Mythic Entertainment's next generation massively roleplaying game, Dark Age of Camelot has gone gold, and is expected to hit stores imminently. We'll be reviewing the full game shortly, but as a precursor, we thought we'd get you salivating about what is promising to be first rate romp through Arthurian times... ("Ok, first me and Sir Luke leap out of the Rabbit...")

Ferrago Magazine managed to track down Matt Firor, recovering, no doubt from several binges after putting the final touches to Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC as we rpg'ers call it) to get the run down on why DAOC is threatening to shake up the online craze.

First off, quite remarkably, DAoC is on schedule for your release date. I'm sure every other developer would love to know how on earth you managed this? Whips? Programmers and Artists chained to their desks, or what?

We use more enlightened methods, such as threats of bodily harm, extortion, and occasionally resorting to "culling of the herd". Seriously, though, we have a lot of experience making online games, and this has helped us throughout the project's life. We already had a head start on the graphical engine for the game (modified from the one that we used in our FPS, Spellbinder: the Nexus Conflict). Our server technology also was pre-developed for lots of other games from Magestorm up to and including Spellbinder. With all these pieces in place, we had a big head start on the project even before we started.

Given the fact that you're on schedule, what would you say to answer concerns of the players out there who have been burnt by those recently released Massively Multiplayer Online Games that were, shall we say, "Released in a not entirely ready format"?

We plan on continually adding more content to Dark Age of Camelot as the game matures. This means that we are launching with a stable base, and enough content to make a viable, fun game. With this stable base we can continue to add more features (quests, models, monsters, sounds, animations, etc.) without too much worry about other stability bugs.

From the mood we've seen in the various online communities, Camelot is poised to threaten the long running supremacy of the "big three" (Ultima Online, Asheron's Call and, of course, Everquest) What elements of those games do you believe were of significant influence on DaoC?

In general we took concepts we liked from those games, as well as others, and then changed them to suit Camelot. The game with the most impact on Camelot is Darkness Falls: the Crusade, a Realm-based PvP text-based MUD that we (Mythic) created a few years ago. Most of the concepts from that game are incorporated wholesale into Dark Age of Camelot.

While we're on the subject of the other online RPGs what, in your opinion, has be learnt as "What and What Not to do" with regards to the game environment?

The greatest asset of making a "second generation" online RPG is that we have the luxury of learning from the examples of existing games. Probably the largest lesson we've taken to heart is to not underestimate the value of customer support. As such, we've devoted a ton of resources to getting our CS staff set up prior to launch with as much firepower as we can devote to them.