Free Multiplayer for Hellgate London

[Emperor Pan I]

When we first started talking about Hellgate: London, there were a lot of interpretations about exactly what kind of game it was that we were making. Our online plans are as ambitious and exciting as the game itself, so I wanted to spend a few minutes talking directly to our fans about this very important topic.

Our intent from the beginning was to provide gamers an online experience not just comparable to, but even better than, what they got from Diablo II. It has always been Flagship’s goal to offer a robust multi-player experience that can satisfy players for months and even years, free from any subscription.

Hellgate: London is completely free to play online, out of the box. Anyone who buys the game can not only play through the fully randomized, storyline-driven gameplay offline, but they can also go online and share that experience with millions of players from around the world. We’re excited to be able to bring gamers an amazing, free online experience that is included with their single player game.

The Hellgate: London secure online experience is structured around shared, multi-player towns linking together randomly generated, “instanced” adventure areas, unique for a single-player or group of players. Both free players and subscribers will be playing together in groups and guilds on huge realms supporting tens of thousands of players simultaneously.

We want as many players as possible to find and group with their friends online, regardless of when or where their characters were created. Gone are the days of worrying about making sure your new character will be able to play with your old friends. Everyone gets access to our secure multi-player game servers. Players can party and trade with other players and play through the entire adventure to save London from the grip of the demons.

And all for free.

Gamers also want choices, and we have so many great ideas for Hellgate: London, and the concept is so extendable, that we know we can keep adding to this game for a long time. We want to continue moving Hellgate: London forward in some really exciting directions, and to support ongoing development we’ve created a subscription service to give players access to new content as we go along. This commitment to our gamers was also a part of our plans for Hellgate: London from the very beginning.

In short, what subscribers are getting is new content – not simply “better” things. Another way of thinking of this would be that we’re delivering smaller expansions over time rather than having players wait a year or more before they finally get something new.

We listen to our community and are making every effort to support players who want an excellent and complete experience for the price of the box alone, as well as those that want us to expand the game for years to come. Hellgate: London is a very special game to all of us at Flagship Studios. The crew at Ping0 has been working diligently on creating the best online experience possible. Together we envision launching a game that will appeal to both those who want to simply get online to play with their friends and those who want more and more from their gaming experience.

Asia countries are choosing business models that will be received the most reasonably in each market. We are discussing the sales model of our game with HanbitSoft and other related partners to yield the best strategy for each market based on a careful study, and all of this will be announced soon.

Bill Roper
Flagship Studios / Ping0

Looks like all those nasty rumors floating around about a subscription for multiplayer have been squashed. Either way Flagship studios isn't really talkative, and the game is right around the corner. Still, it looks like the free multiplayer content isn't as inviting as subscription:

How will it work? Out of the box, you'll have access to the entire single-player game, three character slots, a stash that can hold about twenty items, a soft level cap of about 35-40 (this will be ironed out later), basic voice chat, buddy lists, guild membership, and online co-op play.

For $9.99 a month, you can subscribe to Elite, which will give you access to ongoing content (more on this in a bit), about twelve or more characters, a larger stash that can be shared between characters, a level cap that increases as content is released, access to a special train that takes you to Elite areas, and the ability to form guilds and choose different gameplay modes (PvP, Hardcore mode, and so on). "Ongoing content" is made up of stuff like new locations, quests, enemies, item drops, player housing, and even character classes. Flagship is estimating that about 40% of the development team will be focused on just creating new content for Elite subscribers.

Like the title "Hellgate Elite," these features aren't set in stone, and final details and nuances have to be worked out, but this is the basic framework of the differences between Elite and what Roper terms "value" level players.

Looks like instead of Diablo II's yearly "big patches", or a group of expansion packs every few years Flagship hopes to implement quarterly game updates, etc. for a price.

Still to be seen the final workings of such systems. Not MMO prices anyways. Stay tunes for more.
Source :
http://www.hellgatelondon.com/news/view/76/#fancy_panel
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/hellgate-london/786714p1.html