Yes, you read me right. Not one, not two, but THREE previews ! Scapes, Hellgate: London’s Community Manager has published this short -yet extremely massive content-wise- news a few moments ago. We already knew some aspects of Patch 1.2 and Abyss Chronicles thanks to Gamemeca’s preview, but now, it’s in non-Google English, hence the additional details on these two specific updates. And Patch 1.3’s content is listed as well !
In-game mail, Marksman overhaul, emotes, huge improvements to PvP, new skills, shared stash… Here is the full list (along with two new images.):
Patch 1.2
In-game mail with the ability to attach items.
Marksman skill adjustments.
Many bug fixes.
Previously known only for its sweeping changes to the Marksman class, Patch 1.2 will add in-game mail, a hotly desired feature. Additionally, a great many bugs are addressed in this build, many of them reported by the community.
Patch 1.3
New functional pets.
Warp to any player in buddy list.
Emotes.
Text bubbles over character heads.
Display party member level and class.
Inspect other player’s equipment.
Link items into the chat.
Split stacked items.
“The Abyss Chronicles” (Patch 2)
Group PvP, PvP games, and PvP ranking.
The Abyss “endless” dungeon.
Big Ben/Parliament Square adventure area.
Three new base monster types.
Five new bosses.
New skills for all classes.
New high end armor for all factions.
New weapons for all factions.
Consignment house.
Shared stash.
Instance switching.
Heh, I won’t be cancelling my subscription anytime soon !
Once again GameMeca and Hanbitsoft, the Korean Hellgate London publisher have been the first to reveal to us what FSS has in store for it’s future updates.
The new Chronicles appear to be The Abyss Chronicles and while the text to go with them is in Korean, there are a bunch of concept art pictures that you can look at on our forums.
Massively.com brings us the latest TurpsterVision internet podcast called “London is Hell!” by Mark Turpin. It’s a comparison of which is the better MMO, Hellgate:London or the real life city of London. It’s pretty funny and definitely worth watching.
Welcome back to TurpsterVision! I’m lovin’ it that you could join me for my second show; not a lot of people realize this but the video below is a live stream to my camera and I have to act out the episode multiple times a day for you, the lucky viewers. This week I have decided that it is finally time to find out which is truly the best MMO out on the market. If you want to find out, join us after the break to see what you should be playing!
Krawall.de has posted up a new interview with Bill Roper, which covers such hot topics as the criticism of Hellgate: London and Flagship Studios by the gaming media in general and also by fans of the game. Here’s a snippet:
Bill Roper: Blizzard managed to build up such a good reputation over the years that’s a big difference. There never had been that hostile behavior i experience now in the community. We have many people in our hellgate community that like the game, they give enormous helpfull constructive feedback. That’s the majority. But the critics look to me way more aggressive. Are we spoiled because of that? I don’t know. There had been real critics too back in the blizzard-times, who cleary critizised us. Every game without exception has people that don’t like it. But only with hellgate i see those people that accuse us of messing up the game with full intend.
Krawall.de: that’s pretty farstretched..
Bill Roper: Yes, indeed! No developer would ever to that. How insane would that be and i think it’s insulting when people sit there and say “They just do it for the money” - or because of something else. I allways want to yell than “Sorry what? You don’t know us! You don’t have a clue at all why we are doing what we are doing!”. It’s absurd to think we don’t want to deliver the best work we can.
But that’s the nice thing in the internet: Nobody has to take responsibility for what he’s saying. Anyway: If that’s what people really think than i’m sorry. I’m really sorry we couldn’t deliver the product they wish for. I’m also sorry that at release we couldn’t deliver the product in the quality we wished it to be for - and i’m realy honest here.
But we strive to get this all done as constructive as possible. We are looking forwads, we want to apply the needed changes and make the game better and better. But some people just don’t want to see progress, they just want to be bitter.
More of the lengthy interview can be read in this thread as translated by MadNerd. The original interview can be read in German.
Game Developer Conference 2008 starts today here in San Francisco and Flagship Studios representatives will be in attendance. Community Managers Taylor Balbi and Evan “Scapes” Berman will be at the nVidia booth on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday showcasing Mythos. As part of the Job Fair, Ping0 and Flagship Studios will be recruiting for the positions listed here and here.
For some quick history on the conference, it began in 1987 as a collection of developers meeting in the living room of one of the participants. Originally called the Computer Game Developer Conference, it shortened its name in 1999. Previous GDCs were held in Santa Clara, San Jose, and Long Beach. For more on the event, be sure to check out its website and About Us page.
Scapes reports on the official Hellgate London forums that the new patch is to be released onto the live servers tomorrow.
The Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) live servers will be updating to Patch 1.1b tomorrow, February 14th. Shulgoth (US) will be brought down at 6:00 AM PST (9:00 AM EST) with in-game notification starting at 5:30 AM PST (8:30 AM EST). Sydonai (EU) will be brought down later in the day. This article will be updated when a set time is announced.
Both updates will take about two hours, after which the servers will resume service. The patch notes for Patch 1.1b can be found here.
– Scapes
The patch updates the way Moloch fights, as well as the quality of the chests in the wild. Yay!
Hellgate Guru member Darksaber recently ventured to the barren wastelands of Antarctica and has laid claim to the South Pole with a Hellgate themed flag designed by Hellgate Guru’s Claiming the South Pole Contest winner altmatt1992. Here is what Darksaber had to say about his adventure:
As the Dragoon says: I have returned.
It was a hell of a trip, including a 24 hour delayed flight in which the police and security were called as there was a real chance of a riot in New Zealand airport with lots of cranky South Americans and Australians. Antarctica is an amazing place.’ll post some more pics when I get settled into my new house.
Hellgate Guru will bring you the amazing pictures from Darksaber’s arctic adventure as soon as they are made available.
According to the preview of a new interview with Flagship COO Max Schaefer, too many developers and games in the MMO space are chasing the World of Warcraft glory.
“There seems to be a lot of copy-cat games out there… and a lot of developers have no idea how hard it is to really compete in this space”, Schaefer said in an interview with CVG which will be published in full shortly.
One of the toughest challenges facing MMO developers is the technical requirements behind games of this type, which are enormous, he added.
“You have to build an entire infrastructure with tech ops, customer support, billing, and tons of components just to put up a game at all.”
And at least with RPGs, developers always tend to underestimate the labour necessary to make a good one, Schaefer continued.
“That being said,” he concluded, “there are a lot of clever, talented people out there. And when you least expect it, the next phenomena appears”.
Scapes, one of Hellgate: London’s Community Managers, published these patch notes a few minutes ago. An impressive number of changes have been made to the skills of the Hunter faction, and more specifically to the Marksman. New skill names, new properties, and even synergies for the grenades ! The complete list is available on our forums, but as you’re probably eager to know what’s to come, here are some highlights:
Rebounder Rounds (formerly Ricochet)
“The Marksman uses modified ammunition that has a chance to ricochet off enemies and walls.”
This skill is now an Active skill. It must be activated to gain the effect and it can be placed in your “fire left”, “fire right”, or “fire both weapons” slots.
There is no power cost for using this skill.
This skill has a chance to proc its effect (based on the skill and increasing based on the rank of the skill) for each individual firing of the skill. Since its effect is no longer dependent upon landing a critical hit, the effect of this skills will be seen much more commonly at all skill ranks and character levels.
This skill has indirect synergies with the other skills in the “Ballistics” line. Each rank in Rebounder Rounds has a chance (albeit smaller) to proc when either Ravager Rounds or Penetrator Rounds are used. [...]
Grenades
Grenades now have direct synergies with all other Grenades.
Explosive Grenade
Explosive Grenades now explode on impact with monsters (but not objects) and have a 2 second fuse.
Decreased base Damage by 23%.
Decreased base Ignite Attack Strength by 33%.
Ranks in Explosive Grenade now increase the Damage of all grenades by 10%.[...]
And do not forget, these are only the Hunter-related parts of 1.2, which will include other stuff No ETA at the moment, but stay tuned !
Well the Dev Chat is now officially over! There were over thirty questions answered and the quality of the questions was a vast improvement on the last chat in my opinion.
While the official transcript is not up, Amarra has posted up a transcript on our forums which you can view here.
Hellgate Guru was founded in mid-2005 and has ever since been one of the most popular fan sites and forums devoted to Hellgate: London, catering to a wide range of interests, as well as having a dedicated team of staff members who keep the website full of constant updates, news and generate activity and hype around the game. More
