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Dear Valued Customer,

We are sending you this email to bring this matter to your immediate attention.

It appears that some of our customers may have been inadvertently charged multiple times for their subscriptions. If you are affected, you should start seeing a reversal of charges within 24-36 hours. We anticipate that once the charges have been reversed, any resulting fees that have been incurred on the affected account should be reversed as well. If after 36 hours, there are still incorrect charges or fees on the affected account, please follow these instructions:

* Please begin by contacting your financial institution and explain to them that you were charged multiple times and, as a result, over drafted. Most financial institutions will reverse these charges.

* If your financial institution is unable to remove these charges, you may contact our billing department for help with charge reversal by calling 650-628-1001 during our hours of operation, which are 10:00 AM EDT - 10:00 PM EDT, 7 days a week. Please have the phone and fax number of your financial institution ready when you call.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this issue may be causing you. Please continue to watch the Herald for your respective game (http://warherald.com/ or http://camelotherald.com/) in the coming days for further information regarding this issue.

Mythic did this with Dark Age Of Camelot, giving you the option to start at level 20 and implementing NPCs to give you starter equipment, etc.. However hindsight being 20/20, they stated that starting a character at level 20 did more harm than good due to it killing the 1-20 crowd. The bottom line is, the easiest thing you can do to kill your incoming customer base is to give them nobody to play with.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course. I think you were unfair, though, Zonk. DDO is launched. Of course the Turbies are looking for feedback. WAR is still more than a YEAR from launch. We're still designing the damn thing. What you were seeing at Gencon was the PRE-ALPHA build from before E3. There's nothing done enough to give feedback ON other than a general sense of whether or not we're on the right track. And getting that kind of information is what we're doing at these different shows. We're watching people play. Frankly, buzz more than a year from launch is a recipe for impossible expectations. I'd rather see buzz in response to our beta builds. The booth was not staffed by marketing people, except for one girl. All the others were designers and artists taking notes on the unsolicited reactions of the players. That is the main reason why your technical questions went unanswered, but it's possible that you were asking questions we can't answer yet. Again, more than A YEAR from launch, most spec questions are not possible to answer. You're welcome to email me and ask. I'm the community weenie, but if you know anything about Mythic's first MMO, you know I'm pretty plugged in - sanya AT mythicentertainment.com. I didn't go to GenCon, but I know that at ComicCon, the buzz was almost the opposite of what you describe. Well, I should say "from people who actually tried the pre-alpha demo." The game doesn't play anything like WoW, doesn't have the same central design, and has a totally different theme. The only thing that's the same is the look... and I will say that not so much as a ROCK is going into the game without the specific approval of Games Workshop, the people who designed the look and style in the early 1980s. We are building a game around neverending player versus player warfare. We don't need to distance ourselves from any other products. The gameplay will do that for us! The look of the game throws off the uninitiated at first, but anyone who comes up and asks about it gets a straight answer. I don't normally comment, but this just seemed remarkably uninformed, and contrary to the impressions of everyone else I've had the chance to work with. Sanya Thomas Director of Community Relations EA Mythic http://www.camelotherald.com/ http://www.warhammerherald.com/

Dark Age of Camelot had something similiar to this RSS feed two years ago. They kept track of guild and member pvp statistics (in the form of things called "Realm Points" and kill/death ratio and stuff) for each server and published the results to an XML file. Every DAoC "Pvp Guild" (I use the term loosely), had a php extension that showed real-time statistics of thier members and thier top-status on thier web page. So you could tell how good or bad a DAoC guild was by just browsing thier webpage!

I assume things will be done similar to this. Real time published statistics to guild web pages, showing those viewing them how active they are, how "good" they are, and which members are the better players in the guild. And since they will be updated in real-time, it should be obvious if the information they are publishing is valid (cause a witty programmer could just change all thier published statistics to "win", but then that wouldnt match up with the central server).

here.

New Frontiers Site on Camelot Herald.

Here he is

But he's only a crappy level 23 wizard.

The current game on the market is Dark Age of Camelot, and at this time (although this may change, but hopefully not) it costs half as much at 6 UKP per month, or 5 UKP if you pay for longer in one go. I have not experienced any abuse to date off players. Mainly because the GM's really do stamp on people and ban the accounts when sent evidence of such activities. Any of the above problems are also stamped on, like dragging monsters to other people etc. Players views are taken into account, they welcome logs of encounters for play balance etc. And hopefully they will continue to do so, and not fall into the problems that EQ did. And To be honest if a company wasn't there to make a profit it wouldn't be a company, but a organization.

Sadly lame folks who feel they have to cheat to be able to compete with others are everywhere. It would be one of the most attractive features of a MMORPG to know that there were no effective cheats and that when I got beaten in the game it was because the other guy was better than me, not because he was able to load up a frickin cheat program.

While it might be nice to know all the stats on items, it is not a sufficient justification for using cheat software. Ever. If the playerbase feels the game should provide more information, then you lambast the developers with requests to add it as a feature, but you don't use and encourage the development of cheat software to further that goal. You might have honorable intentions but the 10,000 folks coming after you and using the same software are simply too lame to win a game on their own, and are there for the unfair advantage it offers.

Not so relevant in EQ per se,where players are not in direct combat (unless on the Zeks I know), but very relevant to Dark Age of Camelot (and also see Camelot Herald for Statistics on the scoring and state of the game etc )- the game I play a lot at the moment - where players are regularly in direct conflict with each other. Programs such as Odin's Eye have threatened that game heavily.

Question is, when will events like this become real complace. I mean most of us that game online, have held our own little lan party's. Anywhere from 8 (your standard cheap ether-hub, and still okie on a 512k adsl modem) and 24, when you can manage a guild or clan meeting (which takes an age to organize). Games such as half-life and its many skins, probably wont be able to set them up. But with the likes of "Dark age of Camelot" Europe / US . Seeing so many users now, and ever expanding, with more and more servers, it can only be a matter of time till events become common place. Esp, if they offer prizes for either code or storyline.

Dark Age of Camelot uses XML to display the character stats.
Here is the display page and here is the XML source.
This page explains how they do it. Very nifty for making guild web pages using their data.

Dark Age of Camelot uses XML to display the character stats.
Here is the display page and here is the XML source.
This page explains how they do it. Very nifty for making guild web pages using their data.

Dark Age of Camelot uses XML to display the character stats.
Here is the display page and here is the XML source.
This page explains how they do it. Very nifty for making guild web pages using their data.

Dark Age of Camelot uses XML to display the character stats.
Here is the display page and here is the XML source.
This page explains how they do it. Very nifty for making guild web pages using their data.

Actually, some of the design seems to draw on the unique design of DAOC in some respects. DAOC was the first to introduce Realm vs Realm combat (where players belong to one culture permanently at war with 2 other cultures (Vikings, King Arthur's English, and the Celts of Ireland), and SWG evedently has a similar 3-sided conflict (Empire, Rebels and the Underworld) updated to suit a science-fiction universe. Player-vs-Player combat is hardly a new thing (UO had it) but DAOCs version of it is remarkably effective

Dark Age of Camelot (See http://www.darkageofcamelot.com for some information on the game and http://www.camelotherald.com if you want the game scores for each server and individual) was a very clever development in the world of MMORPGs and while its got its problems, its a very enjoyable game overall. A new expansion called Shrouded Isles will be out in in December. I have been playing DAOC since the day it came out and I haven't lost interest yet.

I hope that Verant/Sony learns from their experience with Everquest and develops a more rounded game. The Star Wars intellectual property is very well developed and deserves a good game. Sadlly, Verant has not been the most responsive of companies in the past.

I am looking forward to SWG immensely. It may be the game to pull me out of DAOC, but its gonna have to be a lot more than just eye-candy to do so.

Mythic Entertainment already has the servers post 'scoring' info onto a web server, the Herald lists players scores(called Realm Points) and updates automagically, as well as the entire realm status.

-Henry