Hellgate: London Receives Additional Financing; Flagship Uses Sales Rights As Loan Collatoral

I also really love the game now after the couple of last patches (1.1/1.2), but there's still so much for them to do to fix/change stuff on the content you get out of the box.

They really need more tilesets and more different types of "buildingblocks" the levels consist of (for more variety) and most important of all they really need to change the way levels are inside the game. All levels are simply tunnels from the spawnpoint to the exitpoint, and that's just not acceptable in the long run. There's absolutely no correlation or feeling of place and space between the stations and all the different levels. What I was hoping for with Hellgate from early on, after seeing a video demonstration they did, was a world like in Diablo 2 where the whole 'overworld' is right there and you walk around in it. In that demonstration they did have that in there, they went from street level down into the subway station and on from there down into sewer levels, but not through magical tubes sticking up and out of everywhere-- the level loads between the different areas matched up (yes, like Half-Life) and there was a sense of where you were in the world. That's still completely what I want Hellgate to become. Actually, I see one of the bulletpoints for the next content-patch is an 'adventure-area' which I take to sound like the big kind of consistent map I want. I'm probably wrong, I guess. Hehe.

The other thing is I really wish they'd come up with another way to pay and play new and upcoming added content. I'll just hold out on subscribing for as long as possible to prevent myself from jumping in and then later deciding "fuck it" and jumping out again-- but then being stuck with all subscriber gear or some idiotic situation like that. This 'let's fragment the player base as much as possible' model is severly retarded.

It's interesting how the majority of comments are essentially EMO posts. All accounts show a significantly better game since launch, developers that listen to the community and more importantly, how instead of dropping the game like a hot potato and a failed attempt, Flagship has put their efforts back into the game.

I've never seen a more jaded, negative, one-shot-you're-done community. They have done everything people have asked for and went above and beyond the call in securing financing for "continuing development of it's franchises". Comerica has sales and distribution rights. THEY ARE NO LONGER RELYING ON A PUBLISHER'S INVESTMENT.

I see a company that has learned and moved forward while the rest of you would rather kick it in the teeth, bury it and be done with it. And while more likely than not, never playing it.

They should have remained independant instead of joining with the likes of EA and ending up with a rushed product that falls short of all expectations, and requiring massive rebalancing. They've lost a very significant proportion of the community due to being caught in a deadlock with having to make new stuff for the subscribers and finishing up the core game which remains yet unfinished and quite disappointing. You either please the non-subs, or the subs but it can't go both ways. Quite sad, it had such high hopes.

Their hyper-invasive EULA did them in for me and my gaming m8s. We went from wanting to do Founders to ducking out on the whole mess. In a truly serendipitous stroke of good fortune we missed out on all the launch debacle (outages, multiple credit charges, etc.). I genuinely feel for any of those who drank the Koolaid and subbed and/or Founded; we had our glasses poured and would be stuck in that mire of duplicity and incompetence had it not been for such a truly draconian and privacy-threatening EULA.

I wonder how their subscriptions are doing. I played thru once in single player and quit after that. I would buy and play a single player expansion, but I don't see myself ever subscribing. Of course, I'm not much for MP, so it doesn't mean much one way or the other.

I have two semi-relevant thoughts:

1) I wish the titan quest team had been able to do something like this to survive, personally, I think that the titan quest team deserved to continue existing. I want Titan Quest 2: Norse Mythology, bad. :(

2) Hellgate London had a really bad business model, because they tried to be a jack of all trades, and ended up a master of none. In my opinion, they'd have been better of if they had specialized as either a diablo 2 successor, or a guild wars successor, and not both. It's like there is a disjunction between their marketing team and development team?

We should probably start taking bets on the demise of the company in it's current form shouldn't we.

A year sounds good.

Uhh.... yeah....

I hope they can manage some sort of re-release now that a lot of issues have been worked out, but this isn't look too good for them.