Years ago when I found out that Bill Roper was creating a team at his new company and the description of the game was called and I quote "Diablo 3D" with embarrass on the three twice if you get my meaning. To quantify all of the emotions wrapped up in this article I must explain the past several years of gaming for me.
In high school Diablo came out and I was hooked. For my spring break I was grounded with with my best friend while all others were away. During the day we would work, then go home and play Diablo until we beat it, several times. Once Diablo 2 came out I was rooted deep into college and work. However every friend I had (and I do mean all of them) was playing it. We played it all the time. I failed history of Shakespear because of that game. It has been installed on every machine I have owned since as my wonderful back up. So when I heard Hellgate, saw the fantasic animation by blur, I told everyone I knew and waited like a kid for Christmas morning.
It is for that reason that I think the fall of Hellgate was more harsh than most because I think my story isn't unique. Many fans were just as crazed for the Diablo magic lightning to strike again. Some of my friends even went so far as to buy the life time subscription to the game. They did this though at the insistent pleas of caution I had thrown out in complete contradiction to years of praise. I did this as I played what became boring, tedious, and just not captivating at all. I was running down the same tunnel over and over and worst of all my semi good machine made it look like pixilated *hurk*. The drastic difference between what I saw and my friends with the insanely powerful machines was a totally different game. I was, and I mean this, heart broken.
Now several posts have gone up stating that even with the collapse of the company the servers are still up. The funny thing is I still install the game randomly just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong or missed something very critical that made it into a great game. Normally I face a game thinking that it won't be great so that my expectations are not destroyed but in this case I really wanted it to be really good. I mourn the passing of Hellgate and now look forward to Diablo 3 to ease the pain I have endured in my child like heart. In the mean time I will be back on battle net. Look with anything prefixed "Bass" and venting agression like a angry bull on crack in a china... stadium? Well you get the idea.
Seabass