Behold the graphic update

Today we got a chance to take a look at Mythic's new Dark Age of Camelot expansion, Darkness Rising. This expansion has content for players level 30 to 50. The King of each realm is in danger, and he seeks out champions to protect him from a mysterious rebellion. If you chose to accept this responsibility you will be given a quest that will take many sub quests to complete. These quests will take you to both new and old areas. As for new areas, there are 3 new outdoor instance zones that will be available at launch. The quests are given by the king himself and are difficult and legenthy. The final steps of the quest will require a full group of 8 to complete sucessfully. The end reward of this quest will be a "Champion Weapon" that is class specific. These "Champion Weapons" will rival the artifact weapons in power.

There are five Champion Levels, and you will be required to be level 50 to gain access to any of them. The Darkness Rising expansion also features a new sub-class system, which will allow you to go to another class trainer and learn new skills and abilities using sub-class points. These sub-class points are given as rewards for completing parts of the Champion Quest. There are also milestone rewards as you complete certain parts of the Champion Quest. One of these milestone rewards is access your King's special store, which features items that are either extreamly rare or not available anywhere else in the game.

Camelot is where I unload my RAGE!

This expansion also features the thing most DAoC players have been long waiting for, player owned mounts. The expansion features two new mounts at launch which are available to all players level 35 and above. There is also an advanced mount which is exclusive to owners of the expansion that are level 45 and above. These advanced mounts are highly customizable, in that you can alter its looks to your liking. For thoes looking for mounted combat, I am afraid that you will probably be disapointed. Mounted combat is still in the planning stages but due to balance issues, it will most likely be cut in the final design stage.

The last item we went over with Mythic was how they were giving Daoc a graphics overhall. In March, RPGamer's Heath Hindman gave an exclusive report on this after attending the Dark Age of Camelot Roundtable here. The company will be upgrading the look of the popular Darkness Falls dungeon, with new textures, areas, and monster graphics. When asked about upgrading the character animations, they hinted that it was on the planning table, so we might see it happen as a future patch.