This just goes to show you that a new studio, no matter how talented, should ALWAYS start small. Hellgate was a huge, ambitious project, but it was also the product of a team that hadn't yet learned how to work together. Thus, it turned out to be a mediocre bug-fest at launch.
Had the company started with a smaller, less ambitious title, then they would have had less bugs and problems to deal with, less financial risk, and would have had an opportunity to organize themselves into a cohesive team in a less stressful, frantic environment. Then they could have used the funding from that project, combined with the know-how to work together, to tackle a project like Hellgate.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
