DAoC – Wayback Wednesday (Mythic Q&A) – Transcript Part 4

MMORPG.com’s Twitch TV channel visits Dark Age of Camelot – The host Rob “Grak Ulen” is joined by John Thornhill, Designer for Dark Age of Camelot, and Kai Schober, Community Manager at BioWare, to play the game and talk about its special appeal; its history and future.

This post is Part 4 of 4 transcripts from a 3 hour session, I didn’t get a chance to watch the stream live as it was 4AM in the UK. Although archives of the video are available.

Topics Covered

  • Future Streams / Relics
  • PvE Content Revamp
  • Previous Events with Players
  • Advertising
  • Successful Game Definition
  • Realm Loyalty
  • Custom UI’s
  • Templates
  • Artifacts
  • Other Topics

[0:45:00] – [0:47:15]  Future Streams/ Relics

Rob

  • I can probably do more daoc streaming, and I can promise you the more I do it the less noob I’ll become

Kai

  • We can do some followups, another night in Molvik and later in Cathal valley perhaps

Rob

  • And eventually maybe some relic stuff and show people whats going on

Kai

  • Sure if you can gather 50 more people
  • Especially with the changes it shouldnt be that easy, to just go to a keep and raid relics
  • There will be more defenders if you don’t own enough enemy keeps

John

  • There will be more defenders if you dont control enough keeps
  • And there will also be higher difficulty guards if they dont own a lot of relics
  • Yellow / blue if you own all 6 relics

[0:48:30] – [0:49:30] PvE Content Revamp

Rob

  • (Chatroom) People are asking if there is any intention to tweak old PvE content that is outdated, like Cursed Forest  or Wretched Winter named monsters?

John

  • Can’t make any promises, but tentative yes
  • Not sure when, but would like to do it

Kai

  • Focus for 1.112 and beyond is RvR

John

  • Relic revamp and some things we cant talk about
  • 10 year anniversary live event next stage

[1:00:00] – [1:01:30]  Previous Events with Players

Rob

  • (Chatroom) When was the last time you did an event like this?

John

  • We did an RvR event (not streaming) with players a year and a half – two years ago
  • We try not to play with players too much
  • It opens us up to favouritism claims etc

Rob

  • I picked this faction, these are fresh characters from them

John

  • I have played all realms pretty equally

Kai

  • So have I, it’s important to know your enemy
  • Important to instantly recognise enemy classes when you see them, what they are capable of and how you can counter

[1:01:45] – [1:02:00] Advertising

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Any plans for advertising?

John

  • This counts

Rob

  • You also have a free 14 day trial

[1:03:00] – [1:04:15] Successful Game Definition

Rob

  • Want to dispell a myth about whats a successful game
  • You dont have to have a million or ten million
  • You have to have a core group of players that love the game and support it
  • A company thats commited to it and keeps it running
  • As long as people are having fun playing it and the game is going on its successful
  • As long as people are on your server and its full and they are playing
  • It doesnt matter if you have 20 servers, all you need is a couple of good servers and you still have a successful game

Kai

  • Especially since all the european servers joined the american servers there is action around the clock

Rob

  • It isn’t just about subscriber amount

[1:06:45] – [1:07:30] Realm Loyalty

Rob

  • (Chatroom) A lot of people that play the game have characters in all 3 realms since its been out so long, what are incentives to keep players to a single realm instead of who is holding all the relics?

Kai

  • Something we will address in a patch patch 1.112
  • Cant talk about but its quite an interesting plan

John

  • Finished the documentation on that last week

[1:09:45] – [1:11:30] Custom UI’s

Kai

  • I could tell you exactly but I’m on the wrong computer I don’t have my custom UI

Rob

  • How big of a community do you have for custom UIs and people that use them

John

  • There are several that players upkeep
  • I use one, but won’t say which

Rob

  • I think it sfunny you use custom UIs

John

  • Yeah, we just cant devote as much resources as we’d like to the UI
  • Players can do wonderful t hings for us

Rob

  • I can under the benefits of having a community UI myself, just giving you trouble
  • I dont think your being lazy
  • You can make a functional UI and give players a decent API and they can do things you don’t have time for

John

  • Community building thing anyway, players like to work on that thing
  • We did an update to the existing UI which helped a lot

[1:14:45] – [1:16:45] Templates

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Can someone explain templates to me, and how important they are in RvR?

John

  • Templates are Dark Age terminology for a set of gear you have typically at 50
  • Its called a template because of a crafting skill called spellcrafting that will change your stats that comes from player crafted gear
  • New user journey added gear sets that will get you nearly there
  • Have plans to add ones to get you closer to top end players (85/90% as effective)

Kai

  • Templating is for players who like to max their efficiancy to the last percentage

[1:19:00] – [1:19:45] Artifacts

Rob

  • (Chatroom) How does the artifact system work?

John

  • Expansion zone called Trials of Atlantis
  • Some artifacts are 35 some are 46
  • You do an encounter (or buy with bounty points / glass)
  • Buy the item and level the item to gain the full stats
  • They have unique spells attached to them

Other

Rob

  • Whos going to pax

Kai

  • I am

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Any plans to put dark age of camelot characters into wrath of heroes

John

  • Don’t think games workshop would be too happy about that

John

  • A player asked if they had trophies after transfer from an archived server
  • All trophies will transfer across

Rob

  • (Chatroom) coming back into the game difficult to find groups
  • I came and found groups, sometimes just 4 or 5, sometime a full group, I’ve had no problems

Rob

  • (Chatroom) People say you can get to 39 in a night

John

  • Players who know what they are doing and are hardcore levelling can do it
  • It will take a few days for casual people

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Do you have a croc ring at level 24?

John

  • There’s a bard in the other group
  • The croc ring is an item at 40+ that lets you have area of effect speed so people can keep up with you outside of the group

Kai

  • Both of our characters are 100% legit and hand-levelled, no special equipment or skills

Rob

  • I’ve not been paid or given anything free

John

  • Theres a quest in each battleground that was added to the patch last fall
  • If you hit the max rank in each battleground you get a special title (Protector of Thidranki) and a big chunk of bounty points

Rob

  • I like the game, and like the three factions and wish there was more like it by Mythic

Kai

  • Wrath of Heroes has three factions, its a MOBA
  • Start at max level and can pop into a game for 15 minutes instead of a chunk of time in an MMO

John

  • Mithril does not exist

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Ability to search for friends or guilds?

John

  • Related to the herald and issue they are looking into

Rob

  • Whats the top priority for development at the moment?

John

  • Focus is RvR revamp
  • Fixing some New Frontiers issues
  • Help close the gap between new and existing players in RvR especially (new user experience 1-35 done)
  • Next step is post 50 with all the PvE  you have to do to get RvR ready
  • And ongoing class balance changes

Rob

  • (Chatroom) Will you be able to ride Minotaurs?

John

  • No

Kai

  • That’s something special about Dark Age, when it becomes dark it’s really dark

John

  • In the battlegrounds only one person can ride in a ram

John

  • We do medal of honor once a year

Kai

  • It should stay something special, if you follow the events we do, you have a pretty good chance of getting one

End

Some nice insights into upcoming changes, and a good perspective from a new player.

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