Life after Hellgate?

As most of us know, Flagship Studios bombed.  Personally, I believe they bit off more then they could chew a little to quickly..   Anyway, looks like Phil Shenk (Co-founder of Flagship) has found a few more supports and is planning to open an new start up studio by the name of ‘Gravity Bear’ and will become it’s CEO.   Kevin Klemmick has signed on to become the start ups Technical direction.  You might know Mr. Klemmick from such games as Hellgate: London.

[SOURCE]

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]

2008 Predictions…

Orginal Post on 12/27/07

Every year I like to think up (and this year post) my predictions for the next year.

1) BioShock will turn into an MMO.
    Think about it.  Being able to run around killing splicer’s while earning enough money to buy better plasmids?  All the while picking up bits and pieces of items to craft them into new weapons, armor and ammo?   All in an underwater city that was seemingly built as an MMO in the first place?   The ability to explore areas shut off from you the first time around? It would be sweet.  Could even do the game like HellGate: London (only done right.. see #9)

2) Blizzard will announce that the next Gen MMO game they are making will be the ‘World of Starcraft’
    The only big sci-fi MMO out there is EVE.  Of course there’s Star Wars Galaxies and Tabula Rasa, but that’s not saying much.  So the world is in need of a good Sci-Fi MMO to take the place of Earth and Beyond. (..!.,   EA)
  
    Starcraft has just as much or more of a following then the Warcraft series and has just as deep of a story and background.  WoW has already has and continues to embrace Diablo like a brother (sockets?  come on) and has some cross over story lines between the Diablo and StarCraft games; Blizzard is also readying up Starcraft II to enter the market.   So, to me, it makes total sense to have a World of StarCraft.

    Now what would REALLY be cool is the ability to merge the three games together so that WoW is the beginning  WoD (that’s World of Diablo) is the middle and WoS is the ending and your character can port back and forth between times.

    Of course, the announcement could be nothing more then the release of Diablo 3 (wasn’t that HellGate?) But the World of StarCraft would be MUCH cooler.
    —————————————————
    Update: 06/28/08
    Well Blizzard has annouced Diablo 3 about 3 odd hours ago.  This is the major announcement for this year
    however there’s still that top-secret project they are working on…

 

3) Nintendo will continue not to be able to create enough Wii’s for demand and within 6 to 8 month it won’t matter.  People will finally give up paying extremely high prices for a system that has very few good games when they can buy an Xbox 360 for cheaper then some of the package deals and get a library of better games.

4) I call 3 ‘hot’ titles for the Wii this year, the rest will suck.

5) Sony will continue to lie to their customers and survive on the fanboys throwing huge amounts of money at the feet of their God.  But no one will care because the PS3 has RIDGE RACER!!

6) The Xbox360 will continue to dominate the online play aspect of console gaming.  The PC will continue to mock LIVE.

7) The industry will begin to understand that most gamers don’t care that they can show off their photos on their console.  We want to play games.

Mobile gamers will finally realize that Cell phones are NOT good gaming platform.  PDA users will continue to look around clueless.

9) HellGate: London will be used as a model to teach new game developers how NOT to just concentrate on the game play and worry about the interface aspects of a game also.  (GREAT game.. Horrible interface..)

10) Some Jerk somewhere will kill someone over something and blame it on a video game. 

11) Rock Band will completely take over and destroy the Guitar Hero market.

=============================================================

Want to hear my prediction on a specific game coming out? 
    Just comment to this thread and ask! (all posts are moderated)

[EDIT - Cleaned up some grammar and did a rewrite in a few places to clear things up]  (Never said I was a good writer.   )

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.

 

—

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.
 
         Subscription Details: Here

HellGate: 0.5 Patch list.

General:
• All players now have 24 character slots.
• Fixed a known issue with the inventory user interface that caused the client to lock up.
• Fixed a bug which caused the Mini-game to sometimes become stuck.
• Added a /help command to provide assistance using available / commands.
• Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

Connection Issues:
• Fixed known issues which sometimes caused players to be disconnected and receive an erroneous network error message.
• Fixed an issue where some home routers would disconnect a user due to an inactive connection.
• Fixed known bugs which sometimes disconnected players during multiplayer quests.
• Fixed problems with NetLimiter 1.30 and some older versions of Norton Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus which would make the user entirely unable to connect to the game.

Chat:
• Made several chat interface improvements and the text entry more intuitive.
• Chat window is now open by default in multiplayer.
• Fixed chat window closing when traveling between zones.
• Fixed several cases where the chat window would obstruct other UI components.
• Chat context (such as Party and Guild) is now more clearly defined in the text entry window, including a color-coded border.
• Chat window is now more transparent.
• Added /g command. This is equivalent to /gchat command (guild chat).
• Whisper text now shows up on all chat tabs.
• Whisper messages and admin announcements auto-open the chat panel.
• Auto-switch to the appropriate tab (such as Party and Guild) if you type text to that channel and are not in a tab that shows the text.
• PageUp/PageDown cycle through chat tabs when text entry is active.
• Chat panel now auto-opens if you type text and press Enter while the panel is closed.
• Chat text entry deactivates after entering text.
• Chat panel no longer closes if you press Enter on a blank line.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Items:
• Fixed known bugs that caused players to sometimes lose items.
• Fixed a bug with the Nanoforge that caused it to inaccurately modify the stats of higher-quality items.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Unique items to drop without special properties. Old unique items that did not have special properties are not changed by this patch. We are looking into whether we can fix the old items, but we don’t currently have a solution.

Quests:
• Fixed various known issues which prevented players from being able to continue interrupted side-quests.
• Quest items should no longer remain in the player inventory after the associated quest has been completed. Players with old quest items (such as Train Parts) associated with quests they’ve already completed or no longer have should find these items removed upon logging in.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from receiving credit for killing the “5 Lies” in The Hellgate quest. Players should now be able to properly advance in this quest.
• In order to obtain the Fawkes Force Five item, the player must have completed Stopping Some Guy quest and not have the ‘Blueprints of Fawkes Force Five’ or ‘Fawkes Force Five’ in their inventory or stash. If they completed the quest and don’t have the Blueprints or Fawkes Force Five, then it rewards them with a completed Fawkes Force Five.

Engineers:
• Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.

PvP:
• Fixed an incorrect modifier causing Special Effect Attack Strengths in PvP situations to be much higher than intended.

World Movement:
• Fixed known issues which occasionally prevented characters from being able to load or switch instances.
• Fixed several issues with players getting stuck in the world.
• Fixed a bug causing players to become stuck at St. Pauls in Nightmare difficulty.
• Portals to party members should now automatically close if the associated party member leaves the game.