Bill Roper Talks Hellgate, Mythos, and Blizzard

N'Gai Croal's Level Up blog once again delivers a several-part interview, this time chatting with Flagship Studios' Bill Roper. Formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, Roper's company is currently best known for its work on Hellgate: London, but as Roper points out in the interview they're working on a good deal more than that. He and N'Gai also walk down memory lane, recounting his work on the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo series. Here, he addresses the controversy surrounding Hellgate's somewhat controversial 'tiered' system: "N'Gai: There's been a lot of discussion online about the business model of the game. Going back to the genesis of Hellgate: London, at what point did you know that you wanted to go with a sort of hybrid model: a base game that would have standard PC game retail pricing, and then an optional premium subscription model on top of it as well? Bill Roper: We've actually, since the beginning, known that we wanted to do a tiered format. It was very, very important for us to be able to come up with a way to actually provide even more of an experience than we did with Diablo 2, with Hellgate: London. Basically, we noticed people had a lot of expectations from the team because of what we did with the Diablo series. Part of that was the ability to when they got the game, having that single-player experience and then being able to take that and go online and have that experience for free. I wanted to make sure we had that because that was the base-level expectation of our fans. That's what they got from Diablo 2."

Comments

Where is Diablo 3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it sure isn't in Hellgate: London OR Mythos. Roper and team doesn't seem to understand the concept of "take the best and add to it". Instead they are "taking some ideas, good and bad, and doing other things, good and bad." Hellgate will do well, it's a decent game and will be solid enough on release, but anyone expecting a proper Diablo successor will be sorely disappointed.

if they knew about subscriptions in the beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

why wasn't it part of the game website or any of the other marketing material from the beginning?

This is the man who made Diablo II.

[BlackCobra43]

He may have made Diablo II, but he, astoundingly, doesn`t GET Diablo II. Diablo II offered the same single-player experiecne online, for sure - but that's if you played alone and...well..why play online, then? No, what made Diablo II great was that you could hop into a game and combine forces with other players to dramatically increase your power, much more than even the same two players alone but combined would achieve. Not so with a tiered service. Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers? It makes about as much sense as a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk living on Endor with a bunch of Ewoks.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail. Try reading some of his interviews once in a while. It's already been explained that the primary difference in equipment you get from doing things you pay for will be how it looks, and not so much as to how it functions.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[JanusFury]

Diablo 1 and 2 were built by Roper and the other folks at Blizzard North, yes, but not by them only. My understanding is that Roper primarily acted in a PR and oversight position, and while he's a great guy and nice to talk to he wasn't actually responsible for much when it came to what the game ended up being like. This is the reason why the things Roper says don't always make sense from the perspective of someone who worked on those titles.

That, and a large portion of Diablo 1 was actually developed by Blizzard proper, because North's team was really inexperienced at that point and they couldn't have shipped a game on their own. I'm not sure if that was the case for D2 as well but I wouldn't be suprised.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[king-manic]

He may have made Diablo II, but he, astoundingly, doesn`t GET Diablo II. Diablo II offered the same single-player experiecne online, for sure - but that's if you played alone and...well..why play online, then? No, what made Diablo II great was that you could hop into a game and combine forces with other players to dramatically increase your power, much more than even the same two players alone but combined would achieve. Not so with a tiered service. Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers? It makes about as much sense as a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk living on Endor with a bunch of Ewoks.

It scaled in a good way with more players. You didn't just gang buster your way through if you had more then 1 person but if you had 5-8 people who were decently equipped and knew their role it made life easier. It only really matters in nightmare or hell difficulties. On normal any old group would wade through unscathed.

A big part of it however was showing off your gear. On a illegitimate server, you knew all the equipment was likely hacked. Thus having a party decked out in perfect gear wasn't interesting. But on the legitimate server you could brag about the storm shield you had (until the botting made it less unique). So their shooting for that, to addict people and then have people pay to stroke their vanity. Possibly they may make items that unlock. So you got the +5 storm shield of evisceration. If you pay $1.50, it adds an extra +1. HArd to say if what ever they have planned will work.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail too. Two words: Max Schaefer.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Chris Burke]

It scaled in a good way with more players. You didn't just gang buster your way through if you had more then 1 person but if you had 5-8 people who were decently equipped and knew their role it made life easier. It only really matters in nightmare or hell difficulties. On normal any old group would wade through unscathed.

Yeah, I loved that about Diablo 2. It meant you didn't have to have 8 people to kill Diablo, but if you did it was still challenging. Also, on those difficulties once you got above four people it became very unwise to run off by yourself.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is... there will be a lot of free play users, especially at the beginning. And it's not like there will be a huge immediate difference between free play users and elite users in free areas.

Think of it like this. Diablo II as acts I - V and that's it. If Diablo II had been a subscription game, by now it would also have acts VI - XXVI... imagine what kind of game that would be.

That's Hellgate: London.

And if you really don't like the "tiers" of hg:l, just play mythos. That will be completely free (and will probably be much more like diablo than hg:l anyway).

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Jugalator]

Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers? The subscriber service will provide additional areas to explore, and more items, but they have been explicit on that the items won't be "better" than other stuff even free players can find. So this argument is moot.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers?"

Because the gimped free player is his bestest friend in the world?

Or says "she" is a hot 16 year old girl?

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard North was originally an independent company. It was established in 1993 under the name Condor, founded by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. The company was purchased and renamed by Blizzard about six months before the release of their hit PC game, Diablo, in 1996. Diablo proved to be incredibly successful, and the still-more successful sequel Diablo II was released in 2000. An expansion pack followed the year after. By June of 2003 two new games were in production. However on June 30, 2003, several key employees left Blizzard North to form the new companies Flagship Studios (8 moved here) and Castaway Entertainment (9 moved here). The Blizzard North exodus continued on with around 30 employees leaving the company in total.

Re:This is the man who made Diablo II.

[DarthpHluid]

You're making some incorrect assumptions about the difference between Elite and non-paying customers. Elite subscribers recieve the following benefits: - 24/7 Phone Support (Free customers recieve support during normal business hours) - No server queues if the servers are full, or priority access if they are absolutely maxed out. - 12 characters per account, instead of 3 for non-paying customers - A larger account-wide storage vault, which allows cross-character storage of 20 items versus 40. - Access to the Hardcore mode (you die, you start over) - Elite characters recieve better visual models and armor graphics. Likewise, Hardcore characters get the "best" graphical models. - The ability to start guilds. "Free" customers can join guilds, but cannot create them. And that's pretty much it. Free-to-play and Elite customers interact in the *exact same game world*. All it does is make the online play a little easier on you and possibly more enjoyable with the "more attractive" models and larger cross-character storage. It is unconfirmed whether Hardcore players will be able to group together with non-Hardcore players (Free or Elite) - they definately go to the same towns etc as everyone else, so you can show off the fact that you're a Hardcore character - but there's been no specific details released on whether or not they can play in the same instances with other characters, since their loot, etc would be different, and a hardcore player might potentially be a liability to a "normal" party since they will be VERY concerned with their own characters survival above all else. I suggest you read http://hellgate.wikia.com/wiki/Hellgate:_London_FAQ - it answers all of this and a lot more.

uhhh

[BitterAndDrunk]

I heard about it at least 10 months ago; Roper alluded to it in early interviews where there would be an MMO-type component but they hadn't figured out the precise model yet.

Re:uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

game was announced in 2005, first we heard about the subs was 2007

Oh come on

[BlackCobra43]

Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences.

Re:Oh come on

[brkello]

There are already tons of examples for that being a successful model. Maple Story, for example.

Re:Oh come on

[Usekh]

Ever heard of a little game called second life?

Re:Oh come on

[Jugalator]

Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences. Again a cynic haven't read up on this game before commenting.

You don't only pay for "purely aesthetic differences", you pay for more character slots, better guild support (being a guild officer *requires* subscription), hardcore mode for more thrill to the game, more areas to explore and quest in, and possibly (this specific part is only rumored yet) even more character classes for more skills.

Re:Oh come on

[fractoid]

Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences. Erm... you do realise that the limited edition [Murky the Murloc] vanity pets that Blizzard gave out to Blizzcon-goers a couple of years ago sold on ebay for up to US$100 immediately after the convention? There's one on ebay now with current bid of US$200. See it yet?

Re:Oh come on

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences.

What's the difference between a $400 video card and an $800 video card?

Re:Oh come on

[spocksbrain]

It's extremely common in asian RPGs, but I'm with you, that kind thing just doesn't fly in the US or EU hardcore markets.

Re:Oh come on

[Lord Kestrel]

HC will be subscriptions only? What about single player, will they be able to do HC? Or is it just to do online HC mode that requires a subscription?

Re:if they knew about subscriptions in the beginni

[earnest murderer]

Maybe because they didn't know exactly what they were going to do years ago.

Gamers are fickle. If you talk about something that excited you in a brain storming session the other night, even off the record, you may as well write it in stone. Because as far as the gaming populous is concerned you goddamned promised. Even if you don't say anything but an editor makes a hypothesis about your game frequently that has become the "lore" as it were. It gets repeated, the part about conjecture is lost, a thousand blogs/adwords dispensers quote each other without checking (or citing or caring really) the source and pretty soon you goddamned promised that it would be in.

God help you if you actually do say something and then change it later. It used to be that developers would talk in depth about projects, now all we get are screen shots, background, and stories about office drama. I can't blame them really.

Still no idea what I get for subscribing

[wilsonthecat]

I read the 2nd interview, and saw the same question being asked 3 times and evaded 3 times. What exactly do you get for subscribing? A few extra equipment slots and bag spaces? I can see that working for the hardcore raiders (if the game has raiding, I don't really know the format of Diablio 2).

Personally I won't be fussed about extra slots for the money, new content would be the enticing aspect.

Re:Still no idea what I get for subscribing

[buman]

As for the subscribed content, I've heard in several interviews that the differences between the subscribed and non-paying clients would be fairly small at launch but would increase over time. This eases players into the concept and will probably gain more interest over time. It was stated that they are not introducing a game breaking tier system where players can become vastly superior because they have subscribed for content. This is humored in the featured Penny Arcade comic http://www.hellgateguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/20070511.jpg

Some of the early content afforded for subscribing initially is more stash space (similar to D2 stash system).You are afforded 12 character slots for online play where the basic accounts have only three, allowing for two variants of each class if you wished. Game modes and other non-gear related features such as classic "hard-core" mode have been cited as well.
In the future there would be four month cycles of large content releases similar to current Blizzard World of Warcraft models but also smaller monthly content updates. Adding new areas, special group content, as well as new item content/improvements.

An interesting choice available for a short time is the lifetime subscription being made available http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=80910. For $150 USD you can sign up for a subscription plan that lasts the duration of the service. This amounts to nearly 16 months if you were to play monthly so if you had the game for at least a year and a bit it would become worth the initial purchase. If the lifetime of the game holds up to Diablo 2 this could be a very good deal.