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Sweeping changes to Hellgate: London in Abyss Chronicles
Hell is about to get even hotter, as Flagship Studios prepares to unleash fresh content for Hellgate: London. Our sister blog Big Download has some posted new screenshots of the upcoming Abyss Chronicles for HG:L, as well as info on the 2.0 and 2.1 updates to the title. Patch 2.0 will be Hellgate: London's second major content update, and brings with it a host of new features and changes to the game. The build is likely to go live on the Test Server in the next week, but until then, here's Big Download's breakdown of the 2.0 changes: A new quest line that covers the spread of the Abyss through Parliament Square and the survivors' efforts to fight back A major rebalancing of the Blademaster class A complete PvP overhaul, including achievements, rankings, rewards, and a new CTF team gametype Changes to the Shared Stash, such as a separate pane for each difficulty Addition of two new trinket slots for players to add rings and such to their characters An attribute respec NPC that allows players to remove points from an attribute for a fee-per-point Three new skills for each class A consignment house (read: auction house) where players can sell stuff to other players without direct trading Beyond rolling out The Abyss Chronicles with 2.0, the next area Flagship Studios is focusing on is PvP through Patch 2.1. The patch will 'open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London' by introducing five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture the Flag. The end result is what Flagship describes as 'a robust PvP experience.'
Hellgate: London giveths and takeths away
Flagship Studios announced some changes to Hellgate: London in the form of Patch 1.3b, which should resolve issues with the ill-fated Patch 1.3a. Indeed, the month of May has turned out to be HellPatch: London for Flagship and HG: L fans, with the patches even being patched. Some players who logged into the Test Server recently found that their characters were gone and, fearing the worst, assumed (incorrectly) that a character wipe had taken place. This was not the case at all; a Test Center database crash was the culprit, and a restore from backup solved the issue. Now that the updated patch has been rolled out, nightly restarts of the live servers have ceased, as of May 20th. The reboots were a precaution to prevent server instability while issues were being resolved. A notable change in Patch 1.3b is that HG: L now blocks non-subscribers from party portaling into subscriber-only areas. Although this change will likely disappoint the gamers who play for free, a quest NPC previously available only to paying players is now available to non-subs. Whether or not this balances the scales for the non-subs remains to be seen, but portaling into restricted areas would seem to be an exploit. The other changes and fixes in Patch 1.3b are numerous, and affect non-subscribers and subscribers alike. The complete breakdown is found after the jump:
Open forums and a patched patch for Hellgate: London
Things are happening at Hellgate: London these days -- so many, that we're going to make a list! (We love lists.) The forums are now open: You no longer need to have an account to read the Hellgate: London forums, though you still need an account to post in them. Patch 1.3 is out: It has the usual number of bug fixes along with a lot of new features like emotes and shared stashes. Patch 1.3 has been patched: It also has the usual number of bugs that had to be fixed for the game to be fully playable again. Patch 1.3b is on the test server: There are still more bugs to be fixed and the changes are being tested now. The Test Server has been patched: The database crashed and needed to be rebuilt. So the Test Server is currently being tested. The Abyss Chronicles are coming soon: The next content patch or Patch 2.0 is in the works and information will be released shortly. For more details on all of this news and more, check out Issue 5 of the Underground Communique.
