You Got Flagshipped
Epic Failure or Game of The Year… You Decide!
Subscribe to Flagshipped.com (comments feed)
H Bomb Has Been Successfully Dropped on Japan
- June
- 29
6:43 am Hellgate London
According to reports, the recently released, zoned for Japan, version of Hellgate: London is being very well received. Having achieved first place on Amazon Japan’s PC Game List based on sales. Lot of fresh blood to grease the gears of the short-sighted money train, is being had, good times are here again.
Problem is, there’s a pattern which has been repeated in every region release of Hellgate: London so far. Interest/player count starts off strong, which is understandable as HGL does have its charms, for many newer players. After playing for x number of hours, realization sets in that the mobs/levels/quests/skill-trees/mods are bland, uncreative, or outright duplicates. This epiphany happens for most players between Act 3 in Nightmare on their first character or when leveling their second character for the second (fourth) time through the game.
Soon, HGL Japan’s player count will peak then repeat the death march of declining numbers seen in all the other previously released regions. The game simply does not have the amount of content needed to retain typical online gamers for more than one or two months. Unless this cycle fails to repeat in Japan, it’s far from time to celebrate.
Interesting to note that according to Scapes, “The Japan-localized version of Hellgate: London connects to the Shulgoth server.” Interesting as it gives credence to this rumor going around, Bad News for Hellgate Players in Japan, Singapore and Germany. Also, since they’re now (because of cost cutting, see above link) connecting up Japan based players to the North American servers, perhaps it would be a good time to throw a lifeline and invite the few remain players from IAHGames SEA Hellgate over to a server which isn’t permanently stuck at Patch 0.7. Oh wait never mind, that would require doing something that doesn’t directly bring profits to FSS.
At least they’re condensing the region populations together, should slow down the decay to some degree.
Share This
28 comments
|
Posted by Mountain Man, on June 29th, 2008, at 7:06 am. “At least they’re condensing the region populations together, should slow down the decay to some degree.” I imagine the language barrier is going to be fun. Just what Flagship needs: let’s drive a wedge between our players. |
|
Posted by Honurot, on June 29th, 2008, at 9:09 am. I think the thing that needs to be realized right now about the average feel of the gamer in Japan is that a lot of them do not play online if there is NO expansive world to play in. Tubes and one shot streets do not fit this modicum which could turn off a lot of the Japanese customer market. Most Japanese players when it comes to RPG’s from my understanding and observations are usually “single players” by nature, the “MMO boom” over there only really hit hardcore with the release of Final Fantasy 11 which makes the market over there in comparison to everyone else’s still rather young. It is an ever growing interest (just look at what happened with Granado Espada in 2006) and there are MMO’s of various sorts in Japan no doubt, but they are not as capable of being as heavily populated when it comes to MMORPG’s specifically if the games do not share a lot of what makes their single player experiences worthwhile or they do something completely different in a good, PLAYABLE way (which by the way HG:L does not do by any form or scope right out of the box). This is also the same type of reasoning most of them tend to use when deciding whether or not to subscribe. Would you choose HG:L over FFXI if all you had to go on was out of the box content, world size and back story? I seriously doubt it. Heart pounding, fast paced action with flash and drool worthy flare? Interesting and exploratory skill tree with options for greater character customization? An in-game story that is interesting and gives pause or adrenaline for excitement? In comparison to other games that have been released there, HG:L can’t hold a candle. Not to mention that a good number of the game developers over there actually have the common sense to leave out the single player aspect if they are trying to release a so-called “Action MMORPG” (are you hearing this Hintaga?). Another thing that is happening in Japan that could really make this endeavor a faux pas is the whole “non-gaming games trend” that is sweeping that country right now as we post our opinions on this. High marked, critically praised, top name RPG’s like Lost Odyssey did not do well over there in light of the wave of self-help and brain teasing games that were released at the same time. HG:L does have some casual pick-up-and-play value to it to an extremely short degree but its no where near as challenging as it should or could be in comparison to what is offered in these types of games. And the reason why I’m comparing these two completely different genres of games is because one is damn near swallowing the other’s customer base. I’m just a guy that loves good games and have a whore’s love for good stories and if I can see all this then well…. Flagship should have looked at and considered carefully whether or not their game would do well in this market in the long term but hey, look who it is….. |
|
Posted by Lanthanide, on June 29th, 2008, at 4:11 pm. The interesting thing is that Japan will let them see just what people actually think of the game. I think they’ve obviously waited until now so that they can release Abyss Chronicles within a few weeks of launch in Japan, to help drum up sales and hype. If Japan remains popular for a long time, or gets more popular, then it shows them that HGL really is a good game, and all the problems in the other territories were just because of the poor release and attendant problems. On the other hand, if Japan levels off and drops in popularity fairly quickly, it shows them that HGL is just a stinker all around. Personally I’m leaning more towards the second outcome - the game simply doesn’t have enough depth to it to hold people’s interest. A huge problem for me was the weapons as ’spell-delivery systems’, which means they have no ammo, so there is very little strategy involved other than keeping your mouse button held down as long as possible. |
|
Posted by Matri, on June 30th, 2008, at 3:53 am. Interesting to note that according to Scapes, “The Japan-localized version of Hellgate: London connects to the Shulgoth server.” *sigh* I’m too burned out to be outraged anymore… |
|
Posted by Cooper, on June 30th, 2008, at 9:43 am. Im very interested about how HGL will do in Japan. Lets be honest, were all biased against HGL, and Japan seems to be not. If the game goes well, maybe it really has improved. However, im think it will fail over there as well. I also think its not a too big archievement to get on top of the Amazon “real-time” charts upon release. The question is if it will stay there, so i look foreward to their charts next week. Ill take that as an indicator whether the game has improved by now, but not as an indicator for financial success because of the size of the japanese pc-games market. Does anybody know who dared publishing HGL over there? Valtonis replied on June 30, 2008 none of us were biased against HGL when we bought it. Cooper replied on June 30, 2008 I never claimed that. ;) I said we are biased now and the japanese market seems to be not and can therefore be a good indicator for the games true quality. |
|
Posted by BryanM, on June 30th, 2008, at 5:14 pm. 10 total copies sold, twice as many as Hello Kitty Island Adventures? |
|
Posted by Panther, on July 1st, 2008, at 11:58 am. For us SEA players, the nagging feeling that FSS had abandoned us couldn’t have been more absolute. I guess they decided to let Japan access their (US)Shulgoth server maybe because they’ve learnt that region-locking is a bad business practice. If they didnt engage a third party representative here in the first placed maybe we would be playing on that server too. Well, most of us couldnt give a fuck any longer anyway. |
|
Posted by Cooper, on July 2nd, 2008, at 7:01 am. [URL=http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88%E3%83%AD%E3%83%8B%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%84-%E3%83%98%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88-%E3%83%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%B3-%E5%AE%8C%E5%85%A8%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E7%89%88/dp/B0018LAJU6/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1214999148&sr=8-1]link[/URL] I cant understand too much, but what i understand is that the CE is 22% off and got an average userrating of 2,2 out of 5. The advertising text references to “Diablo” and “Blizzard”. It seems to be published by EA over there. However, what confuses me is that it is currently out of stock. |
|
Posted by Cooper, on July 2nd, 2008, at 7:04 am. Check out Amazon.jp for some info: The CE is 22% off, the average userrating is 2.2 out of 5. Its currently rank 4 on the PC-games chart. The advertising text references to Diablo and Blizzard. It seems to be published by EA. What confuses me though is that its currently out of stock. |
|
Posted by Mountain Man, on July 2nd, 2008, at 11:46 am. Another interesting side effect of allowing Japanese players to play on the US servers: monumental lag of alpha proportions. Check out this thread on the official forums: http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=105188 Maybe one of these days Flagship will actually get something right. Aliciakeys replied on July 2, 2008 Someone in the post said it’s just to see how many Jap players stick around to see if another server is actually going to be needed. Like that will happen or something. I give them 2 weeks, maybe more since they wont be going anywhere fast with the lag (or shorter if they quit because they cant reach act2). On another note, the game is still working fine for the fanbois, as usual. Flagshipped. Matri replied on July 3, 2008 As if the fanboys would say anything to the contrary… Mountain Man replied on July 3, 2008 Check out this dude going ballistic over the word “flagshipped”: http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showpost.php?p=1108416&postcount=71 Pretty funny. Gapes replied on July 3, 2008 lol…i love that he claims he’s not a fanboy Camu replied on July 3, 2008 I’m actually surprised flagshipped isn’t censored on the HGL forums. h0nam replied on July 3, 2008 Posting here for when I get banned or something from HG Forums. ” Theres a point where idiocy and humor don’t go hand in hand anymore. And this guy is it. This crap is it. This is idiocy to specifically try and kill Flagshipped. Why don’t you shut the **** up, kid. We all agree you have problems. hell, FSS has addressed it. Time and time again. I am by no means a fanboy. You need to see the doctor, and fast, so you won’t be saying things like “to at least keep half my time from D3 still on it” (whatever that means) again. FSS, if any of you see this… why can’t you get Junkonpunk to like, shut the hell up and sue him for being a mean angry fat kid that runs? because I kinda think thats what this kid is. I’m no lawyer yet, but damn. digitalpunk replied on July 4, 2008 that is just a lol at epic proportions. The blind fanboy syndrome at the official forums always gets a laugh out of me at some of the posts. I’ve had more entertainment at their forum than the actual attempt of a failed game they call Hellgate:London. It’s interesting because all the fanboys blamed us haters for keeping any potential newcomers away from the game, but in reality its them thats hurting their own community, not us. We can hate all we want on the game but were no longer apart of their small community (in the game chat or on their forums). Perfect example of this is my neighbor has three kids and they all bought this game (i wish they would of talked to me first, i would have given them my game disk and my account that i use for mostly just squashing spiders and other pests in the house with my $50 flyswatter) . so they would have had three new people to possibly become potential subscribers but they said that within 1 hour of playing they were instantly turned off by the community. They all quit playing. They would post some newbie questions for help and such in the in-game chat and the forums cause hey they were new to the game and didnt know much and they were experiencing certain problems or bugs, but they would either just be ignored or get the usual fanboy “STFU” or “GTFO” or “dis game roxxors, yer jist stoopidz” messages. So yeah. who’s to blame for the dwindling playerbase. Cooper replied on July 8, 2008 Is that true? I always heard the ingame community is mature and helpful. Fanboi talk ofc, but i believed that. I guess thats only true if youre not talking about bugs or repetative gameplay. They seem to be really sensitive when it comes to these issues. But we are whiners… yeah ok… :D |
|
Posted by dczm, on July 2nd, 2008, at 4:53 pm. Unlike NA or EU, or the rest of Asia (China, Korea, SEA), Japan’s PC game market is almost negligible. I know that console market is dominant worldwide in terms of sales nowadays but the Japanese PC game market is so tiny that it is close to non-exsitent. Being No.1 on weekly PC game chart may imply a sale of as many as, 5k or less. Honurot replied on July 2, 2008 You just pretty much wrapped up what I said in a pretty package, thank you. Just wish I had said it better and in smaller doses. |
|
Posted by Matri, on July 3rd, 2008, at 12:25 am. http://forums.hellgatelondon.com/showthread.php?t=105188 LordKragor: If you are on the US Server then I think you are seeing the effects of the Japanese players, I don’t think the HGL servers do well with a lot of people on them. ROFL!! Anyone else see the significance of what he’s saying? |
|
Posted by Crazychop, on July 4th, 2008, at 3:01 am. I am playing LOTRO on the US server myself and have no idea why HGL:L would lag so much; I am connecting from the SEA region and I don’t get lag spikes that often. All in all, the regionals servers feel more like a business decision than a technical one. I bet when the SEA server shuts down, Flagship would let SEA customers connect to the US one, and more lag will ensue. |
|
Posted by tekhedd, on July 10th, 2008, at 6:00 pm. I find the title of this news article to be in extremely poor taste. Then, the ensuing discovery that it’s also funny, followed by the embarrassment of knowing that it’s wrong to find it funny, making it even funnier, makes it less offensive, which then makes it less funny but more offensive, until eventually it reaches equilibrium somewhere in the middle. |
|
Posted by One Month Later, How Well is Hellgate: London Selling in Japan? at You Got Flagshipped, on July 22nd, 2008, at 3:22 am. […] (as a unique problem for Japanese HGL Players) response times are greatly delayed, since they have no localized servers and must connect to the North American […] |
Subscribe to Flagshipped.com (comments feed)
Agamemnon replied on June 29, 2008
You mean another wedge. Subscribers vs. non-subscribers clearly wasn’t enough to split the community.
But yes, as you said, the language barrier should be interesting. Oh well. At least Japan will be the first region to open up to Hellgate and find it most up to date.
[reply this comment]