Hellgate: London To Be Closed, Possibly Saved?

Namco Bandai recently announced that Hellgate: London would be shut down on January 31, 2009. They'd been supporting the game's servers since Flagship Studios saw massive layoffs in July. Now, a fansite has located an announcement on the game's Korean site suggesting that it may be picked up by a Taiwanese company called Redbana. The English version of the announcement says, "In the meantime, stay alert: the Hellgate will soon re-open, and your valor will be needed again."

Comments

red bananas

[dnwq]

For those wondering if 'redbana' is a portmaneau of 'red' and 'banana'... you're right. In fact the Chinese name of the company, literally translated, is "Red Banana(s)". ... yeah, I've got no idea either. I mean 'redbana' works just as well as 'google' does perhaps, but Red Bananas...? I give up.

Re:red bananas

[Travis Mansbridge]

With traffic lights, green means "go" and yellow means "slow down." But with bananas, it's the other way around. Yellow means "go ahead," green means "hold on." And red means "where the fuck did you get that banana at?"

-Mitch

State of in-game advertising?

[psoriac]

Not having purchased or followed this game after release, I was wondering what the state of the in-game advertising is with this announcement? Will the single-player game still be downloading from the ad content servers, or will those go away as well?

I sort of feel bad for those who purchased lifetime subscriptions, but not really.

Re:State of in-game advertising?

[illumin8]

I sort of feel bad for those who purchased lifetime subscriptions, but not really.

I was foolish enough to buy a "Founder's Offer" and paid $149.99, plus $49.99 for the game itself, for a lifetime subscription. I did this based on the fact that the beta was a lot of fun, and sure the game had bugs, but it genuinely seemed like a blast the first 25 levels or so, which was about all they would let us play.

After release, when I finished the game, I realized the bugs made it almost unplayable in groups. You could literally form a party, and you couldn't see the players on your own team. All you would see was a floating text name running around on a map. Also, the things they promised such as raid content, end-game, etc. just were not in the game period.

So, I did what any other smart gamer should do when you're sold something that doesn't live up to it's promises by the developer: I called HG:L first and tried to cancel my lifetime sub. Then, they wouldn't allow that, so I called my bank and disputed the credit card charge.

It took a few letters back and forth to the bank. I had to print out the text on their website promising content to lifetime subs that didn't exist. My bank refunded the entire $149.99.

More gamers need to do this. In fact, I'd say, if anyone out there hasn't done it yet, get your money back. There is a time limit on these things, but if you're sold a lifetime subscription and the company shut down the servers, get your money back.

If more gamers did this, we wouldn't have so many crap games getting released like this. For some reason game developers of the more sleazy variety (Bill Roper, I'm looking at you) look at the success of World of Warcraft and think "cha-ching": MMO = Easy money. Those game devs that are just in it for a quick buck need to get out now because you're making the rest of the industry look bad.

Re:State of in-game advertising?

[Fozzyuw]

For some reason game developers of the more sleazy variety (Bill Roper, I'm looking at you) look at the success of World of Warcraft and think "cha-ching": MMO = Easy money.

Oh please. Stop the bitter divorce bull crap.

Bill Roper has gone on record stating the reason for the collapse of Hellgate. It had little if anything to do with this aforementioned idea of "greed" and everything to do with very poor business decisions by a guy who shouldn't have been making them to begin with. It's a very telling interview and worth a read. Speaking as a person who bought Hellgate:London but never purchased a subscription plan.

With regards to the lifetime subscription, you did the right thing by contacting your credit card company. It's pretty much the only course of action you had because Flagship didn't have any money to refund. Your CC company basically swallowed the cost for your bad investment.

Re:State of in-game advertising?

[Tom]

if you're sold a lifetime subscription and the company shut down the servers, get your money back.

Depends on whether they specified your or their lifetime in the small print. :-)

Re:State of in-game advertising?

[Still an AC]

The CC didn't swallow, they spit the cost out to their other customers so they would have to cover the load.

Re:State of in-game advertising?

[sleeponthemic]

There is a time limit on these things, but if you're sold a lifetime subscription and the company shut down the servers, get your money back

You paid for a lifetime subscription for the life of the game. I don't disagree with your course of action mentioned in your post regarding genuine gripes, but I don't quite comprehend why you are suggesting people should get their money back for the game ending. The life of the game is (perhaps) over. Contract ended. Still, it was buried in the terms and conditions in the first sentence so you can't be blamed for missing it. :-) Live by the sword, die by the sword.

"Lifetime Subscription" refers to the lifetime of the online subscription component for Hellgate: London, not the user's lifetime. http://www.hellgatelondon.com/beta

Do people still play this?

[FalleStar]

I know I was very excited about this game for a long time. Then when I purchased it I found that I'd purchased one of the most half-finished games I'd ever played. I for one am surprised that people are still playing this horrible game. I'm just glad I didn't bother to pay for the lifetime subscription like others who got suckered into it. Biggest waste of $60 I've ever spent.

Re:Do people still play this?

[RogueyWon]

Agreed. I wouldn't go so far as to say I was excited about the game, but it was certainly one I'd been keeping an eye on. After all, the people working on it had quite a track record and it sounded like they had some interesting fiction lined up for the game. Plus, as a Londoner, I love it when my city makes an appearance in games and I was interested to see what they'd do with it.

Within 10 minutes of loading up the game, I was reeling from just how bad it was. Certainly, the intro was great - on a par with anything we've seen come out of Blizzard - and it seemed to promise a decent experience. But the game itself felt so half-hearted and amateurish that I honestly couldn't believe it had been released in this day and age.

The engine felt just hideous, with clipping bugs running rampant. Combat was as dull as ditchwater. NPCs were all created from a few generic templates. Their portraits and voices seemed to have been randomly selected. In most cases, the few stock voice-snippets had absolutely no relation to what an NPC was supposed to be saying (and most of the voices sounded like they'd been recorded by somebody who couldn't even find the UK on a map). The "storyline" behind the missions, such as it was, was loose and disjointed. There was no apparent effort being made to tie together what happened in the game with the darker material seen in the pre-release materials and the intro; rather, it was just a procession of deranged people with silly voices. The game also suffered from numerous technical problems, including crashes and inexplicable slowdowns in sparse areas on a PC that can run Crysis perfectly well.

The locations in the game bore only the very slightest passing resemblance to London. The heavy randomisation used in level design meant that areas that should be immediately recognisable to anybody who's spent a couple of days in London as a tourist were warped beyond all recognition. Even Resistance: Fall of Man, which depicted an alternate world version of a 1940s London in its later missions, did a better job of portraying the city than this.

There were a few small positives. The class selection was quite nice and, had the game been capable of keeping my interest, I can see I would have had fun tweaking characters. The designs of the enemies were pretty decent, although they suffered from being over-used and from AI which basically just had them all run at the player in a straight line.

But overall, the impression I took from the game was of a huge, massive waste of potential. I know that they developers have since said they never really had a clear idea for what the game should be. In my opinion, they should have ditched any pretence of being a "massive" online game. The game would have worked best as a relatively linear action-RPG, focussed on single-player and small-group multiplayer co-op. They should have spent more time on level design and made more out of one of their unique selling points; the London setting. Any randomisation of areas should have been strictly confined to underground areas and sewers. To be honest, I got the impression that nobody involved in developing the game had even visited the city it was set in. Even spending some time online looking at photos would have helped them develop a far more atmospheric game. Getting in some people who know how to actually write plot and dialogue would also have helped. The story concept was awesome, but the execution was woeful.

I've not read them myself, but I have heard from others that the Hellgate novels are actually "not half bad" as video-game conversions go (I know this isn't saying much). It therefore beggars belief that they managed to give us a game with less narrative impact than the original Doom.

Re:Do people still play this?

[Endo13]

One of my kicks is the dwarven flight masters that tell me to keep my feet on the ground just before sending me off on a flight.

Re:Let it die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people play online games, some people post long, ranty posts on /.

Re:Open Source the server code! or possibly the ga

[Psychochild]

Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game. Plus, consider that open sourcing a project like a game of this scale is not a non-trivial bit of work.

Anyway, the whole situation with Hellgate and Flagship was a pretty fucked up affair. You can see an interview with Bill Roper here: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3169356. I also wrote a book about business and legal issues: Business & Legal Primer for Game Development , which would give you some insight into the business and legal issues in game development.

GPL Server Clone

[protektor]

Sounds like people should start doing packet dumps of the server so that they can create a clone server. According to the 1UP article it's a bank (Comerica Bank - Dallas,TX) that now owns the rights to Hellgate:London. I don't see a bank doing anything with it other than maybe trying to find a buyer for it. I would doubt that any company seriously would by the rights to it from the bank given that it wasn't a great seller. In fact Metacritic shows it only has a rating of 70% which is pretty average, but a number of people have commented on numerous bugs with the game. So I doubt it would be of much value to a game company since they could create a similar IP without having to pay for it and pick up the negative community opinion due to the company going under.

But of course I could be wrong.

Re:GPL Server Clone

[killmofasta]

A ?Bank? owns it? I dont see a bank doing anything with it other than bleeding it to death with the cheapest advertising, and getting every last dime out of it.

Did you know the servers for Third party servers for Nox are still up? and the servers for Dungeon Siege (Microsoft) are dark?

Re:Let it die.

[montyzooooma]

I realise it's pointless to reply to posts like this BUT... the point of playing RPGs, MMO or otherwise, for me is to escape the mundane life that most of us do have in our 30s and 40s. We've done all that stuff you talk about and now we have wives, children and houses (not necessarily multiple of each but you get my drift) and debts, obligations and responsibilities. Some people watch TV, go to movies, play golf, go to their local bar or get a mistress to escape those mundane obligations. In the small amount of free time I do have I play video games. To each their own.

Re:Open Source the server code! or possibly the ga

[ricree]

Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game.

There is a bit of precedent for something like this. Blender came to be in a similar situation. When the company failed, their creditors agreed to open source it for a payment of around $100000, which was met by community donations. Now, I doubt that Hellgate: London could get the same level of donations that Blender did, but if the company is looking at a total loss they could possibly be persuaded to let it go relatively cheaply.

Re:Let it die.

[glock22ownr]

Your comment is so short sighted that I would argue you have a problem with getting out and discovering the world. Not everyone that plays MMOs is a nerd living in their parents basement. I hunt, fish, am married, go out with the wife and friends, and play WoW. If your significant other is stuck in the game and does not come out of their dungeon that's another discussion, but don't attribute their character to everyone here. Most of the people I play WoW with are in the military and as it turns out that sh1t can be kind of boring if you aren't doing anything. Or you're stuck in some sh1thole town in Texas. It takes all kinds. One dude I knew in game was a body builder, yes I met him in person. Everything can be done in moderation, even MMORPGs. You just have to realize that a day fishing > a day on WoW... So if you know someone that cannot see that, grow a pair and send them an e-mail with that exact comment. Don't come around here and act all superior asking if we're afraid d-bag... Who left the anon comment?

Re:Let it die.

[Endo13]

Sounds like you should have gone E/Mo instead.

Re:Let it die.

[duckInferno]

And some people just love playing games, especially with friends. No other reasons or excuses need to enter the equation :p

A good question I think: why does this guy want me to stop doing what I love?