Catacombs Q&A #1
Interviews
information
11/09/2004
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Catacombs is the next major Player versus Monster focused expansion of Dark Age of Camelot. Matt Firor, despite his extremely busy schedule, took a little time to answer our questions on Catacombs and revealed some exciting news. Catacombs, apparently, is going to enter Open Beta this week and therefore will be available for testing by any current Dark Age of Camelot subscriber. There still is a 7-Day Trial available at Fileplanet, if you want to get a glance at the game before Catacombs hits the shelves and brings five new classes (two for each realm except Albion), extremely well done new protagonist models and of course the Catacombs: underground adventuring areas beneath the realms of Midgard, Albion and Hibernia. Now, we hope you enjoy the interview and the first exclusive super high resolution screenshots.
Interview with Matt Firor
Marian: Could you introduce yourself to our readers?
Matt Firor: I'm Matt Firor, Executive Producer at Mythic Entertainment. I've been at Mythic since it was founded in 1995. I was the original Producer of Dark Age of Camelot - as well as most other Mythic titles. Right now I'm Executive Producing Dark Age of Camelot expansions as well as Imperator, Mythic's next title.
Marian: First off, my deepest respect for all of the Dark Age of Camelot team for constantly providing such a high level of quality. And speaking of quality - we've been very impressed by the steep rise in quality on the protagonist models coming with Catacombs! But what about the lag produced by it? Will my PC break down in one of the pretty frequent PvP raids in DAoC now?
Matt Firor: Thanks for the kind words about Camelot; we are very proud of the work that we've done on the game to date. You bring up a very good question about the video requirements for Catacombs, the next Dark Age of Camelot expansion. Our goal is to provide a substantial graphics upgrade for those users who have cards that can fully support the new models - a DX 9 card. With this configuration, they should see as good a frame rate as they do now in Camelot. However, if someone has an older card, they can still see some of the new enhancements at little or no framerate cost. Players always have the option of viewing the older models, however, should they find that necessary.
Marian: You also state that you will probably be adding "fun additions such as blinking eyes and moving fingers". How about cloaks that wave in the wind?
Matt Firor: We are working on the cloak animations right now, and they are proving to be very difficult. It is hard to get just the right illusion of cloth flapping in the wind without actually having any wind! We hope to have the problems ironed out soon.
Marian: Will there be any improvement beyond what Frontiers brought to the PvP System, or will Catacombs be a PvM only expansion like Trials of Atlantis?
Matt Firor: Catacombs is a Player vs. Monster expansion - it focuses almost entirely on providing players of the game new areas to explore. The sole exception to this is, of course, the five new classes that we are introducing into the game with Catacombs, all of whom will bring their talents to the RvR battlefields.
Marian: In addition to the last question - Will the underground areas only be available as instanced dungeons, or will there be PvP battlegrounds underground? I'd imagine that the 3 Realms could be connected via tunnels under the ocean somehow.
Matt Firor: Well, because of the fact that we're not focusing on RvR for this expansion, we're not going to have RvR instanced areas at this time. It's something we may consider down the road for Camelot, now that we have the technology.
Marian: We've seen speculations about the new character class names and what realm they will belong to, but no official word. Can you clear up what the new classes will be, and which realm they are available to? (Speculations say new classes will be Valkyrie, Banshee, Warlock and Vampiir and of course the officially unveiled Zealot on Albion)
Matt Firor: We've recently changed the Zealot's name to the Heretic (much better sounding and fits the nature of the class better) - other than that, he's the same as when we introduced him. And yes, you are corect; the other classes being introduced are the Valkyrie and Warlock for Midgard and the Bainshee and Vampiir for Hibernia.
Marian: Will Vampiir's be actually based on the Vampire myth, and hence need to drink blood and need to stay away from sunlight?
Matt Firor: Our take on the Vampiir is more of an energy thief than a "blood" thief. He'll need to sap energy from his enemies in order to cast his spells. We'll be testing this concept out in the beta test that is just now getting underway.
Marian: What's the current progress, and will there be a (Closed) Beta Test of Catacombs?
Matt Firor: We've been in various phases of beta for about weeks now and are about to go Open Beta this week.
Marian: Are there any plans to implement mounts for players in either Catacombs, a patch or a future expansion? (Player controllable)
Matt Firor: Now that's the $24 question! As any long-time player of the game can tell you, this is something we've been thinking about for a long time, and right now we’re planning on getting a player-owned horse system into the game sometime after Catacombs launches.
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