Hellgate: London “London 2038” Developer Diary #3

The development of the ambitious London 2038 multiplayer reboot for Hellgate: London continues at a steady clip, as indicated in this third developer diary. In it, we learn that the team has fixed at least ten fairly substantial bugs since the last update they gave us, and that there are nine remaining issues that they are focusing on as further testing is completed. We also get to see Shulgoth taken down on their server:

What’s more, closed alpha testing doesn’t sound too far away:

All of us have been hard at work addressing the issues that were known at the time of the last dev diary. Many small issues were fixed since then due to the hard work and dedication of our development team. Some additional issues have also been discovered since then as well, mainly due to our ability to test in a more in-depth way.

What Now Works In Addition to Previous Update

– Party members’ health displays properly
– Power/shield regeneration rate is now correct
– Inspection no longer crashes the game and works as expected
– Auction house (Consignment House) now functions correctly
– AI pathing is now correct
– Achievements/achievement bonuses function correctly
– Stonehenge essences (beast, spectral, etc) now drop correctly from bosses
– Abyss-era rings can be purified in the Transmogrifying Cube
– Zone portals now use the correct text color (allowed, quest, locked, etc)
– Party finding/party listing system now works correctly

What Doesn’t Work/Is Being Worked On

– Data issues causing some remaining problems
– Issue with certain skills causing NPC lag (see video of Shulgoth above when the summoner uses Meatshield)
– Issue causing occasional crashes related to merchants and items
– Party member inspection from the party member portrait does not function
– Embankment Redoubt quest cannot be completed due to bug in handling AI for the NPC soldiers in the quest.
– Some item affixes are show twice but applied only once
– Some specific named monster hunt quests cause issues in parties
– Item linking has known bugs and is being fixed/improved

Hopefully this project will turn into a late Christmas present for those of us excited for a chance to venture through Stonehenge and Abyss again.