The tests are happening as we speak, if I understood Mark well - double check their (City State Entertainment) face / tweeter just in case.
60$ tier from the store gives you Beta 1 access (the cheapest one to give you any kind of test access currently; current tests are beta 1, alpha & IT, BUT Beta 1 doesn’t give you access to any test session, there are priorities).
Talking about PvE, check this - http://camelot.gamepedia.com/PvE_in_Camelot_Unchained.
The tests are happening as we speak, if I understood Mark well - double check their (City State Entertainment) face / tweeter just in case.
60$ tier from the store gives you Beta 1 access (current tests are beta 1, alpha & IT).
Talking about PvE, check this - http://camelot.gamepedia.com/PvE_in_Camelot_Unchained.
TLDR is - no quests, no direct PvE leveling (say, by mindlesly killing monsters) and no endgame PvE raids; others than that - pretty much everything.
Awesome, thanks - I’m in :-)
Before you give money, have in mind that this is rather real testing (repetitive stuff, feedback, test sessions happening couple times per month, lots of rough or missing basic features…) than some modern polished fancy early access, it will look much more like a real game once beta stats sometime Q1 2016.
Aaalright, the stream is over (5 hours!), was fun and for what it’s worth here is Vellic’s summary (with Q&A part to be added bit later, I guess!?), Massively OP’s stream announcement and crafting interview with Mark (“Camelot Unchained’s Mark Jacobs on economy, crafting, and Star Wars Galaxies inspiration”), together with MMORPG.com’s interview and (again, just in case) the new crafting document.
Their crafting system and design is almost eerie for me. I’ve had a lot of discussions with a friend over the years about what I really dislike about MMO crafting systems and how I would do it. A surprising amount of stuff is almost word-for-word with what they’re doing with Camelot Unchained. That really excites me, because the “Crafting Class” role is something I’ve been wanting since my blacksmith days in very very early UO.
I used to be a huge MMO fan but I feel like it’s been so stagnant since WoW. I had pretty much written the genre off, but then CU and Crowfall came out with designs that are targeted directly at me. Pretty exciting stuff, if even one of those games turns out to be good I’ll be one happy gamer.
Neat. I plan to take a closer look at those links, but skimming through the crafting one did look very interesting.
I am cautious to drop big money on another MMORPG right now, but I may drop in during Beta at some point to check it out
I’d be tempted to remove “almost” in front of that eerie of yours. I sometimes have black thoughts type of “Who am I trying to trick? The size of CSE’s ambition would easily make even the SWTOR’s budget insufficient…and they have couple bucks less”. As I said before, our only hope is that they will somehow, miraculously, fail at all the “right” places =)
Yep, beta is certainly much better time to judge (connected to that tricky video from the post below).
Allright folks, time for some controversy.
First of all, I have to make a little intro here before the crowd starts going “looks like crap!” (or some appropriate variation of it - as many did on Youtube and reddits): this is an alpha test footage, with pre-alpha low poly/texture models, animations (including even walking) are placeholders etc. - this is NOT the game yet, keep your rotten tomatoes for beta :)
What the video below is showing are some alpha biomes (first half) and 600+ players/bots fighting in a very small area, with high framerate, quite big rendering distance, hundreds of trees/bushes etc. fully rendered etc. - at that point basically any other engine on the market would crash and burn long time ago.
After this little foreplay - here is that infamous video.
Couple more links (some have shinies inside):
[Newsletter 17](http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=2b70fd18d895dd960141bac55&id=ae20874c10)
Yesterday's [Evening Update](http://camelotunchained.com/v2/evening-update-wednesday-december-23rd-2015/), with my favorite pic - [Viking](http://camelot.gamepedia.com/Viking_%28race%29) [caravan](http://camelot.gamepedia.com/Caravans) master (I prefer TDD/Arthurians, but the image is kinda nice):
Another interesting concept is to travel by being actually swallowed by Leviathan!?!
...aaand couple more links (do I hear crickets? ah, never mind):
[Crafting presentation recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyd85Qi1o6s)
[Crafting presentation summary (by Vellic)](http://realmsunchained.com/full-details-on-camelot-unchaineds-crafting-system/)
[Crafting Q&A recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmtAI4DcmM)
[Crafting Q&A summary (by Vellic)](http://realmsunchained.com/crafting-reveal-qa/)
[Camelot Unchained Crafting System Revealed (MMO Huts)](http://mmohuts.com/news/camelot-unchained-crafting-system-revealed).
PS Meantime, we have quite lively discussion on MMORPG reddit about that video upthere, including some folks from CSE.
I know the models/animations/etc are placeholder, but I find the current implementation somewhat charming anyway, for some reason.
In regards to the movement speed in the video, do you know if that’s going to be the speed or is that temporary? It looks slow, but that’s not necessarily bad depending on how the game is set up.
Warhammer was crushed by the avalanche of its engine’s inadequacies. It’s not surprising they’ve focused on getting this right from the start. That video is encouraging.
I guess the speed is going to change couple times before launch - it strongly depends on the concrete shape and size of the world, which is not set in stone yet. Anyway, Bards will have speed buffs that will turn mounts into pack mules, except for situations type of: “Damn, no Bard in party! Let’s mount and crawl away.” :)
At some point in that vid, Andrew says that the actual aim is 1000+ in small area, but “we can not promise anything yet”. I have in mind 1k of non-cloned, armored players in full environment, that is after launch (unlike 3k+ they reached couple days ago without some of these elements).
Camelot Unchained just won the most prestigious of all Massively OP’s end-of-the-year awards - the one for "Longest MMO Newsletter"!
Other games will have to comfort themselves trying to win in some minor categories, such as “GotY” or “Most Anticipated”.
Lol. Trendsetting!
A recent discussion on the meaning of “hardcore” (which is often confused with full loot PvP) inspired me to write couple lines about stuff one can lose in Camelot; Basically, you can lose everything - including your soul - but your boots will remain attached to your corpse.
To make it worse, enemies will have additional choices to either pick it apart for resources or to just cynically inhabit it.
This is not the end - not even the very soil you are walking on is safe from being taken.
If you had anything in vaults, stores, stables… anywhere in your ex-house, ship or caravan - just forget about it.
My favorite part is taking enemy’s soul (with names remembered!) and using it to craft and empower gear <3
Soul taking can (and likely will) be connected to the promised Bounty System, an early stretch goal; Say, you might be able to put a bounty on your own stolen soul!? You can hear Mark speaking about that here (skip to 3:40).
And finally, if all that isn’t hardcore enough for you, you can join some of the hinted FFA servers.
PS Here is my inspiration - it includes comments by Mark Jacobs (CU CEO) and Gordon Walton (! - Crowfall’s co-founder and one of two CEOs), somewhat strange meeting on the interwebz!?
What access level are they currently at for this? I mean, is there a tier you can purchase to get in and play now? What tier is needed?
Are the servers up for people at that tier to play now, or is it only a few select days for a limited time? Wife is looking for something new to play and would like to check this out now if it is available through early access.
Still early for a lot of that, Kelan. Beta 1 should be starting up before too long, but it will be a very early beta. All the testing so far has pretty much been limited window engine/server tests.
Still shoulda done a full healer 8-man squad…
Thanks for the feedback. That is what it seemed like from looking around a bit today. Bummer.
I see Tomb Raider came out on PC today, though, so she should be busy and happy for a little while :).
Others covered it rather well, I’d also recommend waiting. Anyway - beta starts in couple weeks, and NDA should go off shortly after that.
Meantime, new stretch goal is unlocked - Role-playing Pack #1.
Speaking of RPers, this is how we see ourselves:
…and this is how our friends from CSE see us:
