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IGN has a preview up for Hellgate as well as a good video interview at the end.  This game is moving up my list so damn fast.  I haven't had this kind of info frenzy since D2.

Click on me! (http://pc.ign.com/articles/704/704165p1.html)

I was going to ask why anyone cared about Hellgate London, but as soon as you said "D2" it cleared everything up.   :-P  Hellgate bored me to pieces when I played it, but that's probably just because I never got the Diablo thing.  I can easily envision someone who liked Diablo liking Hellgate.

Put me on the list of "Cares" for this one too.  If they can make this the next step to D2, I'll be a happy gamer for months to come.  Daddy needs his lottery lewt fix!

I just watched the IGN video interview for this.  Whoa, fucken awesome.  Bill Roper and Co. may have missed out on the WoW moneyhats by jumping ship when they did but I think that their Hellgate moneyhats are going to be all kinds of spiffy.

Multiplayer online goodness but just in small groups of fast FPS/RPG action?  I'm in.

I'm gonna play this and get some video today.

I'm lost.  Where is the follow-up on this?

In Schild's brain.

I played this last year and again this year.  Somewhere on here you can read my review of the game last year.  Since then they have changed their skill system.  They were going to go with a newish sort of system where skills were "equipped".  Your character would have a certain amount of "concentration" allowing them to equip a certain amount of skills.  Skills themselves would be loot drops.  They scrapped this and decided to go with a more familiar skill tree.  They are still keeping the cool weapon system where you loot weapons and then loot addons to enhance the weapons, add new damage types, effects, etc.

This year they had added at least one new class.  Last year they had the templar which was sort of a paladin.  Templars gain power by being in proximity to enemies and can use auras of sorts.  They are a heavy-duty class.  The new class is a sort of hybrid called the cabalist.  They get to summon critters.  I played a cabalist for a while and I had the ability to "hold" a single enemy a gun to shoot with and the ability to conjure up to 3 fire-ball throwing pets to take with me.  The guy I was talking to (an audio programmer) said that they were having "major" and "minor" pets although what this distinction meant wasn't entirely clear.  They have added quest systems and such since last year.  One quest I got to see involved entering a gate into a demon world, killing a demon for a key that would set off some chain reaction, then fleeing that world with a 30s count-down before the whole place went up at which point the gate from the demon world closes.  The gate itself was a pretty cool effect, allowing you to see into the other world from your own.

I got to see a technical demo done at the nVidia booth where one of the programmers was plugging the Havok FX engine they are using.  Part of that included a demonstration of some swarming bugs that were used both for swords (that caused bugs to swarm around them) and a gun that shot swarms of hornets.  The effect looked kinda cool.  Looking at a directory of all the weapons in the game it was pretty huge with dozens of different guns and melee weapons.

I asked about PvP and they seem to be in pretty much the same place they were at last year.  They are testing PvP and it may happen but it's a big balancing issue and they don't know if it will be in the final product.  The core game seems like it will still be cooperative PvE with lots of shiny loot drops.  Asked about release dates they were giving the same answer as last year: when it's done.

Yea, I just need to get my shit together with the E3 stuff. I've sorta been dealing with some other shit atm though.

Well get it together!  And finish your other shit before you start this shit, because I hate it when you guys get your shit mixed.  It's a mess.

I am totally dissatisfied with your service.  I demand a preview of Hellgate:London or my money back!

Gotta be honest. I've sat down to write it about 10 times and there just isn't much to say. Much like I really couldn't write a whole article about Diablo 2 either. If you want the quick and dirty.

1. Character moves a bit slow normally but there is a sprint/jog button and there's probably ways to increase your normal speed.
2. The game does not play like the videos. The game at this time plays like a sorta slow diablo 2. Except from a different angle.
3. Melee combat kinda sucks. This is the result of bad animations and such for the player character. Looks like there's a stick stuck up their ass.
4. Lots of loot. Which would be totally fucking awesome if...
5. The armor was more interesting. Seriously, I got a guy that works there to god me up to level 25 or something and drop the highest level armor they had in the game next to my feet. It sucked and was ugly.
6. The stage(s) they had up for play did not have enough loot dropping to judge how deep the loot system was compared to Diablo.
7. Anyone heaping praise on it at this point is merely talking about potential. Yes, the game has laid the groundwork to be fantastic but everyone should be goddanm happy it's not coming out until 2007.

That's good enough for me.  I just wanted to hear something about it.

I hope they continue to work on the weaknesses you saw.  Anything that has less polish and attraction power than D2 will flop.  That is a lot to live up to, but I believe it to be the truth.