Camelot Unchained will have "sandbox" RvR combat, no storyline

Former Mythic leader Mark Jacobs plans for Camelot Unchained to be written entirely by players, in what he hopes will be a sandbox-like PvP experience.

In a new dev blog, Jacobs went over the ways in which Camelot Unchained is and isn't like a sandbox, concluding that no MMORPG can rightfully lay claim to the genre descriptor. In one part of the MMO, however, he sees some strong parallels - realm versus realm combat.

"Because we are eschewing PvE, we are also simultaneously saying goodbye to the most linear of all MMORPGs elements, the storyline. Of all the things that make the vast majority of MMORPGs feel like theme parks, it is how the designers lay out and intertwine the story arc, world and a character’s progression through them," he said.

"Camelot Unchained will have a strong backstory of course but Camelot Unchained will not have a story arc created by a writer; rather the players will write that story as their accomplishments both fill out and change the world. While Camelot Unchained does have a box around it (for example, you can’t eliminate the other side(s) from the game and/or drive them from the whole world), the players themselves, and not the designers, shape and evolve the territory on which the RvR action unfolds.

"We will give the players the tools that they need to capture and control territories, to build and teardown structures, to engage nightly in RvR battles and to call upon forces that can physically change the world but in what order/manner this happens is based solely on the players’ actions and not a pre-determined story arc. While we will lay out the world’s topography and we will place a limited number of some key structures throughout it, it will be the players who will determine where the vast majority of the structures are placed and how they will be arranged, what their function is and even their power.

"This is truly the embodiment of the sandbox mechanic, as it will apply to CU and any other game of the same type and besides, maybe there are some rather powerful beings that even do more than simply building and destroying structures."

Camelot Unchained will be Kickstarted later this month.

Thanks, Massively.