Hellgate London - Bill Roper Interview @ Gamespot

Gamespot is featuring an interview with Flagship Studios CEO and Founder Bill Roper. The interview focuses on the recent flap about MMO-style charges rumored to be coming down the pipe:

GameSpot: What are the plans for the multiplayer component of Hellgate: London? Will there be free multiplayer gameplay? Are there plans for some kind of subscription content? If so, what would be the difference between free and subscription multiplayer?
Bill Roper: We have always had the intention of providing rich, robust, massively multiplayer online gaming experiences for our players. This means that we will be providing everything from a secure client/server infrastructure to 24/7 customer support to maintaining a complete live team to provide not only balance and bug fixes, but more importantly, continuing, ongoing content updates to the game. And while we are still finalizing the commercial and game aspects of our online plans, we can tell players that there will definitely be significant free online play.
GS: Regardless of the multiplayer situation, you will be able to play Hellgate: London entirely as a single-player game, correct?
BR: Of course! This has never changed and has always been a key part of our design. We know that not everyone has the ability or desire to play with others or online. Just as with the Diablo series, we have created a complete single-player experience whose longevity of gameplay benefits from all of the randomization, rarity, and customization you'd expect from us.

More information.

Oh great a MMO-centric game with token single player full of five thousand randomized iterations of a few tilesets. You know it's going to be a winner. This will probably be another boring single player game like Dungeon Siege was.

Nope. It will probably be even more boring .

Do they give classes somewhere in how to talk like this? At least he didn't use the words "epic" or "immersive'.

I refuse to condemn this game til I play it, tho. I really want it to be good. I have overcome my dismay at the FPS elements, and am holding on to a glimmer of hope that single-player will at least be fun.

They pretty well said that all new (and better) content would be exclusive to MP. I was getting pretty excited until that revelation. I'll still keep an ear open for reviews, though, because it sounded like a great game up until then.

I hope they make it a really good shooter at its' core, because at least that will ameliorate whatever RPG-lite issues there are … and we can just have a fun action game.