Greetings friends,
I couldn't be more excited about the future of Dark Age of Camelot! Talal has been a great ambassador of the game and a visionary leader. I only hope to partly fill his shoes and carry on the torch he has made so bright.
For those that don't know, I've been the Lead Designer on the team for quite some time now and am intimately familiar with our current and future plans. Speaking of those plans, I'd like to outline the next patch cycle for you as well as the general focus and resources of the team for the foreseeable future.
Click the 'More' Link to continue!
October 13th Anniversary Month
We will be doing some exciting things for Camelot's 13th birthday:
- A marketing campaign and Come Back to Camelot promotion to attract new and veteran players back to the game
- New Race and Class pairings
- A 13th Anniversary Housing Trophy
- A surprise, never-before-done event with never-before-seen rewards
1.116 Patch and Schedule
With the added focus on the Anniversary, we've decided to extend the release of 1.116 to the end of November/early December time-frame. We've been hard at work on 1.116 for a month now but this extension will give us the time we need to launch a polished version and deliver on our very ambitious promises. Speaking of those promises...
- Champion Level 15 is coming along well and features a new quest line to obtain it. You'll also be able to earn it through normal means such as XP and RvR!
- With CL15, we'll also be doing some re-balancing of the existing Champion Level abilities and adding completely new ones!
- New Champion Level 15 Weapons and Art are coming, and we think you’ll be pleased!
- Darkness Falls is getting revamped! Bigger, better encounters with new rewards and updated loot.
- A Casual Group Finder is being introduced to allow players that want to jump in and RvR a way to find a group very quickly - with just the press of a button!
Future Plans
With 1.116, we'll be introducing the first major "UX" (User Experience) feature in a long list of planned UX features that will help modernize Dark Age of Camelot.
The plan going forward is to introduce 1-2 of these features each patch while keeping a focus on updating existing content and introducing completely new quests, encounters, and loot! Tweaks to New Frontiers and a sprinkling of Class Balance changes can always be expected of course, but our focus is going to be updating and modernizing the user experience of Dark Age of Camelot for the foreseeable future.
A partial list of planned updates include:
- Market Explorer Search Enhancements
- A Map + Quest Journal combination and revamp
- Tooltip Item Delves
- Right-click to equip or swap inventory
- Ability list management and Quickbar functionality
- Guild and Social Management tools
- In-game Mail
Community Outreach
Carol Kenny, our Community Manager, has done a great job of re-invigorating our community and she is going to be stepping it up even more in the coming weeks and months! Here are some of the plans:
- We will be working with our internal Knights of the Roundtable members to shift their focus towards more community engagement and assistance.
- The Grab Bag is getting a make-over and when it's back we think you'll find it much more useful.
- We are going to continue to create in-house “How-To” videos to help returning players get back on their feet.
- We’ll start to leverage live player-streaming and player-made videos about the game. Stay tuned for more details on this if you are interested in participating!
- Updates to the Herald with Archived Server character search, Realmwar updates, and Leaderboards!
- Starting with 1.116 we'll also be introducing a new FAQ in conjunction with the patch notes that addresses some of the "Why?" that goes along with the "What?" in the patch notes.
John Thornhill
Producer
Dark Age of Camelot
.png)
.png)
