Were you worried that Camelot Unchained would slack off on its newsletters whilst in the pre-beta crunch? You needn’t have — this month’s missive clocks in at over 10,000 words. Among them, Mark Jacobs revisits the game’s Thirty Day doc, writing, “I’m confident in saying that I believe this information dump is one of the largest ever done for a game that was still in a true Alpha.
Moreover, the extra year of tech development for the game is genuinely paying off in a way that should please people tired of ambitionless MMOs and knockoffs. As Jacobs puts it,
“When we launched the Kickstarter, we said that we believed we could deliver on something not seen in any MMORPG to date: large-scale battles (1K or more), where players could maintain a playable FPS without having the best rig from Alienware. While we achieved this last year using the old ability system, the new system is a lot more flexible and complex. Over the last three weeks, we have overdelivered on a stated goal and delivered a powerful message to the Backers that attended: ‘The future is now!'”
The newsletter also includes a revamp of one of the original lore docs, a section on how animations are put together, and a state-of-the build recap covering the progress of the bots during the testing process. PvPers, there’s a nugget for you too in the form of the RvRvPvP chunk. Actually, reluctant-PvPers probably need to hear it more than anyone.
“When you are playing Camelot Unchained you will of course be fighting other players, just as in any PvP game, but since CU is an RvR game, there is a lot more context than there would be in a free-for-all game. Being part of a Realm means you don’t have to fend for yourself. Instead, your day-to-day experience will include participation in a war effort where you always know what side you’re on, where you have allies you can depend on, and where your Realm has important properties that shape the way you experience the game. […] Your Realm is something you can always depend on. As a player, you will always have allies, whether you decide to play entirely solo or join a guild. Having a Realm also means the other players of the same Realm can never turn against you, which creates an environment of trust and comradery that doesn’t exist in a factionless environment.”
Several members of the team are at DragonCon in Atlanta this weekend, so give them a warm welcome!
