Dark Age Of Camelot: Interview with Walt "Copper" Yarbrough

1. What are going to be your priorities once you get settled into the new job?

My first priority is to put together a reasonable schedule for Darkness Rising, one that meshes with the existing plans for 2005 and allows for ongoing improvement to the game. It's important to address all three of these tasks without putting the production staff on a death march, and also to maintain a balance of work and home life for the team.

After I make the schedule, I have to make it happen. ;)

2. DAOC made a bunch of changes to make it easier to get into the high end game. Have these changes been a success, in your opinion, or do you feel you could do something more?

The high-end game is more accessible than ever before. To that extent, I think the changes have been a success. But this is a MMORPG, so there's always more to do. We're making our best effort to gradually incorporate changes into the game, in lieu of massive sweeping changes that the players cannot adjust to. We will continue to tweak artifacts and systems such as Master Levels and RAs to make sure that risk and reward are properly balanced.

3.DAOC has a lot of competition and more coming out all the time. What's going to keep it competitive with the A List MMO's coming out? Why has it managed so well in a changing, highly competitive market?

You're making it tough to avoid saying something snarky ;)

DAOC has managed so well due to the constant updates we offer to our players on an ongoing basis. I'm sure you've seen the recent graphic upgrades to our starting towns, which were offered to our players as a free download. We're currently upgrading more of our classic area graphics, including Darkness Falls.

In addition to graphics upgrades, we offer major free patches with content revisions. One of our recent changes completely revamped classic zone hunting areas, making it easier for players to find places to hunt that are perfect for their level.

We rely on feedback and our relationship with the community - and of course, competition is good for the genre. When we launched, many of our best features appeared elsewhere - then we borrowed some back. Now, we're working on more of our own unique features with the upcoming Guild Patch. No doubt, some of the things featured in that patch will be borrowed in turn. It's just the nature of the industry.

4. What are you going to bring to Camelot?

As with the other producers Camelot has had, I've been with the company since there were fewer than fifteen employees. I've also worked in many different capacities on the development team here, which gives me a kind of "from the ground up" perspective. As those familiar with my previous work will know, we do listen to the communities feedback, and we do try to fix the bugs.

5. Do you still plan on alternating expansions between PvE and RvR?

Well, we haven't been, really. New Frontiers was the only expansion specifically designed to focus on RVR, though certainly the impact Trials of Atlantis on RVR was significant. Expansions have mainly been about adding onto the existing world and offering more options to our players. When planning for a new expansion it's important to determine where the market is, what the community is interested in seeing, and how the game has evolved. Because of that it's impossible to plan an expansion very far in advance, so right now we're just focusing through 2005. We'll see what needs to be done after we finish Darkness Rising.

6. Some people feel that Camelot's real selling point is the robust RvR, yet most of the expansions have focused on PvE. Would you agree or disagree? If so, why has that been the case.

I entirely agree. The main appeal of Camelot is its RvR content. We try to focus on offering content that's independent of RvR in paid expansions, and leave core upgrades for free downloadable expansions and patches. Obviously a major selling point of any expansion is to allow players to grow, customize, and improve their characters, so we've been unable to avoid some degree of change. But an expansion like New Frontiers only happened after a lot of time, discussion, and feedback.

7. What is the one thing you'd like most to change or improve in Camelot?

The guild system was originally my baby. There were many things I dreamed about that never made it into the game due to time and technology restraints, so the upcoming patch, 1.76, will see many exciting additions to the current system. We'll add guild banners that can be carried into battle and captured by the enemy. We're also putting in unique systems for collecting guild dues, and more. I'm very excited about this project, it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time now.

8. What's the best way to get your attention as a player?

For a player to get my attention? Bug appeals, feedback forms, and message boards. Really. I check the bug tracker every day, and the community team that reads your feedback forms reports your issues and concerns to me. I'm also a major lurker on various message boards, so if you're talking about it then I've probably read it.

9. At what point will you consider Camelot "done"?

Camelot will never be "done" as long as people play it. We have a discussion list of items (many of them player requests) that we review and pull from during the planning phase of every patch. We offer spell and style tweaks, as well as major improvements such as the recent artifact decay fixes and the upcoming guild emblem additions in every patch. As long as we have players, we'll continue to support and improve the game experience for them.

10. Does the team balance for PvP first, then PvE, vice versa, or both at the same time?

We balance both at the same time. It's important to look at every angle when talking about balance. Changes may be requested for certain abilities based solely on RvR or solely on PvP, and sometimes the player or developer making the request hasn't considered the impact from every angle. That's fine, because that's the task of the design team. When discussing balance, it's our job to fully consider what the repercussions of the change will be on each aspect of the game. It can be a painstaking process, and we rely on our volunteers and players to help us fine tune the final results.