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Why did ToA kill the game?
markawa
Member Posts: 5
Every now and then I hear people saying that ToA killed the game and it is not the same old game they used to know.
What I don`t hear is people saying exactaly why it killed the game, so I`m just curious.
To me ToA is not that bad. The thing is that it requires full groups to get the good artifacts and do the Master levels, and because of my particular situation, I play 95% of the time solo, which means that after almost a year playing, I have 5 artifacts at most and no master levels.
If I could be in full groups more often I wouldn`t have complains.
I play now in Classic because I can do almost anything solo, but still play in Percival occasionaly.
Other thing is That i HATE TD`s, so I`m always outdoors 
. I suggest to people that don`t like Td`s go out and gain your levels the old style. Chances are, you`ll bump into me in Lyonesse or Underground city
Comments
I'm returning to DAoC here tonight or tomorrow. I am going back to Albion, where I originated from in 2002. I plan to forgoe the TD's this time, and level the old fashion way...the way I prefer. I remember always being grouped and hunting in the open world. So I plan to do it again for possibly my last time resubbing to this game or last time grinding a profession to 50. I plan to invite others to join me, but I don't have my hopes up since the community is a lot different than the one I started playing with. The focus then was on the group and on group combat and having fun. The focus now is rushing to RvR by grinding quickly through the TD's and most of the time solo. Now it's all about Titles for people.
Hopefully I will start a trend that might catch a following of at least enough people to help chance Gareth into something like the old days. So you may see me wandering around the open lands myself.
FFXI: Gauhar - Odin
In short, it forced you to PVE in order to PVP (or RVR as DAoC puts it).
It forced people who wanted to do nothing but PVP to get over to a PVE area and grind out a bunch of overpowered items in order to be useful in PVP again.
ToA killed DAoC because it represented everything that DAoC didn't stand for, and forced a new playstyle on people who didn't want it.
ToA is the archetype for a PVE game (A crappy archetype to boot) while DAoC is an archetype (one of many) for a good PVP game (granted I still think DAoC's PVE sucks ass)
It's this incompatability of playstyles that caused ToA to kill DAoC. If ToA required you to, say, steal the horn of valhala and *poof* you got a full set of kick-ass armour (could be in a raid to do this) then ToA wouldn't have been even remotely as bad as it was, since it still facilitated fun gameplay as opposed to facilitating something most people don't want to do.
THAT is why ToA killed DAoC.
Also, I love TD's. It sucks that they're always in a dungeon, but I just can't stand the PVE of DAoC< and TD's make it bearable.
ToA forced grinding/farming/camping on a game that broke away from the EQ grind/farm/camp mold. SI was the limit for most folks, farming the dungeons in zerg raids for gear was tolerable, sometimes fun in a good/entertaining raid group.
ToA also widened the gap between the big PvPers who did the grind/farm/camp for the overpowered artifacts and the casuals who couldn't keep up. A 'casual' player had a hard enough time keeping up with RR's. Throw in the time needed to acqure ML's and artifacts and you have an official grind game. High RR + Artifacts was just entirely too much.
DAoC was a trailblazer, in that it deviated from EQ's footsteps. When it jumped in line with EQ, the player base deserted.
I don't know that TOA killed the game, but I was around when they introduced an automatic levelling command ("/20") so that players with level 50 toons could start new ones at level 20. That pretty much hurt the low level game, which I theorize must remain healthy in order to attract new players.
Also, I think the Catacombs instanced dungeons are set up so that a player can solo to 50 or very close.
Again, without noobs running around in the lower levels (1-10), the gaming experience for newer players is going to be kind of lonely. Whenever I come back and create a new character, I feel like I'm in a ghost town. Guess all the others are in battlegrounds or something.
Still, whatever the state of this game, I have to give it permanent high marks for excellent weapons and armor graphics. Even five years later, the weapons still look as good as any that are in the newer games.
Your level 50 out in the frontiers was now slaughtered to those that were fully ToAed. In order to do ToA, most of the time you need large Raids for everything. In order to get into a Raid, you had to be in particular guilds/alliances. Then there is the whole difficulty with being there for the Raids for some people.
Add on to that the artifacts required a lot more people and a lot for farming than they do now.
Essentially it was an EQ expansion for a non-EQ game.
Other effects are that it destroyed crafting. This helped to weaken the community. People started to complain about grinding then them pointed to ToA as a mind-numbing example of it.
Just FYI, they fixed alot of the complaints about ToA in patch v1.81 .. now everybody should be able to get all the artifacts they want, without too much trouble.
Anyway.. most clusters run around 2000 players, which is plenty enough to get decent action on a daily basis.. I've never had any problems finding people / fights.. and I'm playing in euro time on a US server, so I'm bound to find a lower pop during my playtime.
Granted.. I play more than 1 toon.. so when there's no good/interesting action in the big boys RvR area (NF), I'll log on my thidranki (lvl20-24) or molvik (lvl35-39) toon. You'll be hard pressed to find an empty Thidranki BG!
I don't know what its like now but I know the impact ToA had when it released. It pushed anyone who was not a hardcore grinder/raider out of the game. Not only the casuals but the moderate gamers also. The only ones able to dominate and compete where the people who lived online with buffbots.
ToA was the last draw for alot of people back them. Maybe they fixed it now, but as usual its far to late.
When I checked out catacombs when it released, it had the impact of isolating many players. It turned the game into a solitary experience. The game became a ghost town compared to its prime.
If it wasn't for the server clustering, the game would be barren.
If ToA had been a part of the game from the start it wouldn't have been a problem.
The problem was that by the time it was released most people were 50th level, were fully templated and were concetrating on having RvR fun...and then they suddenly had to PvE grind again to remain competative at a time when all we really wanted was more RvR.
It killed it for me for two reasons:
1. I had already been dragged kicking and screaming to 50 (I was happy at 49) by my ex, got all my armor done to good specs, then BOOM! I have to grind more? Ye gods, no. And it wasn't even fun hunting because it was all about the loot, and not about accidentally pulling all the goblins in Lyonesse.
2. I was a minstrel and TOA had a ring that gave speed to everyone without a certain radius, so essentially I was no longer needed.
I won't even get into the personal reasons.
The game was a blast before TOA, and now I can go an hour without running into anyone else, and even then they won't speak with me. I really miss DAoC before the 'change.' I'm trying it again without much success, but if you're ever in the RP cluster of Albion, give Tarja Penn a shout.
Also, I have to say people act as if TOA came out yesterday and is the main reason the game is empty today. In fact, it came out in 2003 and the main reason the game is empty today has nothing to do with it, but is WoW.
Also before ToA "the best weapons/armor" were in darkness falls. To gain access to Darkness Falls you had to PvP. Once better stuff was available from PvE areas that reasons to PvP decreased.
So forcing PvP with ToA and encouraging PvE be putting the best stuff in PvP only areas alloud the thing players loved about DAoC to begin to die off.
Even if you love PvP would you "waste" time PvPing if during the same time you could raid for the best weapon in the game. Some of my most excitng PVP moments was in DF when another realm first took over and we all rush to their side to kill them.
At release the best armor and weapons were in the mainland dungeon. Then Darkness Falls was added and some items were better and some weren't. With SI came spellcrafting and player made items were hands down the best items in the game. There very few items better in the game and you could only get those by the Epic dungons in SI.
The only reason people cared about DF was for leveling and most important trinketing. Get seals, buy items, destroy items, turn into trinkets, sell trinkets, then use the money to buy good player made equipment.
I personally don't mind TOA. They made the artifacts alot better to achieve now since 60 people can raid on a Artifact and get it instead of 60 people raiding on a arti and lotto'in the actual item off to one lucky person. And when you have a 60 man BG you can cover quite a board of arties in a very short amount of time. And the fact that you can level them anywhere now instead of certain areas of the maps makes that process alot quicker. Usually 8 man TD's or an hour in the ML 7 dungeon covers that time.
I will admit though that the ML lines are a nuisance. Not for the skills themselves but for the time it takes to cover them. With both artie and ML raid BG runs usually half of the BG is ninja afk or they simply don't listen which makes the time even longer. I personally /bow to all who take the time to lead these and put up with the BS and I know how it is because I generally do artie runs myself. With the later expansions, namely Darkness Rising, achieving alot of these ML's only require a group rather than a BG. I know the whole ML1 can be done with a group and in short order too.
Scroll farming usually doesn't take too long with the exception that to get the rarest scrolls of your book generally requires atleast a couple players and a bot and most people prefer to just buy the scroll on the cm at some outragious price which leaves those penny pinchers like me to fend for ourselves against a red or purple con mob.
TD's I thought were a horrible idea since it promoted solo'n and fast grinding. I level'd a vamp in 3 days from 1 to 41 on TD's alone until I got completely disgusted and burned out on him. In fact I was going so fast through the TD's that I didn't even have a chance to get a crafted suit sc'd before I needed a new one. this isn't saying I don't use them though because they do make leveling a little easier when you can't get a group. This did open a one avenue that most don't think of though. For alot of you that level in the outdoors check your camp bonus the next time your out there, you'll see that it's outragiously huge since the mobs haven't been farmed in so long.
The one factor that I do like about classic over Devon cluster is the anti-buffbot rule that they implemented and I wish that they would add that one rule to atleast one cluster although I can understand why they don't (wouldn't want to lose almost half your cash flow). I like the idea that a seer/buffer has to actually be played and be within a certain distance for the buffs to be effective and I'm sure that the combat tactics are vastly different on classic than those on regular. I personally would have no problem if they took away the /20 also because that would give newbies a chance to meet and play with more people and would probably bring a little of the player base back. With the TD's you can get to level 20 in a couple hours anyways (or if your bored you can level a bainshee in the 5-9 DF up to level 14 and rock people with your baseline shout. Yes I did that once to see how far in level I could get before it was pointless).
All in all though I still like TOA and what it brings and especially more so now that they fixed alot of items in it making it easier for multiple people to accomplish the same goal.
I am not a casual gamer, but I do rarely have 8 hours at a time to sit and raid/grind. I do have lots of 2-3 hour blocks over the day and week. When TOA was released it required immense time, lots of people and that time had to be in blocks greater than I had.
TOA caused an arms race in order to even bother RVRing. If you didn't have TOA items, ML's you were less than a speed bump on the RVR battlefield.
I've read that they fixed all this... but I'm already gone. Would I come back? Maybe. But right now I am playing WOW casually and other non MMO games. And honestly DAOC is now so far behind its a dinosaur and I'm kinda a lover of new features.
I did have 3 lvl 50s (rune mage, warrior, skald) and they were reasonable realm ranks 3 and 4 maybe a 5. So I did actually play DOAC for awhile. It was a sad day when TOA ruined it for me.
I was looking forward to Imperium... but alas it went away. I was looking forward to WAR but alas EA bought mythic and I despise EA's corporate no fun attitude.
Just FYI, they fixed alot of the complaints about ToA in patch v1.81 .. now everybody should be able to get all the artifacts they want, without too much trouble.
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ToA is much easier now and with the help of a few friends or a guild and/or active /as Artis are easy to get and its not hard to find a group doing ML's.
Crafting issues are being evalualted and changes being made there as well.
I don't like to play solo, so the community is also part of the game for me. I do not however, like buffbots. That damages groupage. But then I often play healer buffing toons.
I agree for new people /level 20 is not a good thing, hard to find someone around and the starter guilds aren't really that helpful. Although I can /level I choose not to so I can really learn the character - but also often find ghost towns