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Dark Age of Camelot arose as Everquest's first fantasy MMOG competitor two years after the reigning fantasy MMOG was released. Originally developed by Mythic, DAoC was scooped up by EA along with Mythic, making it part of the large EA conglomerate. When it was introduced, DAoC was considered to be very similar to Everquest in many ways, but eventually they shed that thought process and began to accumulate a popular following of their own.

Along with offering some incentives to alleviate camping spawn points, make customizable armor, and its enhanced graphics, the game's guiding principles capitalized on one gaming aspect many felt was absent in Everquest: truly integrated player vs. player (or "RvR" - realm vs. realm, in DAoC). PvP action, that is, which has tangible impact in the virtual world.

The game introduced one other important technological element to the fantasy RPG scene: for lack of a better term we'll call it "dynamic zone loading." Everquest used what became known as a traditional zone architecture; splitting the world into small zones that must be loaded sequentially while gameplay is suspended. DAoC's "zones"- called regions- are extremely large swaths of terrain that load in a "bubble" around the player; in other words the game constantly loads while the player travels.