Redbana US is bringing Mythos back from the grave. We spoke to Eric Liu, the company's Global Manager, about acquiring Mythos and what their version of it will be like. Mythos was originally developed by Flagship, but never made it far. The team that built it resurfaced and later brought the world Torchlight.

MMORPG.com: How did Redbana get a hold of the game? Can you tell us the story from your side?

Eric Liu: We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to take on Flagship’s project and continue its development. HanbitSoft acquired the intellectual property for Mythos, and now HanbiSoft’s parent company T3 Entertainment is developing it in conjunction with Redbana US Corp. Redbana will also be the publisher for Mythos in North America.

Read it all here.

Every two weeks through the end of the year, we are going to give you some exclusive screenshots that show off the look of Star Trek Online. Here is this week's batch:

See all three here.

MMORPG.com contributor Shannon Drake writes this week's list, providing some examples of non-traditional versions of everyone's favorite Fantasy humanoid race, the elves that could be used in future MMOs.

Making a fantasy MMO without elves is absurdism at its highest.

Okay, maybe those are some strong words, exaggerating for the sake of it, but people do love their elves. They are the perfect fantasy race for roleplaying games, because Elves are just different enough to be interesting, pointy-eared and maybe immortal, while still being recognizably or almost human. And, most importantly, they are an exotic race without being too odd or weird for players to identify with. While EverQuest II's Frogloks are hilarious; giant, playable frogs don't seem to have quite the cultural impact of the other traditional fantasy races, possibly because it's easier to figure out how to inherit a quasi-humanoid's skin than to figure out what motivates a frog. Besides flies and sitting around on lily pads and avoiding lusty pigs, of course.

Read it all here.

It's tempting to play with someone else's intellectual property. This week, Victor Wachter examines this trend in MMOs.

Although this week's column talks about some of the challenges inherent to developing an MMORPG from a an existing license, I don't mean to seem cynical about them. I think that the ability to step into a world you've grown to know and love as a fan is awesome. I've worked on a several licenses and been near a few more. Each time, my inner geek was all a twitter in spite of the obstacles.

And, oh they've had their challenges. Middle Earth Online went into development at Sierra in 1998. It took nine years and a change of developer for Tolkien's world to finally emerge as Lord of the Rings Online. The Marvel Comics license has been through at least three developers and two publishers officially, and several more unofficially. Contention exists even among the creators as to whether or not StarGate Worlds will ever ship. And it seems like years since the Firefly MMORPG was announced, but since then FOX has said they'd rather see a Buffy game.

Read it all here.

Originally posted by someforumguy

 And to the writer, there is no up and down in space.

 

There is when you cannot turn "upside down" ;)

The English language doesn't exactly have words to describe that clearly, so since you're fixed like you would be on Earth, I figured up and down drew the mental picture readers needed.

MMORPG.com traveled down to Los Gatos to talk to the team and play Star Trek Online. We got a lot of time to just run/fly around and check out the ins and outs of the game. We then spoke to Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich about it. This is the first of two articles and is a broader preview. On Wednesday, we'll bring you a specific article that really delves into great detail on ship interiors and bridge crews.

“The vision is that as you play through the content you feel like you’re in the movies, the TV shows,” explained Zinkievich.

They broke the missions up into mini-arcs that obviously owe a lot to a TV episode. They always begin in space with the player sent off on some kind of mission. Upon arrival, there is some kind of space-based challenge – in my hands-on time that meant combat – and then the story draws the player down onto land or some other kind of away mission.

Read it all here.

An interview with Fallen Earth Project Manager Colin Dwan brings us up to date on the progress of the Icarus MMO since launch.

MMORPG.com: Are there plans to add new skills to the game, will players be able to specialize in new areas?

Colin Dwan: Players will find the addition of a new tradeskill in the upcoming social patch, set for release in mid-December. As we add in new content, we will expand the current tradeskills to unlock new sets of items, weapons, and armor as players rediscover lost technology and societies.

Read it all here.

A simple yet important question is explored in the latest edition of Richard Aihoshi's weekly MMORPG.com column.

Quite a while ago now- perhaps as far back as eight to 10 years - I conducted a completely informal little survey in which I asked developers with experience working on at least one MMOG whether they felt the titles of that time were as much fun as they could or should be. The answers were preponderantly negative. This was as expected. I'd have been gravely disappointed if people had thought there wasn't significant room for improvement.

Flashing forward to the present, the industry has definitely progressed in this regard. However, as you can gather from today's column heading, I'm not entirely happy with the extent that has actually been achieved. Of course, this begs the question "Why not?" I'm not presumptuous enough to suggest or even think I can provide a definitive answer, but I do have a few thoughts I'm willing to offer up for consideration.

Read it all here.

Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online's latest expansion is Siege of Mirkwood. Today, they have provided us with these three exclusive screenshots from the Chambers instance.

You can visit LotRO's webspage, here.

See all three here.

MMORPG.com Age of Conan Correspondent John Humphrey writes this look at the fan base of the Conan IP that Funcom has to draw from and the new steps that the MMO company is taking to bring them and others into their game.

There are fans that have read the original Robert E. Howard short-stories and poetry, much of which was written between 1932 and 1936 and re-published extensively. Many of the original Howard stories are available to read for FREE online. There are those of us who have followed the "pastiche" writings and books about Conan (non-Howard material), from the likes of Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Robert Jordan, Leonard Carpenter, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, and many others.

Read it all here.

Tasos Flambouras, Darkfall's Associate Producer, checks in to talk about "Conquer the Seas," Darkfall's first expansion pack.

MMORPG.com: Overall what is your favorite part of the expansion? What do you think players will like the most?

Tasos Flambouras: My favorite part is the sea element because of its awesome potential to add a completely new gameplay layer to Darkfall and I think that most players will also appreciate it. I also believe that everyone will appreciate the skill extensions, and the significant monster improvements. A lot of players will enjoy the improvements to melee and archery.

There’s a bit for every play-style in this expansion so different players will like different things.

Read it all here.

The lead up to Star Trek Online's Beta has been rife with controversy. This week, Jaime Skelton dives into exactly what happened.

When watching for hot topics in the community, I've noticed Cryptic is going to be a company laced with controversy. While their heels are still cooling from the heat from Champions Online's launch, now they are faced with troubles and worries about Star Trek Online, their newest title set to launch in February next year.

How is it that a game that hasn't even hit open beta has caused up such a stir? The fuss began with Champions Online, on a special offer launched in August for those who were interested in purchasing six month or lifetime subscriptions. The special offer included “guaranteed” closed beta access for Lifetime subscribers to Champions Online, and access (though not specifically stated as “guaranteed”) for six month subscribers. It's safe to assume that a large portion of the subscribers who took advantage of these offers wanted, and expected, to be able to participate in the beta testing of Star Trek Online.

Read it all here.

Sorry guys, it helps if I actually turn the article on :)

Live now.

MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently spoke with Runescape Lead Designer Mark Ogilvie about the game, its success and more.

MMORPG.com: RuneScape remains one of the top free to play MMOs out there. What keeps the game going so strongly?

Mark Ogilvie: Having a classless system within the game means we can offer a player real choices rather than forcing actions on the player based on an arbitrary decision they made some time in the past. Saying "we have a rich variety of gameplay content" is an easy thing to say, but when you look at lots of other products out there, you have to create a multitude of characters to experience it all. That's something we don't do in RuneScape. That means that, so long as you have the skill levels, you can do anything you like.

In terms of technology, we have the same approach to accessibility and have entire departments dedicated to making the experience as high quality as possible, irrelevant of the specs of your computer.

Our release strategy means that players are receiving new content almost every week, ensuring that there is always something new to engage players.

My personal favourite strength of RuneScape is the quest content, which really is the greatest range of epic adventures and fantastic journeys I have seen in an MMO.

Read it all here.

This week, we bring you three themed images from Global Agenda, the upcoming sci-fi MMO shooter. All three images focus in on the Recon class and are accompanied by descriptions right from the Hi-Rez Studios development team.

Check out the full set here.

MMORPG.com World fo Warcraft Correspondent James Wood pens this quickie guide to the achievements from the heroic five man dungeons necessary to snag a Red Proto-Drake mount. Those dungeons are: Utgarde Keep, The Nexus, Azjol-Nerub and Ahn’kahet.

Fat chance that the Red Proto-Drake will be gone any time soon since it's only a 280% flight speed mount. Still, anyone after the Red or Blue Dragonhawk mount (when Blizzard gets off their backsides and increases its speed to 310% instead of a measly 280%) from Mountain O' Mounts should count the Red Proto-Drake among the 100 that they'll need. Or you can just look a lot cooler riding on a big red proto-drake instead of a puny red or blue bird that looks like it would snap in half if a Tauren sat on it.

The achievements from the heroic five-man dungeons aren't as difficult as they used to be pre-Ulduar, but a lot of them are still a pain in the backside. They're all listed here per dungeon, all rated for their difficulty with the appropriate tactics and under the assumption that the groups trying for this are decked out in Naxx 25, Ulduar 10/25, or ToC 10/25 gear.

Read it all here.

The Underfoot Expansion is on the way for the grandfather of MMOs: SOE's EverQuest. Carolyn Koh recently dialed it back and ran around. Find out what she saw.

It had been a while since I had last logged into EverQuest and the first thing I must say is how good it looks for a game that’s 10 years old. The quality of the textures and NPCs are on par with some games launched much later than EverQuest although I can’t say the same for player avatars. The Underfoot – the realm of Brell Serilis has been talked about since the Hole opened way back when in the EverQuest history and it’s a good looking expansion, more dark than light since it is located, lore-wise, under the Hole.

Read it all here.

Scott Jennings takes a lesson from Modern Warfare 2 and looks at how MMOs handle (or don't handle as the case may be) controversy.

The argument over whether an MMORPG is “just a game” or “more than a game” has raged for years – essentially, since they were invented. From a design aspect, this usually hinges on whether a given MMORPG is a theme park, like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and the many games that play similarly, with a straight line to the “cheese”, or a virtual world, such as Ultima Online, EVE, or to a greater degree Second Life, that give you no goals save that which you make. And from a market perspective, the theme park has won, overwhelmingly. World of Warcraft’s position in the market alone sees to that, if nothing else.

Yet among the players of games, the argument rages, and even in wholly “theme park” games such as World of Warcraft. Players of these games can take them very seriously indeed, and they have every right to given the amount of time that character development can entail. “Guild drama,” after all, can be far more riveting to experience first-hand than any canned quest.

Read it all here.

NetDevil has released these three new, exclusive MMORPG.com screenshots from their upcoming space-based MMORPG, Jumpgate Evolution. The first two images show Solarian fighters, while the third image shows a mining establishment in the Bleakstone sector.

Check out all three here.

MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently had the chance to ask a few questions of Jehanzeb Hasan, the Jr. Project Manager for the upcoming Grand Fantasia Item Shop based MMO.

MMORPG.com: Talk about the free to play model and how it applies to Grand Fantasia.

Jehanzeb Hasan: I know there's a segment of the MMO fan base that has a certain aversion to free-to-play games, and some out there who are simply unwilling to give them a try. Often, this stems from an assumption that free-to-play games limit content--that you have to pay to unlock the really worthwhile and valuable stuff. Of course, this feeling isn't always unfounded, but in the case of Grand Fantasia--and really, many of Aeria Games' other titles--this simply isn't the case.

Grand Fantasia is a strong, robust, complete standalone title. There's a wealth of content available to players that are game enough to give it a chance--branching class trees, pets, guilds, instanced dungeons, PvP, team based battlefields, mounts, a player-based economy--it's all there and it's all free. For those players who are willing to pay, what we'll offer in terms of microtransactions are items of convenience and vanity. Nothing will that dramatically affect mechanics or unbalance the game.

Read it all here.