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Mythica MMORPG Cancelled By Microsoft 223

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.'"
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Mythica MMORPG Cancelled By Microsoft

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  • by lpangelrob2 ( 721920 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:00AM (#8266344) Journal
    Translation: All you Mythica developers, we have a few NT bugs to fix... (fp) :-)
  • M$ Games? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:02AM (#8266364)
    I always looked at windows as an RPG - well, at least a good fight engine.
  • MS's MMOGs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Silwenae ( 514138 ) * on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:02AM (#8266370) Homepage
    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.
    • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rallion ( 711805 )
      EQ may be the leader at the moment, but World of Warcraft beta got almost as many signups as EQ has subscribers...
      • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Knetzar ( 698216 )
        The beta is free. How many of those that signed up will be willing to pay a monthly fee?
      • WoW beta signups are even more remarkable when you consider that they showed the middle finger towards europeans by not allowing them to participate at this point. Yes, they claim euro beta signups come later. Too bad. They already pissed off bunch of fanbois...

        Of course WoW has so nutcase expectations built up by now that either Blizzard guys are Gods and pull it off, or it'll be the most spectacular trainwreck launch of our time. I'm currently betting on the second option, based on their track record wit
    • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:5, Informative)

      by JelloGnome ( 748938 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:45AM (#8266640)
      Right now, Final Fantasy Online has more subscribers than EverQuest (worldwide). I don't know the exact numbers, but EQ is between 400-500k and FFXI is between 500-600k. I think Final Fantasy's astronomical growth rate demonstrates that the current MMORPG market is not saturated. Personally I'm glad Microsoft is giving Brad McQuaid the opportunity to take back the MMORPG title. A good choice, but Richard Garriot would have been better. Richard Garriot created the first version of Ultima Online with $250,000 and a handful of hobbyist text MUD designers. And UO, with graphics relatively unchanged since 1996, is the third most popular MMORPG with around 250k subscribers. Imagine what Garriot could do with some real money! Well for once, I'd like to say best of luck to Microsoft. Mythica was obviously not going anywhere. And Sony needs a nice ass whopping after ruining Planetside and SWG :) McQuaid may just have what it takes to bring the fun back to MMORPGs.
      • Everquest stopped being fun, though. As soon as every named NPC was camped, and there were lists to fight dragons and gods, the fun was gone (except for the elite few).

        I really hope that Brad McQuaid has learned something from that, and applies it to any new games he is involved with.

        Then again, maybe that was the goal all along, given how much static content makes up EQ...
      • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:51AM (#8266982)
        Richard Garriot is current working on an MMORPG called Tabula Rosa under the Korean publisher NCSoft. NCSoft also published Lineage, currently the largest MMORPG in the world with around 4 million subscribers. So it seems as if "Lord British" will get a great chance to show what he can do with some real money.
        • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:2, Informative)

          by m1kesm1th ( 305697 )
          Its actually called Tabula Rasa, which means clean slate in Latin.
      • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb AT gmail DOT com> on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:53AM (#8266996) Homepage
        I think Final Fantasy's astronomical growth rate demonstrates that the current MMORPG market is not saturated.

        No. It demonstrates that the worldwide MMORPG is not saturated. For English speakers, though, there are plenty of MMORPGs available (I'll leave the question of whether they're good or not to others).

        Unfortunately, the MMORPG market seems to be locked into a painful, stagnating track. Specifically, everyone sees the success of Everquest and wants to attract the people who like that game. Thus, every game seems to be emulating EQ with relatively minor tweaks (probably inspired by reading threads written by people who are angry about something in Everquest). The problem with being on this track is that people who didn't enjoy, or got tired of, Everquest see little reason to try the latest, greatest MMORPG given how much they all tend to resemble each other.

        Me, I'm just going to bide my time until they get about two years into Star Wars Galaxies. With spaceships and the inevitable balancing/tweaking/content additions, I'm pretty sure I could enjoy it. :)

        • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:5, Interesting)

          by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @04:24AM (#8267601) Journal
          No. It demonstrates that the worldwide MMORPG is not saturated. For English speakers, though, there are plenty of MMORPGs available (I'll leave the question of whether they're good or not to others).


          Unfortunately, the MMORPG market seems to be locked into a painful, stagnating track. Specifically, everyone sees the success of Everquest and wants to attract the people who like that game. Thus, every game seems to be emulating EQ with relatively minor tweaks
          I think the potential MMORPG market is immense. There are plenty of people who would enjoy such a game, if they were introduced to a) computers, b) gaming in general, and c) online gaming. I know a few people who were pushed through that path by their husband or wife, and (to their own surprise) found great enjoyment ini playing MMORPGs.

          The Sims Online tried to tap some of this market. Despite its failure, the game managed to draw in something of a new crowd; people who weren't big on RPGs or online gaming.

          I see two opportunities for MMORPG companies:
          1) Market expansion a la Sims Online: attracting more of the mainstream crowd. That doesn't mean writing a game that everyone likes; it means writing a game that has appeal outside the current MMORPG player base.
          2) Separation and rationalisation of the graphics engine, game world functions, support, and billing function. As the player base widens, I think it will be increasingly hard to develop a game that has appeal to everyone. Instead, if you have a generic (but evolving) game world engine, a single billing and support entity, and flexible graphics engines, then you will be able to develop and run multiple MMORPGs at a lower cost. You may be able to profitably run a niche-market game for perhaps 20.000 subscribers, if you have 10 such games. That way, you'll be able to tailor each game to the wants of a small group of players, rather than being forced financially to write a game that tries to be everything to everyone.
      • "Back?"

        Listen, I'm no hater...but I beta tested Everquest back in 1997, and I've had more fun in bus stations than I did playing that game.

        I enjoyed the challenge at first -- I am a P&P guy at heart and the idea of a massive immersive world really shook my dodecahedral dice. But I'm afraid it rolled a fumble...I couldn't take the waiting for monsters to respawn, or the guys who insisted on talking out of game (or even worse, the guys who tried to talk in game but only know the dialogue from "Lady Haw
    • Re:MS's MMOGs (Score:3, Interesting)

      by UID30 ( 176734 )
      I was an avid Everquest fan when it was released ... played it for years, grew frustrated with bad interface, bad customer support, bad policy ... and quit. Reactivated later, grew frustrated with bad interface, bad customer support, bad policy, bad design ... and quit. Reactivated later, grew bored with bad content, bad customer support, bad design ... and quit.

      From what I remember, McQuaid's "vision" was what stifled EQ development and gameplay for many years.

      I've had quite enough of his "vision" to l
  • Chrikey (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smaug195 ( 535681 ) * on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:03AM (#8266373)
    Microsoft is putting out yet another MMORPG in an already way too crowded marketplace? I understand the 13$ a month business model is good, but not spread as thin as it will be with all this competition.
    • Re:Chrikey (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:19AM (#8266487)
      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.
      • exactly. its not the mmorpg market thats saturated - its the reach of the model thats is breaking. there needs to be an extension of the rpg to beyond just high bandwidth wired PCs.
      • mobile-capable? wtf? (Score:3, Informative)

        by NSash ( 711724 )
        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. [microsoft.com])
        • I think the original poster made a typo. I suspect he meant to say if a MMORPG is PocketPC playable, the market will expand greatly. I suspect (hope) he wasn't referring to Microsoft's new MMORPG.
  • by windside ( 112784 ) <pmjboyleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:03AM (#8266376)
    I've never been a fan of MS games, but wouldn't it make more sense for them to focus attention on cross-platform games that they would be able to market both for PCs and for their XBox system? Perhaps the second MMORPG mentioned in the article meets this critereon while the cancelled game doesn't.
    • by TrancePhreak ( 576593 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:21AM (#8266499)
      I don't think the XBox Live system allows for PC intereaction. This is due to the high number of PC users that like to cheat in games. Although, a cheat device for the XBox was released to some, and many people stopped playing the games that cheats existed for and went on to other similar games. Take Return To Castle Wolfenstein for instance. It was one of the biggest online games for XBox for a good while, until a bunch of people started cheating. Almost everyone stopped playing that and now plays other games.
  • Smart move! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vonPoonBurGer ( 680105 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:04AM (#8266390)
    For once I agree with something MS did. There are already too many mediocre MMORPGs floundering around in the marketplace. It's only a matter of time before some of them are forced to close their doors. As I understand it, there are a bunch of them (like Anarchy Online) that are caught between having too few subscribers to make a significant profit, but too many to pull the plug without facing a significant backlash. Aside from pure financial considerations, though, I wonder how much Mythic's lawsuit [com.com] played into the decision (that's Mythic, developer of Dark Age of Camelot, as opposed to the just-cancelled project Mythica).
    • Re:Smart move! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:28AM (#8266539)
      I'm sure the lawsuit was a factor too. But, like you said, the market is going to get saturated quick. Not as much room for shitty games in a place where you have to pay per month. That means a game must not only be interesting enough to make a sale, but good enough to keep that intrest over a long period of time. More, people are only going to be willing to plunk down so much. 1-2 games is probably the max for most people.

      I'm betting between the lawsuit and the promise of Sigil they figured this wasn't worth it and just stopped.
    • Re:Smart move! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) * on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:08AM (#8266763)
      Though you're generally right about the plethora of mediocre MMORPGs out there, I knew some people involved in Mythica, and they are surely not mediocre developers. And from what I've heard from them, the game was shaping up to be anything but a mediocre release, which makes this announcement quite shocking. I understand it from a business perspective, but it seems like this game had a really good shot at serious success. The naming issue was probably easily addressable, and surely is not behind the cancellation.
    • Actually, I'd bet that AO has a sustainable userbase.

      They just announced [anarchy-online.com] second full-fledged expansion on the game. Shadowlands supposedly sold pretty well, and their subscriber numbers are slowly creeping upwards. I don't think they'd keep on investing towards new expansions and continued development of the game if they didn't get profit out of the game. Yes, AO is not a runaway hit, but I'd wager a bet that it's profitable. Now it's questionable will it survive the upcoming onslaugh of New Shiny Thingy

  • Bad Day (Score:4, Funny)

    by panaceaa ( 205396 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:06AM (#8266403) Homepage Journal
    First Barbie breaks up with Ken [cnn.com] and now this! Augh!$@, my fantasy word is crumbling to pieces. :((((
    • Re:Bad Day (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:20AM (#8266494)
      Barbie breaks up with Ken

      Another fine shining example for a society with a 50% divorce rate.

      Should also make a great cultural addition to "The Apprentice" (keep your own job by abandoning your neighbor), "Survivor" (let's all get together and decide who to ostracize) and "American Idol" (let's make sport of human cruelty).

      What a joyful day indeed.
      • Re:Bad Day (Score:3, Funny)

        by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 )
        Another fine shining example for a society with a 50% divorce rate.

        We should require parents who get divorced to eat their children.
  • by Yoda2 ( 522522 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:07AM (#8266412)
    Inspired by real life events...Raiders of the Lost Code [slashdot.org].
    • Inspired by real life events...Raiders of the Lost Code.

      And like in that movie, our hero yells "don't look at it...don't look at it"... and the bad guys who do look at it have their faces melt off.

  • by GLowder ( 622780 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:14AM (#8266449)

    MS makes a brilliant move to preemptively kill projects, in an effort to stem any further source code leaks.

    "No source code here to leak, project's axed, move on."

  • by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:15AM (#8266456)
    Having less MMORPGs on the market would mean the consumer base would be focused in fewer games. Theoritically this means companies would be more inclined to make less buggy software and improve the game overall.

    In a perfect world that is. While this is true in the long run, you won't see these results any time soon.

  • As well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pixelgeek ( 676892 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:22AM (#8266508)
    This avoids any possibility of continued legal action by the makers of "Dark Age of Camelot".

    Not sure what the status of that suit was but with no game MS doesn't have to worry about taking a lawyer from their crack team of legal-ninjas scouring the globe for teenage website operators to sue.
  • by tkokesh ( 668827 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:22AM (#8266510) Homepage
    A group of warri^H^H^H^H^Hprogrammers fights against droves of bugs and orc^H^H^Hsalesdrones as they quest towards the evil land of Mordo^H^H^H^H^HLonghorn!

    To be released in 2004^H5^H6^H7...

  • Most likely because the root cellar is already stuffed to the drip rails with spot-lighted mule deer and snare-trapped rooster pheasant...

    You think the streets of Seattle are tough, try going out in the woods.
  • by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:28AM (#8266538)
    Please sir, could I have some more?
    • Not really sure you would want the code.
      When AC2 was released it had two major code problems, chat and authentication. Both of theses section were written by microsoft and given to Turbine, the developers of the rest of AC2. It was said that the code came from an in house MMORPG that was in development, the name Mythica was not yet out.
      Later it was found that the problem with chat was that it was using .NET and that the under lying services could not handle the large amounts of information being passed
  • A Sad Day (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PakProtector ( 115173 ) <cevkiv@NOspAm.gmail.com> on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:29AM (#8266544) Journal

    Let me start this off by saying I'm not a big fan of Microsoft in General.

    But that game was amazing. I got to play it ( An Alpha or Pre-Beta ) at GenCon, and it was really fun. I can't remember alot of details, so mod me as you will, but from what I remember gameplay was very intuitive for an RPG, let alone a MMORPG, and battles were face-paced and quick, and very heartpounding.

    This is coming from a 3 year EverQuest addict. I'm sorry to see this game going.

  • They really should do MMDOWXP, massive multiprogrammers debugging of Windows XP, yeah. Otherwise Windows become a mythology itself in few years.

  • by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @12:42AM (#8266620)
    To MS, _life_ is a MMORPG, one in which you WILL be assimilated.
  • by agwis ( 690872 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:00AM (#8266717)
    Cyan and UBI just cancelled URU live as well. They gave excuses that not enough people signed up for the game to make it viable so they pulled the plug and promised a bunch of expansion packs instead...which sucks IMHO.

    It seems like there just aren't enough gamers interested in paying a monthly subscription to make it profitable for game makers. That, and the fact that a lot of willing customers are still stuck with dial up internet access and can't enjoy these games anyways. Maybe when everyone can get easy, inexpensive access to broadband these games will garner more interest. In the meantime, I'll just keep hosting my lan parties.

    -Pat
    • The real sad thing about URU being killed off was that it offered a different style of gameplay: dice-less, rule-less rpg instead of yet another rehash of Dungeons & Dragons. No leveling, no so and so many points for killing this or that monster, no PKing, cooperation instead of competition. This might not attract the 14-year old brigands of other MMORPGs, but it was attracting a lot of people that only play cooperative, non-violent games. Instead of leeching off of the customer-base of already existing
    • "there just aren't enough gamers"? EverQuest has over 400k active accounts, Final Fantasy XI over 500k, Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot over 200k each (numbers may not be quite current). Those are just some of the biggest ones. There are clearly lots and lots and lots of people willing to pay for playing MMORPGs.
    • It seems like there just aren't enough gamers interested in paying a monthly subscription to make it profitable for game makers.

      I think MMO games would get a lot more subscribers if they could find a model where they bring people in for a flat one-time fee, and then give the player more when they're already comfortable with the game and are ready and willing to upgrade to a monthly fee. This will inject a consant flow of new players into the game, who subsequently get hooked and upgrade.

      I think the bigge
    • "It seems like there just aren't enough gamers interested in paying a monthly subscription to make it profitable for game makers."

      Evidence seems to point to entirely the opposite conclusion. There's a massive glut of extremely similar games, and most of them are still succeeding to some degree (EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SWG...). The fact that they don't even have to branch out to be successful makes MM games look like safer ripoffs that RTS used to be.

      Take into consideration that this is a new genre, and with n
  • by servognome ( 738846 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:01AM (#8266724)
    SEATTLE - Microsoft said late Thursday that it would immediately halt development of "Mythica", an online roleplaying game that was scheduled for release in the second half of 2004. A Microsoft Studios spokesman stated, "After reviewing similar titles in the massively multiplayer Online gaming genre, we determined that our game was too stable. It is a disappointment given the talent, experience, and track record we have here at Microsoft at creating buggy software. Unfortunately, the competitive market did not allow us time to include enough crashes or exploits in our game to make it competitive for a launch this year."
  • by shoolz ( 752000 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:02AM (#8266727) Homepage
    Wouldn't it be nice if all other game companies were as forthcoming with game dev info (hello 3DRealms)? As much as I dislike MS, It's nice to see a company just come out and say it. "This game is toast, just letting you know"
  • So... ah... if you're not going to be using the Mythica source anymore, do you mind if we have it?
  • Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)

    by shird ( 566377 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @01:43AM (#8266927) Homepage Journal
    Some early screenshots [mythicarealms.com] 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.
  • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I For One.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by taernim ( 557097 ) on Friday February 13, 2004 @05:36AM (#8267797) Homepage
    .. can't wait for the new MS game!

    Duke Nukem Forever Online... man. This is gonna be great. Anyone know when it'll be out? ;-)
  • As long as Blizzard doesn't kill World of WarCraft, I don't care. : )


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
  • so sad for the team of patch developers that were earmarked for this project. In other news, patching Windows will now take place "up to five months after bug is found". :-)

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