Something old, something new

Hi all,

I stopped playing DAoC about three years ago. About 3 months after the releases of Trials of Atlantis. I was burned out on the game at the time. I had played it hardcore for a year. I jumped around to other games since then, CoX, WoW, SWG, EQII among the most played and of course my favorite L2 (until NCSoft spit on the legit players)

So I loaded up DAoC Epic. And what a difference. Very nice. This game has made huge improvements since I last played. I don't know all the nitty gritty. I'm sure it still has it problems. What MMO doesn't?

One thing DAoC always had that I liked was unique classes. Not your standard "warrior" for everyone here, thats for sure! My wife made one of the new classes, a banshee (the irony lol) talk about different. You turn into a ghost - like banshee and screem to kill mobs.

I was also impressed with the new tutorial. I know its a little thing, but those new player tutorials make a lasting impression on new players. I thought it was very well done. It certainly captures the atmosphere of the war and strife to come. There was no tutorial at all back in my day when I played, and it was a pain figuring everything out.

I don't know about all the instancing they added though. Seems kind of like a bad idea for a game with lower end pops. Something interesting was the new PvP dungeons for LOW levels. I mean LOW, like level 1. I was in one taken care of business and got jumped by 4 Albs lol, some things never change I guess. Albs still deserve to be hated (in an ingame fun way)

The artwork and graphics have made huge improvements. Its truely amazing how much work they have done. The game looks fantastic. Easily able to compete on a graphics level with anything else out there. The world has an "alive" feel to it. I love the new look to everything! All the realms look great. The new character customization makes the game feel "new". Easily better them almost everything else out there. The variety of races and classes is HUGE. I honestly don't know where to start.

One of the major "cons" IMHO is the clunky quest jounal system and some of the interface. Now I hate markers floating above NPC's heads like most MMOers, however if the directions say "go NW near the tower" then dont put the NPC to the "SW next to the portal" lol. Its a bit unwieldy and clunky is all. Not for the WoW crowd though. You actually need to read the quest and REMEMBER some of the details. (shocking)

One other major "con" are some of the animations. Still alot of "sliding around" going on. I notice when your character runs, it has the weird sort of glide. Almost like its not in contact with the surface. Its very subtle but noticable. The terrain movement doesn't match the speed of the run or something.   

Anyway, I experimented with a few different classes and over all was very happy with the decission to return. Normally I would never go back to a game, especially an older one. I would definately requemend to anyone to hop in and give DAoC a try.  For once a company has not totally destroyed their game over the years, but rather improved it greatly. Although I don't think all the instancing they added was a very good idea. With light populations, I would think the last thing youwould want to do is "hide" everyone. Public dungeons and areas is the way to go with this sort of game.

Sometimes something old turns out to be something new  

EDIT

One other thing that I see as a con was the music. Its time they updated those tired old droney scores with something new and more appropriate. Ingame music can play an important roll in setting the "tone and mood" of a game. Also, using the same music for all realms still seems like a mistake to me. Again, its minor overall but noticable. Its a missed opportunity to ADD to the quality of the game IMHO