Mythic Entertainment closes after Dark Age Of Camelot decline

Electronic Arts has shut down Mythic Entertainment, the developer behind the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age Of Camelot. The closure follows a long decline in the game's player base, a trend that former players trace back to the release of World of Warcraft in 2004.

Adam W, a reader who played Dark Age Of Camelot for four or five years in the early 2000s, says the shutdown was not a surprise. He argues that the studio never recovered from the mass exodus of players to World of Warcraft, which launched in 2004. Many players switched titles immediately upon release, and the remaining population gradually thinned out over time. Eventually, the English servers were merged into a single server to maintain activity levels.

W describes the game as a balance of player versus environment and player versus player combat. He started solo on the Prydwen server as an infiltrator, a class that functions as an assassin. He later moved to group-based classes and led top-end raids in his realm. It was common for a raid group of more than 60 players to fail on difficult bosses. In those cases, his guild would return as a group of eight to slowly clear the remaining dungeon content.

By the end of his time in the game, W was part of a top player versus player guild called Public Enemies. The guild maintained a fixed group of eight players who played together each evening. They sought out other groups of eight from different realms for fair fights. They also engaged with larger, less organized groups of 20 to 30 players, which W noted were often easier to defeat.

The game's decline forced W to stop playing when regular players became scarce. He sold his account on eBay, a process that technically violated the game's terms and conditions. The account held a realm rank 11 infiltrator, sorcerer, and paladin, along with multiple other characters across several servers. Despite the game's reduced popularity, the account still held demand.

W tried World of Warcraft but found the player versus environment side enjoyable while preferring the player versus player elements of Dark Age Of Camelot. He stopped playing World of Warcraft because his schedule changed. As a student, he had time to commit to the game, but as an adult with a job and a long-term partner, he could not maintain the necessary playtime.

The recent announcement of World of Warcraft: Forever has prompted W to consider returning to the genre. He acknowledges, however, that playing at the level he desires is no longer realistic. The closure of Mythic Entertainment marks the end of the studio that created Dark Age Of Camelot, a title that W considers the best player versus player experience he has had.

The shutdown of Mythic Entertainment joins a list of studios closed by Electronic Arts over the years. While the recent closure of BioWare has drawn attention, W notes that Mythic's fate was tied directly to the competitive shift in the online gaming market. The studio's inability to retain its player base after 2004 made the eventual closure a predictable outcome for those who followed the game's history.