Hellgate London - Editorial about The Great Disappointment @ Hellmode

An editorial written at Hellmode by Sol Invictus (who ran HellGate Guru)  deals with the game's goals and why the game failed in the end. Here's some of his thoughts when he first played the game in a Q&A setting at Flagship Studios:

This, however, is where the eventual pit in my stomach started. Even though it was my first time playing the game, the experience was a little underwhelming. The combination of finicky movement controls, unfinished character animations, and an underutilized setting set the stage for my initial disappointment. I liked what I saw, but I had my doubts; it didn’t seem polished enough and it wasn’t quite what I expected. But I remained silent; I felt as if speaking negatively of this game would be a betrayal to the friendly studios I just visited and my recent drinking buddies. So I kept quiet, and continued on with my experience.

And here's something about the game's difficulty levels:

The experience was made worse by the game’s unbalanced difficulty levels, in which the shooting gallery had only been designed for the easiest mode. The turret’s damage was not scaled with the difficulty, so killing the flying monsters, which had their health and damage scaled up, was impossible without exploiting a glitch that made it unnecessary to use the turret. I was personally told by its designer that the sequence had been developed and implemented in just two days. It showed. Seeing the excitement on the faces of the friendly folks at Flagship Studios, I felt unwilling to share my negative impressions with the developers this at the time.