Cryptic lassoes Roper, Hellgate relaunching?

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Nov 3, 2008 3:47 pm PT

Former Flagship CEO resurfaces as design director of the forthcoming PC/360 superhero MMORPG Champions Online; Korean publisher HanbitSoft reportedly working on new expansion.

It's been a roller coaster year for former Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper. After overseeing the October 31, 2007, launch of Hellgate: London, he looked on as it struggled to carve out a niche in the market. However, despite decent reviews, the title never gained traction. The game's dwindling support forced Flagship to lay off most of its employees in July, and copublisher (with EA) Namco Bandai announced last month it would shut the game's servers down on January 31.

In August, some of the Flagship castaways announced they were forming a new independent studio, Runic Games. Today, Roper revealed he has landed a new gig of his own at Cryptic Studios, developer of City of Heroes and the forthcoming Star Trek Online. The San Francisco Bay Area-based shop hired the veteran developer to be design director of Champions Online, its forthcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the classic pen-and-paper title.

"Cryptic has experienced huge growth over the past year and has exciting opportunities ahead of it," said Roper in a statement. "The company knows how to choose compelling IPs that have rich histories such as Champions and Star Trek. I'm looking forward to working with the team."

Roper gained notoriety working on Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft while working at the pre-World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment. First hired as part of the now-Activision-merged developer-publisher's audio department, Roper rose quickly through its ranks, eventually becoming vice president of Blizzard North and a director of Blizzard itself. In 2003, he left Blizzard to found Flagship studios and work on Hellgate and the still-unreleased Mythos.

Speaking of Hellgate, this week also brings news the game may live on after Namco pulls the plug on its servers in January. In two separate posts, Korean publisher and developer HanbitSoft claims it now owns the Hellgate IP and is working on a new expansion for the game. The posts say work on the expansion is being done at a "newly established studio in the US." A July Gamasutra report pegged the studio as a San Franciscan subsidiary of Asian publisher T3 Entertainment, which was also continuing development of Mythos.

50 Comments

  • Frosty192

    Posted May 8, 2009 8:59 am PT

    msilver67

    well if you think about it, for the time it was out till the time that it ended, you would have paid that much anyways so i guess you "kinda" got your moneys worth

  • greighopkins

    Posted May 6, 2009 3:44 am PT

    ah please, oh please, oh please, bring back Hellgate
    This game is beyond awesome with a rich ambience and lore that we haven't seen since WoW or Oblivion.
    all we see these days are games rolled-out for the sake of a new game-mechanic or movie release.
    Hellgate is unique and deserves another shot in the west.

  • Qwickilller117

    Posted Jan 18, 2009 8:52 am PT

    msilver67

    you got it right on the money

  • msilver67

    Posted Dec 18, 2008 4:47 pm PT

    Well if Bill Roper's name has anything to do with future gaming, everyone should expect something wonderful to come about..oops that is right he ripped me and 249,999 other Hellgate Clients out of our $149.00 lifetime subscriptions..wow I almost awoke the eternal damned from the ripped off souls of HellGate Online..wheffff

  • leoleez

    Posted Dec 8, 2008 8:37 pm PT


    focus on hanbit should focus on mythos (i hate to leav it in their hands) and cryptic should focus on champions, which seems like a funner alternative to the boost in scifi MMOs

  • necronaux

    Posted Nov 7, 2008 10:49 am PT

    As long as it doesn't effect other titles they're working on, it's their money.

  • DiscGuru101

    Posted Nov 5, 2008 1:21 pm PT

    For the love of all things good on planet Earth, focus on Star Trek. Champions is just a poor mans City of Heroes.

  • _DeadlyFred_

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 11:05 pm PT

    Ok so, if you don't like or even play Hellgate... why do you even care? Some people enjoy the game and for them this is great news--go be a killjoy somewhere else.

  • Harwood

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 7:51 pm PT

    I have been enjoying Hellgate for the past few months. I have no real crash problems, but I don't play online. I enjoy just jumping on the box and wasting targets in what is, at least on my hardware, a fantastic visual. The loss of the servers is not a big deal to me. The possibility of an expansion and the implicit support for the title is comforting.

    I wonder what they want for the servers though?

  • Pete5506

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 4:26 pm PT

    The game is gone, let it be

  • liljimy

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 4:11 pm PT

    Okay, i never really judge a game by who made it but it's always been "bill roper and diablo..." so i figured if him and his team made the coolest multiplayer RPG game then i shouldn't have to worry about it then, right? Soon enough it turned into: "bill roper hopes this..." "bill roper fails that..." this guy tried to get a good hype going by saying he was apart of the development of the diablo series. He was basically degrading the diablo name by comparing it to a boring wayyyyy below average hackn' slash game. He worked at blizzard for how long? He should know that blizzard almost always delays every game they make by months to be sure that the release is ideal. So why go ahead and release based on a given deadline when there are still months of work that is still needed to be done? obviously he didn't learn much. I was 9/10 ready to pay the founder's subscription because i couldnt wait to get all that cool stuff but within a week of playing it-- well you've played the game, right? well then i dont have to say another word. :-D

  • omnifas

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 1:22 pm PT

    Hanbitsoft is gonna be wasting development dollars on Mythos. Mythos was getting better every month because of the Developer Community relationship which I highly doubt Hanbit can even come close to matching.

  • jpmose9

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 12:37 pm PT

    i just remember that I installed this game i'm uninstalling now hoping that the expansion never come out

  • bojan_sokol

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 11:59 am PT

    Hellgate only has great intro movie thats all

  • Wolfcp11

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 11:07 am PT

    Let the dead lie.

  • tudyniuz

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 10:42 am PT

    Champions online doesn't sound very good or interesting but I'm waiting on more information

  • buzzguy

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 9:57 am PT

    Champions Online could be really, really good. Especially if it plays as well on consoles as on PC's. Can't wait!

  • n64nut

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 9:55 am PT

    Leria, I played the demo too and it ran just fine. The retail version, however, was a complete nightmare with frequent crashes and glitches that made it near unplayable. Even at 30 bucks, I still feel really screwed out of my money.

    Should have gotten Crysis, even though my PC would probably hate me forever.

  • Leria

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 9:05 am PT

    Uh, Sins...... I played the demo for Hellgate, and I didn't see any bugs, crashes, glitches, etc.
    None at all.

  • Sins-of-Mosin

    Posted Nov 4, 2008 7:00 am PT

    Seems a lot of people on here got flagshipped including myself. The game was never going to be a hit with so many broken things. The inventory was from 1998, the weapons rating was just horrible, a few tile sets, point A to B maps, and all the bugs disconnects crashes gliches. And whats worse is if they tried to make a patch, it would break something else.

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