Hellgate London - Interview @ Shacknews

Shacknews follows up the Hellgate: London hubbub with an article format interview with Bill Roper:

We'll probably have some kind of detail in the next month or two as to our pricing model, but the design is both a standalone as well as an MMO, so we want to be able to hit both markets just like we did with the Diablo titles. There are a lot of people that in some instances actually can't get online, and there are also people who are online but for gaming they aren't sure if they want to make that commitment to pay the monthly fee and go online. They can get the game and play the standalone, and get 30 or 40 hours' worth of gameplay. If they like that, they can go online and we'll have a good ramp of some kind for them to go online and check out some of the services. Exactly how we handle that, whether it'll be a trial or whether they can check out some of the game for free, we're still hammering out the final details. Then beyond that it will be pay to play, and again we're about a month out from announcing more on that. But what you're getting with that service is you're getting 24/7 customer service, secure servers, databases, and the biggest thing is that you're getting continuing content. We'll have a full dev team that's on the project from day one. Actually, right when you buy the game, when it launches there will already be content available that you can't get in the single-player--additional monsters, areas, all the community and economy things, you'll be able to form guilds, auction houses, all those things you expect from MMOs.