Hellgate Stonehenge content live today

By Robert Purchese Published 21 January, 2008

Raids, duelling, level-scalable quests.

The Stonehenge Chronicles update for Hellgate: London is going live today.

Developer boss Bill Roper aired the news on the game's official website, asking for feedback so he can keep making improvements.

Stonehenge is a new hub for subscribers to explore with lots more quests and items and things to do. Most interesting are a non-linear Essence Caves quest line scalable to you and your party's level (repeatable), and raid adventure The Wild catering for large groups. Lots of lovely loot, apparently.

Broader changes available to everyone are a new duelling area where you can fight your friends, as well as numerous class tweaks and fixes particularly for the Evoker and Guardian classes.

The Hellgate: London website has a full list of patch notes for inquisitive types, or you can get our thoughts on the game in the Hellgate: London review.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kami #1 4 years ago

    It is about time they got this going. Subscribers, and more notably the Founders, have so far been a touch screwed over on the content front in Hellgate. Time to start pulling that back.

  • mkreku #2 4 years ago

    Do people play this?

  • jlaakso #3 4 years ago

    It's a game I fully intend to return to, but just don't have the time for yet. Still quite a bit of Christmas backlog to clear.

  • Kami #4 4 years ago

    mkreku, people do play it but Founders especially have lost most of what were meant to be "Subscriber/Founder Perks" to non-subscribers, simply because the non-subscribers whinged about having restricted amounts of characters and less storage space etc.

    You could argue you get what you pay for but non-subscribers have been winning in Hellgate. There has been no reason to subscribe. This SHOULD start making a difference, but we'll see if they cave in once more to the non-subscriber userbase. I hope they don't because Founders spent good money on getting that kind of exclusivity as a perk, and if FSS don't produce then I forsee a game that will die on it's arse and possibly find a few founder subscribers suing for breach of agreement...

  • Kropotkin #5 4 years ago

    All I can say is, you can't polish a turd for this is what this game is, a turd.

  • Whizzo #6 4 years ago

    Bit of a long walk from central London to Salisbury!

  • jamscones #7 4 years ago

    This will be nice for the subscribers. All five of them.

    I'd love to see the business case that justifies creating new content that only a handful of the total users will ever see. The subs model for this game is bizarre.

  • UncleLou #8 4 years ago

    They're a bit between a rock and a hard place now. I doubt they have enough subscribers to justify further content, but if they change the business model now, the few subscribers they have will be pissed off.

    All I can say is, you can't polish a turd for this is what this game is, a turd.

    Nonsense. HG:L is the prime example of a game with a terrific core that can be improved infinitely with polish.

  • Kami #9 4 years ago

    Lou, it's not the subscribers. Subscribers pay monthly. Think about the founders who paid $150 a time (and there are many, unsurprisingly). These people were offered exclusive content, for a one-off fee, and they're the ones likely to get the most shafted.

    I suspect they may have to change the business model eventually though. They set a precedent already. It's a shame because HGL is a fun game in short blasts. But unless there is seriously amazing and totally exclusive subscriber content, there's no point subscribing.

    Time will tell. I do worry about this game though because it's got so much potential. I'm not sure though if they're entirely clued up on what they should offer those who are willing to pay without pissing off the non-subscribers (Which is a bad stance to take).

  • Shrike #10 4 years ago

    If they'd called this Hellgate: Salisbury I'd have bought the original on principle. So true.

  • UncleLou #11 4 years ago

    You are of course completely right, Kami - I was using the term "subscribers will be pissed off" in the widest sense possible, also meaning founders who already paid a lump sum. :)

    It's a shame because HGL is a fun game in short blasts. But unless there is seriously amazing and totally exclusive subscriber content, there's no point subscribing.

    Yeah, exactly. It doesn't seem to be the kind of game that is well suited for a sub model, as people won't play it religiously every month like something like WoW. There just isn't enough content and variety. I suspect there aren't many people who played Diablo 2 constantly like an MMO, either - the game is still a success online because people play it again and again, but on and off, not daily. No sub at all and the odd expansion pack probably would have been a better idea.

    That said, if they had released the game in a better state in the first place, and been quicker with the content updates, it still might have worked. But now - I guess most people will have finished the new content at the weekend, and then what? It'll probably be months before they have something new.

  • Pirotic #12 4 years ago

    They should make a proper expansion pack and make it both a stand alone retail game (so you don't need the original) and also make it free to the subscribers. They can't afford to focus on the subscription model at the moment when they are having problems bringing in even casual players, but if they can release a half decent stand alone add-on once the engine has been polished up, it may attract new players who were initially put off by the lack of content and amount of bugs in the demo. I'd pay £20 to give it another shot given the chance.

  • UncleLou #13 4 years ago

    They should make a proper expansion pack and make it both a stand alone retail game (so you don't need the original) and also make it free to the subscribers.

    That actually sounds like a good idea, but if they release an expansion pack in, say, 6 months, subscribers will still be pissed unless it costs 150 US$. ;)

    But seriously, that sounds like it could be a step into the right direction.

    On the other hand, I recently logged on once again and it was fairly rowded, but maybe the just reduced the number of instanced stations to make it appear so.

  • Kami #14 4 years ago

    I play a couple hours of HGL a week. Okay, my Blademaster is only lvl 28. But I still wouldn't charge through the game. There's no point, and to be very blunt, there's no compulsion or hook that would keep you playing for more than a few hours a week. This isn't WoW where your gear dictates your existance, or Tabula Rasa where the grind is actually half the fun and totally compulsive. It's not even "Massively Multiplayer" until you've finished the game once. I've soloed to 28. May get worse but I've been told it's really not hard to solo through the normal.

    I think a subs model is very bizarre for HGL. But subscribers can ditch out whenever they like if FSS look like they're going to throw in the towel. Founders can't, they've paid for ostensibly 15 months of gametime. If FSS can't deliver the goods, they will have to question the business model and it's likely the founders are going to get screwed quite badly in the process (worse then they're being screwed now, at any rate!).

    HGL needs much more. It needs a larger hub for a start. A social scene. Somewhere players can kick back. Much like MMO's have "Focal points" where players can congregate, in HGL players can be all over the place. It needs more exclusive content for subscribers - and stuff that is easier to obtain than it is now (£10 a month for a shitty 0.0001% droprate of legendary Subscriber-only equipment?). And founders themselves should be given much better perks.

    The real shame is that HGL still feels like a single-player game. I have a deep suspicion that it was originally meant to be that way. I'm not sure where they thought taking it online as an MMO was a good idea, but so far it's a bit of a cock-up.

    Shame.