Editorial Roper on HG:L rocky start and free content for all

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Hellgate: London

<b>Bill Roper</b> is once again <A href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=185252">discussing the rocky release</a> of <a href="http://www.hellgatelondon.com">Hellgate: London</a> on <a href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/">Computer and Video Games</a>. Topics include the term <i>flagshipped</i>, subscriber and non-subscriber goodies, problems cropping up at the last minute, and so on. Here's a clip:
<br>
<blockquote> "There is this huge misconception that we aren't doing things for our free players," says Roper. "A massive amount of work went into the patches after the game came out, as well as what's in The Stonehenge Chronicles, and that's available to everyone. All of the class rebalances, the PvP duelling arena, the numerous UI changes, group-play balance, quest work, item and mod issues being addressed (as well as a new upgrade system), crafting and more are there for everyone. We're very dedicated to providing updates and a better experience to everyone who plays the game."</blockquote>
<br>
I still like the term <i>free player</i>, as though you didn't sell out $50 for the game.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[Kingston]

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to get patches! Rejoice!

 

[Herbert West]

But you have to pay taxes for loot that you gather, right? Micropayments are such a neat thing. If not then ZOMG, I'm awed greatly by his dedication to the players!

 

[shihonage]

John Romero is still making some sort of games true to his Dangerous Dave nature, and George Broussard simply hasn't released anything yet.

Bill Roper released a steaming pile of crap, ignoring the early warnings, and now dodges questions during interviews (see the single-player question). Out of all fallen video game gods, he disappoints me most.

 

[RampantCoyote]

Yeah, the "Free Player" thing stuck in my craw, too. I thought, "Wow, I didn't know I could play it for free! Maybe I'll try it out after all."

But I knew what he was saying. Different worlds. I come from indie-land where free players literally means, "The people who haven't paid us a single cent."

 

[someone else]

"A massive amount of work went into the patches after the game came out

A massive amount of work went into debugging before the game came out.

Be grateful!

 

[Ryuken]

Out of all fallen video game gods, he disappoints me most.

Video game god? He was the face of Blizzard (North) and now of Flagship Studios but he hasn't really designed or programmed a game like Romero or Broussard did. He is more the PR/Story/Manual/Producer/Orcish voice guy than anything else. Somebody has to talk to the press of course...

 

[Hazelnut]

I still like the term <i>free player</i>, as though you didn't sell out $50 for the game.

Can we assume that this was an intentional typo? :wink:

 

[HanoverF]

I had quit playing earlier after a mission where you had to go 5 maps away to accomplish something, and I needed to run it three times because the game would crash along the way and you'd get sent back to the starting point. The very next mission was like 7 maps away, so I decided fuck it, and stopped playing altogether. I was extremely bored one day and decided to see just what "fixes" had gone into Shitgate. Ran it and it patched up, then it told me I needed to get <i>another</i> patch from the website and install that, so I download this 300mb patch (299.5mb of which, I'm sure is content for the idiot subscribers and the other is the patch) from their slow shitty server. So now 45 minutes later when it finishes downloading I run it and it pops up some update screen for a few seconds and then flashes an error message that the patch is corrupted and I needed to download it again. I was hoping to get a few quick laughs at the horrible piece of shit, but instead I got flagshipped and just deleted the diseased thing.

 

[Section8]

My favourite Hellgate memory is when I installed the demo and it invalidated my copy of Vista until I uninstalled it. Good times.

 

[Binary]

My favourite Hellgate memory is when I installed the demo and it invalidated my copy of Vista until I uninstalled it. Good times.

Vista and HGL? Man you like suffering.

BTW Mythos also from Flagship is an interesting free MMORPG... now if only they'd tune the engine so that it'd run on Wine...