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The DC Roundtable has finished up, and I've gotta say it was a lot of fun. Everything went smoothly, and Mythic has got an incredible bunch of people working for them. Every single one of them was friendly, helpful, and the love they have for their game showed.
The day started with a short speech from Mark Jacobs where he expressed his pride in Mythic's product and his hopes for the future.
Matt Firor then talked about Shrouded Isles, DAoC's future expansion. He outlined the basic design of the three new races, 6 professions, and 3 island territories with their own capital cities and 2 new dungeons each.
For Albion, the new territory is Avalon. The new race, the Inconnu, are small, goblin-ish underground beings with ghastly white skin and dark black eyes. One of the new professions is Necromancer, and the other is the melee hybrid Reaver.
For Hibernia, the new territory is Hy Brasil, a 'pristine' forested area home to the new race, sylvans. Sylvans are tall, skinny dryad related creatures with bark-like skin and foliage colored 'hair' (the one they showed had gorgeous autumn rust and red colors). The new professions are Vale-walkers and Animist.
For Midgard, the new territory is Aegir, with an underground city named Trollheim, and is the original homeland of the trolls and kobolds. The land is harsh, and is also home to the new midgard race, a tall, neanderthalic race called the Vallkyn. The new professions are Bone-dancers and Savages (hand to hand combat melees that wear 'weapons' on their hands)
There are interesting faction backstories for each of the new territories. There are 'good-guys' and 'bad-guys' fighting for the territory, so expect to see some interesting quests involved with helping the 'good-guys' defend the lands.
They then showed us a brief preview of the graphics engine that is being used in Shrouded Isles, and boy does it look awesome. If you've played Morrowind, you've seen the capabilities of this engine.
First they showed us the river that runs through Camelot Hills. Wow. Does it look good, let me tell you. Reflections, and the water actually looks like a river now, flowing downstream.
Next they showed off their plans to make more exciting terrain, with stony cliffs and more realistic mountainous areas.
They saved the best for last though. Picture an icy cave, reflections everywhere. As you travel through it, you see the skeletal remains of a huge dragon. Huge, I tell you. The wings forming the roof of one of the caverns, the body a slippery tunnel. You really have to see it to believe how gorgeous this was.
They next brought out the spellcrafting team of Spyke Alexander and Erik Krebs (Archon). While the crowd tried to wipe the drool off their faces from the ice cave pictures, these two just made it worse as they showed the design for spellcrafting/alchemy. It's going to be neat, and I foresee crafters becoming even more respected ingame than they already are. The level and quality of the item will determine how much spellcrafting and alchemy it can hold. They also let out a secret that is going to make the crafters ingame even happier. One of the benefits of alchemy will be to increase the quality of items...possibly up to a maximum of 105%. With up to four new spells per item and several alchemical options (such as particle effects and charged spells), crafters are going to be high demand. They also let out that they will be adding merchant NPCs near the crafting areas that crafters can drop crafted items on and the NPCs will sell them to the general population. Crafter can pick up their profits after their work has been sold. The downside is, there probably won't be consignments for the two new skills, but they are hoping the new NPC vendors will replace that need. They also said in one of the breakout sessions that they hope to give crafters a respec option for those who want to change their profession.