We were able to take an updated look at Mythica at Gen Con Indy 2003 and saw some elements of the early game in action. Mythica will be an online role-playing game in which you play as a dead Norse hero whose spirit has been commissioned to fight in the upcoming battle of Ragnarok against the encroaching fire giants. The game's most intriguing feature is its "private realms" technology, which will make carefully generated areas available for exploration by individual players and small groups of players, rather than forcing everyone to share a huge public area. However, as we saw, these private realms can be extremely large--up to a square kilometer in area.

In the game, you'll be able to play as one of eight character classes derived from four basic professions, but your character's profession will actually develop over many hours of play, rather than your choosing a race, class, and statistics all at once before even starting. Microsoft is concerned that this typical approach to character creation in online RPGs often causes new players to make poor decisions they'll regret later. Instead, you'll choose nothing more than your character's name and gender at the beginning of the game and later develop your character's profession and affiliation with the major Nordic pantheon of Odin, Loki, or Thor.

We watched as a party of four players of different character classes assaulted a fire giant stronghold, using special team-based abilities that become available to players only when they form an adventuring party. Scout characters can "paint" targets, which can bring faraway targets into range for ranged attacks. We watched as a scout character painted a far-off fire-giant tower for a pyromancer character (a fire-using sorceress). The tower was destroyed both with the use of a nearby catapult (the game will feature siege warfare as well as regular battles) and with a ritual spell, another group-only ability. Mythica is scheduled for release next year.