DAoC: New Frontiers Interview

WorthPlaying has conducted an interview with Mythic's Matt Firor, asking the executive producer quite a few questions about New Frontiers, the upcoming free PvP expansion for Dark Age of Camelot. A snippet, as usual:
Q: New Frontiers allows players to use boats, which were introduced in the Trials of Atlantis expansion, will ToA be required to play Frontiers. Also, will other ToA specific improvements, like being able to swim underwater, be available in Frontiers?

A: Aha! Now the difficult questions start. If you hadn't noticed, starting about five months ago, the Dark Age of Camelot (sans Shrouded Isles or Trials of Atlantis) that we are selling in stores and giving away free via download and magazine cover disk is the SI graphics engine with just the original game's content. We plan on phasing out the original engine over the next few months, since players of the original game have free upgrade options to the new version. We'll start an education process on this; how it will affect those players that continue to use Camelot's original graphics engine - and what hardware, if any, will need to be upgraded. Generally, when you run the SI engine and turn off most of the higher-end effect settings, you can run that version on almost any computer that runs the original engine.

Getting back to your actual question - no, you will not need ToA in order to get into New Frontiers. But, you will need at least Shrouded Isles or the version of the classic game that has the SI engine. We will be adding underwater to that engine, but only in the new frontier zones. In New Frontiers, you will be able to fight and swim underwater.