Signup for the Mythos Beta

One of my readers, Azalus, commented on one of my posts about Mythos asking if anyone had a spare beta invite.

Reading the review makes me want to play this even more, unfortunately I have yet to receive an Invite…

Lucky for Azalus, the Mythos beta was opened up a while back so he can go to the Mythos web site and enter his email address in the signup form provided.

A lot has changed since I took my original look at Mythos. The biggest change, a sort of back to the drawing board level event, involves the de-instancing of much of the world. The areas between dungeons are now open for one and all.

Personally, I’m not all that sure this is a good move. Sure it makes the game more MMO — a lot of folks have commented that Guild Wars isn’t a true MMO simply because it instances the space between towns, something that Mythos used to do — but it removes that Diablo feel. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Anyway. If you’re still interested in Mythos, head over to the main site and sign up for the beta.

Popularity: 1%

Mythos Zone 3 Imminent

I just received the Mythos Newsletter in my inbox. It doesn’t really have a lot to say, just lists some of the upcoming features and events happening with Mythos. These include a redesign of the Mythos website, the announcement that the Zone 3 release is imminent, and some changes in PvP and Crafting.

There’s also a graphic of a new monster to fight, the Stagkin. The picture has a bipedal humanoid with a reindeer head carrying a nice big polearm. It’s a bit like Rudolph on steriods. A very very angry Rudolph who had previously gone on a rampage slaughtering elves and the Claus family leaving a trail of carnage in his wake…. ooops. There goes my imagination again. Could be a SciFi movie of the week.

The newsletter also mentions that if the Zone 3 test works out well, Mythos may well go into an open beta phase. That’s big news. Mythos has been in closed beta for a long time now. Opening it up will give this game a lot more recognition. Something it deserves.

Popularity: 3%

Mythos Questions Answered

A reader named Jakob has been following my Mythos reviews, and posted a comment with a few questions about the game.

Does the game scale to party size, particularly in instances?

I haven’t grouped up with anyone yet, so I can’t say for certain that instances scale. However, the instances I’ve run have a lot of mobs. The bosses, especially as I’ve increased in level, are reasonably tough and have taken a bit of kiting to bring down. One of them, a bear, must have taken at least ten or fifteen minutes. Coupled with long boss fights, the instances usually taking me forty-five minutes to an hour to clear. A group will be able to clean up an instance far faster than a single player.

For a bigger challenge there are elite maps that have a recommended party size of five. Normal instances recommend just one player. These should be much more challenging for a group.

What is the LFG Mechanism like?

There is a Party Finder dialog that is accessible by a button on the Chat interface. It seems to be pretty much standard fare for this sort of feature. The LFG dialog has a list of players looking for groups, and allows players to list themselves, or find a party.

There is also a LFG chat channel available, which I’ve seen a number of party requests on.

What is the ratio of persistent to instanced areas?

For each main town, for instance Stonehill, there are a number of persistent areas, farms, temples that are essentially mini-versions of the towns. There are a couple of vendors, several quest givers, and some other NPCs hanging about.

Other than that, all other areas are instanced. Apart from the clearings around cave or dungeon entrances these areas have lots of mobs just waiting to be killed.

Does the game offer the option of AI assistance, like henchmen in Guild Wars?

I haven’t seen any henchmen for hire yet, but to be fair I haven’t really been looking for them. As Jakob mentioned in another comment, there is mention of Hirelings being added in a recent patch.

If the intent of the game is to be free, what will the purchased content be?

I asked this question when I recently interviewed Max Schaefer. The idea is to sell luxuries to paying players. These won’t necessarily effect gameplay - though they may enhance adventuring, not sure what that means. The RMT model also won’t result in players not being able to enjoy the full game because they haven’t paid, unlike other games such as Dungeon Runners.

There could be some similarities to the subscription model used by Hellgate: London - they are both produced by Flagship Studios - which provides for additional storage space and some other features that also don’t affect gameplay. Though I’d have to say having lots of storage is almost essential to enjoy these sorts of games. Especially for an old hoarder like me.

Don’t forget, if you have any questions that you would like answered, about Mythos or MMO games in general, please ask. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find out.

Popularity: 4%

Mythos Preview: Six to Twelve

It’s been a few weeks since I posted the previous installments of my Mythos adventures - apologies for that - the last few weeks it seems that every time I’ve sat down to do this report, there’s something else fun to write about.

I was going to title this post Mythos 6 - 10, but I got a bit carried away and leveled up to twelve. It’s not hard, Mythos is one of the games where I can easily get to the end of a quest and tell myself I have time for one more.

Speaking of leveling. At this stage it remains reasonably consistent. My experience seems to be that it takes two or three dungeons to crack each level. Part of this is because the mobs you encounter appear to be locked to your around your level if you are in an appropriate level dungeon. Generally there are also one or two outdoor areas that you have to travel to to reach the dungeon.

Each dungeon is set to a level range which you see when you are in the world travel view. I actually haven’t tried a dungeon who’s level range I have exceeded yet, but I suspect the maximum level of the critters would be the maximum level of the dungeon.

I noticed that at around the level seven and up dungeons a few things started changing. First, there were more tough mobs in the dungeons. These weren’t the bosses that had to be defeated for the quests, but were random orange, blue, or named mobs. They were also quite a lot tougher to take down.

At around level eight or nine, these ‘elite’ mobs were also starting to appear more often in the outdoor lead-up areas. My Gadgeteer didn’t have too many problems with these guys, she’s getting pretty good at kiting. It’s the other ranged mobs that she has a problem with. Fortunately I haven’t run into any ranged elites yet. I suspect I will at some point soon.

Unfortunately, these elites don’t always drop the loot according to their difficulty, which can vary quite dramatically. I’ve had a number of fights that were long and drawn out and quite difficult, where only a couple of pieces of vendor trash were dropped. A little disappointing after the effort.

The second thing that I’m now seeing is master chests. There are chests dotted all over the place in Mythos. Some of them are locked and need a small key to get into, but most are ordinary chests that don’t need a key.

The master chests sit at the bottom of dungeons and drop some really nice loot. They also need a master key to be opened. The master key will drop off a mob somewhere in the dungeon.

I found out the hard way, that you need to clear all the levels of the dungeon. I didn’t for one quest because it was getting late and I wanted to finish. I got to the bottom level, killed the boss, and then came upon the master chest, and no key. I didn’t end up going back to look for it, but I kicked myself anyway.

The last thing I noticed was that the drop rate of green, blue, and purple items has increased. That’s only to be expected though I wouldn’t have thought to see any blue or purple items at this stage of the game. Not a problem though. I’ve now got a lot of blue armor equipped.

As is normal with these things, the rarer drops tend to be for other classes. That’s not so bad since they sell to the vendor for a lot more than the white items. That alone has boosted my wealth, I’m up to around 70 silver now. It’d be a lot more, but I bought a couple of blue items which at the time wiped me out.

I only have one beef with the way items work for the Gadgeteer. I’ve come across a few dexterity weapons that have much better stats than my existing weapons. (Gadgeteers focus on the dexterity attribute, Bloodletters on strength, and Pyromancers on wisdom.) I picked up a very nice and deadly bow, and a couple of single wield pistols that combined would be better than my trusty rifle. However, for some reason, the Gadgeteers offensive spells - including Piercing Barrage and Napalm - only work for rifles.

The word on the forums is that there are other classes in the wings that bows and pistols are meant for. That certainly gels with the information Max Schaefer provided in his interview - new classes are on their way. The problem is that it does seem to unduly limit the Gadgeteer. It would be nice not to be confined to a single weapon type and have range of weapons to choose from, as the Bloodletters and Pyromancers do.

Aside from that single issue, the beta still seems to be shining. I haven’t really found any more bugs. The only occasions have been where a mobs AI seems to have gotten its knickers in a twist and the mob has continually advanced and retreated on my position until I got its attention or killed it. Oh, and there was one time when I killed one of these confused elites and it dropped its loot in a place I could not access. Some nice gear dropped too. Doh!

I’ve also finally moved on from the starting zone, Stonehill. There were a ton of quests there, and I picked up at least a couple dozen maps as well. I reckon I could have stayed there for another four or five levels, but I was getting itchy feet. So I hopped on the transport and ended up in a new town, looking at three NPCs with yellow question marks.

And that’s where I am now. I’m probably going to pull back a little on my Mythos game time for a bit, but that’s not due to any fault in Mythos. I’ve got a few things I’d like to do in other games over the next couple of months. I’m definitely going to step back into Mythos, it’s a really great game, and one I’ve been having a lot of fun in.

Popularity: 10%

Mythos Interview with Max Schaefer

A few weeks ago I received an eMail from Max Schaefer, who is the executive producer of Mythos, in response to a post I published requesting an invite to the Mythos beta. At the time, Max kindly provided a beta key to the game. As part of our conversation, I asked Max if he wouldn’t mind doing an interview for Stropp’s World to which he agreed.

Max is one of the original co-founders of Blizzard North, which developed the Diablo series of action RPG games. In 2003 Max resigned from Blizzard, along with a number of other employees including Bill Roper, to pursue new opportunities. The opportunity turned out to be the start up of a new game company called Flagship Studios.

Stropp: Hi Max, welcome to Stropp’s World. Why did Flagship Studios decide to develop a Diablo style game?

Max: Originally, the purpose of the Mythos project was to make a small free game that would be a test-bed for the Hellgate: London network infrastructure. It didn’t take long before we realized it was turning into a real project. We were fortunate enough to get Travis Baldree, who made Fate almost single-handedly, to lead up the project, and he and his team have made Mythos into not only a real game, but one that all of Flagship Studios is very proud of.

Stropp: Will Mythos have a story arc? Will there be larger story of the world told in the game?

Max: Mythos will have a history, a setting, and a lore, but not so much a "story" that you play out as you level. Instead, you will learn about the world of Uld, about why the various players are there, what happened in the past, and what challenges there are for the future. But in Mythos, you are the story - you write it with your character’s exploits, and the interactions with all of the other players. We plan a very full suite of community-based gameplay features.

Stropp: I understand you are working on the up coming crafting system. Can you tell us how it works? And will the items that are crafted ultimately be useful, or will they be overtaken by loot drops and quest rewards?

Max: There are enough different types of desirable items in Mythos that crafting will give access to items and benefits that aren’t simply more of what you find from loot drops and questing. The crafting system under development now has elements of a skill system hybridized into it, and we’ll be releasing more and more information about it as we get closer to the Zone 3 push.

Stropp: How about PvP? Will this be included in Mythos? Can you give us any details?

Max: We’ll be starting out with basic dueling, and also with a very exciting concept: the Shadow World. This is basically a copy of the entire game of Mythos, accessible through portals, that has PvP everywhere, all the time. It’s very exciting the way it’s turning out. Additionally, we plan other PvP and group vs. group modes like Capture the Flag-type games and other non-PK competitions.

Stropp: How is the beta progressing?

Max: It’s going extremely well. The response from gamers has been fantastic, and we work closely with Beta testers to uncover bugs, and discover player preferences and issues. Travis and the team have a great relationship with the players, and are very motivated by the response so far.

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.

Stropp: What are your plans for Mythos when it is released? Will you be regularly patching in content? Or will you be doing bigger expansions less frequently?

Max: We plan on regularly patching in content. Our plans for Mythos extend well beyond what we will be commercializing with, and the Seattle team is committed to expanding the universe for the foreseeable future. Since Mythos is a free download, we’ll probably not do larger expansions, but just keep adding chunks of content that will be automatically patched in when players log on.

Stropp: How about new races or classes? Will we see any Frost Mages or Necromancers in Mythos?

Max: Not those specifically, but yes, both new races and classes are on the way.

Stropp: It’s been previously announced that Mythos will be free to play. Can you tell us what revenue model you will be using? What incentives will there be for players to pay extra?

Max: We will be using an RMT model. Our goal is to provide a wonderful, robust free experience, but offer attractive options for people who are willing to pay to get extra luxuries, or enhance their adventuring. We don’t want to simply sell the best items - even paying players will have to go kill monsters to find the best loot. Also, we plan to let players trade the in-game cash currency for items with non-paying players. This way, even the cash items will be available to free players, and we’ll avoid splitting the community into the haves and have-nots.

Stropp: There’s been quite a lot of discussion around the MMO blogging community recently about RMT. How do you intend to deal with third party gold and item sellers?

Max: It’s very difficult to stop item selling. Instead, we are investigating actually allowing players to sell items though a secure in-game marketplace rather than resorting to Ebay. We don’t think gold farming will be a huge issue in Mythos, however, since the RMT currency cannot be farmed, and the in-game gold doesn’t buy you everything you need. Nevertheless, we stop gold farming whenever we can.

Stropp: Finally, is there anything else that you would like to tell us about Mythos?

Max: Mythos is all about good fun. We made it easy to approach - we expect many players will never have to look at a manual - and have aimed for a wide audience of gamers. At the same time, we want players to have a deep, rich game experience, the kind you don’t usually get from free games. Basically, we want to bring AAA production values and depth to the casual game space. We don’t expect to take over for giant epics like World of Warcraft, but rather to enhance such games with an alternative that’s a bit lighter, a bit less time consuming, a bit easier to play, and is always just a free download away for everyone.

Stropp: Max, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. Good luck with the rest of the beta.

Max: Thank you for the opportunity!

Popularity: 13%

Mythos Beta - Day Two

I spent a good chunk of today experimenting with Mythos.

One of the goals of today’s play was try out the different classes and modes. So I put Durkin on the backburner and created a Pyromancer.

The Pyromancer is essentially a fire mage. However, there are a lot of different builds available. You can choose these builds by using your skill points to buy different skill sets. Usually there are several skills associated with a primary skill.

For instance the Flamecaster page for the Pyromancer has a skill you can learn called Flaming Dart. This allows the Pyro to fire a flaming dart that passes through multiple enemies doing damage to them all. Flaming dart has six levels that increase damage each time the skill is raised.

Two tiers down, there is another skill called Dancing Flames. This causes the darts to ricochet of walls and other obstructions. The player can invest eight points in this to increase its effect. The final tier skill related to Flaming Dart is Burning Fragments. This causes the darts to split into secondary projectiles to do yet more damage. Six points can be invested here.

The concept of Tiers deserves some explanation. Each skill is assigned to a tier. The first tier in our previous example has the Flaming Dart and Flaming First skills. Tier two has Flame Serpents, Restorative Flames, and Ignite. Tier three has more skills and so forth, all the way to Tier six. In order to get the second tier skills, the player must invest some skill points to unlocking it. Three skill points are necessary for tier two, all the way up to a total of 30 skill points to unlock tier six.

I got the Pyromancer up to level six before I called it a day on that class. I did die a couple of times, lucky I wasn’t hardcore. For the most part, taking down ordinary monsters was pretty easy. Two or three shots dispatched them handily. It was with the bosses I had more trouble. This class seems to be fairly squishy, though I’m certain I wasn’t playing it fully right.

In anycase my day wasn’t done. I wanted a bit more of a challenge. So I created an elite Bloodletter. I called him Darkin and he was a Gremlin too. Oh the Pyro, I can’t remember her name offhand, but she was a Satyr.

Elite mode, as it sounds, is somewhat harder. Darkin had a tougher time dispatching mobs than did Durkin. The damage the mobs did was increased, and they were tougher. The only other thing I noticed was that the loot drops were improved. I received more greens and blue items. I also received a yellow item on the next character, a named spear. This, I believe was a set item. Pity I couldn’t use it.

The Bosses were much harder. I was able to take down all but one, the end boss in the white caves. Durkin had no problems whatsoever, Darkin lost health rapidly and died trying to escape. Also happy I was not in hardcore mode.

Speaking of which. I mentioned in the Mythos Preview: One to Five report that players were able to respec their skill points at a special NPC. This is only applicable to normal mode characters and not elite or hardcore characters.

There’s a long running debate on the beta forums on the whole respec is good/evil theme. One group of players wants the ability to respec, the other doesn’t.

My final task for the day was to make a Gadgeteer. This time I chose to make a Human character, and once again chose the Elite mode. The Gadgeteer relies on ranged weapons much like a hunter, but they are also able to use grenades and other gizmos. My perception after playing it was that the Gadgeteer is tougher than the Pyro but not as tough as the Bloodletter. Makes sense doesn’t it?

So far this is my favorite class. There’s a lot of kiting involved, especially in the case of the bosses. In one dungeon I had to take on three nasty spider queen sisters. There was no way to stand still since they poisoned and burned me down really quickly. The only way to deal with them solo was to kite them back to the entrance room and lead them around the room stopping occasionally to shoot back.

These were the hardest I encountered, and I was able to take them on successfully.

In light of this, I figured I might look again at the Pyromancer. I believe my problem there was in kiting the mobs and bosses. With a bit more practice and a different allocation of skill points (I was still figuring things out at that point) the Pyro might be a fun class to play.

I’m not so sure about the Bloodletter. Since he has to get up close and personal, there’s no way to kite unless he uses a ranged weapon or a minion. Darkin would never have stood a chance against the Spider Queen Sisters.

For those of you interested in finding out more about the skills. A very helpful fellow named Matt Hall has set up a website to allow players to experiment with their skill builds. The site is called Mythos Calc and is worth a look, if just to check out the skills in the game.

Stay tuned for more on the Mythos beta.

Popularity: 8%

Mythos Preview: One to Five

A couple of days ago I posted that I had recently heard some good things about Mythos. One of those things was that Flagship Studios had allocated some beta invites to existing beta testers to give out to their friends. At the end of the article, I asked that if anyone could spare a beta invite to send it my way.

Lo and behold, the next morning there was an email in my inbox from non other than Max Schaefer, the Executive Producer of Mythos with an offer of an invite.

Needless to say I gratefully accepted the offer, and was forwarded the invite. Thanks Max, I really appreciate it.

Tonight I created an account, downloaded the client, and logged in.

This preview is a very early first impressions of my first five levels in the game. Later on, I’ll expand upon that with a look at the other classes, and with some of the higher level areas and bosses.

First Steps

Mythos presented a very quick download of only around 330MB. The install was completely painless as we’ve come to expect in this day and age. Once the game was installed, I logged in on my beta account and the game started patching.

Even the patch was nice and quick. As it started I realised that I was decaffeinated and went into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Shortly after I got back to my desk, the patch finished and the game restarted. For the record, I’m on ADSL2+ and get a maximum download speed of around 7 megabits/s.

Once I was back in I checked the option screen. I usually have to do this for every new game I buy because the default resolution is set to 1024×768, and my monitor is 1920×1200. Mythos had detected that and had correctly set the screen resolution. Nice.

Character Creation

Since it was the first time in, I was immediately taken to the character creation screen. There I was greeted by a surly looking blue haired gremlin sucking on a Clint Eastwood Western style cigar. It’s great to see a sense of humour and the willingness to go against the winds of political correctness.

Character Creation was the same as you’d find in pretty much any game of this genre. You get three species; Human, Gremlin, and Satyr, with male and female options for each. There are three class options to select from; Bloodletter, primarily melee; Pyromancer; and Gadgeteer, sort of like a hunter crossed with engineer/tinkerer.

You get a range of the standard character options; face, hairstyle, skin colour, and the like to customise your character. Initially I felt that the number of options was very limited, perhaps too much so, but it’s not really a problem since you are always looking at it from a top down perspective.

Finally, there are two options to select from. Elite and Hardcore. Elite ups the difficulty setting, and I think increases the experience gain. Hardcore, a Diablo 2 favourite, gives you the option to play with permadeath. Since this was my first time creating a character, I left these unchecked.

I ended up creating a Gremlin Bloodletter called Durkin.

One To Five

Durkin started in front of an abbey with a NPC standing next to him. These days the Exclamation and Question marks are the universal quest indicators, and this guy had an Exclamation. After clicking on him, he tells me that I have a destiny. Cool. I reckon that’s just flattery to get me to help him.

Seems the dead have risen and are causing a ruckus. They’ve must have been thirsty because the first thing they did was get on the turps. Brother Anselean just had no idea how to deal with drunken undead so he asked me. Into the vestry I go.

After routing those wacky undead, I returned to Brother Anselean to receive my reward. Apart from some armor I also received enough XP to level up. Levelling up will also be familiar to those who have played enough RPGs or MMORPGS. There are attributes to raise, and skill points to assign. Without the manual it’s tricky to know what each skill does, but fortunately there is an NPC available to refund those points for a price.

From that point I was directed to the nearest town, which is also referred to as a safe point. It’s from here that I found merchants, quest givers, and the all important stash where I keep my stuff. Inventory space, as usual is at a premium, and unfortunately uses the same system that is common in Diablo like games. That is, different items have different sizes and shapes, meaning that reshuffling is one of the necessary skills to have.

Mythos also has an achievement system similar to Lord of the Rings Online. When you finish certain tasks, or kill enough monsters, you get a trait that you can load into a slot to increase your attributes. However, this system is not as complex or involved as LotROs,.

Quest givers will ask you to go to certain locations. You can only go to a location, like a set of caves or a farm if it’s inscribed on your map. At this early stage at least, the quest givers will inscribe the locations they ask you to visit. I’m not sure about later. You can also buy maps from a cartographer, or get them as drops of the mobs you kill.

Maps come in two kinds. Normal (for want of a better word) or Elite. The locations on a normal map are suitable for a single player to adventure in. Elite maps recommend a party of five. And maps also indicate the level of the player they are suitable for. No worrying about if an area is too big for you.

I finished up my session tonight about three quarters of the way to level six.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in the game are great. The graphics have a very cartoony feel, almost Japanese RPG style as you can see in the screenshots. They’re crisp and clean, and importantly very responsive.

The game also sounds good. I have to admit, I’m not much of one for game sound and music, so a lot of it escapes my attention. The music and sound in Mythos is just right. I didn’t feel overwhelmed with a need to turn the volume down. Even though I had to when a friend called while I was playing.

Gameplay

The gameplay is pure Diablo 2. If you’ve played Diablo 2 you’ll know what I mean. You move around by pointing and clicking the mouse, and when you come across a monster clicking on it attacks it. It’s a very simple mechanic, and it works.

Quest givers provide quests in town. When you leave town, you are able to select any inscribed location on your map to travel to. These areas are instanced to you, in much the same way as Hellgate: London (also by Flagship) and Guild Wars.

Loot also behaves the same way. There’s the standard white drops which have no special stats. Then there are the green and blue drops of which I have already received. Some of this is unidentified and a charm is needed to make an identification.

What About The Bugs?

It is a beta after all, right?

From the what I saw of the state of the game I reckon it must be about ready for release. I didn’t come across any major issues. There were no crashes, nasty graphics issues, or gameplay issues. All the quests worked (which I’d expect for all the newbie quests). I didn’t encounter any major lag issues, however some other testers did mention lag.

The only issues I encountered were a few moment of stuttering graphics in the character create screen, and in the newbie area.

However, it’s still early days yet. I only played for an hour and a half after all, and haven’t cracked level six yet.

Make sure you check back later for more.

Popularity: 16%

Mythos

I’ve been hearing a few good things about Mythos lately.

MMO Crunch recently previewed the game, and I’ve been lurking around the Official Mythos web site as well, not that there’s much to see there yet.

The first one is that it’s very similar to Diablo 2. This can only be a good thing. I really enjoyed playing both Diablo and Diablo 2. While memories of many of the games I’ve played have fallen to the mists of time, D2 is one of the few classics that is fondly remembered.

It’s also being developed by the guys responsible for Hellgate: London, Flagship Studios. Please don’t take that as a bad thing. Hellgate in itself wasn’t a bad game, I previously rated the single player game fairly highly, it was just delivered way too early. Hopefully Flagship have learned their lesson and are going to take their time with this one.

Considering Flagships first two games are effectively in the Diablo 2 genre, these guys must have a passion for that style of gaming.

I’ve put my hand up for a beta key. Unfortunately my track record in getting accepted into betas recently has been pretty lousy. The last beta I was in was for the Lord of the Rings Online. So, here’s a request to my readers. If any of you are in the Mythos beta and have a spare key, I’d be grateful if you could send it my way.

Popularity: 5%