The cake is a lie

Portal - Credits - Spoiler follows

Spoiler Alert!!!!! Spoiler Alert!!!!

Just for the sheer awesomeness!



Just finished it. And it's one of the best games I've ever played. Possibly the best.

Straits Times - Singapore - Hellgate: London O

Quoted by a poster in the Hellgate London Alliance IAH forums, this is apparently from the Singapore Straits Times:

"It's hell for gamers with Hellgate bug fix

Gamers up in arms after 'patch' offered to iron out bugs threatens to wipe out saved games of thousands
By Oo Gin Lee

UPROAR: The furore over the 'patch' has sent IAH, the operators of the multi-player PC game's South-east Asia server, back to the drawing board to find a better solution. -- PHOTO: FLAGSHIP STUDIOS

A SMALL piece of software that will iron out the bugs in a popular multi-player PC game called Hellgate London is causing a furore among its players.

If the 'patch' is installed by Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), the operators of the South-east Asia server of the game, it threatens to wipe out the saved games of thousands who have been playing the game since its launch two weeks ago.

The resulting uproar has sent IAH back to the drawing board to find a solution which is not so drastic.

Thousands of irate responses had been posted on IAH's website forums, with many demanding that the company rectify the situation, and some threatening to boycott it.

The backlash has dented the reputation of IAH, which set a milestone for Singapore as the first local company to operate a top-tier multi-player online game.

It has sold 35,000 copies of Hellgate to game distributors here and in South-east Asia. About 7,000 were sold to players here within the first two days of the game's release.

Mr Roland Ong, chief executive officer of IAH, said the problem arose because the South-east Asia game server was launched a day earlier than the ones in the United States.

The game was launched in the US with the patch already installed. The Singapore game was launched first without the patch and IAH did not anticipate it would cause problems later.

It turned out that the patch was incompatible with the saved games.

Yesterday, IAH said it was working round-the-clock with the US developers of the game, Flagship Studios, to resolve the problem.

Mr Bill Roper, chief executive of Flagship Studios, said: 'We have refused to accept a character wipe as a viable solution.'

He said that Flagship's engineers were currently implementing solutions that would not do this.

The new patch is expected to be ready before Nov 22.

IAH had initially offered a 30-day free subscription for gamers affected by the wipe, but gamers felt this could not compare with the hours they had put into the game.

While some gamers welcomed the news of a new solution, many remained sceptical about IAH's ability to deliver.

Software developer Mark Chang, 29, who has also put in over 50 hours of play into the game, was unconvinced: 'I have no more confidence in them. We will just have to wait and see.'" from Hellgate: London Official Forum

Hellgate Alliance Asia - No wipe - Good & Bad

Message from IAHGames CEO, Roland Ong:

IAHGames made an innovative effort, together with our partners Flagship and Hanbitsoft, to bring about successfully a World Wide sim-launch in South East Asia (SEA) of a large-scale Triple-A title, Hellgate London. This has never been done by other game operators at this scale and comes with challenges. Last week on our official forum we announced that due to difficulties in implementing the latest upgrade to the Live Game Service the upgrade could result in a Character Wipe, which would have deleted all in-game experience earned by gamers over the past 2 weeks. The problem was a result of SEA going LIVE simultaneously with the USA servers in Calendar time -- but due to the actual time difference, SEA actually released 1 day ahead of the USA. This resulted in a slightly different software build than the USA servers. The upgrade, known as Patch 0, intended to bring our servers to the same level as the USA. The complication arose because our database was already being filled with in-game data from our gamers, and this in-game data was a risk for corruption. However, because gamers were earnestly requesting us to avoid a character wipe, we delayed the upgrade patch, worked round the clock, and around the globe, for the solution. We are pleased to announce the solution today.

Hellgate Alliance

Terrific news for those who didn't want a wipe.... but no, wait....

They said they were going to wipe.... and so, many players, thinking their characters were condemned, deliberately messed up their characters in an act of of suicidal defiance - some people even deleted their characters in response to the news of the wipe. Oh boy. IAH messed up badly.

Terrible communication on their part.

This... is why they call it Hellgate.

Hellgate London - Is this the worst incident in online gaming?

Oh lol /cry Is this the worst incident in online gaming? - Hellgate:London Official Forum

Bugs & fixes for Hellgate:London errors

Two links to pages of bugs and fixes for Hellgate London (more bugs than fixes tho' atm):

Fixes for Hellgate:London Errors, Crash, bugs and common problems. | Gaming News Link

Hellgate London demo Error and bugs Fixes | Gaming News Link

Good article from Kotaku about Hellgate Asia's wipe

Article from Kotatku entitled "Asian Hellgate: London Servers To Get Wiped"

The best bits are the comments. Here are a few:

"Wow, that's terrible. I had such high hopes for this game until they finally released some gameplay videos. From that point I knew it would be a stinker. My friend has a 5000$ pc and he can't even play it because it's so buggy.

Now a full server wipe? Bad form...bad, bad, bad."

---

"Hellgate is pretty addictive, but I have to admit it's been plagued with more bugs and issues than most MMOs."

---

"These guys come from Blizzard, kings of the "...when it's done" mantra. I don't remember ever played any Blizzard game that had any catastrophic bugs like this, even right out the door.

I wish they would have gave this a little more dev time. It should have never made it's Halloween debut. If anything, this has just ruined the Flagship name in a lot of people's eyes."

---

"i bought hellgate for my new pc. i can't even play it, the memory leak on load crashes my computer. Even after shutting the game down, it takes a tow on my pc. I recently finished cod4 on my pc(all high) and handle crysis med/high, yet i cant do hellgate.

Not only that, my items have been disappearing from my character. I could only wish for a refund that could never be granted. Diablo creator's sold the title, but w/o Blizzard, they're hopeless. Btw, nice tech support, no gm's and office is only up on weekdays."

---

"Look, this isn't Flagship's fault. The players in Asia simply tried to move too quickly over the giant flaming pentagram tile in the chaos sanctuary--thereby causing the servers to hemorrhage real human blood and then collapse."

HanbitSoft to blame for Asian Hellgate server fiasco?

Here's the latest gossip from the Hellgate London SEAsian forums:

"First of all, everyone knows HanbitSoft is the publisher for SEA server right? Basically, IAHgames provides the server infrastructure and HBS is incharge of patching the servers and bring the content to speed. So in a nutshell it's FSS -> HBS -> IAH. That's why everything takes forever.

Today's cock up is because... HBS isn't ready to deliver what was originally promised. I still don't know the exact details, but I'm digging. Seems like IAH is getting blamed for HBS's incompetence." Link

And later in the same thread:

"here's more tibits about the insides of what's going on.

- During just before the launch of HGL in SEA, IAH asked if it was okay to proceed with the current server version client that FSS sent to them (which is the ultra buggy crap we are playing on). FSS gave them the green light.

- They went ahead, and then the shit started rolling in. Tried to retrify the issues by engaging HBS tech staff, but there were issues with the database." Link

IAH test beta Hellgate London on paying customers?

Feelings are running hot on the IAH Hellgate London forums about the server reset and the character wipe.

Here's one angry forum thread that makes a good point, that IAH released an untested Beta version of the game:

"In short, IAHgames just pushed out a beta server on production environment and cheat us all."

Probably not a beta, but certainly not tested before the launch.

Hellgate London IAH South East Asia - character wipe

Here's what I posted on Hellgate London South East Asia's forum

All I want is to get back to my level without having to grind it.

The free subscription is worth absolutely nothing to me. If I had more spare time, it might worth more. But I don't, and it's not.

Let me explain... I'm in my forties, wife, kids, etc... Therefore, very little spare time. And so for me, the subscription IAH is offering is worth less than the value I place on my time. That's life.

So how about this IAH... here's my request: please keep the free subscription and use the money to pay someone to level my characters. That's business.

And it works for me XD

My point is this... how much is this subscription really worth?

Could IAH find anyone willing to spend time leveling my characters for the cost value of the subscription they're offering me? ... without exploiting anyone... That means no children who need pocket money and no out-of-work WoW gold farmers. =)

Think it over IAH. Let me know.

/wink

Evoker level 17

Pretty much how I play my evoker.

Hellgate equipment stats - what do they do/mean?

What do these stats mean?Well for starters I've noticed that the ARCANE SHIELD 1 and BROM'S CURSE 1 will give me a buff that pops up under certain circumstances and is tied to my Shift Key.

In the pic ARCANE SHIELD pops up on my Shift Key:

And no, I don't have Arcane Shield as one of my chosen skills. It buffs off the item. Sweet.

As for the other stats, well here's a full list explaining all the defensive enhancements with an intro.

And here are the offensive enhancements.

Hellgate teething problems - Asian server

The big Hellgate MMO baby is having teething problems. Here's a selection from our Asian server:

• 'Memory exhausted' error game crashes (even with 4 Gig of RAM)
• Other game crashes - quite frequent
• Cannot see characters in same group
• Cannot level beyond 22 - xp and talent points unrewarded
• Server crash
• etc...

Some of this was due to the Hellgate server admin guys (IAH) not being able to apply Patch Zero at the right time.

No big deal. Just teething problems. Apparently there are problems on the US and EU servers too. So blah. nvm

However the big problem on the Asian server side has been the slow communication from IAH about what's going on. Here's a post on the forum that sums it up nicely.

There's also a rumor going around about wiping everyone's characters and resetting the server back to day zero to apply the patch and fix the problems. But there's been no word about this from the server administrators. hmmm.

Killed Murmur

It's not easy to get everyone together at the right time, but we managed it. Thanks to Wind, Nali and Jay at the start, Daak, Kem and I (Tik) managed an instance and got the first key fragment of the Kara attunement quest.

Since D, K and I aren't on US time, we don't get much opportunity to commit to instance runs - either too late or too early. So this was a nice treat.

I also learnt loads about crowd control (being a noob at instances). There's something for my mage to work on.

Actually I learnt lots. How to use Team Speak (never used it before). How to time my sheeping. How to manage my aggro better. And to remember to fix my damn armor before joining a group in an instance. How could I forget that, doh! Poor Wind sounded very tired by the end.

It was a lotafun. /happy dance

Hellgate Windows Vista patch

If Hellgate won't install on your Vista machine, you need a patch. Here it is, from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

Evoker skills

Hellgate London Slash Commands

Hit slash / then Tab through to find these slash commands or type them in as follows:

/accept = accept a party invite

/bug = submit a bug report

/channels = list all chat channels

/channeljoin [channel] = join a channel (e.g. /channeljoin chat-2)

/channelleave [channel]= quit a channel

/chat = chat to server default channel

/disband = disband a party.

/fps = shows frames per second in-game top left of screen.

/ignore [name] = ignores chat from that player (great for whiners or 'Nightmare' bores).

/invite [name] = allows you to invite a player to your party (even if you're not in the same zone).

/kick [name] = kick a player from a party.

/l [text] = chat local zone (same as town).

/leave = leave a party.

/lfg [text] = Looking For Group channel.

/newbie [text] = your general chat command.

/p [text] = party chat.

/ping = shows your ping rate to the server.

/r [text] = reply to last tell/whisper.

/quit = quit the game directly to desktop.

/s text = allows players to talk in the chat-1 or chat-2 channel.

/t [name] [text] = Allows you to whisper any player in game if you know their name. (works like /w)

/town [text] = town chat

/trade [text] = trade channel

/w [name] [text] = allows you to whisper any player in game if you know their name (works like /t).

Hellgate - mini game

Wondering what those symbols are that keep changing and blinking in the bottom right of your screen? It's the Hellgate mini game.

Usually there's a combo of 3 symbols with some numbers in them. If you complete the numbers, you get extra loot rewards. There are 4 categories:

1. Killing X number of monsters with some damage type.
2. Killing Y foes of some monster type.
3. Looting Z item types from a monster.
4. Finishing any quest objective.

For a breakdown of what these symbols mean, visit:

http://wiki.theamazonbasin.com/index.php/Mini-game

or

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/hgl/forums/index.php?showtopic=1970

Hellgate - Kiting with my swarm rifle

My leading evoker tactic at the moment.

1. Equip swarm rifle (it fires a swarm of flying green bugs):

2. Clear an exit path

3. Run towards a group of mobs and fire away with your swarm rifle

4. Reverse back down the cleared exit path while firing all the way (aim towards the mobs as you fire - but you don't need to be too accurate)

5. Watch as bugs fly around the place eating/exploding mobs, boxes, barrels, etc... Fun, fun, fun...

6. Loot

It's a great gun. Once the bugs have finished with one mob they go for the next one. As long as you keep the gun going and you keep moving backwards as they advance, they'll all die.

I did the boss guy in the British Museum using this trick 3 times on different evokers. I just ran him and his cronies round and round the circular staircase in the center of the museum. Works a treat on opening boxes too.

I'm not sure how this compares with the 'Swarm' skill evokers get at level 25.

w00tmaster - get on the bus

London Routemaster (the big red London buses are called Routemasters) with added w00t.


w00tmaster >