DAOC 2? "Camelot Unchained" Announced

I, for one, am stoked:

Me too. I wonder what “old school mmorpg” specifically means.

Its a marketing word now, which basically means “Hey, we want you in your 30’somethings that used to play the old DAOC but now makes tons of money to come play our game”.

That said, being the MMO-Whore I am, I am excited! ;-)

They need to lure Walter back before I’ll get really excited…but I think he’s staying in (oops) Boston.

oh - Launching on kickstarter? An MMO on kickstarter would need serious amounts of capital, as I understand it. Of course, it could be supplemental, but then again, doing a kickstarter is pretty strange.
I guess we will know soon enough what the plan is.

That’s what I was thinking. I would think they’d need several million at least if they are funding it through KS.

Perhaps they’re doing the same approach Star Citizen did, use raised capital from Kickstarter to show to investors. I guess we’ll be finding out.

I’d be a lot more excited for this concept before GW2 launched, but I feel the WvW in that is a solid successor to DAOC’s RvR. They’re going to have to raise the bar in both the base game mechanics and RvR to get me to bite at this point, but I’ll be watching with interest.

Indeed. Targeting adults.

Ironically it also means they will not be implementing game in any “old school” way, because audience now richer, has less time and less willing to put up with a bullshit time-wasters and cockblocks.

Advertising old-school means that it will be as “new” school as anything that came after WOW - casual, forgiving and with tons of moneterization built into it.

I did like the joke in the middle of the teaser, though I’m not totally convinced that’s a wise move. Then again, the teaser doesn’t really say much, so I guess they might as well make it humorous.

I’m excited about this. I haven’t played many MMORPGs but of the few I did (Anarchy Online, Everquest, DAoC, Warhammer Online), Dark Age Of Camelot was the only one that really hooked me.

I hope they put in another Darkness Falls. Some of the running battles through the dungeon when realm ownership switched hands were a hoot.

I enjoyed my time in DAOC. I’ll be watching this with cautious interest.

What’s the point? All the original devs are gone.

The “license” is the single element in DAoC that was crap. Just bland mishmash of mythology.

If you liked DAoC then you have reasons to NOT play this.

Oh, just noticed “Mark Jacobs”. The one guy full of himself without any idea about game design. I’ll watch this indeed. It will be fun.

I like RvR in GW2 as well, but having three distinct factions, with different sets of classes really is what set DAoC apart. Warhammer of course had distinct classes as well, but was limited to two factions.

I read something somewhere – Eurogamer I think – that quoted Mark Jacobs as saying there would be virtually no PvE in the game. It will be all RvR. That has piqued my interest.

Still, it has to be a long way off. I am betting it’s three years out at this point. I don’t even want to think about it much.

Mr. Jacobs’ latest post: “Foundational Principle #1 – Be willing to take risks, even if fortune doesn’t always favor the bold”

Excerpts:

Being safe is for tourists and for most casual games. This is the wrong game, wrong genre, wrong developer and wrong time to be safe. We will take chances with lots of aspects of this game. We are not afraid to take a stance on what we believe will make a great game even if it means angering (and losing) some potential customers. To quote one of my favorite movies, “This is a revolution dammit! We are going to have to offend somebody.”

To say this game’s design will be fraught with risks is an understatement. I know it would be very easy just to go out and use buzzwords like “sandbox” lots and lots in describing this game to attract players and investors. I could also go out and talk about how this game “Will revolutionize PvE!” and attract another group of players and investors (that whole mass market thing) but yet I choose to make an RvR-focused game that even if successful has no chance of threatening Dark Age of Camelot’s peak subs (250k), let alone something much larger like EQ1. What I want to do is take chances with this game that most, if not all, publishers wouldn’t want to take with it and that’s exactly what we are going to do.

Up next: RvR, it’s just not for endgame anymore!

Interesting, so they’re going for more of a niche MMO rather than a blockbuster? That’s something I’ve been wanting for quite a while, rather than generic WoW clones that try to appeal to all and often end up appealing to very few.

The problem is that the art assets and other things they need to do to build an MMO may not be any cheaper to make than it would take to create those assets for a game with bigger ambitions. I’m not sure how you scale down cost when your target is a reduced number of subscribers.

I guess if they don’t have much PvE in the game that will result in some savings.

Absolutely. The cost of doing a niche game is going to be that it can’t be as big or as broad in scope. I mean, there’s no way you’re going to be running a team of 200+ people for a game you are expecting to have fewer subscribers than your previous one. I’m okay with that, though. I think the MMO field could use some niche products and diversification, even if that means they’re not quite so Massive. By definition that doesn’t mean that they’re all going to be for me (a lot probably won’t), but it increases the chance of one of these games being right up my alley.

EVE is a perfect example, it’s definitely not a game trying to (or expecting to) cater to everyone. I can’t personally get into it, but for the people who love that game there’s really nothing else out there like it. I hope the MMO field invigorates itself by exploring different niches like that, it’s all just been so samey for almost a decade now. I’ll have to wait and see if DAOC2 sounds like it’s right for me, but I’m glad to see a studio talking about wanting to make a particular game, even if that’s a niche.

The big problem with Mark Jacobs is the rhetoric. Does this quote tell anything about the game, or even suggesting a positive stance?

Nope. It’s “feel good”, complacent type of speech. You go nowhere with that because it’s entirely empty of ideas and motivations. Empty self-praise is the death of balanced judgement.

“We’re ready to take chance with design” means absolutely nothing and makes no difference between them and everyone else. It’s just about a childish behavior of someone who paints himself into that mythical and praiseworthy figure of the man who defies everything with his courage and ambition. And if he fails he already has the words ready to continue praise himself about his courage, about making a MMO when it’s not a secure business practice and so on. The HERO against all odds. 95% of Jacobs attention goes into flattering himself in seemingly indirect ways, and wishful thinking.

That quote speaks aloud about how Mark Jacobs perceives what he does and himself.

Up next: RvR, it’s just not for endgame anymore!

He said the same thing about Warhammer. He seems like the politician who broke every promise he made and then continues to ask for votes proposing the exact same thing all over again without even admitting any fault.

How can you make a good mmorpg if you can’t even start to understand what went wrong in all previous attempts and still think that bad results either weren’t bad (but merely perceived bad), or caused by conspiracies (EA or whoever)?

P.S.
Can’t help seeing Silvio Berlusconi all over him. They share that exact bloated, blind ego that can only completely obscure good judgement.