Forrest at Myth.bungie.org is reporting that Zandervix has posted some portions of the Myth III manual in their Asylum. If, like Forrest, you're on a Macintosh and haven't had any opportunity to play Myth III yet, this might be the only way to get your fix right now.

GameSpot has reviewed Myth III and gave it a positive 8.4 out of 10 rating. Overall, they were impressed, but the scores were affected by bugs and missing features:

Myth III's major shortcomings are its lack of new multiplayer content and a number of technical issues. Mumbo Jumbo is preparing a patch to resolve the significant outstanding issues and plans to release its map-making tools, which should allow the community to convert popular existing third-party maps and mods, like the World War II mod, and make entirely new ones. But many of the planned multiplayer features, such as new game types and the ability to play different tribes of units against each other, have been dropped entirely.

You can also read the GameSpot Reader Reviews, which has had seventeen contributions and an overall rating of 8.7 out of 10 at this point.

Rumor is that Myth III is infected with the recent nimda virus. SunStyle's post at MWA informs and warns:

I just Had couple of friends complaining about nimda virus... i end up checking my computer and i'm infected by same virus... I talk to a couple of other friends, they all say their computer is fucking up! I tell them to run virus software, they all got same virus! Guess what we all have in COMMON? We all have installed Myth 3 full!

Also if you goto here http://www.mcafee.com/anti-virus/viruses/nimda/default.asp?cid=2444 it says:
McAfee.com has noticed an increase in the prevalence of the Nimda worm during the week of 10/29/01 - 11/2/01!

Correct me if i'm wrong, but the myth 3 was realeased 2 days b4 demo? And demo was release on 10.31.01! So That would explain the sudden increase on this virus

This is definitely not something you want to ignore. Coffee and ax have confirmed the virus's presence on their hard drives. This doesn't look good.

It's too early to conclude whether or not this has affected all or most Windows users, but a recall for Myth III could be in order if this proves to be more than coincidence.

UPDATE: ax has sent us an image that shows the nimda virus on the Myth III CD. This is not a scan of ax's hard disk, but of the CD-ROM itself.

Kudos to Myrgard for spotting a post by Conner at Marius.net that states that Marius.net will soon expand to support Myth II as well as Myth TFL. Here's how it will work:

What is pretty [neat] (in my opinion) is that both TFL and SB players will be on the same server, in the same rooms, and can chat with one another. Also you will use the same login/password for both games. TFL players will only see TFL games, SB players will see only SB games.

Marius.net for Myth II is currently in testing and should be available soon . An official announcement is expected from Team Marius.net at that time.

IGN PC has reviewed Myth III and gave it a score of 8.7 out of 10. To put things in perspective, IGN gave Myth II a score of 8.9 out of 10 back in 1999.

Bugs didn't play too big of a role in the review, though some were mentioned. I was particularly disturbed by the apparent lack of veterans in the single player mission:

One sad fact that seems to have been taken away, or maybe there's a bug, is that unit experience doesn't look to carry over from level to level. I'm actually hoping this is a bug, because that feature was a big plus to my experiences in the last two games. Originally, units build experience and get quicker and more accurate every time they kill an enemy. But unfortunately I began most missions with totally fresh units even if the same type of units were used in the previous mission. Without having units carry over, the fear of losing important and experienced units goes away and so does your fear of losing them and sacrificing units becomes less of a tough decision. Sorry little archer guy, but you need to be fed to the mean old Trow now to buy some time for my demolitionists... sad little archer. I didn't even bother naming any of them this time around even though that feature is still there.

As far as the single player missions go, IGN had a hard time deciding whether it was solid or not:

The difficulty level is still right up there (and harder if you have the same unit advancement problems that I did) and you'll have to do some serious thinking and unit management with formations and placement if you want to get through some of these tough missions. I'm actually a little mixed on some this. There were some really great missions in the game that I had some trouble with and had to rethink a few times, but there were some that just... seemed a little less thought out. I'm talking particularly about some of the hero missions when you take control of Connacht, Dumas, Ravanna, and Myrdred. These missions basically required you to rush every enemy you came across with the exception of a couple of basic puzzles that need to be solved. The hero missions in the last games took more planning and thought to use the heroes wisely. I only lost one of the heroes once and that was because I was a complete dumbass. But there are also some wonderfully fun maps that challenge you to attack and defend against great numbers of creatures causing some wonderful chaos.

It doesn't sound like IGN even tried multiplayer at all, only suggesting that the new units should add to the experience.

A few points got knocked off for slow load times for saved games, which have plagued the series since TFL. This aside, IGN really enjoyed the game and feels Myth III is a worthy continuation of the series.

Total Codex at the Ministry Of Security has been pondering what the move to GameSpy for Myth III's online play will mean for the Myth community. He points out a number of differences in the way that system works compared to the old Bungie.net:

I have a Mac, so therefore I have no Myth 3 yet. However, what is obvious is that GameSpy does not require a CD key to register an account. Instead, you use your email address. This leaves many questions unanswered, as well as a few fears. For example: dummying/dropping - you can technically make accounts just as fast as you can reload Hotmail's web site, so what's to stop people from totally abusing the ranking system? As far as admins go, are there any? Even if there are, if a person can make an unlimited number of accounts, how would admins even make a difference? These are the types of questions that MOS is working on getting the answers for.

He also notes a few additions to their humor section.

MWA has posted one of the bonus maps included with the EBGames pre-order package. Pepper Heights is a Gimble In The Wabe-like map for Myth III. MWA is having some server troubles, so be patient and keep trying the link.

The celebration for the 4th anniversary of Myth: The Fallen Lord's release will be held on Marius.net tonight. No time is specified, but showing up at around 6:30 PST would be a good bet.

Lophan at Myth.bungie.org noticed a recent update at the Marathon Open Source page that hosts the Aleph One project-- namely, that someone's put a Soulless 3d model in, taking advantage of the recently added model support. The result is interesting, to say the least.

Blambi at MythVillage spotted a review of Green Berets, the Myth 2 engine RTS game, over at The Mushroom. They found it to be more or less an exercise in frustration, citing the computer's unwavering accuracy, constant respawning of enemies, and the need for micromanagement:

For those of you who really enjoy a challenge in and RTS, or for those of you who get off on being pissed then by all means pick up Green Berets and feel what it truly means to be at a disadvantage. Although we did lose the Vietnam Conflict, I think we did better in real life than most people will do in the first few missions of this game.

They gave the game a rating of 3.5 out of a possible ten, listing the texture mapping and sound as positive points.

IMG has posted a news item that answers a few questions about the Mac version of Myth III, as said by MacSoft's Nate Birkholz in the IMG forum. His post:

Just so people are up to date, the A-Level bug list for the Mac version is as follows:

1) Random crashes under OS X when using an nVidia card. Traced to GeForce drivers for OS X.
2) Unexplained performance drop under OS X around build 134 (PC gold version).
3) LAN networking broken under OS X.
4) GameSpy broken under OS X.

Mumbo Jumbo has been working hard on getting these issues resolved. While they are working on these, they are fixing the Mac-specific B-level bugs and folding in fixes and tweaks reported from the PC version.

Birkholz also stopped by the Myth Village forum with some fantastic news:

Myth III under OS 9 is now rock solid. We can't crash it at all, and we've played for hours of multiplay (cooperative and competitive) without crashing, dropping, or otherwise experiencing nastiness.

MacSoft seems intent on releasing a solid application that won't be plagued with nasty bugs like the PC version. If this is all true, Mac users can look forward to a much smoother release than the prior one.

Isolder and TychoMax posted that they have made a Myth III spoof movie that's a little less than 2 minutes long and 70MB in size. It's available at their hotline server here: hotline://65.15.6.141 in the root folder. TychoMax also posted to let us know it's on his iDisk.

Yuri Bushen of Freelancer has posted a Myth III review that has loads of new screenshots and is a positive review, scoring an overall 8.06 out of 10. Notable complaints are the incompatibilities with Windows XP and the AI. However, they were very impressed with the graphics and artwork. Bushen on the multiplayer mode:

In one word, I should say that this mode is no worse [than] that of previous game in the series.

Hmm... OK. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but the multiplayer mode got a 7 out of 10 score. (Thanks Myth Village)