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Bill Roper Speaks About Flagship

Written by John Walker on August 19, 2008.

The mystery behind the Flagship fiasco has produced much speculation. At last Bill Roper has spoken out, in an interview with 1Up. You can now learn about the last couple of months at Flagship in detail. And it looks like it really is the last couple of months at Flagship. Sad stuff.

“Really, our focus now has been on how we best take care of the guys that aren’t there anymore and help them find jobs with other teams… We’re really working to get those guys placed. Then, past that, we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to take care of our creditors and other fiscal challenges. But it’s definitely at the point where we’re not exactly trying to plot a gigantic turnaround with a bright, rosy future at Flagship. It’s unfortunately more the other side of the coin… We’re working hard on how to end gracefully.”

Read the full interview here.

Flagship At Half-Mast But Still Afloat

Written by Alec Meer on July 16, 2008.

Those of us hoping for a fairytale ending to the snowballing Flagship Studios saga aren’t going to get one. But we do get one of those ambiguous movie endings where whether the hero lives or dies after the credits roll depends on the viewer’s rationalisation/wishful thinking. Yes, a weird story gets weirder: despite reports of their demise since Friday, the troubled studio behind Hellgate: London and Mythos still functions.
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Bloodbath at Flagship?

Written by John Walker on July 12, 2008.

What on Earth’s going on with Flagship Studios? The short answer is it’s not entirely clear yet. But some newsmen are claiming that the creators of Hellgate: London, and the forthcoming Mythos, are shutting up shop, with the ownership and IP of both games transferring elsewhere. Blimey. How did it come to this?
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Flagship: “We ended up rushing Hellgate”

Written by Alec Meer on July 8, 2008.

I recently had a bit of a chinwag with Flagship COO Max Schaefer for Eurogamer. Primarily it’s about free MMO Mythos, a game they sound supremely confident about: “Can we take down the big boys? I think we can take down some of them. And I’d like to put a dent in the others.” He’s also remarkably honest about its similarities to Diablo and WoW, adamant that being so is in their audience’s best interests.

There’s also some interesting light-shining on the Hellgate: London balls-up. Of course he doesn’t actually say it’s a balls-up, but it certainly sounds as though Flagship are no longer pretending all is sweetness and light in Hellgateland: “When you’re starting with a brand new game studio with very limited budget and no existing technologies, that was probably biting off too much.” Read the full interview here. It was a long old chat - there’s another 3000 words on the cutting room floor, which I may lob up here later on.

Hellgate? Screwed. Tabula Rasa? Okay. Apparently.

Written by Kieron Gillen on June 11, 2008.

If we paid attention to note the relative amounts of Online RPG noteworthy news, we’d be sure to note that today is the biggest day for noteworthy news since the previous noteworthy news day. Firstly, Bluesnews brings to our attention that Flagshipped discovered Guy Somberg’s blog post about the state of affairs at Flagship. He rapidly deleted it, but Google-cache remembers all, where he despairs how people are leaving Flagship in droves. Meanwhile, over at Eurogamer, a NCSoft spokesman say that Tabula Rasa’s sales are growing month on month. Which must be nice for them.

Full quotations beneath this linky-thing.
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Hellgategate

Written by Alec Meer on April 11, 2008.

We’re hearing contradictory reports as to the success of the oft-maligned Hellgate: London. Well, we know it’s not doing so well over here, but grindfest-lovin’ Korea’s another matter.

Developers Flagship have chucked out a press release claiming it’s the most successful online launch in Korea in three years, rising to become the ninth most-played online game in the country. Which, in a country with a lot of popular online games, is a pretty big deal. Anti-fansite Flagshipped.com, however, links to a Korean site charting the game since launch, which reveals it slipped to 20th most-played online game within a month and a half of release. Then comment-folk at Flagshipped angrily claim the chart’s inaccurate. Oy gevalt. Anyone here still playing HGL, by the way?

Hellgate: Plunder

Written by John Walker on November 9, 2007.

Poor old Hellgate: London hasn’t been off to a splendid start. One Wednesday it was revealed that customers were having their credit cards billed repeatedly, then to rub salt in that financial wound, even after paying people still weren’t getting access to the members’ benefits.

In the early hours of this morning, Hellgate developers Flagship posted this to their forum (I link to the unofficial forum, as the official site requires a login to even read it - sigh).

Tact doesn’t appear to have been at the forefront of their approach, informing those who had been charged three or four times in the space of a couple of days, “We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused, although it impacted just 3% of people that requested to become subscribing members.” That presumably doesn’t provide much comfort to the 3% it’s aimed at. However, Flagship assure players that the problem is now fixed, and they are reimbursing players now.

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Hellgate Demo Materialises

Written by Jim Rossignol on October 18, 2007.

The demo of Flagship Studios’ demonic Big Smoke-based guns ‘n’ magic RPG has arrived. Oh yes. You can summon the 1.5gb beast from here, here, or here. This demonstration version of the game features two classes and a bunch of missions from the Holborn and Covent Garden sections of the game.

The full game, which features all kinds of multiplayer group-hugging and zombie mashing functions, is available in Europe in the 2nd of November, and in North America a little earlier, on the 31st of October. Needless to say, we’ll be lighting black candles and drawing threatening (perhaps informative) sigils on the walls of the internet a little closer to its release.

Hellgate: Going Underground

Written by Kieron Gillen on October 4, 2007.

Some of you may be hoping I’m going to run out of rubbishy song-title references if we do many more Hellgate stories. Sadly, I could do this all year.

Anyway - let’s get on with those Beta impressions I promised you yesterday, eh?

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Hellgate: London Loves

Written by Kieron Gillen on October 3, 2007.

As the number of Beta Impressions of Hellgate spread across the net, deductive game-watchers will realise the embargo has lifted for us Journo sorts. Well, mostly. We can only use five grabs from the first part of the game or we’ll be crushed by enormous fists. So, whilst other sites are doing useful things like telling you about the game, we’re going to deal with a much more pressing question.

Is this really anything at all like London, or is Johnny Foreigner doing another Mary bleeding Poppins on us?

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