Hellgate London Alpha

[Moaner]

So uhhh...  Does the game still launch on Halloween?  That announcement sounds a little ambiguous.  I'm confused, very tired, and wanted to play on Haloween damnit!

Someone spell it out for the sleep deprived please!  :)

[Tige]

If you have pre-ordered you should have your beta key by now.  Get the beta client, not the demo.

On Friday (10/26) the beta servers come down.

On Monday (3/31) the servers are turned on for those who have the game.

For those who have pre-ordered that have yet to receive their box you will be able to log onto a psuedo-beta server.  This server will have the zero day patch.

You can play on the pseudo beta server while you await your box upto level 22.

When your box arrives, sometime during the week of 10/31, you set up your account.  At this time your psuedo-beta server avatar is folded into your account and you log onto a game server with him/her.

Hilarity ensues.

[sam, an eggplant]

The entire beta until the day of launch, I had horrible tearing (on new drivers). On launch day they magically went away with the first patch. That's a fucking magic patch, IMO.

Generally speaking, the "magic patch" refers to a game that sucked in beta, generating 1000+ page  petitions in the beta forums to delay release, but ended up magically delicious with the day 1 patch applied. That bug would certainly make it suck for you, but as a whole, WoW closed beta players were pretty much deliriously happy and thought the game was ready to go.

Anyway, we're derailing like crazy. Now back to HG:L disappointing.

[Hoax]

Fucking bullshit.

That should read WoW players who were alliance and playing one of the finished classes AND DIDNT CARE ABOUT PVP were dileriously happy.  There was much frothing to be found, but it was drowned out by the blizz fanboi machine.

Also those crazy Ruskies that hit L60 in the open beta were probably happy.

Otherwise, bullshit.

[sam, an eggplant]

I played horde in the closed beta and I was happy. First MMO beta I ever thought was ready for release.

You're right about the PvP though. I didn't and don't care.

[Miasma]

I played horde in the closed beta and I was happy.

Me too, but then I tried alliance and saw just how badly the Horde side of the game was done by comparison.

[Aez]

Well, color me surprised.  I went to log into the test center server, it downloaded a huge patch. More effects, more colorful, faster load times. Looks like there was a magic patch after all.

ah!  It's easy to believe once the miracle is done.

industry: 1      |      f13: 35

[Venkman]

Does that weapon now do 10 electric damage or is there zero increased damage because it wasn't doing electric damage to begin with?

(from two pages ago)

If the weapon is Fire based and you add 10% electric damage, your net gain should be zero. At least, that's how I interpreted it. It'd be like in WoW where if you only ever cast Fire spells, you don't gain anything from gear that gives +Arcane. Of course, WoW's not that restrictive because even without any points in Arcane there's some Arc spells still worth casting. But that's a quibble.

[Aez]

Does that weapon now do 10 electric damage or is there zero increased damage because it wasn't doing electric damage to begin with?

(from two pages ago)

If the weapon is Fire based and you add 10% electric damage, your net gain should be zero. At least, that's how I interpreted it. It'd be like in WoW where if you only ever cast Fire spells, you don't gain anything from gear that gives +Arcane. Of course, WoW's not that restrictive because even without any points in Arcane there's some Arc spells still worth casting. But that's a quibble.

I know it's counter intuitive but it's actually the opposite.   

From some beta guide :

+X to attack strength:
This will increase the chance of adding a special effect to a weapon, this does not increase damage.
If you have a weapon that deals toxic damage, and add a +X to ignite mod to the weapon, that item will NEVER ignite any mob. However, if you add a +X to ignite mod AND a +X% fire damage added mod, it will have a chance to ignite mobs.

+X% Element damage:
This will take the base damage of your weapon and add additional damage of the element it mentions.
EX: If you have a sword that does 50-100 toxic damage then you add a +10% fire damage mod to that sword. The sword will now do 50-100 toxic and 5-10 fire damage.

+X% Damage:
This will increase the base damage of your weapon, and all corresponding elemental damage mods.
EX: You have a sword that does 50-100 toxic damage and 5-10 fire damage (from a fire element damage mod), now you add a +20% damage mod to that weapon.
Your sword will now do 60-120 toxic damage and 6-12 fire damage.

[Gforce]

I didn't know TR was very looty.  I thought it was battlegroundy and MOG-item-progressiony?

TR is very looty. Late in the Beta they increased drop rates by literally an order of magnitude (apparently the Bane gained an appreciation for paint mixes, among other things) and in fact it's too looty now given that they didn't increase the amount of storage.



Yes I have a mule character just to store all my paint recipes.

They did increase the amount of inventory space, by about 500 percent.
Also things stopped dropping so much paint a long time ago. The loot makes more sense now.
Been a long while since you played apparently. Game is still in beta, for another week or so.

[schild]

Garriot Force?

[rattran]

Perhaps he's here looking for Rainz.

[Trippy]

They did increase the amount of inventory space, by about 500 percent.
Also things stopped dropping so much paint a long time ago. The loot makes more sense now.
Been a long while since you played apparently. Game is still in beta, for another week or so.

No it has not. Apparently you aren't playing the same game I am.

[squirrel]

They did increase the amount of inventory space, by about 500 percent.
Also things stopped dropping so much paint a long time ago. The loot makes more sense now.
Been a long while since you played apparently. Game is still in beta, for another week or so.

No it has not. Apparently you aren't playing the same game I am.

WTF does this have to do with HG:L? Or did I simply miss the full derail earlier?

[Trippy]

You did.

[squirrel]

You did.

See I hate that. Fuck, is it my build? I knew I shouldn't have gone for "leetsniperbadass4" right away...

[Modern Angel]

What the fuck is up with the DX10 client? I turn it on, reload the game and it's a slideshow on a static opening screen. 8600GT, 2.4GHz Quadcore, 2gigs of RAM... I should at least be able to RUN it.

[Yegolev]

I will say, after playing it, the beta is better than the demo.  Minus points for rebooting my machine when the install finished and I clicked "Launch Game", but since I did press a suspicious orange button this could have been a user error.  Fiddling with the graphics settings made it less choppy, but that second station was like a slideshow for a few minutes when I first went into it.  I made it to level 5 before I ran out of memory and it crashed.  After that I played Mythos.  I think HLG is still in the "wait a few months" bucket.

[Salamok]

Anyone get a EU server beta invite?  I just got one and am not sure if it's related to something Ironwood did with the key i gave him or maybe something else entirely.

[rattran]

The memory leak for nvidia is still there on the test center, but better. Framerates with an 8800gts/c2d6420/4gb at 1920x1200 extreme shaders are ~30 outdoors and in stations, ~40 in corridor levels. Dynamic Lightiing on, dx10 smoke off. With smoke on, it goes to ~15. I get about 2 hours before the 'low memory' warning. With dx9 it looks pretty close to as good, I get a solid 70fps, and still run out of memory.

So anyway, if you choose Test Center as the server, it's a more up to date client, with new, different bugs. I think it'll do fine on launch, the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth, but nothing extraordinary unless the servers go boom. Which is always an option.

Oh, and luck has been 'adjusted' Basically 10x the numbers it was before, seems to be the same or slightly better magic drops, with a much better mix of crap. I'd say of the non-white items, it's about 60/30/9/1 meh/rare/legend/unique. Not counting the named boss drops.

Any yeah, I got a European invite

[sam, an eggplant]

Yeah, I got a bunch of EU emails too, but they don't actually contain any links. Weird.

I tried out the new "golden patch" on the test server last night and got an engineer up to level 7 (since the infamous drone bug was fixed), and it seems pretty much the same to me. It has slightly more polish, the halloween quests were neat, and it had absolutely crippling nearly unplayable lag.

Also, whenever I zoned into a station, everybody's body, including mine, was invisible and all I could see was their weapons running around.

[Signe]

At the moment, this game is completely unplayable, even in the EDT morning when there isn't even a lot of people around.  Even the freakin' instances!  They have... what?... five days to fix what ever it is that'll make it playable before they are saturated with people expecting to play a game?  Good luck!

[Salamok]

At the moment, this game is completely unplayable, even in the EDT morning when there isn't even a lot of people around.  Even the freakin' instances!  They have... what?... five days to fix what ever it is that'll make it playable before they are saturated with people expecting to play a game?  Good luck!

maybe they are busy purchasing and setting up servers with the preorder money. 

[schild]

At the moment, this game is completely unplayable, even in the EDT morning when there isn't even a lot of people around.  Even the freakin' instances!  They have... what?... five days to fix what ever it is that'll make it playable before they are saturated with people expecting to play a game?  Good luck!

maybe they are busy purchasing and setting up servers with the preorder money. 

You think they've seen a dime of the preorder money? ^_^

[Salamok]

At the moment, this game is completely unplayable, even in the EDT morning when there isn't even a lot of people around.  Even the freakin' instances!  They have... what?... five days to fix what ever it is that'll make it playable before they are saturated with people expecting to play a game?  Good luck!

maybe they are busy purchasing and setting up servers with the preorder money. 

You think they've seen a dime of the preorder money? ^_^

Actually do to their lack of advertising and piss poor release effort I would be surprised if they had enough preorder money to buy a fish taco.

[Jamiko]

Maybe it's because I never played Diablo 2 (don't hit me) but I think this game a fiery ball of demon-killing fun. I have not encountered many bugs and it has been extremely playable for me. I do have a pretty nice computer so it probably helps (not Vista though still clinging to XP).

[Salamok]

Maybe it's because I never played Diablo 2 (don't hit me) but I think this game a fiery ball of demon-killing fun. I have not encountered many bugs and it has been extremely playable for me. I do have a pretty nice computer so it probably helps (not Vista though still clinging to XP).

It isn't just you. 

[rattran]

Odd, I was on for a bit this morning. Other than not being able to get into Charing Cross, no bugs, and no lag. Still memory leaking though. And having a horde of monster attack, no problem. One fucking mob of the bunch being able to phase me? Dead.

[Signe]

Ah... maybe it was because my character was in Charing Cross.  People in chat were complaining about it, too.  Even in instances, you would swing and shoot and explode and maybe a minute later something would fall over dead and give you some loot.  Most things were just running in place.  My computer is fine with this game.  I've been in beta for some time and haven't had any problems until recently.  The only annoying bug I've come across is the stuck in swinging mode with my blademaster now and then, but that seems to be fixed just by hitting "Esc" and then "return to game".

[Venkman]

Holy crap. So I was about to ask how D2 3D could bring modern PCs to their knees until I checked back with screenshots I'm sure have been there for months. I trully am a graphics whore. Suddenly I'm interested in the game.

Late to the party as usual.

So, I want to stay away from the Demo then right?

[Salamok]

Holy crap. So I was about to ask how D2 3D could bring modern PCs to their knees until I checked back with screenshots I'm sure have been there for months. I trully am a graphics whore. Suddenly I'm interested in the game.

Late to the party as usual.

So, I want to stay away from the Demo then right?

the consensus seems to be beta>demo

[Trouble]

Too bad you can't make a beta account now with your preorder due to "maintenance". Why do I have a feeling it's more like "our servers are exploding! we can't fit anymore!".

https://accounts.hellgatelondon.com/PingAccount/beta_signup.jsp

I WANT TO PLAY

[Venkman]

Bleh. Thanks for the warning. I'll manage my expectations tonight :)

[Count Nerfedalot]

Of course I am.  It just would be nice to see someone besides me with that name.  I've NEVER had a problem getting it, even years after something launches.  It's insulting.

PS  I've actually just finished the early download.

That name wouldn't come with a last name of Mallory would it?  Cool character.  Would fit well in Eve.

[Signe]

No French here.  I'm nearly all wegian.  Nor by birth, Glas by marriage.     (I like the name Mallory though, even if it is a bit dark)