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New to DAOC - An Early Report
Wolfbite
Member Posts: 34
Previous experience: World of Warcraft, Current SWG-trial, Ryzom Trial, EQ2 Trial, Several EQ trials.
So, I started my free trial of Dark Age of Camelot a few days ago. The game suggested that I choose the Palemides (sp?) server and choose Midgard as realm. So I did, since it was obvious Midgard needed me. 
I chose to play as a human viking, and planned on becoming a Berserker. I used the first 6 levels getting adjusted to the game and questing a fair bit, and the remaining 6 levels to quest more, craft, and be severely annoyed at certain bugs (that means I'm now lvl.12)
Questing is fast! There's no grinding at all needed (the most mobs I've needed to kill in a quest so far is 4!), you just go to where the mobs are, down a couple, or do other to-the-point stuff, and go back and complete the quest. XP seem to be much easier to gain by doing quests than grind mobs. The quests do a nice job with promotion of the story.
The graphics are mostly nice, and surprisingly so, considering how old the game is, and that it is an online game. Both mobs and npcs are quite detailed, and up close they somehow look nicer than WoW's. But there is a big problem, and that is draw distance. This is most annoying when I'm trying to locate npcs or mobs, and I have to come pretty close to them to read their names. Overall, though, I like the graphics.
The controls are ok. Running and sprinting, turning, sidestepping, all those basic commands are well enough implemented. However: 1. Using a horse or boat is downright embarrasing: the constant jittering of the movements of said objects are laughable. I prefer to sprint instead. 2. Why can't the camera automatically adjust back to default position when you're done looking sideways? It is very annoying that I must fine-tune it every time. All in all, the controls are acceptable.
Berserker abilities seem ok. Nothing to be amazed at (that might be the fault of less than inspiring fighting animations), but they get the job done. Some abilities are useless in solo play, but they should be interesting if I ever find a group (more on that soon)-
The crafting is actually very nice. I love that you can buy everything you need (at least on lower levels?), and I love that you can get tasks from your master, so that you actually make a little money instead of using them all up on mats. I chose weaponsmithing (after not being able to locate gemcutting, lol), and it's great. But herein lies the most obnoxious bug I've ever encountered. Four times in two days I have gotten the task of making a COPPER *insert whatever weapon type here*! Making copper anything as weaponsmith isn't possible in Midgard, which means I have to wait till the task is removed from the quest journal. If I could've deleted the task, I wouldn't have cared much, but as it is now it pisses me off.
Taskmasters in villages intrigue me. I have yet to get any tasks from them, though. Does it happen?
Mostly I have a positive experience in Dark Age of Camelot, but there is one aspect that might ruin it all for me: The population. Where is everyone? I tried to get together a group to kill Ocug (a lvl.12 quest), and there wasn't a single response in the hour I tried. As if killing the bloody Tomte would take more than ten minutes. Otherwise, I see precious few players when I'm online. It does help somewhat late at night (I'm in Norway, and play on US servers, so you could say it's my fault), but overall it feels oh so very empty. I did actually group with a polite hunter yesterday, but he was sceptical, as I am, of the population, and I haven't seen him since. Hopefully he hasn't given up yet. I could try the classic servers, where the population is much larger, but I don't want to shut out so much of what DaoC has to offer.
I will stay the 14 days the trial lasts, but initial impressions does tell me that this is a dying game. Warhammer just might prove to be the last nail in the coffin.
Comments
I don't know why, but this forum won't let me use paragraphs. It might have something to do with Opera incompatability. Sorry for this.
Edit: Ah, fixed it. I had to switch to Traditional BBML.
I played DAoC for many + years... Yes... best RVR of any game on the market.... buttttttttttttttttttttttttt... no commmmment as of now 12/26/06.. fun factor fell off... Playing WoW until Warhammer
http://daoc.catacombs.com/webobj_d2.cfm
http://daoc.gamescape.com/Reports/Population.aspx
Bick
Yes, I'm aware of the servers and the populations, that's why I mentioned the classic servers.
Bick
While they could make it so that you can see npc/mob names farther the reason for their short range is the RvR: makes it harder to notice other players and the other way around. It can give some "tactical advances" such as hiding in a bush or something, without the name revealing you.
As for the funny horse taxi movement, that's the old engine for you.
Oh, and for the camera control: The default key for setting the camera to it's default position is 5 on numpad. You can change that by typing /keyboard.
You can also set a new default position by typing /setcamera after you change it to your liking. You can pan the camera further from your character with the key under Esc(either tilde(~) or something else,depending on your keyboard). Hold it down as press down arrow, I'd recommend moving the camera as far as you can.
Taskmasters give missions to Task Dungeons. You can access the TDs if you have the Catacombs expansion. They are great solo exp although the Shrouded Isles+RvR-zones have double exp right so you might want to go over the SI zones instead.
The population... That's because you are playing on a Normal server and are under lvl20. On Normal servers players with lvl50 character can start a new character right at lvl20. This was quite big mistake from Mythic since as you can see, it made the low level zones wastelands. This is not the case on Classic server however as the feature is unavailable over there.
No one really bothers doing the quests either(unless they know it's fairly easy to do and gives good items) In the end grinding mobs is just better way to gain exp and money and there are easier/better ways to get equipment during the leveling progress.
Thanks for the info, rATIx. I agree, giving us an option to make a lvl.20 is silly. Hopefully I can find groups easier at that level, though. I'm heading into the game right now, for a bit of fun. I hope. ^^