Hellgate: London Holiday Newsletter

Flagship Studios sent us over a holiday-themed newsletter this morning, providing us with information about the game’s latest single player and multiplayer patches, as well as the Stonehenge Expansion. Check it out:

Fellow Hellgaters,
The leaves have long since fallen, snow coats the ground, and the temperature is cold enough to freeze Sydonai’s tentacles off. The master of Earth’s Burn is not pleased. But we sure are! How could we not be? This is our first post-release newsletter!

Below, please find the latest HG:L happenings.

Multiplayer Patch 0.7
As the players who participated in our Test Center server found out earlier today, the 0.7 content update will be launching for both the Shulgoth (US) and Sydonai (EU) servers this week.

Big additions in this patch include a massive memory usage fix, Nightmare difficulty rebalancing, and a new “Looking for Group” interface.

A number of notorious bugs were also squashed in this build. Impassible maps and quest monsters that refused to spawn are a thing of the past.

With 0.7 subscribers can enjoy additional content in the form of the Transmogrifier — an item used for extra inventory and recipe crunching — and twelve new unique items.

Bill & Stonehenge
Curious about Hellgate: London’s first major ongoing content release for subscribers? It’s what we call the Stonehenge Expansion and Bill Roper is here to fill you in…

“We’ve decided to take the time necessary to make our first major content patch right. If there is one lesson we’ve learned from launching Hellgate: London, our releases should be a question of “what” and not “when.”

We were pushing to get Stonehenge released before the end of the year, but we realized that we wouldn’t be doing the right thing to push it out before it was ready and properly tested. We’re still on our schedule and meeting our original promise of providing a major quarterly update. We just felt that we would be doing everyone a disservice to push this out before it was right.

We are, however, going to have the first in our continuing Hellgate chronicles, entitled Stonehenge, into Test Center before the holidays. This is so we can get a lot of people finding the issues and getting us feedback over their holiday breaks.”
— Bill Roper

If all goes well, you’ll see the Stonehenge Expansion hit the Test Center this week, with the full release scheduled to launch in January.

Single Player Patch 0.6
Hellgaters who prefer solo play have been eagerly awaiting this news… SP 0.6 is now available. Some major fixes include issues with the mini-game, quest items, and unique drops. Fresh content includes rebalanced skills, more chests in secret areas, and user interface tweaks. These adjustments match SP to MP 0.6 and shall greatly improve your single player experience.

So Long!
From everyone here at Flagship Studios (yes, even Sydonai), we wish you all the best this holiday season and we hope 2008 sees you all safe and well. See you online!