Building On a Legend

The Legend of King Arthur is a rich vein of storytelling that many artists throughout the years have sought to mine, from Alfred Lord Tennyson in his epic poem “Idylls of the King” to composer Richard Wagner, who wove Arthurian themes into “Parsifal” and “Tristan und Isolde.”

The latest to pursue this holy grail is Mythic Entertainment Corp., whose band of developers has come up with “Dark Age of Camelot,” a massively multi-player online game that can be played simultaneously by thousands.

The head of Mythic is Mark Jacobs, 44, who came up with the idea for “Dark Age of Camelot” two years ago and shopped the idea around to various publishers. The business of online role-playing games is strewn with casualties, missed deadlines and technical Gordian knots. Funcom’s “Anarchy Online,” for example, debuted this year with numerous technical glitches, some of which remain unresolved. The field also is dominated by what Jacobs calls the “unholy trinity” of games--”EverQuest,” “Ultima Online” and “Asheron’s Call.”

Undaunted, Jacobs sold a minority share in his company to Abandon Entertainment in New York for $2.5 million and used the cash to make his game in 18 months.

“Dark Age of Camelot” went live this week.

Question: Why did you choose to set the game in Camelot?

Answer: When I started to think about this, I asked, “What’s one of the most popular legends in the world that is in the public domain?” It turns out to be Camelot. If you walk down the street and you ask 100 people if they have ever heard of “EverQuest,” most would give you a blank stare. But if you ask them if they’ve ever heard of King Arthur, many would say yes. In addition to saving millions on a licensing fee, I also wouldn’t have to spend millions of dollars explaining this game to people. They immediately understand Camelot. It’s one of the first big legends that people are exposed to.

Q: How does “Dark Age of Camelot” advance the genre of online role-playing games?

A: The first thing about “Camelot” is a question of whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary. We are evolutionary. Most games in the industry are simply evolutionary. A few are so unique as to change the market. This is not one of them. We’ve done a few things to make this game the best out there. Take trade skill systems. Most out there are not very exciting. We’ve set up a very tight economy so players can make almost anything combat-related that they want to. These items can be used to defend the players’ realms. So if you create these items, you can bring them to the fort and the fort gets stronger. You, in turn, get realm points because you are considered defenders of the realm. Our questing system is also very complex and comes with extensive back stories. In one, you have to tell the boy that the father is dead. He goes off and swears revenge. So it’s not just about getting items.

Q: Unlike other games, players can easily seek out and kill other players in your game. In other role-playing games, you have to go out of your way to do this. How will you handle the inevitable unpleasantness that comes with this?

A: We’re big fans of player-versus-player combat here. But we also know it can be badly handled. There are problems of players simply killing each other on sight. We wanted a way where new players don’t have to worry about getting immediately killed when they come into the game by a more powerful, experienced character. So we try to do this in a controlled environment. This game is set up so a new player has nothing to worry about, doesn’t have to look over their shoulder. Within your own realm, you cannot attack another player. Everyone is supposed to be your friend. You have to go outside of your realm to fight another player. And if you don’t want to go there, you don’t have to. You can increase your skills within your own realm. We’ve also taken away some unpleasant aspects of looting and taunting. The vile spewing that occasionally comes across is ridiculous. So we eliminated that. You cannot communicate with anyone on the other team under any circumstances. To them, you are the enemy. Period.

Q: So what’s the point of having player-versus-player combat if you can’t loot and taunt?

A: We’ve set up areas with relics. If you capture the relics and bring them back, everyone in that realm benefits. We’ve introduced player-versus-player combat in a very meaningful way, not in a way that will alienate people.

Q: Many players don’t like killing other players. Do you think you’re limiting the audience by putting such a heavy emphasis on this feature?

A: Absolutely. But we’ve created other things you can do. We have dungeons, monsters, trade skills, trading and hunting grounds in the safe areas. Think of it as a typical role-playing game with another land. It’s an amusement park. If you get tired of the roller coaster, we have other rides. It’s all there.

Q: How do you plan to avoid the technical problems that have plagued other massively multi-player games?

A: A lot of the problems boil down to either inadequate bandwidth, not enough servers, buggy software or poor customer service. We’ve addressed all four. First, we have a deal with our Internet service provider that gets us as much bandwidth as we need at the drop of a hat. Without the bandwidth, you have nothing else. Second is server capacity. We have been running this game in beta for months with 10,000 active users. We have a darn fine idea of what our players will eat up in terms of server capacity. We’ll have over 65 servers at launch, with each server capable of handling 1,000 players. The third area is customer service. I’ve got 46 people working right now in my customer service department. We’re set up for full phone, e-mail and in-game support. It’s 24/7 for in-game support, and phone support is 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. All these guys are paid, not volunteers. That sets us apart. Finally, our code base is established. We’ve used it in other games. It’s been tested. Having said that, there’s always going to be bugs in a multi-player game.

Q: How many years do you plan to keep this game running, and how do you plan to keep players interested?

A: We plan to keep it running as long as possible. And we are going to be introducing new features constantly. We’re going to do this by keeping every developer we have on the game for a long time. Some companies cut corners by moving the development team on to another game once it’s finished. They put on a smaller “live team” to maintain the game and keep costs down. We’re not going to do that. Every developer who worked on the game is going to continue to stay with the game. We want this to be the No. 1 game in the industry, and we’re willing to pay the price to make that happen.

*

Alex Pham covers the video game industry. She can be reached at alex.pham@latimes.com.