False advertisement and some really bad game design make up what we know as Hellgate London.
In the beta, a developer let it known that ... yes they really did not want the game to feel epic. That they loved the movie shaun of the dead so much, they wanted to just make it all one big joke. They did that. The joke was on the people who payed for a non-epic game. One of which tries to distract the consumer with nice graphics and a loot system. Everything else fails. Good game design comes from making a good foundation, something Flagship studios clearly did not spend time on. We have to remember, the man behind the Diablo franchise is NOT at Flagship studios, as they would want you to believe, but working at Perpetual Entertainment. On other occasions Roper has stated that HGL is not an MMO, and then later at a different time, that it IS and mmo. Flagship studios does not even know their own product, and this lack of strong concept and clear design ends up hurting them.
The game fails to be anything more than just a gimmick.