Hellgate London - Koreans Love It

Flagship would like to thank you for your beta testing services and announce that their real market - Korea - really loves Hellgate: London:

FLAGSHIP STUDIOS’ HELLGATE™: LONDON CELEBRATES THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ONLINE KOREAN LAUNCH IN THREE YEARS


San Francisco, CA (April 11th, 2008) - Flagship Studios today announced that its action role-playing game Hellgate: London has become the most successful online video game launch in Korea of the past three years with over 1 million accounts registered within the first two weeks of its open beta test. Hellgate: London is the first online game in over three years to use a monthly subscription business model.

After launching the open beta on January 15th, Hellgate: London quickly rose to the ninth most played online game, fifth most popular RPG and most popular online beta game in PC Cafes*, with over 1 million accounts. Hellgate: London was released commercially on February 22nd, and achieved record sales in its first week of presales.

“To become the most successful launch in Korea for over three years is an incredible achievement,” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “This milestone wouldn’t have been possible for us to achieve without the incredible support of our publishing partner, Hanbitsoft, and our dedicated community in Korea. We look forward to expanding the Hellgate universe and building upon this success in the future.”

“Flagship Studios are well aware of how the Asian market operates very differently to the Western territories” said Alex Kim, CEO of HanbitSoft, “By listening to players’ feedback and through constant updates to the game, Hellgate: London will continue to be an incredible success throughout Asia.”

Hellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games and the action of first-person shooter titles, while offering infinite playability with dynamically generated levels, items, enemies, and events. Whether online or off, a player creates a heroic character, completes quests, and battles through innumerable hordes of demons to advance through experience levels and branching skill paths. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly customizable appearances, and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment allow players to create their own unique hero.

For more information please visit the official Hellgate: London site at www.hellgatelondon.com

*According to Gametrics and Game Report

More information.

It is a miracle that they got 1 million accounts for a game that is 1/10 as good as the more popular mmorpgs in Korea but since they haven't really mentioned numbers for actual paying customers it might be because it is free.

Just to let you know the top mmorpgs in Korea are mostly free to play with microtransactions and have far more variety and are much less buggy then Hellgate: London.

Originally Posted by guenthar
It is a miracle that they got 1 million accounts

They didn't. They got 1 million accounts for open beta. That says absolutely nothing about how many active accounts they have now.

Some of the disillusioned former fans are disputing this. There's something of a rebuttal posted here: http://www.flagshipped.com/2008/04/1…in-three-years

I was talking about the open beta if you read the comment further.

I don't understand that flaggshipped site at all. Don't these people/ perdon have better things to do than make fun of a game?

What a waste of talent.

I mean Dungeon lords was a much worse game, And I didn't see people making sites for that.

seriously, korean ppl are so sad in a way… all they ever play is starcraft and diablo game alike… and lots of MMORPG.

I'm not sure whether we should point with fingers at them, neither at Koreans nor at the game company. OK, we now know that this game is not the new WoW. But if I think of the numbers of sold PC games in 2007 for Germany that I read a few days ago on this website, I remember that it sold 100,000 copies in Germany alone. Even if this game is no online success, I guess it will at least recoup its investments.

In the end, a bad game with great marketing still seems to trump good games with bad marketing. That's not exactly any new revelation, but I'm pretty sad every time I meet another example for this simple truth.

Originally Posted by Turjan
In the end, a bad game with great marketing still seems to trump good games with bad marketing. That's not exactly any new revelation, but I'm pretty sad every time I meet another example for this simple truth.

Yes, that's why marketing has become so powerful - I fear that it rules everything out.
Within companies.

For me hellgate is just ok as a shooter and I wouldnt mind more of mmogs like it in the future. Shooters are not that complex. In them you run through..narrow corridors…and shoot at…stuff…with different…boomsticks…and thers a…somkind of..story. Hellgate has all that and its a mmog - in good or bad its still unique.

As for roleplaying it might not have anything to do with that but that goes for most if not all mmogs.