No Hellgate: London Character Wipes

IAHGames and Flagship Studios have announced that character wipes will not be necessary to get the Southeast Asia servers up to par with the US and EU servers.

Message from IAHGames CEO, Roland Ong:

IAHGames made an innovative effort, together with our partners Flagship and Hanbitsoft, to bring about successfully a World Wide sim-launch in South East Asia (SEA) of a large-scale Triple-A title, Hellgate London. This has never been done by other game operators at this scale and comes with challenges. Last week on our official forum we announced that due to difficulties in implementing the latest upgrade to the Live Game Service the upgrade could result in a Character Wipe, which would have deleted all in-game experience earned by gamers over the past 2 weeks. The problem was a result of SEA going LIVE simultaneously with the USA servers in Calendar time — but due to the actual time difference, SEA actually released 1 day ahead of the USA. This resulted in a slightly different software build than the USA servers. The upgrade, known as Patch 0, intended to bring our servers to the same level as the USA. The complication arose because our database was already being filled with in-game data from our gamers, and this in-game data was a risk for corruption. However, because gamers were earnestly requesting us to avoid a character wipe, we delayed the upgrade patch, worked round the clock, and around the globe, for the solution. We are pleased to announce the solution today.

Message from Flagship Studios CEO, Bill Roper:

(Flagship Studios, together with IAHGames and Hanbitsoft, remains highly committed to finding the best possible solution for the South East Asian Hellgate: London game service. By having the interest of our HGL fans as our top-most priority, we have refused to accept a character wipe as a viable solution. Hence, we are pleased to reveal that Flagship’s engineers are currently implementing solutions that will not require a wipe of player characters. We are simultaneously upgrading the SEA servers to the latest patch 0.1, which is equivalent to what is currently on our US and European HGL servers. Flagship Studios will ensure that these solutions are implemented systematically within the shortest possible timeline. To top it all off, we will be working with IAHGames to provide rewards to our players in appreciation of their understanding and support during our launch.)

Letter:

Dear Gamers,

We are elated to announce Flagship Studios has given us a green light to implement Patch 0 with NO character wipe.

Flagship Studios has investigated the major character issues, including missing skills and statistics, and have found methods to resolve them. They will also be performing a server upgrade to Patch 0.1 for our game service, making it equivalent to what the US gamers are enjoying now.

The process of implementing these improvements should be complete by 22nd November, 2007.

also working closely with Hanbitsoft and Flagship Studios on a program to reward our gamers for the patience and perseverance shown during the recent turn of events. Please stay updated to the forum and website for more news from your community manager, Angelace.

Thank you for your attention and have a good day ahead.

Sincerely,
Team HGL

Good news for those of you affected. Until the next patch that proves difficult to implement, anyway!