Went back to DAOC after 2yrs, pleasantly surprised @ updates..

So after 2yrs of not touching DAOC, and being AMAZINGLY bored from avoiding all the sub-par newer "Smash Hits" like Rift & SWTOR, I resubbed to DAOC.

I decided to ignore my 20+ someodd lvl 50s, and rolled a new character on Mid (a Hunter). Right off the bat I noticed that they had updated the new starting zones for new characters AGAIN. You no longer start in that nooby fort like they had done the year before, and now you are fastracked from 1 to 10 in a VERY meaningful way. Instead of simply telling you "Go forth & learn the game for yourself!" the newer quest system they have actually guides you with REAL game information to help you get back up to snuff like you're a veteran player (maybe not knowing EVERYTHING, but certainly what you NEED).

So, after 30minutes of lazily going through the new player experience (or what i refer to as the NPE) I was lvl 10. So, my next step was to figure out where to go from here so I asked in /advice what the best route would be to go. To my utter surprised, I was told to do quests in the Battlegrounds. Supposedly these new quests would give me a CRAP TON of exp & Bounty Points?! I responded with "Wtf do you mean Bounty Points as well?!". Sure enough, I went to the teleporter in Jordheim & said "Battlegrounds", and the "Captain" in each battleground gives you 3 quests that reward you with a LOT of exp, some money appropriate for your level, and bounty points!!!!

The BPs you earn from BGs can NOW be spent on BG gear that is roughly 20% below cap on everything once you get past the lvl 39 BG. Otherwise, if you do enough quests (you can also /xp off to farm BPs to get a fullsuit of armor) you can essentially buy all the armor you need. This means no more saving up tons of money to ask a crafter & SCer to make Thidrank, or Molvik gear for you to ACTUALLY stand a chance in BG pvp! This, I thought at least, was AWESOME because BGs are now insanely popular because the quests themselves FORCE you into areas where you can find RVR in the Bgs.

So, obviously I was a little curious as to how this may have "damaged" the lvl 50 RvR. To my surprise, at "PrimeTime" on the East Coast I've found that each realm stays anywhere from 400 to 800 players per side on any given day (650+ for fridays & weekends per side). Not to mention that MORE than a 1/3rd of those numbers are always out in the Frontiers RvRing. Needless to say, I'm a little overwhelmed by how active DAOC is still, and I'm having fun again !

Currently, I stopped playing my hunter because my old guild quit, and I rolled a Theurgist on Ywain6 (though it doesn't matter, ALL the "servers" are "clustered" together to form ONE LARGE server). If you've been away from DAOC for awhile, or have been thinking of returning, you can make a new account & try a free trial to see what's up.

ps: Mythic staff went on a whole bender about Multi-Boxing a year or so ago in order to appease some crybabies in the VNBoards community. However, it's become CLEAR that it was just a PR stunt to scare off gold farmers as I see 6+ multiboxers here & there roaming around without a single care from mythic staff. I even caught an OLD OLD OLD Gold farmer in POC last night, and ended up owning his whole team. Apparently, he's reoprted on a daily basis by random passerbys and he's not been touched. However, it's not like EVERY multiboxer (sometimes referred to as "Macro Teams") are Gold Farmers so I pay them no mind unless it's an enemy realmer !

-Faded