As you may or may not know, the inclusion of LAN play or the lack thereof in Hellgate: London has been the subject of discussion for months on the Hellgate Guru forum. Flagship’s Ivan Sulic has spoken up and clarified the matter:
As of April 28, 2007…
There will be no LAN play in Hellgate: London.
Why?
It’s a security risk. We have closed servers. We don’t want other people learning how to circumvent our laser grid of defenses. We don’t want other people running their own fake HG:L servers and ripping people off.
Why does it suck and why is it good?
No LAN doesn’t suck at all. I know, I’m supposed to say things like that. It’s somewhere in my job description. But when you really think about it… Who the fuck cares? LAN was great when we didn’t have broadband. It’s also awesome if you’re willing to lug your stupid computer around all over the place. But HG:L runs on closed servers and we have free online multiplayer that’s every bit as robust as Diablo II. So why even bother with LAN?
You can discuss the topic on our forum. And while you’re at it, Ivan has also posted a topic on the subject of Dual-Monitor Support which you can read here. Here’s what he had to say on that:
Hellgate: London does not feature dual monitor support.
Why?
The better question is “Why would we ever support two monitors?” There’s no cockpit. There’s no rearview mirror. There’s no dire need of extra peripheral vision. Heck, the main character is in the center of the screen!
Dual Monitors would suck unless we seriously reworked character and UI positioning and we’re not going to do that this late in the game for a relatively small segment of the market…especially since it wouldn’t make Hellgate any more enjoyable than it is now. In fact, it’d probably just make the game worse.
To mark the end of the Mythos Alpha and the beginning of the new Mythos Closed Beta, Mythos Guru has been given a fresh coat of paint. Following in the footsteps of Hellgate Guru, the new design features all of the cool stuff offered by Hellgate Guru’s current design. Be sure to drop by Mythos Guru to check out the new look, if you haven’t already.
Today marks the fifth and last day of the “Hellgate Week” feature at 1up, concluding with full transcripts of two interviews that 1up conducted at Flagship Studios the day after playing the game. First up, Dave Brevik, followed by Bill Roper. The interview feature consists of more than 7000 words, spanning 7 pages.
If you value your eyes, you can watch the video interview with Bill Roper instead. Here’s a bit on the game’s genre:
1UP: What’s up with people trying to shoehorn the game into different categories, and seeming to miss the idea that it’s just an action-RPG? I mean, what else would you expect from this team? It’s going to be an action-RPG. Except everybody wants to say, oh, it’s a first-person shooter, or it’s an adventure game…what’s going on there? Why do you think that’s happening?
BR: People like to have easy ways to describe things. They want that five-second marketing bullet. And I think when you start breaking outside of those boundaries and designing something that is outside of the box, they still want to have a label for it. And it gets harder and harder to put a label on it. I remember we used to have religious arguments that would be occurring in the press and the fanbase over Diablo II about “is this really an RPG or not.” And there’d be all this discussion why it was and why it wasn’t.
And we think we’re going to have a lot of those same types of arguments occur. What is Hellgate? Is it an RPG? Is it an FPS with RPG elements? Is it an RPG with FPS elements? And then there’s the whole online scope of it as well. What is it online? Is it this, is it that? And it’s the kind of thing where we just want to make a fun game. And that’s always the goal: making a game that’s fun. And as we start adding different elements and different experiences that we’ve had and different influences, a game takes shape out of that that really becomes, then, what it is. It is what it is is maybe the easiest way to describe it, but that looks really crappy on the back of a box or in a marketing call-out. Hellgate: London: It is what it is…
We always pitch it as it’s an action-RPG. That’s what it is at its core. But then it has a lot of other layers and elements that we really do think are going to be attractive to other gamers.
Interestingly not overtly connected to 1UP’s Hellgate: London Week, Garnett Lee interviews Flagship Studios’ David Brevik in this eight-minute video. Topics include gameplay, quest design, and how the company operates in hypercrunch mode.
Thursday has arrived and served up two scoops of sweet Hellgate: London Week goodness. Perhaps the most anticipated article of the week, we have been treated to a piece that details Hellgate: London’s mad phat lewtz. Suffice to say, we’ve come a long way from “Godly Plate Of The Whale”.
Rounding out the day, the 1UP.com authors who wrote the re-review of the entire Diablo series on Day Three have shared their fond memories of the franchise that defined a genre.
– Scaper-X
As if 1UP.com’s Hellgate: London Week wasn’t sufficient coverage, Garnett Lee, author of the lengthy preview that was featured on Day Two, has shared more of his experience playing Hellgate: London in his 1UP.com blog.
For the Hellgate: London cover story running this week I got one of those particularly cool opportunities that come with the job every so often. Monday a week ago I spent the afternoon and part of the evening at Flagship studios playing the game with Bill Roper. The magnitude of that wasn’t lost on me, but what makes it especially cool is that having done a number of demos, meetings, presentations, and interviews with Bill before, I wasn’t going in cold. So, what wound up happening is that we hung out, just two guys, shooting the shit, and geeking on this really cool game.
This casualness did result in one kinda funny thing, Bill wanted his turn to drive every so often too, and he wasn’t adverse to bogarting the keyboard a little. That in itself says something about the game though. By this point in the process he’s no doubt played it umpteen million times. Yet it still sucked him in just as easily as it did me.
That’s exactly how it felt during our raids of Flagship Studios: casual, chill, and “gimme the keyboard” (in a good way). As for the screenshot, I loves me some hellriftin’ action. Kudos go to SuE for the find.
– Scaper-X
Kaiser Hwang, the new Ping-0 Senior Community manager who recently introduced himself on our forum has been interviewed by our Teutonic friends at inGame.de.
inHellgate.de: Can you explain what exactly you are doing as the new Senior Community Manager? Could you also explain how you will work together with Ivan and Brennan - what is your mission?
Kaiser: My mission is to make Ivan and Brennan my personal cooks because there’s nothing… oh, wait, that’s my other mission.
As Senior Community Manager, I’ll have a number of responsibilities. Most importantly, I’ll be making sure that the Hellgate: London community has a voice, and can communicate not only with us here at Flagship, but also with each other. The game is great for multiplayer, after all. J I definitely want to the Hellgate community to the best out there — and seeing the support that’s already out there without the game even in stores, I don’t have many doubts it will be.
As you may or may not know, Ivan is spending more time these days writing for the game, and Brennan is working on lots of video-related stuff for both the game, and for the community. Though they both try their best to be everywhere at once (y’know, like Muad’Dib…), the more they have to do, the less time they have to do each thing. Ultimately, the three of us will work together on everything, but you’ll likely be seeing me more often than not.
Angelace, IAH Games’ Community Manager for Hellgate: London has a Hellgate: London blog that’s just gone live. She introduces herself in her first post and goes on to talk about some of her first-hand experiences with Hellgate: London. Here’s a snippet:
I recently had the FANTASTIC opportunity to play Hellgate: London at Flagship Studios in San Francisco and interact with the development team there. It was like a dream come true for me - a completely surreal experience.
Two words immediately came to my mind when I first laid my eager paws on the game.
Bloody. Awesome.
Damn right. That said, we’re definitely going to keep a close eye on her blog. Thanks for linking to Hellgate Guru, Angelace!
Mythos Testers, Huge News in the Mythos Kingdom! We have successfully completed the Alpha portion of Mythos testing! Your support and assistance have vaulted us towards the next step in our development, the Mythos Closed Beta. We will be taking some weeks off from updating the content of the game, letting the development crew in Seattle focus on coming back with an all-new expanded experience in the Closed Beta. As a tester, you need to know several things. First, we are going to keep the current build up as much as we can, but there is no guarantee that it will always be up. There will be no, or very few, content additions or balance tweaks, even though we are fully aware of existing imbalance which will be addressed in the upcoming Closed Beta build. Instead, it will be a playground for the network programmers to perfect their technologies. You are welcome and encouraged to continue playing at your leisure, though we may ask that everyone come in from time to time. Second, you will all automatically be the group that starts the Closed Beta. Finally, we will still be adding people from time to time, so check your account for invitations. Stay tuned for further announcements, news, screenshot teasers, and more here on www.mythos.com!
Exciting times! Welcome to the interim before the next stage, all! (Normally we post Mythos news on Mythos Guru but this was rather big news.)
– Scaper-X
The hump day of 1UP.com’s Hellgate: London Week has brought us a double-header! We’ve been treated to a modern look at the entire Diablo series, summarizing the games and their histories as far as version 1.11 of Diablo II: Lord Of Destruction. Additionally, they re-rank the games.
To follow, we have a three-page article in which 1UP.com does quickie interviews of some big names at Flagship Studios. And Tyler gets to mention his hat, woot!
– Scaper-X
Hellgate Guru was founded in mid-2005 and has ever since been one of the most popular fan sites and forums devoted to Hellgate: London, catering to a wide range of interests, as well as having a dedicated team of staff members who keep the website full of constant updates, news and generate activity and hype around the game. More
