E3 2001Dark Age of Camelot updated impressions

GameSpot stopped by Mythic Entertainment's booth at E3 2001 to see the latest build of Dark Age of Camelot, the developer's mythology-based online role-playing game. Mythic unveiled two completely new areas in the game's realm of Albion: the huge city of Camelot, and the game's first dungeon, Uther's Tomb, which lies near the city.

Dark Age of Camelot has been in closed beta testing for some months, and its beta testers are already familiar with the simple towns that had previously been implemented in the game. However, the city of Camelot is many times larger than even the largest town, and has many guild and merchant buildings populated with nonplayer characters and detailed objects. And the game's first dungeon is larger still. Uther's Tomb is a huge structure that, according to the game's story, was constructed by the wizard Merlin as a memorial for the deceased king. The dungeon itself is gigantic, and consists of huge rooms connected by equally spacious corridors and tunnels. Mythic has clearly anticipated heavy player traffic in its first dungeon, and the game's world builders have made sure that each of the dungeon's stony doorways and arches is tall enough and wide enough to accommodate the size of most small- to medium-sized adventuring parties; even when they're on the run from the monsters that Mythic will use to eventually populate the area. What's more, the dungeon itself textured cleanly but simply; the walls themselves will eventually be covered in cobwebs and moss, but their textures will still be basic enough to allow for great numbers of players to pass through it without inducing severe slowdown or other performance hits on players' systems.

We've also learned that Dark Age of Camelot's development is more or less right on schedule; the game's player-versus-player combat will continue to be tweaked in the coming months in preparation for the game's third realm of Hibernia, which should be in the game in a few months.