Hellish connection
Following my participation in the European beta of Hellgate: London, I’d spent a good portion of my free time articulating my criticisms of it. I rambled on about how it had failed to establish itself as the spiritual successor to Diablo II that it had so earnestly promised to be. I said that the combat was dreary, it was badly bugged, the graphics were disappointing. In short, it didn’t have any balls.
So it was in a strange twist of fate that I received it as a Christmas present this year. I had failed to remove it from my Amazon wish list, and so the gift giver had rightly presumed that I desired it still.
The install went smoothly enough. I signed in with my login details from the beta. I created a new Evoker character on Sydonai (the European server) and began my excursion into the ruins of the Capital.
I was pleasantly surprised. The first few minutes of play were totally lag-free, there seemed to be some graphical improvements and the combat felt a tad more satisfying. None of this was enough to make me retract my previous criticisms, but I was eager to carry on playing casually.
But it turns out that the lag-free period I experienced was a one-off. Over the last two days I’ve only been able to play once or twice per day, and a lot of that play time has been fairly laggy. I’ve also been disconnected a couple of times. I’ve mostly been unable to log in at all; instead, I reach the loading screen and the ring of glyphs that represent the connection process just spin endlessly with no result.
A friend has apparently had exactly the same problem, and some pretty intense Google searching and forum surfing on my part has yielded nothing more than fruitless recommendations and random despair.
I wait for now, but this doesn’t reflect at all well on Flagship Studios.
Deary me,
- Chris
