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Mythica MMORPG Cancelled By Microsoft
Ivan writes "Microsoft announced that it has cancelled Mythica, its internally developed massively multiplayer PC RPG with a Nordic twist. The official website has the formal cancellation announcement, but additionally, 1UP spoke with MS reps who gave a few more details, noting 'the company had two MMORPG projects in development -- Mythica, and an as-yet-unannounced title. Rather than support the development and eventual maintenance of two MMORPGs in an already crowded and highly competitive market, Microsoft cancelled Mythica to make room for its other game.'"
Considering Microsoft's "other MMOG" is a as yet unannounced game from Sigil Games (sigilgames.com) I can't say I'm suprised.
Sigil Games, founded by Brad McQuaid, one of the original creators and producer of Everquest before leaving for Sigil, is working on a 3rd generation MMOG as he calls it.
Say what you will about EQ, but it's still the market leader for MMOGs here in the US. He's hired a ton of talent from the original EQ team to build his game.
Can't say I blame Microsoft at all for betting their chips on Sigil instead of Mythica, considering Turbine already bought Asheron's Call 2 back from Microsoft and running a MMOG isn't cheap, though you can make most of it back over time.
The company is called Sigil Games Online and is made up of the creative minds that designed the original Everquest. Sigil has hired up a lot of the Everquest talent, (which may account for the odd ball expansions that have been released. ie PoP, LoY, GoD, and Luclin). Also, Sigil has only hired experienced people. Expect a good game out of these people. They are MUD players, Pen and Paper Players and people who suffered the problems of the original MMoRPGs. They also have ears directly connected to the online community and they listen to what people like and dislike.
I do security
Microsoft was sued by Mythic (makers of Dark Age of Camelot) over the similarities between the names "Mythic" and "Mythica". I guess Microsoft thought they'd lose and decided to scrap the project.
No sig for you.
I'm really glad to see you're not a bandwagon Microsoft smasher... [/sarcasm]
FYI, Microsoft just released the source code to Allegiance, a multiplayer game that was years ahead of its time but died due to lack of publicity and players.
As for this project, since it isn't finished I don't quite see the point in releasing the source. It wouldn't be quite so useful, and modding a MMORPG is not on the top of my list.
webpage
SigilGames.Com is hosted on a Linux server.
I suppose they will want to change that.
From what I understand, Lineage 2 doesn't have a real subscription user base. Since it's based in South Korea, where internet cafes are more popular, not everyone who is playing the game is paying a monthly fee to do so; rather, the internet cafe gets Lineage licenses and anyone can make an account, counting as individual subscribers. I *think* this is how it works, but again, don't quote me on it :)
"Their big programming project"? Game developers working on Longhorn? Not likely. Microsoft has a bunch of big programming projects going on all the time, and there's little sharing between them. People working on Visual Studio are not going to be pulled off to work on SQL Server, and game developers are not going to be put on Longhorn (unless the developers in question are looking to change jobs within the company and go through the proper interview loops in the new groups and get accepted, of course).
Assuming the Mythica developers were internal to Microsoft and not part of an external company that Microsoft publishes for (Bizarre Creations, Gas Powered Games, etc), the team may be parceled up across different games in the MGS division, or they might be developing a different game. They're certainly not working on Longhorn.
Finally, cancelling projects in any company, not just Microsoft, doesn't happen overnight. Whether or not the NT source was leaked likely had no bearing on this decision at all, as it was surely made weeks ago.
You foil hat might be just a bit too tight, I think.
Turbine purchased AC back from MS. With rights to Middle-Earth and D+D Online, Turbine pretty much has a lock on MGORPG. (Massively Geek Online Role-Playing Games)
With those two titles and WoW on the horizon, MS is probably correct in assuming that Mythica would be largely ignored.
http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=136
Some early screenshots of the game that will no longer be. Looks pretty good, nothing fancy, but of course there is much more to a game than just the visuals.
I.O.U One Sig.
There were some other problems with URU Live.
Some were game engine related (too much network traffic to the clients, server overload, etc.), and others were deployment issues (Ubi didn't seem to allocate enough server/bandwidth to it). Both of these are fixable (people at Cyan who actually wrote it have said that they have fixes done for a lot of the problems), but Ubi has chosen not to implement them. A big reason that they had problems getting people to sign up is that half the time you couldn't log in to the server.
That said, it was a beautiful game enviroment (when you could get in and play).
They where not married, they where just dating.
If the MMORPG is mobile-capable, e.g. PocketPC (which I *HIGHLY* suspect) then it is not a crowded marketplace anymore...even at $3 a month it'll remain pretty lucrative.
Unless their new MMORPG is a MUD (which I *HIGHLY* suspect is not the case), I doubt you'll be able to play it on any PocketPC. You can't even run the most recent version of EverQuest on a 500mhz Pentium II with 512 megs of ram, and PocketPCs aren't even close to being able to support that much RAM. (Don't believe me? See for yourself.)