Hellgate Palladium,Hellgate Pd

Patch 1.1b Going Live Tomorrow

2008-02-15T01:12:00.001-08:00

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!

Patch 1.2 - Massive Marskman Overhaul !

2008-02-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

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 !

My own Evoker Guide

2008-01-24T22:29:00.000-08:00

At Level 50, you should have these skills.

Brom's Curse - 7
This should be maxed because it is an awesome skill, especially when your in a party and want to keep everyone alive. Along with health injector's you shouldn't have trouble staying alive. This skill allows you to take 14% of your life back every time you hit an enemy at level 7. Although there is a limit, it works every 2 seconds, so you can't use a quick firing weapon to steal your life back extremely fast. But with lightning field it will be hitting lots of enemies at once which will result in you getting a huge % of your life back at once if you are hurt.

Drain Power - 2
pre req for elemental drain. I tend to use a lot of power injectors for this build instead of using this skill. But lots of willpower helps!

Drain Life - 2
pre req for elemental drain. Use health injectors and Brom's curse instead of this. And blink away if those aren't doing enough to keep ya alive.

Elemental Drain - 5
This skill owns, when there is a tough enemy it allows you to do a lot more damage. Also if they are hitting you with lightning or other elementals it will reduce the damage taken by quite a bit.

Concentrate Damage - 10
This skill should be maxed because it comes in handy, especially in groups, but even in solo. What you do is cast this skill, then use spectral lash on an enemy from a distance, if they aren't dead then cast lightning field in front of you and begin to back up. Then when they get closer cast lightning field again and start to use Arc Legion, if they still have some life then use Brom's curse and keep throwing down lightning field and Arc Legion. If the enemies are still hurting you too much, then blink away and repeat.

Dual Focus - 1
You only need one point in this since you are not going to be a tank for this build and will be putting a lot of points into willpower.

Blink - 1
Some people think you need more than one point because of the 20 second cool down. But you shouldn't have to be fleeing in a panic with all the damage being dealt and Brom's curse. You can take away spectral lash mastery or one or two points out of lightning field if you want more into this skill. It will reduce the cool down by a few seconds but i don't recommend it.

Spectral Bolt - 3
pre req for spectral lash.

Spectral Lash - 5
At 30 meters, this is enough. It is good for sniping off flying enemies from a distance especially. It is also good for luring mobs closer to your lightning field and Arc Legion. I don't think it's necessary to put 10 points into this skill and have 45 meters.

Spectral Lash Mastery - 1
It's up to you if you want to put one point in this or not. I do just so that every now and then you can have an explosion that allows you to take less damage and do more damage to the enemies. But since the blast area of it isn't very large i wouldn't suggest dishing out too many points into this.

Lightning Field - 5
This is an absolute must for this build. With it's quick casting time you can be running from enemies and throwing it down. With Brom's curse it makes it even more valuable from all the health you can receive from enemies. Some people don't like to put 5 points into this skill though, so it is up to you how much you invest. Every skill point adds an increased radius for the lightning field, it does not increase damage. I would suggest adding at least 3 points into this skill and no more than 5. It depends how big of a field you want.

Tempest - 3
pre req for Arc Legion.

Arc Legion - 5
This deals huge damage to enemies. Putting 5 points into it allows a 15 meter range which i think is enough. It seems like a waste to put 10 points into this since that only adds 5 more meters. But this is another one that is up for debate. I would suggest sticking with the range of 1-5 points for this skill, it just depends how close you want too be to enemies.

As for stats, you should put the minimum amount of accuracy and strength for your equipment. Then put what you think is necessary for stamina and willpower. If you play solo a lot then you might want to put an even amount of points into stamina and willpower. If you play with groups of people more often then you might want to add more into willpower since you won't be taking as many hits.

P.S. Don't think about skipping out on Brom's curse because you will need it on nightmare difficulty and especially if you are playing elite and/or hardcore.

P.P.S This is one of many many builds for an evoker. There are so many combinations that could be used effectively, but this is what i find to be fun and work. I find that as long as you don't spread out your skill points into too many areas then you will have a decent evoker. Good luck! and please feel free to comment.
FROM: http://hellgate.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4637

Stonehenge Chronicles Released

2008-01-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

As we reported yesterday, the Stonehenge chronicles patch was released yesterday. Subscribing players can now enjoy all of the aspects of Patch 1.0, and all the other Hellgate fans still get class changes and bug fixes. Hellgate has officially gone gold!

Hellgaters! We march to Stonehenge!

Hellgate: London's first major content update, the Stonehenge Chronicles, launched early this morning. After a day's pause to exterminate two pesky bugs, brave Hellgaters have already ventured out into the hellspawn-infested realms beyond the safety of the monolithic ruins built by druids long past. Sending back word of their conquests in forms both written and visual, reports from the front lines are unanimous: Stonehenge shall not fall into demon hands. Putting their rivalries aside, Templar, Hunters, and Cabalists have banded together to seek out the enemy in its lair, felling minions and masters of hell's castes to reach an eternal evil.

In addition to this new subscriber content, all players get to enjoy a host of fresh features, gameplay tweaks, and a reworked Evoker class. Buddy lists are now account-based, the crafting system has been streamlined, and the user interface now has scaling elements. Add in abundant bug fixes and improved textures on party members and you've one heck of a giant content update. The Stonehenge Chronicles patch notes can be found here and the patch itself can be downloaded here.

It's time to take the fight to the demon. We march!

Hunter Model Tutorial

2008-01-24T21:18:00.000-08:00

CGSociety has just publshed a feature article by Alessandro Baldasseroni, who is the designer of the Hunter model for Hellgate London.

CGSociety states:

Alessandro Baldasseroni created the Hunter model. He tells all on CGSociety.
Baldasseroni is one of the most prolific artists in the industry, submitting
works since the original Character Modeling d’artiste title, and the original
ELEMENTAL Autodesk book. Alessandro submitted the Hellgate: London ‘Hunter’
image to Ballistic Publishing’s ‘EXOTIQUE 3’ last year. The Hunter model was
made for the Hellgate:London cinematic, made by Blur Studio Inc. The Hellgate:
London game was created and developed by Flagship Studio.

The guide shows the steps that were taken to make the hunter along with a number of concept illustrations. It is three pages long and is a great read for any 3D modelling enthusiast.

Q&A: Bill Roper opens up on Hellgate

2008-01-20T23:44:00.000-08:00

GameSpot has published up a question and answer session with Bill Roper, where they mainly chose to talk to him about the upcoming patch as well as how the team at FSS feel about the game so far.

GS: Hellgate launched with more than a few serious bugs. Was this a matter of staying true to the ominous Halloween date, or were outside forces to blame?

BR: Honestly, we tried to do too much with the game. We created our own engine, tools, and online destination from scratch in just a few years. We are really proud of the work we did, however we were perhaps a bit too ambitious.

If we could have waited another three months to ship, we would have, but the challenges of an independent game studio are much, much different than what we had during our days at Blizzard or the guys at Arena.net face (since we often see comparisons with them and Guild Wars) as they were owned by NCsoft before they had to ship. We don’t shy away from the fact that Hellgate: London was far from perfect when we launched, but we’ve also stayed dedicated to the game and our players and have been exerting every effort to make amends and get the game to what we envisioned. We’re thankful to our fans that have stuck with us, and encourage people who maybe tried the game when it launched or never checked it out because of early concerns to give us another look with The Stonehenge Chronicles.

It is interesting to see that FSS has more or less admited what a lot of fans have been saying of them being too ambitious, however they also seem to confirm a lot of people’s reasoning for why they couldn’t delay the game much longer.

While the entire interview is a very intersting read and I recommend everyone to read it, here is a snippet I found particularly interesting:

We’re continuing to give all of the classes in-depth evaluation and will be making everything from tweaks to whole-sale changes as required. We’re also very close to starting up a “Team Advocate” program where specific members of our community will be organizing feedback in several areas from our player base and then speak directly with the design team to see these issues addressed. We have a lot of very passionate players in our community, and we think this will be an invaluable way to best get their feedback and improve the game.

As well as:

If you look at a game like Eve Online, for example, they started with a very small number of players, but had enough to sustain themselves while they grew the game. Today, they have a healthy and dedicated player base that makes them a success story.

Really the entire article is worth a read, so go read it now!

Game Informer Magazine Online reviews Hellgate:London

2008-01-20T23:43:00.001-08:00

Game Informer Magazine Online recently reviewed Hellgate:London and delivered a particularly positive review when compared to a majority of other reviews. Could this be because Game Informer Magazine has a partnership with EBGames.com, one of the largest video game retailers in the United States or is Game Informer telling it like it is based purely on the game as a concept and it’s game play?

Here’s an excerpt from the review which you can find Here

Continuing the Diablo homage, nearly everything in Hellgate is randomly generated, from the maps you explore to the weapons you equip and the monsters you fight. Unfortunately, the environments prove to be the game’s biggest disappointment. The dozen or so tilesets are endlessly recombined into unique levels, but the set pieces quickly become all too familiar. The twentieth time exploring the same ruined building (albeit perhaps on a different side of the street) doesn’t exactly hold the same sense of wonder.

What Hellgate does, it does well – few games have core gameplay this strong. However, it doesn’t venture far outside of the scope of filling an XP bar or finding that next upgrade. The story isn’t much more than a thin excuse to kill demons, and the truly memorable encounters are few and far between. If you like faster-paced combat than you’ll find in the rest of the MMO genre, though, this could be a great fit.

G4TV Hellgate:London Review

2008-01-20T23:29:00.000-08:00

G4TV’s review of Hellgate:London done a month or so after launch. It’s a pretty fair review. They raise a pretty good point about how expectations have made it a bit complicated to review HG:L. On one hand you know FSS is a new company and know they deserve to be cut some slack but on the other side of the coin, these guys created one of the top games ever in Diablo II so they should be able to do it again. Unlike some reviews that say the game sucks, stay away, G4 goes the wait until some fixes are patched in route.

http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/reviews/1669/Hellgate_London.html

Below is an excerpt noting the online and single player experience.

Much has been made of Hellgate’s online experience, and in theory, it’s mostly a good thing. Players gather together in hub stations to chat, trade items, show off the spoils of their adventures, and group up for upcoming missions. Then, as they head out, the whole thing is instanced particularly for that group. And then, the random level generation takes over once again. It’s not as big a deal in the online mode, since you’ll have the camaraderie of your party members to make up for the sometimes irritating level design. Plus the whole thing is free. Hellgate does feature an optional subscription service that adds options like Guild functionality and the promise of future content upgrades, but the free multiplayer is likely where most gamers will want to stay.

Put quite simply, Hellgate: London is a buggy mess. And that goes double for the multiplayer action. Crazy slowdown during battle; graphic issues where various on-screen elements completely disappear; and bugs that crash players right to the desktop are all issues in the retail version of this potentially awesome game. Patches will almost assuredly fix these problems eventually, but it’s still pretty disheartening to rip open that cellophane for the first time and realized you’ve basically paid full price for an unfinished, unpolished product.

As a single-player game, Hellgate delivers – especially if you’re a die-hard Diablo II fan. If you can deal with annoying inventory management and unimaginative level design, you’ll get a lot of fun out of this game. Online, however, is a broken mess as of launch. In time, you’ll probably be able to add at least a point to our score, but as of right now, you’re better off waiting to jump into this demon-infested version of London.

Stonehenge Chronicles Launch Date Set

2008-01-20T23:26:00.000-08:00

Hellgate: London Community Manager Scapes has posted the official date for the release of the Stonehenge Chronicles at January 21st, 2008. Here are the details!

HELLGATE: LONDON GOES TO STONEHENGE

Explore New Environments, Conquer New Demons and Find More Phat Loot
in the First Chapter of the Hellgate Chronicles
The fight for humanity is spreading away from the streets and sewers of London and moving all the way out to the mystical areas surrounding Stonehenge – or what’s left of it. The first installment of the ongoing Hellgate Chronicles is going live for subscribers on Monday, January 21st, 2008.

Stonehenge is a huge outdoor hub accessed through a special portal in Templar Base, connecting players to several new and exciting quests. Heroes will find themselves in completely new open, outdoor wilderness areas unlike anything seen within the city limits of London, battling terrifying new demons and bosses and finding new items very distinct in their appearance. This action-packed update includes:

• The Caste Caves – Unlock four unique dungeons, one for each caste of enemy – Beast, Necro, Spectral and Demon – to seek and destroy a powerful overlord that resides in each cave. Defeating them and collecting their heads will allow you to continue the adventure…

• Moloch’s Lair – Only after collecting the heads from the Caste Caves will heroes be allowed entry into the lair, with a chance to defeat the legendary Moloch, one of hell’s most imposing minions who carries very unique items that can only be obtained by defeating him in combat. And because Moloch’s soul is eternal, this quest and it’s rewards can be a never-ending challenge.

• The Wild – These three mini-raid areas present players with difficult obstacles but also huge rewards with three levels that get increasingly more difficult even with the recommended full party size – you will need a small army to get through these challenges.

In addition to the above, The Stonehenge Chronicles also includes many of the other updates the Hellgate: London community has been asking for, including improvements to game UI, a large number of skill balance changes, a PvP dueling arena and more.

Hellgate: London subscribers can also now pay for their subscriptions via PayPal and PayByCash. For more information on payment options and a full list of notes for this update, please visit www.hellgatelondon.com.

Hellgate: Patch 0.7 Fix

2008-01-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

Flagship CM Scapes tells us that they are making a new build of Patch 0.7 to help fixing "Network Error" problems:

To all Hellgaters who have been experiencing "Network Error" problems: they
shall plague you no more. We're going to launch a new build of Patch 0.7 which
includes a fix that should end the appearance of this error.

Shulgoth
(US) will be closed at 5:30 AM PT and will be shut down at 6:00 AM PT. Sydonai
(EU) will be closed at 7:30 PM PT and will be shut down at 8:00 PM PT. Both
upgrades are estimated to take two hours.

In addition:
This patch has no Stonehenge content and isn't related to it.

However, the "network error" bug will remain fixed when the live servers
transition to the Stonehenge content update.

MMOsite Reader's Choice Awards

2008-01-16T01:01:00.000-08:00

The rally cry of Hellgate: Incgamers seems to have pulled off! Look at MMOsite's best games of the year, it seems clear to say that while Hellgate have had some bad reviews, there are some die-hard fans still in this very community! The same seems to go for GuildWars: IncGamers.

Best New Game
1. Hellgate:London
2. Zero
3. Tabula Rasa.

Favourite p2p Game
1. Guild Wars
2. Hellgate: London
3. Ragnarok Online

Best Graphic
1. Shaiya
2. Silkroad online
3. Hellgate:London

Bill Roper HanbitSoft Interview

2008-01-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

This interview with Bill Roper at the Korean launch event comes to us courtesy of Play HGL and HanbitSoft.

HanbitSoft sends over a translated summary of some of the questions and answers
that Bill Roper answered over at the Hellgate: London Launching Party in Korea.
I am not sure if the answers were translated from Korean back to English again
or those are his own words, just click the link to check out the interview.

Thanks HanbitSoft!

Bill answers various questions, a lot of which address the game issues as well as how the launch in Korea will happen and what Bill hopes for.

Q. If you would tell your success by number, what would it be?
I think CCU
over 100,000 will make me very happy. Wouldn’t that be quite a success? ^^

Enjoy

Missed out on the Founder’s Offer?

2008-01-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

The Founders Offer allows you to pay a one-time payment of 150 USD for a lifetime subscription to Hellgate: London instead of monthly payments.

Please keep in mind you don’t need to subscribe for online play, but if you’re interested in the perks of subscription and on-going content, then this is definitely worth looking into.

Missed out on the Founders Offer? You can still get yours with a pre-order from bGosu.com.
You can grab the Pre-Order from the site which includes a Founders Offer eligibility offer where you can pay for the founders offer and attain a wasp dye kit for all of your characters.

Details:

The wasp dye kit can’t be traded and will always be with your character(s) even
if you make a brand new character they will obtain a wasp dye kit in their
inventory.

Only those who with a pre-order registered account are viable
to the limited-time founders offer.

You can add a ‘pre-order’ badge to
your account from the hellgatelondon.com website into your account there after
signing in at anytime.

Also, if you just wanted the wasp dye kit and
didn’t want founders offer you can get that too. You can add all 4 different
pre-order dye kits to 1 account. It’s certainly a great looking dye kit for
those of you with bland colors. Metalic black with gold pipe lining and patterns
make for a kickass scheme.

Be sure to check out bGosu.com if you’re interested.

Patch 1.0: Scapes’ Update and Hanbiton Video Preview

2008-01-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since we heard about the first big update for Hellgate: London, Patch 1.0. But be not worried, loot-hungry masses !

First of all, Scapes, one of Hellgate: London’s Community Managers, has written an update on the Patch’s progress. Here is what he had to say last Wedneday:

[…]The content update is not far away but does have two more requisite steps to
pass through.

First, our quality assurance (QA) team is scouring the
live launch build of Stonehenge for faults and is rapidly narrowing down the
remaining “holds”, bugs that prevent the patch from being released. These holds
make the game unplayable from either a gameplay or technical standpoint. Only a
solitary few remain and are meeting their undoing at present.

Second,
we’re going to be starting the ramp-up for promotion of Stonehenge Chronicles on
aggregate gaming news websites and with other press sources. For those who
haven’t experienced the new subscriber content first-hand, these articles will
provide a thorough evaluation of what the Stonehenge content update is going to
offer.[…]

But the most interesting information was added yesterday:

UPDATE:
The Stonehenge Chronicles content update will be coming this month.
Also, our planned schedule for releasing future content updates has not been
affected.

Obviously, very good news, both regarding Patch 1.0 and future patches.

Now, I’ll tease you a bit more, with this video Hanbiton released yesterday Peeks at Stonehenge itself, at some areas, and a few surprises are included in the Low-res video, and in its High-def sibling.

There you go, fellas !

HellgateLondon.com - Third Fan Interview

2008-01-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

As you may or may not remember, one of the prizes for Hellgate: London’s Halloween contest was to be interviewed by FSS. Today, the third interview was published on HG:L’s official website, allowing us to meet Nick Choate, a really talented pumpkin carver.

What inspired you to create your submission?
Inspiration…uhh…nothing really, the idea kinda just popped in my head when i saw the box art for the game (the Davy Jones reject)
What did you use to create it?
Pumpkin, Photosho..I mean…lots of hard work, and an Exacto knife. I did use Photoshop to trace an outline of the pictures, then transferred it onto the pumpkin.

Hellgate: London Korean Open Beta on Friday

2008-01-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

The Open Beta for Hellgate: London is launching this coming Friday. Details can be read at HanbitSoft’s website.
Bill Roper, Eric Liu and Aletheia Simonson from Flagship Studios will be gracing the huge event at Melon Ax Hall in Korea. DJ Doc, a Korean hip-hop group will also be performing live at the event. So if anyone’s going, please be sure to bring a camera and take some photos of the event!
It looks like it’ll be possible to win a slew of prizes including a new Dell XPS gaming laptop, HP widescreen monitors and more.

Hellgate: London in Tom’s Hardware “Worst Games of 2007″

2008-01-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

I was hoping to resume newsing on HGG with a good piece of news, but heh, duty comes first. Ben Meier and Rob Wright, hosts of Second Take (Tom’s Hardware’s games-related show) had a talk about the worst games of 2007, and Hellgate: London is on the list, along with games such as L.A.I.R or Fantastic Four.

According to Meier and Wright, HG:L is “plagued by technical issues”, “crashes and glitches”. The biggest blow comes from Wright: “If it did not have these technical issues, would it be a great game ? No, but it might be better, might be a rental […]”.

It should be noted that this advice is based on Travis Meacham’s upcoming review, and that Meacham is “prepared to say that it will be one of his worst reviewed games of the year”.

Competition: Claim the South Pole for Hellgate Guru

2008-01-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

Hellgate Guru is starting a new competition with the help of Darksaber, who’s traveling to Antartica in January/February, and you can participate!

Put a Guru flag (or shirt on a stick) and claim the south pole !

That’s right, HellgateGuru.com will claim the South Pole for the Living in 2008. We’re taking back the polar wastes from those nasty demons with a bad-ass flag to show them we mean business.

THE COMPETITION

It’s pretty simple: Design a Hellgate-themed logo to go on a A4(?) sized flag, preferrably neutral white or black background.

Remember, you don’t see countries flags with lens flare effects in Photochop, right? Simple, sexy, shiny - thats what a HGG flag is all about.

PRIZE

The winning entry will recieve their once frozen, but now thawed flag (mailed free of charge to your doorstep) , accompanied by a certificate and framed photo of the flag standing in the frigid wastelands, planted by yours truly.

Sorry folks, I can’t offer pengiuns as a second place prize, but I might be able to sneak through customs with an elephant seal in my bag.

Hellgate London Manga

2008-01-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

Kellestine has pointed out that there is new information on the first volume of the Hellgate London manga, which lists both its pricing and a small summary of it.

HELLGATE: LONDON VOLUME 1 GN
by Arvid Nelson & Lee Tae-Hang

In
the year 2020, a demon invasion strikes several cities around the
globe…including London, home to college Rugby champ John Fowler and his family.
In the 48 hours leading up to the invasion’s climatic Battle of All Hallow’s
Eve, John and his sister Lindsey attempt to unfold the mystery behind a series
of bizarre portents: an exhumed skeleton, a haunting apparition, and a powerful
sword that they find in their attic. Solving the mystery, though, reveals
something about their family that changes their lives forever.

SC, 5×7, 192pgs, b&w $10.99

Hellgate: London Korean Open Beta on Friday

2008-01-09T06:38:00.000-08:00

The Open Beta for Hellgate: London is launching this coming Friday. Details can be read at HanbitSoft’s website.

Bill Roper, Eric Liu and Aletheia Simonson from Flagship Studios will be gracing the huge event at Melon Ax Hall in Korea. DJ Doc, a Korean hip-hop group will also be performing live at the event. So if anyone’s going, please be sure to bring a camera and take some photos of the event!

It looks like it’ll be possible to win a slew of prizes including a new Dell XPS gaming laptop, HP widescreen monitors and more.

Hellgate: London in Tom’s Hardware “Worst Games of 2007″

2008-01-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

More details of Arvid Nelson's Hellgate: London comic book revealed

2008-01-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

More than two months back, we reported that Flagship Studios' Hellgate: London would be getting a manga rendition of its own courtesy of Tokyopop. More details have surfaced about London comic">Arvid Nelson's Hellgate: London comic since then, most of which deal with the context and the characters of the story.

The story of the new Hellgate: London comic is set in the year 2020, about 48 hours before the Templar make their suicidal assault on St. Paul's Cathedral on All Hallows' Eve. Rugby champ John Fowler and his family take the spotlight this time around as they attempt to make sense of a variety of ominous occurrences that will reveal the truth behind the real nature of their family.

Writer Arvid Nelson and illustrator Lee Tae-Hang worked in conjunction with Flagship Studios for the Hellgate: London comic project. Volume 1 of the manga consists of 192 black and white pages in softcover format, and sells for a retail price of US$10.99.

Evoker skills: Full descriptions and ratings

2007-12-28T01:22:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Ever grow tired of those ridiculous and naive skill descriptions? Hellfire: "It unleashes the fires of hell to burn stuff!". I think Bill Roper hired the guy behind Ask a Ninja to write those, since they tell you nothing whatsoever about the skill itself. Well, this is what this is here for, I started this as a personal reference to remember the skills that I don't want to invest in for the future.

I used to believe that evokers had all of the super good and powerful skills all waiting for me to learn them at level 30, like how Frozen Orb was like in Diablo 2. Alas, I found out that some of the most powerful Evoker skills are the ones you start with.

Tests were made in Single player in patch 0.1, that means I didn't get to try these skills in group environments, and they could change in some future patch. I plan to add a video for each skill when I have the time and probably write reviews for other classes (and maybe weapons as well). If you wish to add any of the text here to the Hellgate Wiki then feel free to, but it would be nice if you could add a small reference ;)

On a small note, my main language isn't English so read with a grain of salt.

Score System

Scores are out of 10 (0 is crappy, 10 is godly)

Usability: Is it fun, easy, and effective? How often will you use it?

Damage: How powerful it is, keep in mind that the focus item is the main damage factor in most skills.

Utility: Does it do Something?to your enemies that benefits you or your group? How useful? Any tactical usage?

Upgradability: Does it improve a lot when upgraded? (Spending additional skill points)

Overall: The overall value of a skill. This is good?or This is crappy and worthless?

Level 1

Word of Fear

Instantly cast a fear nova that sends all foes within 10 meters running away from you.

7 Usability

0 Damage

8 Utility

6 Upgradability

7.5 Overall
Comments: Works very nicely for the beginning of the game, and it can be powerful when invested in. But it does no actual damage and has no guarantees that it’ll actually work. Good in many situations. I personally don’t use it as often as I should.

Firestorm

Rapidly casts short-ranged scattering sparks that cause fire damage (scattering in a cone in the direction the caster is facing). Hold down the mouse button to cast it repeatedly.

8 Usability

8.5 Damage

7 Utility

9 Upgradability

8.3 Overall
Comments: Upgrading it will cause the ignite effect to work almost all the time (You’ll notice this from the first extra point), this means guaranteed death to almost any rare, epic, legendary or boss mob provided you can get in range. Range is the primary issue here, I’ll also add that it consumes a good amount of mana if you’re just holding the mouse button, to conserve mana you should just fire in bursts of 1-2 seconds since that’ll ignite almost everything around you. Even with all that, I find myself using this skill often in many situations.

Spectral Bolt

Fires a spectral bolt that after 0.5 seconds splits into many bolts that move a bit haphazardly, if the single bolt DIDN’T have the time to split then it’ll simply cause the damage of 1 bolt. Every evoker starts with this so just go try it out.

8 Usability

9 Damage

8 Utility

9 Upgradability

8.9 Overall
Comments: Very good skill. Phased foes take 50% more damage and cause 50% less damage, and with this skill at higher levels you’ll phase out almost anything in a single shot. Although the bolts move randomly and can get annoying, they do hurt a good deal of damage

Level 5
Brom’s Curse

2 seconds cast time, cannot move while casting. On cast it unleashes a curse on X enemies within 15 meters for Y seconds. Anyone that causes damage to those cursed mobs will get Z% of his Total HP back, the effect can occur once every 2 seconds per mob (That means u cant fire a machine gun and get infinite health back). Mass enemy damage spells and weapons will work with the curse. E.g. if you cursed 5 zombies and hit them all at the same time, you’ll get 40% of your total HP back, very handy.

7 Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

7 Upgradability

8.5 Overall
Comments: While it is indeed a very powerful curse, the 2 second cast time make it difficult to time especially on fast moving mobs since you could easily die if they get close enough. Also, this isn’t that handy for your everyday evoker since the heal effect won’t restore your shields, it’ll simply forcibly prolong your life. It is, however, very nice when used right. Very useful for Templars in your group though, and probably summoners too.

Drain Power

Channels a beam that automatically locks on ALL enemies in front of the caster. 20 meters range. Each enemy will increase your mana regeneration by X%.

4.5 Usability

0 Damage

4 Utility

10 Upgradability

5.5 Overall
Comments: Not a bad skill, but not good either. It does work very nicely in certain situations where there are lots of mobs cramped together, but I’d rather switch to a gun or mind control weapon if I’m low on mana, or use a powerpack than use this skill. Investing skill points multiplies the effect greatly.

Dual Focus

Passive. Allows you to dual wield focus items. “Two focus items are better than one” as the damage from the other focus item directly increases your total spell damage.

10 Usability

10 Damage

? Utility

6 Upgradability

9.7 Overall
Comments: Upgrading will reduce the willpower feed (The cost of willpower you need to equip weapons/armor/mods). Evokers naturally should have high enough willpower, unless you have very powerful gear that needs amounts of willpower. Some evokers who rather wield a focus item and a gun or mind control device could skip this, but I wouldn’t. It’s a must-learn.

Demonspine

Important Note: DOES NOT require any corpses nearby to use, the official description is very misleading!

Casts a bone spear that travels in a straight line, hitting and penetrating all enemies for 20 meters, and most likely stunning them.

9.5 Usability

10 Damage (Multi mobs) - 8 Damage (Single mob)

7.5 Utility

9 Upgradability

9.3 Overall
Comments: A few points in this and you can stun almost anything besides giants and main event bosses. The best part about this skill is that as mobs come (and as you run away from them) they automatically align in a vertical line, allowing you to use 1-3 shots to stunlock and kill them all without breaking a sweat! A monster of a skill.

Venomous Spirit

Fires a long range, slow moving homing (specter-like) projectile.

? Usability

8 Damage

? Utility

? Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: It is good but the slow projectile speed can get frustrating. And the fact that it only hits 1 monster is enough to give this a bad rating. I need further testing to see how useful this really is. I can imagine it being a little viable for PvP, but I’d certainly invest in arc legion for that.

Level 10

Arcane Shield

Enter a stance where you’re unable to move but have increased maximum shields. Effect wears off as soon as you move.

? Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

? Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: I can imagine this being useful in certain situations, like when you’re locked on with lightning beams from those floating eye thing mobs and you want to nuke em down. Other than that, I much prefer mobility if I want to survive, standing still and taking the hits isn’t really a cabalist job..

Spectral Lash

Channels a spectral beam that causes damage. Must recast spell when target dies or is lost from sight (Annoying to do). Spectral Lash Mastery upgrades this skill.

5 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

6.5 Upgradability

6.8 Overall
Comments: Only focuses on 1 target at a time. Upgrading the skill will cause it to have a really long range, sort of an sniper-killer kind of thing as it hits really far and doesn’t need aiming. I’m yet to see the usefulness of this skill, as arc legion bests this in everything besides range.

Lightning Field

Throws a ball of lightning (Infinite range) that travels like a grenade and explodes on impact, causing the floor to have an electric field that lasts for 5 seconds (approx.). Current game mechanics allow only 1 floor damage effect to exist at a time, that means you CANT stack lightning fields.

8 Usability

? Damage

? Utility

4.5 Upgradability

8.0 Overall
Comments: Combine this with Brom’s Curse for excellent HP recovery. A very good skill all in all and can be key in certain low HP / low speed mob situations, like when fighting Zombie Summoners. No cooldowns, low mana cost, and its grenade-like throwing makes this a rather useful skill. Just not so useful against fast moving things that don’t like to stand still.

Bone Shards

Important Note: DOES NOT require any corpses nearby to use, the official description is very misleading!

Instantly (as fast as word of fear) damages enemies within a 10 meter radius around the caster, likely stunning them. 8 second cooldown.

6 Usability

9 Damage (Multi) - 6 Damage (Single)

? Utility

8 Upgradability

7.4 Overall
Comments: A better version of word of fear that causes decent damage, but more risky. Fear causes mobs to move away, giving you an opening. Stun just makes them sit there and block your exits, while the rest rotate around you and beat you to death. Plus the fact that most melee mobs have higher stun resistances than the rest will increase the risk factors. Still, the skill is good to pick up if you invested in Demonspine.

Level 15

Drain Life

Channels a bolt that causes little damage and restores your life by X per second. It’s harder to lock on multiple targets than its predecessor.

5 Usability

3 Damage

? Utility

8.5 Upgradability

2.5 Overall
Comments: I hate this skill, I’d use brom’s curse if it wasn’t instant. As far as I’ve tested it doesn’t technically DRAIN life, it just heals you and causes some very low amount of damage. I’d imagine this being useful if you’re trying to skip a batch of mobs by spraying this as you pass and praying that you live to reach the portal. Health Injectors are there for a reason even if they do have a 10 second cooldown.

Summon Ember

1 second cast time. Summons 1 elemental creature to assist you in combat.

8 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

7.5 Upgradability

8.2 Overall
Comments: No pre-requirements greatly increases the overall value of this skill. And since the pet basically causes extra damage for no direct mana cost, its pretty handy to have, provide it doesn’t run around killing itself (sadly that happens often). Its one of those “Why the hell not?” type of skills, just a bit of a hassle to cast every now and then. I heard that his damage scales with the character level, but I haven’t been keeping an eye on his progress much.

Flameshards

Launches X number of flame spikes in a chinese fan-spread like way in front of the caster, each spike will explode after about 1.5 seconds. Spikes can stick to monsters, and on cast they’re not evenly distributed. (e.g. sometimes all spikes appear on the right most side). 20 meters range.

8.5 Usability

9.3 Damage

? Utility

9.5 Upgradability

8.5 Overall
Comments: Good range, no cooldown, lots of fun! Use this on the frontline of a huge army and you can easily blow the first few lines away. Although I’d typically use Demonspine, this is more useful if the enemy is approaching you in a horizontal formation. Also, while almost all spikes can stick to a giant mob or boss to cause good damage, its usually better to use Firestorm to get the ignite effect on. You can also cast spikes on the floor and time the explosions to do a good deal of damage to an incoming force.

Venom Armor

Instantly creates a Venom Armor around you that increases your armor value, and whenever you take any hit unleashes a single swarm of locusts (sometimes more, unconfirmed) that home to nearby enemies and damage them.

7 Usability

7 Damage

? Utility

8 Upgradability

7.6 Overall
Comments: Decent. Just the high mana cost that bothers. Should be an interesting combination with Brom’s Curse and other spells, but I’m yet to test that kind of approach.

Level 20

Concentrate Damage

Blink

Tempest

Skullsplitter

Coming soon…

Level 25

Afterlife

Elemental Drain

Coming soon....

Spectral Lash Mastery

Passive. Causes a small explosion on an enemy killed by Spectral Lash, can only happen once every 2 seconds.

8 Usability

5 Damage

? Utility

7.5 Upgradability

6.7 Overall
Comments: While it’s passive and free, the explosion is rather small and weak, and not worth using Spectral Lash for it. Just wait for Arc Legion and use that if you really like homing beam attacks.

Swarm

Throws a green ball that travels like a grenade and explodes upon collision, causing the floor to have a swarm field of damage that lasts for 7 seconds (approx.). Works almost exactly like Lightning Field, but with a cooldown.

9 Usability

10+ Damage (Multi) - 9 Damage (Single)

? Utility

7 Upgradability

8.7 Overall
Comments: A powerful spell, while it does have a cooldown and a big mana cost, the damage it does is very high. Just pray that you throw the ball somewhere near a floor or the effect is wasted. Also, don’t use Lightning Field with this as it will override the swarm field.

Level 30

Hellfire

First, a white beam appears for 2 seconds so you can point where to strike. After 2 seconds, a red glyph appears on the floor, and after about 3 seconds, a meteor strikes the glyph causing a good amount of damage and burning the floor for about 4 seconds. No cooldown.

3 Usability (Opinion may vary)

10 Damage

? Utility

6.5 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Situational. This skill would be a TON better if they remove the annoying 2 second wait on the white aiming beam and just get on with the meteor shower. Huge mana cost on this spell, but upgrading it will solve the issue. I can’t rate it yet (or ever) until I test this fully in multiplayer and see how powerful it can get on stationary mobs.

Arc Legion

Multiple lightning beams appear and lock on nearby enemies, usually all beams focus on 1 enemy but they can focus on multiple enemies if they’re close enough. Costs a fixed amount of mana per beam only when its in range and doing damage.

10 Usability

9.5 Damage

9 Utility

6.5 Upgradability

9.1 Overall
Comments: Automatic lock-on for easy targeting. Powerful, and acceptable mana cost. Its short range is absolutely not an issue, and if it was then a few extra skill points will fix the problem. Can shock your target very quickly, and you can cast this skill even if you’re shocked (in fact, you can cast all lightning type magic when you’re shocked). This skill is almost perfect except that its generally not good against waves of cramped up mobs as the other evoker skills, and not nearly as good as Firestorm on bosses that have high HP (Due to the Ignites). I can imagine this skill being the most popular PvP skill in all of Hellgate, I’d like to try it in a duel.

Level 20

Concentrate Damage

Enter a stance that allows you to deal X% extra damage.

8 Usability

9.5 Damage

? Utility

9 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: An excellent way to start attacking something unaware of you, combine it with enough power and you’ll kill things before they get to you. But don’t be Rambo about this and start moving if it gets dangerous. I’m sure this skill has its priceless moments in party play, like when you have a good guardian. The only downfall is its 10 second cooldown.

Blink

Causes you to instantly teleport a few meters ahead. If there’s a wall blocking you then it won’t work and won’t cost you any mana or trigger the cooldown.

? Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

7 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: This is strictly down to your style of play. It’ll teleport you ahead, either saving or killing you in the process. But it can be amazingly useful in skipping rooms when used right. In my personal opinion, learn it since it has no pre-requirements, you never know when it’s handy.

Tempest

About 3 seconds cast time. When done, creates a thundercloud that’s about 20 meters wide and lasts for roughly 15 seconds (Can’t remember exact time). Any monster that goes near the cloud will get zapped with a powerful attack. The cloud has 3-4 zaps (Again, not very sure) that shoot at the first enemy, and each one of those zaps has its recharge time of about 3 seconds. So it’s not exactly mass damage (AOE), it’s just a cloud that has mini lightning turrets zapping 1 monster at a time.

8 Usability

9.5 Damage

7 Utility

8.5 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Very powerful skull, albeit slow and painfully hard to pull off right. It totally depends what you’re up against, and it should prove to be much stronger in party play. If you’re up against slow moving melee targets, one Tempest will make a difference.

Skullsplitter

Throws a fast moving, small ricocheting ball of bone that after 1.5 seconds explodes into X number of instant hit splash damage bone bullets. The explosion from these bullets has a good radius, but the direction they travel in is hard to spot, my best guess is a wide cone in the direction the original ball was heading to. Note that if the original ball hits a monster then it won’t explode and instead cause very little damage. When used right, it can cause ridiculous amounts of damage.

? Usability

? Damage(Varies greatly)

? Utility

9 Upgradability

? Overall
Comments: Very hard to pull off, or maybe I need a lot more practice using it? I can’t say that its good or bad, I can only say that if you throw a high level Skullsplitter into a small room and HOPEFULLY the ball didn’t hit anyone in its way there, there’s a good chance everything in there will be dead. Personally, I think Hellfire is easier to pull off than this. But with enough practice, Skullsplitter can be very devastating even if it lacks the stun power from its predecessors. I think the key to using this is how you ricochet the shot, need more experimenting..

Level 25

Afterlife

2 seconds cast time, cannot move. Drains the life of every corpse around you in a 10 meter radius, restoring X HP per corpse drained.

5 Usability

0 Damage

? Utility

4 Upgradability

5.4 Overall
Comments: Free instant HP recovery, but absolutely not necessary. As an evoker you shouldn’t be taking damage that burns through your shields that often, and even if you do, you can simply use a healthpack or something. It can be handy in certain situations, like if there are waves of mobs spawning on top of each other, and I can imagine this skill being handy, or key, for some high HP / armor Evoker builds. This skill could actually useful in battle if it was instant and its energy cost was lower, or even zero

Elemental Drain

Starts channeling a beam into your target for 3 seconds, you CAN move while it’s casting. When the channeling is done, you gain X% Elemental Defenses and reduce the target’s Elemental Defenses by Y%. Both effects last for about 7 seconds, 20 meters range.

7.5 Usability

9.5 Damage

10 Utility

9.5 Upgradability

8.9 Overall
Comments: Wow! Absolutely powerful and amazing to use on any stubborn creature, albeit costs a good sum of mana. I love the fact that you’re able to move as you’re casting. Every party play or boss hunting Evoker is advised to learn and maximize this skill!

Hellgate on GOTY List

2007-12-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

The end of the year always brings ou tthe GOTY awards and Gamespy posted their list for PC Roleplaying game. No surprisew which title took the top spot but it was nice to see Hellgate making it into the top 10 at number six ahead of more recently released titles such as Tabula Rasa and even GuildWars. The full list below:

Hellgate London E-Card from IAH

2007-12-26T01:52:00.000-08:00

The South East Asian Hellgate London publisher IAH has posted up an E-Card on their website that you can send to your friends to wish them all the best for these festive hollidays!

The cards feature the upcoming Hellgate London figurines that will be released in 2008.

So head over to the IAH site, and fill out your friend’s details to send them the card!

Video Game Review: Hellgate: London

2007-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

The general premise behind Hellgate: London (HG:L) is that the world has been overrun by a demonic invasion and there’s a group of survivors holed up in London’s various subway stations trying to survive. It’s produced by Flagship Studios, formed from many former Diablo developers, and published by EA

The Good

HG:L is very much the spiritual successor to Diablo, and therefore can best be described as “hack and slash”. For much of the early goings, you will be charging through a horde of beasts, demons and zombies merrily shooting, casting or slashing them into tiny bits and collecting all sorts of gear along the way. It does capture a lot of that old spirit “just another level real quick” feeling of Diablo despite the new setting.

The interface is a bit sparse, but functional. Your health and shields are shown on one side, mana…excuse me, POWER on the other with your skill buttons in the middle. A great many conventions of the user experience have been taken from World of Warcraft (which arguably took them from Diablo, of course) so if you have any sort of familiarity with that game you should be able to navigate the interface pretty easily without directions. Exclamation marks denote quest-givers, item quality is denoted by color, and so forth. While not original perhaps, they are a good standard to base around nonetheless.

Gameplay revolves around clearing out various levels, most randomly generated. While generally some variation of ruined cityscape, Flagship has tried to present at least some variety in the levels with pseudo-RTS play or specialty levels where it’s pitch-black save a provided light. Monsters and static objects (which can be smashed) all have a chance to drop items, but unlike many RPGs, there is no pressing need to swap out items all the time. At stations, you can “upgrade” your weapons to improve their stats or add new abilities to them, theoretically allowing you to keep a favored weapon for as long as you want to use it. The upgrades are paid for through both money and materials which you obtain from breaking apart unwanted items.

Graphically the game looks nice, though obviously a better card translates into better graphics. The armor and weapons for the three different factions is very distinct and well-done, and the monsters will give you a feeling that you are indeed fighting something otherworldly. There are also some very nice animation effects, such as a zombie having chunks of blown off by weapons fire until it’s just a pair of legs charging at you. One great graphical feature is that armor can be colored to present a uniform scheme, eliminating the “I lost a fight with a clown tent” appearance common in games such as the aforementioned World of Warcraft. It’s a small detail, but appreciated that in the future they have not lost the ability to use paint.

Another major point on the game is that while it has a Singleplayer version, you’ll almost certainly want to play the multiplayer and tackle the dungeons with your friends. This multiplayer has many interesting ideas in the genre, such as the subscription model. You can play HG:L online, for free, forever. Of course, you won’t gain the benefit of all the new content they put out unless you subscribe, but you’re not obligated to pay unless you feel what they’re giving you warrants it. This is a nice feature, as people can see how the company behaves for as long as they feel they need to before forking over more money. Don’t think it’s worth it to shell out the fees ($9.99 a month as of this writing)? Then don’t until you see something you feel is worth the money. It’s an interesting model, to say the least.

The game also includes Xbox Live-ish “achievements” for various things such as slaying X amount of monsters, accumulating Y amount of money or more esoteric ones such as the Templar-only achievement of killing the end boss with a cricket bat. A nice feature, if mildly pointless, but it does give you smaller sub-goals to focus on while trying to get through the game. It’s also a chance for them to show some humor with their “I really hate boxes” achievement you gain for smashing the little blighters in search of the elusive “phat lewtz.”

The Bad

Right now the biggest knock against the game is that it’s more than a little repetitive. There’s currently a finite number of tilesets and structures, and the more you play the more you’ll see these repeat themselves. Monsters, too, suffer from this as your enemies tend to simply be re-skinned versions of what you fought previously. There’s some variety in their abilities, but once you get past the first few levels you see fewer and fewer new enemy models popping up. This too is similar to Diablo, but can be a put-off all the same.

Another big problem is the lack of what some would consider “core MMO functionality” in the multiplayer segment. Things like an Auction House or in-game mail system are currently not in the game, and the guild management options are almost totally inadequate. However, Flagship has stated that these things are at the top of their priority list for inclusion into the game. Even so, this can wreck the game for many people, so it’s definitely bad.

Monster AI, at least on the basic level, is also woefully bad. It is entirely possible to wipe out whole swathes of enemies by running backwards and holding down the mouse button (for a ranged class at least). While some enemies have interesting tactics from time to time, for the most part it will simply be a slaughter of epic proportions. It’s good for the ego, perhaps, to be a whirlwind of destruction (which is admittedly the point of hack-n-slash), but every so often it just feels like you’re stomping on kittens. I hear this isn't as hideous on the harder difficulties, but since you can only do one at the start, it is worth mentioning.

The most grievous sin (in this reviewer’s opinion) was the inclusion of the most reviled portion of Diablo: Inventory Tetris. Sure, you have the six squares needed to pick up that legendary rifle, but because they’re not in the correct shape you have to juggle around your inventory until it will fit. While it’s quaint and familiar at first, it rapidly descends into the “tiresome” realm. It’s a minor quibble in the grand scheme, but it’s one that crops up with such regularity that it’s probably the most prominent issue with the game’s design. No word from Flagship on if that will be remedied.

The Ugly

Some of the uglier portions of the game would be the chat interface. While it got great improvements with their most recently released patch, it’s still a very large, clunky…thing. It gets the job done after a fashion, but it’s just very confusing to figure out at a glance. Nothing insurmountable, but annoying.

The level randomness that’s one of HG:L’s nicer features can also come back to bite it as it doesn’t appear that it has any “safeguards” on the random portion. This can lead to the puzzling situation where your quest will involve you going across multiple zones, but the entrance into the level from the station is, quite literally, across the hall from the exit to the next zone. While you’re likely to go around slashing away at the whole level in search of loot and XP, it is quite disconcerting.

Another issue is the temperamental respawn mechanics. When you log in and enter any level, logging out and going back into it will present you with an entirely new level. Fair enough, but the respawns on levels when you have NOT logged out seem murky at best. Sometimes you’ll return through levels you’ve cleared a half hour or more ago to find them wholly deserted still, others you’ll walk back to find them fully re-populated mere minutes later. This is especially fun when you were exploring a hellrift and return to find monsters all over the portal that kill you before the screen has fully rendered them…but I’m not bitter.

Talents…sorry, SKILLS, are another issue. The explanation on skills does not always give a good idea of how useful a given skill will be, or at what level of investment you see returns. For example, Blademasters have a “Charge” ability that is generally regarded as a “one point wonder” meaning it’s good to put one point into it, but further investment is largely a waste even if it goes up to 10 possible points. This, combined with a lack of a respec mechanism, makes the game very unforgiving of not doing research on these skills beforehand as you can pump points (of which you will only have 49 to distribute as you see fit) into something that seems good, but turns out to be useless. Whether respeccing will be included in a future patch is still up for debate.

The Gryph Factor*

HG:L is currently very low on Gryph Factor. There are no API for user addons, and there’s very little information available outside the game currently. Their web assets are very lackluster and there’s a minimum of “geeking out” that can be done over the game in its present state. This would make for one very sad Gryphon.

Overall

If you miss the days where you could get a couple buddies and charge into a dungeon without having to worry about “who’s the tank?” or “we need a healer” or “Damnit, the boss didn’t drop my item again” then HG:L will undoubtedly be a breath of fresh air. It’s familiar enough to Diablo/WoW players that the learning curve for them will be almost non-existent, and it captures the spirit of “hit stuff on the head until it doesn’t move anymore and then take their stuff”. It’s not a WoW-killer, or a blockbuster mega-title but between the gameplay and the support that Flagship has shown thus far it’s still a solid buy. The jury is still out on their long-term appeal, as that relies heavily on what their patches hold in store.

Control Freaks - David Glenn Interview

2007-12-20T22:04:00.000-08:00

While this video is hosted on “My Video Daily” website, it was conducted by Control Freaks with David Glenn, at one of the recent game conferences.

The video shows an ad at the start so wait through that.

It starts off with the familiar trailer of Hellgate, then David comes on. He talks of how the studio started, talks of how many people they have, of Mythos, Ping0, how they progressed through making the game as well as their cinematics.

It is a good interview, and while no new information on the game is provided, it is still full of information on the company.

Hellgate London - Biggest Disappointment of the Year?

2007-12-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

Primotech has published their game of the year awards for 2007, and they list Hellgate London as their most disappointing game of 2007.

Hellgate London is not a bad game, but it is the biggest disappointment of the
year.

The title showed so much promise: it was to be the first major
project from Flagship Studios, the newly created team staffed by high level
ex-Blizzard employees. With a game this similar to Diablo created by the people
who actually made Diablo, we can’t help but make comparisons, and unfortunately,
that’s where Hellgate falls well short.

The game lacks the same
addictive quality that made Diablo what it was. To top it all off, the fee
structure is unusual, to say the least. Not only do players have to shell out
full price for the game, but also need to pay a monthly fee if they don’t want
to be at a disadvantage when playing online.

And, if you were one of the
unfortunate souls to have paid for all of that, your online character may have
been suddenly wiped clean shortly after the game’s release.

You’ll
notice that we haven’t posted a review of the game. It’s because none of us have
been able to bring ourselves to play long enough to actually write one. Here’s
hoping that 2008 brings a better offering from Flagship.

Hellgate for the Holidays

2007-12-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

Flagship Studios has sent out a newsletter wishing season’s greetings and providing details on what’s to come in the new patches. Here are its contents, in case you didn’t receive it:

Fellow Hellgaters,

The leaves have long since fallen, snow coats the ground, and the temperature is cold enough to freeze Sydonai’s tentacles off. The master of Earth’s Burn is not pleased. But we sure are! How could we not be? This is our first post-release newsletter!

Below, please find the latest HG:L happenings.

Multiplayer Patch 0.7
As the players who participated in our Test Center server found out earlier today, the 0.7 content update will be launching for both the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers this week.

Big additions in this patch include a massive memory usage fix, Nightmare difficulty rebalancing, and a new “Looking for Group” interface.

A number of notorious bugs were also squashed in this build. Impassible maps and quest monsters that refused to spawn are a thing of the past.

With 0.7 subscribers can enjoy additional content in the form of the Transmogrifier — an item used for extra inventory and recipe crunching — and twelve new unique items.

Bill & Stonehenge
Curious about Hellgate: London’s first major ongoing content release for subscribers? It’s what we call the Stonehenge Expansion and Bill Roper is here to fill you in…

“We’ve decided to take the time necessary to make our first major content patch
right. If there is one lesson we’ve learned from launching Hellgate: London, our
releases should be a question of “what” and not “when.”

We were pushing
to get Stonehenge released before the end of the year, but we realized that we
wouldn’t be doing the right thing to push it out before it was ready and
properly tested. We’re still on our schedule and meeting our original promise of
providing a major quarterly update. We just felt that we would be doing everyone
a disservice to push this out before it was right.

We are, however,
going to have the first in our continuing Hellgate chronicles, entitled
Stonehenge, into Test Center before the holidays. This is so we can get a lot of
people finding the issues and getting us feedback over their holiday breaks.”

– Bill Roper

If all goes well, you’ll see the Stonehenge Expansion hit the Test Center this week, with the full release scheduled to launch in January.

Single Player Patch 0.6
Hellgaters who prefer solo play have been eagerly awaiting this news… SP 0.6 is now available. Some major fixes include issues with the mini-game, quest items, and unique drops. Fresh content includes rebalanced skills, more chests in secret areas, and user interface tweaks. These adjustments match SP to MP 0.6 and shall greatly improve your single player experience

So Long!
From everyone here at Flagship Studios (yes, even Sydonai), we wish you all the best this holiday season and we hope 2008 sees you all safe and well. See you online!

HellgateLondon.com - MP Patch 0.7 Tomorrow, Patch 1 Preview is Online

2007-12-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

Scapes, Flagship Studios’ Community Manager, published two announcements today, and I just cannot decide which one is more exciting.

First, the 5th Multi Player patch, 0.7, will be available tomorrow, one day late due to a small chat bug.

You, our active and dedicated Hellgaters, have been remarkably patient. This
morning, I received an update on Patch 0.7 saying that a new issue had been
discovered. The Global chat was showing up in the Guild and Party chat panes, a
bug that would render partying and guild play rather difficult. In order to
deliver a sound product free of known defects, Patch 0.7 has been delayed by a
day.

While you wait for the patch, why not try Patch 1.0 ? Yes, as an extra early Christmas present, Flagship Studios has released a preview of the first big content update ! Just log on to the Test Center to get a taste of the “Stonehenge Chronicles”:

We just couldn’t help ourselves. All this holiday cheer got to our heads, so we
put something special in your Test Center stocking… It’s just a little something
we call the Stonehenge Chronicles. We’re hoping you’ll all check it out and have
a good one on us.

Single Player Patch 0.6 and New HG:L Launcher

2007-12-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

Saying that people were looking towards this announcement would be an understatement. Finally, the 0.6 single player patch has been released ! Lots of fixes inside

And to introduce the new patch, an updated version of the Hellgate: London launcher has been released. Just click on the “Updates available” button and this all-new launcher will install itself. Here is what it looks like (main menu, patch menu, patch menu while downloading SP 0.6):

Just in time for Patch 1.0, with its 300MB which would have been quite a hassle to download through the previous system !

First Stonehenge Pics - Hanbitsoft

2007-12-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

The Korean publisher for Hellgate London has today published a whole set of screenshots and concept art of the upcoming Stonehenge area, as well as some new items. While the text is in Korean, there are a lot of pictures to look at. There was also a video that was shown at the presentation, but that is not for the public for now.

The new areas look amazing, and will hopefully get implemented in the game soon!

HGL Fan Interview

2007-12-18T22:19:00.000-08:00

The official Hellgate London has posted up an interview with HGG member Doffy, who was one of the winners of the Halloween competition. This is the first of three interviews with the three winners.

What inspired you to create your submission?

For the first part of the
video: The thought of people continuing to try and trick or treat in
Hellgate:London’s setting was amusing to me.

For the second part: The
gods of sarcasm.

What did you use to create it?

Software: Fraps,
and Sony Vegas 6.0

Otherware: Clay Gootgeld and his beautiful voices.

How long did it take to complete your submission?

Two nights of
capturing/voice acting/editing. Not to mention the 3 years of preproduction.

Have you ever won grand prize in a contest before?

RL? Yes. A
few paintball tournaments. Non-RL? HG:L Halloween contest

Patch 0.7 and 1.0

2007-12-17T22:28:00.000-08:00

Flagship programmer Cellwind has told us some information on Patch 0.7 and 1.0. For one thing, there will be no 0.8 or 0.9, they will jump directly to 1.0. It seems like we will finally have a TestCenter in Europe soon as well.

Vaevictus: Thanks for being patient. I'm pretty sure we had planned on having
the 1.0 patch out by now.

0.7 and 1.0 patch are right on top of
eachother at this point. We have 4 different branches going at the same time and
they are all competing for test time and TestCenter usage. We've got the single
player patch, 0.7 patch, 1.0 patch and the latest branch.

As far as I
know, we should have 0.7 out early next week and have 1.0 on TestCenter about
the same time. When 1.0 gets released depends on what issues we find and how
long it takes to fix them. If there are no problems for a few days then I
imagine it would get released the following week.

HellgateDigger Online!

2007-12-17T22:23:00.000-08:00

HellgateDigger.com is now open for first public testing and we are wanting you to go test it out. This is the latest Community Driven project here at Hellgate IncGamers and with your input this could be a very useful resource. We have started things off with a few bits and pieces but it needs the community to help out.

This complete database for the game will grow over time and we have worked hard at making the information input as complete as possible including shots and user comments as well as all the stats you would expect to find in a database.

Cellwind Gives Updates on Patch Status

2007-12-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

Flagship Studios programmer Cellwind has dropped some status updates about the release for the upcoming patches 0.7 and patch 1.0 on the official forum in a thread that addresses the issue of the game’s out-of-memory issues and his progress on dealing with it.

Here are some of the things he’s mentioned regarding the upcoming patches:

DK_Lond: Sorry for the lack of communication. We would have released 0.7 patch
this last week, but we thought there was a problem with the server code which
turned out to be nothing. At first we turned off the new allocators, but that
didn’t fix it. After what looked like a 5x increase in memory usage per user, it
turned out that our stress test code wasn’t simulating any users logging out. It
should be out Monday or Tuesday.

…

Vaevictus: Thanks for being patient. I’m pretty sure we had planned on having
the 1.0 patch out by now.

0.7 and 1.0 patch are right on top of
eachother at this point. We have 4 different branches going at the same time and
they are all competing for test time and TestCenter usage. We’ve got the single
player patch, 0.7 patch, 1.0 patch and the latest branch.

As far as I
know, we should have 0.7 out early next week and have 1.0 on TestCenter about
the same time. When 1.0 gets released depends on what issues we find and how
long it takes to fix them. If there are no problems for a few days then I
imagine it would get released the following week.

…

mjollnerus: I think it’s a case of fear of the unknown. FMOD releases a new
build like every 2 weeks, so the fear is that taking a new build to fix known
issues could introduce greater unknown issues. The majority of our test effort
has been directed at patch 1.0, so it was thought best to put the new FMOD drop
there where it would get the most testing. As Summer says, we’re skipping the
version numbers from 0.7 to 1.0 patch, so there won’t be a 0.8 and 0.9 patch.
There should only be a week between the 0.7 and 1.0 patch.

1001 Facts of Hellgate: London

2007-12-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

Well, not quite as few as 1001 facts, but the HellgateWiki.com now features 1001 content articles!

Obviously, there are a LOT more than 1001 pages, but there are about 1001 pages with enough content to be considered a "proper" article; such as a Class, NPC, Item, Weapon, Quest or Skill. The whole Wiki contains 3329 pages, but many of those are stubs or talk pages (Wikis' equivalence of a Forum or comments page) and 1586 uploaded files. What all these numbers actually mean is that it's the best source of information for Hellgate: London, and that we, as a community of Wikians, are quite darn proud of it!

A Wiki is an open-ended project of a community, in this case the Hellgate community, and we would love to be able to eventually give ALL information there is about Hellgate: London to anyone that is curious about the game. The first 1001 articles is a big step in the right direction. Anyone can help, even if it is just a spelling error or a minor Data Gathering number added, and who knows, you might get hooked on the Wiki-ing!

Thanks BSTL, Crichhhhwwt, Cydira, Dark Matter, GoodWill, Mileron, Pixelz, PtViper, Tenera, TheEnemy and Xodusness for your frequent and high quality contributions, and a BIG thanks to the hundreds of users that have contributed with a statistical number, skill addition, screenshot or spelling fix during the last few months! Lets go make it even better!

Missed out on the Founder’s Offer?

2007-12-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

This is the last month to be eligible for the Founders Offer as the offer only lasts up until December 31st. For those of you who aren’t in the know, the Founders Offer allows you to pay a one-time payment of 150 USD for a lifetime subscription to Hellgate: London instead of monthly payments.

After the end of the month, you will no longer be able to get the founders offer. Please keep in mind you don’t need to subscribe for online play, but if you’re interested in the perks of subscription and on-going content, then this is definitely worth looking into.

Missed out on the Founders Offer? You can still get yours with a pre-order from bGosu.com.
You can grab the Pre-Order from the site which includes a Founders Offer eligibility offer where you can pay for the founders offer and attain a wasp dye kit for all of your characters.

Details:

The wasp dye kit can’t be traded and will always be with your character(s) even
if you make a brand new character they will obtain a wasp dye kit in their
inventory.

Only those who with a pre-order registered account are viable
to the limited-time founders offer.

You can add a ‘pre-order’ badge to
your account from the hellgatelondon.com website into your account there after
signing in at anytime, but the founders offer must be paid for before December
31st of 2007 to obtain the Founders Offer.

Also, if you just wanted the
wasp dye kit and didn’t want founders offer you can get that too. You can add
all 4 different pre-order dye kits to 1 account. It’s certainly a great looking
dye kit for those of you with bland colors. Metalic black with gold pipe lining
and patterns make for a kickass scheme.

Game Informer Reviews Hellgate London

2007-12-14T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Game Informer magazine has reviewed Hellgate London in it’s current issue.
They talk of the games positives such as the gameplay, items, randomly generated levels, however also mention the negatives such as the repeated quests and areas as well as HGL being more of a good Co-Op game rather than an MMO. They do say that what the game does well, it does very well, but it’s bad points is that it doesn’t venture too far out of its scope.

All in all, Game Informer gives Hellgate London 8.5/10 and gives the following points:

Concept: Apply Diablo style leveling and loot grinding to a 3D rendered post
apocalyptic vision of Earth

Graphics: Quite nice, especially the variety
with which you can customise your avatar’s appearance via equipment

Sound: Voiceover are good, but the effects grate after a while and the
music annoyingly only plays about 15 percent of the time

Playability:
The action is fast, interface smooth, and loads short

Entertainment: You
won’t find better level and loot grinding anywhere, but that’s about all this
offers

Replay Value: High

It then goes on to say that you can play the game free, and if you fall in love with it, it’s well worth the $10 per month to become a subscriber.

PC Powerplay Reviews Hellgate London

2007-12-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

PC Powerplay, an Australian gaming magazine has published a review of Hellgate London in their most current issue. While we do not have scans, we actually don’t publish scans on this website anymore, so don’t expect to see them. However HGG member Darksabre posted a summary of the article that I will now shamelessly copy and paste here!

The two-page review features six screenshots, a boxout of classes and a few
pictures regarding the skill tree, inventory and world map.

Quotes from
the article:

POSITIVES:
“If you like action RPG’s you should buy
this game. If you like FPS games, you should buy this game. If you like RPG/FPS
games, you should probably start cancelling your social committments for the
next six months”

“Killing baddies is the heart of the game, and it’s
both visuall appealing and fun in a classic Quake kind of way: the difficulty is
pitched just right”

“Hellgate is a wonderfully deep, wonderfully
balanced Diablo 2 ripoff”

NEGATIVES:
“The side quests are uniformly
awful, presented 1997 style, as poorly written text over poorly written
dialogue, and the central plot isn’t much better”

“But Hellgate wants 28
different kinds of magical pants, and couldn’t stretch back stories for any of
them, so its greenhorn dungarees for you, hero”

“It bothers me that
Hellgate pretends. It bothers me that it thinks its an update, not a rehash of
the dungeon crawl formula It bothers me that it could have been so much more.
But it is what it is: a good game which doesnt bother with the bits it thinks we
don’t care about”

No mention is given to online modes, subscription or
ongoing updates or patches.

7/10
+ Insanely replayable
+ Easy to
learn, hard to master
+ Great monster designs
- Unexciting Story
-
Recycled RPG cliches
- Little sense of immersion

Beginners Guide to the Evoker

2007-12-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Hellgate: Londen is a great game. But it’s very vague for new players. So I did a lot of playing, testing and searching around the net in order to get an idea of how things work. While doing so I thought, why not just compile all the information which I obtain so that other can benefit from it as well. But I must admit it isn’t completely finished yet. I still haven’t seen all spells, as I didn’t get into the beta and have a busy life at the moment. None the less, I tried my best and plan on keeping it updated. Anyway, here it is!

This Guide Contains: v1.1
Overview of the Evoker
Elements
Focus Drives
- Weapon Rating Number
- Power
- Elemental Attack Strength
- Relic Slots
- Types of Focus Drives
- Magical Properties and Spells
Attribute Points
Skills

Overview of the Evoker:
Evokers are the primary caster class of Hellgate: London. By the means of their focus drives they are able to tap into the powers of the nether, and manipulate these to conjure devastating spells. Granting them full skill access to all the ingame elements, which makes the evoker a versatile class, able to specialize in different types of combat. With that in mind we will continue on to the rest of this guide.

Elements:
Before we go further into the evoker it might be useful to know what kind of elements the game contains, and their corresponding status effects. These effects may apply when any of the elements causes a target to lose life while having the corresponding attack strength. Note that I said lose life, as HG:L contains energy shields that absorb damage and thus prevent status effects from applying as long as they hold. There are ways around this, more on that later. Anyway, here is the list of elements:
Physical: May stun the target, preventing it from taking any actions for a short amount of time.
Fire: May cause the target to become ignited, causing it to lose 5% of its maximum health per second.
Electrical: May cause the target to become shocked, preventing it from using any skills.
Spectral: May inflict phase which causes the target to take 50% more damage and decrease its damage output by 50%
Toxic: May poison the target, preventing it from gaining health. It may also slow move and/or attack speed and cause a minor health degeneration.

Focus Drives:
Focus drives are the gauntlet like weapons that the evoker requires to wear in order to cast his spells. They are referred to as weapons because they can also fire bolts of energy, much like a pistol. But more important, they directly determine how effective the evokers spells are. Evokers also have a skill called Dual Focus, which makes it possible for them to wear two focus drives at the same time.

Key Features:
Focus Drives have three key features: Power, Elemental Strength, Relic Slots. The power and elemental strength can be viewed by pressing the right mouse button on a focus. This will cause the weapon menu to pop-up, which contains all its stats. Most are pretty self explanatory, but some may need additional clarification. Speaking of which, lets first clear up the…
Weapon Rating Number: This refers to the number you see when holding your mouse over a focus, also seen in the upper right corner when viewing the weapon menu. It has its corresponding elemental symbol on the background that refers to the type of damage it deals*. This is often confused for the focus weapon’s power, but in fact it is supposed to give an indication of the overall rating of the focus. Taking in account all stats, including those given by any inserted Relics.
*(so far I have only seen spectral, but I don’t have proof that others don’t exist)
Power: Determines two things; the amount of damage spells do, and the focus weapon fire damage. Each spell has it’s own damage factor, which is multiplied by your power factor for the final amount of damage. Note that currently the exact damage of a spell cant been viewed.
When dual wielding, the power used for spell damage isn’t a simple sum of the two focus drives. If the information I have read is correct, each focus gives off 60% of their respective power. For example, when wielding one with power 60 and a second one with power 50 the effective spell power will become: (60 x 0.6) + (50 x 0.6) = 66.
What most people might not realize at first is that equipping a second focus can lead to a decrease in the final power factor. By solving the formula it becomes clear that the secondary focus must have at least 2/3 of the power of the primary one in order to not negatively influence the total power outcome. Above 2/3 will always increase the total power. It is, of course, unlikely for the difference between the two focus drives to become so big.
Elemental Strength: Determines the chance that any elemental damage triggers their corresponding status effect. I am pretty sure that both the amount of damage and the base trigger chance of the source are also factored in the final proc chance. (Proc means the triggering of the status effect)
Besides the chance to proc, also the duration of the status effect seems to be influenced by the elemental strength. I don’t know if the final elemental strength is calculated the same way as power when dual wielding.
Relic Slots: Focus drives may contain up to 2 relic slots, except for prism’s which have 3 or 4. Relics are items that can be found and inserted into weapons in order to upgrade them. They have their own special stats; like increased damage, elemental strength, special spell triggers on a kill and so on. When inserted into a weapon it takes on the relics effects. How these influence spells will be listed below, under magical properties. Note that in order to insert a relic, the items it goes into must be of a certain level. This level range is displayed among the relics stats.

Types of Focus Drives:
There are several types of focus drives, which have inherent special properties:
Axis: Decreases power cost of spells.
Core: Decreases recharge times of spells.
Lens: Increased critical hit chance.
Locus: Enhanced damage.
Prism: Increased number of Relic slots, always 3 or 4, instead of up to 2.
Radiant: Increased Elemental Strength.

Magical Properties and spells:
Items that have green, blue, orange or gold names are magically enhanced. These contain special modifiers which boost the wearer in some way. With focus drives most of these also apply to the evokers spells. It’s not always that clear what does and what doesn’t apply. So, the next section will sum up several magical attributes that effect spells.

+X% of any damage type: for example, +10% fire damage. Important to know is that this doesn’t only apply to fire spells. Spectral Lash (which does spectral damage) also gains 10% extra damage, but that will be fire damage. So as a result spectral lash now does spectral and fire damage, and can trigger both phase and ignite. Although the ignite chance will be significantly smaller due to the small part being fire damage. This even counts for physical damage.
Adds X to [Status Effect] Attack Strength: This increases the chance an elemental attack will trigger its status effect. For more information see the elemental table above.
Shield Penetration: This also applies to your spells. Some percentage will negate the shield and directly result in life los. Penetrating damage can apply a status effect. It’s highly recommended to get a total of 100%, which will cause you to completely negate shields.

Others that also apply to spells:
Shield Overload.
X% Chance to cause a spell on kill/hit.
Critical Damage Bonus: +X%. (Don’t know if all damage spells can crit)
Critical Multiplier +X%.

A note worthy exception is:
+X% Increased Range does NOT apply to spells. I have tested this and it didn’t have any effect on spell range.

Attribute Points
The evoker focused on Stamina and Will:
Will: Will is of course important for power pool and power regeneration. Allowing for more spells to be cast. Focus drives and Relics also require Will to be equipped. So keep in mind that in mind. Especially when making a more Stamina based evoker.
Stamina: More Stamina means more hit points, which is always good. It’s also required for equipping armors.
Strength: Some players also spend some points in Strength, because this is required in order to equip armors with higher defense ratings. Which might be desired when you use close range spells. But this is very build dependent.
Accuracy: Evokers don’t need this. Don’t put points in this.

Skills
The evokers skills can be split up in several groups; Curses, Drains, Miscellaneous, Fire, Spectral, Lightning, Bone and Toxic skills. Spells that deal damage have their own factor which is multiplied with the powers from the equipped focus drives. So spell damage is not related with skill level.
I chose not to use a spell rating system, because I believe that most spell are to situational and build dependent. Instead I’ll first give a description of each spell, mostly covering how it functions. This is followed by some comments about how the spell could be used, and what to keep in mind while doing so. I hope this will make people see how they can combine spells in order to design their own builds. Before you start reading these you might want to view the skill tree, or use the talent calculator to help you play around with skill points as you design your evoker.

Evoker Talent Calculator

Curses:

Brom’s Curse (lvl 5): This curse heals anyone that damages the afflicted creatures. The amount healed is equal to the given percentage of the attackers max life. It has a 10 meter radius and a casting time of 1 second, during which you can’t move. The life gain effect can only trigger once every 2 seconds or so, per target. Additional points in this skill increases the health percentage gained, maximum number of targets and duration.

This skill is a good way to keep up your health, and works great in parties as well. When combined with other defensive spell like Venom Armor and Arcane shield it can significantly increase your survivability. Therefore most evokers consider it a must have skill. It doesn’t require to be maxed, though. 3 or 4 points should be enough. The first few points really help to make it more durable, to last until the end of the fight, as well as increasing the percentage life gained. But after 4 points it’s duration increase shouldn’t matter that much and the small percentage bonus isn’t worth the points.
It also works well together with Drain Power, which deals really small amounts of damage but enough to trigger Brom’s Curse.

Afterlife (lvl 25): This skill heals the evoker for a certain amount of life per corps in a 10 meter radius. The life gained scales with character level. It has a 2 second casting time, during which you can’t move. Initially it has a 20 second cooldown, which decreases by additional skill points.

Can be useful in between battles, for health recovery. A 2 second casting time is rather long for it to be an effective heal spell during combat. Brom’s Curse is better way to fulfill this function, as you can continue to be offensive while healing yourself. I don’t recommend putting points in this skill, instead get a focus with + to afterlife. Set this as one of your additional weapon sets (F2 or so), and swap it out when you need to heal. It isn’t worth the points.

Spectral Curse (lvl 30): This curse causes all afflicted creatures to explode with spectral damage on death. A sort of automatic corps explosion. It has a 10 meter radius and a casting time of 1 second, during which you can’t move. Additional points increase the maximum number of targets that can be afflicted and it’s duration.

Initially this has a very short duration of only 3 seconds, coupled with the short range in which it takes effects makes it tricky to use. Although the duration can be increased with additional skill points. This skill has the potential to cause a chain effect. As in killing one triggers an explosion that in turn kills another and so on. In theory this could work great for an evoker that focuses around close combat. With spells like Firestorm and Venom Armor. It should be noted that it overrides Brom’s Curse, which is disadvantage for such builds. Although Arcane Shield may be able to compensate for this.

Drain Spells:

Drain Power (lvl 5): With this skill the evoker channels a beam to each enemy in a narrow 20 meter cone. For each affected target the evoker gets the given percentile bonus to power regeneration. It also deals a minimal amount of damage. You can freely move while using this skill. Additional skill points will increase the percentile bonus to power regeneration.

This spell can be useful for power intensive builds. Since the bonus gained is percentile, the effect of this skill is greater if the evoker already has a higher base power regeneration. I this case it might be worth a few points. But I recommend to wait until later levels before you put additional points in this, so you can see how your power pool / power usage scales late game.
As has been said before, this triggers Brom’s Curse, which can lead to a very effective refill.

Drain Life (lvl 15): Works the same as Drain Power, but the cone in which it locks on to its targets seems to be narrower. For each affected target the evokers heals for a fixed amount of health per second, which scales with character level. The damage is better than that of Drain Power, but still not low. Additional skill points will increase the health gain per second.

This spell can be useful. It deals better damage than Drain Power, but less than the amount of life it drains. Just as Drain Power it can trigger Brom’s Curse. Combining those will result in a very nice and quick health regen. Can be useful in pvp, if health injectors are forbidden.

Elemental Drain (lvl 25): All I have heard about this is that its bugged and because of that ineffective, therefore I haven’t tested it yet. I will update this in the nearby future.

Miscellaneous:

Word of Fear (lvl 1): May cause enemies within a 10 meter radius to flee away from you. Additional skill points increase the chance that they will flee.

A defensive spell. Not fully reliable, but still a potential life saver. I don’t know how it scales at higher levels nor difficulties. Personally am not a fan of this type of skill, at least not when playing something like an evoker. So overall its hard for me to say if it’s worth it.

Dual Focus (lvl 5): The first skill point is required for the evoker to dual wield focus drives. Which is likely to result in increased spell power and elemental attack strength. In addition two focus drives allow for more item bonuses to skills and relic slots, increasing the strength of the evoker even further. Additional points decrease the will power feed.

A must have skill. At the very least 1 point should always be spend on Dual Focus. The evoker is an offensive class, and foci are the way to increase your damage output. It’s as simple as that.
Evokers naturally have high will, but endgame legendary foci require huge amounts as well. Always keep this in mind when designing your builds, and thus keep some points reserved. I recommend spreading the investments in this skill over a large amount of levels. See how your Will scales with your gear as you progress. This is especially important for evokers that focus more on stamina due to their build.

Arcane Shield (lvl 10): Instantly recharges and boosts the evokers shield above its maximum. The maximum shield bonus scales with character level. You must stand still in order to maintain the shield bonus. It has a 10 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the maximum shield bonus.

At least 1 point should be put into this, as it instantly recovers your shields to 100%. Even if you move directly after casting it, only the maximum shields bonus will be lost. Remember that shields are important because they protect you from status effects. Can also be used to buy time for healing abilities to kick in, or protect you while casting spells that might require you to endanger yourself. Examples of such are Tempest (takes some time to cast), Firestorm (due to the short range) or Concentrate Damage (also requires you to stay stationary).

Summon Ember (lvl 15): Summons a fire elemental that fights for the evoker. Takes 1 second to summon, and you can’t move for 2 seconds afterwards. Maintaining an elemental also lowers your maximum power. Additional skill points increases the elementals damage output.

It’s rather weak and suicidal, although I have only seen it at skill level 1. Maybe its useful at higher levels. Still, in my opinion, if you want to summon stuff go play the summoner, if you want to blast stuff play the evoker. As you are reading this guide I guess you are interested in blasting stuff so never mind this thing.

Blink (lvl 20): Instantly teleports the evoker 20 meters in a straight line. Cant pass through all obstacles . Has an initial cooldown of 20 seconds. Additional skill points decrease the cooldown.

Recommend either one point in this or 8 to 10, depending on your goal and build. When surrounded you can teleport out of harms way, saving your live in the process. In PvP the enhanced mobility can be a great advantage, if this fits your play style put in 8 to 10 points.
The way blink paths is rather shady. Some obstacles seem to block it, others don’t. One thing is sure, you cant pass through walls. If the path is blocked it wont cost any power nor will it trigger the cooldown.

Concentrate Damage (lvl 20): When activated this skill enhances damage output at the cost of mobility. Increasing all spell damage by a given percentage, but requiring the evoker to remain stationary in order to maintain. It has a 10 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the percentile damage bonus.

Sacrificing mobility is a very high cost, especially in solo play and PvP. On the other hand this skill can be immensely powerful. It’s best used as an opener. Combine this with skills as Spectral Lash and Tempest and it will wrack havoc among enemies. The trick, when combining this with tempest, is that the damage bonus is applied when you cast the spell, you don’t have to maintain Concentrate Damage afterwards. Then use the long range of Spectral Lash to pull enemies towards you, through the tempest. In addition you can throw down a Lightning Field or a Swarm. This should devastate most mobs.
Another use is in party play, were you pretty much become an artillery cannon while your allies keep mobs busy.

Fire:

Firestorm (lvl 1): This spell creates a barrage of small fire blasts, which takes shape in a 8 meter cone. Additional skill points significantly increase the ignite chance.

This is probably the most effective boss killer, especially with a few additional points. The damage is impressive, coupled with a high ignite chance makes this spell literally burn through most health bars in a matter of seconds. The biggest concerns are the limited range and power cost. Speaking of which, the power cost is misleading. The given cost is per spark, not per cast. Still it’s a great skill. If you want to build around it keep in mind that you will need to go up close and personal. I recommend using this with skills like Brom’s Curse, Venom Armor and maybe even Arcane Shield.

Flameshards (lvl 15): This spell launches a given number of shards that spread out in a cone shape. The angle between the shards seems to be somewhat random. The shards embed into anything they hit, and explode soon after. It has a 20 meter range and no cooldown. Additional skill points increase the number of shards per casting.

The damage and power cost are good, but personally I don’t find this spell effective. Unless you have a horde of enemies in front of you most shards wont damage anything. Another problem is that it doesn’t guaranty to launch a shard where you aim, making it even less reliable. Of course this will get better with additional skill points, as there will be more shards. It is possible for several shards to hit the same target, but this requires the target to be big and close by. For such a situation you already have Firestorm, which has a better ignite chance as well. I must admit I haven’t seen this at high skill level.

Hellfire (lvl 30): Soon to be added.

Lightning:

Lightning Field (lvl 10): This spell creates a lightning orb that travels in an arc, much like a grenade. It generates an electric field on impact, which deals damage to each foe that comes in contact with it. It has a 30 meter range and lasts for about 5 seconds. Additional skill point increase the size of the electric field.

This skill definitely has its uses. Great at taking out small pesky enemies without spending a lot of power. Great against slow enemies as well. It functions good as backup damage, while casting other spells, as the damage is mediocre by itself. Swarm functions mostly the same, but has better damage. You might think; why not use both of them. Well, the spells don’t stack when they effecting the same area. Neither does lightning field with itself. So keep that in mind.

Tempest (lvl 20): This spell conjures a large dark cloud that fires bolts of lightning at enemies within range. It has a 3 second casting time and lasts for 20 seconds. There are several bolts, each with an individual cooldown. Additional skill points increase the rate at which the cloud fires its bolts.

Hard to use, but extremely damaging when used correctly. This skills damage output does increase with additional skill points! Simply because it will fire more frequent. When using this skill you need to do so tactical, plan ahead. Set up the cloud and pull in some enemies. Then try to keep them within the clouds firing range. By stuns or maybe kite them around with a high level Blink. See the comment of Concentrate Damage for another tactic with this skill.
One more thing; sometimes it doesn’t form when the sealing of the area is too low, which of course is really annoying. Can’t be helped, though.

Arc Legion (lvl 30): This spell generates several lightning beams that lock-on to enemies within range. It takes several seconds for all the beams to generate, so the damage has a short build up time. They can also split up and lock-on to several targets, spreading the damage among them. It has an initial 11 meter range. Additional skill point increase the range.

Arc Legion does great damage, especially when all beams are focused on a single target. In that case it even out damages spectral lash. Another great thing is that it seems to spam status effects. By equipping foci with +X% elemental Damage and a lot of the corresponding status effect strength, it can phase/ignite/poison/stun/shock almost everything. You may not want to put more then 1 point into this. Increasing the spells range also increases the chance that the beams will spread out. Which increases the power drain but not the total damage output. Still it can be useful for spreading out status effects. Just keep this in mind when you think about how you want to apply this spell.

Spectral:

Spectral Bolt (lvl 1): Fires a purple bolt that splits up into several after a short time. It has a range of 28 meters and 1,5 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the phase attack strength.

It’s very hard to use effectively. The damage of one bolt isn’t that impressive. It needs to be timed right so that the bolt hits the target directly after it splits up. This significantly increases the damage and phase chance. This is also has the best phase strength of all evoker spells.

Spectral Lash (lvl 10): Shoots out a spectral ray that locks on to a single target. It deals damage as long as its locked on. It has an initial range of 18 meters. Additional skill points increase the range.

This skill is the evokers sniper skill. The range can get up to 45 meters. When you combine this with Concentrate Damage you can take out enemies before they even come near to you. The biggest disadvantages are its high power cost and that it only hits one target. The spectral lash mastery upgrades it a little by adding a small explosion effect when you kill the target.

Spectral Lash Mastery (lvl 25): A passive skill that enhances the Spectral Lash skill. This causes targets to explode when they are killed by the spectral lash spell. In addition, it increases the phase attack strength of Lash. Additional skill points increase the phase attack strength bonus.

The explosion radius is quite small and weak, which limits its usefulness. But it’s phase chance is decent, especially with some additional points. It depends on how important it is for you that some enemies phase.

Bone:

Demonspine (lvl 5): This spell fires a fast moving white missile in a 20 meter straight line. It penetrates any enemy it hits and has a good chance to stun. With only a 1 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the chance to stun significantly.

With some additional skill points and stun attack strength you can stun lock allot of creatures out there. The actual hit radius of the spine is also larger than it might indicate. Often it will hit enemies even if it only skims them. Best used by pulling some enemies, then walk backwards as your fire away. They often line up while chasing you. Personally I find this a great skill, one of my favorites.

Bone Shards (lvl 15): Instantly creates a nova of bone shards. Damaging and often stunning enemies within a 10 meter radius. The cooldown is 8 seconds. Additional skill points increase the stun attack strength.

The damage is really low. This is skill revolves around its AoE stun effect. It can buy you some time to, much like Word of Fear. But due to the cooldown it can’t be used very frequently, which really limits its usefulness. Skill points are better spent elsewhere.

Skullsplitter (lvl 25): Soon to be added.

Toxic:

Venomous Spirit (lvl 5): The evoker summons a slow moving spirit that tracks down a single target. It has a good range of 35 meters and can fear the target as well. Additional skill points increase the chance and duration of the fear effect.

For those who are familiar with D2, it works like Bone Spirit, but slower. The damage it decent, and the fear effect makes it possible to kite enemies. Its tracking abilities are pretty good, but the lack of speed can be annoying. It also tends to get stuck in random objects, after which it disappears.

Venom Armor (lvl 15): Creates an Armor of poison and locust around the evoker, increasing armor by the given amount. This scales by character level. Whenever an enemy within 10 meters attacks the armor retaliates by sending a swarm of locust. These cause a damage over time debuff (DoT). The spell initially lasts for 20 seconds, and has a 60 second cooldown. Additional skill points increase the duration and armor bonus.

This is a good spell, The armor bonus is quite nice. When you invest 8 or more points into this it can be maintained constantly. A must have spell for evokers that have build around close range spells such as firestorm. The DoT effect from the locusts stacks with itself, meaning that enemies with a high attack speed will tend to kill themselves.

Swarm (lvl 25): Launches a sphere containing poisonous wasps. This spell functions the same as lightning field. The sphere travels in an arc, and releases a field of poison. It has a initial cooldown of 20 second. Additional skill points decrease the cooldown time.

This is a more powerful version of Lightning field. Therefore it also costs a lot more power, and has a larger cooldown. It can be used in combination with tempest. Create the tempest, pull the mobs and throw down the swarm at your location. Any enemies that make it to you can be finished off with Firestorm. Don’t forget that this doesn’t stack with Lightning field.

Patch 0.6 coming to Asian servers

2007-12-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

Good news to all of you playing on the Asian servers! IAH Games are patching you up with both the old 0.5 and the new 0.6 patch on December 11th.

Dear Gamers,

Please be informed of the scheduled routine maintenance tomorrow, 11 December 2007, Tuesday, from 0800hrs to 1300hrs (GMT+8).

During this period, the HGL Game service will be taken down for standard maintenance and patch deployment of 0.5 and 0.6.

We have completed our round of comprehensive testing on the Patches and we will continue to monitor the servers closely. We need your help in informing us of any issues you may come across while enjoying HGL.
For your reference, attached are Patch 0.5 & 0.6 notes from Flagship’s Hellgate: London website.

Hellgate: Rifle Weaponary

2007-12-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Clsuter Rifle
Damage Type: Physical (Direct & Splash)

The Cluster Rifle is one of the standard - but highly flexible - weapons in the battle against the demons. The oversized barrels allow for large caliber, high explosive missiles to be launched at a sustained rate of fire. With correct tactical choices in terms of rocket arrays, this weapon can be utilized equally well against a wide variety of targets.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 battery

1 relic

1 tech

3 rockets

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harp
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

The HARP is a bulky, 2-handed device that houses both electrical and sonic generators. Resonance projection is accomplished through the generation of a static field that is arced forward, serving as a conduit for the oscillating sonic waves.

Originally created to clear debris from underground passages, HARP (Harmonic Resonance Projection) technology was soon utilized to combat the forces of darkness. A slowly oscillating beam of sound, channeled through tightly focused electrical particles, is used to vibrate objects at random frequencies. The effects of this are somewhat different depending on the target. Non-organic objects tend to vibrate slowly at first, building speed over 3 - 5 seconds until (in a near blur) they shatter in a usually impressive fashion. Organic targets, however, tend to have their internal neural systems disrupted and are held immobile in the weapon's beam.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 battery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spark Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

By generating a rapid pulse of electromagnetic energy through a series of miniaturized Tesla Coils, the Spark Rifle can create a literal storm of sparks. These high-intensity bursts are short in duration but have an exceptionally potent yield. Any means used to increase the Teslic generation only enhances the effect of this weapon.

Max mod slots:

1 fue

3 battery

1 relic

2 tech

1 ammo

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tempest Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

In reference to the powerful electrical bolts discharged when it is fired, this weapon is appropriately named after the Roman god of storms. The Tempest heavy assault rifle is another of the weapons used during the final months of the nation's military war against the demons.

The Tempest uses a combination of a powerful magnetic field generator and high-voltage electricity to discharge a burst of electrical "balls". Designed to damage as many enemy combatants as possible, the firing pattern is a spread of independently moving projectiles that move in a random, forward path.

Max mod slots:

3 batteries

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Viral Lance
Damage Type: Toxic (Direct)

This weapon spews forth a liquid stream of ancient venoms that bathes a single target in deadly poison. The range of the Viral Lance is impressive, making it a favorite of those who wish to incapacitate their enemy from an extremely safe distance.

Max mod slots:

3 fuel

1 battery

1 tech

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zeus Rifle
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)

Named for the Greek god of sky and weather, this weapon would do the supreme ruler of Olympus proud. Discharging a multitude of electrical orbs that split and move in erratic patterns make it a difficult weapon to precisely aim, but also makes it nearly impossible for enemies to dodge. The Zeus Rifle is highly effective at dispersing large groups of demons and is commonly used when fighting in open, outdoor locales.

Max mod slots:

2 battery

2 tech

Hellgate: Pistol Weaponary

2007-12-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

Blaze Pistol
Damage Type: Fire Splash

Designed to deliver a massive, timed explosive, the Blaze Pistol is a fusion of ancient formula, careful craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology. Resembling a small handheld crossbow, the tip of the Blaze Pistol's arrow-like projectile is forged from Palladium, allowing it to anchor itself in the thickest demon hide. The shaft of the bolt is filled with alchemical Greek Fire and is made to literally degenerate upon detonation, eventually delivering the widest and deadliest blast possible to unsuspecting demons who thought the impact alone was all they had to worry about. The results are spectacular and well worth the wait.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

1 battery

1 tech

1 rocket

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Firestarter
Damage type: Fire (Direct)

By unleashing a concentrated stream of Greek Fire, this small and highly portable weapon can quickly ignite combustable material or enemies. The attack of the Firestarter is concentrated so while it can only be employed against a single foe at a time, the likelihood of the target becoming superheated to the point of explosive combustion is high.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 relic

1 ammo

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grappler
Damage Type: n/a

Designed as a companion sidearm for the Templar, the Grappler does just what its name implies. Firing out tether of braided Palladium, the device securely latches onto its target and draws it quickly into melee range. This is a particularly useful item against demons that attack from the skies as it can instantly negate their greatest tactical advantage.

Max mod slots:

1 battery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grenadier
Damage Type: Physical (Direct) & Fire (Splash)

This weapon infuses ancient myth into a highly-modified grenade launcher. By utilizing rounds filled with the long-forgotten alchemical solution known as "Greek Fire", the Grenadier is well suited to burn their unholy targets to the ground. In practical terms, the weapon lobs grenades that combust into a fiery splash and fill the targeted area with extremely hot, long-burning fire that is strangely resistant to the effects of water and chemical extinguishers.

Named after the famous 17th and 18th century British siege/assault troops that gained a reputation of being courageous and fearsome soldiers, the Grenadier is a tactical support weapon that is commonly employed by the Templar. While other types of ammunition have been created, the Holy Fire round is standard issue.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 relic

1 rocket

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plagueblaster
Damage Type: Toxic (Splash)

A bizarre invention that looks more like a mad scientist's portable lab than a weapon. The Plagueblaster has an abundance of ways it can be modified, further lending to its obviously experimental nature. The rapid fire bursts of highly toxic, explosive projectiles make it a deadly experiment indeed.

Max mod slots:

4 fuel

2 relic

1 tech

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rebounder
Damage Type: Physical (Direct & Splash)

As a demonic creation, the inner workings of this weapon remain a mystery. The short, swift blasts that the weapon fires are part energy, part physical in nature and have a peculiar elasticity to them. Controlling the weapon is also somewhat difficult which results is a wild firing pattern whose shots bounce and ricochet before fading into the netherworld from whence they came.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

3 relic

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scorcher
Damage Type: Fire (Splash)

The Scorcher uses the alchemical elements known as Greek Fire to destroy its target with spectacular effect. Designed as a short-range support weapon, it is commonly used in conjunction with a melee weapon.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shockwave
Damage Type: Physical

The Shockwave represents another ingenious use of the HARP technology. Emitting an electrically charged sonic wave that focuses the sonic patterns of the weapon, this device both damages and stuns any targets in its wake. The single-click, radius burst effect of the Shockwave that is centered on the user makes this an extremely simple mechanism to operate. The one drawback to the weapon is the relatively small (fifteen to twenty feet) radius of effect.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel

1 battery

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spike Bolter
Damage Type: Physical (Direct)

The six high-speed rotating barrels afford the Spike bolter a ridiculously high rate of fire which more than makes up for its wide projectile spread. Designed to deliver a massive amount of sharpened Palladium needle-like bullets, the velocity drives the tiny missiles through the thickest of demon hide, much as a toothpick can blast a hole through a telephone pole.

Max mod slots:

1 tech

2 ammo

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vulcan Bolter
Damage Type: Fire (Direct & Splash)

The Vulcan personal defense sidearm is one of the advanced military weapons used in the last days of the invasion. While surprisingly effective against smaller demons, its deployment to battlefield personnel was a case of "too-little too-late". While man's most advanced technology proved incapable of stopping the demons, the Vulcan Bolter is highly useful and deadly weapon in the hands of a well-trained adventurer.

Max mod slots:

3 fuel

Hellgate: Melee Weaponary

2007-12-09T07:03:00.000-08:00

Corrupt Blade

Damage Type: Toxic (Direct)

Secured from fallen demons, these dark blades can be controlled and wielded by a warrior with enough strength of mind and soul. The arcane runes etched in the jagged, ebon blade glow with vile power, emitting small wisps of noxious fumes. The mere touch of this sword can be deadly, and when delivered with force, it is devastating.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

2 relic

Cricket Bat

Damage Type: Physical (Direct)

A common item used for generations on pitches around the world, these sanctified versions can crush the skull of a demon as swiftly as England winning the Ashes. Blessed with ancient rites and invocations, the wood of these bats are harder than steel, yet maintain their lightness of weight and expert balance. A simple weapon, but one that gets the job done.

Max mod slots:

1 relic

Firebrand

Damage Type: Fire (Direct & Splash)

The massive serrated edge of this sword gives it a unique and deadly silhouette. When the eternal essence of flame is conjured, encircling and dancing about the blade, it becomes a devastating weapon - using the very fires of hell to combat the dark demons that walk the earth.

Max mod slots:

1 relic

1 fuel

Molten Edge
Damage Type: Fire (Direct)

The eldritch energies that confine and shape the fiery blade of this weapon allow its owner to wield the very essence of fire against his enemies. The heat emitted by the Molten Edge enables it to easily slice through the thickest armor plating, although it takes great training to use it without grave injury.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

2 relic

Negotiator
Damage Type: Physical (Direct)

The most ancient of the Templar swords, this mighty blade is crafted to cleave through the hardest demon defenses. It is imbued with holy energies and is forged from pure Palladium, making it both light enough to wield one-handed and sharp enough to slice through almost any substance. Its design is the pinnacle of style and substance.

Max mod slots:

3 relic

Shock Blade
Damage Type: Electric (Direct)hysical (Direct)

This martial weapon relies not upon the sharpness of its edge to dispatch its target, but the summoned element of lightning. Imbued with the very essence of the skies, electrical energy dances across the Shock Blade once it has been drawn. The powerful discharge it generates when striking an enemy has been known to completely disrupt the neural systems of demons, giving the wielder an opportunity to press their attack as the vile creature recovers.

Max mod slots:

1 relic

1 fuel

Hellgate: Heavy Weaponary

2007-12-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

Slicer

Damage Type: Spectral (Direct)

Driven by an arcane power source that taps directly into the spectral plane, the Slicer cuts a path through demons in a very unique way. The projectiles from this weapon accelerate over time, picking up speed as they move and reflect off of physical surfaces. This allows errant shots a second or even third chance to strike their target.

Max mod slots:

1 fuel
2 battery
1 tech
1 ammo

Trident Launcher

Damage Type: Fire (Splash)

This portable missile launcher launches up to a trio of high-explosive projectiles that can strike a single or multiple targets depending upon the range at which it is fired. Named after the fabled weapon of the Greek god Poseidon, the Hindus call the trident the trishul which is associated with Shiva, and is a symbolic weapon against evil.

Max mod slots:

2 fuel

1 battery

1 tech

1 rocket

Hellgate - A Novel Purchase

2007-12-09T04:53:00.000-08:00

When I first played Hellgate: London during the late stages of beta, I was somewhat less than impressed. I loved the concept and the graphical style, but the gameplay seemed kind of empty and hollow to me for some reason. Then one day will wandering through a local bookstore I picked up a copy of Hellgate: London Exodus, the first in a series of game-based novels by Author Mel Odom, whose name I recognized from several books in the Shadowrun series years ago. The story chronicles the early days of London's invasion, following templar Simon Cross as he seeks to avenge his father's death at the hands of demons that he once refused to believe in and the rise of the sorcerous Cabalists to power. After reading through the 466 page story I immediately went out and purchased the game, and found myself enjoying it more than ever. Having immersed myself in the fiction, suddenly the game seemed much more developed and interesting to me.

For me this stressed the importance of a strong background story to the immersion of a video game. Having read many game-related novels over the past few years I can say that with few exceptions, I always enjoy the game more once I know details on the back story and the characters that lived through the game's events.

So what do you guys think? Has a novel ever convinced you to purchase a game you otherwise weren't too keen on? How important is story outside the frame of the game itself?

Hellgatelondon.com - IRC Devchat with the Flagship Studios team !

2007-12-06T07:02:00.000-08:00

Talk about short notice ! Flagship Studios will be doing a IRC devchat Friday the 7th, at 4PM PST (7PM Eastern, 11PM GMT+1). No need to fiddle, here are the details Kaiser provides us on Hellgate: London’s official website.

Howdy everyone! This Friday, December 7, we’ll be doing a live IRC developer
chat. It will start at 4PM PST, and you’ll have a chance to talk directly with a
number of us here at Flagship. You can ask questions, tell us your thoughts on
the game, or say whatever you want (well, within reason ^_^). Below are the
details.

Server: irc.ForTheGamers.org
Channel: #FlagshipStudios

Two popular IRC clients you can use are mIRC (a personal favorite) and
ChatZilla. Alternatively, ForTheGamers has a Java chat client you can use
directly in a browser by clicking this link.

If you’ve never used IRC
before, it’s really easy. Under the connection settings just connect to
“irc.ForTheGamers.org” (without the quotes), and then type “/join
#FlagshipStudios” (again, no quotes). This will put you into the proper channel.

Once in, and the question bot has been unlocked, you can ask a question
by typing “/msg DevBot XXX” with XXX being your question. We’ll also have
another channel set up where you can all just chat amongst yourselves.

We’ll give you any updates as the day approaches. Thanks, and see you
there!

Get your questions ready gentlemen, for this is not an opportunity to be missed !
In the meantime, you can join #HellgateLondon on the same server to discuss the game.

Test Center 0.7 Patch Notes

2007-12-06T06:47:00.000-08:00

Test Center

Patch 0.7 Notes

Memory Usage

Fixed a UI-related memory leak

Fixed a clothing and armor texture-related memory issue

User Interface

New Looking For Group interface that allows players to more easily find each other for creating specific groups.

Reorganized the De-modificator, Augmentrex, and Nanoforge interfaces to appear in the left-hand panel area.

Added an auto-transparency feature.

Scrollbar added to the Guild interface.

?Fixed a bug that prevented remapping the Shift key.

Players should now be able to skip all logo splash-screens with a single click.

Nightmare Difficulty

The difficulty of Nightmare has been rebalanced. More overall experience is earned in Nightmare levels, scaling of group experience and difficulty has been improved, and the overall level progression has been adjusted.

Skills

Fixed skills getting added to and/or removed from Shift activation when swapping weapons.

Investing a skill point into an Aura skill will no longer automatically cause it to activate.

Templar

Taunt skills are no longer reduced in effectiveness when grouped

Blademaster

Path of Righteousness now applies damage from offhand melee weapons.

Guardian

Prayer of Retribution can now be used while poisoned.

Prayer of Healing can no longer be used while poisoned.

Cabalists

The Summon Ember and Summon Fire Elemental skills should no longer conflict when granted through items.

Evokers

Fixed a bug that caused Drain Power to charge an upfront power cost.

Tempest抯 targeting range has been increased and should now properly lose targets that move out of range.

Fixed a bug which prevented Boneshards from having any effect on every other cast.

Fixed a bug which prevented Evokers from using any other skills for two seconds after casting Boneshards.

Summoners

Hand of Nostrom correctly adds more beams as the skill level increases.

Fixed a bug which sometimes caused the Warper抯 pet icon to not show up.

Master of the Flame抯 skill effects now display properly in the skill description tooltip.

Hunters

Engineers
- Engineer Drone behavior improved.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Repair Drone to be used at no cost.
- Drones will now level properly along with their owner. Existing Drones that are below your character抯 level will automatically be raised to the correct level.
- Drones now receive correct health bonuses with skill level after re-summoning it.

Marksmen
- Overshield now gives the correct amount of shields.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Homing Shot from activating properly

Quests

Fixed a bug with the Cannon Street Rails Quest Bug.

Fixed an end of Act 4 bug where Maxim and Arphaun occupy the same place, allowing you to only talk to one of them, thus preventing you from completing the quest.

Fixed a bug where Slaughterbeast occasionally doesn't spawn as expected for the 揜egular Customer?quest.

Items

Improved the drop rate of various recipes and analyzers.

New blueprints have been added for Focus items and Boots.

Focus items and Boots can now be made by crafters.

Fixed a bug where Auras would turn on and off when swapping weapons that grant aura skills.

Guilds and Groups

Fixed a bug where players were not seeing Guild invites.

Introduced new Auto-Party logic to provide better matches.

World Movement

Fixed additional instances where players were sometimes randomly teleported when other people use portals.

Players can now use the /stuck command when in Ghost form.

Fixed rare instances where certain areas were impassible.

Miscellaneous

Fixed a bug where Founders saw all character names in blue text.

Fixed rare issues with being unable to properly apply the Multiplayer patch.

Fixed a bug with mods on weapons not being properly equipped when loading a character.

Fixed rare cases where the PRD became unusable.

Fixed a bug where numerous pets would show up in Stations.

Special Subscriber Features

12 new Unique Items

New unique weapons spread across all three factions.

We have a few Holiday goodies in our bag of tricks, including a very special gift that keeps on giving!

The Transmogrifier

This mystic box transforms the junk you put in it into something new and wonderful. When you discover a new Transmogrifier formula, it is automatically stored in a special recipe list.

Wintry Chapeau

This festive winter cap will give you good luck and cheer all the year round.

Fester Festivus

Quest for a jolly new fiendish friend decked out in holiday garb.

8 New-Year Dye Kits

Celebrate the New Year with special winter colors for your armor.

More Hellgate: London Figurines

2007-12-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

PlayHG has pictures of even more Hellgate: London figurines besides the male Templar figurine that’s already been made available in Asia.

Detailed pictures of the individual figurines can be seen at PlayHG.

Hellgatelondon.com - Patch 0.6 is live

2007-12-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

Tiggs, Ping0’s head of Customer Support, wrote 3 posts on the official Hellgate: London Forums yesterday, to warn us of the downtimes (not relevant anymore) for Patch 0.6 to be installed, and to publish the final patch notes. Two fixes have been added to the list, here they are:

Warp restriction text clarified to, “Warp Restricted. You don’t have a waypoint far enough to warp to this level.”

Fixed an infinite loading issue for Russell Square. Some of those characters may not yet be able to progress in the story/areas, however, without getting a party portal to Russell Square to complete the “Forage” quest.

And hurray for lower feed requirements !

CVG Releases Full Roper Interview

2007-12-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

Catalyst 27 here once again. Yes it’s true, it seems that little interview by CVG that was posted here yesterday was in fact, part of a much larger interview. In this extended interview they quiz Flagship Studios’ founder and CEO Bill Roper on everything from how he entered the games industry, right up to the release of Hellagte:London itself. While the interview is fairly standard there are some surprising answers, such as this little gem.

What would you pick out as your ‘best game I’ve ever played’ if you had to
choose one, and why pick that?

May favorite game of all time is Poker,
and specifically Texas Hold’em. I love all of the aspects of poker and I play
whenever I can find a good game.

To me, poker is perfect. It has a
limited number of pieces / game board, a simple basic rule set that can be
modified in hundreds of interesting ways, is a portable multiplayer experience,
and has an incredible risk-to-reward ratio. It’s also fun to watch and can be
equally enjoyable whether playing competitively or just for fun.

Who knew Bill was a big poker player? Enjoy the interview everyone while I go brush up on my card skills.

Tyler Thompson on Game Randomness

2007-12-02T09:33:00.001-08:00

Gamasutra has posted up a summary of Tyler Thompson’s (Flagship Studios’ director of technology) speech at the 2007 Montreal Games Summit.

Tyler speaks of the challanges of using random generation for items, levels, monster and the overall game design. He also speaks of the advantages of using these, although he mentions how things can go wrong. There is a detailed write up about each item and it’s a very interesting read.

“All RPGs are a little random,” Thompson began, explaining, “You can’t imagine a
bunch of guys getting together to play D&D without using dice.” As almost
every RPG uses some basics, such as random damage ranges on items/spells/skills,
or random selection of item drops, it’s worth asking — why do players like it?

“First, it kind of fits into a gambling mentality,” said Thompson.
“Random combat is similar to craps or roulette, where you take your chance and
see what happens. Randomness can create excitement — a weak character could
randomly manage to beat a much stronger character, and vice versa.”

Hellgate London Performance Tests - [H]Enthusiast

2007-12-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

[H]Enthusiast, a gaming website has posted up their tests of Hellgate London’s performance on DX10 and visual results of the differences between various settings. They also list some of the bugs they experienced and their overall impression of the game.

Hellgate: London is just fun. It is what computer games are supposed to be. It
looks fantastic, performs beautifully, and it offers something for almost
anyone. It is an expertly crafted hybrid of First-Person Shooter, of
Role-Playing Game, and of MMO. Hellgate kept us on our toes throughout the
gameplay experience by being different literally every time we played it. It
probably isn’t the game that will make anyone want to upgrade from XP to Vista,
but it may just make you glad if you already have Windows Vista and a DirectX 10
capable video card.

While this was posted a few days ago, I don’t think we’ve newesed it yet.

Flaghip Studios’ Mythos DevChat Imminent !

2007-12-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone ! Catalyst_27 here. Now while we don’t often post a whole lot of news concerning Mythos (Flagship Studios’ free to download and free to play online rpg) this is of particular importance and sure to paste a sloppy smile to your face for the remainder of the day. Thanks to our little brothers at MythosGuru, the Flagship Studios’ developers of Mythos will be available for questions from anyone with an internet connection. Full details follow:

Just a reminder to all that the IRC Interview/DevChat for Mythos will be TODAY
at 5 PM PST. (1 AM GMT)

If you have an IRC client, the server is
irc.forthegamers.org and the channel is #Mythos. You can follow the link here.

If you do not have an IRC client, you can use the Java-based client
located on ForTheGamers.Org. Once connected, type /join #Mythos to enter the
Mythos channel.

Please note that during the DevChat, the channel will be
moderated. All questions will be posed through FTG’s DevBot which will be set up
to organize the questions. inappropriate usernames or “general asshattery”
(Scapes’ official title for the deed) will result in a ban from the channel.
Harassing the Devs or Mods during the DevChat will likely result in removal from
the server, via a kill or G-Line, depending on the severity of the harassment.
So please, be on your best behavior.

See you there!
~Sulfuric

Now as excited as we’ll all be to talk to the devs it’s important to remember that this ‘chat’ is intended for questions regarding Mythos and Mythos only. This does mean that you can ask questions regarding FSS’ evolution of the game from a trial of HG:L code into what it is today and other questions that concern Hellgate:London peripherally, but nothing specifically related to Hellgate:London. Be sure to check your local time against GMT and mark it in your diaries. Now go out and get writing those questions !

HellgateLondon.com - Patch 0.7 approaching

2007-12-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

Kaiser Hwang posted this news a few moments ago to remind us that Patch 0.7 is almost done. It will include changes to memory usage, UI and even skills ! Subscriber-only items and quests will be included in the package too.

Howdy everyone! Work on the upcoming 0.7 patch is nearly done, and should be
heading to our test center by early next week. We have a nice list of fixes in
this patch, including improvements to memory usage, UI changes, and general
skill updates.
Also included will be a number of really cool subscriber
items and quests that should please many old D2 fans. We’ll detail this content,
as well as the bug fixes, when the patch goes live. Thanks, and hope everyone
had a great Thanksgiving!

PS Patch 0.6 is on the Test Center server now,
so if you wanna help out, feel free to hop on and check it out. Also, the Party
Portal issues should be resolved now after last night’s reboot.

This will be the first time subscribers will get quests and items outside an event, this ought to be interesting.

The Negotiator Sword - In the flesh!

2007-12-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

Paul Macdonald of Macdonald Armories has just contacted Hellgate Guru about the completion of the first Negotiator Sword, created in full steel and bronze. The sword follows the exact detailing and proportion of the Negotiator Sword from Hellgate: London and is entirely handcrafted by a Highland swordmaker in Scotland.

Windows Vista Magazine Hi-Res Screenshots

2007-12-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

Having produced a multitude of benchmarks for us, Windows Vista: Das Offizielle Magazin has posted some high resolution screenshots of Hellgate: London.

One of my colleagues just linked our benchmark-pc to a 30”-TFT-Display. The
result: some nice-to-look-at High-Resolution-Screenshots (2560×1600 p and DX10
plus high details). They´re really looking good.

Kotaku Hellgate London Contest

2007-11-29T19:53:00.000-08:00

Kotaku is holding a contest to win your very own copy of Hellgate London (which I’m sure most of the people here already do).

The rules are pretty simple:

Anyone with a calculator know this trick: Type in 7734. Turn it upside down and get the word HELL. Quick contest! We’re giving away a copy of Hellgate: London. Here’s the contest: Make the word “HELL” out of something — anything, but just don’t write it. Take a picture of it and send it to kotakucontestATkotakuDOTcom. Deadline for this is next Wednesday, December 5th. Remember: You’re not just playing for a copy of Hellgate: London but the proverbial INTERNET FAME. Good luck!

Revelations - The North American Art and Design Workshop

2007-11-29T18:50:00.000-08:00

Revelations is a 4 day workshop style event, when various artists who work for top tier CG companies come together and give a variety of lessons on their CG work for upcoming artists and various public. I personally do not know much about the event, living in Australia and all, however it seems like a great function where people can mingle with the great artists and learn a lot while having fun along the way.

CGSociety has a preview poster of the event up on their forums as well as information of the event.

A special 4 Day weekend event unlike any workshop to date…..The event is Friday through Monday with an earth-quaking party (3 bands, live painting, performers, nude models, dancers, free gourmet food, drinks for those over 21 and the most memorable venue in Seattle) FRIDAY NIGHT!! Though the party is just fuel for the fire. This show is all about cutting edge art and design in entertainment and it is a culmination of all our events experience to date.

Creative powerhouses from companies like Blizzard, Bungie, Massive Black, id software, Oddworld, Midway, Obsidian, Radical/THQ, Marvel Comics, Flagship Studios, Project Offset, The ConceptArt.Org Atelier, and Sega will be on hand as well as dozens of other companies in attendance including Microsoft’s Ensemble Studios (yeah they are hiring and recuriting) and more.

The person representing Flagship Studios is Jason Felix, who according to the official Revelations website is:

Jason Felix is known for his digital photo manipulations which have won awards and appeared in numerous art collections of Expose and Spectrum. Jason is also held accountable for creating character/creature concept art on high profile video games franchises such as StarCraft, Prince of Persia, and Hellgate:London.

He lives in San Francisco and can be found fraternizing with other local artists, wrestling his 2 cats of terror, or working at home on his next personal art project.

The event is in Seattle and runs in January 2008, from the 4th to the 7th of January. The event sounds so damn awesome and I wish we had such great things in Australia!

Hope all that go enjoy the great show and let us know how the event went!

Enjoy

House Forsaken Celebrates its 12th Anniversary

2007-11-29T01:30:00.000-08:00

Hellgate Guru would like to extend its congratulations to House Forsaken, a guild that has been around since 1996. They are starting their 12th year today. They are the oldest Blizzard based gaming guild, and have been followers of Bill Roper since 1996; prior to the release of Diablo. Some of you might remember them from the other 37 games they have supported. Many of those games they have won top game tournaments and ladders. We wish them the best on many more years to come.

Hellgate: London DX10 Faster than DX9 Indoors in Patch 0.5

2007-11-29T01:09:00.001-08:00

Windows Vista Magazine has a new, and surprisingly good update for us today. Alex Bohnsack of the magazine had this to share:

Now here are some really interesting benchmarks. When we saw them first on Friday we couldn’t believe it. But for the first time DX10-Framerates from Hellgate: London-indoor-levels are higher than DX9-Framerates at similar indoor-Levels. Well at least with Nvidia-graphics cards using the latest Forceware-drivers.

But just take a look at the benchmarks.

We’ve tested them again and again. And the results were always the same: DX10 is in Hellgate: London at multiplayer-mode an patch 0.5 for the first time faster than DX9.

You can check out the benchmarks for yourself here. This is certainly good news for everyone playing the game on a DX10 graphics card!

HellgateLondon.com - Patch 0.6 This Week, Patch 0.7 Around the Corner

2007-11-26T22:40:00.000-08:00

I think the guys at Flagship Studios forgot what “let’s take a break” mean. Patch 0.5 is merely a week old, yet Patch 0.6 will be online soon ! That bloody “invisible group member bug” will finally be taken down. And Ivan hints at Patch 0.7 too, which will bring some subscriber goodness to… well, the subscribers.

Patch 0.6 has one very notable fix – the invisible group member bug has been slain. This was a crafty, fierce thing with rows of nasty sharp teeth, but we believe it has now fallen into the mists of legend. We’ll stay vigilant in case it raises its ugly invisible head again.

General:
Fixed a bug that caused group members to be invisible to other group members.

Fixed a texture memory leak that occurred when inspecting armor items. This will improve long-term memory usage, especially for players that frequently buy, sell, and analyze items.
Chat:
Increased the number of players in global chat.

The chat window no longer overlaps the Crafter merchant UI panel.

Fixed a bug that prevented the user from interacting with the chat panel via the mouse when the Buddy List or Guild Panel is open.

System messages are now displayed in all chat tabs.

The scroll bar on the Guild Panel should now function properly.

Items:
Items dropped in the world now have slightly lower overall feed requirements. […]

Engineers:
Fixed a bug that caused items equipped on an Engineer Drone to be unequipped when the Engineer summoned the Drone after changing levels. […]

Finally, work is well underway on Patch 0.7! This patch will address more of your issues, as well as some surprises for our subscription members. […]

Windows Vista Magazine Benchmarks Hellgate Patch 0.5

2007-11-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista Magazine has posted some new benchmarks of Hellgate: London armed with multiplayer Patch 0.5 and updated drivers (which can be found via a link in the article).
Here are the results in a nutshell for the Hellgate’s outdoor levels:
· DX-10 MP 0.5 is wee bit faster than SP 0.1
· Little sensation: Armed with the latest Catalyst drivers, AMD/ATI-HD2900-XT- and HD3870 Cards do quite alright in DX10.
More benchmarks, including ones for Hellgate’s indoor levels are to come on Monday, so stay tuned! The article can be discussed here.

New Hellgate London Ingame “Ads”

2007-11-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

Most of us are aware that FSS introduced Patch 0.5 a few days ago, but no one has yet spoken on one of the things they told us to keep an eye out for.

Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

FSS appears to have listened to ideas back from the Alpha boards from what I recall, where people suggested that the posters should display things like rankings. So far I’ve seen highest amount of palladium, most guild members, most guild gold, highest levels in guild and a few others, which are all split as EU or US and written on the poster whether the guild or player is from EU or US.

I accidentally noticed one when I ran past it last night one my Guardian, however I do not run high settings so Im only uploading the best screenshot I took.

Im glad that FSS has taken a postitive step to including player achievements and provided recognition to some of their fanbase! So keep a lookout for these rankings posters!

Hellgate patch today

2007-11-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

Developer Flagship will be taking the Hellgate: London servers offline today to implement a new patch.

Downtime is expected for a couple of hours between 4pm and 6pm GMT, after which you should find some new features to play with and plenty of fixes to niggling problems.

Advertisement
Chief among them is access to 24 character slots for absolutely everyone, a privilege previously restricted to those paying a monthly subscription. It benefits those of you eager to tinker with class builds and that sort of stuff, although make sure you realise you cannot use your single-player character online but have to start from scratch - better to make an early start than realise this late on.

Elsewhere there are countless bullet-points mopping up chat, connection, movement, quest, item and other fixes - best pop over to the official site if you want to bone-up on these. Incidentally, Flagship does know about and has a solution to the invisible party member bug, but it just missed out on being included in this update, patch 0.5. Word is to look out for this one soon.

The other message is for you to keep your feedback rolling in, as it helps Flagship know what to address in its on-going patches. Oh, and Guy Fawkes celebrations will be brought to and end, but thank you very much for taking part and we have learnt a lot, says Roper and team.

Hellgate: London is an action role-playing game with a meaty online offering. If you enjoyed Diablo or Titan Quest in the past, then you might want to pop over to our Hellgate review and find out what it is all about.

Hellgate: London PC Preview

2007-11-19T23:19:00.000-08:00

Techtree has a preview up for Flagship Studios' much awaited Hellgate: London. Hellgate is being developed by ex-Blizzard employees, most of whom are responsible for the much beloved Diablo series.

I cant wait for Bill Roper and the rest of Flagship Studios to amaze us with another addictive game.

In the world of Hellgate, Merry olde London is the target of a unholy invasion from Hell in the year 2038. Prophecies have foretold of that day but were brushed off as fairytales as civilization basked on the fruits of its technological achievements

When the demons finally came, there was little that stood in their way. Emerging from the swirling chaotic Hellgate, they overwhelmed humanity's defenses quickly and systematically. Even the nuclear and biological weaponry employed by a few desperate nations did little more than slow the apocalypse. The nature of the demons' attack presented little in the way of strategic military targets to the generals of mankind's armies. With no obvious headquarters to bombard, visible supply lines to cut, or known leaders to assassinate, the usual tactics of war were useless.

Only those that still practiced the holy, ancient, and arcane rights could stand against the dark invaders, using weapons and spells forged in the traditions of their forefathers. Their successes were scattered, and the leaders of the great military forces could neither understand nor accept their strange ways. This mystical resistance drew the immediate attention of the immensely powerful creatures, seemingly immune to the weapons of mankind. Soon, those that had preserved the knowledge of how to combat the demons shifted their focus from driving them back into the twisting nether to saving as many of their fellow humans as they could. They retreated to the relative sanctuary of the London Underground, a haven whose construction they had orchestrated decades before.

Now, the once great city lies in ruins. A massive, sinister gash in the fabric of our reality swirls and churns, dominating the horizon as it blends into a permanently darkened sky. The Invasion, the unspeakable cataclysm that befell London, eventually engulfed humanity. The powerful nations of man were eradicated, and the decades-long process called The Burn - the transformation of our world into theirs - had begun.

But mankind is a race of survivors. Men and women hide in the shadows of their former dominance, struggling to survive, yearning to strike back at their conquerors. These survivors banded together, and they are learning.

Hellgate Benchmarked on Windows Vista: The Official Magazine

2007-11-19T23:12:00.001-08:00

The German version of Windows Vista: The Official Magazine has published their benchmarks of Hellgate: London featuring comparisons between the game’s performance in DirectX 10 and DirectX 9 on several different graphics cards on Windows Vista x86. The benchmarks can be found here. Though the article is in German, the benchmarks are self-explanatory.

HellgateLondon.com - Patch 0.5 will be live today

2007-11-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

Ivan Sulic just posted this on Hellgate: London’s official website: Patch 0.5 will be released tomorrow! Along this announcement, Ivan keeps us up-to-date regarding the infamous “invisible party members” bug, which will not be solved until the next patch. Finally, the Guy Fawkes event WILL end tomorrow.

We wanted to offer a quick note on the Invisible Party Members bug. We have good
news and future good news. The good news is that we have identified why this is happening and have a couple of solutions for the problem. Unfortunately we made
our discovery too late to include any fixes in this patch, so the future good news is that we’ll be addressing this issue in our next patch.

Patch 0.5 also brings an end to the Guy Fawkes event. We learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work for our players, making it successful on several levels. As
always, we greatly appreciate your feedback on how we can make future events better and even more fun.

Please be aware… Patch implementation is expected to cause server outages between 9:00am PST and 11:00am PST on November 20.

Will the game be updated between Patch 0.5 and Patch 1 ?

Hellgate: London review (PC)

2007-11-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

The spiritual successor to Diablo hits us, but wait… it’s kind of a first person shooter.

Gaming royalty doesn’t just apply to people, but also games. Diablo was one of those games; eliciting a following for its constantly upgrading RPG addictivity, and random dungeon generator to keep things fresh. Hellgate London seems to take the same concepts, mashes them up in a post apocalyptic London based demon story and hopes to keep the charm that the much loved Diablo series once excreted.

The reality of it is that it doesn’t just expand upon the concepts, it seems to plant them straight into a 3D engine, showing off the fact that it can be played as a First Person Shooter, or in third person for a more melee based combat adventure. The game begins (after installation which pleasantly surprised me by letting you set up online within the installer) with a noticeably astounding and quite lengthy FMV intro sequence enthusing the audience and thrusts you straight into the character creation screen. The usual choices of sex, facial hair (perhaps dependant on sex?) and general body size are complimented by the class choice which is where the game gets interesting.

Role Playing, but not as we know it
As with most RPGs, you’ll earn experience, level up, assign ability points to attributes, gain ever more powerful weapons and armour and customise your character with class based skills to help you in battle. Each class is varied enough to sometimes completely change the way of playing. The Marksman puts you straight into first person perspective, and sets you up like a proper shooter, with aiming reticules and circle strafing, but most disconcerting will be the lack of ammo, whereas the Blademaster gives you a classic third person action adventure style for his dual sword wielding action. The perspectives can be changed, but feel the most natural in their default settings. Then there’s the Engineer, building robots to assist him, Guardian, basically a melee tank with heavy attack and defence, Evoker, your classic elemental magic user and the Summoner that seems to be a magic based version of the Engineer, allowing demons to be bent to your will. If that’s your thing.

While the third person action works well and as expected, it was the First Person Shooter aspect to the game that gave me the most intrigue and an attempt to change the genre. The trouble is that it won’t stand up to other shooters on the market, because it isn’t trying to redefine that genre. Battles are generally a case of run in, hit and shoot enemies until they die while healing yourself whenever necessary. Extra skills give an alternative to your tactics, but rarely change the flow of the battle, upgrading your existing skills more often than not.

Mechanics of weaponry
There is a cleverly designed but quite complex (for a newcomer) weapon upgrading system that gives you tech slots in each piece of apparel that you can simply drag and drop upgrades into. Designing your own weapons is possible by breaking down others into their original components and playing around with them cleverly, and when you’re done, why not add a legendary feature to your weapon for that extra final boost.

To reaffirm, there are plenty of ways to customise your weaponry, but they are never really explained, in the manual or in-game and it took me about half way into the game before I really felt like I should see what all of the upgrading was all about, mainly because of the constant dropping of new and more powerful items by your enemies that make it difficult to decide to focus on one weapon for long. Your inventory will fill up very quickly when out on the prowl, and sometimes it is not immediately clear which items will be the best for you to keep hold of, especially since it borrows the ‘Identify’ system from Diablo, demanding you essentially research your plunder before understanding what it can do; It seems to do pretty much the same as Diablo in most cases, merely changing the names of the features for the most part. With the intricately designed items however, sometimes I wish they’d just go back to red and blue potions when trying to find the right item in my inventory.

The concept of the future
At least the plot has a great opening. Setting it up for a dramatic world saving scenario, Hellgate London drawls along with its plot, perhaps trying to make it less linear by offering further side missions that you’ll probably accomplish by concentrating on the main quests (unless it tells you to use an item on an enemy but not how to), and this works fine when you are trying to blitz through the game, but while certain aspects of the story seem very clever and original, the way it is told is confusing, resulting in skipping a lot of the dialogue (unfortunately it’s only in text – but a few select generic lines are uttered by each character) just to find out which door has been unlocked for you to enter next and get to the quest.

Milestones become obvious with the different acts of the story being announced onscreen, but the structure seems to destroy any sense of progression to the game, and until you’re right at the end, you won’t really know where it’s all going, or indeed the style intended for the audience. Some elements seem utterly ridiculous, some are quite amusing, and some make you wonder just how the characters are taking things in the way that they are; although when a certain comedy character is infected by a demon that seems to be gradually taking over his mind and causing his apparent inevitable ‘brain popping’, you can’t help but feel like even the poor chap himself is making light of the situation.

Insert random title here
Having random dungeon creation is claimed by some as an obvious necessity, but with the mere fact that almost all of the locations are of a generic style (perhaps 5 different styles of random levels throughout the game) they seem very plain and repetitive. Random dungeons must be a tricky concept for a 3D world, but having seen the intricate design of many recent games, it seems like a gimmick of a function that sacrifices the quality of design for the hope that playing the same level again with a slightly different layout of where the obligatory rooms and monsters are located will breathe fresh life into the game on each occurrence.

Monster design is generally imaginative, but again with the seemingly random string of enemies in each area, you’ll see most of the basic types early on, allowing for renaming and texturing the same models to represent all new creatures, merely boosting their health and skillset. It seems obvious that enemies must get harder to defeat as your weapons improve, but throughout the game I have found that when you manage to locate that all new super powerful weapon from a hidden cache of clichéd explosive barrels your enemies become mysteriously more powerful, negating any sense of feeling like you are improving once the base type of weapon is found.

Then one will be too difficult
Because of the random level generator, you may come across rare monsters with a randomly chosen attribute that you are unprepared for early in the game. I came across a creature that apparently was ‘regenerating’ and found him impossible to kill early on in the game, as I couldn’t damage him fast enough to stop him from simply healing himself (at least 10 times before you ask) while he had no problem rushing at me to attack. Incidentally, after I came back to the game after a bit of frustration, he had a much weaker power and fell to my assault in seconds.

If you do die, the game seems very forgiving. To resurrect yourself will cost an ever rising amount of Paladium, the game’s currency, or you can come back to the level’s starting point as a ghost for free, coming back to life by finding where you died. Much like Bioshock, this gives you the chance to wear down tricky enemies bit by bit, provided you don’t mind running through the level each death.

Is there a saving grace
The game can be played in online multiplayer too (with an all new character unfortunately), which works well to show how the classes can compliment each other, and it’s free. Unless you decide to subscribe for £6.99 a month, which will give you regular updates with new monsters, weapons, items and quests. A harder difficulty, and more online character slots are available too, but the 3 for the free account shall certainly suffice for my play.

Overall, Hellgate London seems like it began incarnation with a lot of fun and original ideas to bring the genre to a new audience and avoid the obligatory Diablo sequel. The only trouble is that it seems to borrow too much, and doesn’t really deliver in terms of an immersive story, hoping that the gameplay itself will be addictive enough to keep an audience captive and paying extra per month. Choose not to and you probably won’t feel hard done by the game, for the simple reason that it is remarkably addictive. Collecting, levelling and upgrading is still as much fun as it should be, but perhaps the actual feel of how the game plays should have had a little more redesign and a little less rehash.

Hellgate London Concept Art + Job Advert

2007-11-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

Jason Felix, one of the animators behind Hellgate London, has posted a bunch of concept art from Hellgate on an art forum that he appears to frequent. While we have seen some of these pieces before, a few are new. My favourite is the awesome Fire Cabalist!

Now, if you want to be just like Jason, CG jobs has posted up an advert from Flagship Studios for a Senior Animator.

Flagship Studios is seeking an experienced, highly-motivated animator to
create high-impact character and monster animations. The primary responsibility
is animations for the main hero characters, as well as some monsters and
NPCs.

Skills needed are 3ds Max, so if you think you have what it takes go ahead and become just like Jason!

Patch 0.5 - Test Center Going Down and Patch Notes

2007-11-17T21:26:00.000-08:00

Ivan Sulic posted a rather interesting message on the Hellgate: London official boards: the Test Center server will be updated with patch 0.5 tonight, then all US characters will be copied into it. If all goes well, Patch 0.5 will be released next week. You probably want to know what is inside the patch, here are some highlights:
General:

All players now have 24 character slots.

Fixed a known issue with the inventory user interface that caused the client to lock up.

Fixed a bug which caused the Mini-game to sometimes become stuck.

The Mini-game now resets every 15 minutes.

Added a /help command to provide assistance using available / commands.

Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

Connection Issues:

Fixed known issues which sometimes caused players to be disconnected and receive an erroneous network error message.

Fixed an issue where some home routers would disconnect a user due to an inactive connection.

Fixed known bugs which sometimes disconnected players during multiplayer quests.

Fixed problems with NetLimiter 1.30 and some older versions of Norton Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus which would make the user entirely unable to connect to the game.

Chat:
Made several chat interface improvements and the text entry more intuitive:

Chat window is now open by default in multiplayer.

Fixed chat window closing when traveling between zones.

Fixed several cases where the chat window would obstruct other UI components.

Chat context (such as Party and Guild) is now more clearly defined in the text entry window, including a color-coded border.

Chat window is now more transparent.

Added /g command. This is equivalent to /gchat command (guild chat).

Whisper text now shows up on all chat tabs.

Whisper messages and admin announcements auto-open the chat panel.

Auto-switch to the appropriate tab (such as Party and Guild) if you type text to that channel and are not in a tab that shows the text.

PageUp/PageDown cycle through chat tabs when text entry is active.

Chat panel now auto-opens if you type text and press Enter while the panel is closed.

Chat text entry deactivates after entering text.

Chat panel no longer closes if you press Enter on a blank line.

Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Items:

Fixed known bugs that caused players to sometimes lose items.

Fixed a bug with the Nanoforge that caused it to inaccurately modify the stats of higher-quality items.

Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Unique items to drop without special properties.

Quests:

Fixed various known issues which prevented players from being able to continue interrupted side-quests.

Quest items should no longer remain in the player inventory after the associated quest has been completed. Players with old quest items (such as Train Parts) associated with quests they’ve already completed or no longer have should find these items removed upon logging in.

Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from receiving credit for killing the “5 Lies” in The Hellgate quest. Players should now be able to properly advance in this quest.

Engineers:

Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.

Fixed a bug which caused Engineers to receive an erroneous “unable to meet requirements” message when entering a new instance with a Drone that has a weapon equipped.

PvP:

Fixed an incorrect modifier causing Special Effect Attack Strengths in PvP situations to be much higher than intended.

World Movement:

Fixed known issues which occasionally prevented characters from being able to load or switch instances.

Fixed several issues with players getting stuck in the world.

Fixed a bug related to St. Paul's Nightmare mode progression.

Portals to party members should now automatically close if the associated party member leaves the game.

World Events:

The Guy Fawkes event has ended. Characters that have completed the NAME Quest that did not receive the Trinket reward should find this item in their inventory.

Hellgate Locations: Underneath London

2007-11-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

In addition to the Underground tubes, London is crisscrossed with an endless array of other subterranean tunnels. From underground Roman sites, to Victorian-era sewers and pedestrian tunnels, to secret mail tunnels, there exists any number of appropriate and visually interesting settings.

Sewers
Though long dry, these subterranean thoroughfares are literally everywhere beneath the city of London. The survivors of the Invasion have been exploring them in hopes of discovering hidden caches or others that have fallen beneath the notice of the demons. It seems that the forces of darkness have recently begun to take an interest in these locales as well, making for some unexpected and unfortunate encounters.

Hellgate Locations: Underground Stations

2007-11-16T23:20:00.000-08:00

The first section of the London Underground was opened on January 10th, 1863. It was built from then on in great part by the Freemasons. While this provided a convenient and economical means of transport for the inhabitants of London, it also marked the fevered conclusion of the Templar scheme to protect the capital city of England.

John Fowler and Benjamin Baker, the chief engineers and designers of the London Underground, came from families deeply associated with the Freemasons. Every batch of cement used in the initial construction of the tube stations were personally inspected by one of them, ensuring that a very specific alchemical mixture was being used. The secret of this formula was passed along over the next century, allowing future generations of Templar and Freemasons to create a safe haven against the forces of Hell.

Covent Garden Station

The Covent Garden Station, which was one of the busiest on the Underground network, had no escalators - only lifts – which greatly slowed down the flow of passengers. It also made this a highly defensible location in many ways, and an early target of the demons. Obviously, the long-term plans to redevelop the station to cope with the increased customer capacity were never realized.

The station is most known for the stand the Templar took against the Demons in the early days of the conflict there. A particularly brutal assault, the same that caused a severing of the Tottenham Court line, came to its fearsome conclusion in the Covent Garden Station. The battle brought the most Templar losses to date, and it was only halted when they managed to push back the demonic hordes and then set off last-ditch explosives that caved-in the southern section of the station. Sealing off that portion of the Underground line, the blast crushed the majority of their enemies beneath tons of concrete and steel.

Although the Templar came away with a victory, it was a tainted one in that Covent Garden could never be used as a safe zone for establishing a community center. It still serves as a sketchy outpost, manned by a skeleton crew – more a listening post and waypoint than a means of transit or sanctuary. There are ways through the open tubes, but many potential routes into other parts of the city have been sealed with blast doors that are a part of the ongoing defense against the demons.

Hellgate Locations:The Tubes

2007-11-16T23:01:00.000-08:00

The miles of track and supporting infrastructure that makes up the London Underground Transport system has survived the demonic Invasion fairly well. Although there are signs of the devastation everywhere, it is not uncommon to come upon storerooms that are still completely intact. There are also remnants of power sources set up by the Templar during their retreat beneath the earth that can be discovered by those curious – and brave – enough to search the demon infested subways.

Covent Garden Service Line

This terminus is little more than a servicing depot for trains. Its proximity to danger, however, is a reminder that the threat of the demons is ever-present and very real.

Northern Line
This line stems off from the Leicester Square station outpost. Running roughly beneath St. Martin’s Street, several new offshoots have been discovered that lead to once-sealed locations. There are rumors of a Primus constructing a hideous torture chamber somewhere along the line, although no one has yet found its location.

Leicester Square Line
Providing a conduit between the Covent Garden and Leicester Square stations, the only traffic these tracks see are of dark origins. The muggy air here hangs heavy and is tinged with an ominous reddish hue. While travelers can still make their way to points south within London using this line, they only should do so if heavily armed.

Super Awesome Hellgate Patch Coming

2007-11-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

Next week, Hellgate London officially goes gold! Oh, just kidding. Flagship does have a super awesome patch coming though, which should fix many of the outstanding issues the game is facing.

Here are the highlights:

General:

All players now have 24 character slots.

Fixed a known issue with the inventory user interface that caused the client to lock up.

Fixed a bug which caused the Mini-game to sometimes become stuck.

The Mini-game now resets every 15 minutes.

Added a /help command to provide assistance using available / commands.

Some new posters have been added to stations, so check them out!

Connection Issues:

Fixed known issues which sometimes caused players to be disconnected and receive an erroneous network error message.

Fixed an issue where some home routers would disconnect a user due to an inactive connection.

Fixed known bugs which sometimes disconnected players during multiplayer quests.

Fixed problems with NetLimiter 1.30 and some older versions of Norton Antivirus and McAfee

Antivirus which would make the user entirely unable to connect to the game.

Chat:

Made several chat interface improvements and the text entry more intuitive:

Chat window is now open by default in multiplayer.

Fixed chat window closing when traveling between zones.

Fixed several cases where the chat window would obstruct other UI components.

Chat context (such as Party and Guild) is now more clearly defined in the text entry window, including a color-coded border.

Chat window is now more transparent.

Added /g command. This is equivalent to /gchat command (guild chat).

Whisper text now shows up on all chat tabs.

Whisper messages and admin announcements auto-open the chat panel.

Auto-switch to the appropriate tab (such as Party and Guild) if you type text to that channel and are not in a tab that shows the text.

PageUp/PageDown cycle through chat tabs when text entry is active.

Chat panel now auto-opens if you type text and press Enter while the panel is closed.

Chat text entry deactivates after entering text.

Chat panel no longer closes if you press Enter on a blank line.

Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Items:

Fixed known bugs that caused players to sometimes lose items.

Fixed a bug with the Nanoforge that caused it to inaccurately modify the stats of higher-quality items.

Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Unique items to drop without special properties.

Quests:

Fixed various known issues which prevented players from being able to continue interrupted side-quests.

Quest items should no longer remain in the player inventory after the associated quest has been completed. Players with old quest items (such as Train Parts) associated with quests they抳e already completed or no longer have should find these items removed upon logging in.

Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from receiving credit for killing the ? Lies?in

The Hellgate quest. Players should now be able to properly advance in this quest.

Engineers:

Fixed known bugs which prevented Engineer Drones from saving properly.

Fixed a bug which caused Engineers to receive an erroneous 搖nable to meet requirements?message when entering a new instance with a Drone that has a weapon equipped.

PvP:

Fixed an incorrect modifier causing Special Effect Attack Strengths in PvP situations to be much higher than intended.

World Movement:

Fixed known issues which occasionally prevented characters from being able to load or switch instances.

Fixed several issues with players getting stuck in the world.

Fixed a bug related to St. Paul's Nightmare mode progression.

Portals to party members should now automatically close if the associated party member leaves the game.

World Events:

The Guy Fawkes event has ended. Characters that have completed the NAME Quest that did not receive the Trinket reward should find this item in their inventory.

Slowly, but surely, they are unlocking basic gameplay features for non-subscribers. That 24 character slots for everyone change is a nice move.

Top Seller Games - Hellgate #1 and #2

2007-11-16T01:18:00.000-08:00

This is straight of Firing Squad who have posted an article up about the top selling games in the US up to November 3rd:

The NPD Group has released the latest list of the top 10 best selling PC games
in the US, this time for the week ending November 3:

1. Hellgate: London
- Namco/EA
2. Hellgate: London Collectors Edition - Namco/EA
3. Half
Life 2: Episode 2 The Orange Box - Valve/EA
4. Age Of Empires III: Asian
Dynasties - Microsoft
5. The Sims 2 Bon Voyage - Electronic Arts
6.
Nancy Drew: Legend Of The Crystal Skull - Her Interactive
7. Flight
Simulator X: Acceleration - Microsoft
8. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
9.
The Witcher - Atari
10. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts

Hellgate: London - Intro Video

2007-11-14T23:43:00.000-08:00

The official Hellgate: London introduction video.

HellgateLondon.de Interviews Hellgate Composers

2007-11-14T23:27:00.000-08:00

Our friends at HellgateLondon.de have interviewed the composers of the Hellgate: London soundtrack, Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan.
The interview, which is available in English, discusses everything from the creation of the Hellgate: London soundtrack to the composers’ previous work. Here’s a snippet:

7. What guidelines did you have for the Hellgate music?
Sascha & Cris:
Musically, it was a free-for-all in the beginning. Dave had put together a
document of musical styles that he thought might work in the game. It was up to
us to take all those conflicting styles and come up with our own sound that
would work in the game. Every track incorporates something from that original
list though. Weâ€™ve combined orchestra, rock, electronica, drum and bass, etc
in the final product.

On the technical side, we definitely had some
limitations in order for the audio engine to work correctly. These limitations
didnâ€™t really hold us back in any way though. For example, to transition
seamlessly from an ambient cue into an action cue both tracks had to be the
exact same length. If we started in G minor and moved to B minor in one cue we
had to do exactly the same thing in the other. By doing this however, we could
move between both cues so easily that you would never really notice that the
music was changing in the game. It feels extremely natural.

No wipe for South East Asian Servers

2007-11-14T19:59:00.000-08:00

For those players from South East Asia, IAH (The SEA Publisher for HGL) has just published a press release that states that the servers will not be wiped. There is also a message from Bill Roper and Roland Ong, the IAHGames CEO.

Dear Gamers,

We are elated to announce Flagship Studios has given us a
green light to implement Patch 0 with NO character wipe.

Flagship
Studios has investigated the major character issues, including missing skills
and statistics, and have found methods to resolve them. They will also be
performing a server upgrade to Patch 0.1 for our game service, making it
equivalent to what the US gamers are enjoying now.

The process of
implementing these improvements should be complete by 22nd November, 2007.

We are also working closely with Hanbitsoft and Flagship Studios on a
program to reward our gamers for the patience and perseverance shown during the
recent turn of events. Please stay updated to the forum and website for more
news from your community manager, Angelace.

Thank you for your attention
and have a good day ahead.

Sincerely,

Team HGL

The Escapist Reviews Hellgate London

2007-11-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

While we would all want Zero Punctuation to review Hellgate London, we weren’t so lucky. However the Escapist online Magazine has plenty of qualified reviewers and one of them, Adam LaMosca had the pleasure of playing through Hellgate for over 30 hours now.
He has similar views to say that many other reviews have done, however he goes on to say that with polish HGL could potentialy be great.

It might be stuck with the lackluster review scores prompted by its problematic
retail release, but Hellgate still has the potential to become a worthy
successor to Diablo.

His negative views of the game are the usual bugs, lack of environments as well as a small stash and lightness of features. He does however finish with this:

Hellgate’s obviously premature release earned a lukewarm critical reception
that, given numerous recent bug fixes, may already be undeserved. Even in its
current state, it’s an appealing, rewarding, and addictive game. With a bit more
fine-tuning its out-of-the box online component would be well worth the retail
price. Were Flagship to completely iron out the wrinkles and start delivering
some genuinely interesting exclusive content, Hellgate’s subscription service
could eventually become a no-brainer.

Hellgate Locations: The City

2007-11-13T19:22:00.000-08:00

London, as it was, is no more. Now, the once great city lies in ruins. A massive, sinister gash in the fabric of our reality swirls and churns, dominating the horizon as it blends into a permanently darkened sky. The Invasion, the unspeakable cataclysm that befell London, eventually engulfed humanity. This capitol of a once powerful nation has been eradicated, and The Burn – the transformation of our world into theirs – has begun.

Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury is an area of central London, in the borough of Camden. The area contains some of London's finest parks and buildings, and is particularly known for its formal squares. These include the large and orderly Russel Square, the smaller unusual round Bedford Square, Bloomsbury Square dominated by the grand Victoria House, Queen Square home to many hospitals, and Gordon Woburn and Torrington Squares, which are home to parts of University College.

The Bloomsbury district was once served by numerous tube routes, but today is only accessible via the Picadilly and Central lines. Holborn Station is the closest secured site to this area, although recent changes due to The Burn may have unearthed a secret tunnel that is part of the disused British Museum tube station.

Covent Garden Market

The Covent Garden Market district is a typical example of the devastation that was wrought during the demonic invasion. Buildings are in various states of disrepair, fires of infernal origin still burn under a perpetually darkened sky, and creatures of the underworld lurk the abandoned streets. There are few places to hide or find cover, and any unarmed adventurer has an extremely short life expectancy above ground. Shattered windows, desolate store fronts and hastily erected defenses can be seen in the eerie avenues, as well as evidence of the hard-fought battles that seemed to rage everywhere in the once proud city of London.

The British Museum

The oldest museum in the world, The British Museum was established in 1753 and was based largely on the collections of the noted physician, scientist and collector Sir Hans Sloane. His work in the field of botany, and especially his study of chemistry at the Apothecaries Hall in London, laid the groundwork for what would be the core the early museum’s collection.
The British Museum is home to over seven million objects from all continents illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. Many of the artifacts are stored underneath the museum due to lack of space. Though it principally became a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a 'universal museum'.
After its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including ancient relics and antiquities. From Roman and Greek artifacts to an extensive collection of Egyptian sculptures. Amongst its more notable acquisitions were the Rosetta Stone and the infamous Elgin Marbles.
The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is a covered square at the centre of the British Museum designed by the architects Foster and Partners. The roof is a glass and steel construction with 1,656 pairs of uniquely shaped glass panes.

IAHGames Not Wiping Database, Delays Patch 0 Again

2007-11-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

The SEA situation is changing once more. IAHGames, maintainer of the SEA server, today announced that they will not be performing the character wipe and implementation of patch 0 as promised and instead will work closely with their partners to resolve the problem with minimal disruption to the player base.

Hellgatelondon.com - Founder’s Offer and Igames Launch Event

2007-11-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

Two new announcements were posted on Hellgatelondon.com, the first one by Ivan Sulic, the other by Kaiser Hwang.

Igames will be organizing a Hellgate: London launch event in its member centers in North America:

iGames, Inc., the world’s leading game center organization, will be hosting a
special one-day Hellgate: London launch event at 45 select iGames member centers
across North America on Saturday, November 10. The event will be followed by a
two-week showcase, November 12-25, at over 100 member centers, allowing gamers
to play Hellgate: London.

The Founder’s offer will be available for a longer time, and Flagship is currently working on adding more payment options for those who want to subscribe.

Good news! Based on the number of requests from our community, we’re extending
the Founder’s lifetime subscription membership offer through the end of the
2007. We’re also in the process of working on bringing more payment options
online, including Pay By Cash and Paypal, and we’re working hard to include the
ability for players to use debit cards, which we know is the preference of many
players in our European community.

Oh, and you know what ? Today (November 12th) is Ivan’s birthday ! Come and wish him a lot of good things here.

South East Asian HGL Gets Wiped

2007-11-11T22:44:00.000-08:00

Kotaku reports that the version of South East Asian version of Hellgate: London will be getting wiped, as after numerous attempts to apply Patch 0 to the servers it was discovered that the only way to apply it would be to perform a complete character wipe.

IAHGames has issued a statement apologizing to its players, and compensating them with 4 weeks of free subscription benefits. Here’s a snippet:

The implementation of Patch0 and subsequent character wipe will occur at
1200hrs(GMT+8) on Monday, November 12. After the Patch is implemented, a
comprehensive test will be run to ensure there are no further problems. The
process will take about 8 hours.
We would like to repeat we are sorry for
the delay and the frustration it may have caused you. Please accept the game
time as compensation, and thank you for your support until this point.

It’s unfortunate that the wipe has to happen, but it’s good to know that Hellgaters will be receiving a fair compensation for their loss. Endure, in enduring grow strong.

Dear Gamers,

We have decided to postpone today’s maintenance exercise.

Another announcement would be presented tomorrow to inform all our
valued gamers further on the implementation of Patch-0.

We apologize for
any inconvenience it may have caused you and we wish you a good day ahead.

SomethingAwful Features Hellgate: London

2007-11-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

The popular satirical website SomethingAwful.com has featured Hellgate: London on the front page in its mock “Games for Windows” feature with some very nasty things to say about the game. Here’s a snippet:

* At LEAST two possible character builds for each class, one of which might
actually be viable later on in the game! Which one? Who knows? Maybe Satan. Even
spookier!

* Elite and Nightmare Elite modes, which test your ability to
play through the same monotonous game all over again, this time with monsters
that take ten times longer to kill. Hell yeah! Or perhaps I should say Hellgate:
Yeah! Also, Nightmare Elite is literally impossible to beat at the current level
cap of 50. Keep trying, though!

I really don’t know what to say. I don’t agree with the content of the article - two possible character builds per class? What are they smoking? Besides that, Elite was obviously meant for party play, so there’s nothing wrong

Hellgate Cabalist Skills

2007-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

The original plan for characters in Hellgate: London was to have one character in each faction with three or four different skill trees/subclasses. This concept was abandoned during development when the idea of classes with unique skill menus came in, and as such this page, listing all of the skills, has been replaced by the Evoker and Summoner pages. See those pages for up to date skill info about each class in the Cabalist faction. This page preserves information about skill evolution and early Cabalist skills that are not used by the Evoker or Summoner.

Hellgate Hunter Skills

2007-11-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

Hunter skills were originally grouped into three skill trees. With the introduction of the Engineer and Marksman classes, the original skills were divided between them, with some other skills being removed entirely. This page is now a shell, with all the up to date skill info on the Engineer and Hunter pages. This page preserves unused skill descriptions and information about the evolution of the Hunter class' abilities.

Hellgate Templar Skills

2007-11-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

Templar skills are ever-changing during game development. This page was rendered obsolete when Flagship changed from one Templar with skill trees to individual Templar classes with unique skill menus. This page now holds old Templar skill info.
See the Guardian and Blademaster pages for up to date lists of all known Templar skills.

Hellgate Engineer Skills

2007-11-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that many non-percentile values actually scale to the player's level. For example, at player level one, the skill level one Shock and Awe may deal 18-23 damage, but when player is level ten, the same level one Shock and Awe will deal a lot more damage instead. The same scaling effect goes for the rest of the nine skill levels.

Engineer Skills Tree

Hellgate Summoner Skills

2007-11-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that many non-percentile values actually scale to the player's level. For example, at player level 1, the skill level 1 Afterlife may give 17 HP/corpse, but at player level 2, it may give 19 HP/corpse instead. The same scaling effect goes for the rest of the nine skill levels. This is also true for power costs to summon elementals. As your character level goes up, so does the power cost.

Summoner Skills Tree

Hellgate Evoker Skills

2007-11-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that many non-percentile values actually scale to the player's level. For example, at player level one, the skill level one Drain Life may give 14 HP/sec, but when player is level ten, the same level one grenade may give a lot more HP/sec instead. The same scaling effect goes for the rest of the nine skill levels.

Evoker Skills Tree

Hellgate Marksman Skills

2007-11-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that many non-percentile values actually scale to the player's level. For example, at player level one, the skill level one Explosive Grenade may deal 19-22, but when player is level ten, the same level one grenade may do 40~44 damage instead. The same scaling effect goes for the rest of the nine skill levels. If level two grenade do 23~26 damage when player is level one, it may do 45~46 damage when player is level ten, etc.

Marksman Skills Tree

Hellgate Blademaster Skills

2007-11-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind that many non-percentile values actually scale to the player's level. For example, at Clvl 1, the skill level one Surge of Restoration may give 19 hp/min, but when player is level ten, the same level one Surge of Restoration may give a lot more HP instead. The same scaling effect goes for the rest of the nine skill levels. If level two gives 19 hp/min at Clvl 1, it will give even more when the player is clvl 10 etc.

Blademaster Skills Tree

Hellgate Guardian Skills

2007-11-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

The Templar Guardian class is the "tank" of the game, capable of using skills and equipment to withstand tremendous damage. You'll want one of these in your party. Guardians aren't just meat shields, though. They have plenty of useful skills and can kill effectively as well, whether with swords or pistols. Contents
Guardian Description
There are many differences between the two Templar classes, but both will work largely as melee fighters. Guardians are best at taking on big packs of monsters at once, while Blademasters kill very quickly, but can not take the damage from a mob. Guardians actually prefer mobs, with skills and auras that increase their healing rate, or damage, or other properties when there are more enemies nearby. Guardians can have a harder time with a single monster than with a pack, oddly enough.

Guardians can use pistols, and it's nice to have those handy for dealing with various running or flying monsters, but the class is best with a sword and shield.

There was early worries that the Guardian was too defensive a character and that Guardians would not be able to kill as quickly as other characters. They can't, if you measure only the actual damage output, but Guardians have such strong defensive skills that they seldom need to retreat or reposition, standing them in stark contrast to the various higher damage "glass cannon" characters. Blademasters might do more damage, but they spend a great deal of time running around to reposition and string out monster mobs, while the Guardian can just wade in and tank the lot, doing damage the whole time. Its more a difference in play style than doing "less damage".

Guardian Skills

The Guardian has 27 skills, mostly involving surviving in the midst of battle, without resorting to "tactical retreats" like Marksmen and Evokers particularly have to do. Skills are focused on healing, defence and keeping the foes to attack the Guardian, and not some fragile party member. The skills are roughly divided into four Skill Groups: Swordsmanship, Auras, Prayers, and Taunts. Skills in related groups are sometimes, but not necessarily, connected by dependency lines and have each other as prerequisites. Guardians have a lot of auras with all sorts of effects, including healing, damaging, and otherwise inconveniencing monsters. In addition to all the various auras, Guardians have a variety of shield skills, defence-boosting skills, and a few combat skills as well.

Guardian Equipment

GamersWithJobs Review Hellgate

2007-11-10T23:41:00.000-08:00

The gates of hell are open, and you must slog through randomly generated levels packed with the infernal legions of the damned toward a showdown with ultimate evil. Sound familiar?

That Hellgate London borrows heavily from the Diablo model of dispatching nether beings with mystical energies and the healthy smack of enchanted steel is neither surprising nor disappointing. If anything the millions of fans of Blizzard’s franchise have been aching for an adequate heir for years, and while games like Sacred and Titan Quest have made journeyman efforts to fill that void, they have always fallen ultimately just a little short. So, when Bill Roper – one of the masterminds behind the demonic franchise – broke away from Blizzard and announced his project, which sounded suspiciously-exactly like Diablo with fancy new 3D visuals, great enthusiasm followed.

Hellgate London is the culmination of that effort and it can perhaps best be described as the promise of an excellent game in a currently flawed state. Offering the basic frenetic gameplay of Diablo 2 in a 3D futuristic environment lends a lot of basic potential to Hellgate London, and the hand of Bill Roper is evident at many if not every turn, but serious bugs, an unwieldy UI, horrendous account (mis)management, repetitious environments and a constantly evident lack of polish leave the game short of its lofty goals at launch.

Hellgate London is something more than an action-RPG and something just short of an MMO, a hybridized blend that can be played entirely offline, though it makes very little sense to do so. I know it’s perhaps anathema to inject personal anecdotes into critical analysis, but I’ve never been much for ceremony, so here goes. When I was a teenager I was a C student on my best days, and every single teacher I disappointed would send home critical evaluations with the words “shows strong potential” highlighted by what I can only describe as frustrated red underlines. Were I sending home a mid-quarter progress report on Hellgate London, that’s exactly what I’d write under my otherwise discouraged evaluation, and like my parents and teachers I spend as much time imagining what this game will be once it finally applies itself as slapping my head at the boneheaded blunders it currently makes at every turn.

Even the most discouraging critics of the game generally admit that the game is very likely to be different in six months than it is now, and independent developer Flagship studios may be given some latitude with the understanding that traditionally games of this nature rarely launch in a completely finished state. Were the issues entirely content related, it might be easier to look past some of Hellgate London’s less egregious shortcomings, but with regular server downtime, a non-functioning account creation system that has now blossomed into an all out SNAFU, and a variety of crashes to endure, the game clearly would have been very well served with a little more time in development. So far, a patch a day has not been uncommon, and it has become clear that little touches and fixes are slowly bringing the game together.

Perhaps this next statement breaks either some unspoken bond of trust I have contracted with you as a reader, or bursts a little too boldly through the fourth wall, but what are these perspectives for if not to be uncommonly honest with you, so here goes: I find myself wanting to make excuses for Hellgate London. In fact, I dare suggest I’m not the only one, because despite what are mind-numbingly apparent flaws in its current state I want this title to be good. I want to encourage more developers to strike off on their own and try to bring their visions for great games to fruition, and I want to be positive about what should be a fantastic game, but let’s be honest. This game is what happens when great designers run at full speed into the brick wall of a financially mandated hard deadline, the inevitable trainwreck of simply running out of time and money. As a gamer it’s discouraging as hell because whatever inspires Diablo 2 fanatics to return time and again to the infinite and unyielding obliteration of Mephisto is present here. This perspective ultimately breaks down to a pretty simple question: can you look past occasionally show-stopping bugs and rough edges like you’d find on an industrial sander to the game beneath?

But, when I say bugs, let me be clear. We’re talking evil creeping carrion eater kind of bugs that will halt your demon-stomping in its path with a total system freeze. Even with 2 gigs of RAM and a Core 2 Duo processor, I still get what appear to be memory leak crashes to desktop every other time I play. Even the randomly generated maps, which they have presumably been working on for years, occasionally offer no passable path between you and your destination. In multiplayer, I have suddenly had my partner vanish, though he was still clearly in the same gamespace as evidenced by demons falling to invisible blades. There is a cavalcade of little things that will need to be fixed, put in place and polished in the months to come, and this is just a sampling.

Hellgate offers online players two options, a subscription based model or a free model with fewer features, less access to content updates, and fewer character slots and items. Unlike typical MMOs, Hellgate London’s price-tag provides a complete experience without ever requiring you to enter a credit card number, and it’s hard to criticize giving players a free option regardless of comments made earlier in the development cycle. This is a game where it makes sense to offer a subscription model, and being able to play while you wait for Hellgate London to have the content in place to make a subscription worth your while is actually a fair option.

From a gameplay perspective, Hellgate London stays faithful to a Diablo mindset of fighting waves of monsters. The in-game dialogue moves a perfunctory story along well enough and is occasionally quite funny in a clever and quirky way. While there are a number of moments of unusual and creative quests, particularly along the track of the main storyline, taking advantage of the potential of a fairly flexible 3D engine, too many side quests devolve into hunt and gather tedium. Some will find this mitigated by the real draw of the game, which is endless dungeon crawling and item collection. It’s easy enough to imagine an eventual market for highly prized items and sets, a traditional development for games of this type that manage any longevity, but again we approach the idea that the value of Hellgate London is, as yet, untapped. While the story, items and missions are all there, it’s easy to imagine the game being significantly better once the user interface is improved and the economy is thriving.

If it feels like I’m entirely on the fence about this game, it’s because I am. It’s the kind of game I’d rather revisit in six months to see if it eventually matches its potential, because in its release state it is simply incomplete. The fundamentals are there, but the bug fixes, interface improvements and general polish are being patched in day by day. On the upside Hellgate London starts from a reasonably solid foundation and improves each day, but on the downside you might feel like you’ve just dropped $50 to play what is essentially an advanced beta. How you square on the issue of companies needing to launch so they have the assets to finish their game will be a lot of the deciding factor for anyone interested in the game. Enough friends with whom to play and a healthy patience will make the price of admission easier to swallow, but if you’re looking for a polished experience in this kind of gameplay, you might want to break out the old Diablo 2 cd and play that for six months while Hellgate London finishes cooking.

One-Man Raid on Flagship Studios

2007-11-10T23:22:00.000-08:00

Chakl, a long-time member of Hellgate Guru, is currently in San Francisco, visiting Flagship Studios !
Amidst the screams of agony and the fire lit by a traitor -who did not know he was caught on tape - we received this drool-inducing picture:

Hellgate:London: Implementation of Patch0

2007-11-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

Gamers,
Thank you for your patience while we worked to upload Patch0 onto our local servers.

For the past two weeks, IAHGames and our partners have worked overnight almost everyday as they attempted to implement Patch0 onto our existing servers.

In the end, it has been determined that there is no way to implement Patch0 onto our Hellgate: London servers without also discarding relevant player data.

Because of this, when Patch0 is installed on Tuesday, there will be a complete character wipe.
We understand this event is frustrating for you, and we are sorry for the problems in implementing Patch0. As compensation, we are providing all gamers who purchased both the Standard and Collector's Edition Box Sets 4 weeks of free subscription benefits.

Each box already includes 30 days of free subscription benefits, meaning all of you will be entitled to 60 days of free subscription when the service becomes active around the end of the year.

IAHGames and our partners have taken this event very seriously, and yesterday our CEO and Deputy CEO flew to Seoul to discuss the issue with the CEO of HanbitSoft. As a result of the meeting, HanbitSoft has graciously agreed support IAH Games' decision to provide free subscription time as compensation. HanbitSoft and Flagship Studios have also agreed to provide all further patches on par with US patching time lines, to ensure the SEA version of Hellgate: London stays up-to-date.

The implementation of Patch0 and subsequent character wipe will occur at 1200hrs(GMT+8) on Monday, November 12. After the Patch is implemented, a comprehensive test will be run to ensure there are no further problems. The process will take about 8 hours.

We would like to repeat we are sorry for the delay and the frustration it may have caused you. Please accept the game time as compensation, and thank you for your support until this point.

Sincerely,
Team HGL

Gamespot Reviews Hellgate: London

2007-11-10T09:32:00.000-08:00

Well, Hellgate: London has already been reviewed many times, and it is not over yet. Gamespot has published its own analysis of the game, which is not a big surprise if you read any other review. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that Gamespot awarded Hellgate two disctinctions: “Better than the sum of its parts” and “Sucks you in”.

If you love hoarding stuff and don’t mind repetition, Hellgate: London is a
really neat but often uneven game that will probably keep you busy for at
least
a month or two, even if you don’t subscribe. But, for many, the game’s
issues
will be a real deal breaker. If you’re on the fence, you might want
to watch the
game’s patch notes to see how many technical glitches, as
well.
[…]

The Good

Gameplay can be supremely addictive because of the way it lets you
collect tons of items and upgrade your gear
Good-looking graphics,
especially on DirectX 10 machines.

The Bad

Most ranged weapons really
lack “oomph”
Plenty of technical glitches can get in the way
Story is
clumsy and not written or conveyed very well.

Kaiser Lists Flagship Studios’ Priorities

2007-11-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

Kaiser Hwang, Hellgate: London’s Senior Community Manager, posted a message on the official forums yesterday, in which he makes a list of the team’s current priorities regarding several issues, which most of you already encountered in the game.

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.