Namco Bandai has agreed to sell the European and North American Hellgate publishing rights to HanbitSoft, the franchise's current owner, for around $40,000.
We can play Hellgate on 2010 again. Game has some flaws but I really loved this game and will begin to play again.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/52486/Hellgate-London-Returning-To-The-West

I thought the reason why they shut it down in the first place was because, you know, it sucked.

You are perfectly right. I played Hellgate: London before it came out (Games tester for a magazine) and first thought i accidently installed a game from 1998 or something. The graphics - horrible! On a (back then) high-end system, i was stunned to learn that even 'Vampire: The masquerade" had better graphics (by feeling). The sound was horrible. The gameplay was bad. But the graphics really ruined it for me, together with the incredible amount of bugs. This is why i denied to test the game fully for the magazine i wrote for and rather, it got listed as "instant fail game".
Dont waste time with this game that went to hell (gni-hi-hi), which is perfectly what it deserved. Bad enough to hear someone bought the rights and tries/dares to resurrect this game that better should be burried under a bazillion tons of rocks and be forgotten for all eternity.
Man, i never had a game pissing me off so much....
- Gil

Why would someone spend $40,000 resurrecting that mistake?

Given the current financial state of the industry? I doubt it.

Hell, if i knew the rights would go for $40k, i would have bought it personally just to make sure no one ever makes this game show up again on this planet :P
Really, 40k is peanuts, even today. Even for small companies. Business is not as bad as everyone wants to make you believe ;)

I still have it installed (with a fixed exe). I just cannot get interested in the game, tried playing it several times. Seems repetitive to me with nothing new from level to level. It does have some potential but I believe it would need some major changes to make it work.

Sadly, highly repetitive and a little buggy. I played right through the game in SP mode, just to get my $20 worth. Could never get MP to work right at the time.
However: If they're willing to put a fair bit of time into it, I would be interested in seeing what they can do.

What about the poor suckers who paid for a lifetime subscription? Will they be able to play it "for free" again
"Since October 2007, the sensational popularity of Hellgate: London has attracted many RPG gamers" and both of them will be happy to see it back?

If they put huge effort into it, i'd give it another shot... but as said, no other game ever since managed to piss me of so seriously. Or rather the developers/publishers, that should have never allowed that this leaves the office.
Basically they would have to do a complete rework of all gfx, specially since its also OLD now :) Same for sound and gameplay issues, and get rid of all those horrible bugs it has, ...
basically it might be easier to write a new game.

I always liked the look of this a single player game. Never did find a copy to buy though =/

Amen to that, Hellgate was the last straw for me. Awesome amount of hype, bugs and let down with that game. I let em mature before I purchase now . . .=)

I loved it.
It was just released about 3 months too early, by the following January it was as bug free as anything else. That coupled with the subscription fubars and the EIGHT different factions of the player base totally screwed it.
Still a great game imho.

It wasn't a bad game really. I strongly disliked it at first as well: they should never have charged for crucial items for starters. There were also a lot of mistakes made and patches and extra content took too long to appear but towards the end, the game really wasn't that bad. It was no Diablo II but then again, no game is. I even doubt Diablo III will be as good as Diablo II (Blizzard lost most of the team responsible for the original two games).