Dark Age Of Camelot's Free-to-Play "Endless Conquest" Option Coming In Late October

It's been nearly two years since Broadsword Games announced that a free option would be coming to venerable MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot. Dubbed "Endless Conquest," it was supposed to go live in fall of 2018 with a number of restrictions on free accounts. On the down side, that transition obviously didn't happen in 2018; on the up side, it is coming very soon and with fewer restrictions than initially announced.

As revealed in a producer's letter yesterday, Dark Age of Camelot: Endless Conquest is scheduled to launch "in the latter-half of October," allowing players to make accounts on both the Ywain and Gaheris servers. Those characters will be able to progress to level 50 and have access to all expansions up to 2006's Labyrinth of the Minotaur, explore all three realms, do normal PvE and Epic quests, participate in Realm vs. Realm combat, earn Bounty and Realm points, max out their Champion Levels and Realm Rank, and more. You can read about all of what's available to free accounts, and what's not, in the Endless Conquest FAQ.

Notable "no-no's" in that FAQ include the ability to buy a house or train Champion Level Abilities, but restrictions on progression gains seem to have been removed. In the original announcement, free accounts could only create one character, while XP, bounty point, coin, and realm point gains would be "significantly reduced and/or throttled." Now, there are no restrictions on the number of characters you can create and there's no mention of lower rewards, though they "will not have any experience, bounty, or realm point bonuses applied except for those purchased from the Mithril store."

Broadsword also initially said that Endless Conquest would only be for brand-new accounts, though the developer was examining ways to allow lapsed players to get back into the game with their existing accounts. That seems to be the case now, with a few light restrictions on what characters are eligible -- notably that they must be level 15 or above, have at least seven days of play time, and have been created before Endless Conquest launches.

If you're an old DAoC player, will you be returning to Albion and points beyond to try out Endless Conquest? Or, if you've never played before, are you willing to jump into an MMO that launched in 2001 and experience some old school action? Let us know in the comments!