The developers of Camelot Unchained have reached out to the community in a letter. This was about a major innovation expected to be released in January.
What is it about? Mark Jacobs, the lead designer of Camelot Unchained, has unusually spoken out in a letter to the community about an upcoming innovation.
The fans of the MMORPG should see everything that the developers have been intensively working on since July 2019 in January. In the last few months, there have hardly been any major innovations or game updates.
It should be a “big, immersive experience” that will be different from anything shown before. Jacobs states:
I try to avoid exaggerations, but it truly is a significant update and its importance for our backers, Camelot Unchained, the Unchained Engine, and CSE will, well, be quite obvious.
What is behind the announcement? As grand as the innovation sounds, we already know that it does not involve a release date or anything similar. Camelot Unchained is currently not advanced enough for that.
The major topic over the past months has been NPCs and their implementation in the MMORPG. It is therefore highly likely that the innovation will head in that direction.
A fun experience for everyone?
What do we know about the innovation? Mark Jacobs has shared some hints about the innovation and a poem with the readers in the letter. From this, it can be inferred that
- The big announcement is intended to be a fun experience and not just a tech demo.
- It includes a lot of “new and fun content”.
- It revolves around big battles.
- Not everything is currently optimized, so backers with strong hardware are being sought to test the innovation early.
The poem also suggests that the innovation paves the way for a more complete game. Currently, the Beta 1 primarily tests individual scenarios of the MMORPG.
What does this have to do with NPCs? The focus over the past months has been on the NPCs in Camelot Unchained. Although the game is a PvP sandbox MMORPG, the computer-controlled fighters still play an important role:
- They are to defend the fortresses with you and even in your absence against enemies.
- They are to escort caravans.
- They are to serve as merchants from whom you can buy and sell items.
The developers of Camelot Unchained are working on a dynamic system called “The Overmind”, which aims to adjust the number of NPCs based on player activity.
It is quite possible that this system has now been completed and will be implemented in January. This may potentially be combined with a fully open world. That would at least bring Camelot Unchained closer to a finished game version.
In August, we looked at the development of Camelot Unchained in the first half of 2019:
