Max Schaefer was one of the co-founders of Blizzard North which handled the Diablo RPG games, but in 2003 quit the company along with other staffers - including Bill Roper - to pursue other ventures.
The "other ventures" turned out to be Flagship Studios, which along with working on Hellgate: London is also developing MMORPG Mythos at its Seattle HQ.
Schaefer is executive producer on Mythos, which originally started life as a test-bed for the network tech forming the backbone of Hellgate: London's online play - but it's now a game in its own right that will be free to download and play.
Before Flagship Studios, there was Blizzard North. Originally known as Condor, the Redwood-based studio was acquired in 1997 by Blizzard Entertainment. At the time, Blizzard North was hard at work on the development of the game that would be the cornerstone of everything that came after: Diablo.
Hanbitsoft and T3Fun have announced that the open beta for their online action role-playing game, Mythos Global is now live. European fans can once again join in the action after Mythos Europe was closed down last year. Mythos is set in the land of Uld, a fantasy world arisen from the ashes of a dark and terrible war. Uld is a place where many different races live and where gods try their best to gain more power and influence among their followers.
DSOGaming writes: "Sad news for fans of MYTHOS, as Frogster’s community manager announced that MYTHOS Europe will be closing its doors on October 27th at 12:00 CEST (11am UK). According to the team, MYTHOS enjoyed great popularity with the launch in April and the numerous registered users ensured a good start. The desired long-term success unfortunately did not follow and under these circumstances, they have made the difficult decision to discontinue the operation of MYTHOS."
