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Re-Review of Dark Age of Camelot everything included
Unstoppable
Member Posts: 37
NOTE: To scroll from left to right select the page anywhere on the text then use the arrows keys -> <-. Also screenshots were taken and reduced in quality greatly. It is not representative of the capability of the game that much. Also I mainly play on Midgard so this review is tailored to that realm.
Beta, release, cancellation, re sub, cancelation, re sub, and today. That is pretty much my history of DAOC. From beta to this day.
How much has changed since 2001? What has changed and how does the player base feel about it? What do I think about the state of the game? Well that is what brings us to this Re-review of DAOC.
I leveled him up mostly on my own. I was power leveled here and there by my former guild but most of the levels I played hard to get. What's nice now is that with the Catacombs expansion you can level quickly through task dungeons. Easily found by bringing up the /help feature and going into that expansion. Also fighting in new frontier areas garners 200% xp. You can port to two towns which are adequate for levels 25+. Some mobs con purple and should be avoided. I found this to be way faster leveling than Task dungeons. However you can be attacked from the enemy realm but usually they leave you alone since you are no threat. Catacombs is now free and it's a great addition to the DAOC world for new comers and veterans alike. I really have no complaints about it.
As you probably know I totally skipped Trials of Atlantis. Well there's a good reason for that. Trials of Atlantis was what Mythic clearly stated it wouldn't be. A PVE expansion that would affect PVP. It was a dagger in the back and was one of the reasons why I quit after purchasing shrouded Isles. To lie to your customers , those that gave you the success is unacceptable.
Shrouded Isles was all the rage before Catacombs and Trials of Atlantis. A PVE expansion which didn't radically change PVP. You would see people run across Aegirhamn bridge (Midgard). Now if you go there the only things you see are the vacant images of the past. The bridge is pretty much abandoned. Classic zones have players but very few. It's pretty much a ghost town. Sad but that's not where the action is at anyway.
Darkness rising is actually quite a good addition. It adds champion quests which help you get better gear and xp. You can level faster and become more powerful eventually when you hit level 50. However once you start the champion quests some of them require one or two 50's to complete. Unless you can get a full group of 30's of course. This is not such a bad thing because the Champion quests can be completely quickly. Also you do not need to do these quests to unlock your champion weapon. All it requires is champion level 5 which is quite easy to attain. Also around this time porters became available almost anywhere in the world. So getting across the realm of your choice is MUCH MUCH easier now. You don't have to pay anything to do it so it's completely free.
With bounty points gained from RVR you can buy scrolls that equal one bubble of experience. Once you hit 50 you can buy half a bubble champion experience. This whole part of the game is very well made because it does not force you to PVE. You might need to PVE for loot and gold but it's much more easier now to gain gold.
Now on to the Labyrinth. Well that is quite an expansion. It ties in with Darkness rising in that there's a minotaur you talk to in the king's throne room. He then takes you on a series of quests that will end up taking you through all of Labyrinth. While there you face many dangers. Including mobs which are powerful but soloable. That's not really as hard as watching your back for the other two realms which can attack you at any moment. It's not as bad as it sounds though because you can easily port back thanks to pillar stones. As you go exploring you can touch them for port points later on. I found the Labyrinth quests to be very much enjoyable. It then takes you a good group to do the other parts of the quests which I didn't get to. You can do most of it with two people. They really help you get champion levels quickly.
With that out of the way it's fair to say all the expansions except for TOA have been a success. Worthy of your time and effort on the PVE side. Now lets talk about the main draw about the game. The reason why you should even consider returning to DAOC. The realm vs realm.
Recently massive archer changes were made in order to make the developers much more easiely tweak the range combat. I applaud them as they are quite cool and give archers new toys like flame arrows and poison arrows. The problem is that once again these changes were applied rapidly and some say has made archer classes overpowered. Well you can engage (a skill) one archer and block his arrows as a shield user. The problem arises when there are many more archers who hunt together. There's really nothing you can do except run away and hope you don't die.
However this can be countered by playing in a group of 8 which has been the focus of DAOC. The Realm war map now gives live updates and you can see towers that are being attacked as well as keeps. Keeping track of the whole realm vs realm is way easier now. This does not come with consequences though. The New Frontiers expansion saw a revolt against the game by the core player base. Again massive changes to the game were made. (This was way before Labyrinth though). The point i'm trying to get across is that DAOC has a track record for having massive changes all of a sudden. For the most part they accomplish their goal but at the cost of subscriptions makes one wonder.
Realm vs Realm is quite fun. You can go with siege weapons at level 39 if you have high strength (catapults). Make some fire, ice, and stone ammo for added damage and leech some realm points off the big fights. You will die though but at least solo play isn't totally impossible. Eventually once you hit realm rank 3 though grouping is your best option. Solo play is alright but is much too slow even as a stealther. There are many dedicated stealthers but really from what i've seen they can only hinder an armies progress not really stop it. Probably the way it should be. That does not mean that a well coordinate powerful group of stealthers can't accomplish anything. They can definately take a tower if they are dedicated enough or maybe even a low level keep.
My biggest gripe with the Realm vs Realm is what we call "cross-realmers". Since Mythic merged the servers into clusters basically instead of 3 seperate servers you have 1. From there you can still choose the other 3 servers and make a character in another realm. There are NO timers when switching and people can create 2 accounts to spy on the other realm. This is done very easily since you just join a battlegroup that's forming the army.
You can think that spying on the other realm does not have much effect on the game but you'd be dead wrong. I gave it a shot but eventually this is what has led to it's downfall. As you move as one massive army all it takes is one person to be spying on you to know where your army is the whole time. Which pretty much destroys any chance of strategy involved. Sure you can still win but that's not the point. The point is EA Mythic has very little in place to help stop this. The majority of the players wanted to make two different realm characters on the same server. Well the majority of the players has gone from 100,000 subscribers to about 20,000. World of Warcraft does not allow it for this very reason. They know it would hinder their game. However WoW does not rely on RVR.
Lets put that aside for a while though because the game is still much more enjoyable and playable. From PVE to PVP. However another issue yet arises. It's been 6 years since DAOC launch. Many new expansion and engine upgrades. The fact is though the game still remains to be The Net Immerse engine. It is quite amazing so much that has been accomplished with that engine. However the engine itself is flawed and here's why.
The whole game has massive textures which in turn equal better graphics. The problem is the more textures on screen the slower the performance will be. I could still play when 50 vs 50 battles took place. However once you start reaching the 80 vs 100 type battles it's just a slide show. Literally 2 or 3 frames per second. Which is what I believe the very reason why DAOC has lost many resources dedicated to it. EA Mythic perhaps know that engine cannot be optimized. Or heck maybe they just don't want to. It's my problem because I can't play. It's not their problem because they still rack in a good chunk of $$$. Say 15,000 subscribers x 15$ =225,000$/month. Look at it yearly and it's 2.7 million dollars. Be fair and scratch 300,000$ for other costs and you're left with 2.4 million dollars in the bank.
You would need a monster computer to be able to withstand that type of punishment on your machine. Even then i've read people who have had the latest and greatest but they just can't take the overload of textures onto their system memory. This is another big drawback to the RVR.
So how do players cope with this? Well they just do. Some people can handle it some can't. I've had my game crash and force a hard reboot at least 5 times. I find it unacceptable because this should have been fixed. There are also countless bugs looming about which remain to be fixed. They have been documented to EA Mythic by the player base. However not enough gets done considering everyone pays 15$ or less a month.
To that regard the huge bosses in the game are handeled well performance wise. Of course you only have a few full groups on screen so your machine is able to cope. It is interesting to see how well PVE is handled on the out dated engine compared to RVR. It is not to say RVR is totally unplayable, it's enjoyable. However when it comes down to it it's just not enough.
As for the balance of the realms there has been a lot of contreversy. To that end I will try my best to summarize from release up until now what has happend. Basically you have seen Mythic hit the nerf bat when one realm totally dominates. At release till about one or two years it was Midgard. They had very strong melee some might even say overpowered.
Well they got hit with nerfs and many players left. From then on the focus shifted to Hibernia. With exploits as a Bainshee class and unlimited turrets as an Animists classes they dominated. Keep in mind as one realm dominates the population switches. If the timers weren't removed this would have been much less a hassle. Eventually though turrets were capped and Bainshee's nerfed. However many problems still arise which I will cover later.
Albion. The realm you pick when you hear the word "Camelot." This realm has been said by many to be very powerful. Perhaps now the most balanced out of all the three realms. However there are many complaints from the other realms on this realm. It deals with their classes having many things other do not.
To that end it is only fair to give Albion credit in that some of their classes do underperform and are unwanted in groups like the Minstrel. No longer do you see them in groups. Many times you see them solo or in a stealth group.
Also I even experienced this for myself. Albion has access to unlimited monster rezes. What this means is if you die the herectic class hits a button and you appear as a monster. Well that does not sound too bad but a monster you CANNOT BE meleed. That's just poor design or dare I say it on purpose. Also you can't control yourself as a monster. Well this wouldn't be too bad but you also blow people up around you, literally. If you are anywhere near a monster they will start spamming fire explosions.
You would think after all that a monster rez would eventually die. Nope! The person returns back to normal and can begin kicking your ass! Sure you can say well just run away since they can't control the monster rez. Well that does work but..
You have to protect keeps and towers to protect the relics which give strength or power bonuses. Which means eventually monster rez does become grossly overpowered in certain situations. Sure the herectic only has so much of power but there are many abilities which give him more than one power bar. So when you add it all up monster rez IS overpowered. Combine that with many herectics and well my friends you dominate the battlefield.
To date EA Mythic shows no concern in nerfing monster rez or tuching Albion. "Working as intended." Well I find "Working as Intended." to be unacceptable. Even a powerhouse guild went from Hibernia to Midgard due to the population problems there as well as the nerfs.
All in all DAOC is not a game without flaws. There is still lag casting going on by cheaters. Thanks to cross realming those cheaters no longer need to use radar programs. Sure if they are caught they are banned but how do you catch a cross realmer? They can join the public battle group and know your every move with 2 accounts. The answer is you can't. The only thing you could do is prevent it by keeping the server CLUSTER and account to one realm. If they want to play in another realm pick another cluster. This would help but perhaps there are more measures that can be taken.
Due to the outdated engine and the performance problems I pointed out above don't hold your breath. I'm also going to wait on Warhammer Online because frankly EA Mythic has not done enough with DAOC to keep me happy. I'll play till my subscription expires but the bugs, cross realmers, performance problems, balance, outweights the fun factor constantly.
To that end one more positive thing perhaps amidsts all this if the fact that statistics are maintained pretty darn good. The Camelot Herald someitmes isn't updated to date but it's only a few days or maybe a week off. You can check who killed you and know his realm level and what he/she does. You can do that for yourself. It also has many cool statistics like who has more realm points, I remain standing ranking, and much more. This is one thing I hope transitions into Warhammer Online.
The bottom line is if you are going to return to DAOC just play it for what it is. Be prepared for everything I outlined above. I was skeptical just like you so I returned to Camelot and tried it for myself. I do not regret my return. I regret that the game can be much more what it is but just isn't due to the company decisions made. After all it's their game. They choose not to market it and so be it. Don't expect me to be lining up for Warhammer Online.
6.9/10
The game could be much better than it's current state. Much credit is given due to the out dated engine. However much more can be done bring the game back to it's former glory. It's still a quality game it just has many flaws you have to look past to enjoy it. Really it's tailored toward groups. Soloing PVE is very doable. PVP is a bit harder and some classes are just better than others. There is a bit of a rock papers scissors going on. Try the free trial and come up with your own conclusions. www.camelotherald.com and click on downloads.
Comments
- UI was dated and horrible to use for a new player
- Chaarcter movement was way too weird, i'd prefer a fluid movement like EQ2 or WOW.
- Starting zones wern't good, they need to be updated and they were dead, justw asn't fun.
"I actually cook my meat with nothing but my burning hatred for vegetables"
You gotta give a game more than 10 min, when u say u tried a game for 10 min, it makes u look like a crappy gamer. DAoC was always the best, maybe not in graphics or others, but it was way more fun than WoW (I played a year along w/ DAoC), Vanguard (has a few glitches but also potential), City of Heroes/Villains (fun, just not like DAoC), and a few others. How is DAoC now, I haven't been able to play it for 3/4 a year, not enough money. i got enough now, but im savin for Warhammer, made by same company so im lookin for it to be as or more fun than DAoC, and w/ better graphics and all that modern stuff
I like some of the changes and dislike others, you can never completely please everybody. In the end I don't think this game will get much better then what it is now, since mythic will release WAR and only put enough people to work on DAoC to kinda show that the people might be gettin their moneys worth.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
RvR is dependent on people actually being there. The community is far too caught up on 8v8. Its hard and frustrating as hell to get groups. If you go out solo, you get pounded on by full groups of stealths or visibles. If you don't go out solo, you are risking sitting at the PK all damn day.
I wish DAoC was what it used to be. Classic did not stop the game from losing its population. I actually think it helped speed it to its death, because the normal servers are suffering huge population problems.
Morthoron the Moriquendi
Mythic couldn't balance the game "Pong". There are too many overpowered and underpowered classes and abilities, and when Mythic moves to "balance" the game it creates even more wild swings in power that people invested way too much time into.
I also fault Mythic for not thinking ahead on how to deal with merging servers to prevent the cross realm problem. They seemed to think that server populations would always be high. Dumb.
They took FOREVER dealing with cheaters using radar programs. Their biling server was also shown to be unsecure for a while.
Throw on top of it Trials of Atlantis (ToA), the god awful worst expansion in the history of MMO expansions. Jaw dropping overpowered abilities that were insta-win buttons for PvP, built on a tedium of boring and repetitive PvE. Only to eventually see most ToA abilities and items nerfed to high heaven long after everyone kept telling them just how ridiculous they were. So, if you didn't go through ToA, you were toast in PvP. Eventually everyone was forced into doing ToA, then they turn around and nerf it severly about 1.5 years later. Great way to get people to buy the expansion I suppose, but also a better way to drive customers away.
So after people leave the game because of ToA, they make the PvP zones BIGGER??? Yes, spread out people even more. So, then to fix it they merge servers clumsily (hence the OP pet peve of cross realm spying). Since people still complain about ToA, they finally created a server without ToA (the alternative ruleset server, AKA classic server).
None of this would bother me if the underlying PvP game wasn't so much darn fun. I think most people who actually played DAOC more than 10 minutes really enjoyed the game. It just was so frustrating to see so many obvious problems that it could have been so much more.
It's too late to fix now. Every fix just creates more problems. One might hope that they have learned their lessons and can take the best parts of DAOC and make Warhammer Online. Too bad it looks exactly like World of Warcraft and the beta combat footage on YouTube looks ridiculous. I realize it's beta, but jeez.
I think everyone in DAOC is looking for a solid PvP realm based game that also offers decent PvE without the NEED to do PvE. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online look to be the early contenders, but Age of Conan at least doesn't look like WoW and is scheduled to be released in October 2007.
Its easy to say things are unfair, ill still beat your but with your uber eleet class.
Let see i rolled a wiz , friar, cleric, tic, reaver, thrueg, and now am working on a scout just in alb side ... what did i find out all work just fine i could thid pvp with all of them effectively .
Now i know of some unbalence issues such as the la power and ranged damage when the game was first released. But i have not really seen too much lately. I like thanes are a bit op the nuke aoe nuke like beasts and tank and hit like beasts too. still ill kill them.
As for this re-review a major problem was what cross-realmers ... is that a joke. Now you can freaking see on the map where large forces are. and any stealther can say x and x over here heading to... It would take longer to x-realm than to just have people say yo there are bad guys over here.
my 1 cent
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
Its easy to say things are unfair, ill still beat your but with your uber eleet class.
Let see i rolled a wiz , friar, cleric, tic, reaver, thrueg, and now am working on a scout just in alb side ... what did i find out all work just fine i could thid pvp with all of them effectively .
Now i know of some unbalence issues such as the la power and ranged damage when the game was first released. But i have not really seen too much lately. I like thanes are a bit op the nuke aoe nuke like beasts and tank and hit like beasts too. still ill kill them.
As for this re-review a major problem was what cross-realmers ... is that a joke. Now you can freaking see on the map where large forces are. and any stealther can say x and x over here heading to... It would take longer to x-realm than to just have people say yo there are bad guys over here.
my 1 cent
No it's not a joke and now that Midgard lost most of the relics on the Gareth server all the realm hoppers switch to HIbernia and Albion. Go see for yourself. Plus most Mids do not pay attention to battlegroup leaders and run the 8-man's on their own, unless the relic keep is threatened again that's when they care. It's sad really but it could be worse I guess.
It's just sad because DAoC is and was a great game. Unlike others which suffer due to stability, poor design, etc what happen here was largely a content decision, that at least Mythic realized was bad and tried to correct.
So don't throw insults at me like "crappy gamer" no just difference of opinion.
Hi I'm Ravkeen!
Emilia_Emi Lvl 56 Witch
Now Playing : Black Desert Online
"America is not at war, the US Military is at war, America is at the mall."
Your points are invalid,stupid and just wrong....
The most important part of a game is the first 10 or so mins because normally if a persona doesn't have fun inbetween that timeframe then your not going to get many new people. I know 3 or 4 of my mates who tried it and quit around the same time as me and made the same points as me and any business/game will want to know that and address the issues.
Just because you gave the game like 30+ hours or w/e to have fun doesn't mean everyone else will because 99% of people wont. So don't tell my what i think is pointless because noones opinions are and i would have thought Mythic would have addressed the noob experience by now.
Best selling points.
1. Best team/realm based PVP game out their period.
2. Player maturity level is high.. I don't see alot of trash talk from L33T doods.
3. Painless to level- Again the focus of DAOC is PVP not PVE though it has plenty.
4. Battlegrounds all the way up to high end RVR are fun. In fact if a person never wanted to leave a lower level battleground they don't have to. So you could take a day or two get to level 24 and turn exp and realm pts off and just play their if its what you wanted on classic servers anyways.
5. Last but not least. Gear doesn't make the game on a classic server. Sure you want to have the best set up you can get your hands on but its not necessarily a game breaker unlike TOA server PVP.
Over the past several years I've been looking for a game to replace DAOC. I even played WOW for nearly 2 years. Guess what? Their is nothing that can compare to it. People say the graphics are not that of Vanguard. Heck you can't hardly play Vanguard with 20 people in the same area with the best machines you can build of buy. DAOC is playable with several hundred people in the same area battling it out. System crushing graphics doesn't equal playability and online thats what your after as a priority.
You again.
Well that was a pretty long intitial post. Quite the opposite of what I had gotten from you in your original post
http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/129470
That still comes through here with the cross-realm spies. They will always be there in one shape or another. Get over it.
You were sticking with DOAC because you wanted to be RR5? If you played for that long, off and on or whatever, you should have hit RR5 by now. You sure you aren't an Ebay guy? Who tried the game and left and got a lot of info to post an argument that really doesn't have any reason of being there.