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Lights out for Hellgate: London?
November 4th, 2008 by Malcom
It's been a while since a major online game has been completely packed up and taken away from the public. Auto Assault? It wasn't really a major game, it was one of NCSoft's many "side" games. The Sims Online? I'll bet very few other than me knew the game even existed. Whether you experienced Hellgate: London for yourself or not, though, you knew it was out there. You weren't sure exactly what kind of game it was, and that's quite possibly largely in part to the fact that it couldn't decide on a specific genre. I'm writing about it now, since the general opinion was that this game was an "MMOG" at the very least. Hellgate: London won't leave any innovative gameplay features in its legacy, but it'll serve as yet another example of how to not make an online game.
I. Release Date - Ooh, scary!
Hellgate: London was released just in time for Halloween last year. No, the game wasn't ready, but it was Halloween! It fit the "gloomy feel" of the game, and so it had to be released on that date. I did buy this game as soon as it was released, and so I'll note some of its most redeeming features at the time of release(remember, it was Halloween, so it had to be scary!):
- An awful patching process that didn't really patch anything. When it launched, the patching process was absolute shit. I remember disconnecting a couple of times, and the patch would start over from 0%. Come on! This wouldn't have been so bad if the client itself didn't crash for no damn reason at all. Side note: I did try to play the game again recently. When I went to patch it, it asked me to manually download a multiplayer patch. I didn't see a reason to, but did it anyway. I eventually gave up once I realized the game couldn't decide on whether it wanted to be patched or not.
- An amazing introduction cinematic. Once you got to play the game, in-between crashes, you realized where they spent most of their budget. It wasn't on developing the actual game, it was on creating that cinematic. Everything about that cinematic was great, but I sort of wished there had been more things in the game itself than an intro.
- A lot of crashes to the desktop for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes the patching process would halt randomly if you tabbed out, or failed to please the game client in some other way.
- OFFICIAL FORUMS!
I realize most of the times the deadline isn't set by the development companies, but by the publisher, or the person putting all their money into the project. Either way, publishers and developers alike need to realize that if something isn't ready, it's sometimes better to spend a little bit more on it to ensure that the game has a healthy lifespan, than to release it two weeks early so that it will be shut down a year later.
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