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Gear based?
Flipsyde10
Member Posts: 62
I was wondering, how heavily gear based is this game? Is it like WoW, where a crap player in high end stuff would easily tear apart a good player in medium gear?
Also, can one get badass gear just from grinding or doing quests? Or do you have to run high end raid instances to get the stuff?
Thanks for answers to both. 
Comments
Gear helps a lot but it will in no way allow a player with no skill to defeat other players. At least not in equal fights. Gear can be acquired in many different ways. Raiding is one of them but you don't have to participate in those activities if you don't want to. You can get good gear crafted or buy it if you don't like raids. Whatever you know about wow forget it when you are playing this game. The only thing the 2 games have in common is that they are both fantasy based MMORPGs and thats it. Oh and they both have the dwarf race LOL.
Gear matters - its gotten easier to get the good stuff, but there is no denying that gear is a crucial part of RvR. I meet groups (and even been in some..) that wouldnt take players where the could tell that they had no good RvR template...
But it will depend on your own ego - if you want to play at the "top", gear will be important. It will decide if you win a fight or lose it - granted that the other player is equally skilled. Not to mention the fact the many people will have the advantage of a much higher realm rank and thus more PvP abilities...
But DAoC is still worth the effort, no other game has such a fun and ever-changing endgame.
Speaking of raids/instances, can anyone elaborate on how long these runs take? Do they take several hours or are they doable for someone without much hardcore time to give to the game?
Also, are the instances/raids done with no guarantee of a good item at the end (i.e. WoW again)? Or does everyone get a reward at the end (i.e. CoH/CoV, Asheron's Call)?
Most of the raids in DAoC take about 1 hour or so. The dragon raids I used to go on would last about 45 minutes with a group that knew what it was doing. In no way are you going to have to sit by your computer for any more then 2 hours, I'm pretty sure.
Nowadays, money is fairly easy to come by, at least on classic servers it was so I rarely raided, I just bought what I needed from the housing merchants. Majority of my equipment was made by smiths (actual players) and spell crafted by other players who practice alchemy and enchanting.
And regarding your other question:
The gear is random, if you go on a raid it's not a 100% guarantee that you will get what you're lookin for. The mobs drop quite a few different things so you might need to do it 2 maybe 3 times or like I said just buy it.
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-
Ofc daoc isnt like wow endless gear grinding ...
If u wanna start daoc , you will find your first end-game gear , at housing merchants , from some quests (mostly 1fg , like artifacts and epic quests).
All u need is money and 1fg(your guild will help you) to build up your first template (so u can cap all your stats/ressists/toa bonus etc).
You will be ok with that . ofc u can try get more powerful items from dragons , epic encounters etc , but u dont really need em if u are new player.
Gear matters, but it is not the only thing. There is not the endless gear grinds of WoW nor is there going to be people running around in "medium" gear. You will have great gear templated out for your spec before you go out. I guess to compare things on a scale of 1 - 10. In WoW someone might be running around in a 10 and fight someone in a 5. In DAOC, you will have someone in a 10 fighting someone that is an 8.5.
Skill also matters. I have easily killed people higher RR with better templates because they sucked and I was doing this is sub-par equipment - like a 7.
Gear does matter, but it is how you use the gear that also matters. Many of them have effects that become decisive.
If you play on the Classic servers most of what you are going to have is crafted gear. If you play on the regular server, your weapons will be artifacts and about half of your armor will be artifacts. You will then fill things out with crafted armor. For example on one of my characters I have 7 artifacts and 4 crafted items, on another one I have 3 artifacts and 6 crafted. It all just depends on your class and spec.
The worst thing with DAOC's gear right now is that it seems that as soon as you get that great gear made up, something changes in game to make you need another template. I just find that I make a template for a toon, wait 2 month and have to change my template due to new dropped items, new crafted items, class change, combat dynamics change, or outright nerf. It gets very frustrating unless you can do all of the crafting yourself.
That is so so true That is one of the biggest problems in DAOC gear. Where you could just made this uber template and next week a new path comes out with new gear (aka the Dragon Campigan DragonSlayer Gear and the new Dragons Gear) and now you fall back under the food chain and have to start back over again to find a new template to stay in the loop against other realms
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."
Unless you're Chuck Norris, you're going to need the gear.
Gear doesn't make a huge difference. Unless you are trying to 1vs1 a lot or run 8 man groups with elitist people, you can get by with lower end gear. The big thing is to find someone that can help you with a template. A Template can be made with all purchased and spellcrafting stuff and still be pretty equal. Especially on the Classic Servers. The TOA servers you will need artifacts because they make a big difference. A big thing about the template is making sure you get the best out of your stats while also making sure you max out on resistances. They will make a big difference in fights.
Over all DAoC PVP is more about tactics then gear as opposed to WoW where it was about Gear only. In WoW if you have the best gear you could be worth 2-4 people of lesser gear and that isn't the case in DAoC.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
equipment is needed but it is in no way hard to get.
a decient set is close to the power of a eleet set ... its just the eleet set is a bit better.
That being said in crap sets i have roled multiple people with non solo classes (RM, heros etc)
Skill and the setting has a much larger role. That being said its hard to fight a fully equiped, fully buffed toon , if your not buffed or equiped well (very)
"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
Will you please explain what a "template" is? How do you go about making one and do I need to go to websites to figure it out? Or is everything I need in the game?
Also what are the best ways to make money in the game? Do I need a bot?
http://www.daoctemplates.net/
The word template refers to a set of equipment with all of its stats, bonuses, procs, etc. The site posted above shows some examples. In daoc players use tools like Kort's SC Calc to create the perfect set of stats to have on their character and then have the items crafted or they get the specific items they need. Here is some links that provide information about this.
http://kscraft.sourceforge.net/
http://www.camelotherald.com/documentation/spellcraft/
Keep in mind you don't need to worry about a template until you get in the higher levels unless you want to play heavily in the BGs.
They are all telling you gear does not matter BUT yet they all tell you that you have to be templated.LOL Try having random drop gear and fighting the 400lb slob with all the rare drops and special items you will see gear matters.I have been playing this game for 5 years and what i can tell you with the utmost certainty is there is no skill.You click a button and hit them for 100 they click the button and hit you for 300( because of superduper gear and buffs) did he skilfully click the button better?? If skill= having the time it takes to get all the rare items then like I said there is no skill.Give JohnMcenroe a 1920 wooden racket give you or me a new supersized head composite graphite racket and guess what happens we still loose becuase he has skill.This is fact but you dont have to like it .And remember as always working as intended,tabled need more specifics,not at this time,design decision,and thanks for playing daoc
But the thing is that DAoC is not a 1vs1 game. It is balanced around RvR. And RvR is a game of tactics. Yes you need a template, but it is not gear dependent. Meaning that you do not have to have the best gear in the game to compete. Especially on the Classic servers. A Template can be made by purchasing everything you need off of the CMs (Player merchants) and then having it spellcrafted. If you get a decent drop from one of the higher end level areas then you can work it into your template. But you can easily compete with a strictly player made template. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Unless you're Chuck Norris, you're going to need the gear.
Whew! That's a relief. I'd much rather fight with my fists in jeans and a t-shirt than waste my valuable time pursuing gear. Geeze...
Thanks. :-)
He who hesitates is lost.
So in other words if you wanna run around and put your 1 arrow.spell,sword swing into someone for 50-100 rps then gear does not matter.No thanks 8,12,20 people running 1 person down is not now nor has it ever been fun.I will go back to what i said gear DOES matter if it did not you would not see these guys running around with the superduper rare drop items and perfect setups.All this skill is making my head spin LMAO.Your daoc skill and a dollar buys you a cup of coffee do you understand what i am saying??Been playing 5 years i dont feel anymore skilled when i win or loose or when i swing and hit 1 guy for 350 with my spear or swing on the next guy for 150 did my skill drop from 1 mouse click to the next?There are tactics and exploits(cheats) that people use but if that is being equated with skill then...and i will end with working as intended,tabled need more specifics,design decision,not at this time and thank you for playing daoc
What I find funny about all of this is that there isn't any superdooper rare drops, so what does it matter? I mean the hardest things to get for most people would be Darkspire gear but that isn't exactly the best gear. It is near the top for the Classic servers but just slightly better than average on the regular servers. Even with that, the classic servers run DS raids often enough to be able to purchase many items off of a CM.
The biggest difference in gear comes down to those that want to run around in rags that are droped and then those that download programs to squeeze everything they can out of a template. Most people are in the middle. If you hit one person for 100 and someone else for 300 and they are the same class, it most likely has more to do with the buffs that one has and the other one doesn't than any gear.
I am not wasting my time worrying about templates and the perfect stats and going after the perfect gear to be the max toon on my server with the most realm points... God, talk about sucking the fun right out of a game.
After reading this discussion I am tempted to take a break before I ever get started and just play some single player RPGs I've been meaning to get to along with the Call of Duty series where the focus is on the gameplay and having fun and not obsessing about what you are wearing like some primadonna hollywood brat pack.
I am sure everyone has the same basic opportunity to gear up for RvR and can be competitive but the question I have after reading this stuff is do I want to grind that crap to have fun in RvR and not be some other realm's crash test dummy because I was not willing to spend endless hours of my life aquiring the "perfect template" to play against them or not. I am thinking, not.
While RvR is a big draw for DAoC or was in my mind, I might be happier on a pve server where its just us vs the mobs and I don't have to care nearly as much about whether I have a perfect template for grouping against them, assuming that is actually true.
I like what I saw of DAoC enough so far (I am new) to even consider enjoying the solo game on pve since I know already those servers are desolate compared to classic and ToA servers. At least I could see a lot of content new to me and have fun with that for as long as that is fun.
It's just my personal preference but I did my gear grinding in EQ and I am never doing that again for any game. If its not possible to just enjoy all aspects of it by what I regard as normal, sane amounts of playtime then its not for me. The above discussion sounds a lot to me like doing the templates comes down to grinding one way or another for money or drops just to survive the first minutes of RvR. How that can be fun is beyond me. It would not be for me personally.
I just don't want to play anything where its all about the gear anymore and the goal is always what gear you get by doing this, that and the other thing. I'd really like to just play for the adventure, exploration, pvp etc with that stuff coming first and gear coming as a by product of doing that stuff, not the other way around.
It's not just DAoC by any means. I keep seeing that everywhere I look. It's a sad thing to see too. So many people play for virtual crap that means nothing at all and has no lasting value whatsoever, even in the everchanging game worlds they play in. People spend hours and hours and hours of real life time just getting this crap and it devolves into greed and obsession instead of simply being fantasy fun and adventure. Maybe I am just an unrealistic idealist but it should not be impossible for the real fun of an RPG experience to come first and all the itemization crap a distant second. I hope that happens someday. I really do.
He who hesitates is lost.
You do not grind for gear in DAOC and that is my point. Gone are the days where you would spend days trying to get one piece of equipment. For the most part, if you are on a regular server, you will join an artifact raid/group. You will spend one hour running around killing mobs for credit. If you do not have the scrolls you need from doing that, you go to the merchants and buy the scrolls. You can then activate the gear. You then buy player gear to finish things out.
On the classic servers, you just go and buy player crafted gear and you are done.
Thank you Julian for that good news. While I am thinking of it, thank you for the time you spend here helping people out and answering thier questions about the game. It's nice of you to give of your own time this way. I know I appreciate it.
I went off there I think because I was thinking about how bitter I felt by the end of EverQuest and what I was describing was what I had seen things come to there. After that experience I knew I never want to play in a world that has come to that again.
When I was thinking about what to play next, LoTRO looked good to me since it appears to be very quest driven vs camping gear until I read posts about people never being on the same page in the many quests and therefore finding it hard to get groups to do the ones they need and then reading further that the quests were basically all about what gear you get from them and people would actually exclude a given class on purpose if someone else of that class was already in a group to reduce competition for the gear. When I read that it soured my view of LoTRO instantly and I gave up any idea of wanting to try it.
I realize that virtually all of these games are going to have some element of people being focused on themselves and the stuff they get for themselves, etc. but I hope to find a place where that is hopefully mostly somewhere behind some other better facet of gameplay like I thought the RvR and even PvE might be in DAoC and maybe it is from what you are saying. Part of it too is just seeking out some kindred souls in game to play with once I have a character who has made some progress and have had the opportunity to meet other players and learn about the guilds on my server, etc.
it doesn't cost much to stick it out and see for myself so I think I will on the regular server I chose to play on which happens to be in the killibury cluster. I get a nice bonus playing there too although that's just some icing on the cake, I did not go where I went seeking to get the best bonus to play, etc. I also chose Midgard entirely based on what classes I could play before I knew I'd benefit from it being a lesser populated realm in terms of xp and free levels more often. That will be nice though coming up with a first character as it will get me to a level I can group with others more quickly.
Earlier and elsewhere you'd mentioned to me a vampiir would be a good character as they are very self sufficient although I notice they are of Hibernia I think it is. I thought after that maybe I should try one since it was among the classes I was most interested in when I looked at them all initially but it means forgoing the others in Mid for now if I do. I kind of liked how very different the class is from anything I've seen or played before as well.
So if I wanted to do that, can I keep my Mid character in killibury and make a vampiir on another server within that cluster? I know I can't be in more than one realm on the same server but what about different servers within the same cluster? How does that work?
The other question I have now relates to crafting my own gear when my character is older. Is crafting a huge and impossibly expensive timesink here or is it something that is realistically attainable by a new character coming up with no twinks and no money other than what he earns as he goes? I do not mind doing some farming for crafting items as there is purpose to that within reason. I did some tradeskills to GM in EQ but it was pretty much a mindless clickfest grind and I gave up on Artisan (doing them all) because of that. It doesn't have to be perfect or the best system ever, but is crafting reasonably good here? I really, really like the idea of crafters being able to make good items vs subpar everything which was always true in EQ. There was never anything crafted there that was not easily exceeded by even common mob drops which pretty much negated a large amount of it completely. There were some essential crafted things people would make and buy for ridiculous amounts of plat but overall, most of it was vendor trash skillups junk on the path to making one or two things that were actually useful but typically high end useful. Which reminds me, can you craft worthwhile things that are level appropriate as you go along or is it basically skillup to max before you can make anything worthwhile? Again, that's asked based on that is what I knew in EQ.
Ideally a self sufficient class who crafts if its good would be really nice and also playing out of more than one realm would be too over time just to take it all in. I'd wanted Hibernia more in the first place but I saw Mid as a place with the best variety of classes I liked were I to stay in one realm exclusively while I play this. I say that now but in EQ I wound up playing one class main almost all the time for years because he never ran out of things to do. That could probably happen here just as easily although I hope to be less married to one character just to enjoy the variety of several.
He who hesitates is lost.
Lyolas..... I couldn't agree more with your post about these games being too focused on gear and people wasting away their time grinding and raiding for the very best gear. I feel just like you about not wanting to worry about templates and the perfect stats. I'm more interested in the escape and the adventure and having fun than I am worrying about my toon needing to have the perfect set of gear, jewelry, trinkets or whatever.
I admit I do have a lvl 50 Berserker on the Bors server. I got it right around the time Trials of Atlantis was released. I guess being kinda new to this genre, I honestly didn't worry a whole lot about my gear and I pretty much specced my character based on what other people told me would be good. Then one day I had a person in my guild ask me.... hey have you got your template worked out... I can help you with that.... And he went on to help me get a good set of player made gear which he did the spell crafting for me and imbued my armor. That was very cool of him to do... and I thought maybe I would look into doing spell crafting. I wanted to work on being more self sufficient and maybe be able to craft my own gear and do the spell crafting myself for other characters. The Armor Crafting or the Weapon Crafting is a no brainer and pretty easy to do although the higher your skill gets it does get expensive. But then I started looking into the spell crafting. After going to a few sites and even the Camelot Herald site and looking at the info there about how to go about getting the right jewels and trying to get the right stats etc... I got totally discouraged and finally gave up on it. I learned that people were using spellcrafting calculators and going to sites to try and build the perfect templates... and after reading through some of that stuff especially the spell crafting guides I felt like I needed to be some kind of a Nuclear Physicist to be able understand all that and figure it out!!! It just really discouraged me. I have felt since then.... Why do they have to make it so complicated? Plus I can honestly say with the crafting system..... I have fallen asleep at the keyboard while doing my Weaponcrafting LOL!!! Where is the fun and immersiveness in that???
The thing is.... after I got my armor all spellcrafted with bonuses etc.... I still never really understood how he got those bonuses applied to my armor. I knew he made the jewels and combined them with my armor but I'm talking about the stats on all that stuff and all the formulas etc. I just knew I had Axe+10, Left Axe+12 etc etc. Honestly I'm not interested in all that stuff, but I felt at a disadvantage in general. I know now it is quicker leveling up and there are other options like Julian mentioned where you can go to the housing area and search the Marketplace NPCs for the gear you want or need, but then again it takes alot of money to buy all that stuff (if you find what you want). Then your back to farming to earn money etc.
My point is this. If you want to have someone help you with spellcrafting your new player made gear, they are probably going to ask you for a template and what bonuses you want and all that. With me I had NO IDEA what I needed or even what to tell him. Nor did I really care!!! I just wanted to go out and kill monsters and compete in pvp and have a fighting chance. I just felt stupid at that point.
I'm like you Lyolas...... I just want a game where the focus is on the gameplay and having fun and not having to obsess so much about what gear you are wearing. If you find one please let me know. It sounds to me that we are both looking for the same thing.
I hear you Chuck. I really do. I don't mind depth in a game at all really. I actually like it within reason but I disagree with a system that is so complex as to require the use of outside of the game resources just to figure out how to make things, etc. This is nothing new under the sun certainly I know. EverQuest has many sites from class-specific ones to the tradeskills one to the maps ones to Alla, Casters Realm, etc., etc., etc. The thing is at some point you have to wonder is this really fun when I actually have to spend hours offline reasearching before I do something in a game I just want to play as you've described above?
I hope future generation MMOs improve this area a great deal such that any reference info you might need is largely within the game and its world so you needn't leave it to learn what you need to do to craft something, find someplace or complete some quest. I will say that for DAoC Mythic did a very nice job of putting a great deal of the info under one roof at the herald and they ran that which is a lot more than I can say for SOE with EQ.
The other thing you mentioned I take even more issue with and that is that even once someone actually understands spellcrafting and uses the offline tools to figure out what/how they are going to make something there is the issue of rare or difficult or very expensive items to get to actually make it. In EQ this was often the bottleneck between players and decent crafted gear and as such, many either did without or skipped it to go slog through 30 plus hours of raiding madness per week for the best gear. Half the time these people didn't really even like raiding, they just wanted the stuff so they were uber soloing or even grouping. They was always issues with many wanting to drag along thier bots to get raid gear too, as well as dragging them along in groups such that you now had people with multiple concurrent agendas, all get stuff for me focused, and it really ruined it for me at least. I should have left sooner than I did. The game was far better and so was its community years ago before the invasion of the bots, etc. It is fair to say that for every character you meet in EQ, there is a 50/50 chance they are a bot, not an alt but actually a second account bot and often one of many.
I've given this much thought lately as I try out DAoC and assess whether I want to spend a year or more here playing this often.
The thing that comes to mind the most is how most if not all of these games play ass-backwards from the RPG genre they descend from. Ultima Online started off with a lot of good ideas and while the initial release was rocky they were breaking new ground and earned a following who appreciated the game play and eschewed fancy visuals in favor of it. That game was more RPG than anything to follow really and rather than see them get better, they actually got worse in terms of gameplay mechanics in many ways.
What I mean is, where the hell is the RPG in most of today's MMORPGs? Where is the engaging story? What is it that drives to people to press on? It certainly isn't to find out what happens next in a story that is engaging with characters one cares to care about, sometimes like and sometimes dislike, etc. All of that is absent. In a good quality single player RPG you have fun getting more powerful and getting all sorts of cool loot and gear as you go but its never the reason you go do anything. You come upon that stuff as you need it, as it makes sense to have it and in the course of adventuring and questing and discovering the story of the game.
They might as well start calling all of these simply MMOs because tacking on RPG to the end of this new genre's name is pretty decieving really though I know it was never deliberate. Simply because the early ones were given a Forgotten Realms flavor with their medieval worlds and D&D-like dice rolling and stats based gear, etc. they have mostly been regarded as if they are Role Playing games but they aren't. There is no story, the lore is nice but its largely static even in games that have regular story driven events. This is because outside of those events, the world continues as always with the only real thing to pursue being levels and gear. No wonder people become obsessed with the gear. What else is there to play for in these worlds? It's not like you are learning anything special about the world for every 100 hours you spend at this.
I played EverQuest for years and the lore of the game was nice but honestly, it's just fluff to set a stage for the grinding to occur in. There was never any onging development of it for the most part. There was never any purpose to going out to play other than repeatedly kill mobs at some camp to grind xp, raid which for most of the raid content is largely the same thing on a grander scale, tradeskill to make stuff which most people either macro'd in violation of the EULA because it was so mind-numblingly boring they would otherwise do as you did, fall over alseep into the keyboard, or else maybe quest for thier epic because almost no other quests were worth doing or were done by most people. Then they added monster missions which while fun one time through for something different, soon became the new grinds as people would do them hundreds of times leveling characters with no developed skills run by players with no concept of how to play that class in a group or raid which tended to pollute the game's world with a lot of worse than useless characters giving pugs an even worse name there than they have many other places.
Richard Garriot in a recent interview called a spade a spade much as I am doing here and said he sees all of the MMO's since the very first ones as having completely stagnated and not moved forward at all in improving what this experience can and should become. What MMORPGs really need most today in my opinion is to actually become RPGs first and MMOs second. That's a tall order without question but that's the way it is. These mindless and boring grind fests for the obsessed are hardly high quality entertainment versus an excellent single player RPG experience where you really get drawn into a great story full of characters you have feelings about and where you venture forth not to get stuff for you but to experience more of that excellent story. You play late at night because you want to see what happens next. You fall asleep at the keyboard because you didn't want to leave yet, you wanted to see just a little more of what will happen or to win that tough battle you've had trouble with.
Excellent RPGs are all about engaging story. MMORPGs have tacked on "lore" and very little progressive interesting story if any at all. What they do tend to have pales in significance to even a second rate single player game. These games are all about me. They are not about other people in the world you come to care about. They are about my agenda, my template, my gear, my stats, my ability to solo, bot, box, get stuff for me, etc. They really are. That is not to lump all MMO players into this sad lot because that would not be fair or true. But I think many players could look around themselves, particularly those who come from single player RPG backgrounds and have to agree a lot of what I just said rings true.
I see Turbine attempting to break out of this mold somewhat but even there as I mentioned above, the point of the quests in LoTRO for many is simply to blow through them to get the stuff and move on. Once again, the players are fragmented by who is on what quest, what classes are coming to the group because if there is another class using same gear as me, either they go or I go, etc., etc. So maybe a step in the right direction there but no cigar for those guys yet.
The real groundbreaking next generation MMORPGs will be games that focus on story development first and character development second in my opinion or else offer very engaging pvp, rvr, pve gameplay such that you want to go explore and adventure somewhere because it is so damned fun to do it, not because you are on a mission to get this bp or those legs or that aug. I would like to see player economies so fully encapsulated that it becomes impossible for offline transactions of purchased ingame goods to happen from money to gear. You should get what you get as a secondary consequence of experiencing the fun of the game, not play it as some endless grind to rise on a stats ladder or to have unfair advantage over other players with real lives and sane playtimes in pvp arenas.
All that stuff needs fixing in a big way. Until now what we have instead seen is layers upon layers of time-sinks and complexity that attempt to keep players very busy for very long times doing largely mundane things rather than enjoy a truly solid, engaging and very, very fun role playing game with lots of other people with them.
That said, my advice is to go where the real adventure is in good single player RPGs if you favor this sort of thing or even certain high quality shooters that are heavy on interesting scripted sequences, etc. such as the Call of Duty series or the historically based Brothers In Arms series where you have to really employ the same infantry tactics they did in WWII or suffer the consequences. These games lack the social aspects of MMOs I know but they make up for it by delivering a much higher quality experience with great stories and real action that will never find you asleep at the wheel. I don't know about you but I have often sat here eating snacks, etc. with my hands not even on the keyboard while my character whacks at stuff. How engaging is that really? Not very. Granted that is the lamest example of pve in these games but on the path to rvr fun one must suffer plenty of it.
Have you ever noticed how often people refer to "all thier hard work" in raising up a toon in an MMO? Hard work? I thought these were games we play for fun and relaxation after working hard all day. Did I miss something? Am I unreasonable to want my entertainment to not be a second 40 hour job to actually get to the good stuff? I don't think so.
Just as a side note, have you ever heard anyone bemoan all the hard work it took to play a game like say, Baldur's Gate II? I never have. Not even once. I wonder why that is...
After a week so far of trying DAoC with multiple toons on several servers while really thinking over all of this stuff and how much time I wasted in EverQuest I am thinking I may just pass on all MMOs until I see how Warhammer and Tabula Rasa turn out and they had better be better or I'll very likely skip them too in favor of more entertaining pursuits. I am thinking games like Bioshock, the upcoming Dragon Age by bioware, the current NeverWinter Nights too which is said to have excellent story and a new expansion around the corner with more of that. I never did play Oblivion nor its expansions which next month release together for cheaper as a GoTY package. I loved the Medal of Honor series in the past too and the new Airborne one is coming soon and promises to be even better in many ways than its forerunners with levels that adjust to where you happen to land in them and a totally new AI system to make that happen. Right there is well over a year of 20 hours or more a week gameplay easily I'd say although even more good titles are coming soon for the holiday season as always each year. These games all have something in common. They have to stand on thier own two feet in terms of entertaining you. There is no stuff to get in many of them or if there is, its gotten as a consequence of playing, not as the goal of playing, so they had better be very entertaining in other more meaningful ways to be successful. The fact that every year a lot of excellent games do succeed in the non MMO space tells me there's plenty else to choose from besides grinding for virtual stuff you can't even understand without offline in depth study how to make or how it was made.
All this criticism aside, I don't hate all MMOs or the genre itself. It has lots of promise but has stagnated for years and I am just calling it like i see it here. There have been many good first efforts into this relatively new kind of entertainment but it reached a point some time ago where the formula was in obvious need of substantial improvements and I have yet to see that happen. Shiny new graphics and reflective water only go so far. Baldur's Gate II may be old school and ugly by todays 3D standards but nobody who ever played it through would argue with you that it was anything less than one of the best role playing games they had ever seen of fully enjoyed. So I guess its about where would you rather spend the next 100 hours of your free time? Being entertained by a great story or fast paced exciting action or grinding for virtual junk you cannot take with you when you go?
I became hooked on RPGs with the old Ultimas and frankly at this point as a consumer I've finally come around to realize I need to demand a lot more of MMO developers and the only meaningful way to do that is with my game buying dollars. I feel sorry for the nine million sheep who waste endless hours of thier lives playing the likes of World of Warcraft which is all of the above distilled down to its weakest, lamest, most simplistic form basically. I really do. I also feel stupid for wasting all of the hours i did in EverQuest before finally coming to my senses and realizing this stuff.
That's why I went on a little toot above at the mention of gear and templates and stuff. BS. I want a game to play, not a job to do. I don't want ot bash this particular game which for its time was miles ahead of the rest. I think Mythic tried to move forward and by a little in some ways and a lot in others, they actually did. I now hope they didn't stop there when they hit the drawing boards for Warhammer. I want to see some real innovation and improvement and sanity this time or I will simply pass until I do, if I ever do in this genre of PC gaming. I want to see quality bigtime before quantity. I don't need a second full time job thanks. I would like some fun in the evenings rather than waste those hours in front of a television. For now I think I am going to mostly if not completely seek it out elsewhere however.
I may casually play DAoC soloing on the pve server to see some of this world and do some quests but I will need to skip its best feature because I am unwilling to do what is required to compete there. If I want some great pvp action, I will just have to settle for a good online shooter for now. In those worlds, I just log in, grab my weapon and hit the road for instant action with no time wasted. I see it as the most direct route to pvp fun personally. I respect the idea of to each thier own, but that's my take on all this stuff.
He who hesitates is lost.