Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: First of all, congratulations on winning our decade award for best PvP.  It’s well deserved.

Stuart Zissu, Producer, Dark Age of Camelot: It made my day when I saw that!

Could you tell us a little bit about your role with Dark Age of Camelot, how long you’ve been playing the game?

Sure.  I started with Mythic about two or so years ago and came onto the DAoC team in October.  I worked with the team to get a lot of those changes out the door--and they’ve done a great job. 

As for how long I’ve been a part of DAoC, I’ve been a player since beta. I remember the days when all of the monster models weren’t even in.  I started playing back when I was dating my now wife, and she came over to my place one time.  I had to jump in the shower, being the stinky guy that I am, and had her craft some metals while I was busy.  Obviously she had no idea what she was doing, and I come back and she says, “What was I just doing?”  I told her that I was having her create crafts for trinketing and she goes “Interesting.  Is this what you do for a living?”  Of course I say “Not yet!”  ….and now it is what I do!

You’ve obviously seen all 6 expansions, first as a player and now as a Producer. Let’s talk RvR.  DAoC has really set the gold standard on quality RvR play, moreover on large-scale PvP in general.  Would you point out and principles that you’ve stuck to over the years as you create new RvR content?

So what we try to do is create a few fundamentals, things that make the game pop.  Things we try to keep engraved are things like realm pride, RvR battles... 10 years ago we put in an RvR system and 10 years later now the players have come up with 8v8 battles.  Things like Zerg battles – the large scale PvP combat - and these smaller skirmishes are an example of us setting up an experience and how it may play out... but we know full well that the players may turn it into something much more awesome and unexpected.