So I picked up the Dark Age of Camelot expansion Catacombs and what follows is my first experience in these new areas. I installed the game first of course which comes on 4 cd’s. And like the other expansion packs for Camelot this is a whole new version of the game. Each expansion that has come out has had it’s own client for the game. Which means that I’ve wasted another 2 gigs or so for this game that I’ll play maybe for a month at the most and end up canceling again.

Then of course I patch. Patching Catacombs involves the normal Camelot patching system plus a download of some bigger file not added by the patcher. No problem here of course since the expansion has been out a while and it’s not having to patch everyone and their brother. Once the game loads up your greeted with a new character selection screen, which is a nice fluff feature added by the expansion. All of my character except my level 50 were able to change their faces here at this screen. Turk (my level 50) could not do so. Which is no big deal as I found out I can talk to a npc in game to do this later. I picked my 50 and entered the game.

And of course I zone into Avalon City. This of course just shows how long ago it was I played the game last. So to get to these new expansion areas I have to run to a nearby town and take a horse to another town where I’m able to teleport to Camelot City. Then one goes behind the church and enters the Roman Aqueducts. And this is where the games unfriendliness becomes very apparent. You zone into this area and there is no real indication of where you need to go, other than heading forward. I guess I’ve grown used to WoW and it’s hold my hand approach.

So I’m exploring these Roman Aqueducts and having a general fun time minus the fun. I go past this Blue shiny thing and pay no attention to it. Which was a mistake because it is an Obelisks that transports you into the city for your side. But I had no idea and I explore all around this maze that is the Roman Aqueducts. And I’m having a fairly decent go at it until I come to a dead end which the only way to go is to jump off down to your death.

And of course I skillfully manage to fall to my death at this dead end as I’m making my way out of it. Which is no big deal I’m level 50 the experience loss is not an issue nor is the 17 gold it costs to buy back my con. It’s just the whole idea of this death. It’s like the game (or the developers) relish the idea of killing the player.

I can invision some sort of big scoreboard at Mythic that keeps a tally everytime the game kills one of their players. And again maybe I’ve been babied to much by World of Warcraft. But I just can’t find the fun in it anymore and I’ve tried. Oh well I’ll spend a few more days in Camelot as I gain up some great rested xp in WoW and see how many more times Catacombs can kill me.

Well I have returned to the game Dark Age of Camelot. And don’t think for a second that I’m forgetting about World of Warcraft. It’s just that I’ve grown to used to the company of all the people in the guild I’m in. Playing WoW without them is just boring. So I decided last week that I would reactivate my account and start playing again. And it appears this was a good time to get back into the game. A huge patch just came out today that make some of the more painful parts of Camelot a little less painful. Which is good because I don’t like pain.

I also picked up my first artifact tonight thanks to some help from my friends. It’s called the Harpy’s Feather Cloak. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I got to find three scrolls to activate the damn thing. And on top of that once activated I have to level the artifact for it to get more special abilities. I just can’t wait.

But I’m happy to have something to do again in the game. For a long time my only goal was getting 50. And afterwords I felt like I no longer had a purpose in the game. Which was my own fault for wanting to hit 50 so bad. I still have all kinds of things to do. Like try out this new frontiers that I hear such bad things about. And of course I will continue to preach WoW to all the guildies.

It doesn’t happen often. Usually I hate it. But tonight was different. I actually had fun RvRing in Dark Age of Camelot. For those of you who don’t play Camelot or mmorpg’s in general, RvR is realm versus realm. Which is what Camelot calls PvP (player versus player). RvR in general is a chaotic mess in Camelot. It is unorganized and the side with the most numbers wins. It’s called zerging in the game. A term coined from the game Starcraft. There are no tactics involved to the RvR portion of the game.

Below are a few screen shots showing off my kill spams. You have to look in the upper text window to see it. It just says “you killed so and so”, to others it says who did the killing.

In the group were two fellow guildies, Dderapapp and Etnoan. When I do play I enjoy the company of my guildmates. Dderapapp is the leader of the guild and a guy that has been playing as long as me. Except he has the level 50’s to show for the time he’s spent playing the game. Etnoan is funny guy and will probably soon hit 50, way before I do.

One of these days I do plan on getting at least one character to 50. It’s kind of become my goal in life, at least my life in this mmorpg. You could say it’s my New Year’s resolution. One resolution I would like to fulfill. I’ve added my in game experience bar under my character picture on my website (on the right hand side down towards the bottom) to remind myself just how far I have to go.

So the new Dark Age of Camelot expansion has been out for a bit. I finally picked it up the other day. Trials of Atlantisadds some new stuff to the two year old game. The biggest question of course is it worth the 30 bucks? The answer to that question all depends on your point of view. Before I get into that, take a look at these eight screen shots (1024×768):

Now first off the name alone should tell you what kind of content has been added. Water my man in case your slow at these kind of things. To some it may seem like a cheap gimmick. Personally I like it.

Last night was the first time I actually got scared playing the game. When I saw that big fish in screens 3&4 I just about jumped out of my seat. I was afraid for my character. I had a similar reaction to seeing my first shark in the game. And you can’t discount that kind of thing. Of course I’ve always been into the whole underwater thing. I watched Sea Hunt religiously when I was a little kid.

Other new features include in no particular order own-able boats, master levels, new zones, pretty new graphics, uber items, and of course sharks. I am a little disappointed that you can’t play pirate. I mean it’s kind of a let down with all this water and boat theme they got going on.

So is it worth buying? Yes and no. I’m not exactly a diehard player of the game. In fact I can get pretty bored with it fast. So this new content gives me a reason to play. To some others it may seem like fluff. But that’s up to you to decide.

I did some realm versus realm yesterday. I figured out why I don’t really care for RvR. I’m dead more than I like. Anyway here are some shots (1024×768) from a few of the engagements from yesterday.

The last three are oddball shots I found to fill out the rest. Two graphical glitches and a Shrouded Isles monster.

Well you should have known that I was going to throw up some shots of the Dark Age of Camelot expansion pack Shrouded Isles. There would have been four more but the servers were coming down. But don’t worry I will snap off some more later.

So far it’s not bad. I was a little worried when I saw the printed requirements on the box. The box recommends Pentium III 1.4 GHz processor and the preferred video card is a GeForce 4 Ti. I’m happy to report that it runs fine, even at my usual resolution of 1152×864.

The graphics upgrade is nice. But I feel that this should have been offered also as a free download. But hey what can you do? I have only briefly explored some of the new continent that Albion gets. I do dig the new interface. They also give you some options for adjusting sound and video settings without quiting to the menu. I will have more screen shots later. It’s time for bed, for me.

Well I got my disks for the Star Wars Galaxies beta. But I have yet been able to play. It appears they have the servers up only at certain times. So I’m waiting to see what it will be like.

I stopped playing Earth and Beyond. It was lots of fun at first. But after week it was boring. That’s ok. Because Dark Age of Camelot has it’s first expansion pack coming out today. Shrouded Isles is the name of the expansion pack. It will add more content and upgrade the graphics engine. It also is supposed to have a improved interface. But I hadn’t seen any released screens of it. So I did a search on Google and found one. It looks pretty slick.

I was going to wait to pick up the expansion, but I may have to go get it today.