‘Dark Age’ Amid a Troubled Kingdom

Fog rolls through the forest, cool and thick, muffling the clang of swordplay. All around, knights rush to aid their brethren waging battle against a horde of ogres.

As the fog dissipates, the chaos becomes clear. The glory days of Camelot are long gone. Since King Arthur’s recent death, the world has been cast into violence as Arthur’s peace shatters and dark forces threaten the Kingdom.

In “Dark Age of Camelot,” the latest entrant into the world of massively multi-player online games, players inhabit a lush world filled with historical and mythological references.

“Dark Age,” which went live Tuesday, joins a crowded and often troubled arena plagued with problems and technical flaws. Several online games have been released this year alone, such as “Anarchy Online” and “World War 2 Online.”

Why the crowds? The reason is part financial, part the follow-the-pack mentality driving the video game business these days. The popularity of “Ultima Online” and “EverQuest”--as well as nonpersistent multi-player games such as “Quake,” “Unreal” and “Half-Life”--has developers scrambling online.

Perhaps they’ve rushed too much. Most of the online role-playing games launched this year have had cool receptions, primarily because of technology flaws. Fans flooded the Web with complaints about “Anarchy” and “World War 2,” grumbling about everything from lag times to the difficulty of play.

That hasn’t stopped others. The proverbial 800-pound guerrilla in this space is “Star Wars: Galaxies.” Expected to hit retail shelves next year and developed by the team behind “EverQuest,” the game allows players to cooperate, run a community and even pilot starships.

Developers of “Dark Age” insist that they watched the competition and have learned from their mistakes. And judging by play in beta tests, they’re right.

Players can align themselves with one of three realms: Albion, the land of Britons and former home of Arthur; Hibernia, the land of Celts and magic; and Midgard, the land of Norsemen, trolls and creatures that love to bash anything that moves.

Things work a little differently for each realm, but the general path is the same: Pick a character, pick a general area of expertise and go explore.

Personally, I preferred Albion. I’m a huge fan of medieval times--as a woman, how could I not love all those sweaty men in armor?--and I enjoyed the subtle visual touches of this environment.

Despite numerous similarities to “Ultima” and “EverQuest,” “Dark Age” enjoys some fairly interesting key differences.

First, developer Mythic Entertainment is trying to position the game play as both a solo and a group experience. “Ultima” rewards players for going out alone, and “EverQuest” is nearly impossible to survive without a group at higher levels. “Dark Age” requires both.

Take the tasks, or hidden mini quests that help boost a character’s levels and line his pockets. Some are simple: Carry a scroll from one town to another. Others require help: Kill this really nasty demon.

Finding a group to join was--at least during the beta--dead easy. The game has a group function in the control panel and allows players to flag themselves as “seeking” company. Click on the “find” button and up pops a menu that lists all the players--including their levels and character type--who are also searching.

The realms are absolutely enormous, which is good and bad. Players won’t get bored exploring their own world, let alone waging war on the rival two. And visually, the game is stunning. The landscapes are detailed and picturesque, with warm sunsets, varying weather patterns and a moon that goes through its various phases.

With a fairly powerful video card, for example, players can watch fog roll gracefully into Campacorentin Forest, watch the river gently lap against the shore and enjoy star constellations slowly moving across the sky.

But running from one point to the other can literally take more than an hour--the time it took me, using a DSL connection, to travel from the most northern point of Albion to the most southern. Ouch.

There are horses, which can speed up the process. But the horse trails are fairly limited.

At least people don’t have to worry about player killers in their own backyard, as players cannot attack someone of their own realm. Instead, the game is geared for massive war campaigns, in which one realm goes after another.

Here’s how it works: The three realms are actually three islands, which right now can be reached only by ship. Once players arrive on hostile territory, they are flagged as enemies.

There are obvious benefits to this system as well as one fairly serious downside: Several weeks before the game shipped, such cross-realm raids were crashing the system.

Will “Dark Age” live up to its beta promise? Only time will tell. But players looking for an evolution of “Ultima” and “EverQuest” should keep their fingers crossed.

*

P.J. Huffstutter covers technology. She can be reached at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Skinny “Dark Age of Camelot”

* Genre: Massively multi-player online role playing

* Platform: PC

* Price: $40 for the software, $10.95 to $12.95 a month

* Publisher: Mythic Entertainment and Abandon Entertainment

* Minimum system requirements: A Pentium II 450 MHz; 256 MB of RAM; 600 MB of free hard-drive space; 32-MB 3-D accelerated video card

* Recommended system requirements: A Pentium III 1 GHz; 256 MB of RAM; 32-MB 3-D accelerated video card

* ESRB* rating: Teen

* The good: Terrific game play, gorgeous environments

* The bad: Some technical glitches

* Bottom line: A possible successor to “EverQuest”

*

* Entertainment Software Ratings Board