First, the development team has laid out a patch schedule for the next four months:
- August. A standard bug fix version that will add one new big feature into the game: the Player Merchant search interface. This will give players an interface with which to search through all available consignment merchants in a housing zone to find the objects they are looking for. Other items include a long list of bug fixes, and possibly class balancing and other tweaks.
- September. A patch focusing on RvR world enhancements, RvR bug fixes and balance tweaks (although it may have other fixes in it as well). This patch is NOT the RvR expansion (more on that below) - instead it is a patch that will address class balance, bugs, keep and frontier zone enhancements, and anything else that is RvR related.
- October. Trials of Atlantis will launch, and the patches for this time period will almost certainly focus on the new content and abilities that will be introduced with Camelot's second retail expansion.
The RvR Expansion
We hear the clamoring from the community for more information about the RvR expansion (working name is Dark Age of Camelot: Frontiers). However, we don't want to release any information about the expansion until we decide exactly what we are going to do. The scope of Frontiers is currently much larger than it was when we first announced it, and we need to be careful not to promise anything until the details are hammered out.
We have in fact started working on Frontiers, and the first round of RvR-specific updates in the September patch are a result of that focus. However, we want to do a lot more than just fix bugs and address balance issues in Frontiers - we want to learn from the almost two-years of RvR that players have enjoyed in Camelot and come up with many new features and twists to keep veteran RvR players interested. You can expect to see many changes to the RvR system as you know it, but not so many that it becomes unfamiliar to you.
Frontiers will have to be extensively beta tested, and we will release many details of the new system during the Beta process, which will start after the launch of Trials of Atlantis. Frontiers is going to have a long development and testing process, so our current schedule calls for it launching live in early 2004. I know this is going to feel like forever, but we don't want to rush this out the door.
Corporate News
As a company, Mythic is doing very well - so well, in fact, that we are expanding. As Mark Jacobs said in a recent internet radio interview, we are staffing up so that we have two full time development teams. One full team will be devoted to continually enhancing and adding content to Dark Age of Camelot, and the other will be focused on our new up-coming space MMORPG, Imperator. Stay tuned to the Camelot Herald and MythicEntertainment.com for job announcements as positions become available.
http://www.camelotherald.com/more/974.shtml
Atlantis seems to be right on schedule though (big suprise there) and I'm pretty sure 90% of the player base doesn't want it. When was the last time you heard someone say, "I wish we had more high level PvE zones and epic dungeons"? Since mythic knew this, they've decided to implement "master levels" that pretty much forces everyone to buy the damn thing so they're not totally gimped in RvR.
I wish they just hadn't said anything. I'd rather be ignorant than disappointed.
(Edited by Zutroy at 12:53 pm on July 24, 2003)
Can't wait to see what they come up with for paladins. Turtle skill: Like an "engage all", AF goes up to 1800, but you can still be nuked for 900 damage every 2s.