Camelot Unchained, the spiritual successor of Dark Age of Camelot, is gradually approaching its first beta phase.
As already mentioned last year, part of the “Camelot Unchained” development team traveled to Dragon-Con in Atlanta over the American Labor Day weekend. Once again, there was a dedicated panel for the game during which a new trailer was released, showcasing what has improved over the past year. But see for yourself!
As can be seen in the video, the game already features better graphics, a new physics-based rendering, more realistic lighting and shadow representations, as well as many other details. The team is definitely very confident that the start of the first beta phase of Camelot Unchained, after the beta has already been postponed twice, is just around the corner.
However, the team has not yet been able to address other areas of the game. This includes the animations, which are all still placeholders, as can be seen from the odd running movements.
The reason for this is that City State Entertainment has primarily focused on the technical aspects of Camelot Unchained and the development of their new in-house engine. A decision that is paying off. Because after the team successfully tested mass battles with around 600 bots and players at the end of last year, nearly 1000 players have been possible in current tests.
Free-to-play? Not okay!
In addition to the video presentation, Mark Jacobs (CEO) also addressed the topic of Free-to-Play (F2P) and emphasized what he made clear at the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign: “There is absolutely no chance that this game will ever become Free-to-Play!”
This time, Jacobs even goes a step further and says he would rather pull the plug on the game than switch the payment model from subscription to F2P. Although they would later offer so-called free trials to give players the chance to check out the game shortly before purchasing, nothing more than that, because according to Jacobs, F2P has no future.
Free-to-play is bad for developers because it devalues their work and takes away the planning security from studios. And on the other hand, it is also bad for players, who would be treated like walking wallets:
What message would we send if our societal contribution consisted of players saying, ‘your sweat, the time and energy your team has put into a game is not worth paying for.’ Could you imagine walking into a restaurant and saying to the waiter, ‘Wow, that was a really delicious meal. But you know what? I don’t feel like paying for it right now, why don’t you just charge the guy next to me twice.’ Such behavior would not be right!
Finally, we would like to show you this video in which Mark Jacobs takes you on a tour of the new biome. Enjoy!
