The Slippery, Sliding Slope to Hell

Patch .5 for Hellgate: London is due out in the next couple of days. It's mainly a clean-up patch, fixing bugs and whatnot, but it also includes a controversial change to the number of available character slots: twenty-four for everyone now, including non-subscribers. FFS also added Nighmare mode for non-subscribers as well.

This has the subscriber community in an uproar. They quite rightly call foul for having paid for features that are now free to non-subscribers. I don't think this bodes well for FFS. It's a slippery slope they slide by shifting paid content to free play. Granted, I think it's the right thing to do, but it should have come out-of-the-box like that, not two weeks into the game's release. My gut instinct tells me that FFS doesn't really have substantial content waiting in the wings, at least nothing that justifies $10 a month, and that a tsunami of subscribers are going to bail. And now with this latest change in player slots and Nightmare mode, I see that flight solidifying even more.

Despite HG: L's controversial release, I can testify that the game has been running better lately. I've slowly been adding video options, like enhanced weather, dynamic lighting, and triple-buffering and I still average around 25 fps. Certain zones witness my fps plunge down to the low teens; these areas have a lot of fire strewn throughout the level and I think that causes the slowdown. But other areas, especially the enclosed bunker zones, see my fps top 40. I foresee future patches and driver updates improving that considerably. My goal is to be able to run the game on the highest texture setting.

I know many people are unhappy with the game and even unhappier with FFS. I understand their frustration and don't fault them for their criticism of the game's current state even if some of their forum posts indulge in hyperbole. But personally, I'm enjoying the game. It's not an MMO, no matter what others or FFS state, but an action RPG that allows the gamer to burn twenty minutes or twenty hours at a time, depending on their individual schedule. If more people approached it with that mindset and stopped expecting it to have the same gameplay and gargantuan content as WoW, I think more gamers would begin enjoying the game as well.