Dark Age of Camelot

Dark Age of Camelot is a 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game, released in October, 2001 in North America and in Europe in January 2002. The game combines Arthurian lore, Norse mythology and Irish Celtic legends with high fantasy. It is set in the period after King Arthur's death and his kingdom has split into three parts which are in a constant state of war with each other. "Dark Age of Camelot" includes both player versus environment (PvE) and realm versus realm (RvR) combat. The game is in large part an adaptation of a previous Mythic Entertainment game called "Darkness Falls: The Crusade" (1999), a text based game.
It was announced on February 5, 2014, that development of the game would be transferred from Mythic Entertainment to Broadsword Online Games, a newly made studio, that will take over all future development of Mythic's two remaining MMO games, the other being "Ultima Online". Mythic was subsequently shut down shortly thereafter on May 29, 2014. On May 24, 2019 Broadsword announced that a new "progression" server was in development which would be limited to content from the original release, "Shrouded Isles" expansion, and the housing zone additions. With regard to "Old Frontiers" returning to the game, the development team plans to poll the community for their preference.
Gameplay.
Character control is, for the most part, by means of either the mouse or keyboard. The player can customize up to three 'Quickbars' of 10 slots each with spells, melee or ranged attacks (depending on equipped weapon), or macros, and can be either clicked on or selected with the number keys to activate. Players choose from three realms: Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard, each based on different mythologies. Each realm has different races. Although each realm's classes differ in specific abilities, "DAoC"s classes are broken down into the four common RPG archetypes: warrior 'tanks', spell casters, rogues that use stealth, and healing priests. Hybrid classes, which combine skills from any two of the archetypes, also exist in all 3 realms. DAoC's classes are balanced at the RvR level instead of in direct comparison to the other realms' equivalent classes. DAoC classes are very rigid with specific roles, play styles, and specialization point allocations.
Guilds offer social, economic and PvE/PvP advantages that contrast with or exceed soloing and 'pick-up groups'. Each guild comes with its own chat channel, in-game ranking system, territory claiming ability, guild banking system, guild housing, emblem, and reward system in the form of guild bounty points and merit points. Each guild leader (or leaders, as the game provides for multiple leaders) can define their own set of rules and goals. The guild leader(s) can customize the privileges, (such as inviting new members, speaking in alliance chat, and claiming captured Towers for the guild) of each Rank within the guild. Furthermore, alliances can be formed between player guilds, which offer up a conjoined chat channel for all guilds within one alliance to communicate.
Realm versus Realm is the main focus of Dark Age of Camelot. The story line revolves around what happens after the death of King Arthur and his united kingdom falling apart. Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard are in a three way war against each other and constantly war for control of powerful relics, keeps and towers, as well as control of the entrance to Darkness Falls.
Realms.
"Dark Age of Camelot" has three realms, allowing a unique dynamic of RvRvR gameplay. Each of the three realms are inspired by actual historical folklore and mythology.
Storyline.
Each realm has a unique but parallel storyline, which is expanded with retail expansions. The European distributors occasionally add their own writings and quests about the realms and their inhabitants. In the original Realm zones, smaller cities in the realm need protection against monsters common to many other RPGs. Albion is menaced by undead raised by Morgana, Hibernia is torn apart by the Unseelie Court and Siabra, and Midgard by the treacherous Blodfelag.
Development.
The decision to develop "Dark Age of Camelot" was made in late 1999, with it originally being conceived of as a graphical MUD. Mythic Entertainment president Mark Jacobs proposed the idea of using Arthurian legend since it was on the public domain and thus the company would be free of any licensing issues. Total development costs excluding equipment leases was about $2.5 million and took 18 months with a team of 25 full-time developers. 3DS Max and Character Studio were used to create all models and animations within the game.
Toward the end of development, Mythic found itself in a difficult financial situation: Since it had never borrowed money, it lacked a credit rating sufficient to lease the Dell servers needed to run the game. After being denied the lease by Dell, Mythic had to purchase each server using its development funds. Securing a publisher was also a difficult task; every publisher that Mythic initially approached rejected the game except for one, Vivendi Games. In 2014, Jacobs still expressed gratitude to Vivendi for taking a chance on the studio.
During the game's prime, Mythic operated 120 dual-processor Pentium servers running Linux. Out of those, groups of six servers were devoted to running one world, or as the player saw it, one server. The servers were designed to handle 20,000 players simultaneously logged in at any given time, however, Mythic limited them to about 4,000 each in order to keep the world from feeling too cluttered. Mythic's cofounder Rob Denton stated, "If you have too many people, the worlds get too crowded. The last thing you want is to be bumping into thousands of people." Much of the game's code was also stored on the servers, with the user client more focused on graphics and texture loading based on a data stream limited to 10 kbit/s per player.
In December 2017, Broadsword Games announced Dark Age of Camelot: Endless Conquest, a non-subscription style game account allowing players to play the game for free, with some restrictions on how many characters the player can have, character classes, as well as some services within the game. Their timeline originally placed release in fall of 2018, but "unforeseen issues and technological constraints" with the v1.125 patch has forced them to delay the release until early 2019. However, they have also announced that prior accounts will be eligible for Endless Conquest as well as new accounts.
Expansions.
Mythic has produced seven expansions (which originally had to be bought separately, but are now free downloads) for DAoC. The expansions were not released on European servers (run by GOA), until typically months after the Mythic release.
Reception.
Sales.
Before the release of "Dark Age of Camelot", Mythic Entertainment forecast "30,000 players on launch in the United States", according to GameSpy. In that country, the title entered NPD Intelect's weekly computer game sales rankings in first place for October 7–13, 2001. Its initial shipment sold out within one day. Its sales reached 51,000 units within four days of release. "Dark Age of Camelot" remained at #1 for the week ending October 20, but fell to third and fifth in the following two weeks, respectively. However, the game claimed first place on NPD's monthly chart for October 2001. After a ninth-place finish for the week ending November 10, it was absent from NPD's weekly top 10 and monthly top 20.
By the first week of November, "Dark Age of Camelot" had sold 115,894 units in the United States. Remarking on this performance, GameSpot's writer Desslock explained that the game had "sold extremely well during the first few weeks of its release, and looks to be a significantly larger success than the other massively multiplayer RPG released this year, "Anarchy Online"." He cited its performance as evidence that "there's probably never been a larger demand for RPGs". "Dark Age of Camelot"s sales in the United States reached 300,000 copies, for revenues of $10.4 million, by August 2006. At the time, this led "Edge" to declare it the country's 63rd-best-selling computer game released since January 2000. The "Dark Age of Camelot" franchise, including its expansion packs, totaled sales of 780,000 units in the United States by 2006.
The game was also a hit in Europe, where it sold above 100,000 units by March 2003.