Augustus Gloop

The NDA has been lifted.

I've only been in the beta for about 3 days now, and only been able to play a couple times. That said, Crux and I had a blast partying together and slaughtering foul demon spawn. I created a blademaster and he had a marksman, and we figured out a very sweet system: He pulled, and damaged them until they got to me and then I opened a can of whoopass, engulfed in mayhem, while he picked off the ones on the outside. From what he said, he was very pleased to find that his role as a marksman was a lot more twitch and aim skills than you would expect from a rpg mmo, while my experience as a blademaster was very traditional, oblivion elder scrolls type thing.

Item drops are unique to each player, I could see mine, and Crux could see his. We profited heavily by talking about our drops, and trading back and forth the items we couldn't use but the other could. For everything else there is a guildwars like system where you can break items down into component parts and use those parts to enhance your useful items to a great extent, or even craft completely new items. Using parts in this way adds random bonuses, and could seriously enhance your weapon or be completely useless.

The graphics were cool, the color commentary from the npc's is very fresh and hysterically funny at times, and the creatures look appropriately gruesome and hellish. The music seemed to be dynamic, changing from atmospheric to a thrilling action score, but the changes seemed random and unaffected by what I was actually doing.

That said, they need to work on their skill trees. Let me preface this by saying that unlike WoW, no respec options are available, or intended. Aside from courtesy resetting points when a skill is radically changed, your only option for changing your skill layout is to start a new character. Some of the classes have trees with complimentary skills that seem to mesh very nicely. Others do what they do, and the skills seem extraneous. Still other classes don't have anything but what their skills do, like my experience with my low level summoner. Very much a minion master, I put two points into elemental, which is a little hopping, ranged attack fire demon, and two points allows me to maintain two of them. A mystical rifle I picked up gave me one more point, for a total of three of the little flaming artillery frogs. I then picked up a skill that allows me to summon carnigore, which is a bulldog like demon who is very tough and has abilities that allow it to draw threat; effectively a tank. After that I felt pretty useless, as my demons happily slaughter everything around me without my lifting a finger except to re-summon some when they died.

I'm also skeptical of the subscription scheme: $10 a month for the expanded content... cheaper than most of the mmo's these days, but worth it? Part of Diablo II's enduring charm (I still play) is the fact that it's FREE once you buy it. I wonder if TG might pick up an account and assign a game officer to maintain it, just for the purpose of starting a TG guild in game? One of the benefits of subscribing being that only paying members can create and manage guilds. There will also be a (one time?) offer for pre-order purchasers to buy a lifetime subscription for $149.99. The lifetime offer will be limited to a suspiciously small 125,000 people, and I wonder if this will be a hot ebay item later.
I plan to pre-order from walmart, since of all the companies offering a pre-order deal I like their unique armor paint the best. I'm on the fence about the lifetime offer, and definitely won't subscribe for the monthly. $50.00 + $150.00 = $200.00, a lot to pay for a game that has the potential to be the next diablo 2, but has a long way to go to prove that it can match the lasting fun of that classic. Obviously a lot of the fun comes from playing with your friends, so it would help to know who else will be getting this game.

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Zoopy

I thought all the subscription stuff was higher difficulty levels and Guild stuff... why not just play the non-subscription part?

Augustus Gloop

That's the plan right now, but paying 150.00 now for a lifetime subscription with item and monster periodic content updates might be prophetic if it is as long lasting as diablo 2, which I still play 7 years after it was published. Still, that's a tall order for a game, and it doesn't have Blizzard behind it, just some of the people who worked on the game. The choice might be taken from me anyway, since there are so few lifetime offers. We'll see.

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TheFatKidDeath

Thanks for the write up. I'm all over this game as I love a great click fest. I know we'll have some TG players as I've seen some interest expressed.

I'm curious about randomization of the levels? How often do the levels change?

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Augustus Gloop

I've only seen a few of the levels, but my understanding is that the passageways between major areas change every time the content is reset for you. Also, there are bonus areas called hellgates that appear with rare or unique bosses inside. The hellgates, and the rare/unique monster frequency is directly linked in some way to your Luck attribute. Sort of a beefed up Magic Find like in D2.

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Nemesis

Random map every time you re-enter an "instance", however they really do need to add in more tile sets.

And I'm in. I've been in the beta for a few months now and think the game is amazing.

Some things I do take issue with but nothing that would change my mind about buying the game.

Like many, I'm still really on the fence about going with the monthly payment route, so I'm going to hold off on that until I see exactly what they are offering for my money.

Otherwise, if you take the game for what it is, it rocks.

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It's all in the Reflexes.

Daxx

Exactly what I will be doing. Buy the game, but wait and see on subscription.

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I am the one, I am the zero, I am your low resolution hero.

Relmar

From what I've played of it, ranged is ridiculously overpowered, lol. Unlimited ammo, just run around willy nilly with your fingers holding down the fire buttons on fully automatic weapons. I feel like I'm cheating.

Daxx

I do find the idea of unlimited ammo a little bit silly, plus no reload requirement. There is the (depending on weapon type) rather large aiming penalty if you just spray and pray tho.

Its far more effective to fire in bursts of 1-2 seconds and then let your aim calm down.

If anything I'd say the BladeMaster is more overpowered. It seems you just need to be within 10 feet of anything and swing your sword, and watch the zombies fall down. Evidently this is poorly represented in the demo tho, and the class play gets much more specialized level 10+

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I am the one, I am the zero, I am your low resolution hero.

Snail88

yea dont go by the demo...and thanks for posting this in the rpg forum

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FriedFish

I've got an extra beta code. Post a reply then PM me.

L10N

I plan to get a subscription asap, I have the money to burn as I just finally ended my 30 dollar sony station acces subscription. The demo hasn't really changed my opinion it has just got me wanting more. I think way to many people expect this to be a legend of gaming that will be utterly perfect. To me they announced it as it is but all the game websites added the hype. The game is fun, that is all that matters to me. I play bf2142 on the lowest possible settings and could care less, although I find even with reasonably high settings on hellgate it is a little ugly. the music so far is also no where near the quality of diablo to me but it's not bad, I mean I think diablo 2's music quality could still trounce many games today. The combat is interesting and has just perfect pacing for me, too many rpgs these days make you feel more like a big pansy than a hero with the long winded fights you have with basic orcs and creatures. I am worried about the skills though as I saw the system of d2 where you chose a few skills and pumped them up as an amazing way to make 7 characters into many more. Overall I am ready for Hellgate and I'm set to loss hours upon hours of my life to it.

UnDeaD77

I just got accepted into the beta lol. No point to play it now I guess.

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Gillespie

Compared to this post and the (reasonable) commentary on the game that some beta testers have posted on the MMORPG.com forum, I doubt I'll get this game.

This is EA, though. If this complete crap about the subscription fee stuff pans out to be a cashcow for HGL, don't be surprised if the next Battlefield has a subscription plan for "new weapon updates, new skin updates, blahblah" and the like.

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Augustus Gloop

Well, I went ahead and pre-ordered from ea.com (for the wasp dye kit) and learned that the founder's club offer will become available when the game is released. I think that means if I want to take the plunge, I need to be on at midnight on that day. EA.com (unlike other online stores offering HG:L) only offers a digital download. Also, unlike STEAM, EA.com's digital download purchases are only held for 6 months, or if you want to pay $5 more, 2 years. You're welcome to burn the files to disk if you want, but if you lose them after 2 years, you're screwed. Personally I recommend Wal-Mart's Royal dye kit, which you need to go into the physical store to be eligible for.

EU players: Your subscription is only good in the country you ordered the game from. Meaning, you can play with your North American friends, but if you bought your game in Germany, you will only get the subscription game content on German servers. On other region servers you will only get the free game content. My understanding is that Guild Wars does something similar, but allows you to change the region your account is "tied" to. HG:L does not mention plans to allow something similar.

So, a mixed bag folks. I'm excited about ordering the game, and leaning towards purchasing a founder's club membership- I'd be willing to set up a TG clan for any of us who want to join, but dismayed about all the clumsy roadblocks they've deliberately set up.

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