Folks,

We had a small setback with a character named Wart today, so instead of having our building & mining systems reveals, tonight’s update will have a text teaser, a few other juicy nuggets of information and a heaping helping of concept art. Tomorrow, baring any more nonsense from dear little Wart, we will pull back the curtain on what I expect will be a very interesting and important update from us. That update will then be followed with another lengthy update, which will address other issues related to housing and mining that were not covered in the first video update.

Building a world – Teaser

As you know, the world of Camelot Unchained has gone through an extinction level event and unfortunately, it needs a lot more than a few screen doors to put it back on the right track; it’s truly a major fixer-upper! The goal of our crafting, gathering and building systems are to give players that ability to not only repair the few structures that may be found in the world but also to build a new world out of the rubble of the old world.

Unlike most other MMORPGs, outside of three main cities (one for each realm of course), there aren’t a lot of large structures left standing throughout the known world. Each of these cities is surrounded by an impenetrable mountain range, which protects them both from attacks by the other realms but also from the vagaries and power of the Veilstorms.

Veilstorms are more than simply bad weather days; these storms can bring both destructive power and chaotic change to the lands that they sweep across. While these and other events that plague this world will be covered in a future update, suffice it to say that these terrible storms devastated this world when the Veil was pierced. While the result of these Veilstorms is not always pure destruction, nobody welcomes their coming even with the occasional good fortune that can arise from them. Fortunately, the frequency of these storms has decreased over the years as “The Three” and their armies have stabilized small parts of the world.

As such, the players of Camelot Unchained, will be faced with the daunting challenge of having to rebuild a shattered world while at the same time, engaging in TriRealm™ warfare. Our job at CSE is to put the necessary tools in the players’ hands to create this world and we fully intend to do that. We will build the main cities, we will lay out the lands in exquisite detail, build the mines, the forests, the Depths, the NPCs, etc. but after that, it will be up to our crafters and builders to do the rest. The world will truly be in the hands of our players.

Since I mentioned mines, I want to be very clear that our mines are not the type found in most MMORPGs. Forget using a hammer to strike on an exposed cropping of gold, silver, etc. to extract material. Our mines are real mines that our players will have to go down into in order to obtain the materials that they seek. These mines will also last quite a while and yield enough minerals that our players will not need to spend most of their time wandering around the world looking for mines. They won’t “pop” like most other MMORPGs because frankly, we want to go down a different shaft for this game. ☺

Now, while building a world is fun for some, there are other people who are much more interested in tearing things down, especially when they belong to an enemy realm(s). In Camelot Unchained you will have the ability to do that as often as you are able. Let’s face it, seeing a town burn down to the ground and then taking out some marshmallows and singing Viking “town fire” songs is just plain old-fashioned fun! It is up to the players to decide where and when they attack not up to us. After all, who are we to get in the way of that fun and frolic? OTOH, it won’t always be in your best interests to burn down the structures of your enemies (imagine a sad Viking face here!), sometimes you’ll want to keep a structure intact so you can control it. Other times, you might want to recover some special material(s) that can be found in the structures. How that works and so much more will be covered our weekend updates.

To summarize tonight’s building/gathering/crafting teaser, you get to go deep within mines to get materials, you get to build structures, and you get to then burn those structures down and/or recover materials from them. The best part is, all of this is just a small part of what is coming tomorrow.

New Tiers OTW!

Mountain Top Estates

We’ll soon be adding two new tiers to our Kickstarter. The first will feature a mountaintop home and plot that can be purchased in one of the three realms of Camelot Unchained. Based on the feedback from our backers, it appears that most of you would like to see this as a “Digital Only” tier and so, that’s what it will be. The home, just like the “Living Large” tier, will be customized with the help of CSE and it will be realm-locked. This will be a limited tier but it can be repeated if there is enough demand for it. As per some of the other tiers, we will reserve some additional homes, islands, etc. for our European players who are patiently waiting to use PayPal to back this game. Over the next few days I’ll be fleshing out this tier and I’ll probably send out a draft tier update to get some additional feedback from our backers.

Private Servers

We’ll also be adding an additional very high-end tier that will feature a private server that can be controlled by the pledge owner along with a private island on that server. The owner of this server will be able to invite up to 300 people to play on that server and they will also have a full set of controls to tweak much of the server’s higher-level settings but they will not be able to build new assets, have access to the code, item database, etc. Think of this has our version of games such as Tribes: Ascend but instead of renting time for the server, it’s yours to access for as long as Camelot Unchained is running and as long as you follow our guidelines for operating the server in a manner consistent with the policies of CSE. As of now we are using Amazon Web Services so if you are in one of the locations they serve, we can even spin up the server in your location. Otherwise, we will host it in Northern Virginia.

That wraps up tonight’s update. Tomorrow will be a very interesting day indeed.

-Mark

Tonight’s concept art will be the Veilstorms, a mine, some houses and other building assets, a possible mountain home and BOB.