I can imagine. I've seen some really withering criticisms in those forums...

I think there was some confusion about what the game was going to be initially, [particularly] free play versus subscribing. I think there's still a lot of that. It's honestly confusing to me about the way people react to the subscription option in Hellgate. It's been more of a challenge to us than we anticipated. The whole idea was to give everybody what they wanted. Because we're doing this hybrid model, it's almost like people try to figure out how we're screwing them... but we're not! For subscribers, it's actually less than other MMOs like Tabula Rasa or World of Warcraft [$9.99 versus $14.99]. We're not trying to hose you, we're just trying to give people what they want.​

One of the biggest complaints is about the variety of the levels: despite being in London, you fight in dungeons and basements and sewers an awful lot.

We re-flowed the level layouts in the final version, with a focus on theming the Acts, so that should help. We probably have as many, if not more, level variations in Hellgate as we did in Diablo 2. The reason it feels different is because the game takes place in London or Hell. I think the Act changes in Diablo 2 were more striking - desert, forest, jungle - but if you look at the individual areas, it pretty much boiled down to forest, graveyard, underground caverns, and the Rogue's headquarters. That's pretty much Act 1 of Diablo 2.

But I don't wholly disagree [with the complaint about a lack of visual variety], and I think it came off that way because the levels weren't themed really well [in the earlier versions of Hellgate]. Theming Acts really helped things feel different. We didn't add any areas, but the game now feels far more thematic because we tweaked the layouts and graphic look for each Act. That's one of the big changes we made in the last month of development.

Here's another popular complaint: In Hellgate, weapons are far more useful than skills -- my Marksman mostly used his gun, not his skills and abilities. Will you further tweak skills to make them more useful? Would you ever consider totally re-doing the current skills?

We will never completely re-do skills, but we will always look at them. The final version has a seen many skill changes. What we wanted to do in Hellgate was to make the weapons into spell-delivery systems. Skills in Hellgate alter the way you use your primary weapon, such as the Marksman's grenades.

The other thing is, players have had a long time in Diablo 2 to figure out all the different character builds. Honestly, players haven't had much time to [experiment] in Hellgate with different skills and builds. In Diablo 2, a lot of the skills outright sucked. It's also very different in Hellgate, because skills grow with you as you level. In Hellgate, we didn't want people to regret putting points into early-level skills. Obviously we'll continue to tweak and balance the skills, but Hellgate uses a very different skill system from D2 and people will figure it out.​