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What made DAOC better?
filmoret
Member EpicPosts: 4,906
I've searched around a bit and you always hear the glory days of DAOC. But my question, what makes this game better then GW2 or ESO? Please do not speak blindly and say because it was a 3 faction war or because there was castle seiging. Because GW2 and ESO both have this. I'm just looking for good ideas that aren't in these games.
Are you onto something or just on something?
Comments
I think it is more because it is people's first love. You never find something that recaptures that. DaoC had rampant crowd control, unbalanced classes, and had no scenarios -- just straight up rvr. It had 3'oclock calls in the middle of the night to exploit weaknesses.
Personally I thought warhammer was leaps and bounds ahead of DaoC for the sheer variety of pvp, the classes, not being able to move through players, and the reward system for rvr ranks.
Warhammer was the one though that had the "one big thing wrong" syndrome, although there it was two. 1) Inability to contain the balance of the realms. One side could get more powerful and stay that way. They needed either three realms, or some other balancing system like moon phase bonuses. 2) Bolluxing the end game. The city and the fortresses that guarded the main city. The former was a minigame and the latter the system couldn't handle. *IF* those two issues had been less blatant in the game, it would be the RvR standard and DaoC would have faded out.
The main thing DaoC had was some authenticity with how it did the armors/skills realm to realm. It was grittier/more realistic/less fanciful. And of course that it was FIRST.
Actually it wasn't just that it was your first love when playing it, but it was everyone ELSES who was playing's first love. This showed in the kind of intensity/caring that people had. It was more that than the game or game's mechanics itself.
You had the same kind of thing in UO, EQ1, and AC back in the day but for different aspects of MMO gaming.
One factor that I think helped the initial version of DAoC was the separation of the realms. Players were allowed to create characters on only 1 realm on each server. Mythic actively monitored this to prevent 'cross-realm intelligence'. These efforts worked well, and gave a realm some confidence that they could plan raids with relative security. Ultimately players found ways around this restriction, and even the game features were modified to allow this, due to falling populations.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The divided the game into 4 worlds, One PvE for each faction and one for PvP. Never the two mix. But the PvP map had PvP and PvE content. So no matter what type of gamer you were you fit into DAoC. PvP impacted the world and was worth doing. The really did a good job of making people care for their factions because of what you got when your side was winning.
As much care was given to PvE. Open world dungeons for all levels. Heck DAoC was the first game I played where you would have 40-100 people take down a named together and it happened all the time. The verity of classes was huge, a bard on one faction was a healer and on another it was a rogue. The number of classes was also huge.
Crafting mattered and gear did not. Having the the best gear only gave you a small advantage. Crafting had depth and master crafters were in demand. People who took time and care in their trade showed. Also their crafting system was fun. One of the first games to also add player housing and that also was well done. Only now are newer MMOs surpassing what DAoC did for housing.
I could go on and on but this was a gem of a game and if Mythic had not stopped updating it to make Warhammer, I am sure it would have still had a good following today.
It's greatness has to be considered in era it launched. It was the 5th major MMO launched(after UO, EQ, AC and AO) and at it's peak the game was firing on all cylinders. It offered something no other game had (RvR) and was varied in it's classes more than any other game. They had the economy working well and it was just a lot of fun. Then ToA came out and ruined the entire formula and the game has never been the same since.
To compare it to the current generation of games and to say why is it better isn't really a relevant question. DAOC was and can still be fun, and it still offers one of the best PvP games in any MMO but the glory days are behind it. I had always wished they had done a DAOC 2 instead of WAR, but that isn't likely to happen now.
Funny that DAoC outlived Warhammer lol
The DAOC that I and many others loved (circa 2003) was very different from the version that is live today, or any other 3 faction PVP game out there.
We didn't fight for points, or score, or to win campaigns, we fought for five basic reasons:
1) Realm pride - this was very important, we Albs hated the filthy Mids/Hibs and when I eventually moved over to Mordred where there were no factions, I had a real issue not playing an Alb character, felt dirty to be playing as a Mid somehow.
2) We fought for control of Darkness Falls. The realm that controlled the most Keeps had access to it, the other two realms did not. Even if 30 minutes deep into a PVE zone (game had long travel times) a call to arms to help flip the last couple of keeps always drew people like me into the fight, even though I didn't care much for PVP, if there was something to fight for, I was there. DF at the time was the best source of gear and gold and high end PVE, so everyone wanted in there.
3) On a lesser scale, we fought for relics, items that imparted bonuses to your realm for controlling them, and the scramble for them was epic at times, though frequently too much of a lag fest for my computer to handle. (I could never afford the best, and you needed the best)
4) Also important, you earned realm points for killing enemies and taking keeps, and those points could be spent on special abilities that could boost your prowess in both PVP and PVE, (and you had to be quite careful how you spent them) so everyone had incentive to go PVP to earn them, even if they preferred a more PVE focus to their gaming.
5) We fought for our friends, and many in the realm were well to known to us as DAOC had a very long leveling curve back in the day, especially from level 40-45, and even worse for 46-50, and it was very beneficial (almost mandatory for many classes) to group up therefore by the time you reached 50, there's was a large number of people who had leveled up side by side with you for many months. Toss in the the 3 or 4 tiers of Battlegrounds which most everyone did, and fought together, and by the time you reached the Big Boy PVP you had a large number of people you were used to fighting and grouping with, so there was a natural affinity from it.
Sure, since those days there have been MMO's such as WAR, or ESO that have captured some of the elements I listed, but there hasn't been any that have replicated it perfectly, which is why they don't end up with the same experience IMO.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
First welcome to the forums here =-) Second, what part of EQ was sandbox?
Here are a list of things that made DaoC great.
No Mirrored Classes (every realm had their own unique classes)
Persistent Battlegrounds (The battleground is available whether zero people in it or 100 people in it) unlike WOW
Realm Pride/ Realm hatred
Realm ranks (Advance your character by PvPing)
Every type of PvP situation, 1v1, 2v1, 8v8, 8v16 and so on (Yes, a skilled high realm rank group of 8 could take out a unskilled group of 16)
A chance to be a legend. If you were one to be reckoned with other players and enemies would share stories of your prowess in battle. This lead to alot of realm respect, you would hear things like "OMG, Woeful is out.. everybody defend." Woeful was an actual player from Albion and every realm had their heroes. This is what I enjoyed the most.
I have played ESO, but not GW2. There's quite a bit of difference between ESO and DAOC. For one, the classes. DAOC had the three realms, like ESO, but the classes were different for the three realms. As an Alb minstrel, I would never face another minstrel, the other two factions didn't have one. They had similar but different classes. In ESO, you can fight another faction but it could be the exact same toon as you are playing. All the three factions have the same classes, so there is no real differentiation.
And the complexity of the classes and the number of classes was far greater in DAOC. Take the Cabalist for example; the cabby had three different skill lines to specialize in. In today's MMO's, that would be three classes right there. Plus, the cabby had different pets to call on. DAOC has many more classes, and the classes are much more complex, than ESO.
And the classes were designed to be inter-dependent. Unlike ESO, where everyone can do everything, in DAOC you had specialists. To make a fully rounded team required multiple players. That also made it harder to solo. ESO's classes are mildly different from each other, and each one can do the other one's jobs. DAOC was totally unlike that. The fun part for me came when a group started really meshing, because each of us brought our unique skills to the party. In ESO, everybody is everything, in all factions. Bleh.
I didn't play ESO RvR, but in DAOC it meant something to capture a relic. All people in that faction, even PvE, got a buff and a notice. It helped instill realm pride (having different classes helps this too). ESO's RvR seems more like an instanced world away from the rest, and I never got any message about how it was going. Realm pride means much less in that case.
Of course, there are a lot of other differences too. DAOC didn't have quests, it wasn't story driven. ESO is almost totally story and quest driven, like a solo RPG. DAOC wasn't designed for a console, so it had full activity bars and a robust inventory system, unlike the stunted 5-slot action bar and ridiculous linear scrolling inventory of ESO.
In fact, DAOC and ESO are not alike at all, except ESO has a pale reflection of the RvR world of DAOC.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Hehe, I agree.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Nostalgia.
Oldschool DAoC had a pretty big frontier and no maps. This added a lot to roaming gameplay and relic/keep raids. You had to actively scout your frontier for invading forces (especially when some keeps were already taken and you knew something big is going on). Your main forces needed time to react and mount a defense. You needed drivers who knew the terrain and keep locations.
As others mentioned, pre-SI and in the SI era the realm pride was really strong. You worked with your realm to achieve the common goal and hated the enemies.
It was not uncommon to have a realm wide call to arms, where the message got passed along through guilds and alliances and most xp/PvE groups dropped what they were doing and quickly headed out to the frontier for a defense.
If you did more than just big keep/relic raids you actually knew your enemies after a while. You knew which groups and players were good in the other realms. You developed respect/hate relationships. I am still great friends with several people I met as enemies in DAoC and we play games together now.
Group vs group combat had depth and was mostly well balanced between the realms, which resulted in a constantly evolving meta of group setups and tactics.
As others mentioned 1vs1 balance was mostly crap, no question, but that wasn't the game's focus.
Small well organized groups could take on much larger unorganized forces. Zergbusting was actually really fun.
Was DAoC perfect? No ofcourse not. Did it have balance issues? Sure. Would we still love it as much if they rereleased the vanilla version now? Most likely not. Audiences have changed. Preferences have changed.
But still, for me, no game has recaptured the stragetic and deep group combat feel since, where positioning, peeling, pre-kiting, interrupting, group setups, protecting your healer/casters, splitting on inc, and many more things were all crucial.
GW2 and ESO both capture almost all of this. A smart group of players will vastly outmatch any zerg in a 2v1 sometimes 3v1 setting.
Easy
rvr Its not option , its a game - its why excited to camelot unchained/civilization
in Gw2 and Eso AvA/WvW its option not game itself
If you log into Everquest Free to Play and go back to the old zones you will see mobs of a lot of different level ranges all scattered around each zone. There are even a few super high level mobs that wander around. On top of this the old zones are not arranged in a manner in which you go from 1-10 to 10-20. You might have a zone with mobs 1-10 (plus a few 30s/40s) and then the next zone over has mobs that rang for 30-50. It's not always this way, but there generally isn't a clear path. You have to seek out the mobs of your level range and it wasn't always easy to find them in the old days. That coupled with the risk of higher level mobs wandering right next to them constantly made it kind of sandboxy. At the least it wasn't linear questing where there are a few quest lines you can follow that will take you from the beginning to the end and show you exactly where to go.
Rose-tinted glasses?
Also define better. Does better mean better siege weaponry, or does better mean that the walls does not self repair after being broken. What exactly is this better you talk about?
A very good and yet common question, one that even I've wondered at times. I myself was a bit too young to have played Daoc's launch, but I played it 5-6 years after it came out and I've played every mmo that's had open world or RvR style pvp since. You hear such great stories and amazing praise from a significant amount of RvR pvp'ers about Daoc. I myself played it for several months but in the end found that it just wasn't "what is was" both in the smaller community and outdated features (ui/graphics/engine/etc.).
I was in the same boat when it came to SWG, which is praised beyond belief but when I got to it, I was 3-4 years too late and encountered the same experiences.
I think, as mentioned earlier, it's a combination of reasons. One being that it was relatively the first of it's kind (3 realm rvr) and therefore holds a special place in a gamer's heart. Everything is best for the first time after all. Also I definitely agree there is no "realm pride" in rvr mmo's anymore. Whether it be GW2, ESO, Rift, etc. everygame had features that just made any type of pride or feeling of home for one's faction useless.
In GW2 it was the free server transfers onto the winning server. In ESO the game itself just never built upon anything other the bare minimum a castle siege rvr system should have. Rerolling is also not that difficult in ESO, neither is switching campaigns because there was never an incentive to stay on a specific campaign (until recently but even that is not much). Rift's system was simply a half-assed attempt to appeal to open world pvpers years after it's launch that barely qualifies as rvr. Many if not all of these game's either didn't provide systems that supported or allowed for "realm pride" as well as many players just lack the interest or capability to have/create it for themselves.
We are after all in an age where everyone wants everything instantly and easily and in a situation where your faction is outnumbered or things are more difficult than you would like why not reroll to the winning faction and go easymode or quit the game and go somewhere easier. I always choose underdog factions for this particular reason.
I've always said a simple new engine, updated graphics, and overhauled ui of Daoc would bring me to a game. I'm now hoping Camelot Unchained will be that game.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
like you said gw2/eso not build to reward player and have spend time in pvp
not pride to you realm just nothing just big battleground without any real cosequence
I dont mind if going reset some point , like crowfall devs said reset its good because usual fresh start bring peak players
and to MMO RVR games work need thousand online with balance(bit more hard to archive)
dont say its not fun , i still play gw2 , and go back look eso in 17march
Its to me unique type game , without cocern about sandbox (farm/grind/politic shit/downtimes) and without themepark (istanced/pve)
GW2 3 faction war is all zerging. DAoC balance spells/skills and classes so tactics were more important. Small groups could take out large groups of players if they worked together well. Myself I have been in a battle of 40 vs over 100 players and we won out using tactics. This is something GW2 does not have. ESO is getting there. Removing the cap as of late to AoE skills is a step in the right direction but it still not there.