Ohhh how I miss Daoc as well. Got it when it was released and played it about 3 years.

Still I remember several fights even though its so many years ago or when everyone lvl 50 on the server was out doing rvr and forums was filled with respectable "trashtalk". The community was so different back then. So much more respectable - and I have often thought about this. I think one of the reasons was, that you had to behave a lot better in those games or it would take you ages to find a group. Today if one behaves badly they just find one of the other 1000 players that has absolutely no idea about who you are.

Just played rift - easily to solo to max level. The game as such was .. hmm good enogh.. but again as in all other games I have ever played since Daoc (maybe except Eve) pvp didnt really mean anything. Just points, able to get some gear and thats about it. No relics to capture, no rpoints to get new skills and no albs or hibs to destroy en masse! :)

About different classes, ofcourse there shouldnt be the same classes on the same realms. Only two games in my book have managed this. One MMO - you guess which one and one RTS which is Starcraft.

What really really bothers me is that after ALL these years, jumping from game to game and companies spending millions after millions of dollars on developing new MMOs, so far no game has been able to deliver what Daoc delivered.

And what did Daoc deliver to me? Fun! Fun hacking at the other two realms, getting "our" keeps back or defending them from enemies, clearing dungeon from all hibs and albs and raidring for our and our enemies relics or defending. Just plain exitement with a meaning to why I was spending so many hours at that single game day after day.

Todays pvp is warfronts, capture the flag, get new stuff, have a good macro and bla bla bla.. boooooring and doesnt hold any meaning, but thats another story..

Sorry for the rant, just miss my Daoc! Best pvp game ever!

Boy reading this really takes me back...I played DAOC for more then 3 years right through TOA<which I personally loved>, cata and classic servers.

Housing was the best, underwater combat was awesome...almost as good as the dolphin ride lol, and the people were so great.  That right there is the missing link for me these days.  Lots of players but no one to play with most of the time.  Solo is king, and while I really like solo at times, MMO still should mean playing with guildmates most of the time IMO.

I have never felt the same exhiliration and satisfaction I did when I reached 50 on my first char, a bard.  Guild had a leveling party so we could all be together for it.  The guild meetings were awesome too...seeing different guild groups seated in circles planning their night or just talking to each other was so common.  Never ever going to see that again sadly. 

Have tried most other sub MMOs playing Rift and Beta for G&H atm, but they never last long.  Getting really close to hanging up my healers for good I think, but there will always be the memories of this MMO, the only one I will probably miss forever.

I miss DAoC in its Golden Days :(.

1. Amazing PvP. 3 Factions was genius with different feels to races and classes too! Made Balancing a pain in the ass but damn was it fun and massive scale pvp usually classes aren't as overly op or at least are easier to handle balance wise then smaller scale pvp.

2. The feeling and mythology of the game. Loved the Norse vs Celt vs Arthurian/Romano-British setting.

Originally posted by Vallista

What happen to this game?  I been trying to find a game that fills the vold and nothing comes close.  Daoc is the only game that pvp mattered.  Where each realm was different from each other.  Not like wow where now blizzard has both factions holding hands ingame and out of game.  It's really sad.  Even their community want alliance to horde to group together.  Please I want to come back to daoc.

 so play it.

If you miss it, come back and play it !

Game only gets better when there are more people, so the more that come back the better the game gets, the more money they get to improve content......ect....

Why do they screw up EVERY good game, from ultima online, to starwars galaxies, to dark age of camelot... is it inevitable?

Change is yes

I checked the Mythic Account Management page just now and on the bottom I had the message "Dark Age of Camelot: Claim your 14 free days!". Tried it and got the message

"Congratulations, your account is eligible for 14 Free Days!

Now you can check out for yourself why Dark Age of Camelot is better than ever! You'll get to see the major improvements to overall performance and server stability, tons of bug fixes, new classes, and new Live Events......"

Maybe some of you old vets can get the same offer? Doesn't hurt to try it out again XD

Great game, lots of memories.  Just scared of getting nastagia if I went back.

Almost every class was fun to play.

The lore was very good, specialy, the midgard lore for me.

how they ruined the game.

toa for me,  althou I did have a botted spiritmaster that farmed arties an scrolls for many.  It got tiresome, and I lost my edge in relearning how to pvp with the 2nd best caster class in game.......  So i imagine alot of people like me forgot how to pvp,  cause of having to pve so much.

If there is a doac II can only hope they would make guild cities in PvP zones, since most people really left when shadowbane came out.  Well the ones that didn't go to Wow.   And take base line stun away from hib  :)

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Originally posted by druidwarlock
Great game, lots of memories.  Just scared of getting nastagia if I went back.
Almost every class was fun to play.
The lore was very good, specialy, the midgard lore for me.
how they ruined the game.
toa for me,  althou I did have a botted spiritmaster that farmed arties an scrolls for many.  It got tiresome, and I lost my edge in relearning how to pvp with the 2nd best caster class in game.......  So i imagine alot of people like me forgot how to pvp,  cause of having to pve so much.
If there is a doac II can only hope they would make guild cities in PvP zones, since most people really left when shadowbane came out.  Well the ones that didn't go to Wow.   And take base line stun away from hib  :)

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You do not have to farm for them really anymore. You can get them all from bounty points from RvR or glass which is easly found.

I miss DAoC too but I went back recently and the community/realm-devotion feel is totally shot; everyone seems to x-realm, there's no great feeling of "we're all in this together" and the majority of people I met, (with a very few memorable exceptions), seemed like total d-bags. Which would be fine if I played on Mordred, cause everyone hates each other, but on Ywain you gotta play alongside these people? Uhh, pass :P think I'll be waiting for GW2, fingers crossed.

but a game like daoc for the OP?

I liked FEZ gameplay for territory, but it shut down .

I havent tryed Aika or Pandora Saga yet,  even thou they are free.

to many games to DL with limited time to play. (slow pacer)

Hoping Gods and Heroes turns pvp into something nice,  hate the fact that most games now release in a beta stage.

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Originally posted by Xexv
I miss DAoC too but I went back recently and the community/realm-devotion feel is totally shot; everyone seems to x-realm, there's no great feeling of "we're all in this together" and the majority of people I met, (with a very few memorable exceptions), seemed like total d-bags. Which would be fine if I played on Mordred, cause everyone hates each other, but on Ywain you gotta play alongside these people? Uhh, pass :P think I'll be waiting for GW2, fingers crossed.

---

I'm completely with the OP on this. I played DAOC from day 1, after playing UO and EQ and quite simply there has never been a game that came close. It really was the next step forward in gameplay and it's amazing how far we've NOT come in the MMO world.

Today we have"yeah sadly here at the end DAOC has tried to adopt some of this crap":

• Dailies "oh how fun". Dailies in DAOC was going to attack the other realm.
• Instanced scenarios
• Instanced capture the flag, king of the hill gameplay best reserved for consoles
• Talking to the enemy
• Dancing with the enemy
• Questing witht he enemy
• Same exact classes on both sides
• Only two sided warfare
• ect...ect...

Originally posted by Xexv

I miss DAoC too but I went back recently and the community/realm-devotion feel is totally shot; everyone seems to x-realm, there's no great feeling of "we're all in this together" and the majority of people I met, (with a very few memorable exceptions), seemed like total d-bags. Which would be fine if I played on Mordred, cause everyone hates each other, but on Ywain you gotta play alongside these people? Uhh, pass :P think I'll be waiting for GW2, fingers crossed.

I played DAoC originally from 2002-2004 (and had an absolute blast until the style change patch for melee, the pve ToA xpac, and the pro-zerging NF xpac made me quit).  Pre-ToA DAoC was by far my favorite mmo.  I went from WoW to WAR to Aion to APB and then back to DAoC last September.  I was very active and had *some* fun for 4-5 months--but eventually I realized that the game just isn't what it once was---for example:

1. As Xexv noted above, a lot of people cross-realm, which absolutely kills realm pride (i dont x-realm--i only play alb)

2. There are barely any melee teams around for Albion players (I play an armsman)---the complete opposite of what it once was.  My options now are solo/small man in labyrinth (which can be OK at times..other times it's a zergfest) or become a bodyguard and/or slam bot for a caster team (which is incredibly lame).

3. The population seems to be very low, even wiht the servers combined.  It's very hard to find a paladin (for celerity), which is kind of lame.

4. Most of the good Albion pvpers (and no, i don't mean dueling--i mean killing people in any way possible)  are european, which means they're only around at weird hours.

5. Speaking of good pvpers, there aren't many left (I honestly feel there were more good albion players on my old server, percival, than there are on albion- ywain)...there are just so many mediocre to bad teams--even some that are led by rr12's fail on teh basics....and guess what...the few good teams around are caster-based (7+ casters)---so much for 8man melee teams (centered around 3+ melee train  or split assist trains,etc)...

6. the frontiers are mainly zerg-based---I don't want to zerg...and i dont want to be in a caster 8man...so im out of luck....

7. darkness falls is borderline empty---so much for DF pvp =/

8. As I already mentioned before, the one place to go for solo/small man is labyrinth--but porting around half the time lookin for a decent fight is lame...and gettin zerged or ambushed by 5+ stealthers is also lame....it CAN be fun....but that fun is nowhere near the amount of fun i had back in the day.

9, The game still has a lot of bugs that mythic seems to ignore (getting zephyr'd through walls in labs while you're pvping....and ending up at the bottom of the labs surrounded by high lvl PVE mobs, for example)--btw I still think zephyr is an overpowered, broken ability...much like I did when ToA came out way back--BUT at least my arms has some cool new abilities :P

I suppose I'll list a few positives, because the game isn't a complete piece of crap

1. The world pvp in DAoC is still greater than a bunch of other mmo's out there (which isn't saying much tbh)--I'd still play it over anythin else until GW2...BUT atm I'm playing single player games, as there's rly nothin out there i want to play atm

2. The pvp is still fun when the fights are even and/or close to being even (granted i basically would just solo/small man as i didnt have another worthwhile option)

3. The game could be really good if mythic actually gave a damn about it

4. My armsman can climb walls...yay.....too bad i dont have a melee team to play with

5. my armsman got some cool abilities....i generally like my class (even with teh changes--i adapted)..and i generally feel that class balance is fine (unlike Aion or Warhammer, in which th class balance is badly broken)....i can go 1v1 against any class and have a pretty good shot at killin them (granted I am rr11...but that goes for ppl my rank and higher as well)

Basically I realized over the course of playing the game again for 4-5 months...was that the game was nowhere near as fun as it once was...and that it wasn't about to get any better.  The game lacks a community, lacks realm pride...lacks the necessary classes needed to make groups....no wonder it's dyying...and guess what?  Mythic doesn't care.  and that's pretty frickin lame...considering it was once really awesome...

Like Xexv, I plan on trying out GW2.  I didn't even look into it initially, though...until my friend told me about the 3-sided world pvp: ' World vs World vs World '.  I hope it's a lot of fun...and I've liked what I've seen so far...but I'll have to play it to see.  God knows DAoC 2 won't be coming out (maybe not ever)---and GW2 has some similarities to DAoC when it comes to world pvp--so I'm goin to give it a shot.  I still have an active DAoC account (even tho ive only logged in a few times over the past 6.5 months)....I log in once in a blue moon and tell a few ppl taht still play how fckin borin teh game is lol =P

Anyway, sry for the long post haha =P

Cheers,

Hildace (Mike)

Originally posted by Ghaval

 

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Originally posted by Xexv
I miss DAoC too but I went back recently and the community/realm-devotion feel is totally shot; everyone seems to x-realm, there's no great feeling of "we're all in this together" and the majority of people I met, (with a very few memorable exceptions), seemed like total d-bags. Which would be fine if I played on Mordred, cause everyone hates each other, but on Ywain you gotta play alongside these people? Uhh, pass :P think I'll be waiting for GW2, fingers crossed.

---

Sounds like Hib or maybe Alb. Mid has more helpfull people. A few are rude just for fun but not that many. My guild is willing to accept and be helpful to returning players. Just have to regester on our webpage and follow the rules. A good guild will change the way you think of the game.

I played Albion this past fall, and, for the most part, did not run into many total d-bags (although I did run into a TON of REALLY BAD PVPERS).  I did, however, run into two different melee teams that were mediocre but could've been much better (had some OK players and maybe 1 or 2 good players each)--the problem was that their leaders INSISTED on doing things their way and were completely close-minded....which was incredibly frustrating because both teams had hte classes, gear, and ranks (but not the strategy or DAoC common sense) to be very good teams....The frustration with them, in addition to 1 member on each team being a complete and total dbag, made me quit those teams after less than a few weeks (for each team).  The first team ended up continuing failing (although it struggled to fill out a group as other members told them off as well--i wasnt the only one)..and hte second team (and the entire second team's guild) went inactive after repeated failures over the course of the following month or so.

btw--joined in mmorpg forums in 2006 and yet i only have 10 posts total...grats lol

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by Vallista

What happen to this game?  I been trying to find a game that fills the vold and nothing comes close.  Daoc is the only game that pvp mattered.  Where each realm was different from each other.  Not like wow where now blizzard has both factions holding hands ingame and out of game.  It's really sad.  Even their community want alliance to horde to group together.  Please I want to come back to daoc.

A combination of EA, WoW, and Mythic's own stupidity happened.

The first huge problem as /level 20. That reward for getting a level 50 character nearly broke the game on its own. The biggest problem is it cut off the flow of newbies into the game. No vets were rerolling anymore, so the starter areas were totally empty. The learning curve of MMOs were still steepish back then (and rightfully so, if a game has no learning curve, why bother playing it) but with no veterans to show people the ropes or give people some money, the newb population died off.

RvR began to suffer, as most people were just rolling level 20 characters and playing in the battlegrounds. This killed the higher level battlegrounds, which made it so that you had to grind PvE mobs to level up. Since most people weren't leveling anymore, this meant you had to solo. Group play died.

Enter ToA. Mythic kept releasing overpowered classes with its expansions to get people to buy them, that's a problem on its own. But with Trials of Atlantis, it introduced such overpowered PvE gear that it broke the balance between quested, crafted, and raid gear, and turned the game into a raid centric game instead of a PvP game. You HAD to do these extremely difficult trials in order to progress and even be able to compete in RvR.

 

Then the Catacombs expansion hit, and introduced instancing. The entire main quest for that expansino was instanced, further emptying the world. It added in task dungeons, which became the fastest way to level, which were randomly generated dungeons that were instanced. It even added instanced wings to previously public dungeons. It also added floating icons over quest NPCs and turned the game into a quest grind, completely killing the social game.

And after that, people just left by the hundred thousands. The only time people showed interest in DAOC again was when Mythic announced a classic server that would roll the game back to launch (mostly). But, WAR did so poorly that EA forced Mythic to focus all their work on WAR. The rest..is history. Mythic no longer exists.

 

And THAT, is why DAoC failed. That's why I won't play it now, because all those horrible problems are still there.

 

What makes it so painful is that DAoC is probably one of the best MMORPGs ever made.It balanced so many features that MMO companies have been struggling to get right for years. And it innovated so much.

If I was to target a single thing that led to DAoC becoming nearly-dead, it would be the Trials of Atlantis expansion.  You have a bunch of hardened veteran pvpers, and instead of letting them pvp, you introduce PvE raiding & grinding?!?  Mythic wanted to expand out of the niche pvp playerbase (to attract pve-ers and make more money) and guess what?  That pissed off the loyal pvp playerbase...and the pve-ers mythic tried to get all went to WoW anyway.  It's no wonder the lead developer got fired from mythic (the same lead dev taht was responsible for the POS aka warahmmer online).

Originally posted by Zinzan

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by Vallista

What happen to this game?  I been trying to find a game that fills the vold and nothing comes close.  Daoc is the only game that pvp mattered.  Where each realm was different from each other.  Not like wow where now blizzard has both factions holding hands ingame and out of game.  It's really sad.  Even their community want alliance to horde to group together.  Please I want to come back to daoc.

A combination of EA, WoW, and Mythic's own stupidity happened.

The first huge problem as /level 20. That reward for getting a level 50 character nearly broke the game on its own. The biggest problem is it cut off the flow of newbies into the game. No vets were rerolling anymore, so the starter areas were totally empty. The learning curve of MMOs were still steepish back then (and rightfully so, if a game has no learning curve, why bother playing it) but with no veterans to show people the ropes or give people some money, the newb population died off.

RvR began to suffer, as most people were just rolling level 20 characters and playing in the battlegrounds. This killed the higher level battlegrounds, which made it so that you had to grind PvE mobs to level up. Since most people weren't leveling anymore, this meant you had to solo. Group play died.

Enter ToA. Mythic kept releasing overpowered classes with its expansions to get people to buy them, that's a problem on its own. But with Trials of Atlantis, it introduced such overpowered PvE gear that it broke the balance between quested, crafted, and raid gear, and turned the game into a raid centric game instead of a PvP game. You HAD to do these extremely difficult trials in order to progress and even be able to compete in RvR.

 

Then the Catacombs expansion hit, and introduced instancing. The entire main quest for that expansino was instanced, further emptying the world. It added in task dungeons, which became the fastest way to level, which were randomly generated dungeons that were instanced. It even added instanced wings to previously public dungeons. It also added floating icons over quest NPCs and turned the game into a quest grind, completely killing the social game.

And after that, people just left by the hundred thousands. The only time people showed interest in DAOC again was when Mythic announced a classic server that would roll the game back to launch (mostly). But, WAR did so poorly that EA forced Mythic to focus all their work on WAR. The rest..is history. Mythic no longer exists.

 

And THAT, is why DAoC failed. That's why I won't play it now, because all those horrible problems are still there.

 

What makes it so painful is that DAoC is probably one of the best MMORPGs ever made.It balanced so many features that MMO companies have been struggling to get right for years. And it innovated so much.

I'll go you one better, SI was the beginning of the end for DAoC, spellcrafting introduced min/maxing and perfect templates, from that moment it was doomed. If you didn't have access to every type of crafter and a strong guild to help farm mets for armour and scing/alch charges and the "right" items to fit around the templates, you were immediately at a massive disadvantage in rvr.

TOA's true damage wasn't the pve raiding as such taking pvpers out of the frontiers. People camping arti mobs and ninja looting artis and raid items generated something new and very ugly in the game, horrible greed and hatred, suddenly people you thought were decent people and friends would screw you over for a cloudsong or a GoV or even a Bence's 2/3 scroll.....it was utterly insane!

It was after TOA and New Frontiers that players left en-masse, not Catacombs. By the time Cata came out servers were already running low on population. I forget when they started clustering.

Also, EU players had to endure the horror that was GOA, US players will never understand how badly this company ruined DAoC for EU players. I played US and EU and honestly, they were totally different experiences.

Ultimately, Mythic killed their own game stone dead.

SI wasn't teh beginning of the end, imo.  It wasn't overly difficult to template and gear your character--certainly not the grind of WoW or Aion--that's for damn sure.  ToA, imo, was the beginning of the end =P

I do agree that the playerbase died off after ToA/NF, though (which was arounf the time I left, actually--shortly after NF came out)---but I believe it was the grinding & pve raiding that was to blame.  The last thing in teh world pvpers want to do is grnid pve mobs...or form large pve raids to kill some dumb pve boss---oh and let's not forget the ML abilities weren't balanced at all...my armsman got the total shaft at the time...while skalds got zephyr? w t f

I really miss this game too. I played last year for some time, but I stopped after the multiple charge fiasco. With two accounts, that hurt a lot! But that's the thing about this game... it's hard to play it with just one account because it seems like so much of the solo play actually requires a buffbot. It's too much for a currently casual player like me who can only play weekends to sub two accounts... I can't justify that sort of cost.

Can still not understand why Daoc 2 was never planned