Video games - Dark Age of Camelot

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	Video games - Dark Age of Camelot

Dark Age of Camelot is a 3D medieval fantasy MMORPG that revolves around the war between three realms at the end of King Arthur's rule: Arthurian-inspired Albion, Norse mythology inspired Midgard and Celtic Hibernia. The game was developed by Mythic Entertainment and released on October 10, 2001.

For the majority of players, the most interesting part of the game is realm vs. realm combat (RvR). On normal servers, players cannot harm other members of their realm. They can travel to special areas called Frontiers and fight players from other realms. Most of the DAoC population focuses on RvR, mainly because PvE (player versus environment) can be rather unstimulating or too challenging on many classes (there are, however, some classes who excel at PvE combat, such as the necromancer). There are three role-playing servers, which act as normal servers except you must follow proper role-playing guidelines, a player versus player server, in which everyone is free to attack anyone at any time, and a co-op server, in which there is no RvR. Each server can support up to 3500 online players at the same time. Recently, Mythic Entertainment has introduced "server clustering" - where certain locations (Frontiers, Capital cities) from multiple servers essentially become one location, and players can interact with players from and travel to other servers.

A new server type has recently been released. These are officially called the "Alternate Rules Servers", but players like to call them the "Classic" servers. They are similar to standard servers except there is no content from the Trials of Atlantis expansion, other than the three races introduced with that expansion, and all stat-enhancement spells (buffs) can only be cast on players with whom you are grouped and within a certain distance. This new server type was launched after extensive player feedback and irritation with the ToA expansion and the issue of buffbots.

As of December 13 2005 there are 22 North American servers, four of which are outside of a cluster, and the rest are spread out among five clusters.

Rhyki the king Roberts worships DAOC and can be found roasting his gutt in his basement in weee hours of the morning where Ouida calls him up at 4 o'clock in the morning. Ouida

Races

The races in the game are: Albion: Avalonian, Briton, Half-Ogre (Trials of Atlantis), Highlander, Inconnu (Shrouded Isles), Saracen. Hibernia: Celt, Elf, Firbolg, Lurikeen, Shar (Trials of Atlantis), Sylvan (Shrouded Isles).

Midgard: Dwarf, Frostalf (Trials of Atlantis), Kobold, Norseman, Troll, Valkyn (Shrouded Isles).

Expansions

Mythic has produced six expansions (4 retail, 2 free) for DAoC:

Shrouded Isles (November 12, 2002) - Added 6 new classes (Neromancer, Reaver; Savage, Bonedancer; Valewalker, Animist), 3 races (Valkyn, Inconnu, Sylvan) and a brand new land for each realm near the size of the old world (in addition to the old world), which also includes epic dungeons. This expansion pack is now a free download.
Foundations (June 18, 2003) - Free expansion which added player housing.
Trials of Atlantis (October 28, 2003) - Added 3 new races (Half-Ogre, Frostalf, Shar) and high level content and zones (which are the same for each realm), also includes new terrain graphics for all areas of the game (including trees). This expansion pack is now a free download, as of October 31, 2005.

The Trials of Atlantis expansion remains very controversial. Many players rejected it because of the high difficulty, organization, and time required in Atlantis's epic raids. The expansion featured extremely powerful items known as artifacts, and extra abilities known as "Master Levels" which are very difficult for the casual player to receive and are considered by many to be too powerful. Artifacts, obtained by hidden encounters only become useful when the player finds the three scrolls hoarded by Atlantean monsters. Furthermore, artifacts must gain experince in order to reach their full potential. Once this has occurred, artifacts become some of the most mighty items in the entire game. In more recent versions of the game, many changes have been made to Atlantean areas in order to make encounters easier, as well as making the artifacts and scrolls easier to come by. How much these changes have 'fixed' things remains to be seen.

New Frontiers (June 22, 2004) - Remake of the game's realm vs. realm warfare (free expansion, required expansion)
Catacombs (December 7, 2004) - Added 5 new classes (Heretic; Vampiir, Bainshee; Warlock, Valkyrie), instanced dungeons (where players entering certain areas get their own private dungeon to hunt in), and new zones and quests with an emphasis on faster and easier leveling. Also includes new player model graphics and new graphics for all the games' dungeons (except Darkness Falls). The Catacombs graphic engine is now free for download off of Mythic's website, however, it does not allow access to Catacombs specific zones.
Darkness Rising (October 11, 2005) ( February 1st 2006 in Europe) - Introduced Champion weapons (much like epic armor), player mounts (horses), Champion Levels and subclassing (small abilities from another class), new dungeons and instanced zones for the new Champion Quests and new graphics for the game world's models (such as barns, haystacks and forts, this includes the Darkness Falls dungeon and the capital cities) which are following the design ideas presented in Mythic's new graphics for the starting cities. Darkness Rising was also the first downloadable paid expansion to Dark Age of Camelot. Many players have largely accepted this expansion, feeling that this is what the Trials of Atlantis expansion should've been in the first place, giving them new abilities without significantly affecting RvR. A has been created by Mythic Entertainment to showcase this expansion.

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Video games - Dark Age of Camelot

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