“As you probably know, a few months ago we had to lay off all of our employees at Flagship, so really what we’ve been doing is trying to work with banks, creditors and former employees to wrap things up. We’re not supporting any products right now.” So when pressed if that meant that it was officially over for the Hellgate: London developer, he responded, “All the principals and employees have moved on. At this point and time, HanbitSoft has purchased the IP, which was being held as securities. Namco will keep their servers up until January 31, 2009.”

Roper is not bitter over his time at Flagship, and in fact thinks that he learned lessons there that he’ll be able to apply at Cryptic. “It can be a problem with a game that you try and go too broad, and I think we did that with Hellgate,” he admitted. “With Champions Online, we’ll focus on making something that’s not wider but is much deeper.”

As a nine-year veteran of Blizzard who has worked on the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises, Roper hopes to apply those lessons of success to Cryptic. “It was a meritocracy at Blizzard, and they were willing to take someone who was new in the industry and give them some freedom if they did well,” he commented. “So I’ve had experience directing, producing and went up to VP level there.”

[...]

Roper assured us that he was very excited about coming to Cryptic and he even revealed that it wasn’t the standard route to employment. “I think it was fortuitous. I was really just trying to get into the beta for Champions Online,” he commented. “I was into the game even before the beta, and I read about it constantly because I was a big City of Heroes fan. I went to a friend of a friend, and we just started talking about things and as the discussion evolved, we found we had some similar ideas. It’s great coming to a place like Cryptic, a place with some very passionate designers, and it’s nice to be less of a suit!”

“The first thing I’m going to be doing, is talking with the guys and digging deeply into what Champions Online is now. There’s a lot of fantastic stuff here, and we’ll focus on figuring out what’s working, what needs some polish and rethinking other things. We’re approaching the game from the standpoint that those people who are familiar with the license will be comfortable immediately and those people who aren’t familiar or who like to solo play will have their own niches carved out,” he concluded.

While we know Bill Roper as the CEO of Flagship Studios and his game Hellgate: London which we have covered for a long time, many people always blamed bad decisions of the managing team for the fall of Hellgate London. It was even stated by Bill many times that they tried to take on too much and couldn’t handle it all.

This is why it seems a bit weird that rather than putting Bill into a design position or maybe a storyline position he is being thrust straight into such a leading position. Champions Online was another game that we followed on the Guru websites, so it’s going to be sad if it ends up failing like Hellgate London.

Either way, good luck to Bill on his new venture and hopefully he has more success with the new game.

To the fans of Hellgate: London,

We wish to express our gratitude to all the fans for showing your passion and dedication to Hellgate: London.

Since acquiring the intellectual property rights, HanbitSoft Inc., the publisher and distributor of Hellgate: London in Asia, has concentrated on the development of Hellgate: London, and has received many inquiries regarding new updates. Our US development studio is currently working on an update that is to surpass “The Abyss Chronicles.” This game will be available through our Web site. We thank you once again for showing your interest and ask for your continuous support for Hellgate: London, as we hope to bring good news shortly. In the meantime, we will continue developing the world’s best game!

Sincerely,
Hellgate: London Product Manager - also a fellow user that loves to play Hellgate: London

Hopefully this means that the game might make a comeback, and hopefully they figure out some deal with the old founders to maybe enable us to at least play the core game for free (as currently this is only Act 1 and Act 2 in Korea)

While we do know that FSS has died, as per yesterday’s post about Hanbiton acquiring Hellgate: London, we do know that the IP is owned by T3 now. What we didn’t know however, is what would happen to the US version of the game.

A new post went up today on the Korean Hellgate London website. It is a post talking about Halloween events and the “re-opening of the Hellgate”, however what is interesting about it, is that it has a section written in English on a usually Korean only website.

The post also sounds like they are getting ready to re-launch the game (could this mean transferring the old players over?) and the company in charge appears to be Redbana. Further research leads to the Taiwanese MMO company called Redbana, which appears to have quite some experience in gaming. Further research leads to findings of a new San Francisco office for the company, which is where Hellgate offices were located previously.

So take this news with a grain of salt, but until we have more news, there is possibility that the game might come back in some way.

Enjoy

Many of you may heard about the sad news of Flagship’s shutdown.

But the good news is that Hellgate will go on with the new crew. HanbitSoft announced that T3 Entertainment recruited some of the best developers from Flagship Studios, Blizzard and formed a team with developers of their own. They will be carrying on where the last crew left off.

Hellgate also decided to go partly FREE in Korea. Don’t be too excited. It’s not ALL FREE.

Act1 and Act2 is open for everyone who wants to experience Hellgate, and only players who choose go on are asked to pay. HanbitSoft introduced various types of price models with a huge bargain, up to 67% OFF at most!

To add, it seems that Hanbitsoft has finally clenched the deal with Flagship Studios and bought the IPs for Hellgate and Mythos. From the same blog:

HanbitSoft now owns both Hellgate: London, online action RPG and Mythos, casual MMORPG, once used to be developed by Flagship Studios. HanbitSoft now acquires IP (Intellectual Property) including the engines and source codes of both well made titles.

This means that HanbitSoft is now the owner of all the titles that Flagship Studios had been working on, and both titles will be developed in newly established studio in the U.S. HanbitSoft expects that full possession of these titles will not only bring them larger portion of the earnings but also upgrade the quality of contents fit for online games.

HanbitSoft had constantly tried to gain the IP of two titles after Flagship Studios shutdown. The company announced recently that the regarding issues are now all settled, and only thing left is to focus on developing the titles the best way possible.

“Hellgate: London is now HanbitSoft’s game, and we have already formed a team. They are doing hard work for updates and patches. Service in Asia including Korea is in good hands” said Gi-Young Kim, CEO of HanbitSoft, and added “I believe Mythos is a very attractive MMORPG, just gaining large fans from couple of beta tests. It has a lot of potential and it will also be developed at studio in San Francisco with Hellgate: London. Both titles will be presented soon with upgraded features.”

Enjoy all you Korean players. Hopefully Mythos will be available to the rest of us too!

Tristram is like a second home to many of us who played the original Diablo. 

Within this article, entitled “A Nostalgic Return to Tristram” I write about a return to the iconic, but ill-fated town of Tristram. The town that defined the world of Diablo and what we, as players of Diablo III can hope to expect when we step foot back into the town with which we grew familiar so long ago. 

This is the first of many Journal entries to come of my forays into Diablo’s place and setting, which hopefully serves to compliment our growing anticipation for Diablo III.

Digg it here.

Here’s a tiny snippet from the full article:

Dungeon Siege II

Let me say right off the bat that I hated Dungeon Siege. It wasn’t a bad game by any means, but nonetheless, I did not enjoy it. It played itself and all you had to do was click to move and spam the heal potion button every once in awhile. In stark contrast, Dungeon Siege 2 does not in fact play itself. In fact, I’d say that Dungeon Siege 2 is a lot of fun.

It’s set in a fantasy-steampunk world with clockwork devices, Uruk Hai-like legions of bad guys, crossbows, dryads who live in trees and elves. The story’s pretty run of the mill, but the locations are varied enough and the NPCs are somewhat interesting, though they are nowhere close to reaching Bioware-levels of character depth.

Titan Quest

Titan Quest is arguably the one Diablo clone that manages to capture the visceral feel of Diablo’s combat and take it to a whole new level. **** goes flying when you hit it with a bat. The only problem with all this hilarious brutality is that there’s no blood or dismemberment, so they feel like little more than indestructible ragdolls.

On the one hand, it’s very satisfying to see a monster go flying after you swat it with a maul, but on the other hand it’s very disappointing when they don’t explode into a fine bloody mist or have body parts flying away when you throw a fireball at them. It’s simply not vicious enough.

The rest of the article can be read at Hellforge @ Gameriot.

So thought some people might like to discuss what repurcussions if any would exist in Diablo 3 for not having it as per the latest announcement by Jay Wilson.

Link

This is from a translated interview by diablo3.4gamer.de

Diablo Source: Will there be an open Battle.net mode and a mode Lan?

Jay Wilson: Currently we plan to allow players, even offline. What we have done, however, the menu a little change. We want to encourage players in Battle.net to play. In Diablo 2 was the first option single player, you click it, playing the game in normal difficulty, and thinks: “Hey, I would now prefer to play with my friends.”, But could not, because if you look at the Battle . net connected, one could not take the character.We could not allow that, because we were the safety of characters not guarantee offline. There is still a separation between single player and Battle.net characters. We want all to know that it is better to play Battle.net. You can play with other players and if they want it they can close off their game alone games. If you decide it should, offline to play, then we will also be the player know that he is not in a position to be the character to play online. We currently have no intentions to LAN games, we focus fully on the Battle.net, where we not only have the ability to quickly contact with other players record, but also to Blizzard community and thus also to support , As in the community.

With that in mind, we’ve created Hellforge — It is not your average Diablo III fansite. To us it’s all about the community. At Hellforge, you tell us what you want to say and share your views with our innovative blogging system. It’s easier than posting on a forum, and we have those, too!

You can also share your own videos and images by uploading them for all to see. Writing your own blog, responding to one, or simply posting on a traditional forum? It’s all up to you.

Be a part of something special and join the Hellforge community.