cory and paste daoc friday news from cam eu plz

[fortunefish]

guys

plz can sum1 copy and paste the daoc friday news from the www.camelot-europe web site please

playing on 3yr old 56k comp and it wont load thanks you all :worthy:

 

[fortunefish]

mt i mean copy :/

 

[NetNifty]

The Friday News
[2004-3-09]

These Friday news will be almost entirely dedicated to the interview of Matt Firor during the Games Convention, since, as you will see, many subjects concerning the actuality and the future of Dark Age of Camelot have been tackled.
No background piece this time, but the unavoidable tip of week.

Beginning of the tests of Dark Age of Camelot : New Frontiers

As we told you last week, the tests are beginning for New Frontiers since Mythic has completed the 1.70 European version. Our technicians will be mainly working on the configuration of our servers, as this new expansion requires more resources, and the tests in game will really begin next week. We will of course inform you about the progression of these tests but we will wait before announcing a release date, even an approximate one.

Matt Firor's Interview during the Games Convention

As announced last week, we have retranscribed the interview of Matt Firor at our stand in Leipzig, two weeks ago. This one should interest you as it concerns the future of the Game, and of Dark Age of Camelot Europe. Here is the transcription of his entire interview :

"First of all I want to say thank you for coming here. It's always great to see Camelot players coming together because of course we wouldn't have a game without the community. And in many ways of course I work on the game but in all ways you guys are the game. And it's true, I like to say it out loud it's true.

So before I get some questions I want to talk for a little bit about what happened in the last year in Dark Age of Camelot and what's coming up in the next year.

In the last year we brought out a lot of changes in Dark Age of Camelot as you know obviously New Frontiers is launched in America. It hasn't come to Europe yet but I am sure if you read the American boards everyone knows about it already. First of all in the last year we got a lot of work at Mythic to make the game more fun and balanced, but of course major focus was the change to RvR combat which will come to you guys at Fall with New Frontiers that was our main focus for the last almost a year.

First of all, if you read the American boards, you'll see that New Frontiers is a collaborative thing with all the community because we put all the community posts and of course even the European ones into account of feedback what you like in RvR and what you didn't like in RvR and we used that as our foundation in making New Frontiers.
And of course this is the first time we ever approached an expansion like this. Before with the other expansion we just kind of did normal game development things but we know that everyone loves RvR so much that we wanted to make absolutely sure that we were doing the right thing when we changed RvR combat because as you all know RvR is Camelot in many ways, it's probably the distinctive part of the game.

And of course we're not done this year, in America anyway and soon in Europe you'll get this too we are also working on another expansion Catacombs which is really another art upgrade to the game. So we always made every year one big art upgrade which makes the world look better it makes the old and new parts look better. So it's an exciting time for us because not only that we have Frontiers but we are also looking forward to Catacombs.

But of course we are always be working on RvR and balancing and making sure that things are ok even if we work on the expansions we always work on feedback to make sure what we are doing is pretty much what the community expects and demands.

So basically New Frontiers is now for us and as you've already seen we made on the American servers many changes in New Frontiers even after launch to make sure that is stable and it's what people expect. So next comes Catacombs and we work on that and that will take us out for the rest of the year.

I'd also like to say that is a lot of fun to come to Germany because I know Germany is actually the number two country which regards server population to Dark Age of Camelot. It is second only to the United States. It is always good to come here. I was actually here last year for a little bit too and it's just great to see so many people that play Dark Age of Camelot and it is a real thrill for me to come over here. So now I understand you have some questions.

How is the attitude of Mythic Ent. towards the European community and GOA as the publisher ?

When Dark Age of Camelot launched in America in 2001 we were up against two very big MMORPGs that were already in America and very large in America, Everquest and Ultima Online. So we knew to be successful to really make it we had to concentrate on bringing Camelot to Europe.
And Camelot is of course based on European myths and legends so we knew that there would be a lot of people here that would be interested in the concept. We had no idea that we would be so successful. But it's in many ways the success of Camelot in Europe that made success of Mythic because we hold our ground in America against the other products but in Europe we are far and ahead away of the other products because of you people. Of course Europe is very important to us and we take European opinions to Camelot very seriously.

Is GOA able to send in feedback from the European community or players and is it taken into account ?

Yes, absolutely. We have a team of people at Mythic in America lead by Sanya Thomas who is charge of internet feedback in general. I know that personally many of you sent her emails because she gets a lot of German emails, in English, everyday and she reads these emails like any other feedback that she gets.
And of course we have a very close relationship with GOA. And on a corporate level they send us feedback of course from the feedback that they get from people like you and of course from other players from other countries.

Can we expect to see class improvement for those being let's say not so useful for regular hunting groups so these classes will be more viable to play whether it's PvM or RvR ?

This question boils down to of course "nobody is perfect". And of course, we make mistakes too. I mean Mythic Entertainment is by no means all knowing. And of course we got our design process to be the best that it can be. But if you read the patch notes over the last three years you know that we really try to do a job about making sure that everyone's character feels worthy in the game. And if they not, the feedback comes to us and eventually we make changes. This has been our point since we launched the game in 2001 and we will always continue I am sure. I mean that was really the goal we always work at this and of course every day we get feedback from almost every class that says that they need help and we know some classes need help and some don't, so we have many people that do nothing but test to make sure that classes are ok and we do make changes where appropriate as you see in every patch note.

How do you handle those critical postings on the fan boards ? Personally and from the view of your position in Mythic Ent. ?

The most important thing to remember when you're reading critical posts on the boards it is that if people wouldn't care about the game, they wouldn't go onto message boards and write messages about it. So it shows how passionate people are about the game.
It's bad for me to read posts about the game but it would be far worse if no ones posts anything about DAoC because that would mean that no-one was interested. We read the boards of course, we have people to do that, I read the boards, we have people to read feedback contributed critical because people want to feel like they belong in Camelot and they want to feel like being part of the community but if they feel their class isn't strong enough of course they are upset. And as I answered in the last question we are always in an ongoing process of making all classes more balanced.
One more thing about critical posts on the boards is of course, sometimes we actually find things we didn't know in posts on the boards, so we read them because you guys get into the game at a level where even us developers can't at some points because you play the same game and the same character over and over again and you notice the little things, so in a critical post sometimes we can discover things we didn't know and that need to be fixed.

So what about Buffbots ?

It wouldn't be a day if I get out of here without having to answer a question about buffbots. To understand about buffbots you have to understand of course as I said two questions ago : Mythic isn't perfect. Of course we introduced this system where players acquire buffbots and get advantages over players who don't have buffbots. By the time we really realized how many people were doing this it of course was very widespread.
Now we are in a situation where some people love buffbots and most of you hate them. What we try to do is to make lots of little changes over time to make buffbots less attractive to people. If we just one day strike them down then the people that have loved to play buffbots of course won't play anymore and we don't want to make that huge change. We want to make them not appreciate the buffbots so much but still continue to play.
One example that we do to make buffbots less attractive : in Catacombs for example - we haven't released information about the classes yet - but I can tell you that the classes will be much less reliant on buffbots and on buffs in general. They will be a little more self-reliant, so with the new classes it won't be quite so necessary to have a buffbot so players of those classes can compete ; one example.
Read the patchnotes in the future as we do a lot of little things as we try to alleviate the problem.

Is Mythic Ent. going to look at the classic zones and especially at the capitals ? Are your designers planning to improve those areas and make them more attractive for players ?

In Catacombs - and we haven't talked about this anywhere so you are hearing this for the first time - a lot of the concept that you get will just start from the capital city. So we want to actually re-interest people in going to the capital cities and going crafting there and making it more the home of the realm like they were intended to be when we developed it.
Every time we try and find more and more things for the capital city to do. In terms of art it is very hard for us to upgrade the capital cities because they are in artistic terms one big model. You can't change a couple of things without changing the whole model. We are trying not to change the art just make more things happen in the city so what people are doing feels more alive.

Will you improve the roleplay for example with the possibility to sit on chairs and lie on beds or with the chance to place guild emblems or jewels for example on your breastplate ?

That is actually a very good question. It is more complicated to answer than you would think. It comes down to every day we have a list of items of things that we want to do in Dark Age of Camelot. Let's call it the List.
So of course we wanted these things like better roleplaying emotes and being able to lie down on a bed and sit and we look at the list and every day the list has things like - after New Frontiers launched in America - make sure that the Animists don't dominate the game. And it's very difficult for me to justify working on lying down on a bed versus making sure that the game itself is balanced at a common RvR level.
For example if you read the latest patch notes in America that came out about two days ago we went through and made a lot of TOA encounters a lot easier. That was one of the things on the list "Make TOA encounters easier" Which I know everyone will appreciate. So once again roleplaying things got bumped off the list to make the game more fun for players. There is always a balance from the development perspective, do we add more fun things or do we make the game more balanced. I always choose make the game more balanced.
Of course it's not all about RvR so we'll get to better emotes, better fun things to do. We do try to add that from time to time. With Catacombs first we are changing the character models and with that come changes to the animations too. So hopefully at that time we'll be able to put a lot more cool things that are fun and just put them all into the expansion so everyone can get them at once.

I just want to thank everyone again for coming. I want to thank GOA for inviting me to come here and meet everyone. You don't know what's like for me sitting in a room for years making a game and then I get to come out and see people that are actually playing it and having fun with it. Actually it is real thrill because I see people posting on the internet I see they are having fun but it is that much more thrill for me to come and see everyone in person."

The problems on Ys, Brocéliande and Excalibur have been fixed

As you may have noticed with the interventions of last week, a problem had affected Ys, Brocéliande and Excalibur servers, and could have happened on other servers. We have used all necessary means in order to solve this problem and thanks to the patches prepared by Mythic that we have passed this week, everything is now working as intended.

Tip of the week
Secondary capacities of the artefacts

Many of you are not using the secondary capacities of your artefacts, sometimes because you don't know it, and more often because you don't know how to proceed to use it. Indeed, it is not easy to write a command when you need to use it quickly.

You should thus know that the in game command to use this secondary capacity is /use2 and corresponds to the default keyboard shortcut Shift + U. But if you would rather use a shortcut with a single key, you can change it if by going in the Option Menu -> configure key board -> and then choosing a key for the : use item 2nd. So, you will have an easy and quick access to these secondary effects.

Have a nice week-end and a nice game !

 

[Tareregion]

seems the interview is a copy and paste from babelfish :| such a pain to read :<

 

[Flimgoblin]

seems the interview is a copy and paste from babelfish :| such a pain to read :<

given Matt Firor is american I'd seriously doubt that.

 

[Cyfr]

They translated it to french then back to English!

 

[IainC]

seems the interview is a copy and paste from babelfish :| such a pain to read :<

Nope it's a word for word transcription from a Q&A session at Leipzig (in English). Because people don't speak in the same way as they would write, it reads a little odd as you don't have the pauses and inflections that would make it flow better.