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Archive for May, 2008
A new trailer has sprung up for the Overworld that is being added to Mythos. No longer will the game be an amalgam of segmented instances that make some loose form of a world, there will now be an overlaying, contiguous “overworld” map for each Zone. Along with this comes an amazing graphical overhaul of Stonehill (that can be seen in the video) and an announcement that “Open Beta nears.”
All of this is great news for that little Tugboat game we’ve all been following for the last year and 4 months, which continues to pull in larger and larger crowds of a barge behind it.
Thanks to “Defens” of the official Mythos forums for the heads up for this video, mythos.4players.de for hosting the video, and thanks to Flagship Studios for making the video! 
~Sulfuric/Tiberius Audley
Well, now that the Mythos Conclave is in public light…
We are proud to present its entry into the Mythos Fansite Community with a community-wide event, to which everyone is invited!
Introducing the Mythos Conclave Round Table, an IRC open discussion regarding individual Mythos gameplay mechanics and elements. Each encounter at the Round Table will feature a new topic, with our first topic being the latest news on Mythos’ development cycle: The Overworld.
The discussion will begin at Saturday, May 10th at 7 PM Eastern Time (GMT-5) and will run for about an hour.
Everyone who is a fan of Mythos, whether in Beta, waiting for an invite, or even on the Development team will be invited to attend.
So what, exactly, is this Round Table discussion?
Basically, it is an open, topical discussion on an aspect of Mythos. Everyone who attends is welcome to watch, but encouraged to chime in and express his or her viewpoint on the subject.
The goal of the discussion is to gather a pool of information and form a general consensus of player and fan opinions regarding important MMO or Action-RPG gameplay mechanics, how they are implemented in Mythos, and how they affect the game. All devevelopers able to attend will also be encouraged to join the conversation, discussing what they seek when playing online games or what they would like to see in that topic out of Mythos in the future (regardless of if it actually is planned or not).
Essentially, this event is a community event to serve as a dual purpose to announce the Mythos Conclave’s entry into the community and welcome passionate players to share their viewpoints on the game.
All information discussed in the Conclave’s Round Table will be logged and posted on the Conclave after the discussion.
So we look forward to seeing you in the Mythos IRC Saturday night at 7 PM Eastern Time for the Mythos Conclave Round Table! (I’ll add a Java Link when I can find it again.)
~Sulfuric
Hello, and welcome to Mythos Conclave, your new destination for everything about Mythos !
Mythos is an MMO/Action-RPG by Flagship Studios’ Seattle team, combining fast-paced action you can easily jump in, along with randomized environments, a huge number of items, and much much more.
Mythos Conclave will offer you all the lastest news about Mythos, along with discussion forums, additional content, etc. Oh, and free hosting for guilds. Yes. Just ask us, and we will give you your own guild page, along with a forum for your guild !
We hope that you will like our site, and we look forward to talking with you about Mythos !
- The Mythos Conclave team
IGN’s website, RPG Vault, has started a new section recently titled “Focus” where they invite a few leading industry developers to talk about an issue. While there isn’t anything strictly Hellgate or Mythos related in the article, one of the developers invited is from Flagship Studios.
Today, the “focus” discussion was about RPGs and the genre that certain games belong to, as well as how RPGs have changed over the years. The two industry developers today were Steve Bauman, the associate producer at Gas Powered Games, as well as Max Schaefer, who is the Co-Founder and COO of Flagship Studios.
In 1993, Max Schaefer, brother Erich and friend David Brevik co-founded Condor, which became Blizzard North when acquired in 1996. He served as Vice President of Blizzard North and a Director of Blizzard before the same trio plus Bill Roper and David Williams started Flagship Studios in 2003. Some of his credits include Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Hellgate: London.
The article talks about Max’s previous games like Diablo as well as other games in the genre.
The very first test we did at the beginning of the Diablo project was to make a guy with a mace, a simple dungeon, and a skeleton. We set it up so if you clicked the on skeleton, the guy would walk over and whack him one. It was a “lightning in a bottle’ moment, and there was no question we were on to something big. Instead of instructing my character to hit something, I just did it with my mouse click. Everyone could enjoy this! It’s a theory we’ve continued with our current title, Mythos, an action RPG if there ever was one.
So for me, the term action RPG was invented to refer to those games that concentrate on the visceral, graphic imagery and action of the genre. The emphasis is more on battle than lore. All the trappings can be there - the leveling, the stats, the magic loot, the crafting, the questing… It’s just that there tends to be less emphasis on dialogue, story or role-playing.
[…]
However, take the example of the 500-pound gorilla in the room, World of Warcraft. People generally agree it’s a classic RPG, but in reality, it’s also an action RPG: playing it takes a good amount of dexterity, there’s a decent amount of action, and there’s more an overall context than there is a specific story. But if there’s any title that defines the RPG market, and influences how developers must approach the genre, it’s World of Warcraft.
While many have tried, it’s probably futile to try to be a WoW-killer. Not only did the game have great talent with a virtually unlimited budget and timeline, it has also had many years of well-subsidized development post-launch. No publisher in its right mind would commit the resources necessary to beat it at that game. It’s just way too risky.
Steve’s discussion can be seen on page two and talks about his views of the genre.
The whole discussion is a very interesting read and provides some insight on how the genre has evolved.
Enjoy 
Written by Sp3tSn4z on May 4, 2008