Written by Paul Philleo

Continuing with the "m" theme from the title, MPOGD recently had the pleasure of visiting Mythic Entertainment at their headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, where we given an up close and personal look at the new Catacombs expansion to Dark Ages of Camelot (DaoC). For those who are uninitiated, in a nutshell Dark Ages of Camelot is a successful massive multiplayer online role-playing game, built on "ye olde" Arthurian legend. In DaoC, player versus player combat is emphasized, involving three legendary Realms players can join, the the Britons, the Celts, or the Norse. Three years running now, DaoC has built an in-game population of over 250,000 players.

Part of the reason Dark Age of Camelot has been able to keep up with the Joneses - that is, the stream of glamorous competitors such as EverQuest II and World of WarCraft - is through the periodic expansions that have been released over the years. Mythic Entertainment has maintained a firm commitment to avoiding sequels to their game properties and utilizing expansions to drive the audio/visual, content and game play enhancements in Dark Age of Camelot. From the looks of it, Catacombs will bring a great deal of new content to the table - and tantalizingly soon. Mythic Entertainment not too long ago announced that the Catacombs expansion has just gone gold and will be shipping on December 7. The next question you might be asking is, what does Catacombs bring to the DAoC table?

In a nutshell, there are five brand-spanking new classes, two for each realm other than Albion, to encourage players to experience other realms; more detailed player character models with more diverse customization options; dungeon instancing which are areas exclusively set aside for private adventuring, and a whole new coat of graphical paint, bringing improved lighting and textures all around to the world of DaoC.

The Dev is in the Details

That's your mashed potatoes, here's your gravy. There's a lot more to be said about what makes Catacombs so attention-worthy as an expansion. We had just the man to do it: MPOGD's tour guide through the world of Catacombs was Mythic's Destin Bales, Technical Lead Developer, who gave us the scoop on all the details.

New areas in the form of ten new static zones per realm, with one major city and nine new zones per realm, add a lot of new elbow room for your characters to explore. These zones for all three realms are designed for exploring and leveling up to level 50. The enemies players will face are possessed, which factor into the story. For players from the Midgard realm, they'll start out in a monstrous, grim Viking longboat; for players from Albion, they'll be wandering through a massive chain of aquaducts, and for those players from Hibernia, they'll start out on a floating island of rock in a swirling whirlpool of red - reminiscent of the eerie atmosphere from the game American McGee's Alice. Overall, the feel of the new zones have a somewhat gothic feel to them, which matches the flow of the Catacombs storyline.

As important as the new static areas are, a focus for the Catacombs expansion is the new instanced areas, for private adventuring for yourself or with selected friends. As Destin reminded us, there's over 130 instanced dungeons and 75 instanced dungeon tasks for players. So you not only have instanced locations, you're not going to be twiddling your thumbs once you're within the instanced spaces.

Five new classes new grace the world of DaoC -- one for Albion and two apiece for Hibernia and Midgard. Hibernia and Midgard have received the lion's share of the classes, as incentives for new players to join those two realms, as opposed to the more traditionally popular Albion realm.

What would an expansion be without being loaded to the brim with quests? Over 400 quests have been added to the game through the expansion, although most are mini-quests, which are geared toward the adventurer with a limited amount of time. They offer relatively instant gratification, as opposed to the standard quests which involve more significant investment of time, albeit for greater reward. As Destin pointed out, over 80 pages of back story drive the quests, and then tie in to the story. So these quests have meat on their bones.

More attention is being focused on the solo player than the group-oriented play, and that change is not an accident - it is by design. You won't find a lot of emphasis on realm versus realm play features. DAOC: Catacombs is specifically designed to allow MMORPG players who don't have a lot of time but might want to be able to jump into a quick quest, into an instanced area, and jump back into their day-to-day schedules. It's a refreshing design consideration, that recognizes there are online gamers who may not have a lot of time for exhaustive role-playing, and simply would like to experience some quick adventuring.

Lest we not be superficial and give our due to style as well as substance, would you like an idea of what's under the hood of the new Catacombs graphics engine? Here's what the Mythic graphics engine programmers and artists have added to the game. To give a sense of perspective where the graphics have gone from commercial launch three years ago to this point, textures and polygon counts have more than quadrupled. Each character has over 3,500 polygons apiece, and with gear on, over 4,000. Players now have more customization options at their disposal for their avatars as well, including the ability to alter jaw size, eye color, hair color and styles, and more. Starting with Catacombs, for those who revel in such details, characters are being given "the ability to smile and to have an angry face," states Destin, and more such animation and human touches may be seen in the future as well.

Aside from the stats, to my eyes, seeing the "before and after" character models illustrated a striking improvement. The characters are more fully formed and beautfully painted. Attention was also given to the new zones within the expansion, designed to give even what otherwise might be claustrophobic cave areas a sense of soaring and spacious magnificence, or as mentioned earlier, a sense of mood. In part, thank the light mapping and enhanced textures for that.

Still, ask anyone on the Dark Age of Camelot team, they are not slaves to keeping up with every new technology -- although they feel that with the Catacombs expansion, they are neck and neck with the other big boys on the block.

After seeing where Dark Age of Camelot began and seeing how it has grown over the past few years, Catacombs seems to be a promising addition, that shows Mythic's almost two years of effort that has gone into it. Do you think we're done with our insider info from Mythic? Heck, no! Look soon for features about Mythic's Imperator and interviews with Mythic's Mark Jacobs and Matt Firor.