Good day to you, Sanya. I didn't mean to interrupt you while you sip margaritas and lounge around in easy chairs. It's been a pretty slow couple of weeks, I guess. So, when are you going to update the Herald again? It seems so long since your last update.

Diet Vanilla Coke. Sheesh. Don't you remember ANYTHING?

Good thing I've got this TOA beta contest going on or people might think I was dead.

To what do you attribute Mythic's sudden increase in feature additions to Dark Age of Camelot? Are you folks to such a stable point in the game that you were able to focus your energies on new content exclusively, or is it that you've hired a cadre of criminally insane ferrets in all of the project management and forecasting positions?

Ferrets. That and we put a huge chunk o' change into hiring new people and treating them like broadband internet modems - "always working."

Necromancers often get a bad rap as an exploit class because it's so easy to solo with them in PvE. I recall the day that the 1.65A patch notes came out: Various group and broadcast channels were filled with Necromancers yelling "WOOT" and "PHAT NECRO LUV, YO" (not me, of course. I would never spell "WOOT" like that). While I'm sure considerable thought is put into class balancing, when do you think the nerfs are going to hit for the Necro?

Obviously, you spell it "w00t." And oddly enough, I regretfully inform you that we try not to set people up to be nerfed. They don't like it. They would rather be given improvements than beaten into submission. The problem is, sometimes when we give a class a tasty treat, it takes literally months before the overpowered aspects become obvious. And even then, before we nerf, we like to look and see if a counter strategy might be a better thing to add in rather than remove a particular element.

I could say it's like a chess game. It's easy to take a finished chess game and reverse engineer it, and say "here's the exact point where the critical error was made." While the game is in progress, though, the possibilities for the path the game will take are much greater. But I could be just babbling.

While I understand that you don't want to release any details about the work currently taking place with the DAoC: Frontiers expansion, can you give us a hint as to its main goals? Obviously, we all want RvR to be more fun, and open to casual players more and more - but do you have any loftier goals in mind? Is Frontiers going to be an earth-shaking expansion, or will it be an expansion in which a player may or may not comfortably involve him or herself (like Foundations)?

Can't say anything specific, obviously. I'll tell you we're shooting for "loftier." And it's going to be big. I also wouldn't say it's optional, because I don't consider RVR optional. Some people do, you know.

With the 1.65 patch presenting new content for players 35+ to explore, and Trials of Atlantis providing content for players 40+, do you have anything to offer for those players that get to play so seldom that they view such levels as a pipe dream? With all those fancy CS tools I'm sure Scott Jenkins has developed by now, do the Producers have a means to measure the average level of the population, and how realistically available these new content additions will be to the current server population?

Yes, we looked at our population before we chose the focus for the box expansion. It'd be stupid not to. (BTW - Scott is now a game programmer, although he maintains the CS tools he already built. Our Georgia writes the statistical tools now.) We track pretty much everything, and we keep a close eye on what players are doing.

Of course, I regularly remind everyone that some of us are not exactly uber and would like new stuff to do. Although, those of us who are not uber are still being surprised by old stuff we just hadn't gotten to yet.

That fishy smell in the air is me gearing up to ask you some background information on Trials of Atlantis. How close is the world of Atlantis in this expansion to the ancient myths? Is the content team following a particular genre of Atlantis myths (i.e. classical Greek or are we expecting Mythic to be paying Disney some royalties on the side)? At what point in basing an interactive world on a static set of stories does the content team say: "Oh, to hell with it, I can't find a rationale for why this whale would have arms, legs, and 5 tails - he just does, Ok??"

This expansion is totally fantasy - By the way, Atlantis actually has many zones, on earth, under the earth, under the ocean, in the sky. We've drawn from many ancient Earth cultures for this expansion - we're not just in Europe any more.

Trials of Atlantis introduces 3 new races. One of them, in particular, (the Shar) actually seems suited to an aquatic realm, while the other two (the Frostalf and Half Ogre) appear to be regular land-lubbers. Of course, I base these conclusions completely on their visual appearance, and I'm blind in my third eye. Are the Shar water-dwellers, and if so, do they see some sort of racial advantage in this new realm?

No, there are no racial advantages in the water. They're just cool looking.

Trials of Atlantis also introduces a new graphics upgrade to the game. While those of us who took part in the early days of the Shrouded Isles expansion are familiar with graphics upgrade to our favorite game (I had to say good-bye to my circa 1997 laptop playing DAoC anymore), what can you tell us about the new graphics upgrade so that we can start writing up our Christmas lists now? How does the new engine compare to graphically intense "2nd Generation" "Bleeding Edge" "Anonymous Buzzword" MMOG titles out there?

It will compete very nicely. You can see the comparison of old to new on the Trials of Atlantis website. Textures are more subtle and realistic looking. "Gooder." We are hoping that our players who upgraded their machines to top of the line for Shrouded Isles will not need any sort of upgrade.

With Trials of Atlantis being Mythic's second boxed expansion, does the company have a plan similar to the DAoC Gold edition (the bundle of the original DAoC plus Shrouded Isles for a reduced price point)?

I'm sure we will, although I don't think there are any concrete plans right now. Wouldn't make sense not to, eh?

Can you find it in your heart to give the loyal readers of Camelot Warcry an exclusive piece of information about Trials of Atlantis? Really, that's all they're looking for anyway. My witty banter is all for naught. I'm sure just by typing the word "exclusive" above, I've caused about 50,000 extra Google-fueled hits to come our way.

I don't know. Let me ask my evil overlord. *walks away* Yeah. See the attached!

With the announcement of Trials of Atlantis, have you seen any increase in the number of people that periodically return to the game after a long hiatus?

I think so? What I mean by that - the numbers always jump as the summer ends. People come back from vacations, the weather begins to cool down, the college players are back and snuggled up to their T1 lines, etc. We did see a number of returning people, but due to the timing of everything, I can't tell which are the regular returnees and which are the content junkies.

DAoC is obviously a popular and financial success. Given that in you're in a comfortable location in the marketplace, what good things can you say about specific competitors? Is the staff at Mythic looking forward to any particular titles or technologies? Are there addicts of other MMOG titles in your midst as we speak? Don't worry about it; you can go back to badmouthing everyone behind the scenes when we're done.

We try to play everything. Everything out recently occupies a very different niche from ours, so I'm not sure "competitor" is the right word to describe our colleagues. Certainly a lot of interesting stuff has been tried, and it's always good to see people trying new things. I couldn't speak generally for the staff at Mythic, of course - too many of us now. For myself? There are lots of things that might be really cool eventually, but it's not fair to anyone to make judgments months before a product launches.

Rate my duck! Was it slick, or painfully obvious?

Are you about as sick of virus laden emails as I am? Does the bile rise in your throat and the anger in your eyes every time you behold yet another missive with the subject line "Re: Wicked Screensaver"? I was under the impression that "Wicked" was passé these days. My kids already think I'm uncool for wearing my leisure suit in public (with the gold chains, of course); I don't want to get this one wrong as well.

Someone signed me up for tentacle porn. Really, the virus mail is almost a relief. Man, you really don't read my column. Sniffle.

Finally: Thomas? Are you related to Dylan Thomas? Do you go gently into that good night, or are you young and easy under the apple boughs?

Well, I do hope my heart's truth may be spoken on this high hill in a year's turning. We're not related, though. I'm from the Vermont Thomases. The farm did have a lot of apple trees though. Shout out to Orwell, Vee Tee!

Always a good sport, that Sanya. My fondness grows for her daily. Of course, it would grow much deeper if she'd just stop sending me those flirtatious IMs while my wife is in the room. *sigh*