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New Dark Age of Camelot patch introduces New User Experience, RvR changes
It's a big day for Dark Age of Camelot players, as patch 1.110 is going live today. The update includes the revamped New User Journey, which redesigns the tutorial and many mainland areas in each of the three realms in order to "make character progression more efficient and enjoyable than ever before." And of course, DAoC is all about the RvR, so many updates have been made to the game's Battlegrounds in an attempt to make them a "one-stop source for character progression and RvR action through level 49." A number of UI updates have been made as well, which should hopefully make the game more user-friendly and customizable. Balance passes have been made on all classes, with some classes being given free respecs to account for the changes. All-in-all, it seems to be a rather comprehensive update to the game, so if you're a denizen of DAoC, head on over and check out the changes.
The Game Archaeologist answers Asheron's Call 2: The former dev
I've been a long-time follower of Eric Heimburg on his blog, Elder Game, where he and a friend have spent years delivering insightful commentary about MMOs and supermodels (well, mostly MMOs). Because I'm not that observant a fellow and I assume that most fellow bloggers are mere players like I am, I didn't realize until a little while ago that he and his co-writer were former Turbine developers who had worked on Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2. You can see where this is going. Once I learned that, I knew I had to get him to contribute to this series. I began a multi-year wooing campaign that involved skywriting, cupcakes, celebrity kiss-o-grams, envelopes stuffed with unmarked bills, and all the tea in China. Of course, this was well after he'd already said "yes" to it, but I like to keep up appearances. So hit the jump as I talk to a guy who was on the flipside of Asheron's Call 2 as a producer and generally swell fella!
The Daily Grind: Do you prefer historical settings?
This week, Massively's Karen Bryan attended a GDC talk by Charles Cecil, the creator of Broken Sword, on the topic of writing games that employ history and historical themes. Cecil wisely noted that historical themes tap in to the audience's shared mythology to generate a compelling game and to serve as the foundation for accessible puzzles relevant to the storyline. And yet strict historical themes in MMOs, even when not diluted with more fantastic elements, can also betray immersion -- would it really make sense for a game about the American Revolution to allow female characters to become military generals? Dark Age of Camelot certainly saw its share of success pairing real-world European legend and modern 20th-century fantasy, while its cousin Imperator, set in a futuristic Roman Empire, was canceled in favor of another Mythic game. World of Tanks thrives off historical realism, whereas the upcoming The Secret World is making an art-form of layering myth over mundane. Still, history-flavored games are very much in the minority, perhaps because they allow studios much less freedom of lore design. What do you think -- do historical (or pseudo-historical) MMOs work for you? Do you prefer pure escapism, or would you rather play in a "home-turf" setting whose real-world backstory is your own? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
MMO Roundup: Kitties, galaxies, and more
Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future. Blizzard introduces RMT loophole in World of Warcraft You've seen our take on the Guardian Cub and Blizzard's sanctioned RMT (and you're likely to see more of it soon.) Now check out what Massively thinks about the Kitty Economy! Ten things to do in Star Wars Galaxies before it's gone When SOE announced that Star Wars Galaxies would be sunsetted by the end of the year, many players despaired. They gave up. They saw their long years (eight years!) of play turn to dust. But others looked on the impending closure as incentive to do all those things they'd been putting off. Check out the top ten things you must do before SWG's closure. Gazillion's president says MMOs are in a rut "I think MMOs in general are in a rut. It's still mainly WoW clones. A lot of people have done these games, but it's been that same kind of gameplay, and that doesn't mean that's what it has to be," says Gazillion's David Brevik, who was also co-found of Blizzard North. Devs reminisce on Dark Age of Camelot's 10th birthday Dark Age of Camelot turns 10 this week, and if that doesn't make you feel old, well, you're probably not very old (and while we're at it, kindly remove yourself from our lawn). At any rate, Scott Jennings waxes nostalgic about the fantasy RvR title on his personal blog by posting a remembrance from original Mythic producer Matt Firor. Massively Speaking Episode 168 Massively Speaking, Massively's MMO podcast, is back as Shawn and Rubi rant about the week's craziness. Topics include DC Universe Online, APB: Reloaded, Star War: The Old Republic, and Blizzard's next-gen MMO. Massively's week in review Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup.
Dark Age of Camelot unveils its 10th anniversary masterpiece
It's not every day that an MMO turns 10, and Mythic is taking full advantage of the situation to hype up Dark Age of Camelot's impressive milestone by treating players to a few goodies. First up is a highly detailed mural depicting the conflicts, races, and classes of DAoC over the years. Mythic has been revealing the mural piecemeal over the last few weeks before finally unveiling it today to the playerbase. In addition to this poster, Mythic's unleashed Producer Stuart Zissu to film a video laying out the plans for the game's celebration. Zissu talks about the new training hubs designed to get beginners on their feet, epic encounters in the world for groups to tackle, moral arcs that give players concrete choices to make, UI changes, and the 10th anniversary t-shirt. Players logging into the game in October will also find that they'll be enjoying several bonuses to XP, crafting, and more. You can watch Zissu get the crowds pumped up for the party after the jump!
Mark Jacobs: 'I've never been against F2P'
In a brief interview today with MMORPG.com, Mark Jacobs, now president and creative director of City State Entertainment, discussed his thoughts on the F2P model and real-money trading. Jacobs is best known to gamers for his previous roles with Mythic Entertainment and Electronic Arts on such games as Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, and his opinions on the subject of gold-farming are infamous, possibly even extreme. We can't be the only ones who remember the early days of WAR when a crusading, irony-immune Jacobs spammed players' screens with popups whenever gold-spammers were banned. But in this interview, Jacobs aimed to set the record straight: He's against gold-farming specifically and how gold-farming hurts legitimate players, not the free-to-play model. I've never been against F2P. What I was and still remain strongly opposed to is gold farming in games, especially MMOs that weren't designed from the beginning to handle those kind of transactions, and also to the groups that seek to profit from such transactions. What I really dislike isn't so much the gold farming/selling itself, but certain behaviors that occur in games where this happens. He goes on to suggest that the F2P model has surged to prominence due to the weak economy and "a lack of really interesting MMOs," noting that we're due for a shift in the market but that the success of Star Wars: The Old Republic (and its "license to print money" IP) will determine the viability of the subscription model in the future. Jacobs has plenty more to say in the full interview over at MMORPG.com.
Devs reminisce on Dark Age of Camelot's 10th birthday
Dark Age of Camelot turns 10 this week, and if that doesn't make you feel old, well, you're probably not very old (and while we're at it, kindly remove yourself from our lawn). At any rate, Scott Jennings waxes nostalgic about the fantasy RvR title on his personal blog by posting a remembrance from original Mythic producer Matt Firor. The piece is heavy on the meta details, and a read-through will give you an idea of how drastically the MMO industry has changed over the past decade. Firor talks about Mythic's scramble to meet the crushing demand for more servers and the resulting mad dash for the nearest computer retailer to purchase a dozen desktops that were quickly loaded with Linux and whipped into an ad-hoc server cluster. There are more interesting details, of course, and you can read them all at Broken Toys.
Dark Age of Camelot quest revamp in the works
Big changes are in the offing for Dark Age of Camelot fans. The latest Mythic dev diary sets the stage for a "return home to the Albion, Midgard and Hibernia of old." While the diary is long on pseudo in-character prose, it's short on specific details. What we've gathered, though, is that extensive revamps are in the works for many of the game's quests and more than a few of its classic adventuring locales. Mythic's Kai Schober says that new and returning players "may be hard-pressed to find their way at the outset of their journey," and as such the devs have set about revisiting many of the game's famous towns and villages with an eye towards modernizing the progression path. New types of quests are also in store, and the diary describes them as full of "moral deliberation" that will make for "diverse gameplay experiences as well as provide unique item rewards." Read more at the official DAoC website.
Mark Jacobs returns to the gaming industry with City State Entertainment
If you've been around the MMO scene for a while, you'll remember Mark Jacobs as the co-founder of Mythic Entertainment and the force behind Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online. He's been out of the gaming industry since his departure from EA, but according to an exclusive interview with Forbes.com, he's back with a new company. "Jacobs revealed that his new company is called City State Entertainment, and [...] the company aims to create games for the mobile, tablet and social networking space," says Forbes.com's Tracey John. Mark tells Forbes that social game development allows for a faster development cycle and lower costs, which equals more freedom to simply have fun making games. "We don't have to worry if the hardcore gamers are going to get incredibly upset because we're doing something a certain way. We don't have to worry if our game is going to sell another 20 copies. We're just looking to make fun, enjoyable games." Check out the full interview at Forbes.com
Dark Age of Camelot gears up its newbies
As part of Mythic's continued efforts to introduce a "New User Journey" experience that's friendly to Dark Age of Camelot beginners, the studio has turned its attention to the ever-crucial subject of gear. In a new dev diary by DJ Frazier, the dev spells out the problem: "For a new player who wanders into battlegrounds, especially ones like Thidranki or Molvik, they will often find themselves losing almost every fight they encounter, simply because they are playing against people who have had a chance to outfit themselves out in the best equipment they can find for their level range." Because the team fears that this armor disparity proves to be a dealbreaker for many newbies, the devs are retuning the gear that players get during their leveling up process to be more durable and competitive on the battlefield. The two main paths of leveling -- PvE questing and RvR battlegrounds -- will both offer solid picks of gear when patch 1.110 hits. Players who risk the battlegrounds will find themselves in possession of top-notch weapons and armor, whereas those who choose to quest will find themselves "90% of the way there" with their gear. Hopefully, these changes will create an environment that's much more welcoming to newcomers to DAoC.
New bounty rewards coming to Dark Age of Camelot
Dark Age of Camelot is taking aim at bounties. Specifically, the development team is taking aim at the bounty points that players can now earn via quests in the game's battlegrounds. Longtime players have no doubt noticed this change, and in the latest developer diary for the game, Kai Schrober outlines the team's plans to continue improving player experience via a new set of equipment purchasable from special bounty vendors inside the battlegrounds. The equipment available isn't meant to just be good -- it's pre-templated and should bring characters close to the apex of their abilities. The goal, obviously, is to help players feel rewarded for their participation in the game. But the diary also goes into detail about more enhancements to gameplay, including new epic events surrounding quest hubs and new teleporters to give players easy access to battlegrounds. It's a laundry list of improvements for DAoC, a clear sign that even though the past few months have been a bit quiet for the game, development hasn't abated.
Dark Age of Camelot takes players to school
Dark Age of Camelot's new website is already paying off in spades for players, as the developers are able to pass along a host of new information, concept art and previews for the populace. DAOC will be 10 years old as of next month and isn't slowing down. Exhibit A: The team is already hard at work on the 1.110 patch. John Thronhill penned a dev diary about the patch this week; he focuses on the new Lesson Quests that will go hand-in-hand with the beginner experience. Lesson Quests are designed to help newbies get their footing in this complex setting, especially since the game continues to see a "large amount of returning and brand-new players" each month. As players progress through Lesson Quests, they'll not only get a better understanding of how DAOC works but be rewarded with buff tokens, potions, and other nice goodies. As part of the quest chain, NPCs will demonstrate crowd control techniques and other RvR survival skills in the hopes that new players will be able to make a better contribution to the war. These tutorial quests can also be skipped if players already know the ropes. Lesson Quests aren't the only new additions coming with 1.110, although Thornhill says we'll have to wait until another day to hear about the rest.
The Perfect Ten: Non-vanilla server rulesets
I've always thought that rulesets are a golden opportunity for MMO developers to get creative with their products and try something fresh and exciting. Unfortunately, most every MMO these days, new and old, adheres to the four "vanilla" rulesets that have been in place since Pong. You have your default PvE, your same-as-PvE-except-we-have-a-naming-policy PvE-RP, and the two player vs. player variants: PvP and PvP-RP. Those are all well and good, but... y'know... couldn't rulesets be used to create fascinating variations on these games? It turns out that yes, yes they can. While the vanilla rulesets are the vast majority, there does exist a group of fringe rulesets that dared to walk the different patch, er, path and made versions of MMOs that are a bold and refreshing flavor. Like blue! Sometimes these new rulesets were whipped up to inject new life into an aging title, giving players a valid reason to come back and see the game from a different perspective. In this week's Perfect Ten, we're going to check out just how wild 'n' wacky server rulesets can get!
Mythic: Wrath of Heroes gets rid of 'all the boring crap' of WAR
Mythic is taking an interesting approach in promoting its new MOBA, Warhammer Online Wrath of Heroes -- it's throwing Warhammer Online under the bus. At the Wrath of Heroes reveal panel at PAX, the Mythic team talked up its new project as something that Heroes' parent game is not. The team found that people liked WAR but couldn't justify investing in it, so Mythic wanted to create an experience for them. The team took what it saw as one the more popular aspects of WAR -- the scenarios -- and modified them to pit three teams (six on each) against each other for quick, 15-minute gameplay sessions. On death, you can choose any hero in your arsenal so you can adjust to whatever your team needs. This game format allowed the team to strip away the parts of the game it saw as unnecessary. "We went, you know what? If you play the MMO, we give you all this cool equipment on your adventure, and it's a neat thing to do, but let's just get rid of the boring crap and give people cool [stuff] to wear," Paul Barnett said. Citing the accumulation of multiple -- and sometimes quite situational -- skills over the course of "748,000 hours of grinding," Barnett said that his team got rid of this approach by focusing on only five skills per hero in Wrath of Heroes. He thinks that the small incremental progress of skills and skill effects in Warhammer Online is "dull" and instead extolls Wrath of Heroes for picking the best skills, effects and armor so that players don't have to worry about getting all of them. You can watch the full reveal panel of Wrath of Heroes after the jump. [Thanks to Joris for the tip!]
Gamescom 2011: ASTA video talks design philosophy and DAoC inspiration
Last month we brought you a brief blurb about ASTA, the new fantasy MMORPG from NHN. The CryEngine3-powered title is making its official debut at this week's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and a six-minute video trailer has surfaced that shows off quite a bit of detail about the new title. The clip features a lot of concept art, behind-the-scenes shots, and talking-head developer interviews as well as an English-dubbed voiceover that's heavy on lore and backstory bits. There's also a lot of commentary regarding ASTA's design philosophy as well as how the developers are striving to avoid Asian MMO cliches to create a title that is original yet familiar. Finally, the video lets us in on the fact that ASTA is aimed at players "who are not very good at controlling the keyboard and the mouse simultaneously." Despite its apparent simplicity, ASTA will be featuring RvR and PvP mechanics designed specifically to facilitate large-scale conflict rather than small-party skirmishes or duels. Dark Age of Camelot fans may be interested to know that the ASTA video specifically references the older title as inspirational material, and you can find that and more after the cut.
The Game Archaeologist uncovers Shadowbane: The battle-scarred blogger
I've long since enjoyed doing this column because, to me, it feels like the next best thing to having been there back in the day, playing these games. No one MMO player can occupy all titles at once, so experiences are bound to pass us by. Fortunately, the gamers who were there have long memories and are often more than willing to share a story or two if given half the chance. After last week's initial foray into our Shadowbane retrospective, I fished around for a hearty veteran of the minotaur wars who was willing to step up and answer a few questions without succumbing to post-traumatic stress disorder. Within a minute, my good friend Grimnir bit into the topic, and I reeled him in as he flopped and gasped for air. At some point, this metaphor got away from me, but no worries. Hit that jump and let's cast our nets down memory river and see what we can dredge up!
The Game Archaeologist uncovers Shadowbane: The highlights
Way back when I used to haunt the corridors of Gamestop and not shun the place due to its stinky evil, I remember being enticed with these fancy-pantsy "MMORPG" boxes when I'd see them on the shelf. I must have picked up Shadowbane a dozen or so times to check out the blurbs on the back, mentally weighing whether or not this would be the one to introduce me to online gaming, but ultimately it was not to be. It's probably for the best, considering that Shadowbane was primarily PvP and I'm a PvE guy at heart. Plus, the title never really took off the way that publisher Ubisoft had hoped, spending most of its six years of operation lurking in the background of the MMO industry instead of sharing the spotlight. But still, six years! That's far longer than any of the titles we've been talking about these past couple months, and considering that Shadowbane won last week's poll to become this month's topic, there are obviously strong feelings lurking among you. What did Shadowbane try to do differently, how did it stay alive as long as it did, and what was its downfall? Hit the jump to find out!
One Shots: Calling this meeting to order
Today's One Shots image is a blast from the past -- one that a lot of players remember fondly, and many still play. Ogrelin Blodig sent us this Dark Age of Camelot image: This screenshot was taken in 2003 during one of Svea Ulvars guild meetings. We played on the European server Prydwen in the realm of Midgard. You can unfortunately only see the feet of the guild-founder Zog in the middle. Some of us still play in the guild together, but sadly many of the members in that picture haven't been seen in a long time. Next week's One Shots theme is Some Assembly Required, and yes, it's a little nod to Massively's newest column. If you'd like to participate, send your best screenshot of content that you've created to us at oneshots@massively.com. It can be a house you built, an item you crafted, or anything you like as long as it came from your two (virtual) hands. Include your name, the game, and a little description of the image, and we'll feature it here on Massively! %Gallery-112285%
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: Imperator Online
It's been a rollercoaster ride over these past two months bringing the maddening -- and fascinating -- topics of "what if?" MMOs to light. We've covered a wide range of promising titles that were cut down before their release, from True Fantasy Live Online to Mythica, and we've only scratched the surface. Unfortunately, the process of MMO development is rarely smooth and casualties can and do occur, which is why we now pay homage to these fallen games. While I'd love nothing more than to continue this series, I also feel that it's time to return to our normal format starting next week. So today marks the last "what if?" for now, and I've picked a mind-boggler of a game, one that not only frustrates us with its potential but one that asks a "what if?" question of its own. I'm talking about Imperator Online, the MMO from Mythic Entertainment that dared to ask "What if the Roman Empire never fell, but instead continued on to become a really radical futuristic online role-playing game setting?"
One Shots: Remembering when
As we close in on the end of main character week here on One Shots, one Massively reader shares a Dark Age of Camelot blast from his past: Here is my first-ever MMO character. Nightsong, shadowblade from the Kay Server on DAOC. She is standing in front of my first in-game house, with our guild colors of Fury flying. Such great memories. I think it holds up to a lot of current-gen games as far as graphics and armor style goes. We're coming to the close of main character week, and gearing up for the Massively team to take the spotlight. Each day next week will feature one Massively writer taking a One Shots guest spot. What will they come up with? Keep your eye on One Shots to find out! %Gallery-112285%
