Tiggs made a post on the Official Forums stating that both the official forums of Hellgate: London and Mythos will be shutting down.
On Friday, July 18th at Midnight (CST) the forums will be shutting down. We would like to thank everyone for being a part of this wonderful community and we hope to see you all again soon.
-Tiggs
See it for yourself. Thanks for the news tip, Swordplay. You shame me with your news finding abilities sometimes.
In breaking news, Korean news website TheGames.co.kr reports that HanbitSoft is taking full control over the Hellgate: London intellectual property from Flagship Studios. At present, HanbitSoft co-owns the IP, which was developed by Flagship Studios and published by Electronic Arts in Europe and the United States.
HanbitSoft states that the reason it is pursuing this course of action is because “It is hard for us to accept Flagship Studios’ requests for continued support in capital and funding any longer and because Flagship was being difficult”, and because it co-owns a direct stake in the IP, it therefore “has a say in reviewing and determining any course of action to be taken with Hellgate: London.”
HanbitSoft is expected to take full control over the IP. HanbitSoft goes on to state that in doing so, it will be able to “properly manage and develop Hellgate: London into a good game with proper content”, with its own in-house team of developers.
The report further states that the online service of Hellgate: London, which started in January 15, 2008 acquired 100,000 early users within the first two weeks of operation during which time HanbitSoft earned 3 billion won (approximately 3 million USD) for the sales of Hellgate: London in Korea. However, the number of players in the game significantly declined due to the lack of general out-of-the-box content and the sparsity of ongoing content updates. Since its Open Beta launch, Hellgate: London has gone from being the 9th most played game in Korea to 52nd post-commercial launch. (Source)
It’s anyone’s guess at this point as to what will happen to the Hellgate: London development team at Flagship Studios in San Francisco and how this will affect the development of Mythos, Flagship’s other game.
UPDATE: Flagship Studios has sent Hellgate Guru an official response via e-mail with regards to the story:
This story is an outright lie. We have no idea where they are getting their information from and have asked legal counsel to pursue the issue. We are mystified by Hanbitsoft’s conclusions and any attempt to take over the IP will be met with a strong and swift response, to “illegally take over the IP”. All right title and interest in Hellgate; London resides in Flagship Financing, LLC a wholly-owned subsidiary of Flagship Studios. We are outraged that Hanbitsoft would attempt to completely tarnish the reputation of its most vital developer. Hanbitsoft’s new management clearly does not understand the terms of its relationship with Flagship.
Because the story is already public, we feel that we would be doing a great disservice to the public by removing it from existence. We do however feel that it is only fair for us to publish an official response from Flagship Studios itself.
UPDATE #2: Respected industry website GamaSutra has confirmed massive layoffs are taking place at Flagship Studios today.
Gamasutra has received confirmation from a Flagship Studios representative that the Hellgate: London developer has seen significant staff cuts.
This morning, Gamasutra obtained information from a source close to the company indicating that staff at both the Flagship development team as well as online services subsidiary Ping0 were let go. Both companies operate out of the same building.
UPDATE #3: Someone claiming to be a lawyer representing HanbitSoft has requested for us to remove the story. We are ready to comply, but only if other websites and news sites reporting the story agree to do so as well:
We are U.S. attorneys for HanbitSoft. Your story is a repeat of a quote that is not accurate and we request that you pull it down. At the request of Flagship’s attorney, we must correct the record:
Please understand that the facts are (1) HanbitSoft is an exclusive licensee of both Hellgate and Mythos in Asia, with rights to sublicense the games; (2) in addition, HanbitSoft is a secured creditor who has been pledged the Mythos (but not the Hellgate) intellectual property as collateral for a loan; (3) Comerica, another secured lender, has been pledged the Hellgate intellectual property as its collateral for a loan; (4) Flagship Studios does not currently own the intellectual properties to either game, which are held in separate companies subject to the security interests of lenders, and Flagship Studios’ interest in those companies is also pledged to its lenders; (5) it is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open, but HanbitSoft hopes to work with Comerica and some of the team at Flagship to see if there is a way to continue to generate content to keep Hellgate online in Asia and to finish the development of Mythos.
UPDATE #4: Several of our readers have sent in word that the Subscription options within the Accounts page on the official website have disappeared, as has the ability to unsubscribe.
UPDATE #5: VE3D got in touch with Scapes
In a telephone conversation Flagship’s Community Manager, Evan “Scapes” Berman, refused to comment on the current situation at the studio, or whether he was still in the employment of the company. Instead, he insisted that I direct all questions to ex-Blizzard man, Bill Roper. As of this time neither Bill Roper, Tricia Gray (Flagship’s PR representative) or HanbitSoft’s lawyers have responded to email inquiries.
This just in off the front page of the offiial Hellgate London website:
This third installment of SneakShots comes from our art department in the form of a high-resolution wallpaper of the new Abyss Chronicles splash image. The wallpaper features a Cabalist in Darkform, a new Summoner skill in Patch 2. Additionally, the transformed Summoner is sporting new armor and focus items found only in the Abyss laid out behind him.
Darkform is one of eighteen new unique skills, three per class, learned through the acquisition of mysterious items found in the Abyss. The Summoner’s new skills are as follow:
Darkform (Level 10): Using this skill transforms the Summoner into a demonic being, exchanging the use of weapons for vicious claws. This skill also passively allows the use of dual focus items.
Dark Lord (Level 15): This skill passively grants a chance on successful attacks to summon up to 3 Shadow Minions to aid the Summoner.
Dark Offering (Level 20): Using this skill sacrifices a Shadow Minion to unleash a powerful attack against all enemies within range.
To find out more about what new features The Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) brings, check out the latest Test Center patch notes on the forums here. Care to explore the Abyss before it comes to the live servers? Click here to download the standalone Test Center patch!
Are you tired of having to pester Flagship Studios for small tidbits of news about the game?
Are you bored of not having any recent exclusives?
Are you eager to hear about some new and exciting information about Mythos?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you’ve come to the right place!
That’s right! We here at Mythos Guru have gone out of our way to do the job for you. You won’t have to wait in line to get one measly question answered. You won’t have to leave your kids alone in the car, baking under the hot sun, as you dash to your news press to find the latest goss on the game only to find a police officer waiting for you with a warrant and a pair of silver handcuffs when you return. You won’t have to sit there doodling words and pictures on your wall hoping they will be the new exclusives for Mythos.
All you simply have to do is feast your eyes upon our wonderous interview with the amazing Max (Note: Max may or may not actually be amazing, but the interview is indeed wonderful!). Not only do you get exclusive new information at Mythos Guru about the game’s upcoming new modes of transportation, brand new ways to live and die, new ways to dress and express, as well as the secret race that was going to be put in until Max was abducted!!!
You will see the answers to these questions and more by read not one, two, or even five, but twenty four whole questions that will make you wish that you could hibernate until open beta!
GameBanshee has updated their Hellgate London section of the website with an item database, a skill database, quest database, many high resolution screenshots as well as exclusive screenshots from the Abyss Chronicles and an interview about it with Tyler Thompson.
And, to help you track down weapons and armor that meet specific criteria, we’ve also set up an advanced search page. Should you ever find yourself looking for a one-handed weapon with over 1000 ignite attack strength, a piece of armor that increases your critical chance and your accuracy at the same time, or maybe a Focus item that adds a rank to all Evoker skills, we hope you’ll find this page to be invaluable.
GB: What can we expect from The Abyss Chronicles? What were your primary goals when developing this particular update?
Tyler: Our Chronicles are designed to be much more than a patch and the Abyss Chronicle is much more significant in scope than our first Chronicle. We’ve added a long laundry list of new features with this update, but the four big goals were making a new set of levels with new boss fights and some really cool rewards, three new skills for each character class, the Blademaster rebalance and the Consignment Shop. The new levels should give Subscribers a lot of new content to run around in. The new skills really enhance the current character classes and allow for some completely new play styles – including the Summoner transforming into a demon who focuses on melee and summons freaky melee fighters. The Blademaster needed some love. He will be doing much more damage and have more viable skills with this update.
GB: Are you introducing any new unique items with The Abyss Chronicles update? If so, will these items only be obtainable in the new zones or will they also have a chance to drop in the original and Stonehenge zones?
Tyler: We have a large set of new items in the Abyss Chronicles. There are new armor lines for each faction which look pretty cool and have some interesting plus and minus choices for the player like Cabalist armor that adds to power but removes health. There are also some new weapons for every class – like a massive mace which has spinning blades when you swing it. With the exception of the new focus items designed for a melee Summoner, all of these items can only be found in the Abyss areas. All of them have unique versions which mostly are set to drop off of specific bosses.
GB: Also included in Patch 2.1 is a (much needed) rebalance to the attribute feed system on items. What can we expect from these changes? Will feeds still be dependent on which enchantments are present on an item (ie. critical bonuses requiring accuracy), or will they be calculated in another manner?
Tyler: Patch 2.1 will include a careful rebalancing of the feed system. We have a few ideas about how to approach the problem. One thought has been to make the enhancement’s feed requirements match your faction’s more common attributes. We are still talking about a few other ideas as well. To help players until Patch 2.1 comes out, The Abyss Chronicles has an NPC that will charge you palladium to redistribute your attributes.
GB: What’s next after The Abyss Chronicles and Patch 2.1? Can you give us a rundown of features and changes you’d like to implement into the game with future content updates?
Tyler: We’ve got a few different directions that we can go with Hellgate: London after Patch 2.1. I can’t really commit today on which path we will take – there are some high-level debates about this going on right now.
Well, not really. But they are on the official Korean website, which means that we can officially post them now!
I can’t embed them as they are in Windows Media Player, but if you go to the link you can either open them from there or download them.
The first video on the list is the Patch 2 trailer, but now in a much higher resolution and the second is the 1.3 trailer, also in a much higher resolution (1280 by 720 for both) than before (however it has Korean subtitles now).
EDIT: Just to add, the video is titled China Joy 2008, which means it’s being shown at the large China Joy game’s even in China. So guess the marketing for the game is starting with Patch 2 over there in time for the launch which I would think is some time soon.
Yes, we normally split up news posts into lots of bits, but I am busy today so it’s going to be one big news post!
First is the MAJOR news for most of you, which is the fact that patch 2 is coming to Test Center on Monday. The file is going to be a stand alone patch at a massive size of 1.3 gigs!
The Abyss Chronicles boasts a long list of new features and fixes and as such has required a long internal testing process. The studio is currently in a “bug squashing” stage with regards to the major content update meaning that development of Patch 2 is complete and we are now working on cleaning it up and making it pretty (and balanced). As part of the path of all our patches, the Abyss Chronicles will first be enjoying a good stay on our Test Center server where it can be poked and prodded and picked at by you, our thorough Hellgaters and brave test subjects.
The Abyss Chronicles is slated for Test Center launch this coming Monday, June 9th. The update will be applied via a standalone patch (1.3 gigabytes). We will have more information on this big move first thing next week.
– Scapes
Second is the news that Patch 1.3d has hit the test center today. The patch notes are the following:
Patch 1.3d introduces a few significant adjustments to gameplay, character creation, and one vendor NPC in particular. Players can now create Elite Mode characters (and subscribers can create Hardcore Mode characters) if their account has a character that reaches level 20 or above. The update also fixes a PRD bug and a character options issue.
Good hunting, Hellgaters!
The Hellgate: London Team
—
General
All accounts can now access Elite Mode when one of its characters reaches level 20 or above. (Accounts that already have a level 20 character or above will have to gain a level for this to apply.)
Subscriber accounts can now access Hardcore Mode when one of its characters reaches level 20 or above. (Accounts that already have a level 20 character or above will have to gain a level for this to apply.)
The rate at which Rank experience is gained has been rebalanced.
Our favorite Premium Item Merchant, Ko, just got a new shipment of items from a new supplier. Unfortunately, they aren’t quite the quality that he is used to getting. In fact, they are all mostly Enhanced items. Sure, he’s still got the Rare, Legendary and Unique stuff that he always had, but you are pretty likely to get an Enhanced item from him now. He’s got to do something with this new shipment after all.
Fixes
Fixed a bug which could cause a player’s PRD to function incorrectly if they were kicked from their party while warping through the PRD.
Fixed a bug where character options would change as a result of minimizing the character options tab.
Third is the new post on the forums by Tyler Thompson, which is of a thread that’s going to act like a blog of his. So follow i regularly!
Today, I also fixed a bug with ragdolls floating in the air. I caught up on about 50 company e-mails and reassigned several bugs. I met with HR to talk about a few issues. I prepared plans for what the UI SCRUM group will work on next - mostly cribbing from our Team Advocate’s suggestions for guilds, some auction house and e-mail features.
Then I spent a couple hours running around to see whether Patch 2.0 was ready for Test Center. I worked with Matt who was gathering the notes, got them passed to Evan to write them up, checked with Alan who was finishing up his to design changes, checked with QA about the bugs in the latest build, met with some engineers to make sure that they didn’t have concerns about the state of their features, and wrote an e-mail to just about everyone to make sure none of them knew of an issue that would block it.
Afterwards, I met with the team doing Auction House and Guild Features to talk about how long it will take to do their features.
Then I made a big decision about Patch 2.0 and Test Center, but I’ll leave info that to Scapes.
Lastly, is the new Undeground Communique #7, which this time talks of the three patch 1.3c, 1.3d and 2. The news of (most) transfers being complete and (most) items being transferred with the characters (Check your characters for if they worked before Patch 2 hits TC), new ATI drivers that fix issues in Vista as well as the new Sneak Shots about Patch 2 next week being about Trinkets!
Scapes has posted a few bits of news on the official forums regarding patches. First is the news of patch 1.3c coming to the live servers tomorrow.
Hellgate: London Patch 1.3c will be live on the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers tomorrow. This is the same build of Patch 1.3c that is currently on Test Center. The Shulgoth (US) server will update tomorrow, June 3rd, at 6:00 AM PDT. The Sydonai (EU) server will update later tomorrow at 8:00 PM PDT (0300 GMT). The downtime for each server will be about one hour.
Patch notes for Patch 1.3c will be available tomorrow after the launch.
– Scapes
There presently isn’t an ETA for when the Abyss Chronicles will be live on the Test Center server. An announcement will be made when there is one to share.
– Scapes
The official forums have been updated with news of Patch 2.0 and Patch 2.1 and while detailed patch notes are not provided, the general summary and some hints are there:
Discover that which awaits you in the Abyss, brave Hellgaters! The Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) is rapidly taking shape and form and we’re ready to share some of its most exciting offerings with you. As Hellgate: London’s second major content update, the Abyss Chronicles boasts an impressive and lengthy list of new features including a major class rebalance, new environments, new enemies, new skills, new bosses, and new inventory slots . Then there’s the Consignment House, Attribute Respec Vendor, item linking, achievement rewards, and lots more. Suffice to say, the Abyss Chronicle is big. Very big.
Plans are already underway for the patches beyond the Abyss Chronicles. A small content summary for Patch 2.1 has been included as well. This update will open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London in the form of ranked player versus player (PvP) gameplay. Originally slated for release with the Abyss Chronicles, the decision to release new PvP content as part of a supplemental patch was brought about by a desire to introduce five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture The Flag. Together, these features will provide a robust PvP experience within the Hellgate: London universe.
We are hoping to get a Patch 2.0 build into Test Center next week, but we will see what happens.
The Test Center is being updated with patch 1.3b as posted on the forums:
Scapes is off to Japan! (I saw him wheeling his little bag around )
Here’s what’s goin on:
- Royal Mail has been updated for speedier service.
- Fixed mods being lost in Shared Stash.
- Fixed a bug where you could see a players attributes under certain conditions.
- The donation reward armor bouns (Ares’ Bane) applies bonuses to shields.
- Fixed donation text misspelling of Palladium
- Russian clients should no longer crash on certain donation announcements.
- Engineers now have a 12 second shared cooldown on calldown skills: Smackdown, Shock and Awe, Naplam Strike.
Update is scheduled for 1:30 PM PST/8:30 PM GMT. Outage should be less than an hour.
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
