Petroglyph general manager Chuck Kroegel on Mytheon's union of MMO and RTS

We've been seeing a number of new options in online gaming, some clearly definable as being 'massively multiplayer', others less so. One of those game categories that blurs the line a bit is the MMORTS (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy) game... we'll probably just stick with the acronym from now on. But we've wondered, what exactly can we expect from RTS titles as they adopt more features traditionally associated with MMOs?

Steven Crews from The MMO Gamer spoke with Petroglyph Games general manager and executive producer Chuck Kroegel about their upcoming title Mytheon. The game is a free-to-play, downloadable title that will be supported by microtransactions and focuses on the myths, heroes, and monsters of the world's ancient cultures. Crews asks the questions we think are on a lot of people's minds when they hear "MMORTS" -- "Why bring strategy games into the MMO space? What do you get from a persistent universe that you couldn't get out of something like Battle.net?"

Mytheon isn't a standard RTS, Kroegel answers. "If you just took an RTS game in its purest sense and moved it to the MMO space it wouldn't quite work. You would be better off with Battle.net. We are doing something that is a bit different than that. [...] We think that we are modifying the genre -- almost into a new genre -- that fits the MMO platform and the kind of things that people are looking for" says Kroegel.

If you're into games where RTS meets MMO, like Dreamlords the Reawakening for instance, you might be interested in finding out more about Mytheon in The MMO Gamer interview with Chuck Kroegel.