Folks,

DAoC was supposed to announce the features in its fall expansion a few months ago. For the previous expansions the press releases arrived around March/April, if I remember correctly. This time the first delay arrived with the E3 because Mythic wanted to hype Warhammer instead of letting it compete for the attention with DAoC. Like if it could have been a risk. My suspect is that they just didn’t want to be easily identified with the title of “DAoC makers” and instead appear, at least to those who aren’t knee deep in the mmorpg industry, as the new kids on the block.

(After all Mythic is only interested in those who never heard of it, or those who played DAoC so long ago that they don’t remember anymore why they left and just have sweet memories of it. The current players who learnt who the real and recent Mythic really is? Those are not important. Firstly because if they swallowed DAoC so long, they are probably going to buy Warhammer even after all the bitching, secondly because relating to them would be actually have to face the *merit* of what was being done. And not just the fluffy, sweet memories or the hype for the future. Those are players that will be harder to seduce and that are a potential danger to the image of the company. Those have memories.)

Then they said that the announce would arrive in June, then the sellout to EA was announced, then it was July and every other week of July:

First, please, let me say that I too am a little frustrated. Every time I ask, the answer is a very confident-sounding “Within the week! Don’t fret!” About three weeks ago, I started making little mewling noises, and pointing out that maybe saying that Every. Single. Week was starting to sound, you know, stupid.

Now it’s August but it still seems that this expansion is so secret and special that it still cannot be announced.

I’m hearing the announcement will be next week, but I no longer expect you to read that with a straight face, and that’s cool, I understand.

In the meantime lots of details leaked anyway. In an interview they said there was going to be a new race (minotaur) shared by all the three realms, and a new class (mauler). Then there were even rumors about a deal with Vivox (same as those working with Eve-Online) to offer voice chat support and use DAoC as a test bed for Warhammer, who is also supposed to have voice chat.

When people made you wait for something for so long, then expectations rise. I mean, there must be a reason why the features in an expansion are so precious that they cannot be disclosed with the players of the game’s community for MONTHS. It’s not like people really care about DAoC, it’s not like there will be earth shattering innovations. In fact it’s Sanya herself to anticipate the cold shower:

I CAN tell you that you shouldn’t be getting all psyched about the announcement, which is really aimed at people who don’t read the Herald.

Like if people who don’t read the Herald give a shit about DAoC’s next expansion.

Players shouldn’t be getting psyched because most of the features are already known? Maybe people shouldn’t be getting psyched just because this expansion has really nothing to say.

On the Vault I was already commenting:

I suspect that the delay is due to an agreement that needs to be finalized.

My suspect is that they are going to offer voice chat in the expansion as a test bed for Warhammer, waiting to receive confirmation from Vivox and finalize the details so that they can make the proper announce.

There will be hardly something else in the expansion beside that, the new class and race, and some redundant PvE stuff to keep the content team busy.

Oh, and probably that supid idea of instanced PvP.

Hmm. Instanced PvP (what a terrible idea for DAoC), Minotaur… Labyrinth.

The guess about the voice chat is just my very own speculation, so it’s quite possible that there’s no truth about it (beside that Vivox really contacted Mythic). Sanya gave also more hints, since the press release about the expansion is going to be deluding anyway:

we flashed up small sections of larger concept art – weird mechanical things. At another event, we put up a big piece of concept art, this one a kind of bloody, skinned thing with horns. This concept art is pretty effectively foreshadowing what we’re going to put in the press release.

Again, I’m sorry about the lack of expansion information to date. It is totally killing me, because I’ve SEEN what they’re building!

Ohh, I’m so THRILLED! Uhm… No, I’m not.

DAoC was driven to the ground a while ago and this expansion is another useless, superfluous stretch. I guess that the concept art she refers is about the PvE portion of the game. DAoC has shown in the past GREAT art and locations, always destroyed in potential by very bad game design and execution. That concept art doesn’t do anything for me, but that DAoC’s next expansion still has pretty art isn’t really a feature that could impress. It was the same for previous expansions, and it didn’t really help.

Again what I wonder is where the game designers are gone, what’s the vision for the game? Is there anyone at home beside polls and devs who are waiting to be promoted to Warhammer?

It seems not, and for a very valid reason:

“We need to coordinate this with EA.” Most recently, the delay was over something really good for us all, in the long term – we are staffing up the Camelot team by TEN more positions. That’s awesome news for the expansion pack we’ve been building for months, but it did mean we should hold off on the expansion announcement, since adding back some previously-cut features was viable.

Only Sanya could sell this as a good thing. As I wrote in many occasions, a high churn rate in the dev team is only a recipe for failure. Good games only come out of consolidated dev teams who learnt how to work together and developed competence, experience and synergy. Not from a bunch of guys thrown together at random just because the company is in the middle of a big shift. And I really wonder what the fuck there is to coordinate about a press release whose features were all announced and about which noone gives a darn thing.

What is sure is that noone cares about what Mythic is doing on DAoC beside those players still subscribed. What is even more sure is that the feature list on this expansion appeals noone if not, again, those same players (and the instanced PvP may well be a death kiss even to the little worth that was left in the PvP, as Catacombs task dungeons were the death kiss to the game’s PvE side). DAoC was driven to the ground, the original team gone and I strongly doubt that all those fresh guys coming from QA and CS will be able to refill the company of its leaked value and ambition.

Maybe it will happen and they will even do a better work. Excuse me if I’m skeptical. In fact I believe they are just being used as disposable fuel. To burn and leave by the road when this deal with EA will start to show its rotten fruits.

Why the secrecy? Why the delay? This really is bad form on Mythic’s end. They have NOTHING to lose if they were to tell us all their plans for the expansion right now. Really, what negative could come from just letting the people who are funding the expansion in on what it might possibly contain?

You really want to know? Because they have nothing to show. And because they know it.

So, think whatever you want. But there just isn’t another one on the internet who can write so much about a useless expansion that isn’t still even announced.

I want a cookie.