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Bill Roper Talks Hellgate, Mythos, and Blizzard

Posted by Zonk on Wed Sep 12, 2007 04:02 PM
from the he-has-literally-been-there-done-that dept.
Entertainment Games
N'Gai Croal's Level Up blog once again delivers a several-part interview, this time chatting with Flagship Studios' Bill Roper. Formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, Roper's company is currently best known for its work on Hellgate: London, but as Roper points out in the interview they're working on a good deal more than that. He and N'Gai also walk down memory lane, recounting his work on the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo series. Here, he addresses the controversy surrounding Hellgate's somewhat controversial 'tiered' system: "N'Gai: There's been a lot of discussion online about the business model of the game. Going back to the genesis of Hellgate: London, at what point did you know that you wanted to go with a sort of hybrid model: a base game that would have standard PC game retail pricing, and then an optional premium subscription model on top of it as well? Bill Roper: We've actually, since the beginning, known that we wanted to do a tiered format. It was very, very important for us to be able to come up with a way to actually provide even more of an experience than we did with Diablo 2, with Hellgate: London. Basically, we noticed people had a lot of expectations from the team because of what we did with the Diablo series. Part of that was the ability to when they got the game, having that single-player experience and then being able to take that and go online and have that experience for free. I wanted to make sure we had that because that was the base-level expectation of our fans. That's what they got from Diablo 2."
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[+] Flagship Studios' Founder Discusses Its Demise 117 comments
1Up is running a lengthy interview with Bill Roper, founder of Flagship Studios. The game company, known primarily for its Hellgate: London and Mythos titles, announced massive layoffs last month, and is now simply winding down and taking care of a few final issues. Roper gives quite a bit of detail regarding the financial machinations of a game developer and the current status of the games' code. Co-founders Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree gave a related interview recently as well. "The subscription money we did get, we all poured directly into keeping the game online, keeping it up and running. But the development demands far outstripped the revenues. There just wasn't a good contemplation early on of how that would work. It wasn't like: This is the budget that comes in every month; we'll do whatever we can do with that. We just said [that] development will get done out of the revenues, and whoever pays for development, they get paid back out of the revenues. And there wasn't really enough revenues coming in to cover the expected and required development."
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Bill Roper Talks Hellgate, Mythos, and Blizzard 25 Comments More /

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    • I heard about it at least 10 months ago; Roper alluded to it in early interviews where there would be an MMO-type component but they hadn't figured out the precise model yet.

    • Re:if they knew about subscriptions in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)

      by earnest murderer (888716) on Wednesday September 12 2007, @05:49PM (#20579739)
      Maybe because they didn't know exactly what they were going to do years ago.

      Gamers are fickle. If you talk about something that excited you in a brain storming session the other night, even off the record, you may as well write it in stone. Because as far as the gaming populous is concerned you goddamned promised. Even if you don't say anything but an editor makes a hypothesis about your game frequently that has become the "lore" as it were. It gets repeated, the part about conjecture is lost, a thousand blogs/adwords dispensers quote each other without checking (or citing or caring really) the source and pretty soon you goddamned promised that it would be in.

      God help you if you actually do say something and then change it later. It used to be that developers would talk in depth about projects, now all we get are screen shots, background, and stories about office drama. I can't blame them really.

  • This is the man who made Diablo II. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BlackCobra43 (596714) on Wednesday September 12 2007, @04:54PM (#20578987)
    He may have made Diablo II, but he, astoundingly, doesn`t GET Diablo II. Diablo II offered the same single-player experiecne online, for sure - but that's if you played alone and...well..why play online, then? No, what made Diablo II great was that you could hop into a game and combine forces with other players to dramatically increase your power, much more than even the same two players alone but combined would achieve. Not so with a tiered service. Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers? It makes about as much sense as a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk living on Endor with a bunch of Ewoks.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Fail. Try reading some of his interviews once in a while. It's already been explained that the primary difference in equipment you get from doing things you pay for will be how it looks, and not so much as to how it functions.
      • Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences.
        • There are already tons of examples for that being a successful model. Maple Story, for example.
        • Ever heard of a little game called second life?

        • Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences.

          Again a cynic haven't read up on this game before commenting.

          You don't only pay for "purely aesthetic differences", you pay for more character slots, better guild support (being a guild officer *requires* subscription), hardcore mode for more thrill to the game, more areas to explore and quest in, and possibly (this specific part is only rumored yet) even more character classes for more skills.

          • HC will be subscriptions only? What about single player, will they be able to do HC? Or is it just to do online HC mode that requires a subscription?

        • Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences.

          Erm... you do realise that the limited edition [Murky the Murloc] vanity pets that Blizzard gave out to Blizzcon-goers a couple of years ago sold on ebay for up to US$100 immediately after the convention? There's one on ebay now [ebay.com] with current bid of US$200. See it yet?

        • It's extremely common in asian RPGs, but I'm with you, that kind thing just doesn't fly in the US or EU hardcore markets.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JanusFury (452699)
      Diablo 1 and 2 were built by Roper and the other folks at Blizzard North, yes, but not by them only. My understanding is that Roper primarily acted in a PR and oversight position, and while he's a great guy and nice to talk to he wasn't actually responsible for much when it came to what the game ended up being like. This is the reason why the things Roper says don't always make sense from the perspective of someone who worked on those titles.

      That, and a large portion of Diablo 1 was actually developed by Bl

    • Re:This is the man who made Diablo II. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by king-manic (409855) on Wednesday September 12 2007, @05:49PM (#20579741)
      He may have made Diablo II, but he, astoundingly, doesn`t GET Diablo II. Diablo II offered the same single-player experiecne online, for sure - but that's if you played alone and...well..why play online, then? No, what made Diablo II great was that you could hop into a game and combine forces with other players to dramatically increase your power, much more than even the same two players alone but combined would achieve. Not so with a tiered service. Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers? It makes about as much sense as a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk living on Endor with a bunch of Ewoks.

      It scaled in a good way with more players. You didn't just gang buster your way through if you had more then 1 person but if you had 5-8 people who were decently equipped and knew their role it made life easier. It only really matters in nightmare or hell difficulties. On normal any old group would wade through unscathed.

      A big part of it however was showing off your gear. On a illegitimate server, you knew all the equipment was likely hacked. Thus having a party decked out in perfect gear wasn't interesting. But on the legitimate server you could brag about the storm shield you had (until the botting made it less unique). So their shooting for that, to addict people and then have people pay to stroke their vanity. Possibly they may make items that unlock. So you got the +5 storm shield of evisceration. If you pay $1.50, it adds an extra +1. HArd to say if what ever they have planned will work.
      • It scaled in a good way with more players. You didn't just gang buster your way through if you had more then 1 person but if you had 5-8 people who were decently equipped and knew their role it made life easier. It only really matters in nightmare or hell difficulties. On normal any old group would wade through unscathed.

        Yeah, I loved that about Diablo 2. It meant you didn't have to have 8 people to kill Diablo, but if you did it was still challenging. Also, on those difficulties once you got above four p

    • Why would a paying customer want to play with a gimped free player when he could play with other fully-powered paying customers?
      The subscriber service will provide additional areas to explore, and more items, but they have been explicit on that the items won't be "better" than other stuff even free players can find. So this argument is moot.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DarthpHluid (1156253)
      You're making some incorrect assumptions about the difference between Elite and non-paying customers. Elite subscribers recieve the following benefits: - 24/7 Phone Support (Free customers recieve support during normal business hours) - No server queues if the servers are full, or priority access if they are absolutely maxed out. - 12 characters per account, instead of 3 for non-paying customers - A larger account-wide storage vault, which allows cross-character storage of 20 items versus 40. - Access to
  • I read the 2nd interview, and saw the same question being asked 3 times and evaded 3 times. What exactly do you get for subscribing? A few extra equipment slots and bag spaces? I can see that working for the hardcore raiders (if the game has raiding, I don't really know the format of Diablio 2).

    Personally I won't be fussed about extra slots for the money, new content would be the enticing aspect.
    • As for the subscribed content, I've heard in several interviews that the differences between the subscribed and non-paying clients would be fairly small at launch but would increase over time. This eases players into the concept and will probably gain more interest over time. It was stated that they are not introducing a game breaking tier system where players can become vastly superior because they have subscribed for content. This is humored in the featured Penny Arcade comic http://www.hellgateguru.com/w [hellgateguru.com]

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