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A new interview with the chief of operations at Flagship, Max Schaefer, is up at Eurogamer MMO and it has some nice tidbits on how they hope to implement micropayments in the free-to-play Mythos, as well as a piece of their development roadmap.

Max mentions that instead of just selling items, their focus will be on selling enhanced functionality and things players can opt for to get a greater chance at advancing more quickly or have a better chance at finding better loot. Examples given include stash enhancement -- the stash being the storage treasure chest each character has available to them -- such as larger stashes and stashes shared between accounts (so you can have your melee-focused character hand over that great magic staff that is otherwise useless to your magic-wielding character via your stash). Another example would be buying the map to a particular area or dungeon that has a high Luck associated with it, meaning the chance of valuable drops is higher. (Maps operate as keys to new areas -- sometimes marked as "temporary" on the map if they're instanced -- so if you don't have the map you can't go there.)

The maps are interesting, especially if they implement Max's stated idea about letting others in the purchaser's party come along without having to pay as well. So while one person pays the entire party benefits from it when adventuring with them. This is an effective advertising tool -- if players see a clear benefit to these kinds of places they just may pony up for them themselves, or they may be next up to pay for the rest of the team to go adventuring to share the burden.

Max also notes that their expectations are pretty reasonable. They understand that the majority of players will only buy the base game and won't buy anything else.

As long as they can keep the subscription fees for these features low and offer bundles that are compelling they might do very well for themselves, giving end-users more MMO like functionality in return for money, letting players go up from casual into hardcore territory without always feeling like they're left out if they don't pay.

As for upcoming work needed, they're going to be beefing up the social aspects of the game in upcoming updates, as well as rolling the overworld off of test servers and into the main game, making the world more cohesive and less fragmented as a result, more like a full-fledged MMO game. The social features, to me, are probably a key feature that will decide whether it's easy or hard to play with your friends, and careful attention being paid to what is a basic feature and what is a subscription feature will be necessary.

One minor downside for this game is that it's only for Windows right now. I don't see any plans for a MacOS version, which leaves some of my computer-using friends out in the cold. That alone might keep me from buying the final game, instead opting for a much more cross-platform friendly MMO like EVE Online, subscription fee or not.

I've been a part of the Mythos beta for a few months now and have recently started playing it more often, exploring its highly Diablo-esque sword and sorcery gameplay. I've been a vocal proponent of the game on the Aeropause Podcast, primarily by mentioning that I'm playing it just about every week, and I think it's a strong contender to be the game that eats Diablo III's lunch, but only if it can launch ahead of Blizzard's game.

You can sign up for the beta at the game's official website, or read the interview over at Eurogamer.