petroglyph posts

It's been a little while since we last reported on Guardians of Graxia, the upcoming PC card-based fantasy strategy game from developer Petroglyph Games. While Petroglyph has yet to officially announce a release date for the title Big Download has learned via unnamed but reliable sources that the title will be released via download soon, hopefully in the next few days.

The game is the first PC title from Petroglyph since its release of Universe at War: Earth Assault nearly three years ago. Since departing from the development of the upcoming free-to-play game Mytheon earlier this year, Petroglyph is now working on its online MMO RTS game End of Nations for release in 2011.

It's the third day of Steam's week long sale of games from publisher LucasArts. Today the PC game download site has slashed the price of Star Wars Empire at War Gold, the RTS title from developer Petroglyph. You can get both the original game and its expansion pack Forces of Corruption from now until 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday for just $5, a 75 percent savings from its normal price.

Don't forget that Steam also still has a collection of 13 Star Wars-themed games on sale from now until Sunday for just $49.99 compared to a price of over $150 if all those games were bought separately.

Earlier this week we reported that publisher news.bigdownload.com/tag/true-gamesUTV True Games had announced that the upcoming free-to-play action-RPG Mytheon had "fully transitioned into the hands of our Developer" suggesting strongly that the game's main developer Petroglyph was now off the project. Late on Friday Petroglyph's co-founder Mike Legg confirmed to Big Download via email, "We are no longer involved in the development of Mytheon."

Earlier this year True Games filed a lawsuit against Petroglyph to obtain the game's source code but a few weeks later the publisher and Petroglyph announced the quick resolution of the lawsuit. In his email to Big Download this week, Legg says, "We reached a mutual agreement with True Games that resolved the remaining legal issues." That would suggest that there are no hard feelings between the two companies.

True Games will shut down the currently running open beta test of Mytheon on Tuesday, August 31 and says it plans to start inviting players back sometime in the first quarter of 2011. Meanwhile Petroglyph's upcoming downloadable strategy game Guardians of Graxia is supposedly close to being released and the developer's near-future themed RTS game End of Nations for publisher Trion Worlds is due for launch sometime in 2011.

After seemingly coming back together, the development team at Petroglyph seems to have permanently parted ways with publisher UTV True Games over the release of the upcoming free-to-play multiplayer action-RPG Mytheon. This week the game's official message boards had a post from Mytheon's community manager at True Games, stating that the title "has fully transitioned into the hands of our Developers at UTV True Games." No mention of Petroglyph was made.

According to the message board post, True Games plans to end the game's current open beta test on August 31 to make "improvements" to the title. The post says the dev team will provide "early invites to the game in the first quarter of 2011". The forum posts adds, "We remain committed to offering Mytheon as a top quality free-to-play game at official launch with polished gameplay, enhanced features and expanded content: a game worthy of the excellent players that have already joined us for its early testing."

Officially announced in December 2008, development of Mytheon seemed to be going well until May of 2010 when True Games sued Petroglyph over the source code for the game. Only a few weeks later things seemed to be back on track as True Games and Petroglyph announced that their legal issues had been resolved and that Mytheon would launch on July 13. However True Games announced later that the game would not make its planned release date after all. We have emailed Petroglyph to get their side of the story.

It looks like we will be waiting a bit longer for the official launch of Mytheon. The free-to-play multiplayer action-RPG from developer Petroglyph and publisher UTV True Games was supposed to launch on July 13. However the publisher announced that the launch had been delayed to an unnamed date.

Now the game's official message boards has word from True Games's community manager that because of feedback from players in the game's open beta period the game's release has been delayed until some time in the ""Q3/Q4 2010" time period (a previous message that said the game's launch was being delayed until early September was later refuted). People who purchased the $129.95 Champions pack for the game will be getting some extra stuff because of the delay including "an extra 5% off Coin purchases, exclusive stones and gear at the launch of Mytheon."

Earlier this year developer Petroglyph Games finally revealed End of Nations, its near-future themed RTS MMO game for pubisher Trion Worlds. Now comes word that the next Video Games Live music concert will feature the world premiere of the music for the game.

The concert will be held on Saturday July 24 at the San Diego Civic Theater (hey, that's the city where Comic-Con is right now!) with the game's music composer Frank Klepacki taking the stage for the premiere of his music themes. Also the End of Nations "0" issue comic book that was revealed last week will be given out to all attendees of the concert.

As an obvious riff off the fact that many of the members of the Petroglyph team working on End of Nations also worked on the original Command & Conquer, this developer video discusses the cooperative aspects of the game. Although End of Nations will have a strong single player aspect for those who prefer to solo, but you can't forget that it's an MMO. So there will be plenty of gigantic challenges where it would be more beneficial for multiplayer players to work together, combining both firepower and skills, to overcome.

Download HD End of Nations Developer Video #2 (255 MB)
Check out all End of Nations downloads

Last month we reported that DC Comics' Wildstorm division would be releasing a four issue mini-series called The Telera Chronicles that would serve as a prequel story to Trion Worlds' upcoming fantasy MMO Rift: Planes of Telera. Today Trion Worlds sent over word that the other major MMO game it is publishing, the RTS title End of Nations, would also be getting its own Wildstorm produced comic. The comic, due out later this fall, will be written by Ricardo Sanchez and drawn by Yvel Guichet with covers by Chris Sprouse and is based on the game that's being developed by Petroglyph.

Trion Worlds will be giving out free "0" issues of both The Telera Chronicles and the End of Nations comic at the DC Comics booth during the San Diego Comic-Con next week. The "0" issues will only be available during Comic-Con.

[Via email press release]

Folks waiting for the official launch of Mytheon will have to wait a bit longer that originally announced. The free-to-play multiplayer action-RPG game was supposed to launch tomorrow, July 13, but a post on the game's message boards has announced that the launch date has been delayed.

The game from developer Petroglyph and publisher UTV True Games is still in open beta testing but according to True Games's Community Relations Associate Jack Reed the development team is still working to improve the title before launch. He states, "In order to ensure that these improvements are included at the time of the Mytheon's official launch, the originally announced date of July 13th will be pushed back a bit, though we anticipate the new date will be soon after." No new launch date was given. Petroglyph and True Games got into a legal dispute over the game earlier this year but later announced they had resolved their differences.

Developer Petroglyph has been working on an downloadable strategy game called Guardians of Graxia. The game, which will also be accompanied by a board game, is set in an all new fantasy world with lots of new units. Big Download got a chance to get some descriptions of the game's units directly from Petroglyph along with screenshots showing the units in action. You can see one of the units, The Portal, above this post. The Portal is a simple deportation object that allows travel between continents in the game.

Guardians of Graxia is planned for release later this summer in both its PC game and board game versions later this summer. An physical collectible card game, Heroes of Graxia, is also in the works.