Mythos

[Smoof]

Was just thinking about this game today.

Is there any word on the status of it since the issues at Flagship? I really want to play it. :(

[violent]

Wasn't it canceled? Beta was great.

[Troggles]

It's dead, Jim.

[Smoof]

Was it? I thought the rights moved to some Korean company and they might have continued the bit of work that the game needed. If it's truly dead, it's quite sad. I was very much looking forward to that.

[Ravenlock]

Yeah, the death of Mythos is a damned shame. I thought it was a far superior game to Hellgate, and if Flagship had put Mythos out as their *ahem* flagship title instead of Hellgate maybe they wouldn't have been driven into the ground.

I believe (?) that Hanbitsoft acquired the Mythos rights at the same time they acquired the Hellgate rights, and they put out a press release (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22005) back in January stating that Hellgate would reappear someday as a free-to-play game. Who knows, maybe Mythos will get the same treatment. It was still in development, though, so it needed more work, and I think there's some dispute as to whether the Hellgate thing will actually get off the ground, so don't hold your breath. :(

[jpublic]

It's dead. If anything, Hanbitsoft will only release it in Korea/Asian Bloc, since those markets are good suckers for those free-to-play/pay-to-get-anywhere games.

[Ravenlock]

It's dead. If anything, Hanbitsoft will only release it in Korea/Asian Bloc, since those markets are good suckers for those free-to-play/pay-to-get-anywhere games.

Sure, but so are we when somebody bothers to make one that isn't just poorly translated, formerly Asia-only crap. People forget that Jagex's in-browser MMO RuneScape is in fact one of the most popular Western MMO's, with over 5 million active users and more than 1 million paying members (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13769) the last time I saw anybody bother to write an article about them, and that was almost 2 years ago. That's more paying members than any other Western-designed MMO except WoW, at least according to any data I can find. Whether that number's gone up or down in the last 2 years I have no idea, but it's a rather mammoth success by any standard for a game that runs in a plugin.

A high-quality, properly targeted and marketed Western free-to-play, pay-for-perks (or in Runescape's case pay-for-more-game) MMO could succeed just fine, and Mythos could easily be tailored to that formula if Hanbitsoft sees the wisdom in doing so. It was already developed for and around a Western audience, and there's currently no competition in the space it would occupy, at least until Diablo 3 arrives.