Yes, but they have that painted jeep, remember? And the skinny model in jeans shorts?

LATEST NEWS UPDATE!
Reference:
http://forum.iahgames.com/hellgate/showthread.php?p=36674#post36674

[Urgent News] Maintenance postponed. New announcement by tomorrow.
Dear gamers,
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We have decided to postpone today's maintenance exercise.

Another announcement would be presented tomorrow to inform all our valued gamers further on the implementation of Patch-0.

We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you and we wish you a good day ahead.

Team HGL
MPT
--------------------------------------------------------------
-END TRANSMISSION

To add insult to injury, the patch 0 implementation has been delayed to tomorrow, where we will await some new announcements.

This was answered just a few posts above. Also, they would have said if it was going to be US/EU as well.

The wipe is only for the Asian servers, not the US/EU servers.

So is this wipe going to be on all the HellGate Servers, or is it actually just going to be on the Asian fourms?

This is an update.

Much of the players in the IAHGames SEA server still do not know of the impending server wipe that is scheduled in 6 hours.

There has been no emails, no ingame notification, no communication other than the announcement on the website regarding this wipe. People on the /chat channels are totally shocked about the upcoming wipe.

I expect another 20 pages of "why are my characters deleted?" threads on the IAH forums tomorrow full of flames. I would have expected IAH to have at least some professionalism in handling this issue, but alas no. They continue to provide substandard service.

Is it that hard to email everyone that has an account?
Is it that hard to announce serverwide ingame?
Is it that hard to have announcements on login?
Apparently so.

A few people have begun to look for the US version of the game to buy instead (even though playing at 500ms ping averages would suck).

You might be wondering just how many players there might be on the SEA servers. I'll give some observations. There is 1 SEA server. The name of this server is called "Alliance". The highest concurrent number of players online anyone has ever seen since the launch is about 1200 players (there was a IAH forum thread asking this). The highest /chat channel number I've ever joined is "chat-12". Tonight, there were some 300 players online, most of which remain oblivious to the wipe until mentioned on /chat.

**** happens we all know that, and database errors are near impossible to fix, but the compensation they're offering is a bad joke. The same confusion that happened in Beta will probably happen again, as Xinhuan wrote in his post:

I'm one of those who has been excited to play Hellgate anxiously for 3 years, just because of the Diablo 2 nostalgia, I even thought I'd be quitting World of Warcraft for this. But I guess I'm hanging to WoW for a while longer -.-

And all that marketing they've gone through in Asia, for shame..

Edit: If I was a SEA player I'd definitely quit and even sue the companies, and if I REALLY wanted to play Hellgate I'd try to find a US/EU version and play with some dignity.. And don't mind my grammar I'm 70% asleep right now.

whoa, this makes the EU launch seem really professional, even though it is shoddy at best. 30 days of free subscription, wow. that sure makes up for the 3 characters that everyone leveled up to 22 after discovering they couldnt get higher than that, as well as losing the bottom half of the stash filled with legendaries that dissapeared because of the subscription mess. The only compensation which would be even remotely appropriate would be to give every single player in the region Founder's Offer for free. As well as firing the incompetent asses that have managed to **** this up so completely. I will sure as hell think twice before ever buying another Flagship Studios title, which will probably never happen again. I would be very surprised if anyone in Asia will actually continue playing HGL after this travesty.

Just the Asia server.

They are only doing a character wipe on the asian realm, or on US and Europe too?

Well said. I couldn't have said it better. However, our hands are tied at the moment because IAHGames is the only allowed to provide server for Hellgate London. It seem that the official stance is that "you guys should be lucky that there is even an Asian server". There are talks of going down to CASE (the local organisation to settle scams and service disputes) but chances of any refunds or a fairer compensation looks slim.

I am amazed you managed to hold out for that long. I have been looking forward to this game ever since it was announced, but now I have even chosen not to pick it up at all. It is a shame things have gone the way they did, and FFS and their partners have their reasons for this to be sure. Doing things like this, in such a fashion are none other then unacceptable. I would love the know why they executed the things the way they did in the end. EA pressure? Out of money?

This game has/had so much potential, but I think it is safe to say that it was unable to live up to the expectations. The core gameplay mechanism is good, but everything around it is medicure, bad, or just not there. It seems to me that had a great hand, but managed to overplay it anyways.

Reading your comment Xinhuan, I'm honestly shocked. Things have been bad enough with the US/European launch, but what you are saying is simply unacceptable behavior and borderline scamming of customers by IAHGames. Flagship as a game developer working directly with IAHGames should be held accountable for these issues as they have stated themselves that THEY are the ones who give the final approval for launching their game, they are responsible for making sure their publishing partners are able to deliver their product up to the standards they set themselves.

I'm a long time Diablo fan, I have played countless hours of both the original Diablo and Diablo 2, and I have always put trust in the core team behind those games. I played during the Alpha and Beta of HGL, and despite the abysmal state in which the game was launched, I've always defended Flagship and credited their rocky start to their lack of management experience and having to build everything the entire infrastructure of their company while developing the game. Having read this however, I have completely lost any respect I had left for Flagship. I have purchased the game, but I will not subscribe and in all honesty I don't think I could bring myself to spend my hard earned money on another Flagship title. In business and in life, some things can't be excused and Flagship, whether by action or inaction, have managed to destroy my faith in them, and I'm not even suffering from the issues in SEA. It saddens me that I've come to feel this way, but in my opinion, HGL doesn't deserve to succeed.

I am a Singapore player of HGL and I would like to share the appalling story of the quality of service Southeast Asia (SEA) players have been on the receiving end of from IAHGames. To many of us, this is the last straw that is making a good number of players quit HGL for good.


1. The beta client were sold to us in the retail version of the game DVDs on both the Normal and Collector's edition. The amount of bugs present in the game is appalling. The servers are also running on beta, with the level cap at level 22. This level cap wasn't known to us, it was only discovered when players couldn't level past 22.

2. The are no GMs in the game. None. No way to contact any either. The only way to submit a ticket is via the IAHGames website.

3. After the launch, IAHGames announced that patch0 would be applied "soon". The following 4 days were absolute silence about when "soon" is. After 4 days, someone managed to call up the IAHGames CEO and they released a statement which revealed the patching process which comes to the following point.

4. SEA patches are at least 2 days slower than the US counterparts because the SEA patches are different from the US ones. This requires a recompile and a test that takes about 2 days.

So already we're behind the US servers because they are on patch 0.1 already and we're still on beta. There are no halloween events, no Fawkes, etc.

5. IAHGames then decided to take the servers down for maintenance to increase the level cap to 50 as well as lock out the bottom half of the stash and limiting character creation to the first 3 slots. For some reason, the beta server assumed everyone had subscription rights and everyone had a full stash and were able to create up to 4 characters. The taking down of the server to patch it has NO in-game warning. The server simple disconnected everyone without a message or anything. This is really unprofessional.

6. Moreever, there is insufficient notification given to players regarding the locking out of the lower half of the stash. The only notice given was 24 hours from the IAHGames website. There were no ingame messages, no login notices, no emails, nothing. Players did not have a chance to move their uniques and other items out before they were locked out and became inaccessible. Morever, many people did not even know the bottom half of the stash were subscriber-only content or thought that an additional 8x6 slots became available that isn't normally viewable if you subscribed.

7. Additionally, the patch locked out the 4th character slot to no fault of the player without compensation to players who created their character there. IAHGames are unable to move the characters out of that slot to any of the first 3 slots. Many players did not know that non-subscribing accounts are only limited to 3 characters.

8. On top of all this, subscriptions are not available in SEA until end of December. Yet these chars/items remain locked out as per above and we were told to "wait for subscriptions".

10. Throughout all of this, the lack of communication/updates between IAH and the customer base regarding the issues is appalling. There is only 1 Community Manager on the IAHGames forums and 1 forum moderator. There is barely 1 message per day from the CM. The forum moderator is not an employee of IAHGames and freely expresses his opinion on issues, half of which are "the CM is really doing a good job" type of posts, and doesn't maintain any sort of neutrality as expected of someone of moderator status.

11. Another 5 days passes without information. IAHGames then announces a server wipe a week after retail release due to the inability of the servers to be patched to the retail patch0. It took them 11 days to determine that they could not patch the beta servers to retail without the server wipe.

As compensation, IAHGames is giving everyone 30 days of free subscription. This is seen as an insult because money is NOT the issue here, and a mere $10 worth of compensation, which can barely buy 2 meals in a single day, is hardly any compensation for the appalling quality of service so far. This compensation tactic is widely viewed as a marketing ploy instead and angered even more players.

12. Also note that SEA customers are unable to post, or even view or read the official US HGL forums unless they had a beta account. Apart from a "contact us" link on the FSS website, there are no other means of contacting FSS regarding the issues SEA are receiving.


As HGL is the sole monopoly of HGL server provider in SEA, there are no alternatives at all. The level of unprofessionalism is unprecendented for a game that is going to have a subscription service. The SEA version of the game cannot be used to play on the US servers either. Now consider also that the game sold on the DVDs is the beta client. This means on top of all the issues above, we have had to contend with the following issues:

1. Memory leak causes windows to complain and thresh and eventually the game crashes. Game sometimes hangs/lockups for any or no reason. Game sometimes exits to desktop for no reason. Why does a game need to use 800 mb of ram when just loaded to the login screen?

2. Characters getting stuck and are unable to move. The only way to resolve this is to either die (most of the time, this is impossible), or to log out and log back in, which wipes any progress made on the maps. There is NO /stuck command in the beta client.

3. Many quests not completing or unable to be completed until restarting HGL and redoing them. Some mobs do not give quest credit on killing them.

4. Ravagers do not sync properly between server and client making them hard to kill. In some cases, they bug out and become completely unkillable.

5. Line of sight not obeyed or hitbox issues through walls on some mobs.

6. There is double fadein/out when zoning of the loading screen, and this can sometimes take as long as 30 seconds, which is somewhat ridiculous.

7. Buddy list not working completely. Gives an error on logging in.

8. Action bars (the skills on it) disappearing on zoning.

9. Characters not gaining stat/skill points past-level 22 when the level cap was raised on the server side. Experience points were gained but players could not lvl up. When the cap was raised, players logged in to find themselves at level 28 but gained no skill/stat points from those 6 levels. This was unable to be resolved.

10. Game crashes forces the player to replay the map(s) again. So does getting stuck, which require a relog.

11. Items placed on drones are sometimes lost, usually due to crashes.

12. Extreme flashy effects bring the FPS down to a halt/freeze. Another major FPS lag occurs when opening the stash, or switching weapon sets when viewing the stash due to recalculation of stats to show the equipability icon of every item. The game can literally just hang for a few seconds when doing this.

13. Players are getting teleported to another zone out of nowhere for no reason.


There are also numerous gameplay design issues that are extremely annoying, need to be tweaked, or should have been in the game by launch in the first place.

1. Not able to split stacks of items without using the crafting vendor. And that's crude at best.
2. Repetitive tilesets across all 5 acts, unlike the 5 very unique acts in Diablo 2.
3. Minigame icons are hard to remember what they mean.
4. The best available gear are often crafted from the vendor.
5. The monsters that phase in and out of invisibility does it too often.
6. The chat UI can be improved tremendously.

If you have read the SomethingAwful frontpage review, although it is somewhat funny, the article does ring of truth. Now do not get me wrong. The game is pretty fun, i enjoyed playing it. It has many elements that are nostalgic of Diablo2.

However, IAHGames has ruined it for many of us as well and confidence in the company has been severely shaken in the community. There are no promises or reassurances that another wipe will not occur again in the future due to patch failure or other reasons. HGL has potential, but it is currently nowhere near release status, particularly in the SEA region where IAHGames did not have the sufficient time or manpower to ensure a smooth launch. We have all paid $80 to beta test the game (the CE box costs $80 SGD, the normal edition was unavailable on launch day, only on the day after).

Some people even feel that they have been cheated by IAHGames, and that selling the beta client on the retail DVDs is tantamount to a scam. Although one can argue that the $80 is for the single player content, anything mutiplayer is provided free and "as is", no patch0 for single player exists for download either, so all the bugs listed above still exist for a supposed "retail quality game".

Thanks for reading.

- Xinhuan (some of you might remember me from Diablo2 or WoW)

Rush, this isn't FSS so much as IAHGames, and their preparations. Sure, a bit it FSS too, but it is just. so. much! I am extremely sad for all SEA friends =((

OMG.this is the drop,this is realy disappointing ..i have waitet so long for this game ,iam in lvl 33..an i have to start over.. no way ..i do that ..with all the errors an bugs,an ****.an now this..they only wants your money ..an the dont careless about u an other players..... all gamers who purchased both the Standard and Collector's Edition Box Sets 4 weeks of free subscription benefits..... ofcourse u have to subscrip ,,both the Standard and Collector's Edition Box

i never paly this game again..an i teel my friend's no to..

Wow.

Tube of lube?

I guess it's better that they do this now rather than spend another week finding out that a wipe is required. But ouch. That sets a really bad precedent.

Makes me wonder why they wasted all that advertising money on Asia. Should've hired a few extra programmers...

Actually, it seems that the standard box set has the free 30 days subscription. But it's more of a correct on the stick. After 2 months of subscriptions, players still need to pay to enjoy their "compensation". Many SEA players are complaining about the 30-days free compensation but honestly at this point there don't seem to be any good idea which pleases all.

That is ridiculous.

Patch 0 should been applied on release day, as a company with any degree of competence would have found out that the patch could not be applied without a complete character wipe.

Free subscription is hardly equal recompense for the hours that have been essentially wasted.

It's just one failure and mess up after the other with Hellgate; disappointing to say the least.

Wow, that's so shoddy.

Seems that people in Singapore get 30 days free already, although it seems that it isn't even available there yet anyway? "when the service becomes active around the end of the year".

Man I would not be happy. I really don;t know what FSS have been doing for the past few years with the game