Hello everyone! No doubt you’ve all noticed that the Hellgate: London servers are down. This is due to the fact that the subscription function on HellgateLondon.com wasn’t working earlier. In order to allow the Halloween event to proceed as planned, Flagship Studios decided to open it up to all players, not just subscribers. The servers for the game went down for this maitenance around 9 PM ET or so. While the estimate was that the fix would take about a quarter hour, it has clearly taken longer as the servers have not resumed service. Additionally, HellgateLondon.com has been intermittently offline since the servers went down.
When this happened, HellgateGuru.com saw the most activity it has ever seen in its two and a half years of operation. The forum activity was so overwhelming that it crashed our servers and forced the site offline. Citizen, the fellow who operates our servers, came to our aid and righted the site. However, it went down again when the population nearly hit 2300 users. He brought the server up again but had to close the forums for the time being while the servers are made to withstand the onslaught of traffic we’re seeing tonight.
I want to express my deep appreciation for everyone’s patience and understanding while we try our damnedest to bring your Guru back to you all. Until the forums are up, I will keep the front page of Hellgate Guru updated with the latest information on the Hellgate: London server status. Happy Halloween to every Hellgater out there and hope to see you in-game very soon.
UPDATE:
HellgateGuru.com has successfully moved to its new servers! The forums are up and running again. Thanks to Citizen for making this happen to and every Guru out there for your patience!
– Scapes
Bill Roper has posted up on the Hellgate London website that the servers are officially live and he has thanked everyone who participated in the development of Hellgate London.
We want to say THANK YOU to all of the wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, families and significant others that have supported our crazy endeavor. Your understanding and encouragement over the past four years has been appreciated in ways we can’t properly express.
We also want to offer some special thanks to our publishing partners all across the world. You took a risk on us and our idea, and you’ve been supportive of our design philosophies and our development processes. In an atmosphere of, “ship at any cost” you encouraged us to take the time we needed to achieve our goals and make Hellgate: London the best game we could create.
And finally, I want to express my gratitude to all of the people at Flagship Studios and Ping0. What started out with a single, high-level idea has grown into a project and companies that are grander than anything we could have envisioned. The people that are here comprise the best teams I have ever had the honor to work with. And the passion and dedication and pure sweat they have poured into making this release a reality is second to none. Thank you all for your unwavering commitment.
Swordplay over at PlayHGL has posted up the first few photos from the South East Asia launch which show Max and Erich Schaeffer (Hope I spelt that right) as well as the heap of people waiting for launch.
There is also a cute Cabalist and Templar cosplayers in the crowd!
As the beta players aren’t under NDA, guess there is no reason to not announce this. As we pre testing players can login to our accounts, there is some interesting information to be found there. There is a separate tab there which has “badges”, where things like your dye kits, promotional pets, alpha and beta status (whether you participated in it or not), lifetime offer and a few other things are displayed.
On top of this there is a subscription tab which lists the subscription features as well as this important bit on payment:
Monthly at US $9.99 per month
Quarterly at US $27.97 per 3 months
Semiannual at US $51.94 per 6 months
Lifetime subscription at US $149.99 one-time
You can not pay these until you have your retail, but at least we can see that there are quarterly and semiannual options.
On top of that the subscription features are listed:
Hardcore Mode
Guild Creation and Management
Larger Stash
Additional Character Slots
Themed Events and Quests
Unique Event Items
Special Event Pets
As well as ongoing content:
New Levels to Explore
New Monsters
New Weapons
New Skills and Spells
New Character Classes
Raid-Level Areas
Seasonal / Themed Events and Items
Additional Difficulty and Game Play Modes
Additional PvP Modes and Rewards
Achievement Rewards
Advanced Guild Management Tools
Web-based Rankings and Character Viewing
We’re aware that some retailers have started selling Hellgate: London a day early. While the game had shipped to stores, they were not supposed to start selling copies until Wednesday, October 31st. This means that while some people have been able to get their hands on the game a day early, they aren’t able to get onto the multiplayer servers. This is because we are not starting service until Halloween. We apologize for any inconvenience and frustration that has been caused trigger-happy stores. When the servers go live, we’ll make sure to post a notice on www.hellgatelondon.com and www.flagshipstudios.com so that there is no confusion.
Thanks for your support of the game and we’ll see you online very soon!
To celebrate the release of Hellgate: London, we at Hellgate Guru have interviewed three of Flagship Studio’s extraordinary developers! Flagship Studios’ writer Ivan Sulic, community manager Kaiser Hwang, and video editor Brennan Leyoub have agreed to sit down and chat with us for a huge and specially prepared interview.
Here’s a snippet on the creation of Hellgate’s storyline:
What was it like writing the story of Hellgate: London?
Ivan: It was a lot of back and forth. I would come up with something, edit it based on comments, change it based on requests, edit it again because of tech alterations, then cut it altogether because it didn’t work or someone hated it. Sometime later, somebody would want that same something put back in, only different. And then there are the conveyance limitations… There’s only so much a man can do to captivate an audience with 150 word monologues. It’s all that plus deadlines. Many, many deadlines. But, I’m happy with the way it turned out, all things considered.
Of course, regardless of what goes into the game, pleasing everyone is impossible. So, 50 extremely vocal people will demand something be changed, that decision will get approved (or vetoed, depending on what we feel is best), and the content may be changed… Suddenly, 100 people who loved what was originally there and had no reason to complain in the first place would turn around and say, “WTF? You took out my favorite part. Why the heck did you do that?” That’s just the way it goes.
The hellgates are opening! This just in from HellgateLondon.com:
Hey everyone. Sorry for the short notice, but in the next 15 minutes or so, you’ll be able to hop into the game and start creating characters. This goes for both the US and EU servers. Get to it!
More updates to follow…
Community Manager Kaiser also posted a similar heads-up on Guru a few minutes ago. Go, go, go!
UPDATE:
Bit of a delay.
Hey everyone. Sorry for the short notice, but in the next 15 minutes or so at 1:30PM PDT, you’ll be able to hop into the game and start creating characters. At 5:00PM PDT, the game will open up to everyone else. This goes for both the US and EU servers. Get to it!
Will update again when more information is available.
UPDATE 2: I managed to contact Ivan Sulic to ask if Flagship Studios had something to report to the community.
Scapes
We’ve got 238 members in our IRC chatroom all asking for updates about the servers. Is there something I can pass along to them?
Ivan Sulic
From Bill [Roper]…
We’re aware that some retailers have started selling Hellgate: London a day early. While the game had shipped to stores, they were not supposed to start selling copies until Wednesday, October 31st. This means that while some people have been able to get their hands on the game a day early, they aren’t able to get onto the multiplayer servers. This is because we are not officially starting service until Halloween. We apologize for any inconvenience and frustration that has been caused trigger-happy stores. When the servers go live, we’ll make sure to post a notice on www.hellgatelondon.com and www.flagshipstudios.com so that there is no confusion.
From me… We’re all working to get things up as soon as humanly possible.
Scapes
Will pass this along immediately. Thanks.
The US servers have since come up while the EU servers are still pending.
UPDATE 3:
I’ve just received a call from Flagship Studios telling me that the EU servers are up as well.
– Scapes
If you live in Singapore, you may be shocked by the front page of Today, which opens up with the headline, “LONDON BURNING“. The news follows that “Tens of thousands are dead and countless more wounded after a calamity of the most unbelievable proportions befell London…” Yikes!
Hellgate: London is definitely making the headlines, so be sure to check out what the hype is all about in the following scans of Today, which is dated on October 30, 2007.
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
