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Hellgate: London closure dated

Published on 27th October 2008 by Joe Martin

Namco Bandai will be supporting the online portion of Hellgate London until the end of January 2009.

Namco Bandai has now announced that it will close all the servers for the ill-fated Hellgate: London, ending the online portion of the game, on the 31st of January, 2009.

The game, which was published by Electronic Arts and developed by Flagship Studios, proved to be a failure on both critical and financial fronts and resulted in the closure of Bill Roper's Flagship Studios earlier this year.

The failure also forced the cancellation of Flagship's other project, Mythos, which was then in the late beta stage.

Namco Bandai, who now run the servers for the online RPG portion of the game, have announced that in a gesture of support for the community the servers will be free from now until the shutdown date.

Whether or not the games will return in some form at a later date is still a bit unclear, but Asian publisher T3 has bought the rights to both games and is rumoured to have an internal studio working on the titles.

Hellgate: London scored only mediocre reviews back when it was released, though you can check out our extensive graphics analysis and review for more information.

Were you a fan of the series, or could you care less that Hellgate has gone down the pan? Let us know what you think in the forums.

12 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

yakyb 27th October 2008, 11:13

rubbish game released too early was always going to fail

i was sad though because i was really hoping this one would be good

liratheal 27th October 2008, 11:45

There was ever any doubt this would happen?

In the face of WoW, there was no chance. It was just too mediocre.

Mentai 27th October 2008, 13:29

Blizzard should re employ the Flagship Studio artists for Diablo 3! I wonder what Bill Roper will do now that he's liquidated all his assets to pay his staff.

Veles 27th October 2008, 16:19

I wouldn't want to be one of the people who paid hundereds of quid for a lifetime subscription

HourBeforeDawn 27th October 2008, 17:36

ya this game was really bad, I mean great concept but poorly executed

Cobalt 27th October 2008, 17:48

I found it quite enjoyable as a bit of mindless fun but there was really no point to the online content. Focusing on the single player is what they should have done.

metarinka 27th October 2008, 18:08

yah good concept and some decent game mechanics, but very poorly executed online play and the environments were buggy and well... samey.

tis a shame I think a Hell gate london:2 if properly executed could be quite impressive and I really liked playing a dungeon crawler with guns

Dreaming 27th October 2008, 19:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by liratheal
There was ever any doubt this would happen?

In the face of WoW, there was no chance. It was just too mediocre.

It wasn't a WoW competitor anyway, it was developed by ex-devs of Diablo 2, who wanted a make a Diablo 3.

I bought it but you don't have to pay for online play, just some extra features, so that seems a bit misleading. Like, you get extra storage space and stuff. It was never worth the money to pay.

It's a good game but wasn't properly finished, it rolled straight out of beta onto the shelves.

The major flaw was it never took off as a multiplayer. It was like a single player with a multiplayer lobby, no real reason to go round in groups or anything.

Amon 27th October 2008, 22:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobalt
I found it quite enjoyable as a bit of mindless fun but there was really no point to the online content. Focusing on the single player is what they should have done.

Unfortunately, not everybody here has bought and played the game as both of us have, and so their perceived play experience is illegitimate. It is regrettable that the game is being dissolved. My brother had even dished a note for the Collector's Edition. This game is still the most fun I had with 3 other party members over Ventrilo, so far.

AngelOfRage 27th October 2008, 22:45

I played the demo for this non stop and was really looking forward to the full game. I bought it, installed it and must have managed about 5hrs play time on it. It really wasn't that bad, but more of a letdown and certainly not gripping enough to pull me away from WoW at the time.

LordPyrinc 27th October 2008, 23:23

I played it for about three hours. Picked up a copy of it not to long ago at around $20 (U.S.) As expected from the reviews I had read it does seem a bit redundant. That being said, one of these days I do plan on firing it up again and giving it another shot.

Can't wait for D3 though! I'm sure I spent literally 1000's of hours playing Diablo, Hellfire, D2, and LOD between '96 up through 2007. While I bought many other games in that time span, I kept going back to the diablo games.

Mister_X 28th October 2008, 10:29

LOVED the universe of hellgate London LOVED the books by Mel Odom ( despite huge numbers of spelling mistakes in the first 2)
The game was indeed average but getting better as time and patches went by.
A shame it went tits up.

A+ for effort A+for vision B- For implementation