Creator of mythicdrop.com
Gaming fansites
Xiphoid has been creating video game fansites for 25 years.
Age of Empires Atrium (1997 - 2000)
In 1995, at the age of 13, Xiphoid received his first computer: a Packard Bell Legend, with a 100MHz processor, 8MB of RAM, and 1.2GB hard drive.
In addition to using it to play a lot of Diablo 1 and Quake 1, which were released in 1996, he learned HTML and Photoshop to create websites for his favorite games.
His first site was Age of Empires Atrium, which featured forums, news, and strategies for Ensemble Studios's hit RTS game, Age of Empires.
Planet Age of Empires (2000 - 2005)
The gaming software and publishing company, GameSpy, acquired the rights to Age of Empires Atrium's content in 2000, rebranding it to Planet Age of Empires.
The site continued to grow, covering the follow-up games in the "Age of" series: Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, Age of Mythology, and Age of Empires III.
For Age of Mythology, Xiphoid was invited to intern at Ensemble Studios for a summer as an expert gameplay balance tester to help prepare the game for launch. He also attended pre-release events for EA's Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth RTS series.
GameSpy was acquired by IGN in 2004, which slowly phased out GameSpy's network of "Planet" sites, including Planet Age of Empires. Also at this time, Xiphoid was about to finish his undergrad studies to begin a career in Internet technology, which would last 15 years.
Mythic Drop (2022 - present)
Playing Diablo and creating websites have been part of Xiphoid's life for decades. With the impending release of Diablo 4, the two passions dovetailed to lead to the founding of Mythic Drop, a site aiming to serve the Diablo 4 community with accurate, fast, and fresh content.
