Max Schaefer, co-founder of
Flagship Studios, admits that things didn't go exactly as planned with its first title
Hellgate: London; however, he believes the developer's sophomore effort,
Mythos, is coming together much better. Schaefer tells Eurogamer (via
GI.biz) that Flagship was "probably biting off too much" as a new developer with
Hellgate and was rushed at the end, but with Mythos it's focusing on core features and taking time to polish.
Schaefer hopes
Mythos can "put a dent" into some of the big MMOs out there and he believes the free-to-download-and-play model of the game -- with item sales bringing in money -- gives the developer a chance against the boxed subscription-based MMOs.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jakka @ Jul 7th 2008 4:44PM
Well.Bad Stuff aside, Hellgate was pretty original.A little bit of Guild Wars,bit of Diablo 2 and loads of Rouge. I'm hoping they will do better this time.
Ghen @ Jul 7th 2008 4:56PM
Infinitely better. The better part is it is actually fun.
t_m @ Jul 9th 2008 1:37AM
It was probably all the Rouge that gave it such a bad reputation. Made it look cheap and tarty...
Residentevil72501 @ Jul 7th 2008 4:56PM
How they think this is a good idea i will never know, but they obviously have been eating something that gave them mad cow disease! This is the most rediculous idea probably ever....
Mark @ Jul 7th 2008 5:09PM
It's fantastic that you are backing up your awesome claims with reasonable information.
Get back in the basement, Corky.
Alex @ Jul 7th 2008 5:36PM
This is as close as you can get to Bailey's without gettin' your eyes wet.
Shagittarius @ Jul 7th 2008 5:10PM
Lets see do I want to play a game where the best gear is bought with real money?
Absolutely not!
Would I play a game where gear degrades and you need to spend real money to fix it.
Hell no!
This reminds me of old internet services that would charge you by the hour. Time based subscriptions didnt work back then, people would rather pay a flat fee, what makes them think a thinly disguised "hourly rate" is going to work now?
Oh well, chalk this up as the second failure for this dev and you can file their chapter 11 right now.
Mark @ Jul 7th 2008 5:21PM
Try a game like Kingdom of Loathing or Maple Story. Very, very successful, financially. Also, very free, with the ability to pay for extra stuff.
Get over it. WoW is no different.
Liz @ Jul 7th 2008 5:54PM
Agreed. I feel very skeptical about games that charge money for items or for more experience. I was going to download Requiem, another "free" mmo until I saw that you only get 50% gold, experience, and loot drops unless you pay a fee, or some such. I think I will just wait for Warhammer.
offday @ Jul 7th 2008 6:14PM
I agree. With WoW, at least you know your 15 bucks is going towards everything, and everyone has the same opportunities to get sweet gear. But with Mythos, it sounds like you'll be running around in your tattered shirt, and crappy pants having a blast thinking it's "free," until you see some sweet character who just happens to have mommy's credit card.
No thanks. I'll stick to WoW.
WiiFTW @ Jul 7th 2008 8:43PM
@ offday:
Actually unless you get the expansions (Burning Crusade, upcoming Wrath of the Lich King), you're stuck at level 60 while other get more content, items, mounts, and levels up to 70 and 80 respectively.
Overall, I'll wait till the games out (why do people judge games SOOOO early?) but as of now I'm a bit skeptical of the whole split between F2P and P2P players. Thing is, they have to make it compelling enough to have people pay but nice enough to the free players that there's actually a playerbase and community.
I'm personally waiting for Guild Wars 2 (maybe 2009) because it'll be F2P and more WoW-like in movement and other things (no more point-and-click!)
WiiFTW @ Jul 7th 2008 8:52PM
This forum post gives some insight into the planned payment system and how it'll affect non-members:
http://forums.mythos.com/showthread.php?t=15671
ScottG13 @ Jul 7th 2008 5:22PM
I really like Mythos. Easy to get in on the beta, too.
Also, I saw Hellgate for $19.95 at Target this weekend. Your mileage may vary. Is it worth $20? Definitely not $60, right?
j.howlett @ Jul 7th 2008 5:41PM
thats a great price to try out a game that you were only mildly interested in playing. 2 questions to ask yourself before a purchase these days, does it look fun, and does it look like $60 worth of fun?
BananaBoat @ Jul 7th 2008 5:25PM
They completely lost me at "free to play". I've been screwed over by one too many Korean MMO's that were "Free to play". For instance, the game mabinogi that recently got released in the US. It's free to play, sure, but if you want to do any sort of combat (past the noob dungeons) or if you want to participate in the main story, you've got to pay. Unless the model is literally EVERYTHING is free BUT shiny accessories, then fine. If it's everything is free but decent combat (needed to level your character) or the story, then meh.
We'll see. They burned me with the garbage that was Hellgate, so they aren't really on my good side. I hope this next game is good though.
Blazur @ Jul 7th 2008 5:58PM
I lost alot of faith in Flagshipped when I initially heard about their bogus payment scheme for Hellgate, but all that aside I give them tremendous credit for trying something new with Mythos. It's quite risky to release an MMO for no initial entry or ongoing fees. Sadly, after Hellgate their reputation is quite tarnished so they have a challenge ahead of them in rebuilding their integrity.
But honestly an even bigger challenge for them will be competing directly with not only WoW but now Diablo 3.
Odog4ever @ Jul 8th 2008 1:24PM
I don't think that Mythos is in direct competition with Diablo 3. I'm in the beta now and I'm running it on high settings on a 4 yr old machine that wasn't maxed out to begin with.
From the footage that's been released by Bliz it looks like you might need a newer computer (graphics card) to run that. That means their target market is the hardcore PC gamer that spends the money get their rigs up to spec.
Thid is the poorman's Diablo for people who don't want a huge time/money investment. (It is free after all)
I'll still be putting the bulk of my playtime and money into Xbox 360 games but with games like Mythos and Battlefield Heroes coming out I might just dust of my PC for gaming a little more often.
Devwar @ Jul 7th 2008 7:32PM
According to the Mythos forums, the pay stuff is a form of currency that can be traded with people, so you can still get the pay stuff without paying, just gotta mooch off people. And it'll be things like special but not required items, or prestige items, or things like guild halls and what not.
Atleast thats what they say.
gLitterbug @ Jul 7th 2008 7:52PM
Looking at the screenshots all I see is a game that looks like it's from some hobbyist team trying to emulate WoW's style and failing gloriously.
Kael @ Jul 7th 2008 8:27PM
With respect to the developers, Hellgate was a legitimately bad game. The best things to have come from it were lessons learned; maybe they could avoid the same mistakes with Mythos.
Then again... I have played Mythos and, again, with respect to the developers, it, too, is a legitimately bad game. It's not officially out yet; there's time for improvement, but even the basic structure is badly designed. I know making games is tough; I don't want to harp on those good, hard-working folks, I just don't know if the game'll be able to turn itself around.
Faar @ Jul 8th 2008 8:23AM
What the sh*t is wrong with Schaefer these days? Ever since he quit blizzard it's as if he forgot everything about what made that company successful in the first place with regards to online play; IT WAS FREE!
In all the warcrafts, both diablos AND starcraft there wasn't any bollocks fees inserted sideways to try and scam extra cash out of their customers. Diablo 2 sold like eleventeen million boxes because the box was ALL you paid for. And here flagship comes with hellgate - a game which actually interested me until I read about the bollocks MMO-size fee they stuck to a hack and slash adventure.
Hey if I want hack and slash, I'll play guild wars thankyouverymuch - a game that's ALSO FREE to play online.
Is money all this guy cares about now? Why's he so obsessed with attaching fees to everything he makes now? Hell, you can still to this day play all those old blizzard hits for FREE on b.net.
Not paying extra for any flagship scams, thankyouverymuch.
Gerrick @ Jul 8th 2008 11:25AM
You know, playing Warhammer 40k must have devalued the 50$ mark to me, since my Bloodthirster cost 50$ for the parts. Anyways, isn't the game about 20$ on Amazon now?
I still rather enjoy Hellgate, and don't see it in the 'bad game' category. The storyline was decent, but it's telling was uninspiring. The combat mechanic, however, was enjoyable for me. Obviously, many of you don't like it, but there are quite a few people that do and are playing the game.
As for the 'Bollocks subscription model' opposed to Guild Wars Free 2 Play, I'd like to ask how many expansions you have on Guildwars at 50$ each? So, to play Guildwars in it's entirety, you need to shell out about ... 150$. And to play Hellgate, you pay 20$, then you could subscribe to get their expansion packs at 10$ a month. Since they seem to be putting out smaller expansions constantly, it seems worthwhile to me to subscribe for a month here or there when I'm in the mood to play.
Just saying, let's try to keep the 'Absolute Failure' catagory for games like Daikatana or other games which simply aren't fun for anyone.
Shawn @ Jul 8th 2008 1:28PM
I have to admit, I loved Hellgate, hated it for all the bugs after launch, came back to it, and am now taking a break for a while until a ton more content is pushed. It's a love hate relationship to the tee. The game is absolutely original, but it lacked polish on release, and there still isn't enough tilesets for the environment to keep it fresh. They need to add a ton more content, which they've been really slow in doing. They should have had acution house and a ton of other community features from the get go, and it's a shame they had to release the game when they did, I still think it has lots of potential, but there's a lot of work to be done.
They also should have never never released a single player portion of the game, they wasted the little resources they had working on both and now aren't keeping up on it like they are with the multiplayer. Lastly, they should have either had a pay only mmo type of game or no fee at all. Pick one or the other or monetize the game through buying items, which this game has a ton of cool looking gear that people would absolutely buy. Asking 10 bucks a month I think is far too much for what you are getting. If they released big content patches on an actual quarterly basis, I would have no problem, but it's proving to be much more difficult as we see now.
Mythos is outstanding, and it's almost as much fun as Diablo was, sometimes more fun. I would recommend this to everything, screw buying games this summer, Mythos is where it's at, although I do like the world of Hellgate a bit more.
Shawn @ Jul 8th 2008 1:43PM
This says it all about Mythos, and if they follow this all should work out fine:
"We don't want to simply sell the best loot. There will not be a vendor with the best armor or swords for the richest players. Instead, we will sell things that only enhance your ability to go out and find the loot yourself. Additionally the Ingots will buy cosmetic items like crazy hairstyles, account enhancements, guild items, and that sort of thing."
We do NOT want to create a split community between haves and have-nots. Players unable to spend real money will simply have to put more time into it, but will be able to have just as powerful a character as a paying customer."
http://forums.mythos.com/showthread.php?t=15671
t_m @ Jul 9th 2008 1:42AM
if its mostly cosmetic items then it'll work pretty well. There are lots of Free To Play online games that make a fair bit of money from people buying cool gear.
(anything on ijii.com for example.)
But if it ends up like some of those Chinese MMOs where players end up having to sink thouands of dollars into it every month to maintain their position..er.. no thanks.
(this article about ZT online is a bit long, but interesting and scary: http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php )