Freeshards are also the life-saving grace for many games whose official servers are already closed. For example, the Return of Reckoning server is an extremely popular Warhammer online freeshard, offering a place for Warhammer players since 2014 to continue the battle between order and chaos, even after the official servers shut down in 2013. World of Warcraft`s private servers, often legally tracked by Blizzard, were the first to offer a classic WoW experience long before Blizzard launched its own classic servers. And Star Wars Galaxies, which officially closed in 2011, has a vibrant ecosystem of freeshards to choose from for players who aren`t ready to give up their adventures in a galaxy far, far away. The other side of the coin is that because they are not companies, most freeshards are free-to-play. This is almost a no-brainer, as server emulation software is already in legally dubious territory and the actual fees for players would put servers directly on the wrong side of the law. But it should not be forgotten that the ability to play without paying is an important attraction for many players. FOX 10`s Cory McCloskey heads to the Phoenix Theatre Company to take a behind-the-scenes look at the latest production, “Camelot.” It was a vulnerable time for live servers, and the Phoenix star was strong. Many people skipped live servers run by Broadsword Games and joined “the bird,” as the server was affectionately called, starting entirely new careers from scratch and building them into DAoC`s characteristic Kingdom vs. Kingdom (RvR) PvP gameplay. It was a good time to be a Phoenix player, with a server population that regularly surpassed that of live servers, often by a lot.

In addition, Phoenix`s developers have been dynamic and responsive to the gaming community and have even added new original events, such as the “Level Playing Field”, where players increased their toons to 50 only through PvP combat, an event that Broadsword broadcast to DAoC servers live. For DAoC, the Freeshard community began in 2003 when the Dawn of Light (DoL) compute emulator was launched. Phoenix was not the first DAoC-Freeshard or the first DAoC-Freeshard to close its doors. Released shortly after DoL, Uthgard was an early offering and continues to operate to this day, but with a very small population of players. Genesis was a stopover in Phoenix. Alteri is an “Arena PvP” freeshard that focuses entirely on high-level RvR combat. There are many additional small servers, some of which no longer exist. Looking to the future, a new Freeshard titled Atlas with the classic DAoC rule set is in the works. Atlas Discord has nearly 3,000 players before the server even has an official launch date. On Saturday, July 24, 2021, it was announced that Camelot Freeshard Phoenix`s hugely popular Dark Age will be closed until the end of August. In a Phoenix forum post titled “The Sky Is Really Falling This Time,” Gruenesschaf, one of the creators of Freeshard, explained the reasons for the decision and the remaining timeline for the server. Finally, Gruenesschaf explained in a rather fatalistic way, every online game – Freeshard or not – reaches a point after the hype has subsided and player interest has waned, when the player population is simply too small to justify the continued existence of the server.

And that`s exactly the point. Playing on a Freeshard is risky because unlike live servers, where developers charge a subscription fee or an initial purchase price, a Freeshard is sensitive to the whims, interests, and budget constraints of its developers, most of whom run the servers as a hobby job with their own money. Freeshards are not companies and therefore do not follow the basic rules of profitability and investment. And what`s next for the Dark Ages of Camelot, a game launched in 2001 that stubbornly refuses to stop? The official ywain cluster is currently experiencing a population boom, likely due to Phoenix players returning from their shutdown server, but the future looks uncertain. The Freeshard Atlas is on the horizon and promises another classic Freeshard experience for those who have the courage to reinvest their time. Broadsword itself has long promised to release a classic server, and with the game`s 20th anniversary in October, speculation about its launch is widespread. But at the same time, newer, more modern MMOs like Crowfall and New World are already coming or are here, attracting players with their superior graphics and mainstream gaming population. Time alone will tell. But why did Phoenix fail? There are probably several reasons for this. Some claim that phoenix`s developers were almost too responsive and that many of the server`s difficulties were due to complacency towards voice but smaller cliques that caused outsized changes in the game`s core mechanics. Another possibility could be that even the classic set of rules has become stifling for players and developers, turning the game`s main selling point into a liability that has prevented further improvements to the game.

A third important factor is probably the decrease in the player population. Phoenix developer gruenesschaf notes in its final announcement that the server was already on track to reach a critical tipping point in March 2020, and that only pandemic-related lockdowns provided the necessary influx of new players to keep the server running. This further contributes to the weakness of the DAoC Freeshard community. If a server like Phoenix can die, even as early as 2020, is there really a Freeshard that is secure now or in the future? When Phoenix launched nearly four years ago in 2017, the server was hailed as a new version of DAoC, building on its roots before the game`s major expansions, which some players said “ruined” the experience. The launch took place at a time when the classic live servers had been discontinued, which meant there was simply no way to access the classic set of rules before the expansion. But of course, the Freeshards are fickle, and now all this progress is lost with the closure of the bird server. For many players, this means years of work, and while it can be said that DAoC`s main attraction has always been the shared experiences of RvR combat rather than the resulting kingdom points, equipment, and loot, the fact remains that these characters will soon be as if they never existed. Of course, to contradict this point, the official live servers of Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) are still running and running since the game`s launch in 2001. To avoid spam, comments are moderated. If your comment comes from a real person, it will be approved and published in a timely manner.