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Reviews: Dark Age of Camelot
 King Arthur is dead, and with him the force that held three Realms in an uneasy peace. Now the defenders of Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia are locked in a mortal struggle to defend their sacred relics and preserve their homelands. -Mythic Entertainment
Welcome to the Dark Age of Camelot, an epic game based on legends and lore from reality. The newest of the second generation massively multi-player online games taking the lessons learned from others and implementing them to make a graphically pleasing and entertaining game. In Dark Age of Camelot, you can create a character and choose to be hero of Camelot; a magical being in Hibernia from Celtic lore; or an imposing Viking from the realm of Midgard. Historically, the game has been embellished upon legend giving us as players, a new chapter of Arthurian lore by the developers, creating great eye candy. Upon release, the game had little to no down time unheard of within the gaming community. Very little server crashes, very professional staff, and an overwhelming stable release. Here is a game company that actually prepared for the launch of the game, having backup plans in case of emergencies and makes good on the promises of supporting the game with somewhat balanced and enjoyable classes. For players looking for this type of game, which builds upon and corrects the issues from other games or their first step into the massively multi-player online gaming genre, Camelot is an excellent primer. Not only is it a great introduction to online gaming but to the aspects of player versus player combat as well with Realm versus Realm conflict as champions defend or siege enemy realms. The creator’s of Camelot also took into account very important aspects and included them as well. Gold Sinks. The economy in Camelot has no fear of not having a reason to horde in-game currency, as every class must spend cash to upgrade items and equipment. Attaining cash in game from monster bashing, questing, adventuring or taking on the role of a merchant crafting wares and selling to other players yields very little in return, unless you are a tailor. Tailors are the only class of merchant in game making any reasonable amounts of cash, upwards of thirty gold per playing session in a day. Roughly about two hours of sitting in game, taking on tasks of crafting items and selling them to their Guild Master of the trade they have taken on. None of the other classes in any sitting can make as much in game cash as a tailor at lower levels. Death in game was also a consideration taken into account, as Camelot is a level based game, where you must slowly hunt, quest, and do the treadmill to advance further in your chosen field gaining experience to reach the next level to do it all over again. If you die in game to an NPC the loss is very little to the experience until you reach higher levels. You can regain ‘some’ of the experience you lost by returning to your place of death where a gravestone remains and you pray to it. Upon death you do not lose or drop items, leaving no corpse where your items can be ‘looted’ as spoils of victory. For the new player or those who have been looking for a better game based upon the issues they have had with the other second generation games of the genre, Dark Age of Camelot does a fair job. For veterans of the community though you will find Camelot sorely dissapointing, and like the other games after your first free month you once more will find yourselves paying to play in a beta. The Epic story line with static quests does not offer more. Yes, you learn about the history of the land. You go seeking items that are ‘supposed’ to be highly prized by your chosen class often finding yourself spending hours on end trying to find that piece tot he puzzle located "somewhere south of here is one who can tell you that which you seek." Could there of been more? Staffers taking on the role of the noted non-player characters in game leading groups on puzzle hunts or quests once per week on the various servers. Could there be a place for tales of epic sharing and conquest on hosted boards by the company where players and guilds are recognized. There is no continuing story line other then what the players make. Link deaths and black holes are nothing new and in Camelot they are there as well as a falling through the zone where you float through the sky returning to the last spot you saved at. The Bind Spot. The leveling treadmill for the casual gamer and veterans alike will soon grow bored as friends out level them and they are unable to join them in the more dangerous areas. If a player does attempt to join his friends in one hit by an encounter he can be dead thus disrupting the group who needs to take time to start all over. Veterans will find high level content missing as not all areas have yet to be itemized, and an imbalance as other realms get higher level content added before them thus making Realm vs. Realm meaningless as the other ‘teams’ have uber items. You will find poor wait times for Customer support, even now my appeal states I’m number one in the queue with 356 other appeals me for the past three weeks regarding an issue I’ve found with the guild system. The guild system, tragically broken and useless except for a private chat channel. Why spend the time to go in and edit the ranks and set permissions on the different levels of members if they do not work. Alliance chat with guilds you have allied with and verified alliance chat is set to yes, but unable to speak to one another. If you have ranks for members that have a two-word title, such as "Elite Guard," as opposed to "Knight" and attempt to promote a new member to that relevant rank, they also become the Guild Master with the benefits of a rank zero or one member and title to which you can not ‘demote’ as they now have a higher rank then you (your both considered the rank zero guild master). If your guild and guild mates have been out doing Realm Vs. Realm combat (which is just a giant game of capture the flag) and you gain Realm points, only you as a player get the reward, not the guild. Having a guild bank command is useless as the guild deposit and withdraw functions do not work and there is no info anyplace on how they are to work. I’ve tried it at the banker in town, the guild registrar, and to just enter the command targeting myself and not doing /gc deposit. Issues that were not working in beta, and a month after release still do not work. Realm Points have yet to be implemented and serve no purpose other then a way to tally who has more between realm mates, with no place or way to verify if someone is fluffing their numbers to you. Realm vs. Realm after a month is currently just a huge gankfest as those whom are higher level or from one of the realms which has had higher level content itemized have a stronger unbalanced advantage. Granted real PvP will not occur until everyone is on par, but by that time everyone may have already moved on to another realm or even game. For veterans of the PvP community who have spent years fighting against rivals or who have made names for themselves and have pledged their gaming lives to taking out those whom they consider enemies and wish to "Kill them on sight," will find RvR lacking as other players remain nameless. Great for the new players who are looking for the ‘carebear’ protection of no hurt feelings, a true disappointment for those who love to compete of against others worthy in skill and name. Bugs are constantly being introduced with new patches and it’s slowly evolving into the patch to fix the patch issues as well as hidden nerfs that are not being listed in the patch notes, with resolutions being added to the "list of things to do" veteran gamers have heard before. Lastly you know something is drastically wrong when an entire realm of players are debating upon leaving their realm due to issue's that have yet to be acknowledged or addressed. Were not even going to touch upon the CD Key issues that still have problems for those making new accounts, or how Canadians once again did not get any love from an American gaming company once billing started. While quickly addressed and a resolution placed, it should have been foreseen and hopefully international users will not have the same issue. All in all, Dark Age of Camelot is ok for now, but slowly taking that downward spiral to be an epic tragedy and non-entertaining. From all the hype, from taking on noted players from the community onto the team as staff with the company a lot more was expected. Div Devlin Score: 7 out of 10 Comments: Share your thoughts.
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