Hellgate is out! 3 weeks now...what do u think?
go to hellgatelondon.com for the official site folks
... I think this one may take me away from d2 forever.
Not me, not what I've seen. I laid down 50 smackers and within a few minutes had to adjust to the fact that what u are pointing at is for firing and not moving towards. Maybe there is a way in options to get around this. I have a Guardian (Paladin type), lvl 12 now...
Played the game for 3 days, heavily, and have since slowed way down. Still prefer Diablo and Guild Wars and plenty of other games. There have been some threads posted comparing HGL and D2. One of them at the hellgatelondon.com site was closed in 45 minutes by an administer, certainly cuz it was critical and in my opinion, very accurate:
Hmm, cant find the link. Basically, he complained that the underground areas and even above ground looked too similar, it got boring. The xxxx steam tunnels look like the xxxx approach and the basement complex to such and such place, its the same pattern. Also the subway tunnels look all the same. (To be fair, it is indeed all under one city, so lots of variety is hard). The end of act1 is barely perceptible, and then u go into next act and see the same artwork for the subway there and its connecting steam tunnels and basements. (to be fair, there are special areas in the game with unique artwork and feel). He called HGL just another rpg. This guy played lots of D2. These are the main reasons why i put the game on the proverbial backburner.
Other threads: the hellgatelondon.com site is just packed with people complaining about the bugs in the game. Didn't it have a long beta? Also they are openly asking things like: "What was Bill Roper thinking?". Even major supporters are starting the most positive threads like: "I love HGL and I dont care what all these other people are saying". It doesnt take too long to peruse these threads to figure out that alot of people are dissatisfied.
My own additions to this...You can join games in progress, and can meet people in the same 'instance' which is equivalent to GuildWars districts. I havent had the opportunity to do this cuz it says my char is NOT allowed to join any parties, the day I tried, and i made a post about this and no one answered me, so blechh. The numbers of people in the same town or instance or district is small, maybe 5-25. No one seems to be talking, you wont see chatter or comments. You apparently have to have the chat open for this. At first I thought these people were NPC's!
Game is buggy, there was a major bug about mods being added to weapons and it wasnt working, but got patched apparently. Many people like myself played against the act1 boss and either got repeatedly hung up or lost the drop (I lost the drop). For me, items disappeared about 40% of the time went I went to town and came back 5 min later. That seems to be better now. Lag and hanging up isnt too bad for me, some people though are going bonkers about it. I've only died 3-4 times, the mobs seem to be too easy. The idea of starting out weak and being determined to get better to overcome weakness, a hallmark of many rpg's, seems to be absent here. I've heard its much harder in hell or elite or godly level difficulty, whatever it is.
There are 'subscriptions' u have to pony up either major loot, $150, or 9 bucks a month to get extra stuff, otherwise its free after your 50 bucks.
This game is primarily First Person Shooter, and just saying "oh, u can alter it to get a 3rd person perspective" is lame, most players are using some sort of rifle shooting rapidly with all sorts of mods attached to it, and creaming the monster mobs.
Well, lets not make any final decisions here. Its still new, and I'm only halfway thru normal mode...
