Alright, I can overlook the fact that Hellgate: London is a mediocre and repetitive game but its first few weeks of release had been the most horrible thing I have experienced in my entire gaming life. I never knew so many things can possibly go wrong in a short span of time. The situation is so catastrophic that I am surprised IAH games haven't closed down yet. This is worst than the time I was playing Priston Tale (shudder) many years ago. And that was a free game.
What you are about to read may be one of the biggest farce in local gaming history.
Week 0: The Gates are Open!
Local gamers picked up HGL only to realize that they were playing an early Beta version of the game, albeit packaged nicely in a shiny box with a price attached. (US gamers get a retail version update known as Patch 0 the moment they go home and run the game.) Over the first weekend, players soon hit the Beta level cap of 22. Everyone was generally unhappy and flamed IAH on their forums.
Week 1: Welcome to real life Hell...
To help appease the gamers, IAH announced that they will patch the game on Tuesday to remove the level cap. Patch 0 will still have to wait, though. Maintenance ended on Tuesday but... no changes was made to the game at all! Flames ensued. And we learnt that we have a useless bimbotic CM (Community Manager) who only knows how to post ditzy remarks and spam pics of 'sizzling hot' babes.
The server was brought down again on Wednesday to finally remove the level cap and this time, it went through. However, in a most unexpected turn of events, all level 22 with excess EXP automatically skipped levels, causing them to miss out on stat/talent points. Characters were bugged permanently this way. More flame threads appeared on the forum.
IAH announced that they would be looking into the matter to try and 'fix' characters. From a technical standpoint, I already knew it was impossible to alter the game code for each and every bugged character. I played on, bracing myself for what I fear might happen next...
And it did. On Saturday, IAH announced that there would be a character wipe to make way for Patch 0, the reason being that their Beta-version database was incompatible with it (My penguin senses still tell me it's largely because the bugged characters were irrepairable ). Sadly, the wipe/maintenance/patching will be on Monday. It was a weekend with no HGL for players everywhere. Flames carried on in the forums.
Week 2: ???
Monday was supposed to be fresh start for everyone so that we can forget the game's rather shameful first week. But alas, IAH has let down its gamers again with a last minute announcement; there would be no maintenance and Patch 0 has been put on hold until further notice.
Massive flame threads continue to pile up on the Hellgate forums and it has become my source of entertain during work hours.
Looks like the entire game has come to a standstill. It would be interesting to see how IAH can screw up even more.
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