Last week on Wayback Wednesday we once again adventured into Dark Age of Camelot. On this episode I was joined by Kai Schober, John Thornhill, and Talal Saad. Kai is the community manager for DAoC and played Staern an Eldritch, Talal is a developer for DAoC and played Eldarii a Warden, and John, who is also a developer for DAoC, played Kerllean our Bard. DAoC is set shortly after the death of King Arthur and in this game his kingdom has shattered into three warring factions. While DAoC does have interesting Player versus Environment (PvE) mechanics the primary focus has always been the Realm versus Realm (RvR) warfare. This conflict pits the forces of Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard against each other for dominance of the realm. The Albion are based on Arthurian legend and most closely resemble English lore, the Hibernians are rooted in Celtic lore, and the Midgard represent Norse mythology.
While the game is now over 10 years old it is constantly being fine tuned. In fact since Dark Age of Camelot was last featured on Wayback Wednesday in April the game has undergone a huge system change. With patch 1.112 (how a game is 10 years old with 6 expansion but still version 1 is beyond me) came a reworked relic system that brought with it the following changes:
- The relics have been moved to the innermost keeps of a realm.
- These Relic keeps cannot be capture or claimed.
- Elite envoys have been introduced to defend the Relic Keeps and the Relic gate system has been removed.
- Players that carry a relic now also emit a faint glow and act as a beacon that screams, "Come kill me."
Patch 1.112 was introduced on May 22nd and on May 29th the first successful relic raid took place. Talal gave a spirited description of what he witnessed during this raid at the 9:00 mark of the first video. The Albion forces through tactics and might were able to launch a two-pronged attack. The first prong was a decoy and what no one knew, not even Talal, was that a second Albion force was sent to the Hibernian strength relic temple. On their return to Caer Boldiam the Albions were ambushed three times but proved to be the more tenacious force and fended off the Midgard warbands that attacked them.
Another thing that really makes DAoC special is the community. Over Memorial Day Weekend the DAoC team said thanks to those that served their country and offered bonus experience points and realm points to everyone across all servers. I took advantage of this and quickly leveled my character from 39 to level 46. Talal also during the stream (31:30 in first video) extended a personal thank you to Eaderbreca, "So I just want to extend as special welcome a special thank you to Eaderbreca who is very very involved and contributes a great deal to the Dark Age of Camelot community we care about you we respect you and we thank you for all of your service." Kai also went on to extend his thanks as well.
This episode takes place in Cathal Valley. CV is the level 45 to 49 battleground. CV is designed to represent the old frontiers and for this reason is a very popular battleground. We were able to easily capture the Relic in this battleground and hold on to it until John (you can see John with the relic at 1:40:30 in the first video) stealthily dumped it into the middle of a field. We encountered enemy forces all night long from each of the other realms and had a lot of great 8 v 8 and 12 v 12 encounters. I am really looking forward to our next outing which will take place in the New Frontiers.
At the end of the night I had 11 killing blows, 10 deaths and earned RR 2L9. Not too bad for a noob. I appreciate everyone that showed up for the live stream and I look forward to seeing you all again when we do this next time. There will not be a Wayback Wednesday this week but keep your eye out on MMORPG.com later this week to learn why. Also make sure to keep an eye out on the horizon for next month when we will once again venture back into Dark Age of Camelot and tackle the New Frontiers. I also have a surprise from the developers that I will be able to unveil to you.
Be sure to read Talal's write up too!
