In the midst of preparing for their appearance at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, Frogster Interactive has announced a new major shareholder in their company, Gameforge AG, who now holds 60% of the controlling share. In addition, Gameforge AG announced a takeover bid of 25 Euro per share. The company behind two highly-anticipated MMOs, Mythos and Tera Online, will be sustained as an independent company and keep all teams in all locations intact. Despite the bid, Frogster Interactive will be at GamesCom in full force to display their upcoming MMOs for the first time. With the release of their upcoming MMOs and its ‘Project X’ from Runes of Magic, Frogster still expects a strong and profitable expansion for 2011.

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Mythos, a free-to-play dungeon crawling MMO from publisher Redbana, finally has an official website.  In addition to screenshots, videos and a game guide, forums are afoot.

We also nabbed some screenshots and a couple gameplay videos for you to check out.  Is this your cup of tea?  If so, you’ll still have to wait a bit longer, because although they tease closed beta, there is no information regarding when it might start.  You can, however, sign up for closed beta on the official site.

Continued…

After the collapse of Flagship Studios in late 2008, the company’s pseudo-MMOG Hellgate: London had its servers shutdown by Namco-Bandai in February 2009.  HanbitSoft, the game’s Korean publisher, continued to run the game in Korea under the free-to-play model, later purchasing the intellectual property outright.

Shortly after the acquisition, HanbitSoft rechristened the title with an apt name, Hellgate: Resurrection, and promised to re-launch the title internationally.  HanbitSoft itself was then purchased by T3 Entertainment, who assured players that the game would still be returning.  Going so far as to promise its own development power to create an expansion, Hellgate: Tokyo.

Now you’re caught up on the situation of Bill Roper’s gig before Champions Online.

/me wipes brow

HanbitSoft announced a few days ago that Hellgate: Resurrection is still coming to North America, Europe and Japan, but a release in China and Southeast Asia are the first targets.  Hellgate: Resurrection continues to be F2P in Korea, and it’s likely that the game will remain that way for its upcoming re-releases.

In case you are wondering, HanbitSoft also owns Mythos, Flagship Studios’ other project.

The crazy bastards did it! I don’t know why they decided to do what they did but the brilliant minds behind the charmingly free2play MORPG Mythos has decided to tack on another M to that acronym and fully realize it as a true MMORPG. That’s right, as of last week, Flagship Studios released unto their test server their newest incarnation that is headed towards the once fully instanced game, that is a persistent world dubbed the “Overworld”.

For those that have yet to play Mythos or even hear about it, the game is being developed by some of the same people who brought you Diablo 2. As such it plays much like it; point top move, right click to use a skill, left click to attack, massive amounts of loot, etc. Up until last week, the rpesentation of the game was much the same, you and a few friends party up in the town (usually StoneHill) and take off into an instanced zone on your way to whatever quest you were on. It was a simple straight forward method, but it was also one that worked fairly well. Well apparently the developers disagreed.

While not yet available on the actual server, those players whose curiosity needs to be peeked can find that if they head on over to the test server they can experience Mythos ala World of Warcrat style. That is to say, you can go anywhere and do anything with anybody at anytime. For those of you who are fearing that this game will become yet another WoW-clone now that it has lost much of it’s past identity, don’t worry, while the presentation may be completely disheveled the core gameplay is still much the same. Lots of baddies, lots of flashy skills, and lots of loot await you in Mythos just like before. The only difference is now it’s all in one big persistent world. It’s all very exciting stuff!

Today I got my latest issue of PCGamer where they played over 60 different free MMOs and selected 9 as worth playing. I figured you guys could get some good use out of this list so here it is.

Crime Craft

Sort of like GTA except with more crime and less driving around. CrimeCraft uses the Unreal Engine 3 and isn’t set to be released until Spring of 2009, so its about a year away but it’ll be free to play.
http://www.crimecraft.com

Mythos

No suprise to see Mythos making the list. We’ve covered Mythos before, but if you’re not familiar with it it’s a Diablo2 clone, but a MMORPG instead of a regular RPG.
http://www.mythos.com

Requiem: Bloodymare

An extremely gory and bloody horror MMORPG, Requiem: Bloodymare that lives up to its name. Originally created in South Korea the game has made its way to western audiences. Currently the game is in Beta, but will be released shortly.
http://www.playrequiem.com

Dungeon Runner

A comical MMORPG that is a lot of fun to play and is free as long as you allow them to run an ad banner while you’re playing. However for only $4.99/month you have the option to remove that.
http://www.dungeonrunners.com

Sword of the New World: Granado Espada

An MMORPG with an anime look that at one point had a monthly fee but is now free to play. Sword of the New World allows you to control up to 3 characters which separates it from all the other MMOs out there.

http://swordofthenewworld.com

Holic

Currently in open beta, Holic is a MMO with a very cutsie look. What seperates this game from others is that users are able to create there own dungeouns and quests once they get far enough into the game.
http://holic.netgame.com

Shaiya: Light and Darkness

We covered Shaiya before so its no suprise to us that PC Gamer selected it as one of the best free games out there. Shaiya concentrates on long term development of your character and heavy PvP action. If you ever played Lineage, this game is right up your alley.
http://shaiya.aeriagames.com

Fiesta

Another anime inspired MMORPG from Korea, however this one suffers from horribly translated dialog. Aside from the bad translations, Fiesta Online is a good looking game with solid game play.
http://fiesta.outspark.com

Cabal Online

A solid fantasy MMORPG that doesn’t really make any breakthroughs, but features good gameplay, story and PvP via duels. Considering its free to play, if you’re looking for a casual free fantasy MMO, Cabal Online could be the one for you.
http://www.cabalonline.com

Well its been quite some time since we’ve posted about our favorite Diablo 2 clone turn MMORPG, Mythos. Today I received a newsletter update covering the latest patch and there are some BIG changes, BIG! For one PvP is back! Players will be able to attack players anywhere, including towns, and have a Anarchy rating which determines how many items you drop if someone kills you. If you have a low rating and are killed, you drop 1 random item. However if you decide to be a dick and slaughter a bunch of low level players your rating goes up, meaning the next time your killed, you’ll drop more than 1 item. So be nice to the noobs. If you don’t have the stomach for PvP, dueling has been added so you can fight without the fear of losing any of your precious items.

Along with PvP a new race has been added along with a third zone with new quests, monsters and towns. Crafting has also been revamped with hundreds of recipes, harvestable ingredients, ingredient refinement, a full Crafting skill tree.

If you want to full details of the patch, check it out at the all new Mythos site.

I haven’t played Mythos in a few months as I had a hard drive failure and never reinstalled the game once I got a new drive, but I’m currently downloading it so tomorrow you can bet I’ll be hacking and slashing it up on the PvP server. For those of you who haven’t been able to get into the Beta you might be in luck soon.

“If Zone 3 goes well, we could be looking at an Open Beta release in the near future.”

Congratulations to our two winners:

-Erlend Simonsen

-Jim McHie

Thanks for entering, I hope you enjoy the game!

So, it’s actually 9:30am when I am writing this and all the little names are in crumpled up bits of paper in a box to my right. I know, I promised you guys it would be done in a bowler hat not a box, but, you see, I am moving later this week and I accidentally packed my bowler hat so the box will have to do. If anybody is seriously upset you can call our complaint hotline at: 1(325)234-9876. Operators are standing by. . . no they aren’t. Don’t actually call that number because I literally just made it up off the top of my head right now. To any person that owns that number and is accidentally called by disgruntled contestants complainng about some hat and/or box, I’m sorry. . . you can go ahead and call this number so as to reach our comments/complaints operator: 1(678)432-7654. Sorry, I lied again. . . we don’t have a number. You see the horrible conditions Mike makes us work in, we don’t even get telephones!

Wow, ok so now you know what its like to begin writing a blog that you can’t actually publish for a half hour. I would normally go ahead and pull the contestants names right now, but there might maybe possibly just be one more entry in these last 15 minutes.

Now, without further ado (it is 10am now ), the contest winners are:

• Joshua Tompkins
• Dan

Congratulations to those winners! WhooOOooOOO! I seriously hope both of youo enjoy Mythos. Feel free to give me a hoot while in game if you are lonely, my Mythos characters are Wrenches, and Bloodface. I could be on either one at some point today.

Also, as a side note, we had no people disqualified during this contest, which is a good good thing! I was a bit worried when I went to sleep with 3 contestants and then woke up to find over a dozen. Which leads me to another side note, we got 17 contestants! Not a bad start for a first ever contest that we in no way advertised at all. I think we all deserve a hearty pat on the back. I can’t wait until we begin offering real prizes like actual games. . . maybe an Age of Conan contest when it gets released? We’ll see. . . enjoy Mythos guys.

P.S. Both invites were sent out to the email addresses provided. If, for some reason, you don’t get yours then their must have been a problem with your email address. We don’t have anymore to hand out at this time so it’s not like we can just send you another one.

So, seeing as how we got so many requests for Mike’s Mythos invites a few days ago. We decided that it would be a good idea to give mine away as well. I had a few real life buddies who were thinking about playing but they can’t seem to make up their minds, so now you guys get em instead! Hurrah!

Now for those who know next to nothing about the game; Mythos is a Diablo 2-esque MMORPG that features multiple classes, races, and vast amounts of loot. Seriously the game is almost exactly like Diablo 2 but with a different story. A very very good thing, in my opinion. I absolutely love the game. You can check out my preview here, or Mike’s first look here.

Contest outline: The contest will be a random name drawing based on your name as listed in the comments. When the contest ends, I will, personally, throw everybody’s name into a hat (bowler, in case you were wondering what kind) and draw two (2) of them. The winner’s will be announced at that time and have their invites sent off via the email provided to our comments section. MAKE SURE YOU USE A REAL EMAIL ADDRESS.

Contest Rules:

• You can only submit once (we can check IPs, email addresses, etc. do not attempt to cheat over a lousy freebie Mythos invite)
• Let us know why you want a Mythos invite inside your comment. (No explanation means no chance of winning sorry)
• Use a valid email address.
• There is no cash reward, and you cannot sell this invite.
• Contest ends Monday, January 21st at 10:00 am PST. Good luck!

I have read the Mythos website and could not find anything barring people from overseas from getting an invite so feel free to enter if you are from another country. Just make sure you can speak English as we have to be able to read your explanation.

Flagship Studios has decided to give everyone currently in the Mythos beta 2 invites, so I’d like to offer the first 2 people that reply an invite. Just comment here and I’ll send it within 24 hrs, probably much sooner. BTW if you get on my characters name is Omicronn, lev 19 Pyromancer.

For those of you who missed it, below are links to mine and Geoff’s previews of Mythos.

Geoff’s Preview

My Preview