f13.net

Hellgate: London Really a MMORPG

Hellgate: London should be on shelves this summer.  However, read and despair, Diablo 2 fans, at some stuff I stole from GameSpot.

Roper explained that the cool thing about Hellgate: London is that you can play it as a single-player game, but there will also be an option to turn it into a subscription-based multiplayer game if you want to play with others and enjoy lots of new content.

It's like when you take that hot chick from the bar up to your room, then she asks you if you can "talk business".

I feel like I should be pointing and laughing, but I'm not sure at whom.

Well, at least they wouldn't be turning our free online multiplayer into subscription-fee multiplayer just to sit on the money. 

Thanks loads, Phantasy Star Online/Universe, for showing the way.

I'd really like to know more details about the multiplayer setup, since that's the biggest piece of news, for me, to come out about this product.

I'm not sure I would pick this game up if it had a monthly fee.

The pay-only content is troubling. I was already getting a bad vibe from Hellgate, it looked like very old-school fps (a bad thing in my book, I like the 'new school' tactical way), with hordes of enemies pouring at you as you back up through the level. Maybe that's hot for the diablo kids, but it's tired for fps.

And rpg? "Hey mister, a demon stole my prosthetic leg!." Really? Who writes that tripe?

That was pretty funny, if you ask me, mostly because he was a real bastard and I often wished they had taken more than his leg.

I'm not that surprised.  Battle.Net looked to be going this way some time ago then that all quieted down.  Apparently because the people pushing that idea moved on to start their own company.

It looks like a great alternate revenue stream but what it really does is limit participation.  There is no way in hell I am paying for a game connectivity portal for an FPS.  Maybe if the games were actually hosted on their servers so that I had guaranteed latency and responsiveness I could see paying out some cash.  But not for a matching service which is what this looks like to me.

They've been hinting at MMORPG content for about 4 months. But like this? Pay to play content on their server? This is not what was hinted at.

I can't be mad though. I still want a massive piece of that if they don't fuck up the item system.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

I am Jack's giant chunk of Diablo love.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not surprised.

One thing they brought up in the Flagship podcast a while back (June/July of last year) was a fan asked about alternate revenue models to keep content going after the game had shipped, and they said they had definitely not ruled that out just yet.

I'm so used to paying for MMOs anyways, so if this is any good, I have no problems paying for it.

I've played it two E3s in a row, and I loved it  both times. If it continues to deliver, I'm a happy man, and would be willing to throw down cash.

I'm interested in what sort of content they'll add to support this, though.

If there's raiding, I will stab someone.

I actually look forward to a "40 vs. 1 big mofo" type encounter if it was in an FPS.  It didn't sound like there were healers or anything in this game, and that it was being designed around a single person powerhouse.  So, we'll see what happens, but I played it at both E3s as well and so far haven't seen anything super magical yet that makes me want to crap my pants and play it.

Ah, there he is.

HA HA!

Linky (http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=45282&page=null&mode=flat)

I'm only a messenger... I'm sure Schild will take a blade for the game though  :-D

What?

Raaaaaaaaaaids?

Man, fuck them.

But they've said there's raiding.

So...

Ah, there he isn't.

HA HA!

Whoa, wtf. stealth merge for the schild lose.

++

I'd probably still play it just because raids done first person shooter with dual-wielded customizable pistols are probably more enjoyable than the alternative.

Hmm, y'know, I think I can probably think of one or two dissimilarities I could draw here, too (here's a hint: it starts with the letter "$").

Look, I know it's fun and all to grab me by the ankles shake me until money comes out, but KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY.

But not as enjoyable as completely avoiding it entirely.

Yeah I can imagine the fantastic gameplay already. 10 guys to shoot the knee so that the next 10 guys can shoot the arm so that next 10 guys can shoot the chest so the next 9 guys can crack the head armor, so one guy goes for the kill, all while circling strafing and avoiding slack-jawed low-brow team killing 'tards.  But maybe that's too cynical.

I was fully willing to dish a monthly fee for D2 had it meant keeping out the fucking riff-raff.  If they can replicate the D2 ding-gratz luv then I'm there.

This is terrible news.  I was really looking forward to a FPS Diablo but it looks like this is going to be a pay to play expanded GW. 

And raiding?  /puke

Looks like the smart people stayed at Blizzard after all.

So... can I play the "single-player" mode co-op with a friend over a LAN and avoid paying the extra content?

I'm interested in the game for a fun little thing to do with friends occassionally.  What I am not interested in is a subscription based service when plenty of other games are going to hold most of my attention.  Nor do I care to play this only by myself.

I'll wait and see, but it looks like I shall be passing on this one afterall.

Well, the smart marketing people anyway.

I have doubts that there would be this much fuss if HG:L had started out being described as "Planetside crossed with Diablo"

This raises the bar the team need to reach to justify the cost, that's all.

Based on the fact that most us have been willing to pay $15 a month to use auto attack to smash a million identical foozles at some point, that bar is still pretty damn low. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth seems a mite overdone.


Now open up, wallets!

Having seen the videos of all the demos floating around, I'm amazed anyone is still interested in this.  It looks total boaby.

My Scots-English dictionary doesn't have "boaby" in it.  But I think I agree.

(edit) Urban Dictionary informs me that this means penis.

DAMMIT.

If they make raid things where we have to clear 'trash' to get to 'bosses', and only the raid bosses drop the best stuff in the game, I'm gonna cry.

Didn't Myst:URU sorta show that this concept sucked major ass? I dunno if I'll pick up the game now.

I can't believe even Ironwood said "boaby."

Ick.

I think a better concept that would work for this game is to have multiple dungeon paths where smaller teams of a larger group go through and clear out the mobs as they make their way through to a final boss.  Could be fun.

It may not be an MMO after all, as Bill may have been misquoted. The HG:L CM Ivan did a short interview:

Surprise surprise.  So they don't really have any clue and haven't made a final decision.

If they really are making it pay to play multiplayer (at least for online play), I'm willing to bet that they won't make it possible to run it on a LAN out of the box.  My money is on them cockblocking LAN play, then coming down on the first person to release a mod that allows it.  They'll have some clause in the EULA that prohibits all kinds of stuff, and it'll be one of the things that the modder does.  The EFF will take the side of the modder, and C Net and other tech news places will cover it for a few days.

You're assuming that anyone cares.  I just can't envision anyone other than a few desperate Diablo fans playing this thing for more than a few hours.  I played it for a few minutes and I was done.

More like Boring Derivative Trash: London, amirite?

Not that many games do seem to run on LAN anymore.  Are LAN parties official passe' now, or what?


Is it really that bad?
I had hopes for this one.
(But then, I have hopes for Vanguard.)

I hadn't noticed that at all.  Can you rattle off any examples?  (Anything centrally-hosted, like an MMO, doesn't count for obvious reasons.)


The court rests. 

Here's my one-line review of Hellgate:

It's Serious Sam with shitty graphics, shitty maps, no personality, and upgradeable weapons that fire in cones so that you don't have to work too hard to hit things. 

That's it.

Well, a friend of mine went through the motions of arranging LAN parties a couple times in the recent past, and we had a hard time finding any recent games that had good LAN support.  These days, it seems that a lot of games jump straight to Internet matchmaking without the Local Area Network option. 

You want examples, but I really should hit the sack right now.  Maybe you could point out some recently released big name games that have LAN support?  I suspect the difficulty in finding them may establish my point.  (Either that, or the ease of finding them will set me straight.)

So wait... you were helping your friend plan this LAN party, and you looked at some game called X.  In fact, "lots of games," called X, Y, and Z.  And you learned that none of these games supported LAN play.  But either you don't remember any of X, Y, or Z, or their names are so long that it would have actually pushed back your bedtime were you to type out the name of even one of them.  Do I have that right?   :wink:


Unfortunately, I don't own any recently released big name games, which is why I asked the question.  As far as less recently released big name games go, though, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 both have a LAN option.  And I honestly can't imagine why any game that has player-hosted servers would remove that functionality, since connecting over a LAN is really not that different from connecting over the Interblag.  Heck, even if there wasn't a tab explicitly marked "LAN" in the server browser, you could still get to a LAN server via the same mechanism that you use to connect to a more remote server. 

Which is why I'm really curious what these games are that don't support LAN play: if it's true I bet there's an interesting story behind it, and I would like to investigate further.

With around 10 Scottish at last count, I'm appealing to a wider audience.  Further, though Samwise's Universal Translator has it right, I was using the word as the shortened version of 'boaby-kite' which is Strathclyde Rhyming-slang for, well, you get the picture.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and Comapny of Heroes both had lan. Marvel Ultimate: Allaince didn't. IIRC the new NFS didn't either. Let's put it this way - pc only games do, multiplatform, mainly console games, don't. I rock at generalizations :)

Sorry, I don't get it.  My ancestors were Scots (or English, depending on stubbornness); I grew up in Alabama.

My disappointment in Hellgate is exactly that: disappointment.  There isn't any way I can convince myself this is Spiritual Diablo 3 right now, and I am forced to wait on Actual Diablo 3.  I would not mind paying for AD3, as I shall now call it, but right now it's not looking too good.  Arena.net fooled me already with Guild Bores.

Shite.

...

Bugger?

I don't think I've ever even heard of any of those.   :|  I could certainly believe that slapdash console->PC ports might be lacking basic functionality, but who'd want to play those at a LAN party (or anywhere, really) anyway?

Huh? MUA would rock a LAN.

There's a lot more games these days that don't have LAN support than back in the days of StarCraft.  For example, try finding LAN support in Neverwinter Nights 2.  Half-Life 2 was mentioned - it does indeed support LAN, but you can't even launch the game without an Internet connection, thanks to Steam.

Still, if Company of Heroes has LAN support, maybe the days of LAN parties are not over entirely.

Internet killed the LAN star.

Broadband is probably the culprit.

I don't have the game, but according to zee Interweb, it's there (http://www.nwn2hq.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=56&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=).


I don't think I've ever been to a LAN party that didn't have Internet access (they've all been at someone's house, dorm, or fraternity), but yes you can -- start Steam in offline mode (http://www.xlangaming.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=35).  

Google-fu FTW!

You're right.  I was mislead because the very frist thing it has you do is log into Bioware's server.  Then, on the next page, you have an option for LAN play.  Seeing how this is how Half-Life 2 does it as well, it must be some kind of proactive anti-piracy measure.

Oh, and I had steam running in off line mode and it refused to allow me to launch Half-Life 2 Deathmatch.

What did Valve tech support tell you to do to fix it?

Reboot.

My assumption is that Geld was trying to play a game he hadn't downloaded yet.  If he'd contacted support, they would have told him that (or they would have checked that angle out and disproved it), but I'm guessing he didn't try contacting them.

You can not use offline mode and play on a LAN if the LAN is connected to the Internet. The nanosecond Steam detects a connection to the Internet it turns off offline mode. You also need to be connected to the Internet to turn on offline mode. Yes it's a paradox.

Wierd stuff - when I tried this morning to launch Half Life 2 Deathmatch while Steam was running in Offline mode, it wouldn't.  It popped up a message saying that I had to be connected to steam to launch it.  Tried again just now, it didn't.

Ah well.  I still think that LAN support is more rare than it used to be.  There exist a plethora more games these days that support Internet play but not LAN play, for some strange reason or anther.  It's a belabored point by now.

I've heard that, but the article I linked seems to contradict it -- maybe that was an old Steam bug that has since been fixed?  According to the article, your game needs to be up to date (i.e. you can't play a half-downloaded game -- seems reasonable), but no other special preparation is really necessary -- you just tell Steam to start in offline mode when you're offline.  If your LAN is connected to the Internet it's a moot point anyway since then everything would just work as normal.

I'm just not seeing the grand conspiracy against the LAN party that's being posited.

Look at it a little more carefully:

I.e. you have to be connected to Steam first to enable offline mode. If you forget to do this before disconnecting your computer or laptop you are fucked. This is what happened when the power went out in Washington. No offline mode for j000!

I.e. if Steam detects even the faintest whiff of an Internet connection it will disable offline mode.

I.e. once again if you forget to set offline mode before coming to the LAN party you are fucked.

Edit: look at it dangit

Pretty sure that option is checked by default.  I know I have it on.


That was definitely an issue when the Valve servers went down that one time (though still by no means insurmountable), but in the situation being posited (a LAN party in Antarctica), it wouldn't be relevant at all.

I'm not arguing that the offline mode thing won't potentially be a pain in the ass under certain circumstances that I have yet to encounter, just that there's no massive conspiracy to prevent LAN parties from occurring.

The password part is just part of it. You still have to explicitly go into offline mode. In other words, even if the "Remember my password" box is checked if you simply disconnect your box and try to play in offline mode it won't work.

You are correct, they aren't targeting LAN parties specifically -- it's just a general thing where Valve wants to watch you play at all times and to force you to authorize everytime you play (like needing a CD in the disc drive) and they make it almost as hard as humanly possible (having to edit the registry would be worse) to keep Steam from doing that.

Are you sure?  According to the article, all you need to do is close Steam and start it again in offline mode (after you've disconnected, not before).  I'll have to test it out when I get home.

No I'm not sure. I got rid of all that crap after I finished single-player HL2 (which I didn't directly pay for since I got it from the coupon that came with my video card). Looking at the support page (http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=213) on Steam it looks like it has changed since there's no longer reference to all the crap about fiddling with up your clientregistry.blob file so it may be easier now than it was when I was playing and apparently there was a patch sometime in 2005 where if you hit Cancel while Steam is loading it'll give you an option for playing in offline mode. I'm not sure if that means you can still be connected to the Internet and be in offline mode but for some reason I doubt that will work.

Okay, I just ran the experiment.  Here's what I did:

1) Disabled my network connections, right off the bat.  To make sure this was as fair a test as possible, I didn't so much as look at Steam before cutting off its link to the outside world, much less give it a chance to get ready.  Verified that my interwebs were really and truly dead (they were).

2) Opened up my running Steam window, tried to fire up Counter-Strike.  It worked (I actually hadn't expected this)!  I started a game with some bots and putzed around a bit with no problems.

3) Closed Steam.

4) Restarted Steam.  This time there was a minor hangup -- I got a dialog warning me that there was no Internet connection, and did I want to start in Offline mode?  I said yes.  This one extra mouse-click was the most difficult part of the exercise.

5) Fired up Counter-Strike.  It still worked.  The Internet tab had a friendly message telling me that I was in Offline mode and wouldn't be able to join any Internet games until I reestablished my network connection and restarted Steam in online mode.  The Lan tab had no such message (it told me, correctly, that there were no game servers on my local network; I take on faith at this point that if I did and I'd reenabled my LAN connection, they'd show up there.)

6) Just in case CS was especially up to date because I'd played it recently, I tried Half-Life 2, which I haven't played in months and months.  It came up without a complaint.

So much for teh ebil Valve not letting you play your single player games when your Net connection goes down without warning, eh?   :-P

I couldn't find an option in the Steam GUI to enable offline mode when you're not actually offline, but I'm also not sure why you'd need to.  However, as this experiment proved, simple enough workaround if you're hung up on privacy and want to be in offline mode all the time: disable your net connection (simple as a right-click in the systray on Windows), fire up Steam, let it start in offline mode, and re-enable the net connection (Steam won't try it again until you exit and restart).  You could probably get similar results by using security software to selectively deny steam.exe any access to the network.

I took back my annoyance at Steam a while ago. Paying for Chapter 2, downloading it and playing it all in one go without disturbing teh Elena ruled.

However, you have to agree that when it launched it was a fiddly and annoying piece of shit, especially for people in a Third World Country like Scotland.

Damn savages.

I didn't have any problems with it myself, but I'm willing to take others' word for it that it was a pain in the ass; that just doesn't have any bearing in a discussion on the current state of support for LAN-only play.  If anything, the fact that it's gotten better over the past couple of years should indicate that games are getting more LAN-friendly, not less, rite?

Stolen from Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12475).