Trials of Atlantis Wrap Report
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 1114
Best decision one: upgrading the graphics engine. This was by far the most stunning aspect of Trials of Atlantis, one that got the attention of reviewers immediately. The expansion simply looks wonderful, and the fact that we went back and revamped all the game's original and Shrouded Isles zones as well as added the new Atlantis zones shows how committed we are to keep Dark Age of Camelot fresh to new players and old.
Best decision two: deciding to ramp back the difficulty of some encounters after launch. After Trials of Atlantis launched in late October of 2003, players immediately started complaining (with reason) that some of the encounters were simply too difficult and sometimes not logically presented to them. We went back through each encounter soon after release and made changes to many to make them more fun and easier to accomplish, and to make them better fit into the flow of the expansion. This process continues in version 1.68, which we are working on now and which has many additional tweaks, and will continue in future patches.
Best decision three: having all three Realms share the same content. To some extent, having three Realms in Dark Age of Camelot, where the members of the Realms never see the content of the others, means all content that we develop for the game is split into thirds. For example, for Shrouded Isles, we developed a new continent for each Realm - but that meant that a character in a Realm only saw the content for that Realm; essentially only a third of the total content developed. With Trials of Atlantis, we decided to make one continent, and have all the Realms share it. We came up with a backstory where the Atlanteans made alternate "planes" of existence to explain why players never run into players from other Realms while exploring, and then made one huge land and sea mass that comprised the geography of Atlantis. This means that a character in any one Realm received ALL the new content from the expansion, not just a third.
