Camelot Unchained: Piercing the Veil

[Regolyth]

You just need to learn how to fight, Gack.

[Morreion]

There was a reason I was only RR 3.7 on my main! Heh

I did love the Battlegrounds, though. Was there with lots of alts.

[Regolyth]

You should have stuck with me. I could have had you RR5 in just a couple of weeks (post New Frontiers). ;D

[Morreion]

I don't doubt it!

I was too busy hanging around RP guilds and getting into RP drama at the time!

I preferred Old Frontiers though, even though the castles of New Frontiers looked a lot better.

[Morreion]

Camelot Unchained details progress in latest update (Massively)

According to Jacobs, "Our biggest accomplishment in Sprint 4 was pulling together our entire editor, build system, database, patch server, and patch client into a fully working pipeline." This way, when artists and designers make changes to the world it can be instantly downloaded by the workgroup or even the beta or live game. This paves the way for quick response in the live version.

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Piercing the Veil™ #2 (Camelot Unchained)

TheMeph asked: How will CU reach out to all the possible niche players? Will we see ads and banners, or will it be purely on word of mouth?

We are a niche game as you mention, so I wouldn’t expect to see much in the way of standard ads and banners from us. Mark tells me: “We will do the same sort of stuff we did back when Mythic was developing Dark Age of Camelot. Lots of viral stuff spread out over the next two years should work well for us. If we are more successful at launch than we expect to be, that’s one thing, but we need to spend our money wisely and on the game’s development.”

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Bring Out Your Devs™ – Part 1 (Mark Jacobs) (Camelot Unchained)

Hellraise also asked: About the Middle Eastern investors, what were the strings attached that made you reject their offer? Were they in purely from a ROI perspective or did they want to influence the development?

Initially they were interested in a straight investment deal. As the talks progressed, their focus seemed to shift more to a move of the studio to their country and/or me spending a lot more time there than here. The first part came with a stunning amount of personal gain for me but both carried too much risk for CU as well as potential losses among our team so I had to decline the first part. It’s a shame, I really liked them, their country, etc., and I think we could have done a lot of interesting things together but among the things I said to them was that I had 15K+ Founders who backed CU and I can’t do anything that could put this project at risk.

Some Assembly Required: Mark Jacobs on Camelot Unchained's Kickstarter (Massively)

He admits that some MMOs find success in moving to free-to-play, but he's "been thrilled to see companies such as Supercell and others benefit by their huge success in the mobile market using different models." He continued, "That was one of the things I called out during the interview and follow-up -- that certain companies were going to do very well and unfortunately, more would not."

Conversely, Jacobs pointed out the number of studios that were centered on mobile and/or F2P have been shuttered. Basically, he sees everything as in flux now, but hopes that the industry has room for multiple payment models when things settle. He added,

"I have consistently spoken out for a diversity of models since the more successful ones there are, the better for the industry and for gamers, who can then decide which ones they wish to support. Like every other model/platform/game genre, it's a bit of a roller coaster ride. Right now, mobile and F2P are on still on the upward slope, but as has been the case for games over the last 30+ years, there's always the descent once the crest is reached."

Camelot Unchained has rougher-than-expected development stretch (Massively)

"Unfortunately, this sprint was not as successful as the last one. Due to illness and travel, a number of items either were not fully completed or in a couple of cases, didn't get started [...] Now, we still had a good sprint but it wasn't as good as the last one," he wrote in his latest update.

Jacobs said that the team is still working to get infrastructure in place but has basic combat functioning and animations improved.

Camelot Unchained dev blog talks leprechauns (massively)

City State Entertainment issued a lengthy update this week centered on the Luchorpan race of Camelot Unchained. In the post, CSE walked through the lore of the Luchorpan, a short humanoid race that lists teleportation, ore detection, and distraction as its strengths while confessing slower movement speed, reduced attack chance against tall foes, and line-of-sight restrictions as its weaknesses.

Camelot Unchained Q&A talks box copies, name reservations, and stretch goals (Massively)

Some of the topics included boxed copies of the game being limited for collectors only, name reservations being done on a first-come basis through Founder's Points, and additional funding stretch goals for developing the Depths and adding more team members to the project. The magic system is coming along as well: "Mark [Jacobs] has been writing and editing the magic and combat systems documents and we have had team meetings to give him feedback. Once we have these systems to a point where the team feels that they are exciting and workable, then we can start releasing details to the community."

Camelot Unchained producer: 'Be excited. Be very excited.' (Massively)

Rockwell's December producer letter claims that a game is beginning to emerge from all of the hard work. He reiterates that the main focus is preparing Camelot Unchained for January's internal playtest. He also praised many members of the team, including the animation editor, the engineers, and the artists, for their hard work.

[Regolyth]

I'm so excited for this game. I'm really hoping that they offer the game at a $10 a month subscription, rather than the standard $15 you see now.

[Regolyth]

CU launches December 2015.

Mark Jacobs promises stretch goals won't delay Camelot Unchained

To avoid any future conflict with funders, Jacobs went on to list several principles that his studio will adhere to for stretch goals. He said that future stretch goals must add something very useful to the game, not be thrown in just to raise funding, not require adding too many new people to the team, and be added only if they don't conflict with other goals. Jacobs also indicated that he's perfectly fine with halting further stretch goals or waiting to put them in until the time is right and the team has already finished what it needs to do.

Finally, Mark Jacobs made a sacred vow to fans: "I PROMISE, ON BEHALF OF CSE, NEVER TO ADD, OR ALLOW TO BE ADDED, STRETCH GOALS THAT ENDANGER THE ESTIMATED LAUNCH OF CAMELOT UNCHAINED IN DECEMBER 2015. Okay, now it's official."

Also, there are some nifty tidbits from the latest PtV.

Piercing the Veil #6

Valdi asked: Can we get some more detail on what aging does to our characters?

<Mark bravely walks into the lion’s den.> “Back in the WAR development days I thought that having our characters age and show the effects of aging would be a great thing. I had a feature like that in one of my MUDs and I believed it was time for that to happen in one of my MMOs. Unfortunately, even though that was a planned feature for the game, when it came time to implement it, I was told that we couldn’t do it for a variety of reasons, both technical and production-wise. When I told this story to Andrew a few weeks ago, his reaction was ‘Why didn’t anyone ask me? We can so do that!’ Now, even though that pissed me off a lot (because obviously NOBODY had bothered to ask Andrew before telling me we couldn’t do it and therefore yours truly had more than a little egg on his face with the players), I still like the idea and I asked him whether we could do this for Camelot Unchained. I laid out what I thought was a reasonable way to do this and he said that was a good plan and even easier to implement than what we planned for WAR. So, I’m happy to say that yes, certain races (I won’t commit to all of them yet) will have meaningful changes happen to them; both cosmetic and gameplay. For example, our Dvergr might have more stone covering their body and their beards will grow. Other examples could be with our HelBound’s faces, Hamadryad’s tails, etc.”

Perrin asked: How easily do you envision it to be to jump into the action? If I only have 1 hour per day to play the game what percentage of the content will I be able to enjoy? What sort of content will likely be reserved to those sinking 4+ hours per day?

Ideally any time you hop in, whether it’s for 30 mins or 4 hours, you will be able to accomplish something. Perhaps you hop in and craft something for a short while, or you take an hour to go throw sand in your enemy’s eye and smash their favorite toys. We are aware that some people don’t have as much time to game as they’d like to, and we shall endeavor to provide access to that feeling of accomplishment for these folks too. Heck, you can be of service to your realm even if you just pop on for half an hour and craft potions for them, or scout a bit. Of course the longer you are on, the more noobs you can kill

Revelry also asked: Will there be any looting and/or salvaging of destroyed structures?

During our Kickstarter Mark talked about how players will have a choice in how they approach the destruction of structures. If you go down the ‘burn, baby, burn’ route, there isn’t likely to be very much left for salvage. However, if you choose to try and salvage the house right from the start, picking it apart piece by piece, you will be able to get some materials from it. It’s rather likely that taking the place down stone by stone will take longer, so watch for arrows in the back!

This last one should definitely excite some of you non-PvPers who still enjoyed DAoC, perhaps from the crafting angle.

LucasT asked: Ranches/farms for producing realm support items (food as a necessary component to build structures?? Need to feed the builders…), leathers, wood??? Can I make my own property with a blacksmith shop on it…. Ahhh the possibilities… How much can I expect to do as a crafter, I am fine not being a direct part of the battles if I can contribute to the overall war.

Yessity, yes, yes and let me just say…yes. We absolutely want our Crafters making their own special places to craft and being able to generate basic items from their land. As a Crafter you will be contributing majorly to the battle. In, fact battle would hardly be possible without you. Well, it would be, but it would resemble LARPing without even cardboard gear. Lightning bolt, lightning bolt!

[Morreion]

I'm impressed with how CU is handling its development. They are filling a specific niche and are communicating well with their fans!

[Regolyth]

At some point, before launch, I'll have you committed to picking it up Gack.