Designer Admits Hellgate: London Was Too Ambitious
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
Seems like Blizzard employees are pretty knowledgeable just about constructing games. They seem atleast a bit human when it comes to perfection, "hey we need more time to make this game more fun instead of bugs annoyances and bad reviews" instead of "LAUNCH LAUNCH IT NOW LET IT BURN! BURN!!!!"
Huh, never heard of that...teh_Canape said:
It's a shame, because Hellgate: London wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't really at it's potential. Hopefully they can learn from their mistakes and make good games anyways.
Seriously, why is everyone so hung up on release dates? Sure, maybe you'll get a few suckers to buy your incomplete product, but it'll ruin your company's reputation and make your time making it in vain.HellspawnCandy said:
Yeah, That's not really reflective of anything affiliated with Hellgate: London, though it is funny. The subscriptions were actually pretty damn cheap, but the only thing you got for them, IIRC, was a horodric cube knockoff, a new difficulty mode (where you would get absolutely swarmed by enemies) and (in theory) a series of new adventure modules that were supposed to come out every three months or so (in practice, only Stonehenge Chronicles was ever released.)Dexter111 said:And here I thought it was just because they developed a generally very crappy game that couldn't generate much interest even months after it had been released with an even crappier demo and a ridiculously greedy payment model:TheRealGoochman said:
EDIT: that actually more reminds me of the difference between Gold players and free players on Champions Online...
No. I say the game, incomplete and buggy as it was, was still ahead of its time. It's one of those games that's a massive disappointment, but at the same time I actually appreciated the developers for at least trying something new.persona J said:
Borderlands did many of the same things later on, and I still think that with proper care (and funding) Hellgate (or a Hellgate-esque game) very well could work out in the future.
Keeping it in the same vein as Borderlands would be a good first step; otherwise you would have to put up servers for a persistent world, and without a subscription model in place, it wouldn't last unless you gave the dedicated server platform to the players (which is a big no-no from the Publisher's perspective, due to that whole piracy issue. No publisher would fund that, except maybe Valve).
The nature of the game ironically makes it (technically) better for locally hosted, small team or PVP games, especially without the support of massive server farms.
Fronzel said:
Well, honestly given that WoW is like six years old now and definatly showing it's age, the bottom line is that I don't think there are many people who do not think it's about time to put it out to pasture. A lot of players in WoW themselves mull over this periodically themselves. The issue of course is typically that mot new MMORPGs are half-hearted, heavily rushed, and badly financed messes that simply don't have the content to compete with what WoW is now. You can pretty much max them out pretty quickly, and then ultimatly a lot of people head back to WoW simply because there are still things to do in it. The repetitive raiding and such is unusually well thought out and implemented.
Old Republic Online however suffers from none of these problems unless we have been being lied to. The game has constantly been pushed up whenever Bioware has said they need more time, much like what has been going on with Blizzard. It was given a massive 300 million dollar budget which is the equivilent of what was used to develop WoW and it's expansion by many reports, and on top of that this number was revealed quite a while ago, since then the game was pushed up which probably included more budgeting for whatever was being added to
the game or changed.
Simply put "Old Republic Online" has no excuses for not out performing a six year old game. None of the things that brought down other so called "WoW-killers" apply to it. There aren't the money and time issues that plagued games like "Age Of Conan" so they couldn't deliver on the promised content. None of the other games ever really had the tools this game does and that was obvious when they were released.
That's why this is a test of the entire theory being espoused here. If what Roeper is saying is true, Blizzard should be on the verge of being demolished by the numbers until their next game comes out. If "Old Republic" fails in becoming the #1 MMORPG, it's probably going to be a sign that none of the other stuff matters, Blizzard is just so good that even other top tier developers can't touch even their aging work with similar time and tools availible.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "WoW must fall" guys. I still play WoW quite a bit, and will keep playing it if nothing better comes along, as long as I'm having fun I really don't care. I do however EXPECT WoW to be going down this time because looking at all the factors we know there is no reason why "Old Republic" shouldn't do it. Really the only way it should logically fail at taking the #1 spot until someone else develops a newer game on the same scale is if we've been being lied to (again) and "Old Republic" really doesn't have the budget, resources, or talent assigned to it that we've been lead to believe. Some of that is possible because honestly I think Bioware has been being spread too thin on too many projects recently, but at the same time I don't think EA would be handing out enough money to have their shareholders getting worried without some assurances that it was being prioritized by the best people they had. Three Hundred Million Dollars plus of content is the big deal here, people are only going to burn through or burn out on that in a month or two if they really mucked something up, and really with Bioware involved I can't see that happening. Plus while Mythic is not known for their massive successes (and has been quite bitter due to WAR) they are experienced at this whole thing and have Bioware's back at least in a professional sense which adds a bit of security to the whole thing.
Theres that yeah, but also fantasy worlds are a bit more accessable than Star Wars imoTherumancer said:
The reason Hellgate failed was not because it lacked money or time.
The reason it failed is that we do not live in the past and that you can't remake old concepts without executing them extremely well.
The Diablo team made a diablo clone. How could they have executed it better than the first time? Diablo was a major success. Arguing that there was something wrong with it in a certain aspect would have created major resistance.
So basically all they could do was to remake diablo in fancy grafics and with London. Which is what they did. Unfortunately you can'T expect lightning to strike twice. So what really killed the game was the Devs history.
Crippled by succes, you might say.
The reason it failed is that we do not live in the past and that you can't remake old concepts without executing them extremely well.
The Diablo team made a diablo clone. How could they have executed it better than the first time? Diablo was a major success. Arguing that there was something wrong with it in a certain aspect would have created major resistance.
So basically all they could do was to remake diablo in fancy grafics and with London. Which is what they did. Unfortunately you can'T expect lightning to strike twice. So what really killed the game was the Devs history.
Crippled by succes, you might say.
Yeah, you definitely die a lot in single player, and eventually you get to the point where you have to wonder how they expected anyone to do that alone. But overall it's a decent game, nowhere near perfect, but fun (in a really damn frustrating sort of way).Scrythe said:
That's not really fair. Blizzard has the luxury of extended release times and high end content, because it has the money to do so. You can't realistically expect a start-up developer with external funding to work under the Blizzard format.Straying Bullet said:
Now, aiming a bit lower with more focus on its core mechanics, would have gone a long way. Less can be more, especially if its a polished less.
I also quite enjoyed it, however I was in the beta and never got the release. (didn't have the money at the time it came out, and when I did the game had gone downhill)Credge said:
I still think it could have been good with some changes and a lot of bugfixing and polish.
Would love to see Hellgate re-done, properly,
I thought it was a decent idea but like everyone has said, bugged out, low graphics, and it just felt like a very early beta test for a game instead of a completed article
(Then again I'd much rather see Tabula Rasa revived because that would have been the ultimate with just a bit of tweaking,
And we're all still waiting on SOE's Planetside 2 right? ;D)
I thought it was a decent idea but like everyone has said, bugged out, low graphics, and it just felt like a very early beta test for a game instead of a completed article
(Then again I'd much rather see Tabula Rasa revived because that would have been the ultimate with just a bit of tweaking,
And we're all still waiting on SOE's Planetside 2 right? ;D)
