Information About Mythic Entertainment

Mythic Entertainment is the most prolific and one of the most successful online gaming developers in the industry today. Founded in 1995, Mythic was been one of the leaders in developing pay-for-play online games and is currently one of the most successful developers of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.

Mythic has created over fifteen games and expansion packs. Our older titles include some of the most popular online-only games of their time including Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict, Aliens Online, Starship Troopers: Battlespace, Silent Death Online, Rolemaster: Magestorm, Darkness Falls, Darkness Falls: The Crusade, Splatterball, Godzilla Online and Dragon's Gate. Our most famous product is Dark Age of Camelot™ which has been one of the leading MMORPGs in the world since its release in 2001.

Basic Information

A MMORPG is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game in which tens of thousands of people can adventure together or separately in worlds that are created by a game company. The most successful MMORPGs (including Dark Age of Camelot) to date have several hundred thousand monthly subscribers. These type of games are created by teams that can range in size from forty developers to over a hundred developers. These games can cost over ten million to produce a AAA title and some games currently in development, are rumored to cost many times that.

Well, besides the fact that tens of thousands of people can play this type of game at the same time and interact with each other, the biggest difference is that MMORPGs can be constantly updated with new content and challenges for the player. In the case of Dark Age of Camelot, Mythic creates new content and improvements for the game on a monthly basis. We have provided more downloadable content to the player as part of their subscription fee, than any other MMORPG that we are aware of in this industry. Throw in two retail expansions as well as a third coming out late 2004, and you have a game that in the three years since its release has increased dramatically in size, scope and features. You can't get that kind of support from a non-MMORPG.

Yes. Given the expense of creating the game, maintaining the customer service system (in-game, phone and email) and creating new content, the only way for a company to justify these expenses is with a monthly subscription fee. However, when you look at the monthly fee (usually $10-$16USD) that a player pays to access the content almost 24x7, there are few entertainment values that can top that. Basically, for the price of one movie ticket in NYC, a small soda and a small cup of popcorn you have access to an ever-changing and growing world on demand (minus short downtimes for server or software upgrades).

We are hoping to begin beta testing this Fall and are looking at a Spring 2006 release.

Basic Game Information

Imperator is a next-generation MMORPG.

Imperator is an Alternate Earth™ science-fiction based MMORG set in a world where the Roman Republic has survived into the post-modern era. Rome is one of the hyper-powers in the world (but it is not the only one) and it is now leading the defense of the Terran civilizations against the enemies that seek to destroy everything that we hold dear.

Unlike Dark Age of Camelot, Imperator is a Player versus Environment (PvE) game. However, given that much of the game is set in the Roman Republic, there will be plenty of opportunities to players to test themselves against other players within the game. If you have seen our E3 demo movie, there is a reason that the Flavian Amphitheater (known as the Coliseum in our world) occupies a central part.

Well, if you look at the while litany of science-fiction products, many of them are well-rooted in classic Western civilizations. We have decided to "go to the source" and use one of the world's greatest civilizations as the basis of our game. The bottom line is this, Rome was and remains cool and interesting to a large percentage of the world. When, two thousands years after they were built, people are still using some of the roads built by the Romans, there is something special there.

By changing the history of our world (thus making it an Alternate Earth product) in sometimes subtle ways, we will create a whole new timeline for our world and the result will be a world that will be quite different than the one we live in today but also recognizable and somewhat familiar at the same time. It's quite a unique setting and concept for a game.

Not likely. The world we are building is a science-fiction world, not an ancient world with science-fiction elements. We hope to incorporate all the coolest things about science-fiction games and use ancient history and legends to provide a compelling backstory for the game as well as to inspire the creation of certain key elements in the game.

Imagine a Roman Praetorian Guardsmen using the latest in bio-adaptive body-armor. Or, how about Furies that are dedicated to protecting the heart and soul of Roman government? Now, this does not mean that everything we create will have to be based on Western (or Eastern) civilizations and legends but we will certainly do whatever we can to bring those ancient tales, stories and legends into the modern era.

This game will feature a wide assortment of weaponry as we don't expect to well-armed Roman to adventure throughout space using a sword to defeat his opponents. Our mandate is to create a science-fiction game MMORPG not a fantasy MMMORG masquerading as a science-fiction game. So, expect to see lots of cool and devastating weaponry in our game.

We have no plans to have space combat be part of Imperator at launch. Space travel will be an important part of the game but as for commanding your own ship, sorry, we don't have any plans presently on incorporating it.

Of course. We believe that crafting systems are integral to the long-term success of most MMORPGs and we are spending considerable time developing a crafting system that fits a science-fiction game, is enjoyable to use and a profitable (in-game only, thanks) for the player to pursue.

Game Systems

Imperator is at its heart a skill-based game. Players will be able to mix and match abilities to suit their play style. However, this does not mean that players will be able to have all the skills in the game at the highest levels in the game. That would just be silly and lead to all characters being the same. We want players to be able to differentiate their characters as well as fill their own personal vision for them.

Absolutely. We will have a wide range of human and non-human characters in the game for people to choose from. Players will be able to customize the look of their characters to a much great extent than they are currently able to do so in Dark Age of Camelot.

Combat is an integral part of this game and we want to create a system that is not just Dark Age of Camelot in space. We have also seen many of the other combat systems being used by other MMORPGs and we want to create the next generation of these systems to match the rest of the game. What we hope to create is a system that is designed for the RPG-player (as opposed to the FPS player) but requiring a greater involvement and response from them.

Technical Information

Mythic believes that while it is important to design games that use the latest and greatest technology, we don't want our games to require that hardware in order to play it. So, while it is way to early to say what configuration of PC will be required to play our game it will be similar to what we require for Dark Age of Camelot relative to the typical PC at the time of release.

Nope, we are still committed to using NDL's GameBryo graphic rendering engine (the same one that powers Dark Age of Camelot) and the DAoC Game Engine (that does everything else). The beauty of this is that as DAoC is improved during the development of Imperator, Imperator will reap the benefit and as certain improvements are coded for Imperator, DAoC will see them. As of this writing, this is already happening.

Mythic is as proud of its server technology as it is its client technology. Our server uptime is, we believe, the best in the industry. We have no intention of "fixing" something that isn't broken. As a matter of fact, at E3 2004 we demonstrated Imperator with both a movie and a working game server. The game has been in alpha since then and all our improvements, testing, etc. are done in a LIVE environment and not with a server that is in development. This means that on launch, Imperator will be as stable as Dark Age of Camelot which had a better launch (stability, number of users, etc.) than any other MMORPG up to that time.

Mythic has always believed that size does matter but that it is the smaller size that provides the better experience for the player. We have no interest in creating "one-world" servers or any setup in which all the players of the game can all play in the same shared space. In the world of MMORPGs, nobody to date has proven that a game that both has hundreds of thousands of subscribers as well as one-world, can work. It is our belief that players care more about the quality of the experience and the players around them then the sheer quantity. Thus, for Imperator our server size will be no larger than Dark Age of Camelot's is and possibly even smaller. The key is creating the best environment for the player and not a "science project" environment.