mythos posts

Yet another MMO game that once was lost has now been found. Today marks the official public launch of Mythos Europe. The free-to-play fantasy MMO game started life at Flagship Studios but that studio's closure in 2009 caused the game, still in beta, to be shut down. Korea-based Hanbitsoft bought the rights to Mythos and together with partner Frogster helped bring the game back to life.

Apparently, folks in the US can download and play the game from its European servers. That's good news for US Mythos fans as we are still waiting for our own version of the game. The US Mythos web site hasn't been updated since July 2010 and there's no word on when, or even if, a beta test will begin, much less the game's official launch.

The long saga of the free-to-play fantasy MMO Mythos continues to be a fairly melodramatic one. Originally developed by Flagship Studios, the game shut down along with Flagship back in 2008 while it was still in beta (most of the creators of the original Mythos went on to form Runic Games where they made the terrific action-RPG Torchlight).

In December 2009, Korean-based Habitsoft announced plans to relaunch Mythos under its Redbana USA developer sometime in 2010. However, the Mythos curse hit once again with the game still not yet launched in the US. The most recent info from Redbana on the game's official message board was back in January 2011 and states, "There have been further technical delays which have pushed the game back even further than we had anticipated." So far there is no word at all on when Mythos' will launch even in beta form.

However these issues have not affected plans to launch Mythos in Europe. Partnering with Frogstar, the European servers have been in closed beta for some time and will launch its open beta on April 12 with the official release coming on April 28. A box copy of the game will also be made available and will allow players to sign onto the game two days earlier.

The shut down of Flagship Studios over a year also caused their in-development free MMO Mythos to be sold off to Korean publisher Habitsoft. At the time it looked unlikely that the publisher would allow Mythos to be accessed by US players. That changed today with the announcement that the game's new developer, Redbana USA, is prepping the game for a US launch.

The announcement today also comes with the launch of the new US-based Mythos web site which at the moment features a YouTube teaser video with gameplay footage. At the end of the video it shows a "2010" release date (you can check out the video after the jump). At the moment the game is in closed beta in Korea but there's no word on when that will happen for the US release. In the meantime you can check out a brief Q&A on the game's relaunch at our sister site Massively.

As a reminder, Mythos' original development team at Flagship Studios are not in charge of this new version; they have since gotten back together as Runic Games. They have already released the successful single player action-RPG Torchlight with an MMO based on that game now in the works.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few years, first of all, welcome back to civilization. Second of all, remember Diablo? Yeah, they're making the third one finally. But we don't know when it's coming out, so to hell with them ... literally. Because third of all, Runic Games's Torchlight is dropping on the 27th! Yes, of this month!

What? You've never heard of Torchlight or Runic Games? Well, then, let me school you big money style. Read on to find out why Torchlight is going to stave off those waiting-for-Diablo 3 jitters.

The shut down of Flagship Studios caused the development company to close down their plans for a free-to-play MMO title Mythos. However Korean-based developer HanbitSoft announced early on that they acquired the rights to continue the game's development. Today they sent out a press release announcing that they are working to re-launch the game, stating, "MYTHOS is in good condition where it's being reconstructed to become more suitable as online game. We are trying to keep the strengths that the game used to have, and make them even stronger, while eliminating its weaknesses."

At the moment, the official Mythos web site is almost entirely in Korean which makes us wonder if the game itself will be playable for US residents. Meanwhile the original Flagship Studios Mythos team has reformed as Runic Games and announced recently their own original free-to-play MMO Torchlight.

In the wake of the shut down of Flagship Studios last year, members of the team's Seattle branch reformed last August to create Runic Games. The team members all worked on Flagship's free-to-play MMO Mythos that went into beta testing but shut down alongside the company before it could officially launch.

Today it was announced that Chin-based publisher Perfect World has signed on to publish Runic Games's first project. Not surprisingly it's an MMO game with the title Torchlight. The game itself is described as being an "Action-MMORPG" with characters that are " in search of the magic ore that imbues their equipment with power, yet imperils their very existence." No release date for the game was announced.

With the loss of Flagship Studio's MMO Mythos, and the announcement of Blizzard's upcoming Diablo 3, there has never been a better time for the resurgence of the isometric hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler. A recent Mac Monday featured Wild Tangent's Fate, and today's MM brings a similar offering, Soldak Entertainment's Kivi's Underworld.

Similar, that is, in general theme and basic controls, but more akin to a console game in some ways than a PC game. Download the Mac demo right here on Big Download, and read on to find out what Kivi's Underworld is all about.

Wild Tangent's Fate is either an offline version of Flagship Studios' MMO Mythos, or a graphics-updated version of Diablo; I'm not sure quite which. There is scant difference between the two to begin with, a fact that amused and consternated fans of Blizzard's top-down click-and-slash adventure game. At the time, Mythos was thought of as the closest that Diablo fans would get to a true Diablo MMO -- not surprising, since several members of the original Diablo development team founded Flagship Studios. At least, until Mythos get closed down before it even had a chance to crawl out of veta.

Like it or laugh at it, however, the one thing that Mythos proved was that people still love that particular type of gameplay. This is a point in the favor of Fate: now that it's nearly impossible to play either of the Diablo games on OS X without jumping through some arduous hoops, if you're in dire need of an isometric dungeon crawl, then Fate is your game.

It's one of the biggest flame outs in recent game development history. Flagship Studios, formed a few years ago by the prime developers behind the Diablo series at Blizzard, created the highly anticipated action-RPG game Hellgate London. However mediocre reviews, tons of bugs at launch and poor sales after its October 2007 release served to sink the developer. Flagship closed its doors a few weeks ago.

While we have heard from other Flagship founders what happened to the studio, the highest profile team member, Bill Roper, has kept silent until a new and extensive interview just appeared at 1Up.com. Roper admits, "OK, we made mistakes. The Hellgate game came out, and it wasn't great." He also stated that the mix of free play with a monthly fee with more content was also a mistake. However he also stated they were trying to improve the game in the months following its release. Obviously things didn't go as planned and while Roper stated they were in talks with a number of people to buy Flagship and their IPs (including their in-development free MMO Mythos) they ran out of time. Roper still wants to continue to make games for a living but no future plans were revealed.

Despite earlier reports that Flagship Studios would remain optional after the massive layoff comprising most of its staff, ex-COO Max Schaefer has told Gamecyte that the studio has only remained open to "take care of the final affairs."

A Blizzard Entertainment veteran, Schaefer admits that closing down a company was a new experience for him, as it was for most of Flagship's executives. The doors have remained opened so that Flagship CEO Bill Roper can "take care of the debts and the employees in an orderly fashion."

Sitting in on the interview was free-to-play-MMO Mythos lead designer Travis Baldree, who lent a bit more insight into the build up to the studio's premature demise. Baldree says that he, along with the other executives, knew that closing was a possibility, "but we were in very advanced negotiations with a couple of people for deals that would have kept Flagship open and would have kept everything running." For a time, the future seemed brighter.

Unfortunately, none of those deals came to fruition, and the closure became inevitable. "We all were up all night, every night, not getting any sleep, working every day trying to get it to work out for everyone, and in the end it just didn't," says Baldree.

Just as before, Baldree, Schaefer and others are looking ahead to the future, and the second chance it offers. The Mythos team has reformed as Runic Games and continues to do what they love most regardless of setbacks and layoffs: create games.