Hellgate: London - Calling Diablo Fans

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How fun will this game be for the non-hardcore gamers? I got two characters in Diablo up to lvl 60 before I got bored. Should a non-hardcore gamer such as myself even bother with monthly fees?

[Blarg]

Yeah, Blizzard was notorious for terribly under-building their servers ever since Diablo 1. That's what turned me away from their previous rep of always being a top quality company. I figured Diablo 2 would also have a terrible, unplayable launch, and they did, and the same with WoW. Since a lot of the same guys are with Hellgate now, I'm sure that the same remorseless thing will happen.

It's one thing when a tiny company doesn't build up server capacity until they know it's really called for. But when a company as big as Blizzard, with a fanatical following and gigantic preorders, and which massively advertises everywhere for years on end, cops the "Oh, we didn't know our game was going to be POPULAR! or that everyone was going to try to come on the servers as soon as they got the game!" please, it pretty much makes me want to puke. It's basically giving your customers the finger and there's no legit way to pretty it up even a little.

I would be very surprised if Hellgate doesn't have horrible online playability problems on launch and for at the very least a few weeks after.

[g-bebe]

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How fun will this game be for the non-hardcore gamers? I got two characters in Diablo up to lvl 60 before I got bored. Should a non-hardcore gamer such as myself even bother with monthly fees?

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You can try buying the game and playing online for free. There are several extra features you get from paying the monthly fee, but if you're just a casual gamer, then maybe the standard account is for you.

[toss]

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How fun will this game be for the non-hardcore gamers? I got two characters in Diablo up to lvl 60 before I got bored. Should a non-hardcore gamer such as myself even bother with monthly fees?

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You can try buying the game and playing online for free. There are several extra features you get from paying the monthly fee, but if you're just a casual gamer, then maybe the standard account is for you.

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Yup, seems like the best plan. Ought to be worth $50 to screw around in Hellgate for a while.

[g-bebe]

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ZOMG LET US KNOW HOW IT IS LOLOLOL

I've decided to not bother getting a hold of EB and get a beta... I'll wait until Halloween. by then my midterms will be mostly over and I'll be able to GAAAMME

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heh -- g-bebe, you are an oak (Doc Holliday voice) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Gl with school stuff. Don't expect anything from me today, will try and post something tomorrow.

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well, it's tomorrow and you better have some insider info!

[LeapFrog]

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ZOMG LET US KNOW HOW IT IS LOLOLOL

I've decided to not bother getting a hold of EB and get a beta... I'll wait until Halloween. by then my midterms will be mostly over and I'll be able to GAAAMME

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heh -- g-bebe, you are an oak (Doc Holliday voice) [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Gl with school stuff. Don't expect anything from me today, will try and post something tomorrow.

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well, it's tomorrow and you better have some insider info!

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Heh Well we are all under an NDA, not like they are going to come for me but who knows if 2+2 could get a threating email. So, I will stick to only general, publicly available knowledge.

I don't think anyone who preordered is in yet, though who knows if you can even say given the NDA, I didn't read it all [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] They aren't giving out much info except hold tight and that after the problems are resolved people will be let into the beta in 'waves'.

Communication has been pretty crappy, so far I am not impressed with Flagship. Major cluster-mating going on when people get an email with a beta key that says beta starts today, they can signup, download the client and access the forms. Then they find out that they shouldn't even be on the forums and that beta hasn't started yet, lol. At some point yesterday they disabled registration but I think that is back now, but again, beta hasn't started yet.

To sum up, this is pretty lame as they haven't even given an eta like 'invites should begin in a day or two' (or whatever), just 'soon'. My guess would be that they will start trickling out by Thurs, but seriously who knows. We just have to sit begging at the table waiting for some Flagship scraps.

I think Blarg may have been right...

[SBR]

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Yeah, Blizzard was notorious for terribly under-building their servers ever since Diablo 1. That's what turned me away from their previous rep of always being a top quality company. I figured Diablo 2 would also have a terrible, unplayable launch, and they did, and the same with WoW. Since a lot of the same guys are with Hellgate now, I'm sure that the same remorseless thing will happen.

It's one thing when a tiny company doesn't build up server capacity until they know it's really called for. But when a company as big as Blizzard, with a fanatical following and gigantic preorders, and which massively advertises everywhere for years on end, cops the "Oh, we didn't know our game was going to be POPULAR! or that everyone was going to try to come on the servers as soon as they got the game!" please, it pretty much makes me want to puke. It's basically giving your customers the finger and there's no legit way to pretty it up even a little.

I would be very surprised if Hellgate doesn't have horrible online playability problems on launch and for at the very least a few weeks after.

[/ QUOTE ]

Warcraft 3 was stable at launch and TFT was stable as well. Also compared to almost every major MMO launch before it WOW was stable (although I agree it could have been done much better) and BC launched without any significant problems. Diablo 2 was a cluster [censored] but they have been improving.

Your expectations don't seem to be in line with reality. There is no reasonable way for a game company to handle a overly successful launch really well. Launches tend to start with a whole bunch of people wanting to be online at once and then flatten out. If you buy enough servers to handle the initial bulge you are going to end up wasting a lot of money in the long run. When your launch is much more successful than you project it just compounds the problem. WOW went from 0 -> twice as large as the previous biggest MMO in NA almost overnight there is no way to plan for that and keep your costs within reason.

[edfurlong]

jopke imo

[Blarg]

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Yeah, Blizzard was notorious for terribly under-building their servers ever since Diablo 1. That's what turned me away from their previous rep of always being a top quality company. I figured Diablo 2 would also have a terrible, unplayable launch, and they did, and the same with WoW. Since a lot of the same guys are with Hellgate now, I'm sure that the same remorseless thing will happen.

It's one thing when a tiny company doesn't build up server capacity until they know it's really called for. But when a company as big as Blizzard, with a fanatical following and gigantic preorders, and which massively advertises everywhere for years on end, cops the "Oh, we didn't know our game was going to be POPULAR! or that everyone was going to try to come on the servers as soon as they got the game!" please, it pretty much makes me want to puke. It's basically giving your customers the finger and there's no legit way to pretty it up even a little.

I would be very surprised if Hellgate doesn't have horrible online playability problems on launch and for at the very least a few weeks after.

[/ QUOTE ]

Warcraft 3 was stable at launch and TFT was stable as well. Also compared to almost every major MMO launch before it WOW was stable (although I agree it could have been done much better) and BC launched without any significant problems. Diablo 2 was a cluster [censored] but they have been improving.


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WoW was not stable at launch. The Frozen Throne was an expansion pack, so that's a terrible example. And in what way does other companies doing things poorly make doing things poorly yourself any less than doing things, well, poorly? That's a very poor argument again. And remember this is Blizzard, the company with a tremendous reputation for doing things right. What happened to that? If Blizzard is aiming low, it's not exactly a point in their favor.

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Your expectations don't seem to be in line with reality.


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Of course they are. I just don't need to make excuses and then call that "reality."

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There is no reasonable way for a game company to handle a overly successful launch really well.


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What the heck does that even mean? "Overly" successful? You're saying that Blizzard, for example, who advertises for years and gets massive favorable press coverage for their games, and takes enormous pre-orders, and after seeing that it is the norm for people to get online right after they get a game(this has never been a secret), cannot predict a crush to get on the servers at game launch?

Now that's just very silly. They'd have to be not just poor businessmen but absolute idiots to be unable to predict exactly what was going to happen. There is no possible way they could expect any different. This kind of thing is dirt common and of course they knew it was coming. They just chose not to do anything about it, so they could keep their money in their pockets until the last minute.

That's what reality is.

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Launches tend to start with a whole bunch of people wanting to be online at once and then flatten out. If you buy enough servers to handle the initial bulge you are going to end up wasting a lot of money in the long run. When your launch is much more successful than you project it just compounds the problem. WOW went from 0 -> twice as large as the previous biggest MMO in NA almost overnight there is no way to plan for that and keep your costs within reason.

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The choice of whether to have adequate server capacity, nevertheless, is a choice. Painting it as anything different is past the point.

Blizzard games, in particular, have such a huge sell-through on the first day, and in the first week, that it's pretty easy to project that you will need to pay for plenty of server resources. For a game like WoW, which doesn't even have an offline component at all, what exactly did they expect people to do with the game when they sold a million the first day or whatever? Tuck the box on a back shelf and open it at some random point in the next few weeks or months? C'mon now.

Blizzard had the numbers and there was zero mystery involved. They knew what to expect and wanted to see how cheap they could get away with being. They traded customer expectations for a very temporary improvement in liquidity and profit. That's a choice too. It's nothing but what it is. And what it is, is a very different company than what it used to be, unfortunately.

[g-bebe]

EASY, DOWN BLARG DOWN

Frog, personally, I'd never hinge my expectations of a game on a preorder-based beta invite. I'll wait for retail release and decide whether or not the producer is ill prepared or not. I agree though that it's not good marketing to pump up the beta of a game, only to stuff the masses with server problems and registration difficulties.

I've never taken part in a beta, so I'm not entirely sure about the whole scenario, but the last thing I would expect from a beta invite is to walk into flawless organization and maintenance. I know there are some things that should be ready to go for a beta, but it seems to me like part of the point of a beta is to properly address problems that might have been encountered on retail release.

You guys better not be giving up on this after one little bump in the road.