Hellgate: London Servers Shut Down

In preparation of the new free-to-play format, Bandai-Namco has shut down the North American server and forum for Hellgate: London. You can view the final-minute reports from either HellForge or Pumping Irony.

Former Flagship Community Director Diane (Tiggs) Migliaccio yes, the same Tiggs that SOE fired for allegedly taking the players’ side after the NGE was released (many opinions on that debacle, your mileage may vary) was back yesterday and spent nearly the entire day chatting and saying goodbye to Hellgaters. She’s currently the Community Director for Fallen Earth but she was given her powers back for Hellgate’s final day and placed in charge of (flipping the switch) for the forums. Someone else was in charge of shutting off the servers; if she ever said who it was, I wasn’t online for it. During the final couple hours, Tiggs went from simply chatting with us to using the Announcement channel, which is how the aforementioned uninformed players discovered the game was shutting down.

Tiggs’ first announcement read (Reminder that the Hellgate London NA and EU servers as well as the forums will be shut down at midnight CST.) That’s when the uninformed started asking (Is this for maintenance? How long will the server be down?) and some of us began explaining what was happening.

At 11pm CST, Tiggs announced (Sadly the servers and forums will be shutting down in one hour.) Every so often she would update with a countdown of time remaining.
(…)
The last few lines of chat that came across my screen were:

Take care all, let’s kick ass wherever we go!

love u all

dang this really SUX

bye everyone!

Seconds after that final goodbye, there was a sudden jolt of lag as we were all sent back to the Hellgate title screen and greeted with the message of a virtual world that no longer exists: