Hellgate: London's experienced a rocky launch. Problems have ranged from players levelling criticism at the game mechanics through to a percentage of those opting to subscribe for extra content finding credit cards double-charged (an issue which has now been resolved, according to Flagship).
In response to the upheaval, Flagship has outlined its current top priorities for the game and promises that it's working hard to address issues. A forum post reads as follows:
Dear Customers,
We realize many of you are experiencing a variety of problems. We at Flagship and Ping0 are working hard to address these issues.
Our current top priorities are:
Resolving any remaining problems related to billing and subscriptions.
Fixing two known bugs which cause players to sometimes lose items (one related to dual focus/dual melee, and one related to loading issues).
Making improvements to memory usage in order to reduce "Memory Exhausted" crashes.
Fixing a known issue with the user interface which causes the application to lock up intermittently.* An issue which occasionally prevents characters from being able to load or switch instances.
General chat interface improvements. (Many improvements are in the works).
Random disconnects and lag.
Allowing higher resolution textures and models for other players.
Various known problems with being able to continue interrupted side quests.
Remnant quest items not getting destroyed and "clogging" up inventory.
Continued problems with saving / loading Engineer Drone items.
Invisible party members.
The nanoforge not correctly improving rare and better armors.
Getting stuck on collision.
Some of these are issues which will be fixed as soon as possible and go live in upcoming patches, some will be in our upcoming content patch, and others are issues on which we will make gradual improvements to on a continuous basis.
Of course we also have a more extensive bug list as well as lot of general improvements and new content in the works. Everyone here is working full-time to support Hellgate. We appreciate your patience.
You can paint a lump of s**t with gold but its still a lump of s**t. This game has been a massive disappointment. It took me 5 days to actually get the patch installed and then I could not join servers. When I did get onto a server (my first MMO experience in 15 years of gaming) there was no one there. MMO? And the single player seems to be 1. click repeatedly on monster 2. see step one 3 CTD
Really looked forward to this. Should have not bothered.
I'm really enjoying Hellgate and so far have not encountered any problems whatsoever.
All patches have installed straight away. Always able to connect to server. Never been kicked from server.
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
Flagship do seem to be working hard on resolving the problems people are having and IMO it's no different to any other game shortly after launch.
The only thing that has annoyed me so far is I can't subscribe due to not having a credit card, and have missed out on the Halloween and Fawkes events as a result. However more pay options are in the pipeline.
Now, I know the point of alpha and beta tests is generally to find the major bugs and then stress the servers, but come on devs. You got a s**tload of feedback right there, either from people who just enter beta to try before you buy, or from people who really are interested in making the game good and will play through the crap code and tell you what gamers will want to see changed.
Hellgate: London won't be the first victim of the hype outperforming the actual code.
First rule of any online MMO, wait at least a month after release, read the feedback, watch the quality and regularity of patches. Then decide.
Yep. It definitely needed another 3 months of testing.
The multiplayer element seems tacked on, almost as an afterthought.
And so many niggly bugs.
But, a brilliant game overall. Have bought it, but won't subscribe until next month - when there's a reason to.
Personally, Flagship Studios should give everyone some kind of incentive to keep playing through the first month or two.
Everyone knows by now that it's make or break in the MMO market. Well polished, great games do really well. Great games with no polish go down the toilet.
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