Flagship Studios - Shipwrecked

I've already commented on this in some other thread, but I'll add my opinion here as well: This is a sad day for PC gaming. Not many still decide to go exclusively for the PC market, so whenever someone does - and fails - it's a loss for us PC gamers.
 
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I think it's a bright day for Blizzard, cynically speaking.
 
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Well, sad but hardly unexpected. Hellgate london was not what people expected.
 
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So, hasn´t Flagship been the new founding of the former Blizzard North members, many of them who had helped give birth to roaringly successful Diablo back in the old days?

A major blow then, i´d say.
And a shame that such a bunch of supposedly talented, creative and bright people can fail so badly.
:(


Ragon, The Mage
 
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Yes, Ragon. Flagship was founded by at least three key members of Blizzard responsible for making Diablo.

Hellgate was and is mediocre. They couldn't recover from that. That's there only game, the only game they were banking on to fund them for future projects.

It is sad that Hellgate wasn't what we all expected and that its failure caused the company to fail. At least most of the guys and gals at Flagship will get jobs elsewhere and maybe Bill Roper still has something left to create.

Or is he a "Mcquaid"?
 
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I am saddened ... Hellgate wasn't up to expectations, but neither is it the crap that sells better on consoles. I had hoped that the Asian love for the game would allow them to continue, especially since they seemed to be making good progress.
 
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It is always sad to see another PC developer go down :( :cry:

However, I do think that Flagship Studious (maybe) brought this on themselves. You needed an online account (for which you had pay) to get updates as I remember; the developers seemed much more keen on supporing the online things than the single-player things.

I played the demo and enjoyed it a lot :) I did not buy the game because it really wasn't as good as I expected. And the gameplay were really, really hard and difficult, not that I mind this. But whwn you aimed, you really weren't sure if you hit or not.
 
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Rats. I'm partially to blame, because I didn't buy Hellgate. In my defense, reviews weren't so good, and I'm a cheapscate. But I always thought the game would improve and keep gettign patched, and one day I'd hop online for some 3D FP Dialbo-style goodness. And instead, I helped kill PC gaming.

I agree with potato head. If this game had been on the consoles, it could have sold 400,000 copies. Because why not? Those people don't even read reviews.
 
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On the official Hellgate London forums, the community manage denied ever giving a statement. Right now, Flagship/Ping0 is neither confirming or denying anything. Though Flagship and Ping0 employees are still posting on the forums and still are moderating.
 
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As I said in the other thread--very saddening to see this happen. I also never bought this game because of reviews, the bugged state and the fact they made it plain the focus was to be on multiplayer with single-player mostly an afterthought. I can't help thinking they just never connected with the same audience that supported and still supports Diablo II--despite a huge and no doubt expensive PR campaign and mega-advertising launch. I think Bil Roper was giving four or five interviews a day for a month back then.

Just goes to show marketing blitz alone can't sell something without a core product that appeals to/satisfies the targeted audience.

Edit: diabloiii.net also has an unofficial--no names confirmation.
 
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As a lover of RPG , i could have never imagine how much disrespect for the genre Flagship had , when they created Hellgate.

To take whole game world , good lore , and deem it irrelevant ?!

"We dont need quests , and story..nobody cares anyway" , "Lets make all quest dialogues into poorly written office jokes. And quests also... lets fire the writters aswell"


Well, it seems Story is relevant for RPG

Flagship , you got what you deserved....
 
I am not saddened by this at all ... Flagship was using new pay models and its good to see the PC gaming audience say "no thanks" to paying a monthly fee for an action RPG (HGL) and a free to play, pay $ for perks (Mythos) ... kudos Planet for saving us (for now) from more greed.

If companies would just release quality games, they wouldn't have to resort to these "innovative" models.
 
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All I got to say is that those people who paid for the life time subscription got really hosed. The amount of new content that was made is not worth the money the spent for the sub. Not even the perks for being a subscriber was worth the monthly.
 
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... and a free to play, pay $ for perks (Mythos) ...

Sorry for breaking it up to you, but ... the current verdict is that free to play, pay real dough for perks models is alive and kicking, the world has already said that it is OK, and that's that. What Flagship's demise shows (and game companies should have learned at least a decade ago) is that noone is willing to pay for a public beta, not to mention one with montly fees.

Even though I did not play Hellgate or Mythos (though I had some interest in the latter and was looking forward to it), I'm sad to see Flagship bite the dust. They took the liberty with some really bad, if not outright silly decisions on HGL, but I still admire them, mostly for their previous work, and had hopes they could come out of all the mess with a solid title, be it Mythos or something else.
 
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Even though I did not play Hellgate or Mythos (though I had some interest in the latter and was looking forward to it), I'm sad to see Flagship bite the dust.

Double rats. I didn't realize they were behind Mythos. I was looking forward to that too. Why couldn't they have just gotten bought out or something? If it's worth risking X dollars to make a whole game, isn't it worth risking X/2 dollars to finish a half-completed one? Curses.
 
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Now we found out who were lying first. Apparently whatever troubles in Flagship Studios existed for quite some, even in the very last few minutes FSS still denied the close-down rumor. They didn't want to admit it until every efforts to save the company failed.

Uninspired and buggy Diablo-clone, Wrong marketing strategy look like to have been the main reasons for the trouble.
 
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Well... While I'm a bit sad that another studio has to close I'm not overly suprised. It's what happens if you think players are stupid... Hellgate London was crap. It wasn't what players expected or wanted. The whole concept was crap and that was obvious... well for anyone except the developers, I guess.
 
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The concept of action rpg was fine, but the content implementations and promotion failed. They hyped it as Diablo-clone, but apparently it was not easy to as good as Diablo, the result was far from it.
 
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