Please compare and contrast L2 to DAOC

Comments

• common-man Member Posts: 16

  May 2007

  Best would be go to the website for lineage2 and you can find out most of the answers ya want. And yes pvp has a purpose as you can siege to control castles at higher lvls.
• Ellyrion Member Posts: 193

  May 2007

  Originally posted by Arawon
  
  
  I am a long time DAOC player and stumbled across this interesting game now that I have left that world. I know a lot about DAOC...little about L2. Could someone you  has played both help me to understand L2 better. Key questions include....what drives pvp??? Is it organized warfare? Random individual pvp ? What are the penaltys for pvp and pve death ?  Also....How many characters can an accout have ?  What is the overall health of the game and player population?
  Are there free trial keys around?   Thanks for the help.
   
  

  
  
  I've dabbled in DAOC when it first came out, but did not stick around for long as I did not find it challenging enough due to lack of content. The PvP was a breath of fresh air when compared to EQ1 but nevertheless it became quite linear and the abilities gained through RPs not significant enough for the time invested. I know it has changed a lot since then but that will give you a basis for comparison.

  PvP is driven by the economic need to gain control of the PvE environment. In this case Castles (much like the forts in DAOC). The Castles access the PvE environment both directly through taxes which are levied upon your fellow players and through the manor system which is a cooperative economic construct through which you entice your fellow player community to invest their time and resources and re-sell the fruits (literally lol) of their labour through your manor. In turn you can turn their product into profitable consumables which will return to the playerbase through the basic shop system which any player can set up for buying and selling of wares.

  Yes, warfare is organised and the better it is organised the more efficient on consumables it becomes. L2 is all about balancing expenditure with income. Everything costs money and money is not easy to come by, if you play legit. Warfare can be waged at the individual level, group level, clan and alliance levels. Restrictions apply to individual PvP in the form of a Karma system which discourages 1 v 1 PvP which is deemed selfish and generally wasteful. If you have to duel someone legitimately as a matter of honour then you can either do it in the arena or use the new duel system introduced in Interlude.

  Random PvP is purely ego based and is entirely unproductive other than bragging rights due to consumable costs associated with the fight. Technically you could argue that you can engage in 1 v 1 PvP to protect your camp spot, however, any such actions need to be tempered with the common sense understanding that you will need to expect retaliation, unless your opponent is disinterested in pursuing the matter for whatever reason. Unsolicited PvP resulting in the death of the other party will turn you chaotic and you will have to repent for your stupidity by wasting more resources and time in order to buy off the karma penalties.  In some cases PKing someone cannot be helped and again in those times you need to set the conditions for supporting yourself through this period as you are likely to become a prime target for those willing to profit from the increased drop rate which is associated with your chaotic state.

  This leads me into the death penalties. XP is the primary penalty. There used to be item loss but this was removed for various reasons. The exception to this is if your character turns Chaotic (Red Name) with over 5 player kills to your name, whereby you stand a solid chance of dropping random equipment on death.

  The health of the game is in the eye of the beholder. If you are in a decent clan then all is well, if not then well you can gauge by the other responses. Player population is hard to gauge as it fluctuates not only between timezones but also time of the week. Obviously more populated on weekends and what not.

  After 3 years the game has introduced a lot of "freebies" and other toys to speed up progression through lower levels to the degree that some players are able to reach level 20 in a matter of days. You will therefore NOT see many ppl if any in the newbie towns/areas as they will literally spend but a fraction of the time they used to in those areas, and if you join a clan directly you may be "assisted" via clan means from the outset so you may not spend any time at all in those areas. This is why any new player to the game needs to read the board and grasp this fundamental fact, regardless of MMO, and L2 in particular.

  Regards,

  Ellyrion Fiallathandriel

  7X Eva's Templar

  Kain
• common-man Member Posts: 16

  May 2007

  Again the above post is great. And if you get a benefactor who wants you in his academy, and he tweeks you out(which is not expensive to higher lvls) you can hit 20 in a day (some claim 4 hours but jesus, i don't know how). This to the benefit of the clan as when you hit 40 they get clan "rep" points which are needed. This makes the lower lvls very fast and fun. The days of 2 weeks to hit 20 are long gone.