Re: Hellgate impressions

Jim Vieira wrote:
"Nostromo" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thus spake "Magnate" :> GMT, Anno Domini:

I'd be prepared to bet that Diablo 2 would not have achieved anywhere near
the success it did if Blizzard had tried the subscription model.

In its day, no. WoW has proven otherwise by 2007 (just have a look at how
little extra free quality content the sheep got for all those sub fees
*shudder* - no, don't include the extra-cost expansion!). Not that there
aren't plenty free-to-play games out there with lots of add-on content on a
regular basis (GW or AO anyone? ;), but some ppl here need to get over
themselves really. This ain't 2000 any more & this ain't Blizzard or Diablo
2. And I'm glad, considering how those sheisters treated their long-time
customers & fans, many who bought multiple copies, exactly *because* the
game was free to play online. If you weren't there, on BNet, from v1.07 or
earlier, to the bitter end (1.10), getting ignored, getting treated like a
2nd-class peasant, watching your favourite game allowed to be butchered by
hackers, crackers & other sociopaths, watching it then get butchered by
Buzzard themselves in the shitful attempt to send ppl over to WoW, well
then, you really have nothing to compare to or complain about imo.

I agree with you about how badly bnet was supported in recent years, and
frankly I find it inexcusable. I thought I read somewhere that Diablo II sold
like 6-7 million copies in it's lifetime. And of course, they are raking in
bazillions of dollars for WoW. It's not like they couldn't have afforded even
just some simple things.

Yuppers. I actually started playing D2 via TCP with the missy last week (a couple zonscum of all things - her bowa & my java). We might restart with the Median 2008 mod which I rather like (almost like a new game).

For example, are you familiar with the "realm down" bull***?

I got out during 1.10 when the Warden filthware started fucking up almost every HC game I tried to play (& I wasn't going back to soft*** land :). Way to kill a fly with a cannon Buzzard!

If you create games too often, or even do simple things like spin the
mouse wheel through a bunch of skills too quickly, you get booted from
the realm for anywhere from 15 minutes to maybe even days.

I understand the desire to keep things under control a bit, but this system
is and always has been far too restrictive. I'm sure it's just to reduce the
server capacity needed and lower the costs.

I really believe it was (& still is) a systematic method on their part to reduce the D2 population to zero ASAP; initially because they wanted ppl over on WoW for the sub fees; now, just because they don't want to keep paying the one network/programming/support monkey (what support you ask lol!?) to keep the servers/game running. For a game that's grossed well over $100million for the company, a game that mostly funded fucking World of Wankers, well, that is simply unforgivable in my books. Which is why I'll put my money into GW/HGL if for no other reason than to pump up the competition.

With all the money Diablo II raked in, not to mention all the money WoW
raked in, did they really need to be such cheap bastards like that? And
as you said, they don't even try to maintain it anymore in terms of hacking
and cheating.

It's become a joke from what I hear - like a graveyard relic of glories long past, a testing ground for new hacks & exploits, little more.
They really should just decommission the fucker & let people start up some independent servers. Oh wait! Can't do that - might steal a few 1000 bucks off WoW - what will the lawyers & bean-counters & rich arsewipes on the board say!? Ptoooiii!!!

Battle.net is an advertised free feature for many Blizzard games. They
have an obligation to make it functional and support it at least a little bit.
I'm not going so far as to say they've totally abandoned it and let it
go completely to hell. But they are not exactly taking good care of it
at all.

Understatement of the year award goes to Jim! ;)

The only real sins Flagship have made here is not including a TCP
multiplayer option & aligning themselves with EA <G>.

I read on the official forums that they didn't include lan multiplay because
it would more easily allow people to back-engineer their server code. It's
also why the single player client is seperate, because it's code architecture
is purposely different than the multiplayer. Apparently (for example)
Diablo II in single player is still a client/server model, just that your own
computer is the client and the server. If they did it similar in HGL, you
could see how people could figure out how it works to setup private servers.

Yeah, but it begs the question how much piss-farting around with this sort of thing they wasted quality content & QA time on...?

This is something I think that points to their arrogance. They were thinking
so far ahead.. assuming this game was going to be this huge, must have hit
that people would be rushing out to create private servers ala BNET and
WOW. Irritating lan players, having two seperate code bases to maintain
for patches (single player vs. multiplayer). I think they were over confident
and worried too much about the success they percieved was automatically
going to be coming their way.

Well, that must come from the top down, as it does in most companies. The workers always reflect their leadership, one way or another. Is Roper the main headgrower here then?

--
Nostromo
.

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