Dark Age Of Camelot: TOA, TOA, Wherefore Art Thou Different?

Trials of Atlantis has a lot of quests and encounters that aren't like anything you've seen before in Dark Age of Camelot - and approaching that content as anything but new and different may be very frustrating. So! Join me for a quick spin through the mind of the developers.

We called the expansion "Trials of Atlantis" - catchy, yes? And it definitely sums up the lore and the backstory of these new lands perfectly. But it doesn't begin to suggest the scope of the expansion pack. There's a lot more to do than just the trials themselves! There are artifacts to find, stories to unearth, and mysterious lands to explore and hunt. Right now, there are a few bottlenecks in the new lands, because people are focusing primarily on the trials. With so much else to discover and do, there's no reason to be frustrated or to wait in line for anything.

Of course, with that said, we know that many players worry about "falling behind." I could say that people shouldn't worry about that so much - after all, it's a massively multiplayer world. There's really no getting ahead or falling behind, except in your own estimation, because there's no fixed point of comparison. But I'll come back from happy perfect world now and rejoin the real one where people want to have it all and have it first. This natural element of human nature is actually part of the design. The master abilities will help groups more so than individuals. All you need to do to reap the benefits of the new master abilities is to group with someone who has them! The more people that have them, the more powerful the realm as a whole. But you won't be disadvantaged as an individual if you decide to hold off on a trial and hunt for artifact scrolls instead.

A day won't make a difference anyway - the master levels were not designed to be completed in a week, any more than the fifty levels were meant to be completed in a week. In fact, past the first master level, the rest of the trials even have a "stop and smell the flowers" component. You're asked to go kill creatures that grant special master level experience, or perhaps enjoy a little raid on the frontier. This expansion isn't meant to stand alone. It's been integrated into the existing world as best we could. By the way, those master level experience creatures are in far more places than Darkness Falls. Our world team went through our classic game and Shrouded Isles, looking for encounters that practically no one looked at, and added the Master Level experience reward.

We didn't alter the required strategies for the original world, though. We saved the new encounter strategies for TOA. In response to feedback asking for a little less spoonfeeding, fewer (and less obvious) hints, and more thoughtful encounters, we tried to make Atlantis reward those with thoughtful tactics. Many people have complained that there wasn't much in the game that wouldn't reward a zerg rush. (A zerg is where you just throw bodies at the target until it dies - one big overwhelming charge.) So, we actively sought to avoid putting in encounters where sheer numbers win the day. An example of this is the tenth encounter of the second trial. It's not a one group encounter, sure. But if you throw sixty bodies at it in one headlong rush, you'll be wiped out.

And some things are just... different. Invisible enemies that become visible if you've done the encounter correctly, monsters that respond to your particular equipped items, and more.

As with any new software, there have been some bugs that were hard to find without having thousands of people hammering the product. We've been here around the clock since the launch investigating each report. While we cannot answer each individual asking if such and such is a bug, we do treat each question as a possible bug report and investigate. As you can tell from the plethora of patch notes, we've been addressing things as fast the bug is verified and the fix is tested.

Many reported bugs turn out to be not bugs, but the result of misunderstandings. There's a link to the Herald Feedback form on the features list - if you're not sure is something is a bug or what, please select the "questions" category and ask. We'll answer the most common questions here on the Herald.

I've rambled on FAR too long. The short version? This content is different than anything you'll find in our original world and our first expansion. There are a lot of different things to do, and a lot of different ways to do them. We're working on the remaining bugs in the system around the clock, and we thank you very much for your clear, specific reports. And most importantly, we hope you enjoy the new challenges and experiences that Atlantis has to offer.