improved the drop rate of analyzers and various recipes.
• New blueprints have been added for Focus Items and Boots.
• Focus Items and Boots can now be made by crafters.
• Fixed a bug where already activated Auras would turn on and off when swapping weapons that grant Aura skills.

 

Guilds and Groups

• Fixed a bug where players were not seeing Guild invites.
• Introduced new Auto-Party logic to provide better matches.

 

World Movement

• Fixed additional instances where players were sometimes randomly teleported when other people used portals.
• Players can now use the /stuck command when in Ghost form.
• Fixed rare instances where certain areas were impassible.

 

Miscellaneous

• Fixed a bug where Founders saw all character names in blue text.
• Fixed rare issues with being unable to properly apply the Multiplayer patch.
• Fixed a bug with mods on weapons not being properly equipped when loading a character.
• Fixed rare cases where the PRD became unusable.
• Fixed a bug where numerous pets would show up in Stations.

 

—

The Stonehenge Chronicles delayed for Hellgate : London

The Stonehenge Chronicles delayed for Hellgate : London

By Robin Torres

Hellgate : London’s Patch 1.0 aka Stonehenge aka The Stonehenge Chronicles has been delayed until January. This will be the first major quarterly update and, if released in January, will still be on schedule. Bill Roper, in a letter sent …

 

Massively – http://www.massively.com

HellGate: London patch notes and other info

Multiplayer Patch 0.7
As the players who participated in our Test Center server found out earlier today, the 0.7 content update will be launching for both the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers this week.
 
Big additions in this patch include a massive memory usage fix, Nightmare difficulty rebalancing, and a new “Looking for Group” interface.
 
A number of notorious bugs were also squashed in this build. Impassible maps and quest monsters that refused to spawn are a thing of the past.
 
With 0.7 subscribers can enjoy additional content in the form of the Transmogrifier — an item used for extra inventory and recipe crunching — and twelve new unique items.
 
 
Bill & Stonehenge
Curious about Hellgate: London’s first major ongoing content release for subscribers? It’s what we call the Stonehenge Expansion and Bill Roper is here to fill you in…
 
“We’ve decided to take the time necessary to make our first major content patch right. If there is one lesson we’ve learned from launching Hellgate: London, our releases should be a question of “what” and not “when.”
 
We were pushing to get Stonehenge released before the end of the year, but we realized that we wouldn’t be doing the right thing to push it out before it was ready and properly tested. We’re still on our schedule and meeting our original promise of providing a major quarterly update. We just felt that we would be doing everyone a disservice to push this out before it was right.
 
We are, however, going to have the first in our continuing Hellgate chronicles, entitled Stonehenge, into Test Center before the holidays. This is so we can get a lot of people finding the issues and getting us feedback over their holiday breaks.”
– Bill Roper
 
If all goes well, you’ll see the Stonehenge Expansion hit the Test Center this week, with the full release scheduled to launch in January.
 
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