By the measure of Picasso (and Jobs) I am the Leonardo da Vinci of the blogging world. If you would dare to call blogging art.

But I digress. Only those gamers who played Diablo for the first time in 1996/97, fell in love with it, and were then forced to wait from 2000 to 2005 for Diablo 2 to be released would understand this fully. Remember the excitement when you were invited to the closed beta? What about the horror of the 100MB beta client download? I was on dial-up at the time so let me assure you that it wasn’t fun.

Now imagine that times 4 gajibazillion. Hellgate: London promised even more than Diablo 2 did (aside: and even D2 disappointed the followers of The Great Hype Machineâ„¢ back then).

Then imagine this in your inbox.

Congratulations! You’ve been selected to be part of the very first group to help test Hellgate: London, the highly-anticipated Action-RPG from Flagship Studios!

Well I nearly died. And then I was incredibly happy that I was in Sweden because I could download the game without having to worry about a cap.

So for the last 3 weeks or so I’ve been trying to test Hellgate: London on this shocking laptop I’m stuck with for the duration of my stay in Sweden. That’s not entirely fair… The only thing keeping me from a more enjoyable alpha experience is the graphics card really. It’s pretty impressive that the good ol’ integrated Intel 945 is managing so well.

As the discerning have probably… um… discerned from my cunning reference to Fight Club, testers were subject to an NDA. This means that I’m basically not allowed to say anything except that I’m in the Alpha. I have another cunning plan, though. I’m going to keep a record of my alpha wanderings and post them the minute the NDA is lifted.

For now check out the Hellgate: London site and view some of the official trailers.