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Thinking about starting
Squitty
Member Posts: 342
My subscription with World of Warcraft is over in a few days, and I need a new MMORPG. WoW did not cut it for me, there was no high end content worth doing. I just have a few questions about DAoC, because it seems to be the best MMORPG out there right now:
-Is the only expansion Catacombs, and is it possible to buy both games together to save a little money?
-what is the monthly fee like?
-how long does it take to get a character to max level?
-What keeps you subcribed?
And yes I know that there is a 14 day free trial out to see if I like the game (which i intend to try). But of course 14 days is not enough time to see if the game has long lasting appeal.
EDIT: And if Catacombs is the only expansion, what would I be missing out on besides the extra classes?
Comments
1-there are lot of Expension! so i recommend to get the Last Box of DAoC if they sell it at your store which Included all of them and Catacombs or go And get the Platinium box like i did, and dl the Catacombs Patch Engine from the Off. Site!
2- you start with a 30 day free, and its 14.95$ a month! with i thing 10 Char Slot per server if you have Catacombs 8 if you dont! ( you can only play 1 realm per server)
3- take some time when solo , but fast and Fun when Party, and the Game Give you Free lvl like each 20 days!
4-the RvR, the Community, The House System ( not new but help keep you subcribed) and the Big Team Bos hunting, lot of fun ^^!
There is DAOC, their first expansion Shrouded Isles, the third is Trials of Atlantis, and the fourth is Catacombs. They are no longer supporting the original game. Everyone now plays at minimum the classic game and SI. For those that didn't upgrade they got it free.
Purchasing options currently for the US in most places would be to buy the Platnium Edition which contains DAOC, SI, ToA. That will cost $19.99 in most places sometimes on sale for $14.99 Catacombs will run $29.99 or sometimes on sale for $19.99.
The monthly fee is essentially the same as WoW except they are not charing you taxes like WoW does. It runs $14.95 a month I believe. If you buy multiple months at a time it is cheaper.
How long does it take to get to max level? That all depends on the class and if you solo/group/powerlevel. You can get to 50 in about 3 days played in game. For 'average' if there is such a thing to get one character to 50 would most likely take 6-8 days played. So if you play 40 hours in a week and know what you are doing it can be done in less than a month. If you only play around 10 hours in a week it would take 4 - 6 months.
What keeps me subscibed? Hard to answer. Put it this way, what can any other game offer me to leave? It has a lot of PvE content and has the best RvR (or PvP) of any game on the market now or even in the forceable future. Not that I do not have a list of complaints, but it is still the best game on the market. EQ and EQ2 have no point to play. That is I have no purpose in doing things other than talking to people and killing things to get loot so that I can level up and kill more things for loot. WoW is the same at the moment unless you play on a PvP server.
I look at it this way. DAOC has the best community. Almost everyone is nice or helpful. You do not get sarcastic answers. I can essentially send a tell to anyone I want and ask a question and get an answer. If you want to kill other players this game is awsome. They keep improving their RvR sytem. You can capture keeps, kill other players, and now destroy towers. You can see the large holes in the side of the keeps. You can fight from boats. I can level (which I essentially did with my nightshade) by killing other players. No need for PvE if I do not want to bother with it.
If I want a time sink, then at higher levels I can go to ToA and do master levels or find an artifact. I have 12 character slots per server. I have three realms to pick from. 1 free expansion every year and one paid expansion.
Now as for Catacombs, with the trial that is offered here, then you will get the graphics upgrade. However you will be missing ToA content and Catacombs content. If you are in it for the long haul then it is well worth it to get both expansions. The main thing you will be missing out on with Catacombs besides the extra classes will be quicker and easier ways to level. They have task dungeons which are very easy to level in.
You are right in that 14 days is not enough. You will at least need to get to 24 to have a decent feel for the game, although I would recomend getting to 35 before making up your mind. At low levels (pre 20) there are not a lot of people to group with on most servers. If you play on Merlin then it is different. After 20 there are more possibilities of grouping and you can get into hours of RvR action in the battlegrounds. The battleground start at level 1, but almost no one is out at those levels. They will also be redoing the starting areas soon. Redistributing the mobs to take advantage of the new areas to make it easier to level and adding more high end content to areas that is not being used any longer.
My advice is to try the game out for 2-3 months. Get into a nice guild. Get some groups started and get into some RvR. Once you have that you should have a good idea of if you want to stick with the game for longer or not.
1. Let me get this straight. Does mythic give 1 free expansion a year to its subscribers? And they also release 1 expansion per year that you need to buy?
2. I am also a little confused here. Does the graphics upgrade only come with Catacombs?
1. Let me get this straight. Does mythic give 1 free expansion a year to its subscribers? And they also release 1 expansion per year that you need to buy?
yep, they have the last 3 years atleast.
2. I am also a little confused here. Does the graphics upgrade only come with Catacombs?
well, with Cata uyou get the latest grapics engine, but! the "old classics zones" did get a free uppgrade in the last patch 1.75. (not new engine, but new grapics...the old zones where not looking very good..but now they are)
The Grapicsengine you get from the free trial is the one we got from the shrouded Islands expansion.
Every expnasion that DAOC does upgrades the graphics. If anyone remembers what EQ was like before DAOC you will understand what. In EQ you had the original game, then you went to the new zones and the new zones looked new and the old zones looked like crap. When DAOC came out EQ kept doing the same thing, then DAOC released their first expansion and upgraded the graphics for the entire game. After that EQ did the same thing realizing that they had competition.
So simply put every time DAOC will release an expansion they will upgrade the graphics for the entire game when that expansion. This means you will need to buy that expansion if you want to improve the look of your game. What they have no now to compete with WoW and EQ2 is to allow people to have their latest graphics without having to buy the latest expansion.
In any case around Oct/Nov expect a retail expansion coming out that will improve the graphics and add more content to the game. This will be every year since they have an agreement with their publisher to do so. You do not "need" to ever buy the expansion but almost everyone does.
I think they will start selling a full set DAoC this month including the original game and all of it's expansions. Heard that the price was pretty cheap, about same much as WoW costs atm.
EDIT: Also, if you have DAoC and Shrouded Isles (you get that with ur 14-day trial), you can download Catacombs engine for free and the graphics look pretty good.
There are 5 expansions so far 2 free Foundations, New Frontiers and 3 retail Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis and Catacombs.
You are able to buy the platinum edition which comes with all the expansions except catacombs for 19.99 and it comes with one free month.
Its 14.99 for one month but its cheaper if you buy like three months at a time.
How fast you level depends on how much you play and grps/Pls/buffbots and if you have catacombs and every 9 days mythic gives you a free level until like level 45.
With Catacombs You can get to lvl 50 in about 2 weeks depending on how much you play and catacombs has a new graphics so everything looks much better and of course instanced dungeons which are the fastest way to lvl.
Probably the thing that keeps me suscribed is its great PvP and the best community for a mmorpg I have seen and they have great CS so if you do have problems you can actually get it resolved unlike in WoW.
-Memnom
I only skimmed through some of the comments but let me give you my opinion.
I'm in the same boat you were. I actually had both DAoC and WoW active at the same time and I ended up not playing WoW for a week (made it to lvl 34). The end just sucks... I don't care if BG is coming in the next patch or not, it's just nothing compared to DAoC.
DAoC is more than just a grind. After max lvl(50) there are artifacts to get, Realm abilities from realm pts you get from killing players from another Realm and raids galore.
DAoC is the longest subscribed MMO that i've played, and am still playing.
Oh, and (edit), starting from scratch you might find the game a lil boring at first. In some cases there aren't many newbs around cause if you get a lvl 50 you can /level a new guy to 20 or 30 automatically depending what server. So just give the game at least a month to let it soak in, and definately find a guild to join. Playing with friends makes this game 2x better.
Looking for something new.