DAoC's expansion announced: The Labyrinth of the Minotaur

I have only five minutes to comment, but I'll continue later.

The site of the expansion has a somewhat "retro game" feel that I actually like.

The features are better than what I expected:

- One new race (Minotaur) shared by the three realms, as anticipated
- One new class (Mauler) shared by the three realms, as anticipated
- Champion Levels 6-10, as anticipated
- New dungeon: The Labyrinth - Under Agramon (not specified if instanced or shared, but it shouldn't be RvR)
- Cerberus, end-game encounter
- New Item Slots - Mythical Items. To get from the Labyrinth. No other details about these.

And, the biggest one, imho:

- RvR relics that you bring in RvR but that make your character get hunted by other players

No specific details about this either, but I'm pointing to it because... IT'S MY OWN IDEA!

I'll link later (or right now), but if you go see the early pages of the "Dream mmorpg" category you can see how I was imagining powerful PvP items (artifacts) that turn the carrier into a Demi-god. In my design idea, these objects were surely "overpowered" (unbalance in PvP is FUN!), but also "full loot". In the sense that other players who killed you could steal them from your body and becoming themselves a Demi-god.

These powerful items could be summoned only inside very hard PvE instances and then brought back to the PvP world. There were also some limits so that you had to "feed" the item, preventing a player to log out with it and keep it outside of the game for too much time and also forcing the carrier to go out and actually kill people instead of just hide somewhere. In my orginal idea carrying an artifact also "mutated" the graphical appearance of the character, making him bigger and meaner and recognizeable on the battlefield.

Here's an excerpt from the orginial design:

These artifacts make a player near to a demi-god. One player wielding one or more artifacts can fight alone and win against multiple opponents and will be really, really hard to take down without an organized effort from the opposite side. These demi-gods are supposed to become the focus of the PvP in a similar way to how the "heroes" were used in Warcraft 3. They are special and unique. They artifacts aren't usable in PvE, they lose all their properties if they are brought in a PvE instance. In order to keep them on your character, you need to "feed" them by killing the players on the opposite factions and have a role in the conquest, participating actively in the PvP. Exposing yourself. If you are hiding you won't be able to fulfill the "feed" requirements and you'll lose the artifact. When you have an artifact with you your character will change its appearance and you'll be recognizable in the battlefield. Even graphically you'll transform into a demi-god. The other faction will also know that one of the artifacts was summoned and will be able to "divinate" your position in the map. They can track you down. you will be hunted. If you die in a PvP battle, your artifact will be dropped on the ground and one of the players in the opposite faction can loot it and use it, acquiring the powers that were yours. The artifacts are also limited in number. Each type of artifact can have only a fixed (and really small) nuber of "copies" active in a PvP world. The most powerful artifacts are unique and one and only one copy can exist in the PvP world at once. If an artifact is unique, the instance where it can be summoned will be sealed till the artifact remains in the PvP world. There isn't a time limit to the persistence of an artifact in the PvP world, just its "feeding" and "active" requirements. If the feeding requirement aren't met, or if the player with the artifact has been logged out for too long, not meeting the active requirements, the artifact is reset to the original PvE instance that will remain sealed for a set amount of time depending on the type of the artifact.

Now I don't know if Mythic's relics implementation is really similar to that old idea I had since we only have that line in the features list. But I have suspects :)

Who wants to take bets? And who wants to bet that my idea will still be better than Mythic's implementation?

OMG! THIEFS IN MY HOUSE! :)