Dark Age of Camelot Preview
We've been playing the beta of Mythic's MMORPG, and we've got some early impressions and screenshots.
Virginia-based developer Mythic Entertainment has been making online multiplayer games for years, games like the text-based MUD (multi-user dungeon) role-playing game Darkness Falls: the Crusade and, more recently, the 1999 team-based first-person shooter Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict. Mythic's next project is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Dark Age of Camelot. This game is loosely based on classical European mythology, and it takes place shortly after the fall of King Arthur and the dissolution of the Round Table.
If you've played a graphical online role-playing game like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, or EverQuest, you'll likely find Dark Age of Camelot's basic structure to be familiar. The game lets you create a character from a specific character race and class, and then lets you jump in and explore the game's virtual world, fight monsters, and gain experience points and levels. However, Dark Age of Camelot will have a number of distinctive features, not the least of which will be its mythological setting. The game's world consists of three realms: the Celtic land of Hibernia, the Nordic land of Midgard, and the British land of Albion. In the final version of the game, you'll be able to create characters of different races and character classes in each of the three realms with the immediate purpose of adventuring in your homeland and with the ultimate goal of invading either (or both) of the other realms. Dark Age of Camelot is currently in its second phase of closed beta testing, and the realm of Albion has already been implemented and is being explored (and exploited) by diligent beta testers.
Even though King Arthur has perished, Albion is as lush and verdant as ever. It's a land of green fields and rolling hills, marked by winding roads and clear blue rivers. Albion is huge, but you won't run into any kind of transitional pauses as you travel through it. The entire realm is treated as a single area, so you can run from any one point in Albion to another without any loading time at all. Mythic has already implemented full day and night cycles into the game, and the high-quality, dynamic sky is as beautiful during the day as it is at night when the moon rises. Though it does tend to get somewhat dark at night, Mythic has insightfully given each character a personal torch, which casts more than enough real-time light to help your character find its way around.
The current edition of the beta already features all of Albion's character races and most of its character classes. Albion is home to four major character races: the stout, well-rounded Britons; the tall, slim Avalonians; the proud Highlanders; and the dusky Saracens. Dark Age of Camelot lets you customize your character's appearance by not only choosing your character's race and gender but also by choosing your character's height, hair color, and face. After you've created your character, you'll be able to further customize its appearance by choosing to wear different styles of armor, as well as by applying colored dyes to your character's clothing and armor. Though these options go a long way to help make your character look distinctive, none affects your character's actual abilities in the slightest.
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- Mythic Entertainment
- Fantasy Online...
- Release: Sep 1, 2001 »
- ESRB: Teen
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