Stonehenge Unhinged

FFS scheduled itself to update Hellgate: London yesterday, Monday, January 21st. The day came and went without the update, however. Though nothing regarding the delay was posted on the game's main page, the forums were buzzing with activity, mostly from irritated gamers wanting to know what happened with the promised update.

According to numerous posts by Scapes, the appointed FFS spokesman I presume, the update encountered a last minute bug that had to be fixed, resubmitted to QA, and placed back on the Test Center. The latest iteration only made it to the Test Center by 6pm pacific time, so I speculate the earliest anyone will see the update will be today.

If we're lucky.

Scratch that. If FFS is lucky.

Seriously, these guys can't seem to catch a break. I'm getting the impression it's amateur hour out there in San Francisco. Just when I think their credibility can't sink anymore than it already has, they miss their own self-appointed update day.

An update they had scheduled for December 2007, no less.

FFS has been compared to Blizzard many times, mainly because Bill Roper used to work there and helped work on the Diablo series. But based on HG: L's release and subsequent release history, those comparisons need to stop. FFS isn't even in the same league as Blizzard.

My advice to FFS is to take the Blizzard experience some of them have (Roper most notably), and apply it to their fledgling company. The first thing they need to do is adopt the Blizzard ethos "The game is ready when it's ready." Blizzard lives and dies by this motto. Every game they release hits the ground running. Sure, WoW had a rocky release. But that had more to do with the unexpected traffic on their servers than it did with gameplay or code stability. Once Blizzard had a good sense of just how popular their game was, they moved quickly to add servers and strengthen their networking code. Even under stress, I always had the sense that WoW was being managed by professionals.

As counterpoint, HG: L clearly was not ready for retail, but FFS released it anyway. Many people point to EA as the culprit here, and maybe EA did put pressure on Roper and company to release prematurely. But Roper penned the deal with EA. So I personally don't want to hear any whining that someone held a gun to their head and made them do something they wouldn't normally have done. You mess with the bull, you get the horns. You make a deal with the devil, you experience some hell. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. Wait, that last one doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I'll check later today to see if Stonehenge made it off the Test Server and into retail. It'll take me some time to explore Stonehenge and review its contents.