Hellgate: London Subscription Details Released

[Asuka]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/46863

Flagship Studios' optional monthly subscription plan for Hellgate: London has been revealed in Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, claims fansite Hellgate Guru. The game's multiplayer model has remained clouded in a degree of mystery, though statements from Flagship personnel have indicated that some kind of paid service was in the works.

According to the details reprinted by Hellgate Guru, Hellgate: London online players will have the option of paying a $9.95 monthly fee for an Elite subscription, which confers a number of advantages over the standard free online membership. For their payment, Elite subscribers will receive 12 character slots rather than three, access to a Diablo II-esque Hardcore mode, the freedom to bypass server queues, account-wide storage for 40 items (as opposed to 20 items for non-Elites), permission to create guilds and attain officer status, distinguishing Elite features and Elite-only equipment, in-game VIP shuttles, and 24-hour customer support. Elite and non-Elite players may interact fully within the game world, and non-Elite players may join guilds.

Flagship plans to support Hellgate: London with regularly released additional content, potentially as frequently as twice a month. Studio CEO Bill Roper has noted that Flagship has always planned to add content to the game on a regular basis, but would need an appropriate financial model to do so.

"What you're getting with that service is you're getting 24/7 customer service, secure servers, databases, and the biggest thing is that you're getting continuing content," Roper explained to Shacknews in January, prior to the pricing finalization. "We'll have a full dev team that's on the project from day one. Actually, right when you buy the game, when it launches there will already be content available that you can't get in the single-player--additional monsters, areas, all the community and economy things, you'll be able to form guilds, auction houses, all those things you expect from MMOs."

Shacknews has contacted Flagship Studios and co-publisher Electronic Arts for confirmation of these details.

Not really hyped about this game, i was but dunno what happened.

 

[JFry]

I was looking forward to this game but that sounds stupid, to be blunt. Special equipment for elite players? You can't even form guilds if you don't pay? Lame.

If you don't pay the monthly fee you basically play a gimped character. If you pay you just get what any other game gives you with the promise of "more content to come". I'd rather buy a game with released content and reviews so you know what you're getting. Especially from a company's first released game, afaik.

 

[Agent.M]

Im so confused how did this game go from a fps that I originaly saw, to now a charging MMO?

Just more the reason I think this new SC game is gonna be another MMO of some type!

 

[ktimekiller]

meh what a disappoint

 

[Absinthe]

This sounds... retarded.

 

[Icarusintel]

Wow. Way to f*ck up a game that was already looking more and more mediocre with each passing bit of news and screenshot. Comparing this to the Halo 2 multiplayer stuff, does anyone notice the comparison? Buy the game, but pay us more money if you really want to play it.


If this is where games are heading then the companies doing this can go f*ck themselves. What happened to the good old days when you could buy a game, get all the options from the start, get sweet multiplayer modes, and also get the editor?


Edit: And before anyone says this is typical for MMOs, just look at Guild Wars. Nuff said.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

only looking forward to the single player for now anyways.

 

[StardogChampion]

Won't be buying this.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

me neither..

 

[Hazar]

I'll definitely be getting it and probably paying for the extra stuff too.

The game was always and action rpg, with some fps elements. You can still play online for free, you just get extra stuff with the monthly fee.

 

[CptStern]

the extra stuff will be everywhere ..dont know if this game is all that gear centric but if it is you can bet that "elite" gear will be plentiful ..as in every second chest has a purple item with "Elite" in the name causing you to exclaim, "shit I wish I could use this elite gear maybe I should pay the monthly fee" ...it's the same business model as Dungeon Runners and the game is completely useless unless you pay the subscription fee

 

[Hazar]

most likely scenario is that the gear will have the same stats, only look better. Flagship employee kaiser explains better:

*atrial – That info is correct. Again, the game will have as robust an online game as, say, Diablo II, for free. The Elite plan comes with some extra perks, but really doesn’t detract from the core game at all. Ultimately, all of the extra content we have planned for the future requires funding, as do the servers, support, etc., hence a monthly fee. But we’re passionate about making the game, even on the free plan, one that’s great from every aspect. I think once the game comes out and you get a feel for the game, you’ll be happy on either plan, depending on what you’re looking for. ^_^

*Lothar98 – Elite members will have additional content, though it wasn’t all specified in the magazine article. And the customer support thing – it’s 24/7 for the Elite, though everyone will have access to support for free.

*snoboader38 – I am! Sorry to be late. We’re super busy filming some behind-the-scenes content for the game which has me away from my computer a lot!

Thanks to those who understand what we’re trying to do. Trust me when I say that if everything could be free, we’d be all for it. But with all the upcoming content we have planned, we need to be able to keep FSS alive to make it! I’m trying to get a detailed breakdown of the plans so that it’s clear to everyone that even the free plan gives you a whole, not-gimped game. Really.

 

[kineaesth]

Blinking STUPID. I was hoping they wouldn't be idiots and charge.

 

[Hazar]

they are not FORCING YOU TO PAY

you get EXTRA STUFF if you want to pay. I repeat, YOU CAN PLAY OFFLINE OR ONLINE FOR THE PRICE OF JUST THE BOX WITHOUT A MONTHLY FEE.

 

[Absinthe]

they are not FORCING YOU TO PAY

you get EXTRA STUFF if you want to pay. I repeat, YOU CAN PLAY OFFLINE OR ONLINE FOR THE PRICE OF JUST THE BOX WITHOUT A MONTHLY FEE.

And this is still ****ing stupid.

I mean, ****. Come on. What about an equal playing field? In WoW, everybody has access to the same content because everybody's paying. There isn't some stupid glass ceiling where you can't get Tier 4 armor sets because you aren't paying more. Vice versa, it's not like you could pay your way into better gear in Diablo 2.

All this does is fracture the player base. Let's be honest here. If you're going to take on an optional online fee, you'd be damn sure that such an upgrade is going to be significant. It's just dumb to be playing in an environment where half the population has much better shit than you, and the only thing separating you from that is your credit card.

 

[Hazar]

All the items for the elites will have the same stats as the normal ones, just look better.

"1) Will single player have an "account" wide stash, and will it be 20 or 40 items?"
To be honest this is one of the things I know the least about so I can't really give more clarification.

2) Will there be a way for non-subscribers to get the additional content, such as boxed expansion packs?
There have been discussions about various methods of packaging ongoing content but there are no official plans as of yet.

3) Will the matchmaking town terminals described in MMO Games Magazine be an Elite only service?
No, the town terminals are a matchmaking service for everyone.

"Higher what? "

Doh, sorry about that - I'm currently at home nursing a broken arm (my drawing/dominate hand at that) so my typing is very slow at the moment. All the same it's not really an excuse for sloppiness.

I think it's really important that people understand are the goals we have for Hellgate, I will try to explain them as I think it says a lot about our company and where we want the game to go in the long term. We are delivering a full single player game that exceeds, in my opinion, what Diablo 2 (and certainly Guild Wars) delivered in terms of depth of story and variety/quality of game play. The entire single player experience can then be taken online and played through with friends in it's entirety. No one is being gimped, or prevented from participating in any of the content that comes in the box because we want people to be able to hop online, play with their friends and simply have fun without any additional fees or commitments.

Something else we want to do is to keep expanding the world of Hellgate beyond what we've been able to do in the last several years. This is where on going content comes in. We're not holding anything back from the initial release so any ongoing content that is delivered will have been created after the release of Hellgate:London and this is why it isn't included in the initial cost of the game. Have we talked about a lot of the things we want to add already? Sure. Have some of those ideas been partially been worked on? Yep, probably, but one of the realities of any game development cycle is that there will always be more ideas then there is time/manpower to make those ideas happen so things get cut. Again this is where ongoing content comes in. It allows us the time/resources to add all those 'wouldn't it be cool if..' ideas that you guys talk about on the forums and we talk about internally.

Part of 'expanding the world' of Hellgate does mean creating higher level dungeons/areas for players who are supporting the on going content to explore. This will mean that subscription players will eventually be able to attain higher levels but it is not due to an artificial gimping of the boxed game but rather because we've expanded the game beyond it's original scope.

http://www.hellgateguru.com/forum/showthread.php?p=81627#post81627

 

[Tamer17]

Sounds fair enough.

 

[Adrik_Senturu]

Part of 'expanding the world' of Hellgate does mean creating higher level dungeons/areas for players who are supporting the on going content to explore. This will mean that subscription players will eventually be able to attain higher levels but it is not due to an artificial gimping of the boxed game but rather because we've expanded the game beyond it's original scope.

So non-paying players get left behind? :|

 

[Hazar]

you get an entire single player game and mmo for $50. If you want to have more content, you can pay $10 a month at any time.

I really don't see how that's a ripoff in any way.

 

[Agent.M]

you get an entire single player game and mmo for $50. If you want to have more content, you can pay $10 a month at any time.

I really don't see how that's a ripoff in any way.

Neither do I sounds perfectly fair to me.

 

[Asuka]

More info http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/hellgate-london/786714p1.html

 

[Hazar]

http://www.hellgatelondon.com/news/view/76/#fancy_panel

 

[Asuka]

and more info:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/46886

I guess it sounds good.

 

[Adrik_Senturu]

you get an entire single player game and mmo for $50. If you want to have more content, you can pay $10 a month at any time.

I really don't see how that's a ripoff in any way.

Right..see but higher level dungeons/More content only available to subscribers means new and most likely alot better equipment which non-paying players wont see :| So when you reach endgame if your not paying, not only will suscribers be seeing alot more than you, but they'll have better shit too, which just goes back to the whole if your not paying your gimped thing.

 

[Rico]

Also, it's not an MMO. MMO's may have instanced dungeons, but not all areas are instanced, in fact, instances are the exception to the rule in MMOs where all content is online.

It sounds like it's exactly like GW, and GW is not an MMO. You go to towns and talk/sell/find a party, then you go into an instance and play with your party. That's not an MMO, that's a matchmaking service with a graphical interface. Using that logic, every online RPG is an MMO, which is false.

Also, no free guild support, no free hardcore or pvp modes, no LAN play. Just how much of the community are they looking to alienate before release? Diablo 2 had all these features out of the box, so how come they keep saying "you get more from HG:L than from diablo 2" yet they are telling us that features that came standard and for free in Diablo 2, we have to pay for?

I was really excited about the game until they started going into detail about the subscription stuff, now I feel like I might not want to support a company trying to squeeze monthly fees out of players claiming to be an MMO while having zero of the "Massively Multiplayer" aspect.

 

[0mar]

So..

basically it comes down to this.

If you want to enjoy the game, pay 9.95 a month for it. Otherwise, be prepared to slog through an extremely gimped version of the game that is missing core content. Likes like a PASS from me.

No guild forming, no "elite" weaponry, no extra characters, no new content. Basically, non-subscription removes everything about Diablo 2 that was fun. **** off Flagship Studios. **** off.

 

[Hazar]

err, since when did diablo 2 have new content since release? All the "elite" items have been confirmed to be only better aesthetically. You can have as many characters as you want in single player for free. You get 3 for online.

There will be basic pvp for everyone as well as different difficulty levels.

Our intention is to make nightmare and hell modes available to all players equally. Currently we plan to have a hard cap of level 50 for all players, and with these advanced difficulty modes all players should be able to reach this cap. In the future this cap will almost certainly rise (again for everyone), but this is still in an early planning stage.

Hope this helps clear up some issues! ^_^

-kaiser

why would you want lan play? just go online. broadband is common enough. You can join guilds without paying, just not found them.

 

[Letters]

I may buy it for the singleplayer but it better be damn good for me to even want to play it online, let alone pay to do it. If it attracts the same type of crowd as Guild Wars and Diablo II do then you can certainly count me out.

 

[Hazar]

since when are you back? D:

 

[Adrik_Senturu]

err, since when did diablo 2 have new content since release? All the "elite" items have been confirmed to be only better aesthetically..

Until you know like I mentioned about the whole paying players getting acess to new content (Which means better equipment and the like) While non-paying players are left behind :|

Also,

 

[Absinthe]

So... paying a monthly fee for things that look aesthetically better. That's not as bad, but it's actually more retarded than I originally thought.

Why Flagship thinks they should be able to charge for shit that equivalent RPGs like GW do for free is beyond me. If this article is to be believed, then I can only conclude that this is little more than an attempt at squeezing more money out of a playerbase that should be getting a lot of this shit right out of the box.

Come on, the most powerful weapons in the game? Shuttles? Those that opt out of subscribing can't even enter their guild halls? Elite players actually get more gametypes? This has to be a joke. That things like weapons and shuttle transportation inevitably have more to do with your wallet than your skill should be quite disconcerting to any serious gamer, because this is the kind of thing one would expect from EA.

The only things that somewhat justifies the optional fees is the increased character/item storage. When it comes to new monthly content, then we need to get realistic here. The subscription stops being optional at least two or three months down the line. Nobody's going be sticking with the out-of-the-box content when a sizable portion of the players are taking on fresh, new material. I'm quite tempted to think that the initial purchase of the game is just a lure to eventually get monthly payers. And keep in mind that the developers don't need to put any of that money towards the kind of server maintenance that an MMO like WoW requires.

The bottom line is that this is ridiculous no matter how you approach it. Flagship is just trying to cash in on MMO popularity because it's a giant money machine. It's shoehorning monthly fees into the game when there's no good reason for there to be any in the first place.

 

[Cole]

I'd place bets that the online experience will be slightly laggy aswell. Why? Yes this is many people of the Diablo team. However the creator of battle.net and many others who designed game netcode went to ArenaNet(Guild Wars) or stayed at Blizzard. Blizzard games have some of the best netcodes.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Pretty pathetic, any way you look at it. You can say it's only optional until you're blue in the face, fact remains they're dividing their community. Calling it an "elite" sub is only going to antagonise things further, and you already knew it was gonna be a volatile community with a game that basically looks like an apocalyptic Diablo on prozac (or should that be off prozac...).

Edit - Also, with my experience from WoW (not being one, but knowing many), any and all people who've actually had to run a guild will likely cough at the idea of having to PAY to do it. As if it wasn't enough of a job already.

Oh god I can hear it already. "The Arbiterz are looking for new meat, whisper SexyPaly for inviet! Elite subscibers only." And then you get onto the chats. "****ing normal subscribers, who do think's paying for all that extra content, leechers?"