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2008 wasn't a good year for MMOs
One of the blog posts over at the Hellforge community that is getting some traction is Agamemnon's look back at the MMO failures of 2008. Included are looks into why Tabula Rasa, Hellgate: London, Age of Conan, and Pirates of the Burning Sea either outright failed (in the case of Tabula Rasa and Hellgate) or were unable to get the subscriber numbers they expected with their launches.What separates this blog post from the myriad of other posts on the same subject is that the article ends with the many things that these games all did wrong and other developers should learn from. Little things, like listening closely to the feedback from your beta testers, fostering a community, and learning to stay away from the concept of "we'll patch it to perfection." It's a good analysis of the many failures of other games, and a kind tip of the hat to the things an MMO can do right, such as Mythic's openness with Warhammer Online.
Hellgate London status: Purgatory
There have been so many twists and turns with the future of Hellgate: London (and Mythos) that it's hard to know what will happen next. We've heard on a few occasions that Hellgate: London was about to face its demise, only to be saved. Adding to the confusion was the dispute over who even owned Hellgate: London, Flagship Studios or HanbitSoft. After Flagship folded, HanbitSoft's claims seemed to be genuine, and the IP was left in the hands of T3 Entertainment. Subscriptions, however, were then suspended. Shortly afterwards Namco-Bandai swept in, prominently featured HG: L on its site... and subsequently removed it. Despite this, the game has been kept running ever since, although Namco-Bandai's stated that the servers will shut down at the end of January, 2009.Gaming site HellForge has picked up on what we're not ready to call anything more than 'rumor' at this point, but something that perhaps bodes well for the future of the game. Another company name has been thrown into the mix: Redbana (based in Taiwan, connected with the aforementioned T3 Entertainment). HellForge writes: "Further research leads to findings of a new San Francisco office for the company, which is where Hellgate offices were located previously." This seems to be in line with what we reported about the future of both titles in August. While we hope this information could be a positive sign for Hellgate: London and perhaps Mythos as well, at this point it's still largely conjecture. [Via Blue's News]
