As many of us awaits more Diablo III goodness to be trickle down Blizzard’s milky teat, there are more than a few games out there to provide us with our Diablo “fix”, as I like to call it. I’ve written up a list of 5 of what I think are the best Diablo clones.
Dungeon Siege II
Let me say right off the bat that I hated Dungeon Siege. It wasn’t a bad game by any means, but nonetheless, I did not enjoy it. It played itself and all you had to do was click to move and spam the heal potion button every once in awhile. In stark contrast, Dungeon Siege 2 does not in fact play itself. In fact, I’d say that Dungeon Siege 2 is a lot of fun.
It’s set in a fantasy-steampunk world with clockwork devices, Uruk Hai-like legions of bad guys, crossbows, dryads who live in trees and elves. The story’s pretty run of the mill, but the locations are varied enough and the NPCs are somewhat interesting, though they are nowhere close to reaching Bioware-levels of character depth.
Titan Quest
Titan Quest is arguably the one Diablo clone that manages to capture the visceral feel of Diablo’s combat and take it to a whole new level. **** goes flying when you hit it with a bat. The only problem with all this hilarious brutality is that there’s no blood or dismemberment, so they feel like little more than indestructible ragdolls.
On the one hand, it’s very satisfying to see a monster go flying after you swat it with a maul, but on the other hand it’s very disappointing when they don’t explode into a fine bloody mist or have body parts flying away when you throw a fireball at them. It’s simply not vicious enough.
While not strictly related to Blizzard, we’ve been following the progress of the former Flagship Studios’ developers, so this is relevant.
GameCyte has a new interview up with two of them who have started a new studio, Runic Games, who are Max Schaeferand Travis Baldree. The interview delves deep into why the company moved, why they think FSS failed like it did. It specifically mentions the current state of FSS right now as well. Specifically Max makes an emphasis on the fact that for all intents and purposes Flagship Studios is closed down, and Bill is just there to finish off the closure.
Max then goes on to talk about his brother and his involvement with the team. It then goes on to talk about if FSS had any chance of staying open. They then talk of the sorts of games they want to make with the new studios.
Next they talk about the game’s (Mythos) differentiation with Diablo 3 and Sacred 2, as well as the whole colour issue in Diablo 3. Lastly they mention that Namco at the moment is just handling the box sales of Hellgate London, but there is no current knowledge of what they plan to do with the game later.
Diane “Tiggs” Migliaccio contacted me with the following news on behalf of Flagship Studios with regards to Mythos.
<blockquote>Travelers of Uld,
We, the ancient elders of Uld are issuing this warning to all citizens and travelers. Hurry! The great darkness that once plagued Uld is returning. Everyone is ordered to close down their shops and prepare. We predict the when night is at its peak the darkness will arrive. The ancient elders of Uld will be leaving immediately in order to preserve the lore of this wonderful world. Citizens please prepare thyself and know that the elders will be back from their travels some day.
From the team:
We regretfully announce that on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 11:59 CST the world of Uld known as Mythos will be going on hiatus. On behalf of all of the Devs and Community team we want to say thank you to everyone for their support and assistance with Mythos Alpha and Beta testing and we will see you soon.
Travis Baldree, Project Lead and Programmer on Mythos created a thread on the official Mythos forum to bid his farewells to the Mythos community and other members of the Mythos team have since added their heartfelt goodbyes to the thread.
Well, it’s an interesting few days here for all of us. It’s just been killing me not to post until now, but I really needed to wait until some things were settled and announced. As you may or may not know Flagship Studios laid off almost all employees effective friday - you should be able to see the press release in the Announcements. Now, on the face of it, that really does sound like the end of Mythos as we know it - but we have a tight-knit team that feels like family and hopes to stick together. Unfortunately, I can’t speak at any real length about our immediate plans just yet - but let’s say that we hope to have you back up and Beta testing for us in one way or another sometime soon.
You’ve been an incredible community that we’ve all felt priveleged to be a part of, and we’re not quite ready to let go of that little family just yet. No matter the outcome, this has been a fantastic experience, and I and the team would like to thank each and every one of you for the tireless hours of testing and discussion you’ve undergone, and the uniquely friendly community spirit that you all helped foster. It’s been a treat every step of the way.
So, I’m not exactly sure how long Mythos in its current form will remain up, since it is effectively a testing server. I’ll try to get you that information as soon as I can.
In the meantime, I know the rest of the team would love to post their farewells and thanks to all of you. We’ll try to keep you as up to date as we can in one way or another.
Thanks again to all of you - and I hope to be seeing all of you online again very, very soon.
Travis
Others of Flagship Studios who have contributed their farewells and goodbyes to the thread include Jason “Grimby” Beck (Art Lead), Adam “HamSandwhich” Perin (3D Technical Artist), Kyle “SkyCrickett” Cornelius (Concept Artist) and Taylor Balbi (Community Manager).
History will, perhaps, remember Mythos as one of those “great games that should have been”, along with Black Isle Studios’ Van Buren and Troika’s post-apocalyptic RPG. Hope may yet exist for the game, so we’ll be crossing our fingers for a miracle.
A new article has popped up today about Mythos. It deals with the way that Hellgate was received as well as how Mythos plans to make a larger dent in the market.
The article has appeared on Eurogamer and it’s sister site GamesIndustry.biz.
“If we made a mistake with Hellgate, it was trying to do too many things for too many people,” admitted Schaefer, in an interview with our sister site Eurogamer.net.
“We wanted a cutting edge graphics engine, we wanted multiple business models with subscriptions and free play, and single-player, we wanted to combine third-person play with first-person play, we wanted to do random 3D levels, and when you’re starting with a brand new game studio with very limited budget and no existing technologies, that was probably biting off too much.
“We ended up rushing it to market and not keeping it in the oven long enough, just out of necessity.”
[...]
“With Mythos we’re definitely taking our time, we’re well within our budget and our means to make it. It’s a little bit of a turning point for us - don’t try to do everything for everybody. Just be more realistic about your design goals. Bring it back to nine tenths instead of ten tenths and things will go much sooner,” he detailed.
[...]
“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.”
Lagorama, a gaming blog, also has their experience up, however one interesting thing that it reports on is a small teaser from Travis Baldree from the official forums, which is a hint that a more WoW like camera view is to be added into Mythos.
We are proud to announce the launch of the Mythos Calculator.
The Mythos Calculator is packed with all the skills available in the latest build of Mythos (Zone 3). You can even save your personalized build and share it with friends through our calculator’s dynamic linking feature!
Thanks to Matt Hall, Vincent Viau and Tim Fevens for all your diligence and hard work in making this possible.
The official Mythos website has been updated today with new information of a new monster type called the Stagkin, and a description of Stonehill, the first town you’ll ever visit in the vast world of Uld!
Here’s the history of the Stagkin. Be sure to read the rest for more information.
The Stagkin and Ramalo races, distant cousins, inhabit the Umbral Tundra. Their mother Sheer Twoprong the Bitter is seeking the heart of her brother Belgesh, in the hope of adding his essence to her own. With great difficulty she is marshaling the Stagkin and Ramalo, although they are naturally suspicious of one another.
She drives them to seek out Belgesh’s heart, but their superstition of the Wights of the Arcled prevents them from nearing their goal. Driven to rage by their stubbornness and slow-witted responses, she has punished many with dire tortures, driving them mad with fear and pain.
Zone 3 is now available for download! First, uninstall your current installation of Mythos - it will not patch. Log in to the official Mythos website, and use the Download button to get the new Mythos client.
Marsh had a lot to share on the upcoming Crafting system that’s going to be released with the upcoming Zone 3 that’s getting released very soon. Here are some very juicy details:
1) There is a crafting Tree. Three panes. Each Pane holding 6 skill lines and 6 floating skills.
a. Out of the 18 Crafting trees, 15 of them encompass creating equipable or useable items; for instance “Boots and Gloves” , “Sword And Axes” and even “Potions, Grenades and Bandages”
a. Each Tree has a few properties which when invested in will allow you to adjust the items’ properties( Damages, Defenses, Attack Speed, and more ). I’ll talk about this more later.
b. The other three trees will create Weapon, Armor and Trinket Heraldries.(I’ll Talk about later )
c. The 6 floaters will allow for you to add random effects to items you create, Elemental Defenses, Elemental Damages, random affixes and even modify your weapons damage range.
2) There are over 800 recipes currently. Unfortunately with that many, most have not been hand tweaked yet. However the recipes have been generated with some pretty good logic.
a. There are 6 categories of advanced ingredients. For instance, Iron + Coal will give you Steel. Each of these 6 categories have 10 additional ingredients.
b. There is an ingredient bag, which you can get to by pressing “I”. This of course brings up your inventory, but you’ll now see a couple of tabs at the top (Backpack, Ingredients )
c. You can break down items for ingredients – if you complete the first guild quest.
d. Ingredients drop from specific monsters and useable nodes in the levels.
4) There will be 99 pts you can invest in the crafting tree. However at release there will be only 72.
a. One point per level up
b. There will be 50 quests given to you by the crafting guild. Completing each one, gives you a crafting point. On release there will only be 23 quests to complete. We’ll be adding the other 27 very soon.
Heraldries:
Heraldries are like super powerful gems. They have multiple properties, such as:
150% Damage increase for all damage types.
150% Damage Increase for all pets
25% Chance to cause bleed
25% Chance to cause ignite
25% Chance to cause poison
HOWEVER, Heraldries don’t last forever. Most are time based( 25% Damage Bonus for 3 hours 23 minutes ). Some are hit based( 300% Damage Bonus for 100 hits ). Some are damage based ( 100% chance for Fire Nova, 100 times on hit ).
There are 3 different types of Heraldries - Weapon, Armor and Trinket. Each Heraldry is socketable only in those types of items.
That’s about 30% of the Crafting details. The full notes can be read in this thread.
Mythos Guru was founded early in 2007 as the first fansite and forum ever dedicated to Flagship Studios' online game, Mythos. It caters to an international base of players and guilds. Following in the footsteps of its predecessor Hellgate Guru, Mythos Guru shares a proud tradition of sponsoring and organizing community backed projects and events, and a powerful skill calculator. More
