Hellgate: London: Pre-launch report

Hellgate: London is almost upon us. Do any niggling issues remain?

Hellgate: London is almost officially upon us. The game is slated for release on Halloween and the last pre-release patch--which, for all intents and purposes, seems to have put all the finishing touches on the release version of the game--is live on the beta servers. This essentially means that if you're in the beta, then what you're playing right now will presumably reflect the state of the game at launch, barring any "day one" patches.

Conventional wisdom (and, unfortunately, experience being subjected to these very complex games in their early state) will tell you to expect some hitches at launch. This is normal; even the most "with it" companies experience crazy, unanticipated loads when their games launch, and usually, the only remedy for this is time. While it's exciting to be among the first players to hop into a new game, it's often frustrating at the same time.

Once the dust settles for Hellgate though there will be a couple of issues that I'm certain will remain unresolved. Please understand that Hellgate is a game that I really want to like; I dig the mechanics, and I'm the type to very easily be engrossed by the gratifying mechanics that this sort of action RPG is designed around. Before I become fully enfranchised a couple of issues need to be addressed.

1.Why no respecs?

The Hellgate beta community is pretty divided on this issue. On one side are Diablo 2 purists who arbitrarily (and rabidly) rail against the notion of respecs simply because Hellgate's "spiritual predecessor" didn't allow for them. In their mind, players should do their homework before allocating a single point to their skill trees, because, well, it would be noobish not to.

On the other end of the spectrum are players who've become accustomed to the way that "modern" MMOs do things; they want to be able refit their characters at will, to allow them to adapt to changes in game mechanics, or simply to change up their play style every now and then.

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