May 24, 2002 - Mythic was hesitant to show much of anything on the freshly announced Dark Age of Camelot: Shrouded Isles expansion, but they were willing to show us the extent of the graphical improvements behind closed doors. No details were divulged about the large amount of content being added with Shrouded Isles, aside from the fact it's slated for a late 2002 release, but they did mention that they will be adding a new major island to each new realm, the size of the land mass expansion was described as being a little smaller than the home zone of each realm. Add to that five new dungeons, one new race, and a couple of races per realm and you have a moan-worthy expansion. Even if players never explore the new areas in the expansion, by purchasing the expansion pack they will enjoy an instant jump in frame rate along with the vast graphical improvements that remodel all of the game world.

The demonstration began with a look at current graphics of Dark Age of Camelot and then, with a quick type of a secret code, progressed instantly to the newly revamped graphics engine. The improvements were immediately visible: smoother, tighter textures, reflective surfaces, water effects, vastly improved particle system that bring fire, smoke, and spell effects alive. There's now support for DirectX 8.1 and most of the Geforce3 and Radeon graphical chipset features. Last, but it wouldn't be right if we called it least, the character model animations have gone under the knife and now enjoy the silky smooth movements of animation blending.

The bottom line? With the Shrouded Isles expansion, Dark Age of Camelot is now graphically competitive with all of the MMORPG's slated for release this year. You can expect to hear more about the title from us when Mythic makes with the assets.