I've not played Hellgate: London, but I'm sure I must've passed it on the shelves in Gamestation (I'll never forget you, friend) way back when. Apparently, the original was a dark fantasy action RPG with roguelike elements and MMO subscription models before developer Flagship Studios shut down. Then it was re-released a bunch of times, with London giving way to Tokyo in one expansion. Now, Hellgate's original creator Bill Roper has announced he's working on a brand new Hellgate game under his new studio Lunacy Games.
]]>You can't keep a good game down, or a messy one either it seems. Over a decade after its stumbling 2007 launch sank developer Flagship Studios, action RPG Hellgate: London is due to return on November 15th, under the stewardship of Korean developer T3 Entertatinment and publisher HanbitSoft. The publisher claim it to be the very latest iteration of the game, complete with the Hellgate: Tokyo expansion that never made it to the original retail version, but had previously surfaced in an earlier (and since discontinued) free-to-play relaunch.
]]>As the less forgetful among you will recall, the guns'n'demons MMO is being resurrected despite a broadly unhappy reception and an early demise, with Korean dev T3 transplanting a free to play heart into it. While a select few have been allowed in previously, the unwashed masses (hullo!) will also get to peer suspiciously at it in just six days' time, when the open beta lands. It brings with it brand new modes for Hellgate's below-London adventuring. One of them, you may be unsurprised to hear, involves zombies.
Anyway, this open beta sounds a bit like one of those betas that's actually a launch. Damn you Google, you ruined the word 'beta' forever.
]]>Well, they're calling it closed, but it looks like anyone can sign up, and they're also offering the client download on the main site (and mirrors) for anyone to download. Anyway, this means the return of the long-dead action-RPG in a free-to-play guise. Will it work? Do we even care? I guess we'll find out pretty soon!
]]>'Tis a strange thing, to be posting a trailer for a game which came out four years ago, and died in the interim. Much-maligned MMO Hellgate: London is due for a free to play relaunch as simply 'Hellgate' later this year, at the hands of Korean rights-holders Hanbitsoft. It's apparently attempting to shrug off its embarrassing legacy and reposition itself as Serious Business, as the below 12 bloomin' minutes of pre-rendered, scene-setting hyper-earnestness reveal...
]]>Flagship, poor dead Flagship, made a game called Hellgate. It wasn't great, and not enough people bought it to save them from destruction. Now, however, the techno-fantasy action RPG is back, and will be relaunched in North America as a free-to-play title. No game can rest! All must live again under the banner of the undead F2P army! There's a website for the relaunch here, telling us that there will be a beta in June.
Game footage below!
]]>Gamasutra have a wide-ranging interview with Bill Roper, the juciest portion of which talks about how Hellgate: London went wrong. He says: "It still eventually comes down to dollars and cents and time. I mean, I think when Hellgate: London came out... we knew it needed another four to six months. The publishers knew it needed another four to six months. Everybody was all in. That was kind of the mindset.". And much more. Go read.
]]>This broke a couple of days ago, but it's the sort of thing worth mentioning in the Public Record Of PC Games that is RPS. I'll keep it short. Remember Hellgate closing? And then to open in the lands of not-us? Well, now it's to return to the lands of us. When I say "us", I mean "RPS". Not trying to start some kind of race war against anyone from South East Asia, where Hellgate was already going to happily play around. I leave the starting of race wars to Walker. Or Jim. Or, if he's in a particularly bad mood, Alec. I will never start a race war. Except against the 100m dash. I hate that with all my heart. DIE SHORT SPRINTS, DIE.
]]>After the phenomenal runaway success of Hellgate: London it was only a matter of time before there'd be an expansion... Justhangonaminute. Astonishingly this is not a mad lie. There really is to be a Hellgate: Tokyo. There's even a debut teaser to prove it, below. However, it's looking likely that the Korean owners, HanbitSoft, will be keeping the game and this new expansion inside Asia. Still, with the announcement of a new version of Mythos last week, it's interesting to see what happened next to the disastrous MMO.
]]>Or heaven, if you're one of the 12 people who liked it. We kind of lost track of what was going on with Flagship's flagship game after their messy demise, but looks like it managed to squeeze out a few more months of half-life. That's all over come next February though, when the gate to hell will be permanently sealed.
]]>The mystery behind the Flagship fiasco has produced much speculation. At last Bill Roper has spoken out, in an interview with 1Up. You can now learn about the last couple of months at Flagship in detail. And it looks like it really is the last couple of months at Flagship. Sad stuff.
]]>The Hellgate situation appears to be descending further into Hell. Hellgate Guru have translated this story in the Korean press where their Hanbitsoft are terribly mean about partners-in-Hellgate Flagship. "Selfish"? "Irresponsible”? You wouldn't be surprised if they went on to say they smelt bad too. The reason for the rancour is that they claim while they tried to find a deal to keep Flagship going, the founding-fathers preferred to just sack all the staff. They claim to be making good progress in getting the rights to Hellgate, and are preparing a lawsuit against the founding directors of Flagship. Our industry analyst thinks: Hanbitsoft must fancy Flagship. If they start pulling Flagship's pigtails, we'll know for sure.
]]>Those of us hoping for a fairytale ending to the snowballing Flagship Studios saga aren't going to get one. But we do get one of those ambiguous movie endings where whether the hero lives or dies after the credits roll depends on the viewer's rationalisation/wishful thinking. Yes, a weird story gets weirder: despite reports of their demise since Friday, the troubled studio behind Hellgate: London and Mythos still functions.
]]>What on Earth's going on with Flagship Studios? The short answer is it's not entirely clear yet. But some newsmen are claiming that the creators of Hellgate: London, and the forthcoming Mythos, are shutting up shop, with the ownership and IP of both games transferring elsewhere. Blimey. How did it come to this?
]]>I recently had a bit of a chinwag with Flagship COO Max Schaefer for Eurogamer. Primarily it's about free MMO Mythos, a game they sound supremely confident about: "Can we take down the big boys? I think we can take down some of them. And I'd like to put a dent in the others." He's also remarkably honest about its similarities to Diablo and WoW, adamant that being so is in their audience's best interests.
]]>If we paid attention to note the relative amounts of Online RPG noteworthy news, we'd be sure to note that today is the biggest day for noteworthy news since the previous noteworthy news day. Firstly, Bluesnews brings to our attention that Flagshipped discovered Guy Somberg's blog post about the state of affairs at Flagship. He rapidly deleted it, but Google-cache remembers all, where he despairs how people are leaving Flagship in droves. Meanwhile, over at Eurogamer, a NCSoft spokesman say that Tabula Rasa's sales are growing month on month. Which must be nice for them.
Full quotations beneath this linky-thing.
]]>We're hearing contradictory reports as to the success of the oft-maligned Hellgate: London. Well, we know it's not doing so well over here, but grindfest-lovin' Korea's another matter.
]]>Poor old Hellgate: London hasn't been off to a splendid start. One Wednesday it was revealed that customers were having their credit cards billed repeatedly, then to rub salt in that financial wound, even after paying people still weren't getting access to the members' benefits.
In the early hours of this morning, Hellgate developers Flagship posted this to their forum (I link to the unofficial forum, as the official site requires a login to even read it - sigh).
Tact doesn't appear to have been at the forefront of their approach, informing those who had been charged three or four times in the space of a couple of days, "We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused, although it impacted just 3% of people that requested to become subscribing members." That presumably doesn't provide much comfort to the 3% it's aimed at. However, Flagship assure players that the problem is now fixed, and they are reimbursing players now.
]]>The demo of Flagship Studios' demonic Big Smoke-based guns 'n' magic RPG has arrived. Oh yes. You can summon the 1.5gb beast from here, here, or here. This demonstration version of the game features two classes and a bunch of missions from the Holborn and Covent Garden sections of the game.
]]>Some of you may be hoping I'm going to run out of rubbishy song-title references if we do many more Hellgate stories. Sadly, I could do this all year.
Anyway - let's get on with those Beta impressions I promised you yesterday, eh?
]]>As the number of Beta Impressions of Hellgate spread across the net, deductive game-watchers will realise the embargo has lifted for us Journo sorts. Well, mostly. We can only use five grabs from the first part of the game or we'll be crushed by enormous fists. So, whilst other sites are doing useful things like telling you about the game, we're going to deal with a much more pressing question.
Is this really anything at all like London, or is Johnny Foreigner doing another Mary bleeding Poppins on us?
]]>I'm interviewing Flagship Studio's Ex-Blizzard-ite Bill Roper tomorrow for a magazine, so have been doing a little research into what sort of things the man's been saying recently. Some interesting stuff out there. Hellgate: London is a game which I've been, while not ignoring, I've been more waiting to actually actively have a chance to play the bally thing than following the hype. So, while this is a couple of weeks old, it's new to me. Newsweek's always excellent N'Gai Croal chatted to Bill Roper in two separate interviews this year, which he serialised in four parts. He's now lumped it together in one mega-interview which annoys me by asking all the sensible questions I'd have gone for, forcing me to actually apply my brain a bit harder than normal. Damn N'Gai Croal.
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