The Lowdown on Patch 2.0 and 2.1

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
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The official forums have been updated with news of Patch 2.0 and Patch 2.1 and while detailed patch notes are not provided, the general summary and some hints are there:

Discover that which awaits you in the Abyss, brave Hellgaters! The Abyss Chronicles (Patch 2) is rapidly taking shape and form and we’re ready to share some of its most exciting offerings with you. As Hellgate: London’s second major content update, the Abyss Chronicles boasts an impressive and lengthy list of new features including a major class rebalance, new environments, new enemies, new skills, new bosses, and new inventory slots . Then there’s the Consignment House, Attribute Respec Vendor, item linking, achievement rewards, and lots more. Suffice to say, the Abyss Chronicle is big. Very big.

Plans are already underway for the patches beyond the Abyss Chronicles. A small content summary for Patch 2.1 has been included as well. This update will open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London in the form of ranked player versus player (PvP) gameplay. Originally slated for release with the Abyss Chronicles, the decision to release new PvP content as part of a supplemental patch was brought about by a desire to introduce five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture The Flag. Together, these features will provide a robust PvP experience within the Hellgate: London universe.

We are hoping to get a Patch 2.0 build into Test Center next week, but we will see what happens.

You can see the preview of the patch notes on the official forums or own own forums.

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 9, 2008

Patch 1.3b Goes to Test Center

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G-15
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The Test Center is being updated with patch 1.3b as posted on the forums:

Scapes is off to Japan! (I saw him wheeling his little bag around )

Here’s what’s goin on:

- Royal Mail has been updated for speedier service.
- Fixed mods being lost in Shared Stash.
- Fixed a bug where you could see a players attributes under certain conditions.
- The donation reward armor bouns (Ares’ Bane) applies bonuses to shields.
- Fixed donation text misspelling of Palladium
- Russian clients should no longer crash on certain donation announcements.
- Engineers now have a 12 second shared cooldown on calldown skills: Smackdown, Shock and Awe, Naplam Strike.

Update is scheduled for 1:30 PM PST/8:30 PM GMT. Outage should be less than an hour.

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 9, 2008

Official Forums Go Public + Random News

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
in Flagship Studios and Patches
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After many people asked for it, and following Agamenon’s newest thread on the topic FSS has decided to make the forums available for public viewing.

In other random site news, the patch notes for Abyss Chronicles should go up tomorrow.

Okay, verdict’s in, the Abyss Chronicles Content Summary will be posted tomorrow by Bogustus.

I’d post them then but will be rather airborne.
– Scapes

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 8, 2008

Random News Posts From the Official Forums

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
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Here is some random “news” type updates from the official forums for those of you who can’t access them.

First is the news that MattN, the Summoner Team Advocate, has been hired by FSS as a Junior Game Designer. Congratulations to MattN on his new position, however it now means that the Summoner Team Advocate position is once again open.

The original Summoner Team Advocate, MattN, has been hired as a Junior Game Designer here at Flagship Studios. Congrats and welcome, Matt! As such, the Summoner Team Advocate position is open and available for new Summoner aficionados to apply for. Additionally, the Guardian Team Advocate position is also available.

What is the Team Advocate Program
The goal of our Team Advocate Program is to amass the feedback, knowledge, and play experience of our community to better ensure that every aspect of Hellgate: London is as enjoyable as possible.

What are Team Advocates
Team Advocates are players that volunteer their free time to assist the Hellgate: London development team by providing testing, compilations of player feedback, general feedback on proposed changes, and new ideas on ways to improve their area of the game. Team Advocates also have a secondary mission of helping to keep the player base informed on Flagship Studios’ positions on issues related to their topics. Click here to find out more about the Team Advocate Program.

– Scapes

Second are the new amounts that have been set for the donation targets.

After monitoring players’ donation habits over the course of a week, we’ve decided to decrease the target amount for the war drive (donation) to two million palladium. When this donation goal is met, a random buff is bestowed upon all players on the server at that time and lasts for 30 minutes. These buffs do not dissipate upon logout, allowing for 30 total minutes of buff time.

Donate well; donate often! Donations of 100,000 palladium or higher will result in public recognition!

– Scapes

Third is the news from the front page Underground Communique 5, most of which we already know about, but the news being that Scapes is going on a vacation to Japan. What makes this important however is that on the forums he has been hinting that he will have the lowdown of the Patch 2 notes updated on the forums before he leaves!

The current ETA for the Abyss Chronicles to reach the live servers is late May.

It will be on Test Center before that time.

– Scapes

That’s about it for now. So yay Patch 2 notes soon!

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 6, 2008

Nightly Restarts for Live Servers (05/05/08)

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
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From the official forums:

In an effort to prevent server instability, the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers will be restarted nightly starting today. Sydonai (EU) will restart nightly at 8:00 PM PDT (3:00 AM GMT) and Shulgoth (US) will restart at 6:00 AM PDT (1:00 PM GMT).

These daily restarts will continue until further notice.
– Scapes

The range is about 30-60 minutes but we’ll see how long this first restart takes.
– Scapes

Enjoy… I guess :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 5, 2008

RPG Vault - RPG Genre Discussion

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
in Flagship Studios, Interview and Media
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IGN’s website, RPG Vault, has started a new section recently titled “Focus” where they invite a few leading industry developers to talk about an issue. While there isn’t anything strictly Hellgate or Mythos related in the article, one of the developers invited is from Flagship Studios.

Today, the “focus” discussion was about RPGs and the genre that certain games belong to, as well as how RPGs have changed over the years. The two industry developers today were Steve Bauman, the associate producer at Gas Powered Games (which incidently is making Demigod which you can read about on DemigodGuru) as well as Max Schaefer, who is the Co-Founder and COO of Flagship Studios.

In 1993, Max Schaefer, brother Erich and friend David Brevik co-founded Condor, which became Blizzard North when acquired in 1996. He served as Vice President of Blizzard North and a Director of Blizzard before the same trio plus Bill Roper and David Williams started Flagship Studios in 2003. Some of his credits include Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Hellgate: London.

The article talks about Max’s previous games like Diablo as well as other games in the genre.

The very first test we did at the beginning of the Diablo project was to make a guy with a mace, a simple dungeon, and a skeleton. We set it up so if you clicked the on skeleton, the guy would walk over and whack him one. It was a “lightning in a bottle’ moment, and there was no question we were on to something big. Instead of instructing my character to hit something, I just did it with my mouse click. Everyone could enjoy this! It’s a theory we’ve continued with our current title, Mythos, an action RPG if there ever was one.

So for me, the term action RPG was invented to refer to those games that concentrate on the visceral, graphic imagery and action of the genre. The emphasis is more on battle than lore. All the trappings can be there - the leveling, the stats, the magic loot, the crafting, the questing… It’s just that there tends to be less emphasis on dialogue, story or role-playing.

[…]

However, take the example of the 500-pound gorilla in the room, World of Warcraft. People generally agree it’s a classic RPG, but in reality, it’s also an action RPG: playing it takes a good amount of dexterity, there’s a decent amount of action, and there’s more an overall context than there is a specific story. But if there’s any title that defines the RPG market, and influences how developers must approach the genre, it’s World of Warcraft.

While many have tried, it’s probably futile to try to be a WoW-killer. Not only did the game have great talent with a virtually unlimited budget and timeline, it has also had many years of well-subsidized development post-launch. No publisher in its right mind would commit the resources necessary to beat it at that game. It’s just way too risky.

Steve’s discussion can be seen on page two and talks about his views of the genre.

The whole discussion is a very interesting read and provides some insight on how the genre has evolved.

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 4, 2008

Patch 1.3b Going to Test Center

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
in Flagship Studios and Patches
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The patch notes for the new 1.3b patch are up, and the patch is now live on the Test Center.

  • Fixed EU subs not getting the full subs benefits on Test Center
  • Fixed non-subscribers (who were once subscribers) being able to party portal to a subscriber only area
  • Sammy in St. Paul’s Station is no longer subscriber only
  • The donation announcement now says palladium instead of gold (in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian).

Known Issue:

  • The donation announcement text it misspelled as pallasium in English.

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on May 2, 2008

Multiplayer: Patch 1.3a - April 28th, 2008

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G-15
on May 9, 2008
in Flagship Studios and Patches
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Scapes has posted the following update on the forums, so my guess this has now gone live.

Patch 1.3a Notes

April 28, 2008

Patch 1.3a addresses some significant issues experienced in Patch 1.3. It also brings minor changes to the Buddy List as well as translation corrections. Additionally, the target amount for the Donation feature has been adjusted.

See you online!

The Hellgate: London Team
—
General

  • The Donation goal has been reduced.
  • The Buddy List font size and colors have been adjusted for readability.

Fixes

  • Fixed Rank experience not saving when switching instances.
  • Fixed weapon mods being unequipped on load. This bug occurred when retrieving modded weapons from Shared Stash, switching battle sets, mailing modded weapons, and other instances of loading.
  • Mods will no longer work when the weapon they are attached to is upgraded past the mods’ level range.
  • Fixed several skill description translations for European languages.
  • Added code to track in-game mail and help determine what is causing it to lag and items to not be sent.

Patch Notes Disclaimer: While we make every effort to include all upcoming changes in our patch notes, please be aware that occasionally some changes are unintentionally omitted.

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on April 29, 2008

Hellgate: London Patch 1.3 Live!

Published
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G-15
on May 9, 2008
in Flagship Studios and Patches
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The 1.3 Patch that we reported on yesterday is now up on the live server.

Greetings, Hellgaters, and welcome to Hellgate: London Patch 1.3!

Patch 1.3 is a beast of a update, offering no less than eight new features to the game including Shared Stash, a Premium Item Merchant, Donation Collectors and Global Buffs, Ranks and the Expertise system, and lots more. This content update also fixes a number of pesky item, skill, and interface bugs and makes a few tweaks to partying and monster scaling in Stonehenge.

Interacting with your fellow players has been enhanced with the introduction of optional chat bubbles that appear when players talk and performable emotes that your characters now have at their disposal. In Patch 1.3, players can also easily browse lists of chat and emote commands using the two according buttons in the chat pane.

A very sincere thank you to the many players who tested the many builds of Patch 1.3 uploaded to our Test Center server and helped report on the new patch’s balance, performance, and stability.

See you online!

The Hellgate: London Team
—
Click here to read the full patch notes for Patch 1.3!

Enjoy :)

Published by Sp3tSnAz on April 24, 2008

Hellgate: London’s Soundtrack Now Available

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G-15
on April 5, 2008
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In this news from Hellgate: London’s official website, Scapes announced that the soundtrack of Hellgate is now available on Amazon.com. Here is the chance to buy it, as it was previously exclusive to those who had bought the Collector’s Edition. Scapes also mentions an article from Music4games, in which Dave Setinwedel describes how the dynamic music system was created.

Now hear this (literally)! Hellgate: London’s official soundtrack is now available for purchase as a downloadable MP3 album on Amazon.com, released today by London Green Studios. Composed by industry veterans Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan, the Hellgate: London soundtrack features thirteen unique blends of orchestral and rock sounds designed to perfectly fit post-demon-invasion London, circa 2038[...]

Additionally, Music4Games.net offers both an in-depth review of the album and a detailed “postmortem” article written by Dave Steinwedel, Flagship Studios’ Audio Manager, entitled “Building an Adaptive Music System for a Dynamically Generated Game”[...]

The album is on sale there, for a reasonable price of $8.99.

Au revoir ;-)

- G-15