Pax Romana for Mythic
No Dark Age for massively multiplayer follow-up
Riding high on the success of Dark Age of Camelot, developers Mythic have announced their second massively multiplayer role-playing game - Imperator. Appropriately enough it's set in a parallel universe where Rome never fell, side-stepping the Dark Ages. Instead the Roman republic has carried on for thousands of years, gradually turning into an interstellar empire where classical themes and sci-fi technology meet. In other words, it's Star Wars with togas and stuffed doormice. In fact, Mythic are taking the frankly bizarre decision not only to go up against the much anticipated Star Wars Galaxies head-on, but to make a point of this in the press release announcing their new game. "When we first began work on Dark Age of Camelot, everyone in the industry thought we were crazy to compete with EA, Microsoft and Sony, and that we were doomed to failure", Mythic president Mark Jacobs boasted. "As our success has shown, this was not the case. Sony and LucasArts have some of the best people in the industry working on Star Wars Galaxies but so does Mythic and soon they will be focusing on Imperator. We look forward to the challenge; it's going to be fun." Mythic might be setting their sights a little high, and there's likely to be a considerable gap between the release of Star Wars Galaxies (expected out towards the end of this year) and Imperator (which has only recently entered development) which will make any direct comparison between the two rather pointless anyway. We're taking Mythic's claims that their latest effort will turn out to be "a revolutionary game that will help define the MMORPG genre for years" with a healthy dose of scepticism for now, but no doubt more details will emerge over the next year or two as the game gets closer to completion.