Hellgate: London servers set to reopen in Europe and U.S.
Hellgate: Resurrection: Hellgate: Tokyo Announced Today – MMORPG News – New MMO News, Free MMOs, Tidbit, Top 10, Topics, Previews – News.mmosite.com
Joystiq reports from gamesindustry.biz” that HanbitSoft, who owned the rights to Hellgate: London in Korea, has acquired worldwide rights to publishing the software and plans on reopening servers in Europe and the United States. The game will now be called Hellgate: Resurrection and will have new features.
This is definitely good news. Reading through the comments on Joystiq, it’s obvious that a lot of people do not share my excitement at Hellgate’s return. Most likely they’re judging the game based on what it was originally. Yes, Hellgate: London was pretty horrible (although still fun!) at launch, and it remained so for quite some time; however, the game was much better at the time of server shutdown. I was actively playing at the time, having recently come back to the game. Hellgate definitely still has some issues.
My three biggest issues were needing to use the mouse to look around while also needing to use the cursor, the sluggish interface, and the bland atmosphere. The first two problems combine to be particularly annoying, but you do get used to the cursor usage. I doubt the atmosphere can be fixed. The entire game is gray. Thanks Gears of War for making gray worlds so popular! I understand their reasoning: a post-apocalyptic world should be covered in dirt and dust. Still, I feel like some more color could be used.
Despite these shortcomings, the game was actually very fun. While marketed as an MMO, it functioned similar to Guild Wars. The towns were like MMOs, but everything outside of town was instanced. Playing similar to Diablo, it was really an online, role-playing, dungeon crawler. It had an intriguing plot that I never got to see through to the end. I was always sad that I didn’t get to find out what happened at the end. Hopefully it doesn’t disappoint! The graphic novel and three novel series were very entertaining. The novels seemed to end without as much conclusion as I had hoped, but they were still quite enjoyable.
mmosite.com reports that Hellgate: Resurrection includes The Abyss Chronicle, the second patch (the first being the Stonehenge Chronicles), which was developed by Flagship Studios and on the test servers but never released. In addition, HanbitSoft also has new content known as Hellgate: Tokyo, which will take place in Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama. I hope those locations are more colorful! The game has also been tweaked a bit with the removal of the level cap (uh, I doubt there’s no cap), a new/changed character advancement system, and changes to class balance.