07-18-2008, 07:11 AM
Quote:If World of Warcraft did not exist, how differently would Flagship Studios have fared?
As others have said, the failure of HG:L is not something that can be laid at the feet of WoW. HG:L was released way before it was ready (although EA is often blamed for this, as far as I can tell it was FFS who did it out of financial necessity). While there's obviously some overlap in audiences, I think there was a big opportunity for HG:L to pick up a lot of ARPGers who didn't like EQ/WoW style MMORPGs, but the bugs and incompetence, plus visceral resistance to subscriptions for an ARPG, killed that.
Without dwelling on the problems of HG:L (and believe me I could write an essay on that topic), what's really sad is that the game is just now coming into its own. The combat system, item system and classes have always been good IMO (though not everyone agrees, of course). They aren't D2 clones but are done in an interesting and different way, and I've enjoyed playing every one of the six different classes.
A big problem with the original released game was a feeling of monotony with the environments, but those have been expanded for subscribers (that continual expansion of the game being why they neeeded subscriptions). The latest patch 2.0 on the test servers has several new random instance types that are the best they're created so far. It genuinely feels a little spooky, for example, to run through a modern office building killing demons in the cubicles.
Unfortunately, it's hard to see how that patch will ever be polished for release on the live servers, or if those servers remain up at much longer, or how any further development could take place at this point (except conceivably for the asian markts).