Flagship Thinks Mythos Can Take Down Some of the Big MMOs

Flagship Studios’ Max Schaefer chatted with Eurogamer recently about Mythos, with a question eventually arising that asked Schaefer if he thought Mythos could ever become the biggest MMO in the world. He more or less sidestepped that question, but did offer up the idea that Mythos could possibly take down some of the big MMOs on the market.

Just not World of Warcraft.

“You always hope that something like that will happen, but it’s so unpredictable,” he said about the prospect of being the world’s biggest MMO. “What we really want to do is come out and provide a solid alternative to these games. We’re under no illusions. WOW had ten times the staff we did, took three times as long, had twenty times the budget – and those are pretty talented, hard-working guys as well, so to think that we could go straight head to head is probably unrealistic. However, what we can do is target it better and we can find out what the core gaming experience that people want is and really try to hit that. I think that the free model and the item sales model give us the potential to capture a lot more of an audience than if we had gone with a boxed product and subscription model.

“Can we take down the big boys? I think we can take down some of them. And I’d like to put a dent in the others.”

There were a lot of other interesting topics discussed throughout the interview, such as what Flagship Studios learned from Hellgate: London. He summed up the lesson pretty simply, saying, “[D]on’t try to do everything for everybody.”

As for the microtransaction items (the business model is that Mythos will be free to play, with small item microtransactions sustaining things), Schaefer once again provided some assurance that we won’t see people buy their way to the top — you won’t be buying the best sword in the game. In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll be buying any swords at all, or anything of the sort, for that matter.

“What we’re going to do instead is cosmetic things – funny hats and cool shirts, that sort of thing. We’re going to provide service-orientated things like being able to buy bigger Stashes or shared Stashes among your accounts, but then for gameplay itself what we’re going to sell to people is things like maps to dungeons that have more luck. So you’ll get slightly better drops in that dungeon, and maybe 15 per cent more experience,” Schaefer explains.

Doesn’t sound too bad. And in all honesty, I more than likely wouldn’t mind plopping down $1 or so for a badass hat for my character.