Dark Age Of Camelot: Frontiers Tour

Frontiers Tour
By: Thevor

As most of you all know, Mythic released Frontiers, the newest expansion for Dark Age of Camelot, on Tuesday (6/22/04). I recently took a tour with Mark Davis, a producer who works for Mythic. Mark showed me through the new Frontiers, and pointed out a ton of new, goose-bump-worthy features offered by the free expansion. I met Mark on the test server Pendragon and, after receiving godlike powers, we started the tour.

The first thing we talked about was the new Apprentice feature introduced by Frontiers. Unlike the most of the rest of the expansion, this feature affects both RvR and PvE combat. The Apprentice feature allows players to group with higher level players, and still be able to fight. This is possible because the to-hit penalties are taken away; allowing lower level players to be able to actually hit higher level things as long as they are grouped with higher level players. The feature does not add to the lower level player's stats at all, but it does allow them to inflict some damage, and also decreases the damage they take from high level enemies. Ah, finally you can say goodbye to power leveling for hours, swinging 300 times and hitting nothing but air.

The next feature that Mark told me about was the addition, and modification of new battlegrounds. There are now battlegrounds for every level up to 45. Yes that's right, now players can create a brand new level one character, and then proceed directly to beating the crap out of the enemy realms with blunt level 1 weapons. Another great feature about the new battle grounds is the revamped terrain. Each battle ground looks different, and is increasingly more complicated as the level of the battle ground increases. For example, the first battle ground contains a central keep with no doors, and no tower. This makes it easy for low level characters to team up to take over the keep. However, the central keep gets much harder to attack as the battle ground level gets higher.

A major goal of Frontiers is to get more players involved in RvR. The addition of the new battle grounds is one way that Mythic is going about doing so, but another great feature is the ability to actually get good XP while playing RvR. Mark said that it is now possible for a character to level from 1 to 50 while strictly playing RvR. This is possible because players now get 8 times the XP from killing other players as they used to. In other words, killing a human player that cons yellow to you will give you 8 times the amount of XP that you would get from killing an NPC that cons yellow to you. This makes sense because human players are unpredictable, and able to strategize; while NPCs are very limited in their AI abilities.

Next, Mark showed me around the completely new frontier realm that replaced the old frontiers realms. This frontier is one vast realm where the forces of Albion, Midguard, and Hibernia duke it out for the ownership of territory, keeps, and precious relics. The new frontier contains much more varied terrain including rugged mountains, swamps, rivers, and even oceans where player-controlled boats can launch into massive naval warfare battles. Some of this terrain is called one-way terrain, which, as the name implies, can only be traversed in one direction. This pertains mostly to steep canyon walls, where a realm could ambush its enemies by hiding on top of the canyon walls, and firing down on their unsuspectingly trapped foes. Finally, another new terrain aspect pertains to the swampy water. When attacking an island keep, an army may have to trudge through swampy water to get to the gates. This swampy water greatly impedes their movement, giving the defending archers plenty of time to rain pointy-stick d death on the advancing army.

A major change that Frontiers brings to the realm wars is the keep system. Each realm owns keeps in their part of the frontier. However, instead of looking the same for each realm, each of these keeps are unique to each of the three realms. Also, the keeps can be upgraded to one of 10 different levels. The upgrades include more NPC guards, more places to put anti-siege weapons, and higher defensive stats. Along with better features, a keep can also physically change when it is upgraded. A level-one keep looks like an outhouse compared to a decked out level-ten fortress.

Another addition to the keep system is the addition of the /realmwar command, along with new keep towers. Each keep is surrounded by four towers that contain mounting points for siege weapons that can be used to either defend the keep, or, if taken over by an enemy realm, launch attacks on the keep. The /realmwar command is very helpful in letting players know where attacks are taking place. This command brings up a map of the realm that indicates where each keep is, who owns each keep and tower, which keeps are under attack, and where the player is in the frontier. If a player's realm owns all four towers around a keep, the player can teleport to that keep instantly by using one of many teleportation stones found all around the frontier free of charge. This lets a player get right into the heat of battle without having to run for half an hour, hoping that they arrive to more than just a bunch of gravestones.

I've mentioned above that there are now many places to 'mount' siege equipment. An exciting feature presented in Frontiers is the ability for any player to buy a siege weapon, and man it to defend their realm, or attack other realms. This allows low level characters a chance to help out in battles by either blowing holes through defensive walls, or picking off groups of advancing high level troops. Also, a new feature that involves a RP pool has been introduced. When a castle is attacked, a realm point pool is started, and when the battle is over, the winning side will receive the realm points. These points are dolled out to everyone who helps in the fight, meaning that a low level character that helped re-enforce the door by using woodworking skills can actually get realm points for their valiant efforts.

Along with all of the new features offered in Frontiers, a nice little graphics upgrade has been included. All of the textures in the frontiers have been changed to further vary the game-play. Also, the projectiles launched from all of the siege weapons can now be seen visibly flaming into the night. This takes care of the frustration of being blown away by a flaming boulder that you can't even see.

Frontiers offers players a brand new and unique RvR system. Mark told me that Mythic also totally revamped the realm abilities system, but did not go into detail about it because the changes would take hours to go over. As a final treat, I'd like to report to those who don't know already that Mythic has given every player a free respec in both regular abilities as well as realm abilities. The regular respec must be used before you level two more times.

After my tour with Mark, my warrior spirit was rekindled, so I'm off to explore the new frontiers. I'd highly recommend that you do the same.