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Dark Age of Camelot General Article: EA Mythic Press Event: Campaigns and More!
Managing Editor Jon Wood and News Editor Garrett Fuller recently traveled to Fairfax VA for an informative EA Mythic press event. Today, Garrett tells us what the future holds for the former Mythic Entertainment's flagship game, Dark Age of Camelot.
By on January 29, 2007
Dark Age of Camelot: A Look Forward
Managing Editor Jon Wood and News Editor Garrett Fuller recently traveled to Fairfax VA for an informative EA Mythic press event. Today, Garrett tells us what the future holds for the former Mythic Entertainment's flagship game, Dark Age of Camelot.
;)
Dark Age of Camelot if a game that has come a long way. After five years it is considered one of the top old-school MMOs and is often ranked in with Ultima Online and Everquest. However, the Dark Age of Camelot we saw this week carries many upgrades and features which keep it in competition with the current MMOs we are all playing today. After five years on the map, Dark Age of Camelot still delivers and plans to deliver for many years to come.
Producer Walt Yarborough gave us a presentation on the changes that we can expect from Dark Age of Camelot in the near future. After going through and highlighting points on The Labyrinth of the Minotaur, he went right into the new content that players will be able to enjoy. Also, he did mention that GOA will be launching the expansion in Europe sometime in February. The expansion has been available in North America since November.
Moving into 2007, Dark Age of Camelot plans to concentrate on three new features to drive their game: Live Game Updates, Enhancing account services, and the biggest of the three Camelot Campaigns. Also, DAOC will make the Catacombs expansion free for players. With so much content already in the game, and players still fighting it out in RvR, the new features will focus on giving the players things to do without having new zones to adventure through.
;)
In regards to live game updates, Camelot plans a large scale clean up of the way game play is working currently. Their hope is to optimize player performance and remove player frustrations. This began with the January 10th patch (1.87) and is expected to continue throughout the year. Without going into full specifics, Walt explained that DAOC will be cleaning up crafting, the UI, its class system, and will be adding some polish to the art and content. Also, players will be getting a twelve button hot bar on their UIs.
The next feature that the Camelot team spoke about was enhancing their player account services. With each account, players will be able to transfer characters across servers with greater ease. The team is also planning to add more inventory slots and vault slots for housing. One of the biggest changes players will get on their accounts is the ability to gender respec their character. Yes, you heard that right. If you have a level fifty male Berserker; you can now change her to a female. Hopefully wives and girlfriends will not exploit this feature when the guys are not looking.
;)
The biggest addition to Dark Age of Camelot for 2007 is the rise of Camelot Campaigns. Campaigns work like this: Every six months players will begin a new campaign in their respective realms. The campaign is designed to bring players together again and have them re-explore the realm they knew as home. Every two weeks, content for the campaign will be added. This will continue over the next six months until the big finale takes place. Players can with quests and eventually join up in a raid for the end content. These in-game story arcs will offer players new content without having to travel into new zones. The events will take place in older zones that the players have already explored. Walt was quick to say that these story arcs will be layered so that you an always catch up before the big event at the end of six months. Considering DAOC has a five year history, the content will be for high-level players (metrics have shown that a good portion of Camelot’s player base fits into this category). Another note is that once implemented, the story arcs will remain in the game and forever change the face of the realms.
The first campaign players will get to see is “A Dragon’s Revenge.” The story goes that one of the dragons (we don’t know which ones…crafty Devs…) is out for revenge on the realms. The dragon and its allies will attack the areas that most players call home and cause havoc on the world. Players will have to fend them off and try to rebuild their homelands after the destruction. The story will feature scripted events and eventually build up to a huge battle for players.
When talking with Designer Mike Stone, he had said, “We want to cater to the community in everything we do.” This is the philosophy behind campaigns.
;)
One of the last points that I feel is important to bring up is that in talking with the team the issue of Trials of Atlantis was addressed. The developers know that ToA was poorly received by the community when it was released and mentioned that the Gareth server was in direct response to that. They wanted players to enjoy the game without the ToA content. The main reason behind this was also clarified by Mike Stone, “Players don’t want to be forced; they want to choose what they do.” He basically went on to say that ToA forced players to compete in an arms race scenario when the game was already successful with its RvR content. People then felt like they had to go out and grind again. This process took away from the RvR which was so popular. Even though EA Mythic may not get everything right (then again who does), you have to respect a company that makes mistakes, admits it, and really tries to give something back to the players in return.
Overall, for a game that has a five year history Dark Age of Camelot is going strong. When we asked Mike about the lifecycle of the game he hoped it would be around for another twenty years. Thanks again to the DAOC team for meeting with us and giving players a sneak peak into what is on the horizon for 2007.
Very nice improvments,
However....when I went back and popped in eariler this year to see how things are in old DAoC one thing really needs to be looked at and that is the "downtime". Kill one mob, sit around for several minutes resting. Its really really dull, slow paced gameplay. Doling out free levels every so often is no solution, the message that sends is "yeah we know our gameplay/leveling sucks, so here, have a free level on the house".
DAoC was my first MMORPG and I started playing it back in 2002, so I really want to see this game succeed. But nothing will bring me back until they find a way to bring in the old community and increase their subscription numbers. No game will be populated as WoW is at the moment, but it should not be hard to find a group if you want one. When I used to play DAoC, I never had problems finding a group and we would level for hours. I found that fun, but now the population is pretty low and most people are already lvl 50 and most of them just want to RvR. Again, when I used to play, I found no shortage of people who liked to do the PvE content. But now people just want to RvR and could careless about the PvE content. Even in-game people say that this game is all about the RvR. Well, it wasn't all about the RvR back then. RvR was a large part of it and the stories were built for it, but PvE was also a big part and big enough that they had a server dedicated to PvE alone. Now I liked RvR too, but I didn't want to have to RvR 24/7. I wanted to be able to also go do a raid maybe a couple times a week and maybe some RPing events.
So unless they can provide that feel that it once had for me, I won't be coming back. To produce that feel, they need to encourage RPing, bring back the community that likes to do the PvE content as well as the RvR content, and provide measures that encourage the already scarce community to group together instead of soloing all the time.
This was changed in 1.87. It takes about 30-60 seconds (depending on level) to go from 1% to 100% now. They've also added campfires (drops in SI and classic areas) that increase power/end/hp regen rates.
I thought that the leveling was the best part of the game. You had no downtime if you were grouped with others that can replenish your hitpoints, endurance, and mana. But yeah, soloing sucks and that is why I left after Catacombs. I tried it out this past fall and they've improved the amount of xp you get in the Classic and SI areas, which has given people a reason to come out of the Catacombs and group up. But it was still a lot harder to find a group than it was back in the day, so I left. I have all, but the LoTM expansions too. I don't want new areas to explore, I want the old areas with people to play in them with. These new campaigns will help, but they are targetted for lvl 50's, which is something I don't have. And I prefer not to have to solo to 50 just to see that new content. I'll just stick with WoW and The Burning Crusade. I just found a great guild on a new server and I am having a lot of fun. Plus we RP. Imagine a guild of 80+ accounts of RPers who also plan to do all content in-game and also have experience with it. The results is a lot of fun times.
DAoC is OldSchool, and the main thing OldSchool MMORPGs have working for them is that they dont appeal to everyone = compromises less to none (and in my opinion a good game cant appeal to everyone, we're only human here ..
)
What I love about DAoC and why i've played it a few years = it's PvP, I L U V it
Long life DAoC!
ED : Yes it is "grindyR" compared to recent releases, it has fixed class roles, team play works wonders.
Realm VS Realm endgame PvP and the Battlegrounds (having toons for as many BGs as possible) are what gives it it's wonderful coating. Those that 'been there know.
That sounds nice, how recent was 1.87???
Other replies, I played DAoC for over a year, had several level 50"s and higher RR toons. The game was slow paced and grindy hence the empty servers and free levels.
1.87 went live last week I believe.
No matter what I play, I always come back to this game. Not only does levelling fly when you are in a group, but many, and I mean MANY classes are so soloable now it is nice. Did not go back to RVR this time around, but rather Gaheris which allows you to play any class and any race and explore the world. Always raids going on, and plenty of people around to play with so its good!!!
They did an update to 1.87 last week.
The so-called classic servers lack ToA ( which finally after lots of changes was a really good expansion... ) and unfortunately, with Catacombs classes and balancing based on the assumption of buffed characters ( look at the Scout on classic servers... ), the ARServers are a mess with regards to RvR balancing.
But still the first year DAoC was lots of fun. Thanks for that Ex Mythic Entertainment!
DAOC is a good game, I still have accounts on it because the RvR is good times, and I really enjoy it. Maybe not as flashy as some of the newer games, but still a good time.
I played on Gareth off an on since its release and I just recently quit this past December when the double xp was around. Finding a group is not easy like you say it is. You almost have to solo or wait for a group for a pretty long time. There are some levels that is easy to find groups for, but not all of them. When I played DAoC from 2002-2004, grouping came natural to everyone and you could find one within 5 min. But now it is not natural and a lot of people would much rather solo. Finding a group can take anywhere from 5min to never depending on your level and the time of day.
Im really glad theyre still actively putting out content updates for this game. It is too great a game to let die especially in pvp. I often rue ebaying my account several years ago and would certainly go back to it however i just cant bring myself to grind soem more toons again sadly.
With the 1.87 changes that somneone mentioned about the regen and xp rates being uppped i might try it out on the free trial again although im tempted to go more for the us servers as opposed to the euro servers as i hear theyre very low populaiton now
Have to say ive still never quite managed to recreate the thrill i got pvping in daoc on many occasions.
The biggest problem with DAoC now is population.
I started on the Gawaine server 4 1/2 years ago. I'm still here, but the population is almost non-existent.
When I first started, Gawaine would have 2500 people on in the evening. Now it's usually under 400.
They addressed this for RvR and for raids (MLs, Dragon, Caer Sidi, etc) with the clustering, bringing the cluster population up to about where Gawaine used to be on its own.
The problem is most of the zones are not clustered so the PvE is spread out across 4 servers.
You used to be able to go into just about any of the main dungeons in classic or SI and find a group.
In addtion to the population spread across 4 servers, the task dungeons and other instances mean lots of people are leveling out of sight and are harder to find to get into a group.
Merge all the zones but housing (have no idea how you could merge housing fairly so leave it alone) and drop the instance dungeons would go a long way to help.
Then they just need to find a way to attract people back or get new players.
If something significant doesn't happen, a successful release of WAR will signal a serious decline in DAoC if not it's death.
-G
the ehancements mentioned that will be coming (like extra slots for characters, etc) -- He failed to mention that they are considering this to be a "Real Money Transaction" -- meaning yeh, its gonna be available but you are gonna pay for it. Much like the nickel and dime shenanigans of SOE and Station. Since its EA now, this wasnt a surprise. EA will bleed every cent they can out of you.
As far as the rest, as an Elder of the game, I think EA Mythic making some of the changes that were screamed for 4 -5 years ago is more like --yeh thats nice but its a little late.
Top that with a joke of customer service sending canned responses --- nah gonna leave it off my game list.
Does anyone happen to know, though, if they might be combining the smaller servers of a particular type? Because I really was turned off by the fact that the three roleplay servers were clustering not even 300 people all together at times while Garreth held more alone without including those it was clustered with. I can understand the ToA thing, since that applies to the RP servers... Might they offer a ToA RP and a non-ToA RP?
Just want to say I agree, completely. I tried going back to DAOC, when the classic servers were implemented, but it just wasn't the same.
Running back and forth to task dungeons, I got a new character up to 50 in a ridiculously short amount of time, but the community that made it such a great game didn't seem to be there anymore. I think the PvE was just as important to the sense community as the RvR, but Mythic seems to have let that part of the game wither and die. It's tough to keep the PvE appealing to players, but between bots, solo content, and speeding up and simplifying levelling as much as possible, there didn't seem to be much to it anymore, to accommodate much socializing.
I couldn't agree more - DAoC is one of the best MMOs out even after 5 years. There is no PvP that even hits close to this.
On the flip side I have been playing on and off since SI was released, so I'm always looking for something new, and AoC and War are the only 2 games that I could imagin trading my DAoC for.
A half year ago I popped back in, and, still all the same,...
A DOS game, your kidding right? I dont think the graphics are that bad. DAOC was my first mmorpg, i started playing the day it was released. Now ive seen the changes this game has gone through, and its still a pretty good game. I have to agree with most of the posters here on the pros and cons to DAOC. The RVR is still the best ive seen, but very hard to find a group b/c everyone are already in their set groups. Like me, my first toon was a Thane... i dont have to mention how much hate thanes got, they were disliked b/c of the morons who spammed AOE hammers all over the place breaking mez. It ruined it for all the good thanes like me who knew how to play the thane without spamming the AOE. Anyway it was very hard for me to get into any RVR group b/c i wasnt a tank or a caster, i was both but subpar in both. I quit DAOC leaving behind a 50 thane, 50 skald, 50 shadowblade and a lvl 49 hunter. I hope one day they can allow me again to return to see the new changes.
I thought this was very interesting and they have earned my respect saying this to.
Even though EA Mythic may not get everything right (then again who does), you have to respect a company that makes mistakes, admits it, and really tries to give something back to the players in return.
Now if only SOE did something like that concerning SWG... makes you wonder why they dont when Mythic can admit mistakes and do something to make up for that mistake.
DAoC was my first MMORPG, and it will always hold great memories for me. I'm glad to see that they are continuing to make changes and make the game better, but I wanted to list a few of the things that really discouraged me about the game and why I left. I have been back a few times but only to leave again after a month or so.
1. I wish they would make it so you can fully respec your character any time you want if you would like to. Make it easy for people to do. Yeah they have single line respecs at lvl 20 and 40. I don't want to respec ONE line. I want ALL my points back and let me respec them ALL the way I want. Don't make me have to kill the dragon or do some rediculously insane quest to get a full respec stone. Just let me pay some gold or wait a set amount of time and then the option to respec is open to me. Make me feel like if I screwed up my spec that I am able to fix it if I need to or want to. Make it easy for me to experiment with different specs. Also please give me some inkling of what abiliies I will get at the trainer if I spend points in certain lines. Yes you can click on the skill line and see what you will get at certain levels but you have no F-ing idea what each of those do until you train in it and then delve it to see what kind of style it is. I don't want to go to a F-ing 3rd party website to use their "Character Builder 2.0" to decide how I should spend my points. I want something official from Mythic to let me know what my options are.
2. Spellcrafting and Imbueing items to get bonuses to your gear. With my first (and only) lvl 50, I worked with a guild member to figure out my "template" and to get some nice gear. The spellcrafter says something like... OK, get naked and then give me all your base stats. Ok now put on the rings and jewlels.. now give me those stats... or some rediculous thing where I had to give him all these numbers. Meanwhile I had to get another LGM Armorcrafter to make me a set of 100% or 99% quality set of armor. Which I had to wait for him to do for almost an hour and cost me an arm and a leg as well. Then I go back to the Spellcrafter, give him the player made armor. He then gets the stats from the armor and then makes the jewels etc in order to "combine" them with the armor (which I HOPE he does not destroy). I pay him an arm and a leg after waiting for another hour and get a set of nice armor with good stats for my Berserker (half of which make no sense to me). But I do know that I have Axe +10, Left Axe +11 etc, etc woohoo! Please make it EASIER for me to obtain some good gear with good stats without it being such a pain in the rear end. I thought... well I am going to learn Spellcrafting so I can do my own armor. There is hardly any info on the Herald to help me learn what or how to do it. So I go again, to a 3rd party site and download and INSTALL a spellcrafter calculator 2.0 or whatever it was. I opened it up and looked at it and went WTF is this and how do I use it? I read the instructions that came with it. It didn't take long for me to say SCREW this! What do they want me to be... a F-ing Nuclear Physicist so I can understand how this F-ing thing works??? Make it easier to obtain a decent set of gear that I can at least compete in with. Ok make me grind for it, I'm ok with that. (Yes I got my Epic set of gear, only to be told, "That's not as good as player made and spellcrafted gear"... WTF?) Or make me pay for it. That's cool but make it something I feel I can achieve and help me understand how to achieve it. And BTW what in the hell is "Base Clamped Damage" anyway??
3. Help a noob get a little more coin so he can afford to buy some decent armor after lvl 10-15 or so. Yes you can farm Aurulite and buy the Catacombs gear, but how can I do that if I can't kill anything in that Adventure Wing higher than a blue and then only if it doesn't "add" because my set of gear is sub par? I realize you can farm alot of Aurulite with a group, but at the moment I'm not in a big guild and don't have tons of time to do that. I go to the Market Explorer to see what is available there... and surprise I can't afford it. I'm not one to beg other people for money. Help me get some money early on!
4. PLEASE add a freaking EMAIL system into the game! What an idea!!! I want to send messages or send items to my other characters or friends even when they are not playing. Then when they log on.. BOOM they got my message or my items or whatever. It took Mythic what.... 4 years to add MAPS to the game. How many more years until they add an email system to the game? This one is way over-due if you ask me.
5. Let there be a way that I can sell items without having to have a house with a consignment merchant. If I don't have a house I'm screwed if I have stuff to sell other than SPAMMING the general chat... WTS such and such. I realize that this all works together with Foundations (housing expansion), but I don't have a house for crying out loud!! NO I don't really want one that I have to pay rent on or lose, just so I can place a consignment merchant there to sell my goods..
Having said all that, I love Dark Age of Camelot. I hope it does last another 20 years. Those are just some of the things I think they could improve on with the game. But for now I think I am leaving it once again to play WoW with my rl friends and their fun and helpful guild. But I will probably be back sometime... maybe
You really do have to respect Mythic.
Hopefully Mythic influences Ultima Online to start doing the same.
Yeah, as much as I hated TOA, and pre-TOA DAOC is still my all-time favorite MMO- I have to say, what SOE did to SWG is really much worse. If only they'd make similar classic servers, they'd save a lot of face on that. Although like with Mythic, waiting two years to get around to it, seems a bit late for that. Still, you'd think they'd try to salvage the game, it's one of the few that isn't an EQ clone in any way, shape or form.
I really enjoyed DAoC when it first came out, it easily pulled me away from EQ1. The 1st expansion, Shrouded Isles, was quite fun and well made.
ToA did kill it for me though....
I was actually going to return some time ago but when EA bought Mythic, or I should say Mark sold his company out, I lost a lot of respect for them. So I didn't return as I will not play or rent any game made by EA. Sad really, some of my fondest ingame moments were in DAoC.
I will only go back if they remove buff-bots.
Thats it the deal maker or breaker for me. Oh and don't tell me to go classic. I have 5 level 50s and 3 legendary crafters on Nimue.
But the 2 accounts to compete in RvR blows and I will not pay it .
There I feel better now,,,,,,,,,,,
LOL Buff bot accounts make up half their subscriptions!!
Clerics begin rant here:
One other thing Mythic could never get right. When they adjusted a class they either nerfed them to uselessness or created new RvR gods. Never could they do it right. The cleric nerf was a good example. But the assasin saga was worse, first they suck then they rule then they suck again..... same with archers..
Another real good example is Necro armor
First it did not decay. This was wrong since all other classes had to deal with item decay. So in typical Mythic fasion they "fixed" it. Then Necro armor decayed like 10x faster than anyone elses and may still. They are very slow to correct anything and when they do they will overdue it again......
From a game designer perspective, Dark Age of Camelot is still the number one MMO on the market right now. It's the only game where you can RvR (pvp) in a meaningful ways and quite frankly, that's what end game is about. The game overall with housing and good crafting (althout not simple if you go in spell crafting i agree) makes it so you don't have to farm mindlessly in order to have good gear. The classic server is the place to go for any of you who consider trying it. But i would only do so if you have one or more friends to start up from scratch with you. (Unless you really don't mind soloing for a month or two until you get to 50 and hit the real stuff)
I would consider going back to Daoc as well, but all the people i know are either waiting for War Hammer to come out or still playing WoW until War Hammer. In both case, not a viable option for me since i don't want to be stuck with wannabes
I agree the pvp in DAoC is probably one of the best out there now. Non-instanced battlegrounds at every level, siege warfare and of course Relic Raids! Instead of just gettting some points so you can be Capt Faction Dude, you can actually sieze a relic that will give a buff to everyone of your realm no matter where they are.
The balance of PvE to PvP is pretty much perfect.
If Mythic make Warhammer into DAoC's illbegotten child then I know that the next three years of my life ( not to mention bank account ) belong to them.
Unless I decide that WoW Burning Crud is "teh ROx0r" ofc
By far the the most fun ive had playing an mmo ( pre TOA that is )
bring back the old frontiers
Loved dark ages perfect mix of pve and pvp with a purpose and either optional. Just wish the population was what it was before and id still be playing.
After spending over 5 years of playing this game and living through countless nerfs (outright or indirrect) I finally retired from Camelot.
Don't get me wrong, the game still packs decent graphics and easy gameplay but when a company guts class after class and continues to do so to this date its no wonder the poplulation during peak hours is as low as it is. Eventually there will be 1 cluster as the population moves on to games with less headaches.
Anyone who has played a Zerker, SB, WL, and now a BD will agree.
CURRENTLY DEFENDING THE REALM WORLDWIDE 6,115 (lol I rest my case)
Having played DAOC for many years the one thing I can say to those who have not played it before and are considering trying it out, that Mythic really is one of the best companies involved in the MMORPG industry. They really care deeply about their product and more so about their customers. I have played many of the different games within this genre and found Mythic is one of the best at providing customer service and really listening to what players have to say. Its a game most definitely worth trying out.
Talic Mightyheart
Be safe and fight well friend.
I finally had to quit last year because of one thing that destroyed the last bit of immersiveness to me, and actually betrayed its own RvR code of years past. It has to do with clustering and is difficult to explain, but I will try....
RvR is basically Albion, Midgard and Hibernia fighting one another. When you start on a new server you have to pick a realm to join, just one. Your character levels and fights in that realm, and not the other two. Your character cannot communicate with the enemy ever, if you meet an enemy in the frontier and try to talk to it, the enemy will get a message like "Sardon said somethng in a language you do not understand", aside from emoting, there is no way to communicate. For five years this has been the way of things it is one of the fundamental things about DAoC PvP that is so appealing. The enemy is that much more mysterious and fearsome. It really adds something to the immersion for the player. Now comes the clustering....
When the servers were clustered, 3 of the original servers were joined into one cluster. That was fine, because a restriction was applied to the cluster now. If you started on any server in the cluster you had to join just ONE realm. If you had characters in opposing realms on the servers within the new cluster you now had to wait 8 hours to switch between those servers. I could live with that just fine. People screamed and complained, so mythic reduced the 8 hours to 30 minutes. I could live with that too.
Whew, that was difficult to explain, I hope it demonstrates what a complicated mess clustering has become for DAoC. I hoped they find a way to fix it. Instead they did something that destroyed the way RvR is played forever, and mutated the game into a kind of grindy Battlefield 1942 with 3 playable sides. Here it is....
They lifted all of the server/cluster/realm restrictions! Insanity! You can now create new characters in any realm, and switch to them immediately. Not long after this was implemented I would see chat and recieve private tells like "hey j00 I wuz de ani in de t0w3r, I pwned you over and over you suck, roflmao!". Plus it was not uncommon to take part in RvR battle in which half of your realmmates leave you and join one of the other two sides if they are winning. Its just like what they call team stacking in BF1942 or some similar multiplayer shootemup. I can put up with team stacking in BF1942, but not a game I have paid for and worked so hard on over a 4 year period. PvE was destroyed a long time ago, now they are working on killing RvR, its becoming cheap PvP.
One added note, doesn't anyone remember what happened to the last mmorpg EA had its hands on? (earth & beyond) Im kind of scared for DAoC and there is no way I can be convinced that Warhammer or the new UO will be any better.
P.S. Yes, Old frontiers would be great!
I also played in the first year and was run out by buff bots and and horrible nerfage that came to clerics.
I really hope mythic has learned there lesson with this game. Here's to mythic/ea not repeating the same mistakes, the rvr/pve ideas for warhammer look really good.