Official F.A.Q

What is Dark Age of Camelot?

Dark Age of Camelot is a massively multi-player online role-playing game conceived and developed by Mythic Entertainment. Set in the Kingdom of Albion in the years immediately following the death of King Arthur, players of the game enter a world in chaos, where Arthur’s peace has been shattered and dark forces threaten the Kingdom. Unlike traditional role-playing games in which a player’s greatest challenge is fighting computer-controlled monsters, players in Camelot will come face-to-face with their greatest challenge yet, other players. In Camelot, players must choose to be members of one of the three Realms that are striving for mastery in this chaotic world: The Britons, the Celts, or the Norse. The Britons are the former kingdom of Albion, once ruled by the great King Arthur. The Celts are from the wild and magical western island of Hibernia. The Norse are the large barbarians from the lands to the north of Albion.

Building upon the foundation laid by such great games as EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, and Ultima Online, the game features 3D-accelerated graphics with movable camera, multiple class and race combinations, and has built in and balanced team Player vs. Player (PvP). Unlike its predecessors, in Camelot, PvP conflict is an integral part of a player’s experience in the world, not an afterthought.


When will Camelot be done and when will beta testing start?

The game is slated to be complete by late summer 2001, with betas starting about five months before that.


Who is Mythic Entertainment, and what games have they done?

Mythic Entertainment is the most prolific and one of the most successful online gaming developers in the industry today. With eleven online games to its credit, Mythic has been a major part of all of its distribution and publishing partners pay-for-play games including AOL, the Centropolis Gaming Center, Gamestorm and ENGAGE. Our titles include some of the most popular online-only games of all time including Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict, Aliens Online, Starship Troopers: Battlespace, Silent Death Online, Rolemaster: Magestorm, Darkness Falls, Darkness Falls: The Crusade, Splatterball, Godzilla Online, and Dragon’s Gate.

Mythic has more experience in developing and running multi-user online role-playing games than most of its competitors. Dragon’s Gate is one of the longest running online RPGs out there, having just hit its 12th anniversary and is still going strong on America Online. Mythic also has the successful Darkness Falls RPGs, which are available on America Online, Centropolis Gaming Center and Gamestorm.


Which Arthurian legends does Camelot follow? There are so many.

In order to make a great game, we’ve delved into many different Arthurian traditions, and have come up with a good mix of romantic Arthurian myths, pre-Christian Welsh legends and high fantasy. First and foremost, Camelot will be a fun game, and we will never let a strict adherence to any of the legends get in the way of that. That being said, any fan of the King Arthur legends will feel right at home playing on the side of the Britons.


What kind of graphics engine does Camelot have?

Camelot uses a 3D graphics proprietary engine developed by Mythic which is built upon the NetImmerse engine from NDL Inc - the same API that Mythic used to develop Spellbinder: the Nexus Conflict. It features 3D accelerated graphics, detachable camera, first and third person views, and all the visual splendor you would expect from any other large graphical multi-user online game.

What does Camelot have that EverQuest and Asheron’s Call don’t?

Camelot has an immediately identifiable background that will be familiar to anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of mythical history. The Arthurian legends, the Norse Sagas, and to a lesser extent, Celtic folklore, are all represented in the game. The gods in the game will come from the pages of well-known mythology - gods like Odin and Thor, heroes like Cuchulain, Lancelot, and Galahad will all be part of the game’s background (and maybe foreground!).

Camelot also has a built in PvP system, which strongly guides the player into conflict against members of opposing Realms. The PvP system has been strongly thought out and is an integral part of the game itself, unlike the other large commercial online RPGs. Instead of having every player be able to fight any other player, as in Ultima Online, in Camelot, PvP is team based, where you can only fight characters in opposing Realms. This will encourage teamwork and cooperation among the members of a Realm as they must band together to fend off attacks, raids, etc. from the other Realms.


What are the different Realms and how are they in conflict?

The Realms in Dark Age of Camelot are the Kingdom of Albion, home of the Britons, the Celtic Kingdom of Hibernia, and the Norse Kingdom of Midgaard. Players will be able to play characters in each of the Realms - each Realm’s characters will specialize in different types of magic, different fighting techniques, and of course each will have geographically typical terrain. Midguard is full of fjords and ice, Albion is full of rolling hills and Roman ruins, and Hibernia is a wild land of deep forests, enchanted hills and magical beasts.

Each Realm is the possessor of a number of ancient magical Relics, which give bonuses to all members of that Realm - when the Relics are safely in their shrine. However, Relics can be stolen away by enemy raiding parties and taken to their shrines, making them stronger. When safely in shrine, Relics give moderate attack and damage bonuses to fighting races, and magical spellcasting bonuses to spellcasters. Any Realm that does not have its Relics fights at a disadvantage.

Relics must be protected at all costs from theft - this concept forms the core of the PvP conflict in Camelot. Relics come in all shapes and sizes and are based on each Realm’s history and legends. Some of the ongoing quests in Camelot will be centered around discovering many lost Relics.


What is PvP? How is handled differently than other online RPGs?

PvP is shorthand for "Player vs. Player". Some online RPGs do not allow player vs. player combat at all; instead characters fight with NPC monsters - this is the model that EverQuest follows, with the exception of a few EQ PvP servers. Others, like Ultima Online, allow everyone to fight everyone else, which can sometimes be chaotic. Camelot will be team-based PvP, where characters will be able to rise up to medium level without having to worry about being marauded by high-level enemies. As the players grow in stature, they will be expected to protect their realm from enemy incursions, as well as occasionally go on raiding parties against other Realms.

In order to allow new players some time to gain experience in the game, each Realm will have its own unique protected adventuring areas that are designed for new players. These areas will be consistent with the each Realm and allow the new player an opportunity to gain experience without worrying at all about an invasion from across the seas.

Player levels will be based on experience vs. monsters, not vs. other players. At higher levels, players will have to adventure out into regions between the realms, which could bring them into conflict with enemies, but not necessarily so. The true PvP comes into play when actively going out on raids, or protecting your Relics from enemy invasions.

Each player accumulates "Realm Points" while either defending their Realm against enemy invasions or going out on raiding parties. As the player gains Realm Points, they gain special titles as well as bonuses to their skill statistics. Because of this, a high-level player who has gained Realm points will be more powerful than a player of the same level who has not. The game will not force players into PvP, but if you choose to do so, you will become more powerful.


Will you be able to fight characters in your own Realm?

You will not be able to fight characters from your own Realm, in any normal playing sense. However, we will probably have a dueling system in, or at least special arena areas where you can go to practice PvP with friends. This way, you’ll at least have the chance to get accustomed to player versus player combat before you get involved in Realm PvP.


Hasn’t Mythic done a PvP game like this before?

Yes. In fact Camelot will be based in many ways on Mythic’s text online RPG Darkness Falls: The Crusade. This game has a three-Realm conflict based in an original fantasy setting. Camelot will use the lessons learned from this game, in creating a balanced PvP system. While DFC is not a graphical game, it contains all the non-visual elements that will exist in Camelot: an extensive guild system, character classes, races, and a huge database of objects and monsters that are already fully tested and balanced. The PvP system in DFC is well-rounded and although not perfect, is a good jumping off point for Camelot. It is because we are able to use most of DFC’s underlying database structure, we can cut the development time to the short 18 months that we envision.

How do Guilds work in Camelot?

Camelot will have built-in support for guilds, and many will be available for each class/race combination. When a player joins a guild, they get special tweaks to their character and even new skills, making a magician in one guild slightly different than a magician from the same realm in another guild, which gives players yet another way to customize their characters. Also, guilds can accept players of different classes, making it possible for the mercenaries guild in Midguard to accept both Viking Skalds (minstrel), as well as Troll warriors. These guilds are not player-created, rather they are a part of the game.

Of course there will be player-created Associations as well, which will let same-realm characters band together and form their own organizations.


How smart is the monster AI?

The Camelot development tools include a proprietary monster scripting engine that will make is possible for the world developers to make monsters that act in an intelligent way. They can truly interact with the players, have conversations, exchange objects, make deals and generally act in any way as conceived of by the world developer.


How big is the game world?

Huge. There are many zones for each Realm, which allows the player to gain levels and adventure without running into many (if any) player-character enemies. Then there are middle zones, which link the Realms together, where you may encounter enemy players.

The zones will be taken as much as possible from the maps of Scandinavia, Wales/England, and Ireland. The English zones will have Roman ruins, stone circles, and deep dark forests. The Norse zones will be full of ice and pine forests, tundra, and taiga. The Irish zones will have rolling hills, magical creatures and places, and a distinctly Celtic feel.


Will the game have zones like EverQuest?

Dark Age of Camelot features a unique world architecture that almost completely removes the need for players to "zone" between game areas. The system has "Regions" that are made up of huge areas of the game -- inside which players will not have to wait to zone, as in other online RPGs. Instead, the player moves inside a "bubble" that keeps track of all monsters and other characters near the player. As the player moves around, the bubble continually refreshes itself by loading in new objects, monsters, and players that come in contact with the edges of the bubble. In essence, it is like playing EverQuest and being able to see and move across zone borders into other zones.

To give an idea of the size of the Regions, each Realm's territory consists of two regions, allowing players to adventure for hours without ever having to wait for the game to load a new zone. The regions correspond to a "home area" and a "frontier area" of each Realm's territory. The home area is where low to mid level characters will cooperatively group and fight to gain levels. The frontier region consists of tougher high level areas where players go on high level quests and to engage in PvP combat against players from other Realms.


Will you have housing for Characters?

Camelot will probably support some sort of housing for characters, although these will be pre-built structures.

How will you communicate with other players?

In the game you will have the basic "say" commands and group chat commands that let you talk to all within a certain radius. Added to that will be the ability to send messages to single players who are currently online and who are members of your Realm. This ability may be tied to gameplay (i.e. via spells or objects).

Due to the competitive nature of the game, we will not allow inter-Realm communication in Camelot. The other realms are your enemies, so there will be no need to talk to them. We’ve learned from our other PvP games that if you allow players to communicate with players from other sides, then cheating will certainly follow.


How many characters per server will players be able to have?

You will be able to have seven characters per server, but all must be of one Realm. If you want to play characters from another Realm, you must create them on another server. This will cut down on players entering the game on one side to see what’s going on, then logging in as a character in another Realm to tell everyone what’s happening in the enemy camp.


How many players will be able to play simultaneously?

Somewhere between 2000 and 3000 per world, with as many world shards as demand warrants. Each shard will be a completely separate world.


What about quests? How will they not be repetitive?

We have a lot of good ideas to make quests non-repetitive and so each player that does a quest will have a different experience. In most online RPGs, quest consist of going from step 1 to step 2 - talk to the NPC, find an object, give it to him, he gives you a note with more instructions on it, etc. These usually end up with a lot of high-level characters "camping" the same area waiting for a specific NPC to spawn so that they can kill it/talk to it/etc. This can often be frustrating to the players, especially if the NPC only spawns once every couple of hours.

Camelot will alleviate these issues in many different ways, by included an extensive questing engine. First, the steps in the quest will be randomly generated, so two players going on a quest for the same item will probably not do the same steps, and definitely not in the same order. Second, players on quests will have to fulfil earlier parts of the quest in order to get quest items off of NPCs. For example, if a player has to say a certain phrase to an NPC to get an item, the NPC will not respond even to the correct phrase if the player has not done the previous steps on the quest.

Camelot will also have a special Questing Journal that lists the quests that the player has accepted, and shows the steps that need to be taken, as well as the steps that the player has done already. This will alleviate the need for tedious note taking and the "what do I do with this piece of pottery" that happens on other games.


What will armed combat be like?

One of the biggest problems with other online RPGs is that a magic-using character is fun and exciting to play, but an Arms-wielding fighter usually has only a few options to keep combat fun and interesting. Camelot, however, will feature "combat styles", which are unique fighting moves that must be learned by fighting characters in much the same way that a spell casters has to learn new spells.

By studying the fighting styles of monsters and other players, fighters will find that some styles work better in some situations than in others. Fighting classes will be able to learn new styles by going on Quests, by advancing in their guild, or by gaining levels.