Stupid Omali, why did you delete the Mythos category? Frogster might be finished with Mythos, but that isn’t stopping Hanbitsoft from completing its collection of dead Flagship Studios projects by scooping up the title and announcing the first closed beta test of Mythos Global. Set to begin December 1st, Hanbitsoft wants you to know that this is not the same Mythos that crashed in Europe, but a better Mythos.
More information to come.
Hellgate Global is an interesting concept: Take the dungeon crawling of Diablo, combined with the random item combination drops of Diablo, throw in some role playing elements, toss in guns, and place it in the setting of post-apocalypse battle against hell. If the box price and subscription fee was a bit too unnerving when Hellgate had its first run, you certainly don’t have any excuse now that the game is free to play. So if you haven’t picked up this title yet, read on.
On the hole, Hellgate is something of a free to play’ers dream, a game where all content can be accessed without paying a dime. As of this writing, there are two roadblocks. The first, around level 16 to access Act 3 and onward, and the second to access Hellgate: Tokyo after Act 5. While you can go ahead and buy the tickets for real cash ($6 total), Hanbitsoft allows players to sell tickets on the auction house, meaning if you can grind the palladium needed for the tickets, you can get through all of the content for free. Personally, I buy packs of auto-dismantlers, a convenience item that breaks down my loot drops so I don’t have to go through every few minutes and do it myself, on the auction house for around eight thousand palladium for packs of fifty. I think I save about five cents per purchase.
As far as the game itself goes, Hellgate is a hub quester. You start at hub one, complete quests, eventually those quests take you to hub 2, rinse and repeat. Quests involve traveling to instanced areas to accomplish goals of killing a quantity of a specific enemy, collecting quest items, closing portals, and interacting with objects. The quests are straightforward and plain enough that there isn’t much to praise, but also not much to trash. I must point out blatant issues with the randomization system, which you can read below. As the game progresses, however, you do come across a few more interesting quests, requiring you to do things like gather materials and craft using blueprints. The story quests are really the only ones that are worth reading, because there is a progressing storyline as you move from act 1 through act 5. It isn’t R.A. Salvatore quality, but it is a decent read.
Your cannon fodder is made up of little more than zombies and other assorted creatures. As you progress, you’ll come across mobs that heal, buff, and protect other mobs of their class, as well as rare and epic versions that are essentially the same mob but with better loot and a lot more health. Also specific to each map is a kill counter that, upon completion, will spawn a mini-boss for you to kill. This resets and continues as long as you are on that map. These higher tier mobs spawn with various attributes, altering what type of damage they deal, their armor, and how they move.
The classes mainly divide the gameplay into one of two categories: Either you are shooting while running backwards, ala Serious Sam, or you are hacking and slashing. I’ve played as a defender (melee) and my main character is an engineer, a ranged class that fires guns and can summon and level up its own set of drones. Combat is pretty straightforward, although you’ll be mashing the mouse keys no matter which class you pick.
You’ll be dismantling most of your weapons and armor anyway, because you’ll need the components in order to upgrade your current equipment, and this is where the game takes a nosedive. Some people enjoy the random nature, others do not, but going into each upgrade requires extensive amounts of resources, and can result in a failed augmentation, losing not only your invested resources, but a level you’d already upgraded. In one night, I lost all of the levels on my rifle, draining its stats to the point where there was no point keeping it. The augmentation is random, and there are also kiosks you can go to to add other benefits to your weapons/armor with pure palladium.
So why aren’t you playing Hellgate? Possibly because of the cash shop. For how much of the cash shop can be traded, there is more that cannot. Skill retrainers cost $10-$13 and a full respec at endgame will cost you $33. There is some contempt with the community that Hanbitsoft spends too much time adding new things to the cash shop and ignoring problems like memory leaks, crashing, bugs, etc.
Next, the random system in Hellgate is barely functioning at best. Odds are you will come across a bug a few times while playing that will result in either not enough of a specific mob being spawned to meet a kill requirement, or not enough spawned to drop enough items needed for a quest. Teleporting bosses have the occasional habit of moving themselves to an area that can’t be reached, or disappearing altogether and in rare cases never spawning. This is more frustrating considering that a boss may not spawn until you’ve already cleared out a room and come back, so you won’t realize that the boss isn’t spawning until three or four sweeps through the map.
The game also has a habit of not properly explaining features, foremost why certain abilities will simply stop functioning. For instance, if your character finds itself unable to sprint, or suddenly unable to shoot, or your weapon won’t stop firing, there is no feedback to let you know what is currently happening. I’m sure this is all explained somewhere, like in the little icons that sometimes appear in the right hand corner of the screen, but there isn’t enough time in the heat of battle to switch to free mouse and hover over the icons before being surrounded and slaughtered by the minions of hell.
Give it a go. Honestly, what do you have to lose? If you are a casual player, you’ll blow through Hellgate without ever spending a nickel, buying the content with the palladium you collect through in-game grinding. Hellgate isn’t a perfect game, as indicated by its Frankenstein-esque murder of its creator, but it is certainly worth a download and at least a look through.
Hellgate’s popularity is difficult to pin down. On one hand, the game always seems relatively populated when I enter. On the other, there are only three threads posted in on the General Discussion forums on the 6th. That being said, there must be a decent amount of people because there is a market for palladium selling, given the chat channels are constantly being pounded by chat spam bots.
Hellgate Global is an interesting concept: Take the dungeon crawling of Diablo, combined with the random item combination drops of Diablo, throw in some role playing elements, toss in guns, and place it in the setting of post-apocalypse battle against hell. If the box price and subscription fee was a bit too unnerving when Hellgate had its first run, you certainly don’t have any excuse now that the game is free to play. So if you haven’t picked up this title yet, read on.
On the hole, Hellgate is something of a free to play’ers dream, a game where all content can be accessed without paying a dime. As of this writing, there are two roadblocks. The first, around level 16 to access Act 3 and onward, and the second to access Hellgate: Tokyo after Act 5. While you can go ahead and buy the tickets for real cash ($6 total), Hanbitsoft allows players to sell tickets on the auction house, meaning if you can grind the palladium needed for the tickets, you can get through all of the content for free. Personally, I buy packs of auto-dismantlers, a convenience item that breaks down my loot drops so I don’t have to go through every few minutes and do it myself, on the auction house for around eight thousand palladium for packs of fifty. I think I save about five cents per purchase.
As far as the game itself goes, Hellgate is a hub quester. You start at hub one, complete quests, eventually those quests take you to hub 2, rinse and repeat. Quests involve traveling to instanced areas to accomplish goals of killing a quantity of a specific enemy, collecting quest items, closing portals, and interacting with objects. The quests are straightforward and plain enough that there isn’t much to praise, but also not much to trash. I must point out blatant issues with the randomization system, which you can read below. As the game progresses, however, you do come across a few more interesting quests, requiring you to do things like gather materials and craft using blueprints. The story quests are really the only ones that are worth reading, because there is a progressing storyline as you move from act 1 through act 5. It isn’t R.A. Salvatore quality, but it is a decent read.
Your cannon fodder is made up of little more than zombies and other assorted creatures. As you progress, you’ll come across mobs that heal, buff, and protect other mobs of their class, as well as rare and epic versions that are essentially the same mob but with better loot and a lot more health. Also specific to each map is a kill counter that, upon completion, will spawn a mini-boss for you to kill. This resets and continues as long as you are on that map. These higher tier mobs spawn with various attributes, altering what type of damage they deal, their armor, and how they move.
The classes mainly divide the gameplay into one of two categories: Either you are shooting while running backwards, ala Serious Sam, or you are hacking and slashing. I’ve played as a defender (melee) and my main character is an engineer, a ranged class that fires guns and can summon and level up its own set of drones. Combat is pretty straightforward, although you’ll be mashing the mouse keys no matter which class you pick.
You’ll be dismantling most of your weapons and armor anyway, because you’ll need the components in order to upgrade your current equipment, and this is where the game takes a nosedive. Some people enjoy the random nature, others do not, but going into each upgrade requires extensive amounts of resources, and can result in a failed augmentation, losing not only your invested resources, but a level you’d already upgraded. In one night, I lost all of the levels on my rifle, draining its stats to the point where there was no point keeping it. The augmentation is random, and there are also kiosks you can go to to add other benefits to your weapons/armor with pure palladium.
So why aren’t you playing Hellgate? Possibly because of the cash shop. For how much of the cash shop can be traded, there is more that cannot. Skill retrainers cost $10-$13 and a full respec at endgame will cost you $33. There is some contempt with the community that Hanbitsoft spends too much time adding new things to the cash shop and ignoring problems like memory leaks, crashing, bugs, etc.
Next, the random system in Hellgate is barely functioning at best. Odds are you will come across a bug a few times while playing that will result in either not enough of a specific mob being spawned to meet a kill requirement, or not enough spawned to drop enough items needed for a quest. Teleporting bosses have the occasional habit of moving themselves to an area that can’t be reached, or disappearing altogether and in rare cases never spawning. This is more frustrating considering that a boss may not spawn until you’ve already cleared out a room and come back, so you won’t realize that the boss isn’t spawning until three or four sweeps through the map.
The game also has a habit of not properly explaining features, foremost why certain abilities will simply stop functioning. For instance, if your character finds itself unable to sprint, or suddenly unable to shoot, or your weapon won’t stop firing, there is no feedback to let you know what is currently happening. I’m sure this is all explained somewhere, like in the little icons that sometimes appear in the right hand corner of the screen, but there isn’t enough time in the heat of battle to switch to free mouse and hover over the icons before being surrounded and slaughtered by the minions of hell.
Give it a go. Honestly, what do you have to lose? If you are a casual player, you’ll blow through Hellgate without ever spending a nickel, buying the content with the palladium you collect through in-game grinding. Hellgate isn’t a perfect game, as indicated by its Frankenstein-esque murder of its creator, but it is certainly worth a download and at least a look through.
Hellgate’s popularity is difficult to pin down. On one hand, the game always seems relatively populated when I enter. On the other, there are only three threads posted in on the General Discussion forums on the 6th. That being said, there must be a decent amount of people because there is a market for palladium selling, given the chat channels are constantly being pounded by chat spam bots.
You’ve most likely heard of “jackpot items,” even if you aren’t entirely familiar with the term itself. These items cost real money and only offer the chance at a high level piece of equipment, usually a very slim chance at that. I’ve been rather critical of jackpot items in the past, I’ve referred to them as taking advantage of people with gambling problems, and criticized a certain company on using it in conjunction with abusing the name of charity to gain funds.
But the question remains as to whether or not such an item constitutes gambling. While you or I might say yes, the Games Rating Board of South Korea asked ten publishers to hand over information relating to their jackpot items. The companies reportedly revealed names, costs, and currencies involved, but refused to hand over details of payout percentages. When pressed, the GRB was met with statements that the data constituted confidential company information, and was not under the jurisdiction of the GRB.
The Games Rating Board is now accusing these companies of obstructing an investigation. It is unclear at this time what, if any, ramifications these companies could face.
When Hellgate: London relaunched, I decided to incorporate it into a new run of features titled “How Free Can You Be?” So far, I’ve already incorporated titles including Turbine’s games, Alganon, and now Hellgate. In regards to Hellgate, around level 16-17 players receive a series of quests that require them to travel to Southwark Station and one that requires them to travel through Waterloo Bridge Passageway. Upon attempting to enter Waterloo Bridge Passageway, players are met with what many are perceiving as a bug: The door does not open, nor does it give an explanation as to why.
At this point, you’ve completed the free portion of Hellgate Global, and will have to purchase a ticket in order to advance. This can be done in one of two ways: The ticket is available on the cash shop for 4000 tcoin ($4 USD). Since the minimum amount you can load into your account is $5, this will leave you with 1000 coins left to spend on your heart’s desire.
Alternatively, Hanbitsoft has decided to make the Act 3 tickets tradeable, meaning you can buy them in the in-game marketplace from other players who bought them from the cash shop. So if you’re a pro at grinding money, you can play Hellgate Global entirely for free.
Tickets on the marketplace go for over four hundred thousand palladium and unlocks the rest of the game, and applies to the whole account.
[Update Sept 9th]: A lot of people have asked me to post this up: If you already have the Act 3 ticket and still can’t get into Waterloo Bridge, check your missions. There are several that must be completed before you can enter Waterloo Bridge, regardless of if you’ve activated the ticket or not.
Aika Online launched under Gala-Net back in early 2010, and quickly became a subject of controversy in April when it was revealed that the company had begun an IP block on all players outside of North America (due to Hanbitsoft carrying the rights to publish in Europe), after Gala-Net had already opened the cash shop, allowing non-North American players to start throwing their money in. Gala-Net came to something of a half-compromise. Players wouldn’t be refunded, but anyone who had created an account prior to the IP blocks would be allowed to continue playing. European players were miffed, especially since the European release was delayed over the North American release by several months.
Well the segregation is over! Although the services won’t be merging (for now), both Aika Online and Aika Global (the latter being Hanbitsoft’s operation) have announced that they are opening doors to previously blocked players. On February 17th, Gala-Net opens to European players and Hanbitsoft opens to American players. It is important to note that the two games are still operated by completely different companies. Your characters, potato chips, TCoins, and accounts will not transfer between services (unless something changes in the next week).
Unless this is the start to a service merger in between the two companies, but that’s just my speculation.
You’ll remember that Hellgate: London, after the game’s launch and subsequent crash back to earth, was picked up in full by its Korean publisher Hanbitsoft. You may also remember that the game still runs to this day in Asia, under the aforementioned Hanbitsoft. In case this isn’t bringing up one single question, you may also remember that at one point Hanbitsoft announced that Hellgate: London would be returning to North America and Europe. Oh and that “plans are set to go in motion later this year…”
It was over one year ago that Hanbitsoft announced Hellgate: London was returning to the west, as a free to play title. One year of virtually no information or announcements from Hanbitsoft as to the status of this resurrection. Sure, people who purchased Hellgate can still play the single player, but who wants to play solo, a game that would be much more fun with someone to actually chat to?
Maybe I’m just being too optimistic when I say I’m still holding out for Hellgate Online to return, and I’m sure there are those with me who are inactively waiting it out. That being said, I can’t get this feeling out of my mind that Hanbitsoft has either forgotten about the game or has quietly shelved their resurrection idea in the west. I’d ask, but I need a Hanbitsoft account, and that requires a Korean SSID.
You’ll remember that Hellgate: London, after the game’s launch and subsequent crash back to earth, was picked up in full by its Korean publisher Hanbitsoft. You may also remember that the game still runs to this day in Asia, under the aforementioned Hanbitsoft. In case this isn’t bringing up one single question, you may also remember that at one point Hanbitsoft announced that Hellgate: London would be returning to North America and Europe. Oh and that “plans are set to go in motion later this year…”
It was over one year ago that Hanbitsoft announced Hellgate: London was returning to the west, as a free to play title. One year of virtually no information or announcements from Hanbitsoft as to the status of this resurrection. Sure, people who purchased Hellgate can still play the single player, but who wants to play solo, a game that would be much more fun with someone to actually chat to?
Maybe I’m just being too optimistic when I say I’m still holding out for Hellgate Online to return, and I’m sure there are those with me who are inactively waiting it out. That being said, I can’t get this feeling out of my mind that Hanbitsoft has either forgotten about the game or has quietly shelved their resurrection idea in the west. I’d ask, but I need a Hanbitsoft account, and that requires a Korean SSID.
My Lord of the Rings account can’t be used in Germany, nor will my World of Warcraft account work in China. My Archlord account may now work in Europe, but my Chronicles of Spellborn account will certainly not work in the Philippines. My Allods Online account might work in Australia, but my Tabula Rasa account will not work at all.
A lot of people are not aware of this, but there are a lot of developers that outsource their MMOs in foreign countries to where it was produced originally. gPotato, for example, is not actually a developer for most of their games, but actually a portal through which North American players can enjoy something directly out of Korea. gPotato hosts the servers and rakes in some cash from the cash shop, but ultimately must pay the developing body for the rights to host the title. Occasionally you will hear about MMOs switching hands, such as Codemasters losing Archlord and Cabal not shutting down in the west but actually moving over to ESTsoft.
As is the case with most publishers, gPotato only has the rights to publish Aika Online in one region: This region being North America. Due to legal restrictions, namely gPotato only having the rights to publish in North America it was only a matter of time before they acted upon that restriction, and started blocking IP addresses from outside of North America. Technically that happened three days ago, but who’s counting?
The important matter of all of this is that the cash shop was open for a full week before the announced shut down, leaving non-North American players with plenty of time to fill up on gPotato Chips (that’s what they call it, right?), the currency for Aika’s cash shop.
Players are, understandably angered at this “bull doodoo” (Not my words, from the Aika forums, also not censored.), reports are already coming in of players who had spent several hundreds of dollars worth of gpots to buff themselves in Aika, only to be barred from their accounts.
“Currently, a decision has not been reached regarding the status of existing Aika accounts which were registered outside of North America. The issue is under intensive review by management. In the event that existing accounts are blocked from playing Aika as a result of this decision, those players whose accounts would be unable to access the game will be issued a full refund on a case-by-case basis of any gPotato purchases they have made specifically for or in Aika.“
Hopefully gPotato will be able to come to a resolution. Gpots can be used in any gPotato game, so international players may be stuck using them in Allods Online or other titles. The developer for Aika is Hanbitsoft, the same company bringing Hellgate London back to the West.
People often ask me, Omali, why haven’t you done a “what happened” for Hellgate: London? The answer is simple: The game never died. Despite shutting down in Western areas, Hellgate London has continued to thrive in the Asian markets. Although the new publisher Hanbitsoft has given distinct interest in opening the game back up in Western markets, they have been impeded by Namco-Bandai, who still owned the rights to publish the software on this side of the hemisphere.
“We are pleased to participate in the revitalization of Hellgate through this agreement and are deeply gratified to allow HanbitSoft to take the lead on this franchise and bring this game to the people who seek it”
-Namco-Bandai
Sure it translates to “we had no plans to do anything with this franchise so we got some money off of it,” on Namco’s part, but who cares? Hellgate: London is coming back! Technically the first true resurrection in MMO history, in the same sense of having your arm reattached years after it was lopped off for financial reasons, plans are set to go in motion later this year to bring Hellgate back to the North American and European markets.
Looks like we will be seeing Hellgate: Tokyo and any other planned expansions after all. And that means, Hellgate: London? Back in the list of games you go! Hopefully Hanbitsoft will be willing to run the title somewhere other than directly into the ground (I’m looking at you, Flagship Studios)
MMO Fallout 