Archive for the 'Media' Category

Horned’s dungeon has a new interview up on their website with Max Schaefer.

It goes through a variety of questions about game features and what is to come in the future of the game.

Mythos will finance itself about so-called item-stores. In which prize area will these stores move?

Max Schaefer: You will be able to buy items and services from vendors using the in-game cash currency in each town. They will work very much like the regular vendors, only instead of gold, silver, and copper, they will take the cash currency.

Will there be for fans like me sometime maybe a collector edition? Lineage 2 has demonstrated it here and after 2 years has thrown on the market a collector edition.

Max Schaefer: That’s a little ahead of where we’re thinking right now, but I like the idea. If we are successful in launching Mythos, we’ll do something like that for our fans!

[...]

Thank you Mr. Schaefer for this Interview. I hope Mythos would be a great Game.. No, I know that Mythos would be a great Game. Im a big Fan of this Game. And if, nevertheless, you want to make liable to pay costs one day. I think here the fans pay with pleasure monthly. A survey of us confirms this that the people were ready to pay.

Max Schaefer: There really is no good way to get money from customers, is there? If only we could get a government subsidy and provide the game for free to everyone, then everyone would be happy! Seriously, a huge part of our market is the Asian territories, and they are almost 100% using the item store model. Since our team is as small as our budget, we can only support one financial model at this time, and are going with the item store concept worldwide. We think it provides the most flexibility, and the best option for those who cannot pay any cash to play.

There are more questions on their website, so go check them out!

Enjoy :)

Gamer’s Hell has released four video trailers from Flagship on their website two days ago. The first three videos we have already seen, however they are now available for download in their High Definition versions. They talk of Mythos in general and also showcase the classes.

The fourth video is however the one to look at, as it’s a new trailer of the Mythos Overworld. The video previews the area and hints at an upcoming open beta!

Enjoy :)

Published in Flagship Studios and Media.

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

Published in Flagship Seattle, Media and Previews.

The Mythos website has been updated with a list of major changes that are currently happening to the game.

The main thing that they talk about, is the introduction of a full open world, with instances scattered throughout it. Best way to describe it would probably be something similar to Oblivion, but with randomised dungeons.

This on it’s own also leads to many other changes to things like PVP and quests.

You can read the full list of changes on our forums, and here are two screenshots:

Enjoy :-)

Written by Sp3tSn4z on April 30, 2008

Published in Media and Mythos.

Massively.com has a new article up where they detail the crafting system in Mythos.

Crafting itself is simple to pick up — just hit R and spend points in the crafting tree. You’ll see that it is impossible for a single crafter to become an expert in more than one or two skills. The skill trees themselves are oddly split — training in Swords and Axes gives you no abilities to create Spears and Polearms. Master the crafting of chest armors, but that will do you no good when it comes to making shoulders and helms. Focus on becoming the best cobbler in Uld, but don’t expect that skill to carry over into the scribing of Heraldries.

Here is a brief overview of the crafting quests and the process of crafting itself. You can read a more detailed list of the benefits of crafted items over on the official Mythos forums.

Enjoy :-)

Written by Sp3tSn4z on April 30, 2008