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Hellgate: London

It's not just a game, it's also a service

Hellgate: London tries to duplicate Diablo's popular server-based online play. In addition to the single player mode, you can play online with your characters saved on the online servers, similar to Battle.net. Unlike that system, Flagship has gone one step further and asks for a subscription fee - 9.99, dollars or euros, depending on where you live (and thanks to the weak dollar, that means Europeans get to pay 40% more) - or if you are sure you want Hellgate for life, there is also a "lifetime subscription" option. Either way, this is an "optional" premium subscription - basic online play is free.

So what does your ten bucks a month give you? Five extra character slots, extra stash space for storing junk, and access to additional subscriber-only content. A nasty reviewer might quip that Flagship Studios is essentially saying "Here is the game, now pay us ten bucks a month so we'll add the missing content and allow you to actually experiment with different character classes. Oh, and if you stop paying, we take your extra characters and subscriber-only toys away until you pay us again."

I'm not that nasty, so I'll just question the value for money here. Sure, there are promises of great things Coming Real Soon for those who subscribe, but until proven otherwise, the offered deal (ten bucks a month for five character slots you should have had in the first place, plus some extra storage space that will expand the storage from "insignificant" to "still too small") is silly. The lifetime subscription is even sillier: the whole concept of trying to milk players with monthly fees while the game offers nothing that shouldn't have been there for just the price of the box is just... weak. Look at Guild Wars - it offers ten times the online experience Hellgate does, yet it's free to play. Yes, Guild Wars charges for expansions, but a flat fee every now and then is infinitely fairer than Hellgate's constant monthly milking in exchange for nothing but big promises at this point.

Billing woes

In any case, Flagship Studios is asking for more money - or they would, if they could get their billing system to work. You know the launch is rocky when the systems for taking your money do not work on launch day, and even now, a week later, the forums have complaints about double-charges and other billing blunders.

Additionally, the Ping0 service managed to confuse the players completely with the separate, same (yet not the same) subscriptions between EU and US. If I've understood everything correctly, Ping0 has two separate subscription databases for the western gamers - US and EU. You can sign up for a free online account to ether one (or both, if you so choose), using the single product key included. If you subscribe to one, your subscription features only work on those servers. To add to confusion, all beta accounts were moved over to final game - only the characters got wiped. Initially you could still access them with the beta client, with a grace period until you have to add a product key to continue playing.

It's all just a bit confusing so far. Ah, but the US beta accounts were duplicated on the EU servers. The same account and password, yet separate databases. It was common for a European player to log in using his beta account - on the US side of the pond - and accidentally end up subscribing to the wrong service. Then, using same old beta-based username and password, when logging on to the EU side of things (with the retail game installed as "European"), the subscriber features didn't show up as activated. And with the beta accounts allowing entry to the live game for the first few days, some even managed to start their live characters on the US servers, only to find them "missing" when they reinstalled the client from the retail DVD with the game defaulting to the European servers. To add further insult to injury, the EU site for Hellgate has no forums - and you need US side account to post to the US forums. End result: a very fine mess.

While "Hellgate: London the game", leaves a lot to be desired, "Hellgate: London the service" is just a train wreck in progress. The only positive aspect of the whole thing is that the multiplayer servers have stayed up reasonably well. Other aspects of the online service side feels like a bunch of newbies fumbling around, and I'm sure the customer support reps have their work cut out trying to untangle the whole US-EU account mess.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Visuals and PerformancePage 4: Multiplayer, subscription servicePage 5: Final Thoughts and Scores

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