Camelot Grab Bag Q&A
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 880
Q: Where the heck is the expansion announcement?
A: 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. Read on if you're the kind of person who likes to know the sad stories behind the scenes, and skip to the last paragraph if all you care about is the answer.
I cannot tell you how sorry I am about what seems like an endless game of keep-away. Or monkey in the middle, with me as the monkey. Ook.
But honestly, y'all, this has been the darndest summer as these things go. First it was "wait until after E3." Then it was "Um, we need to wait a little longer." (That turned out to be the EA thing, by the way - as previously mentioned in this space, pesky things like "insider trading laws" prevented most employees from finding out about our purchase until the week it happened.) Then it was "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.
Now 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.
But you know something, gangsters - 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. Two reasons.
One, if you're an obsessive internet junkie such as myself, you have already seen the screen caps from the last few Camelot Roadtrips. At one, 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. (There was a really hilarious thread on the Vault about "Possible Expansion Titles" after that piece of art went around.) This concept art is pretty effectively foreshadowing what we're going to put in the press release.
Two, we're not going to put much in the press release. At this point, the announcement has been delayed by luck and circumstance SO FREAKING MUCH that we've decided to announce the bulk of the details at the Camelot Roundtable in Las Vegas. We are also planning (knock on wood, RIGHT NOW) to install the expansion beta on the Roundtable LAN, so that all attendees can actually play it on the spot. We always intended that Roundtable attendees would get an expansion beta. Well, now we're just going to give ALL the goodies to the people who make it to our annual party at the end of September.
