Happy Holidays to all, and for all you MMO game companies, you get coal this Xmas!

I apologize for my lack of work recently; work’s been hell, and Comcast hasn’t been particularly kind to me and my internet connection. Nothing more frustrating that sitting there, typing up an article, only to be unable to publish it when it’s done. But things are slowing down a bit, so I wanted to take a moment to get some more of my random thoughts out there.

In Podcast-y news, I recently summoned up the dregs of my sanity to host another Roundtable over at The Maelstrom Podcast, and a new home in the future. But more on that later. This roundable was… ambitious. With a total of myself and 8 other contributors it was a very full house. But I enjoy the larger shows over the smaller shows for a couple of reasons. While they are less “intimate”, I think you get a much broader base of discussion for the topics, as you’ll hear during our show. Also, they’re just more fun to be a part of! The hosts, and where you can find more of their work are:

Myself, as moderator -sometimes contributor

Joel and Remy from The Maelstrom Podcast

Darren from Shut Up We’re Talking

Jaye from Journeys With Jaye and Troy from Voyages of Vanguard and the Emerald Tablet

Jonathan from The Online Gamer’s Anthology

Brenden from AnotherHere.com

And last but not least, Michael aka Syncaine from Hardcore Casual

Some topics discussed included: “Why can’t my mage look hot?”, “MMO’s & 2007 – WTF?” and “Does EVE Online get equal harsh treatment when they screw up?”

Plenty more of goodness in there, so give it a listen. As a warning, there’s some language in there that may offend, but we’re not sailors. This brings me up to another topic: Why doesn’t the roundtable have it’s own show? An excellent question, and here’s the answer: It does…. now!

I’m pleased to announce the introduction of “Witty Ranter”, a new MMO-Roundtable that will be hosted by the ever-growing Brent and his VirginWorlds Collective (will that damn thing ever STOP growing?). Expect to see the first episode in the new year. Just think of it as Shut Up We’re Talking… with no reservations, and a HUGE set of balls. I’ll be involving more of the community, bloggers AND podcasters, and my goal is to get as much of the community involved in this as possible. Obviously you will hear some voices more often than others, but at the minimum, my goal is to have a new contributor every episode. As we get closer to launch, you will hear more about this in the future. Obviously I’m very excited, as this is my first “solo” podcast… in the past I’ve always had Remy and Joel there to help me with the show, sometimes saving me from myself and my poor attempts at humor. So if you’re a blogger or podcaster who’d like to join the discusson, please feel free to email me at trollonfire@gmail.com and let me know, we’ll get you in the discussion.

But as far as the holiday season, 2007 and MMO’s sucked, both for selection and for content. Nothing really new came out, other than some expansions (RoK for EQ2, miscellaneous content patches for WoW and HGL), all the “big” MMO’s such as Pirates of the Burning Sea and Warhammer Online are all delayed until 1Q ’08 or later. You’d think that someone would have had the good sense to release during the holidays, when EVERYONE could ask for the game for the holiday season, but what do I know? I’m just a gamer. *sigh*

Anyways, As we all look forward to next year and all the electronic goodness it promises… remember to be kind to your PUGer… unless they really piss you off… then screw them out of loots and dump them in the middle of the instance… where if they’re lucky they’ll find a way to escape the mobs ripping them apart. Happy Holidays!

Blizzard + Activision = Death for EA? *cheer!*

     I know it’s all over the news the past couple of days, but the fact that Blizzard and Activision, two of the largest game studios are out there, can only be a good thing.  Add in the fact that Blizzard is ponying up 1 billion more than Activision, giving them an ownership stake in the new merger, is an even better thing.  And the best thing?  The next largest game developer in their sights: Electronic Arts.  If there ever was a gaming trifecta, it’d be pretty close to this… 2 good game studios combining to take down one of the biggest and worst game studios out there.  Someone get Hollywood, this’ll make a hell of a movie.

All joking aside, this is a really good move for both studios.  Activision was known for making some pretty good titles such as Call of Duty 4, the Tony Hawk Series,  Guitar Hero, etc.  Blizzard… well, they make games. good games.  Polish is everything for them.  So you take these two companies, and mix their brightest together, and the end results I have a feeling will be very well worth it.

Now factor in that the next largest piece in the gaming puzzle is EA, a company that: cannot make high quality games without outsourcing them – See Crytek and Crysis, Flagship Studios and Hellgate London (all the negative shit aside, it’s a pretty game that plays relatively smoothly), they had to go out and buy Mythic Studios to get their grubby paws on Warhammer Online.  All the titles they produce in house are either shit to begin with, such as the Madden franchise (Do we NEED a new fucking Madden every year, at 60 bucks a whack? give me a break.) or start out good, only to end up being fucked over by EA.  For anyone who’s played Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Every patch EA decides to tinker with things, only to end up wrecking the game.  I’m not saying EA is the only company that’s guilty of this; SOE and SWG, I’m looking in your direction with NGE… but they’re the only company that has a history of doing it consistently in every game.

And, EA does not do the whole customer service thing well.  My rant on Hellgate London is a prime example, although EA was only supposed to be publishing that game, but even that involves some community relations when things go wrong, and EA has shown time and time again that they’re about as useful to community management as a drunk hooker in a room full of teetotalers.  Blizzard is not perfect on this front by any stretch of the imagination; a short look in the WoW forums makes proof of that.  But on the whole, the improvements they make show they do listen to their playerbase in some capacity, and will consider their comments in deciding the future direction of the game.

Bottom line, if EA was the 800 pound gorilla in the room, then Blizzard and Activision just became the 2 ton rhinocerous with a bad case of ass-whooping to lay down on someone…. too bad EA’s the only other person in the room.  Let’s all shed a tear for them… or just shed a tear of joy that we may never be forced  to see Madden 2010.

Im-a heading out of town…

Just as a heads up I won’t be back until Tuesday evening, heading to Colonial Williamsburg for the Grand Illumination Ceremony.  I should have much to talk about when I get back.  Until then, have fun!

M for Mature or M for “Mommy I want Blood, Guts and Boobs!”?

On Saturday I went out and braved the post-“Black Friday” crowd, to go see Beowulf.  The theatre was surprisingly empty, although the nearby retail stores were not.  There were maybe, 15 people in the theatre, including my wife and I.  Right in front of us was a husband and wife, and 5 kids, none of which could have been older than 10.  My wife and I looked at each other like “uh… WTF?”  This movie, while totally animated, was R for a reason.  It was a very visceral, violent movie, with the Grendel ripping people in half, impaling them, spattering walls and every other surface with people’s blood.  Oh, and the pretty overt sexual references during the movie as well.  Just cuz Angelina Jolie doesn’t have nipples doesn’t mean that those melons on her chest are *not* boobs.  We were totally shocked that parents would bring children that young to a movie like that.  I can almost see the following conversation taking place shortly afterwards:

Dad: “So, what do you want for Christmas, son?”

Son: “I want therapy, Dad! I’m scarred for life!  Oh, and a lusty wench like the one in the movie… I’m 10 years old, it’s time for my first hummer!”

Kids are not mentally ready to deal with those kinds of images.  I understand that at 30 I’m an old fart when it comes to how kids are growing up today, and it’s pretty obvious that we as kids grew up slower, and in not quite such a visceral way.  When I was that age, I went and saw movies like ET, The Goonies, and The Last Starfighter;  if I ever saw anything like Beowulf, my parents would have given me a “hide tanning”… which of course parents today can’t do for fear of being sued for child abuse… whatever.  Regardless, I sincerely doubt that kids’ mental capacities for being able to separate these images from “real” versus “imaginary” has made that big of a quantum leap.  As such, if a movie can make that kind of impact, what kind of impact would a MMO, which is designed to be a fully immersive experience, have on these same impressionable minds?

Disclaimer: I am NOT bashing MMO’s or the genre as a whole.  I still play quite a bit of them.  I am raising this point for discussion, so please take everything I say in that vein. /gets off soapbox

So, with that out of the way, let’s look at MMO’s and other games that are coming up in the future, and what possible effects they might have on our younger gaming population.  I think pretty much everyone as kids played some sort of video game.  In my time it was the classic Nintendo versus Sega; you were either on one side or the other.  It was pretty rare that you came across any game with blood or violence, and the few that did (Mutant League Series on Sega, anyone?) did raise a pretty huge cry of outrage.  There were the arguments we all had “But Mom, all my friends have one!!!” or “It helps my hand/eye coordination!” (Always a favorite, because there was some truth to it.), but in the end all these games were fun and harmless, just ways to relax.  The graphics were poor enough that there was no way to even think it might be “real life”.

As the technology advanced, games became more realistic, and the line started to blur more.  The first game I remember really starting to blur this line was “Mortal Kombat”.  The fact that they used some motion capture technology for the characters made it so you could almost see the people behind the costumes.  The game “felt” more real;  while none of us could lift off our yellow hoods and turn someone into a 6 foot tall barbeque, it still had that semblance of reality.  Obviously the violence was a huge issue with parents, but as kids, we said “meh, it’s not real… it’s fun!”.  We were able to say that because we could STILL tell the difference between the two.

Fast forward a few years, and look where we are now:  movies like Beowulf, with CGI that is so close to actual people it’s downright scary;  at times even I wasn’t 100% sure what was CGI and what was live people, and I knew that the whole thing was animated.  Add to that Crysis, which may take an absolute monster of a machine to run, but it has pushed the gaming envelop even closer to that true “virtual” experience, where the surroundings look so real that you do as an adult, have to shake yourself sometimes and remind yourself “this isn’t real, it’s just a game”.  Now take that whole experience and put it in front of a 10 year old or 12 year old… are they honestly going to be able to mentally break the two up?  Either that’s one hell of a mature kid for his age, or we as a culture are fooling ourselves.

Now factor in the immersiveness of MMO’s, and think of a title like Age of Conan coming out sometime in 2008… the possible conclusions are pretty scary.  Now you’re going to have that almost-surreal realism, coupled with nudity, the same not very overt sexual references simliar to Beowulf, and some pretty downright brutal violence.  Given how many parents have a hard time spending extended quality time with their kids, especially if both parents have to work, the TV and the PC become cheap “virtual babysitters” that parents can fall back on to keep their children occupied while they try and eke out a living for their family.  Add in the joke of a ratings board, and how few companies actually enforce the ratings, it’s all too easy for very young, impressionable minds to have their idea of “reality” warped by the fantasies these games pose.

What if your child thinks that just because every woman he ever meets in a game is nearly naked and always ready for sex, that it’s what they should expect from every woman they meet?  In an era where groups have been fighting for decades to bring men and women to some semblance of parity, it’s like sliding back into the Dark Ages.  Don’t think it could happen?  Tell a kid that the moon is made of cheese long enough, and they will believe it… because an adult, an “authority figure” told them so.  Now if you put almost photorealistic women on a screen, and they’re doing those actions, to a child it would seem a lot more “real”, because of that inability to differentiate.

I’m not trying to be the person with the placard proclaiming “Games Kill Our Children!!!”, but I do want people to understand that as we get closer and closer to that true DNI (Direct Neural Interface) experience, which I think could be here in as little as 20 years, this is going to become an even more and more important issue for ensuring our children grow up knowing the difference between fantasy and reality.

I look forward to your comments.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday. If you’re from the US, enjoy your day of gorging… if you’re not from the US… well, don’t feel bad. The holiday was made famous by us basically tricking the actual Americans into helping us, only to end up causing one of the first genocides in Western Civilization. So please, don’t feel bad.

Oh, and “Nupid”, or whoever the hell your name is on iTunes; thanks for giving The Maelstrom Podcast one star, asshat. I looked at your “reviews”, all 3 of them.. and what do I find? every single one of them gives one star with the reason “they use profanity”….. Are you kidding me? It says “Explicit” right in the show tag… and those other podcasts you list have been explicit since day 1. You say that WoWCast is a great podcast, then turn and give it one star because of the language… give me a fucking break. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If the show is good, rank it 3-4 stars. Saying it’s great and giving it one star is like after having sex with someone you say it was great and then go and kick them in the crotch. So don’t go ragging on a show because you can’t handle the language… the system is in place in iTunes… don’t go tune in to a show and bitch when it’s said Explicit since it launched.

That’s enough of that rant… I need Turkey, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy to satisfy my anger! TROLL SMASH!!!!

‘Tis the season to give content, tra la la la laaaa….

So here we are, rapidly approaching another holiday season, surrounded by yet another bounty of games, for both consoles and PC.  Between Rock Band, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Orange Box, The Witcher, EQ2’s Rise of Kunark Expansion…. the list goes on and on and on.  And so we yearn, and our wallets quietly contemplate suicide by spontaneous combustion as the most painless way to end their tortured lives.  And on top of that, we have to go and get gifts for people other than ourselves… the thought is truly daunting, not to mention irritating… how the hell are we supposed to PLAY all this electronic goodness when we have to keep tromping out to the malls and stores and buying meaningless, mass-produced crap for everyone else???  Thank god for online shopping.  But I digress;  the real reason I am writing this post is because there is one gift we can give many people, that won’t cost a thing, that will be greatly appreciated and remembered, and in fact will take little effort.  It’s content in games, specifically MMO’s.

Think for a moment if you would the first time you entered a raid zone;  I’ll use WoW as an example because it’s currently the one I have the most experience with, and many people will be able to relate to.  I’m going to say that I got into Molten Core probably in late 2005/early 2006.  Definitely not one of the first to be in there, but not the last by far.  When I started, only 3 guilds on our server had successfully killed Ragnaros.  Over the course of several weekends, we spent many a late night learning content, working our way through, and on one late Saturday night, at 3AM EST, finally getting to beat Ragnaros.  It was an amazing accomplishment for us, and as fun as beating the bosses was, an almost bigger part was being able to say “you know, we’re seeing something that not many people will get to see, perhaps ever in their gaming lives…”

And now, the very concept of raiding a zone like MC,  BWL, AQ or Nax is pretty much preposterous, given the inferiority of that low level gear and time it would take to run people through.  But what about all those people who never got a chance to see that content?  For those of us who’ve been there, it’s pretty much old hat.  Walk in, pwn, get loots, shard it, leave.  But what if by just running that content, you could show someone something they’d never be able to see on their own?  All the old raid zones are still 40 people… and odds are you can 15 man a fair amount of MC if you know what you’re doing, level 70 and decked out in uberpimp gear.  So why not run 20-25 people through MC that have never been there before, and give them a chance to see endgame content?  I’m not suggesting you just grab 25 people at random and give them a free ride through the zone;  that’s just stupid.  But everyone has a friend that doesn’t have the time to raid, or never got into a raiding guild, or who’s guild was too small to be able to run these instances.  If for just ONE night, you put aside raiding Black Temple and Karazhan, and went back into the good ol’ days of raiding, you could open up a whole new avenue of gaming to some players, even if for just that one night… doesn’t that make it worth it in some way?  Sure, all the gear is useless to your particular group, but if someone who never had a chance at an epic can walk away with a piece of Tier 1 or Tier 2, you better believe a lot of people will be very happy, even if it’s not as good as what they currently have.

The holiday season is a season of giving.  What better way to give than by doing something you love, having fun with your friends and guildmates, and giving a ton of people the gift of seeing new content, and maybe a shiny new thing for them to enjoy?  Sounds like quite a present to me, and you don’t even have to leave the house… or your chair.

Wait a minute, what do you mean I can’t sell my loot????

    Just picture this scene… you’re done with a hard day of adventuring, causing genocide on a mass scale… There isn’t a fluffy bunny, rabid wolf, or orc for miles around. You have a full bag of potential coins, just enough for your repairs, a night at the in, a hearty meal and a couple pints before calling it a night. You walk into the general store, dump your sack on his counter and say “How much for all this?”. The shopkeeper looks confused.”How much for all what?” he asks, a bit bewildered

“For all what?!?! For all THIS!!!” As you point to your mound of stuff that has taken you hours of hacking, stabbing, bleeding and dying to attain.

“What am I supposed to do with it?!?” the shopkeeper asks, starting to get annoyed.

“You’re supposed to buy it, you dumb NPC. Haven’t you ever played an MMO before??? Don’t you know how this works? You buy the shit I get from stuff out there, and then I go and get stuff I need with the money you give me.”

The shopkeeper really looks pissed now and motions for the guard to escort his “patron” none too gently out. “First off” he says, through grated teeth, “What in the Nine Hells am I going to do with fifty bloody rabbit paws, 10 chunks of rotting boar meat, and 20 dented swords and shredded armor?? Secondly, even if I *did* have a use for them, why the hell would I be paying you for it when I could go get it myself? And finally, the dumbest thing you ever could have done was to call me a “dumb NPC”. And with that, the guard screams for help, and the guards come from all around and beat you into paste. Just before you pass out from the blood loss and pain of broken bones, you hear the shopkeeper mutter “fucking n00b PC’s…”

Amusing as this scenario might be, it does raise a very valid point: Why would an NPC want to buy all that garbage from us PC’s? Honestly, what use would they possibly have for all this shit? And since when does any merchant have an unlimited amount of funds to buy it all? You’d think after the 10 millionth rat ear, they would refuse to buy it, saying “Look behind me, asshole… I’ve got a mound of rat ears 40 feet high and 200 feet around… what in the hell would I do with THIS one??” I understand that we’re supposed to suspend some belief as this is a virtual world, and as such a virtual economy, but when you look at it from even a slightly rational point of view it does begin to unravel pretty quickly.

    This topic was raised by some conversations I had after our roundtable discussion with Brendan, who makes a very valid point, completely separate from my current issues with game economies as a whole and how they could be adjusted: Why have economies at all? Other than serving as another way for us to waste time in our already limited playing schedules, what benefit do they truly have?

From my perspective, they are a place where people try and screw others, be it the asshole who puts the stack of cheap items on the Auction House/Broker for an insanely inflated price in the hopes that you mistakenly click on his item, or a source of continual frustration for many as they either can’t find what they need, or can’t afford whatever it is. All the economy does it waste time, increase aggravation, and ultimately serves more negatives than positives to the gaming experience. So why not do away with it? Have no currency, have every item be either 1 lifetime trade, or be nodrop/notrade. Depending on the virtual world the game will be taking place in, have all materials go to your faction to help fuel the war effort, or have resources be so scarce they have to be turned in for reprocessing. There are tons of possibilities to this type of systems. Players will have to think, be creative, and find alternative ways of getting what they need to progress.

    But in the end the idea of vendors having unlimited currency and unlimited appetites for truly useless items is one of tradition.   “But Adam” they’d say, “every MMO has done it, we have to do it if we’re going to compete with all the other MMO’s out there!!!”. My question to game developers is…. “Why should you?”  Do you want to be a cow, following everyone else, or do you have the cojones to try something new and actually be evolutionary versus conformist?  It’s up to you, but personally I’m done selling rat tails… I’m holding on to enough of them to braid me some rat-nunchucks and a rat whip.  Who said that shit’s useless?

 

My first experiences with Heckgate: London… not so scary, but still fun.

As many of you have read, my first experiences with installing the game were… vexing, to say the least. Unable to wait for EA to get it’s collective act together, I decided to try and find another way to play. After spending a bit of time with Mr. B. Tor Rent, I was able to get an ISO to install the game, because at that time the digital download problem was still not fixed. To repeat, I needed an ISO in order to use my legally purchased CD key for my digital version of the game. /boggle. As a side note, at the time of this writing, EA has allegedly fixed the digital download issue, but being unwilling to download another 6.8 gigs, I have chosen to stick with what I have. So, finally being able to get into the game, I logged into the multiplayer, created a Blademaster melee type character, and jumped in.

To date, I have probably spent about 10-12 hours in the game, all of that time on the Blademaster. My first impressions are: it plays a lot like Diablo II. it’s very hack and slash, but there are some nice upgrades from D2, such as the better vantage point of the camera, using the WASD keys solely for your movement versus the point and click interface, and being able to time your swings to intercept enemies as they are coming in, or to be able to dodge attacks. In that way it does feel a bit more twitchy, but I think it feels a lot more fun and immersive than D2 let me feel. Also, the voice acting is absolutely superb. Some of the stars of current day England make their appearance as NPC’s, such as “Beck”, and “Joanne”, a la David Beckham and J.K. Rowling. The quests are predictable, but the voice talent and quest script often times had me laughing out loud. Whoever plays the crazy man from act 3 honestly needs a job in movies, because he’s that damn good. The crafting system is relatively easy to learn, and there are very few components you need in order to create items, always a plus. Other MMO’s such as Auto Assault and EQ2 had way too many crafting items, requiring ridiculous amounts of storage space and making for very confusing crafting experiences.

The game has a few rough spots, as any MMO does. Regardless of whether you feel Heckgate: London is a MMO, the “unlimited replayability” is pretty limited. The maps do get reused quite often, it’s just a matter of what collection of rooms attached together do you get. When travelling between 2 stations, you almost invariably go through a tunnel instance, which leads into a huge room that has a second floor that you have to go up to get out. I think of the 6 times I’ve had to go through it so far, 5 of them have been on the 2’nd floor, and only once have I had to go all the way through. So it does get pretty predictable at times.

Items are pretty stock, with 4 levels of gear: gray, green, blue and orange. gray gets sold to vendors, green+ gets recycled into crafting materials unless you’re using it for your character. Also, the creatures aren’t particluarly bright. You’d think after being stuck for eternity in Hell, you’d at least get smarter, if for no other reason than to keep your sorry hellspawn ass out of there again for as long as possible. Sadly, the only method these enemies have to attack you is zerg rush, which leads in a quick demise. As a melee character, true to D2 form you’ll be sucking down healing items like water, costing you a small fortune. Fortunately there’s no repair bills like there are in D2, which is a blessing, because you will end up dying, a lot.

That’s one of the biggest peeves I have with the game, is how often and quickly you die. I don’t mind if a game is difficult… in fact it’s a good thing because it makes the game more than just a walkthrough. However I do hate it when the game’s mechanics make it very difficult to play the game the way it’s meant to be played. As an example, when you use a healing item, there is a 10 second cooldown where you cannot activate another health kit. So unlike D2, you cannot simply keep swigging potions in the middle of combat, it’s “drink one, and pray to God that it keeps me alive long enough to live to drink another one”. When you get surrounded by mobs, it’s pretty hard to run away, unlike in D2. If you use the sprint feature, and take any damage while sprinting, you immediately go back to a fast walk. There is something to be said for tactics, and not running in full steam ahead… but what the hell good is a melee character if you can’t stand in the thick of things, keeping the hordes off your buddies? I found that feature pretty irritating.

I will still keep playing this game, because regardless of its faults, it still is a lot of fun. It does bring me back to the glory days of hack and slash, with updated graphics and a storyline that is pretty well written. I think I can best equate it to the Dilbert character Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, and Ruler of Heck. Ultimately not very scary, and often times very humorous, but he plods away, doing the best he can to punish people of the things that aren’t Hell-worthy offenses. I think he’d make an excellent GM for Heckgate:London.

We’re Knights of the Round Table, we Rant whenever able… part deux!

So, we did another little roundtable on The Maelstrom Podcast, this time with an even more varied and illustrious hosts:

Darren, from TheCommonSenseGamer and Shut Up We’re Talking, Brent, from VirginWorlds fame; Brendan from AnotherHere and FalconTwin; Michael Zenke from MMognation and Massively; and Joel, host of the Maelstrom Podcast and finally myself, acting as semi-moderator.

Over the course of almost 2 hours, we rambled, ambled, ranted, raged, and made incoherent sounds of rage on several topics: (Thanks to Michael for putting everything into nice bullet points for me!)

• the lasting impact of Vanguard
• the ripples across the industry of blogs and communities growing in cachet
• the lack of subscription options in AAA games
• the balance of PvP vs. PvE
• the lack of non-PC MMOGs
• and the really crappy track record games have for hitting launch dates

It was a lot of fun, and expect to hear more of these in the future. Everyone had a blast, and we’ll try and mix up the hosts somewhat to get some different views.

Note to game companies: Test your product BEFORE you sell it!

     If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is companies either being too lazy or too shortsighted to test ALL aspects of their game before they ship the goddamn thing.  My current disfavor rests on the always “reliable” EA Games and Flagship Studio’s Hellgate London.  I had heard from several sources that the game is fun, so I figured what the hell.  Not really having the time to drive over to my nearest big-box store chain, I went and downloaded the game digitally.  Buying the game, and the inital download went smoothly; I’d say it took me about 2.5 hours to download the 6.8 gigs that was required.  So now I go to install it, and here’s where the fun and frustration begin.

      So using EA’s little download tool, I start the installation process.  it takes about 30 mins to extract, verify, etc. before it gets to the install option.  So I click the install button, and as the game is booting up, it gives me this error message.  At first I think “Oh, ok… I didn’t create a login, so the system doesn’t recognize me”.  So I bounce over to the website and register.  I try the install again, and I get the same error message.  “Hrm” I think, “is anyone else having this problem?”  So I check the Hellgate London Forums – which were either so poorly hosted or so overloaded with traffic that I couldn’t even check any of the tech support forum to see if there was any help to be found.  Lovely.  My frustration growing at dropping 50 bucks on a product that won’t install, I start trolling the EA Support site, another bastion of fucking useless information and non-information.  Finally able to log in and check, this is the “helpful technical support” that i get from EA Support:

 QUESTION:

What can I do if I am getting an error when I try to install the download manager version of Hellgate: London?

 

Answer:

Some players are getting the following error when they try to install the download manager version of Hellgate: London:

‘Could not open key / Hkey_current_user/software ea//eacore//eadm/eadmonline_content//helgate_london//ergc Verify that you have sufficient access to that key or contact your support personnel’

We are currently looking into this issue, thank you for your patience while we investigate.

Note: Once the issue is corrected you will need to re-download and reinstall the game in order to play.

Please click the Notify Me… button at the bottom of this article to receive updates via e-mail regarding this issue as soon as they are available.

So… what you’re basically telling me is a) You don’t know what the fuck is wrong, b) You don’t know how to fix it, and c) You don’t know when I’ll be able to PLAY THE GAME I JUST DROPPED FIFTY BUCKS ON!!!!! 

     I’m sorry, but if you’re releasing a game digitally, and charging full price for it, make sure it fucking works.  It’s called “Beta Testing” for a reason.  You get 1000 people to download the client, and see if there are any issues.  I refuse to believe that EA didn’t run into ANYONE having this problem before releasing this game digitally.  Or, if they did know the problem, and simply assumed that people would “suck it up and deal”, then what they did was not only wrong, but wholly unethical.  I have since asked for my money back;  I am sure i will be told “no refunds”, regardless of the fact that I cannot use the software that I bought FROM THEIR SITE, USING THEIR DOWNLOADER, and it STILL doesn’t work.  But of course, it’s my fault for actually believing that the company tests their shit before they release it into the wild.  Ugh.