Flagship Studios boss Bill Roper is adamant the developer isn't ripping people off with the subscription-based access to Hellgate: London online multiplayer.

"We wanted to have the best of both worlds: to give people the free experience they're expecting, because this is from the Diablo team, but at the same time to provide continuing content," Roper told PC Zone magazine before discussing exactly what players will get for their $9.99 a month.

He continued, "We want to be able to stream things into the game continuously - additional gameplay modes, mods, quests, monsters and environments, special events for special days, weekly events, things that are ongoing and that go above and beyond balance fixes and bugs - even up to including new factions and character classes."

Roper explained that a fixed, regular schedule won't be applied to such updates but provided an example of how "at the end of every quarter or something, we do a big thing such as adding a new character class or some story."

The subscription, he said, is a way for Flagship Studios to be able to maintain the live team that produces the updates for the game and to interact with the community to see what they'd like added.

The latest trailer is here and today's batch of screenshots can be found here or by clicking the Images tab.

July 16, 2007