Sorry, but I do feel a little festive at Flagship sinking below the waves. Why? Because for months I was afraid that HGL was the wave of the future - developers charging monthly subscriptions for "new" content not worth the price. As a former Guild Wars player, I felt a little put out being forced to pay for such basic conveniences as shared storage between all your characters. I can understand a monthly fee for games that are constantly evolving or adding content, but I don't like it when developers get greedy or act downright dishonestly. If Hellgate was a success, I could see companies across the board charging fees for any multiplayer experience, no matter how lame. Want to reload while playing Team Fortress? That will be $7/month. Want to play any race besides the humans in Starcraft 2 mutiplayer? That will be $10/month. And yes, I was once one of the idiot early adopters who pre-ordered the collector's edition, played in beta, and bought several of the books/comics. Hellgate had a great IP that was really badly implemented. I knew the writing was on the wall when Diablo 3 was announced, but didn't realize the game would die this fast. PS - I'm not here to flame other fans or spit on the vast majority of the dev team. Having been laid off at times in the tech industry, I know how much it sucks to lose your job overnight. But let's face it - content like Stonehenge should have been in the game from the get-go. And premium content should have been just that - cool extra features instead of basics that make the game experience feel gimped unless you subscribe.
I felt a little put out being forced to pay for such basic conveniences as shared storage between all your characters.
- that would be the in game email system and it was free to use, when you subbed you got an extra storage for you all your characters and a box which could modify and upgrade your health potions, but since the gameplay was never a constant health potions run,( like some games) you could use this extra box as just a storage box, anything you wanted to share between your characters was done by the ingame email system, keeping in mind that once you had bought the game you could play online for free and only needed to sub if you wanted the stuff that came with subbing or the access to the Stonehenge map, it also wasn't worth subbing until you level a character over level twenty, also please explain how they FORCED you to pay?
If Hellgate was a success, I could see companies across the board charging fees for any multiplayer experience, no matter how lame. Want to reload while playing Team Fortress? That will be $7/month. Want to play any race besides the humans in Starcraft 2 multiplayer? That will be $10/month.
- could you also tell us next weeks lotto numbers as well?
-\sarcasm on; -Yes of course, Flagship studios being the evil dev's of game creation, invented subbing for ingame extra services, yes of course they were the first do this in the world as well and even sending armed bully boys to your home to kick your dog and threatened to beat you up if you didn't subscribe to there game. //sarcasm off
PS - I'm not here to flame other fans or spit on the vast majority of the dev team. Having been laid off at times in the tech industry, I know how much it sucks to lose your job overnight
I think I'm going to have to ask you to calm down there buddy.
Come on buddy, why don't you tell us all who you really are, it's quite easy to tell that the your login," mmorpg1992,( sorry I meant 1972)" isn't your real login, the one your using now is just to hide behind, most likely because you know what your doing here is just wrong, vile and a excuse for you to act like a wanna'be forum troll. if you would pay attention to your own thread you would see that most people that have posted here are not here to Stomp the ashes with you, only you and one or two others, one of which I supect is you using your real login to backup your origanl post, which really is just lame... buddy.
Redcap, for someone so anti-troll, you seem to troll quite well, working to stifle any attempt at discussion with personal attacks and misinformation. I would suggest you read up on IP law and conflicts before spouting off anymore. Also, there is no 'hostile takeover' because FSS is not a publically traded company.
According to the information we have, this would be more FSS defaulting on a loan with the IP of Mythos as collateral with Hanbitsoft and HG:L as collateral with Comerica. With something like this, you can bet your ass that they could see what was coming from a long ways away, so it would hardly come as a surprise. This was a case of the same thing Flagship had been doing since before launch. The same thing you are trying to do here. Spreading misinformation and downplaying any problems that they might be encountering.
And the lack of information from FSS would have nothing to do with the offices being close, because senior management would still have access, since with IP conflicts of this nature, lawyers would be wrangling all over the place, muddying up the waters so that it takes a while to sort it out and gives them time to develop a workable defence, so again, your statements don't really work except for perhaps the non-senior management employees. Since the servers are still up and running, it's safe to assume that the employees vital to the continued running of the game are still onhand, as neither Hanbitsoft nor Comerica would have access to the servers until the IP matter is sorted out.
And here's the announcement from FSS to further muddy the waters:
@Redcap - My criticisms are aimed squarely at Bill Roper and his top wunderkids who thought it would be such a great idea to make people subscribe for the same level of content that other games offer for free. I wasn't going after the rank and file developers and artists. But you know what? Lots of people are getting laid off in this economy, despite working hard and actually being successful, because somebody in India can mimic their job for $5/hour. When you put out an inferior product, hype it to high heaven, and then overcharge for it, don't go crying when you're out of a job.
As for being a fan of the game, hey more power to you. You absolutely have the right to defend it. But as a former customer who feels he received a lackluster product from a talented company that seems to have failed mostly due to arrogance and greed, I'm not going to shed a tear at their passing.
And in the end I think Flagship's fall will be good for the RPG and MMOG genre. First person shooters didn't disappear because Daikatana failed miserably.
I'm highly amused to read within their statement that the management have laid off everyone else and then, a few sentences later, in describing themselves: "members that are renowned within the gaming industry". Message to Roper & Co: Think before you copy and paste.
Funny how Tiggs was saying a day or so ago, 'this statement will definitely not come from me,' and now she's the one posting it.
...and now the final kick in the face to the community. In 24 hour the official Hellgate London forums will be closed. That's it folks. Honestly what a bunch of douchebags they are, no respect for the players, whatsoever.
Flagship Studios Still in Operations
San Francisco, CA (July 14, 2008) — Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.
“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”
Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.
Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years.
-I guess that last part doesn't really apply to you.
If you really want to know why I'm so annoyed about your little thread, I will tell you, it's not to do with protecting Bill Roper or even FSS or even really the employees,(although it's still pretty lame to ridicule anyone who has lost there job) it's because the ashes you want to stomp aren't Bill Ropers career,( or even him) nor are they the ashes of a sinking and burning Flagship studios ship, but the ashes of nearly every player,( including yourselves) who dreamed or wished that there was some thing different from the mmorpg clones and grinder games that get passed off as original games, love him or hate him or FSS, you should know this, if they go down and never surface again it will be a very dark day for us all, because after this, no major game creator or developer will ever stick his neck out to try and make a game that is out of the box and original again, because everytime a big name dev gets an idea to have a go at something that is different from the norm, someone else will remind them of what happened to Bill and FSS and they wouldn't want a repeat of that, so for them it will a case of stick to already proven games that everybody knows and luv's, for at least the next 5 to 10 years, we can all enjoy some very boring mmorpg clones and mmorpg grinders, because that's how long it will most likely take for big name developer/s to forget what happened Bill and FSS and grow some new balls to break out and try again, till then you can bet you will know exactly what your going to get in a game for your dollar... in any game.
so that's what those ashes are, stomp away like vindictive and scornful children if you must, just make sure you know what your stomping on first.
I think we can all agree that the gameplay was for the most part, spot on: part action/fps, part rpg. However, the problem with HGL was poor level/mission design. The game does a good job of immediately drawing you in, but it quickly wears off when it doesn't get any better than that. If FSS had pushed it more and more(level design, mission structure) at each section, the game would've fared a lot better with critics and gamers.
In essence, at least for me, it was the opposite case of VG - where there was quite a bit of content but the game just hardly worked when you needed it to. Here, the game worked, was playable, but the content was only ankle deep. Another thing is, is that I think we all fell for the hype because it was just too easy to do so. A lot of what was promised seemed simple on paper - Oh, that can't be too hard to pull off - and the sum of all those simple parts would make a very interesting game. But what happens when only half of those "simple" ideas come to fruition and even then, some of those aren't quite functioning as good as they can be?
For all intents and purposes, I do appreciate FFS work on HGL. No, it wasn't what it could've been. But neither is any other game I've played. They're either too short, too buggy, to shallow, etc.... Its kind of like when I see one of my peers share this really cool idea for a project. And then, at the crit, you're more disappointed in the fact that the vision wasn't achieved for whatever reason(time, money, etc....) even though the end product isn't too shabby. Hopefully all those involved learned from their mistakes/mishaps and learned from the successes. While there were many failures(cohesiveness, level design, etc..) with HGL there were a lot of successes(base gameplay, art direction, etc...)
I have to completely disagree with your VG comparison. Did you ever group in this game when it came out? It took them forever to fix the bugs where you couldn't even see your group mates! My wife and I bought this game when it came out and tried to like it for over a month, but we just couldn't get past the fact that every time we played we'd have to quit out, sometimes reboot even and then log back in to see each other in the game..... To me thats not spot on gameplay but bug ridden code. There were many other things broken right away that took forever to fix, but the vanishing group mates bug was one of the worst! This should have never been allowed to be released with a bug like this that they knew about from the beta.
Hopefully future game developers will get a clue and learn from this about what shape a game needs to be in when released....
I can't help but agree with BattleFelon's opinions. Yes, it's a shame, and I honestly feel bad for the fans of this game. If you loved the game, cool, and sorry it went down this way.
In all honesty, what always made me nervous, and what makes me breath a bittersweet sigh of relief, was the subscription plan. I flat out found it dangerous to the industry. Had Hellgate's subscription plan succeeded in its current form, it would probably have led other developers to try similar plans.
I'm sorry for all of you who were big fans of this game, it must suck to have things play out like this. I'm concerned for those of you with lifetime founder's subscriptions, and I hope things work out for you. And I'm sorry that Flagship had to crash and burn this way. Will I dance on the ashes? No, I will not. But I am relieved in a terrible, terrible way.
The death of flagship will not stop new and original games coming to market. Hopefully, what it will really do is stop rushed and unfinished games coming to market. With Vanguard and HGL, and to some extent AOC, it should be clear to develoopers now that players will not accept a half-assed incomplete game. We've played enough mmos and online rpgs at this point that we expect polished games to be released from the start. If we have to wait eight months to get functionality that should have been in from the beginning (ala auction house / shared stash / farmable bosses / etc), then we simply will not give the developers money. It's really quite simple.
Certainly, there can be exceptions to this. For example, I think everyone would have been a lot more pleased with HGL had it had more variety in tilesets. Let's face it, the game was good. There's no doubt about it. Yet it was so lacking in content in so many different areas that most of us just couldn't justify paying a monthly subscription for the game. If you're gonna make an mmo or pay to play arpg, then there should be justifiable reasons for people to pay this fee. HGL simply failed to provide us reason to subscribe.
Regardless, it is still quite amazing when you think about it that HGL mismanaged their capital so poorly. Just as with Vanguard, it was the lack of business management skills and market comprehension that drove this game and development studio to this sorry state.
The death of flagship will not stop new and original games coming to market. Hopefully, what it will really do is stop rushed and unfinished games coming to market. With Vanguard and HGL, and to some extent AOC, it should be clear to develoopers now that players will not accept a half-assed incomplete game. We've played enough mmos and online rpgs at this point that we expect polished games to be released from the start. If we have to wait eight months to get functionality that should have been in from the beginning (ala auction house / shared stash / farmable bosses / etc), then we simply will not give the developers money. It's really quite simple. Certainly, there can be exceptions to this. For example, I think everyone would have been a lot more pleased with HGL had it had more variety in tilesets. Let's face it, the game was good. There's no doubt about it. Yet it was so lacking in content in so many different areas that most of us just couldn't justify paying a monthly subscription for the game. If you're gonna make an mmo or pay to play arpg, then there should be justifiable reasons for people to pay this fee. HGL simply failed to provide us reason to subscribe. Regardless, it is still quite amazing when you think about it that HGL mismanaged their capital so poorly. Just as with Vanguard, it was the lack of business management skills and market comprehension that drove this game and development studio to this sorry state.
It was predictable in hindsight what was going to happen to HGL. Flagship is a new company and was green when it came to operation a business. They were running out of cash flow and had no choice but to release the game in the state it was in or IMO it would have become vaporware. If they had the resources like Blizzard does, I doubt the game would be released yet. Their biggest mistake was to try and please too many people and had way too much work to accomplish at the last minutes. They should have totally focused on one area like SP or online MP and gradually add more over time. What make it even worse was the billing fiasco at launch. Flagship (Ping0) really messed up here. That had to cost them more money than the unfinished product.
The death of flagship will not stop new and original games coming to market. Hopefully, what it will really do is stop rushed and unfinished games coming to market. With Vanguard and HGL, and to some extent AOC, it should be clear to develoopers now that players will not accept a half-assed incomplete game. We've played enough mmos and online rpgs at this point that we expect polished games to be released from the start. If we have to wait eight months to get functionality that should have been in from the beginning (ala auction house / shared stash / farmable bosses / etc), then we simply will not give the developers money. It's really quite simple. Certainly, there can be exceptions to this. For example, I think everyone would have been a lot more pleased with HGL had it had more variety in tilesets. Let's face it, the game was good. There's no doubt about it. Yet it was so lacking in content in so many different areas that most of us just couldn't justify paying a monthly subscription for the game. If you're gonna make an mmo or pay to play arpg, then there should be justifiable reasons for people to pay this fee. HGL simply failed to provide us reason to subscribe. Regardless, it is still quite amazing when you think about it that HGL mismanaged their capital so poorly. Just as with Vanguard, it was the lack of business management skills and market comprehension that drove this game and development studio to this sorry state.
It was predictable in hindsight what was going to happen to HGL. Flagship is a new company and was green when it came to operation a business. They were running out of cash flow and had no choice but to release the game in the state it was in or IMO it would have become vaporware. If they had the resources like Blizzard does, I doubt the game would be released yet. Their biggest mistake was to try and please too many people and had way too much work to accomplish at the last minutes. They should have totally focused on one area like SP or online MP and gradually add more over time. What make it even worse was the billing fiasco at launch. Flagship (Ping0) really messed up here. That had to cost them more money than the unfinished product.
And these were the "great ones" who were responsible for Diablo.
But as for Hellgate, it will join the ranks of Daikatana. Bill Roper can sit down and have a coffee with John Romero, and comisserate over the careers they once had.
Plenty of people in this world deserve to lose their jobs. I have absolutely no sympathy with anyone intending to make their living by cynically exploiting their customers.
Good riddence. May more like you join the dole queues.
No one owes these people financial security, and they most certainly did not have the finaancial security of their customers held in any particular high regard. Why should I return the respect they don't share for me.
They had three years of well paid living on someone elses money. They took their cash in advance. $200 is a lot for someone who flips burgers at MacDonalds. The dev's have nothing to complain about, they had their money and they spent it. No need for sympathy there.
Good riddance Bill Roper.
Thank god your bright vision of the future of gaming is not one that other companies will attempt to adopt.
Really, the game was passable (if perhaps unfit for purpose), but the company stank. I mean it really stank.
Yeah, I played in beta too and wasn't impressed. Then everyone in the office picked it up and begged me to join them. So I did - and now I have a worthless game that I can't even pawn off on Half Price Books for cheap beer money.
I guess the good thing that happened was I realized not to follow the trend immediately. My bad experience with Hellgate saved me from getting into AOC when everyone was frothing at the mouths to play it.
Hellgate official forums: now with Google advertisments. Can you believe it?
Yes I can definitely believe it. HGL servers are still online and the forum active. I doubt there are enough sales to keep the game running. There has to be some way to make money. If it keeps the servers online I'm all for it.
I got this game as a gift and was contemplating taking up the subscription model but decided to wait and see how things would play out. Really liked the gameplay but man was the game buggy. Also felt a bit let down when they added content and bug fixes for the multi-player (read - subscription crowd) first with absolutely no fixes for the single player crowd.
Even the subscrbers were pissed coz they couldnt play the buggy single player version themselves. Got tired of the constant crashes and quit the game long before its eventual downfall. Did think things would improve with the Stonehenge patch but again (atleast from what i heard) it was for the subscriber crowd only.
Have to hand it to the game for having one heck of a community though. These guys were the perfect example for the height of optimism. They blindly trusted the devs when they got absolutely nothing in return. Really hurts when a game with such a great and understanding community has to die.
I do feel sorry for the people who got laid off and i would not dance on the companies ashes but iam guessing the OP was either a subscriber or a founder member, hence this reaction.
I think if they simply sold it as a multiplayer game where you could form your own servers , and released extra content as expansion packs they would still be around.
They really botched things badly and "they" continue to do so.
I did not like it in beta but found it got quite polished, but that's just me. I enjoyed the game a lot but they found a way to destroy it. They could have added more to it, like letting people play in a demon faction, and having open areas.They could have just let us all meet up on Gamespy or something to run group quests. Or let people run their own servers. Even a modding option would have helped. There WERE options here, they just chose to fail.
I don't have the answers but I am totally mad at how it was handled. I subscribed a lot, stopped my sub for the summer. I came back to re-sub only to find out I couldn't and that everyone who was subbed at the moment they sunk gets content for free. What a joke. Flagship is the worst ever and totally incompetent and dishonest.
Now I've got my bags packed to the last slot with good gear since I can't wear half of it (subscriber only). Don't be fooled, for a lot of us, even if we wanted to, the game is no longer playable for reasons like I stated above.
Have a winner and don't go on a game over! Does your avatar make you powerful in real life? Check out the Mystical Enders gaming community. www.mysticalenders.com
Hellgate's Seattle studio alums and ex-Mythos devs Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer found new shop focused on action MMOGs.
During this year's E3 Media & Business Summit word was widespread that Flagship Studios had shut down. After days of silence, the Hellgate: London studio confirmed that it had indeed given "most employees" the pink slip, but would remain extant as a company.
Now comes word that some of Flagship's castaways have landed a new gig. Over the weekend, several members of the studio's Seattle studio announced they had formed an independent studio, Runic Games. Heading up the studio will be Travis Baldree, director of the forthcoming free online RPG Mythos, and Max Schaefer, a founding member of Flagship and Diablo creator Blizzard North.
In a brief statement posted on the studio's bare-bones Web site, Runic Games' founders announced they "intend to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market." They also promised "announcements about forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days."
So now, they'll be suckering a new group of players to pay for their next bullshit. And that part I outlined in green just shows how truly full of shit these guys are.
Hellgate's Seattle studio alums and ex-Mythos devs Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer found new shop focused on action MMOGs.
During this year's E3 Media & Business Summit word was widespread that Flagship Studios had shut down. After days of silence, the Hellgate: London studio confirmed that it had indeed given "most employees" the pink slip, but would remain extant as a company. Now comes word that some of Flagship's castaways have landed a new gig. Over the weekend, several members of the studio's Seattle studio announced they had formed an independent studio, Runic Games. Heading up the studio will be Travis Baldree, director of the forthcoming free online RPG Mythos, and Max Schaefer, a founding member of Flagship and Diablo creator Blizzard North. In a brief statement posted on the studio's bare-bones Web site, Runic Games' founders announced they "intend to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market." They also promised "announcements about forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days."
So now, they'll be suckering a new group of players to pay for their next bullshit. And that part I outlined in green just shows how truly full of shit these guys are.
You are not really being fair to the founders of Runic Games. Their game Mythos never was released to the public. Max Schaefer did work in the San Francisco studio when HGL started but for the last three years worked in Seattle on Mythos. Plus it was Max Schaefer who paid the laid off employees one month salary when they were pink slipped. He didn't have to do that since FSS was incorporated, meaning no one could come after the personal assests of the owners. I want to see what Runic Games comes up with, but with a more critical eye.
Hellgate's Seattle studio alums and ex-Mythos devs Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer found new shop focused on action MMOGs.
During this year's E3 Media & Business Summit word was widespread that Flagship Studios had shut down. After days of silence, the Hellgate: London studio confirmed that it had indeed given "most employees" the pink slip, but would remain extant as a company. Now comes word that some of Flagship's castaways have landed a new gig. Over the weekend, several members of the studio's Seattle studio announced they had formed an independent studio, Runic Games. Heading up the studio will be Travis Baldree, director of the forthcoming free online RPG Mythos, and Max Schaefer, a founding member of Flagship and Diablo creator Blizzard North. In a brief statement posted on the studio's bare-bones Web site, Runic Games' founders announced they "intend to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market." They also promised "announcements about forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days."
So now, they'll be suckering a new group of players to pay for their next bullshit. And that part I outlined in green just shows how truly full of shit these guys are.
You are not really being fair to the founders of Runic Games. Their game Mythos never was released to the public. Max Schaefer did work in the San Francisco studio when HGL started but for the last three years worked in Seattle on Mythos. Plus it was Max Schaefer who paid the laid off employees one month salary when they were pink slipped. He didn't have to do that since FSS was incorporated, meaning no one could come after the personal assests of the owners. I want to see what Runic Games comes up with, but with a more critical eye.
Being incorporated protected them from investors and customers. It did not, however, protect them from the Department of Labor or from employees. THAT is why money was given to those employees when they were pink-slipped, not because it was the right thing to do. Once again, Flagship was covering it ass, nothing more.
stupid people trying to make money off HG:L, the game is dead, games do not come back from the dead, once it has a bad name no one comes back.
Hellgate is a fundamentally flawed game from the orignal design. The entire piece of instanced crap appeals to so few people it is no worth keeping the servers up.
They continually refused to listen to my own, and other beta testers in saying the entire game was broken and would not work.
I do wonder if mythos will pop up as a free to play game. It was kinda fun, it could do alright with a f2p company with microtransactions. But HG:L is a money pit drain on any company who tries to plug the holes with wads of cash.
Comments
I felt a little put out being forced to pay for such basic conveniences as shared storage between all your characters.
- that would be the in game email system and it was free to use, when you subbed you got an extra storage for you all your characters and a box which could modify and upgrade your health potions, but since the gameplay was never a constant health potions run,( like some games) you could use this extra box as just a storage box, anything you wanted to share between your characters was done by the ingame email system, keeping in mind that once you had bought the game you could play online for free and only needed to sub if you wanted the stuff that came with subbing or the access to the Stonehenge map, it also wasn't worth subbing until you level a character over level twenty, also please explain how they FORCED you to pay?
If Hellgate was a success, I could see companies across the board charging fees for any multiplayer experience, no matter how lame. Want to reload while playing Team Fortress? That will be $7/month. Want to play any race besides the humans in Starcraft 2 multiplayer? That will be $10/month.
- could you also tell us next weeks lotto numbers as well?
-\sarcasm on; -Yes of course, Flagship studios being the evil dev's of game creation, invented subbing for ingame extra services, yes of course they were the first do this in the world as well and even sending armed bully boys to your home to kick your dog and threatened to beat you up if you didn't subscribe to there game. //sarcasm off
PS - I'm not here to flame other fans or spit on the vast majority of the dev team. Having been laid off at times in the tech industry, I know how much it sucks to lose your job overnight
- yet here you are still having ago anyway.
Come on buddy, why don't you tell us all who you really are, it's quite easy to tell that the your login," mmorpg1992,( sorry I meant 1972)" isn't your real login, the one your using now is just to hide behind, most likely because you know what your doing here is just wrong, vile and a excuse for you to act like a wanna'be forum troll.
if you would pay attention to your own thread you would see that most people that have posted here are not here to Stomp the ashes with you, only you and one or two others, one of which I supect is you using your real login to backup your origanl post, which really is just lame... buddy.
Redcap, for someone so anti-troll, you seem to troll quite well, working to stifle any attempt at discussion with personal attacks and misinformation. I would suggest you read up on IP law and conflicts before spouting off anymore. Also, there is no 'hostile takeover' because FSS is not a publically traded company.
According to the information we have, this would be more FSS defaulting on a loan with the IP of Mythos as collateral with Hanbitsoft and HG:L as collateral with Comerica. With something like this, you can bet your ass that they could see what was coming from a long ways away, so it would hardly come as a surprise. This was a case of the same thing Flagship had been doing since before launch. The same thing you are trying to do here. Spreading misinformation and downplaying any problems that they might be encountering.
And the lack of information from FSS would have nothing to do with the offices being close, because senior management would still have access, since with IP conflicts of this nature, lawyers would be wrangling all over the place, muddying up the waters so that it takes a while to sort it out and gives them time to develop a workable defence, so again, your statements don't really work except for perhaps the non-senior management employees. Since the servers are still up and running, it's safe to assume that the employees vital to the continued running of the game are still onhand, as neither Hanbitsoft nor Comerica would have access to the servers until the IP matter is sorted out.
And here's the announcement from FSS to further muddy the waters:
http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=107367
@Redcap - My criticisms are aimed squarely at Bill Roper and his top wunderkids who thought it would be such a great idea to make people subscribe for the same level of content that other games offer for free. I wasn't going after the rank and file developers and artists. But you know what? Lots of people are getting laid off in this economy, despite working hard and actually being successful, because somebody in India can mimic their job for $5/hour. When you put out an inferior product, hype it to high heaven, and then overcharge for it, don't go crying when you're out of a job.
As for being a fan of the game, hey more power to you. You absolutely have the right to defend it. But as a former customer who feels he received a lackluster product from a talented company that seems to have failed mostly due to arrogance and greed, I'm not going to shed a tear at their passing.
And in the end I think Flagship's fall will be good for the RPG and MMOG genre. First person shooters didn't disappear because Daikatana failed miserably.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Re:
http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=107367
I'm highly amused to read within their statement that the management have laid off everyone else and then, a few sentences later, in describing themselves: "members that are renowned within the gaming industry". Message to Roper & Co: Think before you copy and paste.
Funny how Tiggs was saying a day or so ago, 'this statement will definitely not come from me,' and now she's the one posting it.
...and now the final kick in the face to the community.
In 24 hour the official Hellgate London forums will be closed.
That's it folks. Honestly what a bunch of douchebags they are, no respect for the players, whatsoever.
San Francisco, CA (July 14, 2008) — Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.
“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”
Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.
Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years.
-I guess that last part doesn't really apply to you.
If you really want to know why I'm so annoyed about your little thread, I will tell you, it's not to do with protecting Bill Roper or even FSS or even really the employees,(although it's still pretty lame to ridicule anyone who has lost there job) it's because the ashes you want to stomp aren't Bill Ropers career,( or even him) nor are they the ashes of a sinking and burning Flagship studios ship, but the ashes of nearly every player,( including yourselves) who dreamed or wished that there was some thing different from the mmorpg clones and grinder games that get passed off as original games, love him or hate him or FSS, you should know this, if they go down and never surface again it will be a very dark day for us all, because after this, no major game creator or developer will ever stick his neck out to try and make a game that is out of the box and original again, because everytime a big name dev gets an idea to have a go at something that is different from the norm, someone else will remind them of what happened to Bill and FSS and they wouldn't want a repeat of that, so for them it will a case of stick to already proven games that everybody knows and luv's, for at least the next 5 to 10 years, we can all enjoy some very boring mmorpg clones and mmorpg grinders, because that's how long it will most likely take for big name developer/s to forget what happened Bill and FSS and grow some new balls to break out and try again, till then you can bet you will know exactly what your going to get in a game for your dollar... in any game.
so that's what those ashes are, stomp away like vindictive and scornful children if you must, just make sure you know what your stomping on first.
and I've had my say and I'm done with you.
I have to completely disagree with your VG comparison. Did you ever group in this game when it came out? It took them forever to fix the bugs where you couldn't even see your group mates! My wife and I bought this game when it came out and tried to like it for over a month, but we just couldn't get past the fact that every time we played we'd have to quit out, sometimes reboot even and then log back in to see each other in the game..... To me thats not spot on gameplay but bug ridden code. There were many other things broken right away that took forever to fix, but the vanishing group mates bug was one of the worst! This should have never been allowed to be released with a bug like this that they knew about from the beta.
Hopefully future game developers will get a clue and learn from this about what shape a game needs to be in when released....
I can't help but agree with BattleFelon's opinions. Yes, it's a shame, and I honestly feel bad for the fans of this game. If you loved the game, cool, and sorry it went down this way.
In all honesty, what always made me nervous, and what makes me breath a bittersweet sigh of relief, was the subscription plan. I flat out found it dangerous to the industry. Had Hellgate's subscription plan succeeded in its current form, it would probably have led other developers to try similar plans.
I'm sorry for all of you who were big fans of this game, it must suck to have things play out like this. I'm concerned for those of you with lifetime founder's subscriptions, and I hope things work out for you. And I'm sorry that Flagship had to crash and burn this way. Will I dance on the ashes? No, I will not. But I am relieved in a terrible, terrible way.
The death of flagship will not stop new and original games coming to market. Hopefully, what it will really do is stop rushed and unfinished games coming to market. With Vanguard and HGL, and to some extent AOC, it should be clear to develoopers now that players will not accept a half-assed incomplete game. We've played enough mmos and online rpgs at this point that we expect polished games to be released from the start. If we have to wait eight months to get functionality that should have been in from the beginning (ala auction house / shared stash / farmable bosses / etc), then we simply will not give the developers money. It's really quite simple.
Certainly, there can be exceptions to this. For example, I think everyone would have been a lot more pleased with HGL had it had more variety in tilesets. Let's face it, the game was good. There's no doubt about it. Yet it was so lacking in content in so many different areas that most of us just couldn't justify paying a monthly subscription for the game. If you're gonna make an mmo or pay to play arpg, then there should be justifiable reasons for people to pay this fee. HGL simply failed to provide us reason to subscribe.
Regardless, it is still quite amazing when you think about it that HGL mismanaged their capital so poorly. Just as with Vanguard, it was the lack of business management skills and market comprehension that drove this game and development studio to this sorry state.
It was predictable in hindsight what was going to happen to HGL. Flagship is a new company and was green when it came to operation a business. They were running out of cash flow and had no choice but to release the game in the state it was in or IMO it would have become vaporware. If they had the resources like Blizzard does, I doubt the game would be released yet. Their biggest mistake was to try and please too many people and had way too much work to accomplish at the last minutes. They should have totally focused on one area like SP or online MP and gradually add more over time. What make it even worse was the billing fiasco at launch. Flagship (Ping0) really messed up here. That had to cost them more money than the unfinished product.
It was predictable in hindsight what was going to happen to HGL. Flagship is a new company and was green when it came to operation a business. They were running out of cash flow and had no choice but to release the game in the state it was in or IMO it would have become vaporware. If they had the resources like Blizzard does, I doubt the game would be released yet. Their biggest mistake was to try and please too many people and had way too much work to accomplish at the last minutes. They should have totally focused on one area like SP or online MP and gradually add more over time. What make it even worse was the billing fiasco at launch. Flagship (Ping0) really messed up here. That had to cost them more money than the unfinished product.
And these were the "great ones" who were responsible for Diablo.
Roper looks funnier to me every day.
Sad to see Mythos go.
But as for Hellgate, it will join the ranks of Daikatana. Bill Roper can sit down and have a coffee with John Romero, and comisserate over the careers they once had.
Plenty of people in this world deserve to lose their jobs. I have absolutely no sympathy with anyone intending to make their living by cynically exploiting their customers.
Good riddence. May more like you join the dole queues.
No one owes these people financial security, and they most certainly did not have the finaancial security of their customers held in any particular high regard. Why should I return the respect they don't share for me.
They had three years of well paid living on someone elses money. They took their cash in advance. $200 is a lot for someone who flips burgers at MacDonalds. The dev's have nothing to complain about, they had their money and they spent it. No need for sympathy there.
Good riddance Bill Roper.
Thank god your bright vision of the future of gaming is not one that other companies will attempt to adopt.
Really, the game was passable (if perhaps unfit for purpose), but the company stank. I mean it really stank.
I knew hellgate was going to fail in beta.
lets see....the side project mythos is 10x more fun than their main game....yeah okay
game was a joke, just let it die and wait for diablo 3
Yeah, I played in beta too and wasn't impressed. Then everyone in the office picked it up and begged me to join them. So I did - and now I have a worthless game that I can't even pawn off on Half Price Books for cheap beer money.
I guess the good thing that happened was I realized not to follow the trend immediately. My bad experience with Hellgate saved me from getting into AOC when everyone was frothing at the mouths to play it.
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Hellgate official forums: now with Google advertisments. Can you believe it?
Yes I can definitely believe it. HGL servers are still online and the forum active. I doubt there are enough sales to keep the game running. There has to be some way to make money. If it keeps the servers online I'm all for it.
I got this game as a gift and was contemplating taking up the subscription model but decided to wait and see how things would play out. Really liked the gameplay but man was the game buggy. Also felt a bit let down when they added content and bug fixes for the multi-player (read - subscription crowd) first with absolutely no fixes for the single player crowd.
Even the subscrbers were pissed coz they couldnt play the buggy single player version themselves. Got tired of the constant crashes and quit the game long before its eventual downfall. Did think things would improve with the Stonehenge patch but again (atleast from what i heard) it was for the subscriber crowd only.
Have to hand it to the game for having one heck of a community though. These guys were the perfect example for the height of optimism. They blindly trusted the devs when they got absolutely nothing in return. Really hurts when a game with such a great and understanding community has to die.
I do feel sorry for the people who got laid off and i would not dance on the companies ashes but iam guessing the OP was either a subscriber or a founder member, hence this reaction.
Take the Hecatomb TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
I think if they simply sold it as a multiplayer game where you could form your own servers , and released extra content as expansion packs they would still be around.
They really botched things badly and "they" continue to do so.
I did not like it in beta but found it got quite polished, but that's just me. I enjoyed the game a lot but they found a way to destroy it. They could have added more to it, like letting people play in a demon faction, and having open areas.They could have just let us all meet up on Gamespy or something to run group quests. Or let people run their own servers. Even a modding option would have helped. There WERE options here, they just chose to fail.
I don't have the answers but I am totally mad at how it was handled. I subscribed a lot, stopped my sub for the summer. I came back to re-sub only to find out I couldn't and that everyone who was subbed at the moment they sunk gets content for free. What a joke. Flagship is the worst ever and totally incompetent and dishonest.
Now I've got my bags packed to the last slot with good gear since I can't wear half of it (subscriber only). Don't be fooled, for a lot of us, even if we wanted to, the game is no longer playable for reasons like I stated above.
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Well, after dumping all the suckers who bought Hellgate in the wind, the idiots did exactly what I figured they would do: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6195738.html?tag=result;title;0
Flagship castaways form Runic
Hellgate's Seattle studio alums and ex-Mythos devs Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer found new shop focused on action MMOGs.
During this year's E3 Media & Business Summit word was widespread that Flagship Studios had shut down. After days of silence, the Hellgate: London studio confirmed that it had indeed given "most employees" the pink slip, but would remain extant as a company.
Now comes word that some of Flagship's castaways have landed a new gig. Over the weekend, several members of the studio's Seattle studio announced they had formed an independent studio, Runic Games. Heading up the studio will be Travis Baldree, director of the forthcoming free online RPG Mythos, and Max Schaefer, a founding member of Flagship and Diablo creator Blizzard North.
In a brief statement posted on the studio's bare-bones Web site, Runic Games' founders announced they "intend to continue to use their expertise in the Action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in this market." They also promised "announcements about forthcoming projects will be made in the coming days."
So now, they'll be suckering a new group of players to pay for their next bullshit. And that part I outlined in green just shows how truly full of shit these guys are.
You are not really being fair to the founders of Runic Games. Their game Mythos never was released to the public. Max Schaefer did work in the San Francisco studio when HGL started but for the last three years worked in Seattle on Mythos. Plus it was Max Schaefer who paid the laid off employees one month salary when they were pink slipped. He didn't have to do that since FSS was incorporated, meaning no one could come after the personal assests of the owners. I want to see what Runic Games comes up with, but with a more critical eye.
You are not really being fair to the founders of Runic Games. Their game Mythos never was released to the public. Max Schaefer did work in the San Francisco studio when HGL started but for the last three years worked in Seattle on Mythos. Plus it was Max Schaefer who paid the laid off employees one month salary when they were pink slipped. He didn't have to do that since FSS was incorporated, meaning no one could come after the personal assests of the owners. I want to see what Runic Games comes up with, but with a more critical eye.
Being incorporated protected them from investors and customers. It did not, however, protect them from the Department of Labor or from employees. THAT is why money was given to those employees when they were pink-slipped, not because it was the right thing to do. Once again, Flagship was covering it ass, nothing more.
I see there are still some embers glowing:
<stomps and spits>
There all better.
stupid people trying to make money off HG:L, the game is dead, games do not come back from the dead, once it has a bad name no one comes back.
Hellgate is a fundamentally flawed game from the orignal design. The entire piece of instanced crap appeals to so few people it is no worth keeping the servers up.
They continually refused to listen to my own, and other beta testers in saying the entire game was broken and would not work.
I do wonder if mythos will pop up as a free to play game. It was kinda fun, it could do alright with a f2p company with microtransactions. But HG:L is a money pit drain on any company who tries to plug the holes with wads of cash.
I think they went as far as they could, kinda makes you wonder what would happen if they were still
with Blizzard
I always wished that hellgate could survive and evolve into something nice, but good will and romance
alone aint enough.They kinda went for an overkill and everything collapsed.
RIP flagship.
Keep your distance or ill send you back to hell spirit.