So I reported yesterday (story ) that the upcoming Hellgate: London release this coming summer would have a "Pay to play" multiplayer instead of the usual freely playable stuff we are used to. The Flagship Studios CEO Mr. Roper (Three"s Company jokes may begin) stated quite plainly in an interview which I linked to, that the multiplayer portion of Hellgate: London was being called an MMORPG, and thus would have a monthly fee attached to it.
Well fast forward to today, and we have a new interview with a Flagship PR guy stating that a pricing structure hasn"t been set in stone yet for the multiplayer portion of the game, and in fact EA itself is saying now that the game may or may not have a subscription based multiplayer. Yikes. Talk about a mess now. We have a highly anticipated game, being crafted by some of the hands who made Diablo, arguably one of the best action RPG"s of all time. We have the CEO of the studio developing said game, stating that the game is being considered an MMORPG, and would have a subscription attached to it. Now you have a PR guy from said studio denying this, and EA the big publisher also denying that a final decision has been made regarding any subscription or not for the multiplayer. Whew. Publicity stunt? Or just a big flub up someplace, misquote, mistake?
Who knows at this point. But everyone can calm down a little bit now maybe, maybe. Oh and the "content" that could be causing all this excitement is exactly that. The developers want to add content during the life of the game, you know, to keep things fresh and make it less Diablo-like. So naturally some people might have taken that and figured we would have to pay to play the game now. Uh, right. Confused yet?