Camelot Unchained:  Transitioning Hype into Reality

In 2001, Dark Age of Camelot was released to a seemingly unexpected gaming community; this incredible game, developed by Mythic Entertainment, went on to literally define how player versus player, both on an individual and grand scale, should occur in an MMO.

Although Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) is not the same game as its spiritual successor will be, it’s extremely important to truly understand the men and women that assisted in past development cycles before casting judgment on Camelot Unchained (CU) or Mark Jacobs.

Transitioning hype into reality will be a difficult task, even for a seasoned veteran like Mark Jacobs; in fact, it’s more difficult to meet the expectations of an excited fan base than merely achieving internal goals such as just releasing a quality product.  In order to understand the hype and the negativity surrounding Camelot Unchained, we first have to understand what made Dark Age of Camelot successful. 

Let’s dive right into this with I hope, an unbiased brief analysis:

- Three Faction Realm Versus Realm allowed no one side to be completely dominate in Dark Age of Camelot due to the unpredictability of the other two sides potentially teaming up to forcefully break the strongest realm.

- Siege Warfare usually required the coordination of multiple groups and sometimes an entire realm, in order to appropriately capture a keep or tower.  Even then, the third realm constantly presented an element of surprise on whether they may disrupt the keep siege or steal it for their own at a precise moment.

- Battlegrounds weren’t just a place to level up or have an ego trip for the night, it prepared players how to play their classes in group RvR.  In addition, it featured key core elements such as keep and towers that required siege engines like trebuchets and rams that would be used in real end-game situations over the journey to level 50.

- Group Dynamics allowed both the zerg mentality and eight man squads to coexist, both serving their respective realm.  Due to the nature of realm abilities, class synergy, combat mechanics, and overall strategy, small well-knit groups could be just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the forty man zerg. 

- Crowd Control was both incredibly useful and incredibly annoying; however, it worked perfectly with the combat system due to class and realm abilities that acted as a balance.  Spells types such as mesmerize, root, and disease allowed eight man groups to divide and conquer zergs, while it allowed zergs to trap eight mans in tight quarters.

- Realm Pride has never been replicated in any game since Dark Age of Camelot.  This bizarre phenomenon still has a lot of people scratching their heads if they never experienced the wonders of DAoC prior to server merges.  If the Call To Arms bell was sounded by your alliance, everyone literally answered the call to go defend against an invasion for their relics.  It wasn’t about individual accomplishments, but rather realm wide achievements.

- Relics were incredible symbols of realm status and success that were coveted by every member of the realm and envied by the opposing realms.  An additional 10/20% melee or magic bonus yielded an unbelievable advantage to both eight man groups and zergs alike.  This simple concept united both eight man groups and zergs into a cohesive force to either protect or steal relics from their enemies.  It was no simple feat stealing a relic, unless it was a sunrise surprise raid; even then, it took time to cross the entire frontier on foot, despite group travel speed.

- Rivalries fueled the essence of competitiveness more in DAoC than any other game beside Starcraft in South Korea.  Some guilds, and especially certain players, struck fear in the hearts of players; you either didn’t engage them or went out of your way to hunt them down.  The importance of being able to see whom you’re fighting is very important in building competitiveness.

- Statistic Min/Maxing allowed players to maximize their character’s strengths and resistances through the use of spellcrafting masterpiece crafted armor; failure to do so usually meant you were worked over pretty quickly by veteran players.   Believe it or not, theorycrafting existed long before World of Warcraft’s release.

Hype into Reality:  If you previously played DAoC, or just enjoy PvP, it’s very easy to understand how someone could become extremely hyped over something that hasn’t even truly started its development. 

This is where my personal opinion comes into play; I have studied game design for several years and currently in the process of obtaining my bachelor’s degree in game art from Full Sail University.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be apart of quality assurance during development cycles for multiple games.  I would absolutely love to see Camelot Unchained become a success not because I want to play it, but because I believe in the experience Mark Jacobs and CSE are trying to present.  The following is a list, I feel, is absolutely critical in order to achieve this:

Confirmed:

[x] Three Faction RvR

[x] Siege Warfare

[x] Player Progression

[x] Group Dynamics

[x] Crowd Control

[x] Statistic Min/Maxing

[x] Useful Crafting Professions

[x] Guild Sponsorship

[x] Relics

[x] Limited Instant Cast Abilities

[x] Interruptible Combat System

[x] No Token System

[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name

Crucial, Yet Unconfirmed:

[-] Class Synergy

[-] Majority Control ‘special’ Zone

[-] Reward Defending Keeps, Not Swapping Hands

[-] No Ridiculous Knockbacks; IE in WAR

[-] Holy Trinity Necessity (Must have Tank/Healer/DPS)

As you can see, it looks like the majority of what made Dark Age of Camelot successful from 2001 until now will be implemented in some form in Camelot Unchained.  I, for one, have followed Mark Jacobs from the early days of Mythic Entertainment and the development of DAoC to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. 

I hope this post has potentially enlightened some of the individuals in the community that are perturbed at why Camelot Unchained is generating so much hype.  As Mark has willingly admitted, he’s made several mistakes along the way due to poor decision making, but he’s also made a multitude of incredible decisions that’s lead to great success.  Despite the level of genius produced from Mark and his team, whether it be Mythic Entertainment or City State Entertainment, you only learn by taking risks whether it be failing or succeeding.

In closing, the two words “absolutely amazing” actually insults the journey I experienced in Dark Age of Camelot.  I’m supporting City State Entertainment, Mark Jacobs, and Camelot Unchained because his track record far outweighs the bad decisions made along the way.  Since the declining subscription base due to outdated graphics engine, combat systems, or whatever the reason, I have personally yearned for Camelot’s spiritual successor.  As long as Mark Jacobs and his development team continue with open ears, let’s help CSE in Transitioning Hype into Reality.

Thanks for reading.

EDITS TO OP:

- Moved "[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name" to Confirmed

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

Camelot Unchained:  Transitioning Hype into Reality

In 2001, Dark Age of Camelot was released to a seemingly unexpected gaming community; this incredible game, developed by Mythic Entertainment, went on to literally define how player versus player, both on an individual and grand scale, should occur in an MMO.

- Group Dynamics allowed both the zerg mentality and eight man squads to coexist, both serving their respective realm.  Due to the nature of realm abilities, class synergy, combat mechanics, and overall strategy, small well-knit groups could be just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the forty man zerg. 

- Crowd Control was both incredibly useful and incredibly annoying; however, it worked perfectly with the combat system due to class and realm abilities that acted as a balance.  Spells types such as mesmerize, root, and disease allowed eight man groups to divide and conquer zergs, while it allowed zergs to trap eight mans in tight quarters.

The problem with these ideas is that it's basically just Daoc 2, which Mark has already said that CU won't be.  Crowd Control, in the form of long duration cc, is something I hope doesn't make it into this game.  The problem I see with long duration cc is that it completely alters the way people play pvp, and not for the better.  I don't care what people say about "having the chance to break out of it" with things such as det, purge, etc. , fundamentally the best tactic that will pretty much be employed by everybody will be to mezz/stun a mass group of players and then have plenty of time to take down the resulting statues one by one.  That's the ENTIRE motive behind long duration cc, no matter how the supporters of this flawed mechanic try to twist it.

Here's the reason I think it's flawed:  It basically forces people to follow this cookie-cutter approach of PvP if they hope to be successful.  The mezzer in your group sees a gathering of enemy players FIRST (that's key), he mezz bombs them, the group then proceeds to assist kill the statues in a specific order.  So instead of getting the beautiful chaos you would get from every player mixing it up in pvp and proving themselves individually, you get this weird artificial and ordered process in which only the mezzer/driver have to be on their toes and the rest of the team are just a bunch of assist monkies picking off the lifeless statues one by one (while the rest of the statues are unable to fight back).  I've been on both sides of this phenomenon, and it's a pretty hallow victory for the group that gets the jump as far as I'm concerned.  It starts to feel more like npc farming (like you would see in PvE) than a genuine, heart-racing, hard fought PvP battle after awhile.  In other words, it makes PvP stale.

Now, I'm pretty sure a lot of the supporters are going to flame the hell out of me and accuse me of "not knowing how to play" since daoc has ways to break out of long duration cc, etc. etc.  My point is that the WHOLE DRIVING PURPOSE of long duration cc in an mmo to begin with is to employ the tactics I mentioned above (mezz the enemy first, farm for RPs, rinse & repeat).  It's a form of PvP (whether from the winning or losing side) that I detest because it kills variety and fun.  Oh, it can be fun taking out a group 2-3 times your size with these artificial mezz tactics the first few times, but then it just turns into boring RP farming after awhile.

Ultimately, what I would like to see is an MMO that focuses on encouraging TACTICS & STRATEGY within a zerg for a change.  We've never really seen that in an mmo to date.  And what has happened is that players tend to flow down the path of least resistance and form up in these leaderless zergs that go on a random rampage.  And while that's the players choice, there should at least be some incentive to organizing and incorporating tactics.  All it would take is for a smaller zerg to consistently win because they're organized, and you'll see a sea change over time in the way people play.  An MMO is supposed to be about  epic battles that are hard fought and won with good tactics and strategy.  I'm cool with 8-man rollers coexisting, but not at the expense of the countless, alternative tactics that can be employed because it doesn't fit into this cookie cutter model that ensures success.  Experienced players should have the choice of playing in zergs or smaller 8-man groups.  It shouldn't become a game about only the noobs play in zergs and the experienced folks play in 8-mans.  That's not a game I want to see.

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name

From the perspective of someone who plays solo 90% of the time I am actually a fan of not seeing my opponent's name,  it adds a certain element of surprise to the engagement. If I open up on a briton, for example, I don't know if he is some guy I have been rolling all week, a guy that has been rolling me all week or just some random I haven't fought yet. It forces you to bring your A-game everytime instead of knowing its a weaker opponent that you can half-ass your way through.

I don't think having or not having names floating over opponent's heads is going to add or take away from building rivalries, since there were plenty of rivalries both solo and guild based in daoc.

Originally posted by uggeh12

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name

From the perspective of someone who plays solo 90% of the time I am actually a fan of not seeing my opponent's name,  it adds a certain element of surprise to the engagement. If I open up on a briton, for example, I don't know if he is some guy I have been rolling all week, a guy that has been rolling me all week or just some random I haven't fought yet. It forces you to bring your A-game everytime instead of knowing its a weaker opponent that you can half-ass your way through.

I don't think having or not having names floating over opponent's heads is going to add or take away from building rivalries, since there were plenty of rivalries both solo and guild based in daoc.

Sorry, what? You can see enemy names in daoc.

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

- Three Faction Realm Versus Realm allowed no one side to be completely dominate in Dark Age of Camelot due to the unpredictability of the other two sides potentially teaming up to forcefully break the strongest realm. 3 sides is far superior to 2 sides but let's not oversell it. I played on a fairly unbalanced DAOC server Gawaine that was about 42% Alb, 36% Hib, 22% Mid. It worked in large part due to distant location of the Alb power relic keep which allowed Hib to control the power relics most of the time despite lower population and the determination of the Hib and its leader to never let Albs through the mile gate in Emain. At the beginning of NF when you could port to any keep, Alb quickly overran the server just like on most others. You don't just need 3 sides. You need ways to make it progressively harder for an overpopulated realm to dominate and also allow the lower populated realms a chance to stage a comeback.

- Siege Warfare usually required the coordination of multiple groups and sometimes an entire realm, in order to appropriately capture a keep or tower.  I took countless keeps and towers with just one group.

- Rivalries fueled the essence of competitiveness more in DAoC than any other game beside Starcraft in South Korea.  Some guilds, and especially certain players, struck fear in the hearts of players; you either didn’t engage them or went out of your way to hunt them down.  The importance of being able to see whom you’re fighting is very important in building competitiveness. This is something they got very wrong in GW 2 with the rotating server match ups and hidden player names. Definitely CU should stick with the DAOC model.

- Statistic Min/Maxing allowed players to maximize their character’s strengths and resistances through the use of spellcrafting masterpiece crafted armor; failure to do so usually meant you were worked over pretty quickly by veteran players.   Believe it or not, theorycrafting existed long before World of Warcraft’s release. Not my favorite aspect of DAOC. I liked it better pre-SI when there was much less emphasis on acquiring the perfect template.

Originally posted by boxsnd

Originally posted by uggeh12

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name

From the perspective of someone who plays solo 90% of the time I am actually a fan of not seeing my opponent's name,  it adds a certain element of surprise to the engagement. If I open up on a briton, for example, I don't know if he is some guy I have been rolling all week, a guy that has been rolling me all week or just some random I haven't fought yet. It forces you to bring your A-game everytime instead of knowing its a weaker opponent that you can half-ass your way through.

I don't think having or not having names floating over opponent's heads is going to add or take away from building rivalries, since there were plenty of rivalries both solo and guild based in daoc.

Sorry, what? You can see enemy names in daoc.

Can you turn it off?  He said he is a fan of not seeing them.

Originally posted by Aethaeryn

Originally posted by boxsnd

Originally posted by uggeh12

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

[-] Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name

From the perspective of someone who plays solo 90% of the time I am actually a fan of not seeing my opponent's name,  it adds a certain element of surprise to the engagement. If I open up on a briton, for example, I don't know if he is some guy I have been rolling all week, a guy that has been rolling me all week or just some random I haven't fought yet. It forces you to bring your A-game everytime instead of knowing its a weaker opponent that you can half-ass your way through.

I don't think having or not having names floating over opponent's heads is going to add or take away from building rivalries, since there were plenty of rivalries both solo and guild based in daoc.

Sorry, what? You can see enemy names in daoc.

Can you turn it off?  He said he is a fan of not seeing them.

You can if you tab target them instead of mouse targetting or if you hide the combat chat. But why would you do that? It gives you valuable information that can make the difference in many fights.

Excellent posts and discussion... you don't often see people identifying the true brilliance of what a good MMO or PvP gameplay should play like. So many games have tried to implement bits and pieces and in some cases larger chunks of the idea of DAoC PvP but have failed miserably because the lack of a few (or all) of the points that Plastic has clearly identified (a good example is WvWvW in GW2).

A good way to look at how PvP 'should' be is to compare it to real war-like scenarios and psychological/motivational factors that come with it. I'm gonna pick only a couple to talk about for now: 

Rivalries/See Your Opponent’s Name - THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING - imagine going into a fight/war without knowing who you are fighting, what their reputation is? whether you should fear them or take comfort in believing that they are no match for you? It plays such a huge role on the immersion of your PvP experience. Any DAoC veteran would understand this. There is only so much a game's "lore" can drive you to motivated pride-worthy battles. True competitiveness in any sport or any e-sport for that matter comes from comparison.

The flip side of this - is wanting your enemies to know who you are... If I invest time and energy to build a revered guild as I have done so many times in the past, I damn well want my enemies to know who they are being rolled by, especially when we out-maneouver them with strategy and tactics. I had lots of glory moments in WvW in GW2 with my guild but guess what it amounted to? NOTHING except the 5 seconds of satisfaction. I want kill-spam, I wan't people to know we're good so we get better recruits, and the enemies fear us, or even better, want to hunt us down 'cause they think we're worth the effort!

Group Dynamics - I agree that there should be room for both the zergs and the 8man/pre-mades. Again relating to a real war-like scenario, there could be any dynamic of groupings and they would actually change based on the requirements of the group/guild/realm. In some cases there may even be rebellious guilds that want to do things their way, this only adds that element of drama and dynamic gameplay that is needed to keep games alive rather than stagnant and repetitive. Unpredictability, and allowing the players to counter it and/or strategize around it is what made DAoC even more special.

Realm Pride - What is war without pride? So many games completely omit this part from their PvP design which is so damn depressing. In-fact I'll go as far as to say this was the #1 enjoyment factor in the many years I played DAoC. Plastic has explained this very well already.

Awesome replies thus far.

@Satarious:  I agree regarding long duration crowd control needing to be looked at in PvP.  If you look at World of Warcraft in its current state, you'll immediately realize there aren't any long duration C/C spells; but, rather, every class has at least one or two abilities that force the player into temporarily losing complete control of their avatar.  While this may ony last two to seven seconds, it's still annoying.  On the bright side, I believe Mark Jacobs has already acknowledged the idea of 'losing control' and disagreed with current models.  

In DAoC, crowd control worked well, but like you mentioned, it typically lead to cookie cutter specializations and only one person 'driving' while one or two played wingman calling out incomings from the flanks.  Once the eight man, or zerg, strikes the opposing force it is pretty much who ever gets their mez off first wins.  At this critical point, though, realm abilities allowed players to purge off their negative effects and returns the lifeless statues back to organic whirlwinds of death.

If C/C exists in Camelot Unchained, we'll need effective immunity timers and abilities to remove the negative effects of certain spells.  Since I have already compared WoW, we'll use it again; instead of being feared six times in a row, even if diminishing returns are active, after the first time you shouldn't be subjected to the spells effects until the immunity timer expires.

@meddyck:  Absolutely.  Any DAoC player worth his or her weight in salt sieged and successfully captured keeps, towers, and even relics against uneven numbers, or no numbers at all.   Though, I don't count unclaimed points of interest in this category - You may capture an objective in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning alone, but it doesn't mean you're a hero; it just means you may not have met resistance.  

You're right though, there needs to be some underdog advantages.  Increased damage, experience gain, or realm points (until it's called something else).  It goes without saying that most RvR players didn't enjoy ToA's mandatory PvE grind in order to be competitive in RvR; part of that does effect the min/maxing, though. Great points, though!

@Seitr:  Awesome, thanks for pointing that out.  I'll edit the original post and move rivalries/see your opponent's name to confirmed.

Great discussion so far!

Originally posted by Satarious

So instead of getting the beautiful chaos you would get from every player mixing it up in pvp and proving themselves individually, you get this weird artificial and ordered process in which only the mezzer/driver have to be on their toes and the rest of the team are just a bunch of assist monkies picking off the lifeless statues one by one (while the rest of the statues are unable to fight back). 

I can see you are one of those awesome tab targetters that just loves to mix it up with whatever enemy crosses your path.  I can also see that you would never last in an 8man zerg killer.  In real war, there is no beautiful chaos.  Organized chaos means that your initial plan went to shit but you're still managing because you planned for extra senarios.  If you enter fights and announce "ok everyone, just grab somebody and try to kill them," what kind of strategy is that?  Do you honestly believe that everything was equal, you should win because you're better?  That's great if you do.  I'm convinced otherwises.

But either way, this is a proposed OPEN RVR world where you could fight even numbers but more than likely you will not.  Ever here of "ass jammed"?  Without cc, you face certain death if you're AJ'd.  The whole point of crowd control was so that a police force of dozens could defeat an angry mob of thousands.

Originally posted by meddyck

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

- Three Faction Realm Versus Realm allowed no one side to be completely dominate in Dark Age of Camelot due to the unpredictability of the other two sides potentially teaming up to forcefully break the strongest realm. 3 sides is far superior to 2 sides but let's not oversell it. I played on a fairly unbalanced DAOC server Gawaine that was about 42% Alb, 36% Hib, 22% Mid. It worked in large part due to distant location of the Alb power relic keep which allowed Hib to control the power relics most of the time despite lower population and the determination of the Hib and its leader to never let Albs through the mile gate in Emain. At the beginning of NF when you could port to any keep, Alb quickly overran the server just like on most others. You don't just need 3 sides. You need ways to make it progressively harder for an overpopulated realm to dominate and also allow the lower populated realms a chance to stage a comeback.  I can't use any examples of games in development.  However, a suggestion would be to implement a "penalty" of some kind for holding relics or a fallout buff for the losing realm.  "You have lost your relic and have become angered."

- Siege Warfare usually required the coordination of multiple groups and sometimes an entire realm, in order to appropriately capture a keep or tower.  I took countless keeps and towers with just one group.  Typically, a keep with relic in it or a tower associated with a port keep drew a lot of attention if it went ablaze.  Yes, a single person could probably solo a level 1 keep.  The point is, big picture, siege was full scale war.

- Rivalries fueled the essence of competitiveness more in DAoC than any other game beside Starcraft in South Korea.  Some guilds, and especially certain players, struck fear in the hearts of players; you either didn’t engage them or went out of your way to hunt them down.  The importance of being able to see whom you’re fighting is very important in building competitiveness. This is something they got very wrong in GW 2 with the rotating server match ups and hidden player names. Definitely CU should stick with the DAOC model.  In DAoC, then names weren't that important for targetting reasons.  If you were a regular in the 8man scene, you knew who your rivals were.  And kill spam was all the idenity verification you needed.

- Statistic Min/Maxing allowed players to maximize their character’s strengths and resistances through the use of spellcrafting masterpiece crafted armor; failure to do so usually meant you were worked over pretty quickly by veteran players.   Believe it or not, theorycrafting existed long before World of Warcraft’s release. Not my favorite aspect of DAOC. I liked it better pre-SI when there was much less emphasis on acquiring the perfect template.  Templates were necessary because new gear was introduced all the time.  Unlike WoW or Rift,  a full set from some tier 3 dungeon wasn't going to cut it.  You had to invest time, effort, and... money to make sure you were the best you could be.  If you want to go fishing on your boat, you have to lube and fuel it before use.  And then you have to clean it afterwards.  Templates made your armor an evolving being just your like your character.

 

Originally posted by Smorak

Originally posted by Satarious

So instead of getting the beautiful chaos you would get from every player mixing it up in pvp and proving themselves individually, you get this weird artificial and ordered process in which only the mezzer/driver have to be on their toes and the rest of the team are just a bunch of assist monkies picking off the lifeless statues one by one (while the rest of the statues are unable to fight back). 

I can see you are one of those awesome tab targetters that just loves to mix it up with whatever enemy crosses your path.

But either way, this is a proposed OPEN RVR world where you could fight even numbers but more than likely you will not.  Ever here of "ass jammed"?  Without cc, you face certain death if you're AJ'd.  The whole point of crowd control was so that a police force of dozens could defeat an angry mob of thousands.

I guess you need to get your eyes checked, because I think you have me confused with that straw man over there you like to dust off whenever you have arguments. ;)

I pretty much hate the "random tab targetting" almost as much as I hate the "I think I'm better than everybody else because I can assist monkey kill a group of statues twice my size" type of pvp gameplay.  The "random tab targetting" bit tends to be standard practice in those leaderless zergs I mentioned in my original post.  This happens because people join random groups in the zerg and just throw themselves into the fight without any thought to strategy.  This is precisely why I think there should be some ingame mechanics that help zergs organize quickly and effortlessly.  If the task of organizing weren't such a pain, I think it would definitely improve the overall pvp (even with pickups).

I'd take the challenge of taking down a larger group with some REAL tactics over easy play, cookie-cutter long duration cc any day.