Mythos is the "little brother" of Hellgate: London, originally just the network playground of the developrers. As the game has evolved during Hellgate: London's development, the little Mythos-project might turn out to be the most popular game of Flagship yet. Quite a surprise for the former Blizzard-employees!
Stropp's World had the luck of catching Max Schaefer, one of the co-founders of both Blizzard North and Flagship Studios, and asked him a couple of things about this "Myhtos" project everyone is on about.
Stropp: Mythos has been in beta for quite some time now. How close are you to a release date?
Max: The Alpha/Beta period has been fairly long, as we really did use it to test features for Hellgate: London. Therefore we opened it before we might have otherwise done so, but this has allowed us get more input from our players and spend more time iterating on the design based on real data. Our release date has not been set but I can tell you it will be this year.
Before Flagship Studios, there was Blizzard North. Originally known as Condor, the Redwood-based studio was acquired in 1997 by Blizzard Entertainment. At the time, Blizzard North was hard at work on the development of the game that would be the cornerstone of everything that came after: Diablo.
Hanbitsoft and T3Fun have announced that the open beta for their online action role-playing game, Mythos Global is now live. European fans can once again join in the action after Mythos Europe was closed down last year. Mythos is set in the land of Uld, a fantasy world arisen from the ashes of a dark and terrible war. Uld is a place where many different races live and where gods try their best to gain more power and influence among their followers.
DSOGaming writes: "Sad news for fans of MYTHOS, as Frogster’s community manager announced that MYTHOS Europe will be closing its doors on October 27th at 12:00 CEST (11am UK). According to the team, MYTHOS enjoyed great popularity with the launch in April and the numerous registered users ensured a good start. The desired long-term success unfortunately did not follow and under these circumstances, they have made the difficult decision to discontinue the operation of MYTHOS."
It's fun when you think about it. Mythos might actually have a better chance at becoming a steady income for Flagship than their "flagship" Hellgate: London!