Hellgate:London

[oldmandennis]

First two sections of act 4 are the same as act 3... well the sun seems to be breaking through the clouds a bit, but other then that.

The impending release of WoW 2.3 and the desire to finish up some stuff like Leatherworking I wanted to have in place for that has cut my HGL time to almost nothing. Maybe D2 was monotonous too, but the random reward thing was pretty new for it. This one seems to be lacking.

Once word of mouth turns against a game that is hoping for subs, its probably all over.

[Cryptic]

I believe it would be inappropriate to label HG:L anything but a complete disaster. Even excluding the quadruple billing issue and the Asian server wipe, it’s glaringly clear that the game was rushed into production in a very crude beta state. Subscribers are basically funding the continuing design of the game, since the money apparently ran out and they had to ship. Wake me in 12 months, if the game has any stability; although Age of Conan and Warhammer will be out by that point, so it’s probably irrelevant. A shameless money grab by FSS; I’ll never buy their games again. Clearly the Diablo magic is gone.

[ShadowHM]

I believe it would be inappropriate to label HG:L anything but a complete disaster.
<snip some more negative comments>
A shameless money grab by FSS; I’ll never buy their games again. Clearly the Diablo magic is gone.

And here I feel rather the opposite. :P

I have been having fun playing; there are bugs but they have not impaired my enjoyment of the game. I am sorry to know you feel that way.

Perhaps in a year or so, you wil be ready to give it another try.

[Warlock]

I believe it would be inappropriate to label HG:L anything but a complete disaster. Even excluding the quadruple billing issue and the Asian server wipe, it’s glaringly clear that the game was rushed into production in a very crude beta state. Subscribers are basically funding the continuing design of the game, since the money apparently ran out and they had to ship. Wake me in 12 months, if the game has any stability; although Age of Conan and Warhammer will be out by that point, so it’s probably irrelevant. A shameless money grab by FSS; I’ll never buy their games again. Clearly the Diablo magic is gone.

I disagree. I've really enjoyed the game; it does have flaws but the underlying game is strong.

[Artega]

I've enjoyed the game a lot so far (recently completing Normal difficultly with a single player generalist Evoker). Very impressed with the character design - no more "I'm specced for Frozen Orb so I will never use anything else". Yes, it has a few rough edges and probably will for a while but I haven't had so much fun with a computer game in a long time.

I played through the demo as both available classes (Blademaster and Marksman, though I thought the melee class was called Templar.)

Thoroughly unimpressed. I had more fun playing the Seven Lances Diablo II mod - and probably would have more fun doing so, even today - than playing such a craptastic game. A free mod is better than a full-priced retail game that came out probably six or seven years later. It's sad, really.

[Quark]

I believe it would be inappropriate to label HG:L anything but a complete disaster. Even excluding the quadruple billing issue and the Asian server wipe, it’s glaringly clear that the game was rushed into production in a very crude beta state. Subscribers are basically funding the continuing design of the game, since the money apparently ran out and they had to ship. Wake me in 12 months, if the game has any stability; although Age of Conan and Warhammer will be out by that point, so it’s probably irrelevant. A shameless money grab by FSS; I’ll never buy their games again. Clearly the Diablo magic is gone.

If you buy it for the MMO-style parts, yeah, it looks pretty bleak right now.

If you buy it to enjoy it like you did Diablo, especially if you were more of a loner or in a closed atmosphere, it's quite enjoyable. Certainly worth the retail box value.

[Thecla]

I believe it would be inappropriate to label HG:L anything but a complete disaster. Even excluding the quadruple billing issue and the Asian server wipe, it’s glaringly clear that the game was rushed into production in a very crude beta state. Subscribers are basically funding the continuing design of the game, since the money apparently ran out and they had to ship. Wake me in 12 months, if the game has any stability; although Age of Conan and Warhammer will be out by that point, so it’s probably irrelevant. A shameless money grab by FSS; I’ll never buy their games again. Clearly the Diablo magic is gone.

I think this is a very harsh summary, but unfortunately not one without some truth to it. Probably, the bottom line is how HG:L plays as a game: if it's a good one it may yet succeed. But even if HG:L turns out to be a really good game (for whatever audience) this launch has done them no favors.

[Artega]

I think this is a very harsh summary, but unfortunately not one without some truth to it. Probably, the bottom line is how HG:L plays as a game: if it's a good one it may yet succeed. But even if HG:L turns out to be a really good game (for whatever audience) this launch has done them no favors.

The world was barren and mostly lifeless in the demo I played. I don't think adding dozens of players milling about the station going HAY CAN I HAVE SUM PALADIUMM PLS will improve that, either. I've seen games made on the N64 that felt more alive and immersive than HGL was.

[Kevin]

The world was barren and mostly lifeless in the demo I played. I don't think adding dozens of players milling about the station going HAY CAN I HAVE SUM PALADIUMM PLS will improve that, either. I've seen games made on the N64 that felt more alive and immersive than HGL was.

I will say the demo was worse than the beta. There were mob types I ran into in the beta in same areas that the very limited demo had that just weren't in the demo. The demo had me not caring at all about the game but the 2 days of the EU-beta I played actually made me think it might be worth getting for a little "fling" play through it with a few toons play through it with my wife a time or two just to see some of the multi stuff but it wouldn't hold my interest for a long time.

[LochnarITB]

At this point, while I can have fun with HGL, I WOULD NOT recommend this game to anyone. As you pass the beta caps, it is obvious just how little internal testing was done. There are huge bugs that could not possibly have been missed with any real amounts of play time. There are mob issues that say to me that anyone playing hardcore is either a gaming god or a total masochist. There are still crashes and I can guarantee that they will happen at the worst time - leaving the game will reset some of the quests' progress and there are no shortcuts to some areas you will then need to get back to. I find myself having fun and then one of these issues smacks me in the face and I get pissed off, something I can get plenty of elsewhere and don't look for in my gaming experience. I just don't see multiplayer and, more specifically, guilds adding much to the game either. Overall, there is nothing I can see to keep me coming back over and over, a la the Diablos, once you've gone through with the different classes.

I wanted this game to be another life stealing addiction, but it won't be so.:(I would love to be proven wrong, and even find reason to subscribe. They have a lot of work to do, very quickly, if that is to be.

[Bolty]

I wanted this game to be another life stealing addiction, but it won't be so.:(I would love to be proven wrong, and even find reason to subscribe. They have a lot of work to do, very quickly, if that is to be.

Just wondering something. WoW was also a complete friggin mess when it was released. Is HG:L even worse?

-Bolty

[LochnarITB]

Just wondering something. WoW was also a complete friggin mess when it was released. Is HG:L even worse?

-Bolty

They really can't be compared. World of Warcraft is just that, a world. The mess that it was(is?) in large part resulted from the depth and breadth of what there was to do. As your toon matured out of its little starting zone, the variety of directions they could go grew and grew. HGL is very linear. I would call it a maturing of the Diablos into a FPS that is getting hyped as a MMORPG seemingly mainly because people can play together in a manner very similar to Diablo and it offers guilds. The game's fun comes in its frenzy and run and gun play, but that frenzy is also what needs work big time. There are just too many times when you get overwhelmed by situations you can't avoid. It also doesn't offer strategy in the way that a WoW group or raid would. It is more "put your backs together and kill or be killed". Because of its linearity and its simplified "strategy", it should have been much easier to test. Fill a room with computers, teens and game dvds and they should have shortly run into most of what people are having problems with. The only way they could have been missed is if all human factor was taken out and the "testing" was strictly scripted. This is very clearly a case of Big Publisher telling Little Developer "I don't care if you need more time - deadline is up, ship it!"

[Monkey]

Just wondering something. WoW was also a complete friggin mess when it was released. Is HG:L even worse?

-Bolty

I rolled characters on launch day in both games. The kinks in the system are nothing worse than WoW's issues (server queues, hourly crashes, imbalanced classes, etc.)--It's just been 3 years and no one remembers having to wait an hour at the login screen.

Hellgate doesn't have the depth of WoW because it's really focused on being an action game and not an immersive world. For example, if you want to meet a friend who is already playing:

In WoW, you'll join their party, find out where they are, and then use some combination of hearthing, flightlines, and riding a ground or flying mount to get there. Travel Time: 5-15 minutes.

In HG:L, you join their party, select "Party Portal" from their portrait and you're there. Travel Time: 5 seconds.

As for tactics, my friends and I (playing in a 3-person group) are up through act 4, and we've found that it's much more difficult (and we die a lot more) when we don't employ "WoW-style tactics," with sticking together and pulling groups with LOS and other tricks. However, it still doesn't have the depth of WoW's Healer-Tank-DPS trinity--that is correct.

I really need to finish the whole thing on normal so I can write my hellgate review.;)

[Thenryb]

Just wondering something. WoW was also a complete friggin mess when it was released. Is HG:L even worse?

-Bolty

It is not even close to being as much of a mess as WOW was on release. In fact, imho, it is not even as close to being as much of a mess as D2 was on release (remember that Blizzard closed its public D2 forum because there were nothing but complaints). As others have indicated HGL is not nearly as complex as WOW and there is hardly any MMO feeling to it at all (which I like).

[oldmandennis]

Personally in WoW, I feel like you played through the opening blunders because you felt like the game was getting bigger and you wanted to be ready for it. Even if leveling a druid before the talent adjustments was pretty terrible, you know your raid needs another druid to cover MOTW so you keep on going.

There also seems to be a fair amount of people forgetting about things like loot lag.

[LochnarITB]

Am I missing something in HGL? Is there some huge world that nobody gave me the key to? I just don't see how the two can be compared. WoW was such a mess because there was such a vast amount of stuff to mess up. I don't see anything like that in HGL. It has linear levels just like the Diablos did. They may be randomly generated instances, but they are still the same material molded into different shapes. Items don't seem to be world based as in WoW, but rather generated per toon as per their class and quest needs. HGL should have been so much easier to test and it doesn't even make sense to relate it to things that were borked in WoW like login queues and loot lag. HGL just doesn't have the complexity that would lead to such issues.

[Thecla]

Just wondering something. WoW was also a complete friggin mess when it was released. Is HG:L even worse?

The main issues I remember with WoW were with server connectivity and network stuff, some of which was pretty bad. As far as that's concerned, despite some occasional network errors (and leaving aside some serious subscription/billing snafus) HG:L is significantly better (as you'd expect for an instanced game). But while I don't have any major difficulties playing HG:L, the game itself feels much less polished and more incomplete than WoW was, even at release (its unfinished talent system notwithstanding). Furthermore 90% of the bugs and annoyances in HG:L are things that were reported over and over again in the (highly compressed) alpha/beta, but still didn't get fixed. FSS should've spent at least a couple more months fixing up the game for release, but maybe they couldn't afford to wait any longer.

[Kevin]

The main issues I remember with WoW were with server connectivity and network stuff, some of which was pretty bad.

Yeah and some of that was simply because they had way more people getting the game than they anticipated. The servers simply couldn't handle the loads. Which was a bad thing for sure. But if the servers were up and the item database wasn't hammered the game itself didn't seem to have too many other game breaking bugs. The disconnects and the login queues were in themselves game breaking and there were minor bugs and no classes talents are remotely like they were at launch from what I remember but I seem to recall that most everything worked aside from all the horrible stuff related to the networking issues.

I got both D1 and D2 very near launch day and I simply don't recall either of them being too bad off but that was so long ago now I don't trust my memory. Guess I could go look back at Network 54 posts on the lounge to see. :)

[Ruvanal]

FSS should've spent at least a couple more months fixing up the game for release, but maybe they couldn't afford to wait any longer.

I suspect that this is the main reason for its release at this time. Consider that this is effectively a start up company and that they have been bleeding and hemoraging red on the finacial side with effectively almost nothing (possibly some advertising revenue) on their income side of thing for the last 2 years.

[Bolty]

I got both D1 and D2 very near launch day and I simply don't recall either of them being too bad off but that was so long ago now I don't trust my memory.

Oh ho ho...the Diablo 2 launch was horrifying. Don't remember how it would take sometimes up to a minute or more to pick up an item? The lag was game-breaking at launch. I was in college at the time and I remember playing at 3:00 AM because that was the only time the servers weren't lagged to hell and back, pun intended.

After a month or so, things got ironed out generally, but Blizzard was totally overwhelmed by the network traffic and lag conditions at launch. They later claimed it was a "good learning experience" they could take forward into WoW. Oops.

-Bolty