Hellgate:London

[Roland]

It should not be a subscription based game in the first place. Having it be one puts far too much emphasis on quantity of play over quality. If Flagship tries to beat World of Warcraft at the "best EverQuest clone of the decade" game, they are going to go down in flames. Neither dungeon hacks nor FPS are big "content" genres. Just make the game fun so people play it over and over. Flagship has single player lagging 2 patches behind multiplayer. Their priorities will always be screwed because their is no way they can provide sufficient content to subscribers to justify the price. So the good news is they will keep developing the game, thanks to the subscribers. The bad news is, they will never get to the important stuff. If they had made Stonehenge the first of several expansions, it could be on the back burner during these early months while they fix the various issues that need to be addressed.

I actually like the game, from what little I've had time to play.;) But their entire strategy on how to develop, market, and sell this game is about as intelligent as PETA's "Got Beer?" campaign. It's no wonder their official forums are virtually unreadable with all the disgruntled subscribers.

Hence I won't even touch the game until about June or July, let alone subscribe until I find the game worthy of paying for. So far, it hasn't even justified the initial investment, given how horrendously broken it was / is. I gave up on it when my 1-month subscription ended (I tried it for the content; it wasn't worth the money at the time, so I didn't renew).

There IS an incredibly fun game in there, somewhere. I'm still not sure if it's worth paying monthly for, but it has potential, at least. Throwing good content after bad before fixing the inherent flaws in the very core structure of the game, however, is not going to solve anything. Fix the core architecture, get SP up to the same speed as MP, and THEN start worrying about tossing out candy like it was a pinata. Otherwise, they will go down in flames, just as you said.

I wish them the best, but I'm not about to ride on a sinking boat. My gaming time is too little to be wasted on frustration.