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DorkCoffeez

Join Date 03/2006

+115

Hellgate, we barely knew ye.

Years ago when I found out that Bill Roper was creating a team at his new company and the description of the game was called and I quote "Diablo 3D" with embarrass on the three twice if you get my meaning. To quantify all of the emotions wrapped up in this article I must explain the past several years of gaming for me.

In high school Diablo came out and I was hooked. For my spring break I was grounded with with my best friend while all others were away. During the day we would work, then go home and play Diablo until we beat it, several times. Once Diablo 2 came out I was rooted deep into college and work. However every friend I had (and I do mean all of them) was playing it. We played it all the time. I failed history of Shakespear because of that game. It has been installed on every machine I have owned since as my wonderful back up. So when I heard Hellgate, saw the fantasic animation by blur, I told everyone I knew and waited like a kid for Christmas morning.

It is for that reason that I think the fall of Hellgate was more harsh than most because I think my story isn't unique. Many fans were just as crazed for the Diablo magic lightning to strike again. Some of my friends even went so far as to buy the life time subscription to the game. They did this though at the insistent pleas of caution I had thrown out in complete contradiction to years of praise. I did this as I played what became boring, tedious, and just not captivating at all. I was running down the same tunnel over and over and worst of all my semi good machine made it look like pixilated *hurk*. The drastic difference between what I saw and my friends with the insanely powerful machines was a totally different game. I was, and I mean this, heart broken.

Now several posts have gone up stating that even with the collapse of the company the servers are still up. The funny thing is I still install the game randomly just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong or missed something very critical that made it into a great game. Normally I face a game thinking that it won't be great so that my expectations are not destroyed but in this case I really wanted it to be really good. I mourn the passing of Hellgate and now look forward to Diablo 3 to ease the pain I have endured in my child like heart. In the mean time I will be back on battle net. Look with anything prefixed "Bass" and venting agression like a angry bull on crack in a china... stadium? Well you get the idea.

Seabass

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Cant stardock save it? Surely with Flagship in bankruptcy the price tag might be right...

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I honestly think that will all the negative press, the major troubles in code, and many other things piled on the regarded unfinished product that the price would be just too high for anyone. You would have to devote a new development team, they would have to learn the code, engine, resources, and more than that you would have to get people interested in it again.

I do NOT speak for offical Stardock policy in any of that. These are just the musings of a gamer and nothing more.

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I think that Hellgate occpies a uniques position in time. We are currently at a point time where crazed D1/D2 fans (I literally lost a summer to each of these games) have aged into a audience (college students and the like) that could, if given the circumstances, drive the development of a game.

This is all theory, but has any publisher tried to do an open source-ish approach where say modular sections of a game could be open and fixed by the community. And if this has not been tried, would Stardock not be a good candidate?

note: yes i know there are open source game and that this model has a crap load of holes, but you never know till you try

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Quoting dummey,

comment 3

has any publisher tried to do an open source-ish approach where say modular sections of a game could be open and fixed by the community.

Closest I can think of is the computer version of Oblivion. It shipped with an editor to make it easier for people to make new stuff. Its rating was changed after release because of a mod. There were a lot of people who played it specifically because mod X added Y feature. It wasn't officially an open-source game, but the game was so heavily modified (and those mods were used by such a large percentage of the users) that it was one in everything but name.

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And it was finally confirmed today that the servers will be closing in February of '09, for good. I feel bad for the folks that bought the lifetime memberships for $150.

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Yeah that just totally sucks. With out much of single player content really that pretty much is the death knell. With such an odd date I have to imagine that is when the lease is up.

I hate that I live in a world where Hellgate has to die and the servers are turned off,... but somehow the UO servers are still alive and kicking. Bleh

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personally i liked Hellgate, the graphics were pretty good when my computer could actually run them, & i always felt that the devs or whoever could do the work, could easily add more content into the game. it wouldnt b that hard to do. i also liked how the weapons could b customized so much & b upgraded pretty easily. its sad that Hellgate wasnt as good as it could have been tho

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I really wanted to enjoy Hellgate London but for some reason I just couldn't get into it.

It lacked something. I have fired it up a few times (single player) since I first bought it and tried to get something back from it and each time find myself bored quite quickly... I've tried quite a few of the classes and none of them have got my gaming juices flowing.

I'm currently still playing COH (love skirmish games against the PC for a 45 minute fix of fun), FarCry2, Sacred2 and Puzzle Quest. I played through D1 and D2 and their expansions and played quite a bit of D2 on Bnet. Of course like many PC gamers I have played ALOT of games since then. D1 and D2 are still up there in my top 20 for sheer atmosphere and playing time.

But Hellgate...so sad. The best thing to come out of Hellgate for me was the Mel Odom trilogy (books), Exodus, Goetia and Covenant. Actually 3 really good books! The idea for Hellgate was so promising. The books captured it well. The game didn't.

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Quoting QuantumArtist,

comment 1

Cant stardock save it? Surely with Flagship in bankruptcy the price tag might be right...

Unfortunatly no.

FSS no longer owns the IP, Hanbitsoft does (along with Mythos).

And while Hanbitsoft is making claims of "fixing" and continuing future support of HG:L, I foresee this as a problem. Any who are familiar with Korean MMO's know how much a grindfest they are.

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hellgate, a mediocre PREMISE, no actual story, and a crappy MMO. Nothing to bother saving.

Take the grind out of MMOs and there is nothing LEFT. MMOs are all ABOUT grind. Some people like this sort of things, but the rest of us are not very appreciative of a second job that you have to pay for.

I am trying to understand what all of you are talking about... You say you hate the game, yet you wish it was better or fixed somehow... why? there are dozens of diablo 2 clones that come out every yaer, many with much more potential then hellgate.

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First off, Hellgate: London was a fun game to play, I mean at first it was. Everything had a challenge in that game on single player. What most people seem to not grasp is that yes it is NOT exactly like a Diablo 2 Clone at all, but when you look at it, it was leaned MORE towards a World of Warcraft clone. My evidence to support this claim, look at the control schematic for the game, you don't fully focus on the mouse, you use the wasd keys to move, and the mouse to target/attack your opponents. Hmm, now where did I see this before...*cough*World of Warcraft*cough*.

Still yes there are other Diablo 2 clones out there, but keep in mind there are a few better clones out there, like Titan Quest, or say Space Siege, stuff like that. Hellgate: London, the people who made it, didn't realize or even try to remember what made Diablo II fun, now why the hell am I sounding like that one guy from Zero Punctuation. What the developers should have done is realized, "hey wait, let's look back at what made Diablo II so addicting and then emphasize on that and then add more features to make it really fun".

Then again I never tried multiplayer side of Hellgate: London, though taking the grind out of this one and you get one big pile of crap. What they should have done is looked at what made World of Warcraft so damn popular, and then worked on it without actually copying it. I mean sure in WoW once you're at max level that's it, you can't get higher, but there was a LOT MORE you can still do even with you being at 70 (80 soon). If they learned that aspect, then Hellgate: London COULD have been the next better WoW, had it been pulled off right.

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Quoting taltamir,

comment 10

hellgate, a mediocre PREMISE, no actual story, and a crappy MMO. Nothing to bother saving.
Take the grind out of MMOs and there is nothing LEFT. MMOs are all ABOUT grind. Some people like this sort of things, but the rest of us are not very appreciative of a second job that you have to pay for.
I am trying to understand what all of you are talking about... You say you hate the game, yet you wish it was better or fixed somehow... why? there are dozens of diablo 2 clones that come out every yaer, many with much more potential then hellgate.

Did you play the game ?

If so I cannot see how that would be possible given the utter ignorance of your comment.

First and foremost HG:L was not an MMO, it has both online AND offline play (just like Diablo did). it isn't a Diablo clone either (please site examples and give hard proof that it's a clone otherwise gtfo) Hell, it doesn't even play like Diablo.

Nor were you required to pay anything. You could spring for a sub or forego it. But I will say that it was the subscription method that killed HG:L (imo)

Second, there was no real grind in HG:L as there was a plethora of missions to help in level advancement.

Third, uh... the story behind and within HG:L was one of the more original one that I've seen in quite a while, and the Novels by Mel Odom were simply great.

No you didn't play the game, so stfu and dose your flames.

Btw, here's a couple links to MY Engineer character:

[url]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/ShadowGryphon/HGLcharacter.png[/url]

[url]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/ShadowGryphon/HGLcharacter2.png[/url]

(yes, thats the Lava dye kit)

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Yes, it plays like an MMO, offline... which is even sadder.

Third, uh... the story behind and within HG:L was one of the more original one that I've seen in quite a while, and the Novels by Mel Odom were simply great.

A million weak missions that basically say "go kill X of creature Y" without any real plot advancements for hours... I played it for 6 hours straight (at which point the game crashed and my character file got corrupted) and the story just would not move along. It had as much "Story" as WOW.

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Quoting taltamir,

comment 13

It does ?!

Please, do explain that.

Third, uh... the story behind and within HG:L was one of the more original one that I've seen in quite a while, and the Novels by Mel Odom were simply great.
A million weak missions that basically say "go kill X of creature Y" without any real plot advancements for hours... I played it for 6 hours straight (at which point the game crashed and my character file got corrupted) and the story just would not move along. It had as much "Story" as WOW.

Actually the main missions specifically advanced the story line, all you had to do was pay attention.

So, you ONLY played six hours? heh heh ok.

online or offline ? If it was online, what server ? What Faction and Class ?

Mind how you answer this.

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