Dark Age expansion details

Mythic has revealed new information on the upcoming expansion pack to its popular online role-playing game, Dark Age of Camelot. Shrouded Isles features a new graphics engine and adds new content, including three continents to explore, one player race per realm, and two player classes per realm. Mythic has also revamped the user interface and created new ambient music for Shrouded Isles, which will require the original game to play.

The game's graphics, seen in the screenshots above, have been noticeably enhanced for the expansion. Shrouded Isles will take advantage of DirectX 8 graphics cards to provide improvements throughout both the new and existing parts of the gameworld, notably higher-detail textures, advanced water effects, and lush trees. The environments located in the three new continents will look the best because they've been designed with the new visual standards in mind. To see the new graphics in Shrouded Isle, players will need one of the newer-generation graphics cards: a GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, Radeon 8500, or better.

Each of Dark Age's three realms gets a new continent in the expansion. Hibernia will have the island of HyBrasil, the long-lost home of the mythic Sylvans, who turn to the Hibernians for help against the invading Fomorians. New to the land of Albion is the island of Avalon, the center of learning for the realm. In her quest to dominate Albion, Morgan Le Fay has formed an alliance with the Drakoran dragon men, which are ravaging Avalon and battling with Albion's allies, the Inconnu. Midgard will see the addition of Aegir, the land of the Troll Fathers, which is now under siege from the Morvalt, a race of prehistoric savages. The Troll Fathers have been successful at taming some of these savages, and this group, called the Valkyn, are helping to fight the force menacing Aegir.

The new player races and classes are related to the stories surrounding these new continents. The new Hibernian race is the Sylvan, which are humanoid with barklike skin; the Albion race is the Inconnu, small albino creatures with large heads; and the new Midgard race is the Valkyn, a throwback race of humans that's more animal than civilized. The animist and valewalker classes are open to new Hibernia characters, and both are related to the Sylvans' love of nature. The Albion necromancer and reaver--a hybrid necromancer/fighter--classes draw on abilities to summon undead. The Midgard bonedancer and savage classes reflect the Valkyns' primitive fierceness. The savage is a hand-to-hand specialist, while the bonedancer can reanimate the skeletons of animals.

Shrouded Isles is due out in the middle of November. For more information, read our full review of Dark Age of Camelot.