Today was the big day for the first major content release in Hellgate: London, with a patch that added several new zones, quests, and loot for subscribers only, centered around Stonehenge.

After first zoning in, the difference is rather striking — the Stonehenge hub area is a big, open, bright area, in stark contrast to all of the other cloudy, dreary, and underground zones that make up the rest of the game. The actual combat zones beyond that darken things up again, with a forest valley atmosphere. It’s a refreshing change, at least.

The main new quest line here is to kill the demon Moloch, after first taking out his generals, and to get to them you have to collect essences before you can get into their zones. I didn’t get very far, since lag is fairly bad tonight, so I’m not yet sure if there are any new enemies or terrain beyond that first combat zone.

There’s also one zone that pretty much requires a group of six or more players if you want to survive at all. I stuck my nose in for a few minutes, but remained pinned down at the entrance by a constant barrage of explosive projectiles.

I found some nice new helms, including one much better than my current one, but the stat requirements on it are fairly steep. I need something like 25 more stamina before it’ll let me wear it. It’s also subscriber-only, so if I ever stop paying, I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore. That’s how they get their hooks in you…

It’s kinda nifty so far, but I still need to explore it further, and it might still become uninteresting before too long. I just need to wait for the lag to die down a bit…