I have had enough of missing this game...  I am downloading the client and coming back.  I miss this game too much to be sitting here without any MMO's on my system at all...

Only questions are:  what server is most populous and offers a fair amount of community support and what server offers some decent player crafted gear on the broker system?

Starting a new toon is always tough and i am sure after YEARS of neglect, i wont remember much of it, but i do remember player crafted gear was the best...and i would like to tweak out just a little bit before heading to the battlegrounds...

Can anyone make a suggestion or two? 

well, i thought i was...the installer doesn't seem to work...

i downloaded the installer and ran it...got a desktop icon for DAOC.  Double clicking it starts camelot.exe which then turns into camelot.bin which then does nothing.  I expected the patcher to launch and then take about 12 hours to patch...but the .bin doesn't seem to do anything...

There is only one normal server left... ywain... classic finally died and was merged with TOA....  gaheris (PVE) and mordred were merged, into a subserver..  When you go back though you will probably be saddened and leave... its not what it used to be. Yes they made toa easy and yes they nerfed alot of the PVE grind, but the game is in the last leg of its life... its simply 8 year old and there is not enough new players to replace veterans as they move on.

I played for a month when ywain was launched alot of people came back primetime pop was 2000-3000 but its been steadily declining to just over 1000 on weekends. I do miss my RR 5L0 hunter, but I really dont want to put any more time or money into a game without a bright future.

The only thing that will bring DAOC back from its state is a complete rework of the entire game, which would mean a sequel... and since DAOC 2.0 would conflict with warhammer online for the same subscribers, i think what we instead see is them adding in more classical DAOC elements to WAR over time, which appears to be what their doing in the next update...  I do miss the game and its sad that no one has even tried to really replicate its fundemental mechanics before...  I suppose "level and gear based progression quest type games are what brings in the cash, so we are stuck with for AAA mmos.

PVP in MMos, is in my opinion, a dying breed. With the exception of EVE, POTBS, Darkfall, and maybe a few others, PVP always feels like a tack on, an appeasement, or soemthing added without much thought or reason or care. Also, notice how all of the PVP games that are built as such..... are indepedant or small time studios..

TLDR: There isnt a modern RVR game that fills the excitment of classic DAOC pre-toa... trust me , I have LOOKED far and wide, it does not exsist. Play DAOC and accept it for what it is now. Your closest bet would be warhammer, and even then war is alot different then daoc ........   Though if you are able to build a DAOC esq game without overpowered gear, excessive scenario grinding or PVE stuff let me know so i can buy a life sub

Thanks for the honest update Rage...it doesn't seem to install anyway, so i guess i will give it a miss after all.  I am with you in saying that it totally sucks that one of the best MMO's ever made is dying a slow and horrible death.  I understand WAR isn't as good as DAOC once was, so i am not sure i will give it a go either...

i yearn for the days of yesteryear when i could sit and play a MMO for 24 hours straight.  Sadly, there hasn't been a game that gives me that drive in several years.  EQ1 did it, DAOC did it and even EQ2 had me up for hours at a time, but alas...those days seem to be gone now.

/cry

Originally posted by JohnnyCache

Thanks for the honest update Rage...it doesn't seem to install anyway, so i guess i will give it a miss after all.  I am with you in saying that it totally sucks that one of the best MMO's ever made is dying a slow and horrible death.  I understand WAR isn't as good as DAOC once was, so i am not sure i will give it a go either...

i yearn for the days of yesteryear when i could sit and play a MMO for 24 hours straight.  Sadly, there hasn't been a game that gives me that drive in several years.  EQ1 did it, DAOC did it and even EQ2 had me up for hours at a time, but alas...those days seem to be gone now.

/cry

yeah, I started with EQ1 at 13, during the launch of kunark, unless you count AD*D dark sun online as a mmo, which I played on the TEN network back when cable was new age technology and most people used dialup

As for EQ... I was shopping in the mall and saw the box and was like oh this look cools so i bought it , because as a kid well I didnt know what a mmo was and then bam that was the start of my MMO career.  EQ1 was a pve game but once I joined the free for all pvp server rallos zek  man I just grew up ganking and being ganked and constant PVP had so much fun. I played that up until Luc /POP at some point some friends introduced me to daoc and played that a number of years on and off.. mostly before TOA.

FYI, warhammer daoc and i think UO all of their games are having a welcome back camapign, not sure when it ends, but I know i was able to reactive my war account for 14 days free or charge no obligations or strings attached... you can probably do that for DAOC as well... as for your client problem, they redid alot of the mythic patchers you must get the one from official website, CD installations and stuff on file sites probably wont work or will give hassle

lol...i remember my first day of eq1 when i was level 3 and met Cornflunk for the first time.  I loved the thought that it was a game that i would end up playing for a long time (7 years in total)...

Hell, i dont care what i play, i just want a decent emmersive MMO.  I met my current wife playing MMORPGs and since the silent decline of EQ2, we have stopped playing together...  She's back on the console games (/puke) and i am constantly digging thru web sites, steam and direct2drive looking for something that will spark our gaming relationship again.

i decided to download LOTRO to see what it is about and may do the same with WAR.  Give them both a 14-day shake down and see if anything interesting falls out.  Mortal Online beta was quite interesting, but wow...what a hard game.  I loved it for its ruggedness and lack of game instruciton and mapping ...made for great emersion, but alas, my lady couldn't get into it like i did </shrug>...

wish me luck in my hunt for the next game...i extend the same to you...

I have gone back to my old love many times and each time its a little sadder. I think if they dropped the price I would play again. Of course they won't because there would be a run from worsthammer back to it if they did. what I did was find a used old copy of the game and install that then let it update hehe. The online download didn't work for me either. The place is a ghost town now. Shame really at 8 years old its still better then most. Right now i am playing D&D online free till something breaks.

I went back to DAoC 3 months ago after 6 years off, had no problems downloading / installing the game, brought my old char back to life (that i transferred from Percival to Ywain1), and decked out my char (template and all of the new stuff) only 11 days after returning (thanks to having 120,000 bounty points saved up).  I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm glad to back.  I can honestly say I'll most likely be playing DAoC until either DAoC 2 comes out, or the game dies.  So far there's been a good amount of action (much more PvP action on this single server than my old WoW, Aion, and yes, even Warhammer, servers combined). 

Honestly I would've paid $30.00 a month to play DAoC again after the garbage I went through with WoW, WAR, and Aion.  The only other mmo-ish type of game that I really enjoyed was APB (which died but might be ressurected in Q2 2011).

WoW and Aion turned out to be PvE games with a sprinkle of PvP, while WAR had such a horrible endgame, and piss-poor class balance, that I could never see myself going back.  I know it probably won't happen, but I'd love to see Mythic let WAR die and focus some resources back on DAoC.  From the lack of updates and minor issues that could be fixed, it is obvious that Mythic is just keeping DAoC afloat, and not actually sinking any serious resources into the game.  Even with whatever issues it might have, and the fact that (imo) pre-ToA DAoC (aka classic DAoC) was far better than the current game, it is still (imo) the best mmo PvP game on the market right now.

Unfortunately a lot of ppl either won't come back or won't give an old game a shot, and so I have a feeling that DAoC will eventually die, and hopefully (for my sake), there will be a game worthy of replacing it--until then, I will be duking it out with the mids & hibs (alb 4 lyfe!).

I will add one issue I have with teh game now (since the final merge) is that people can have their albs, mids, and hibs on the same account--so if you had hibs on one classic server, and albs on another classic server, with teh new setup, you could put the albs on say Ywain1, and the hibs on say Ywain2.  I don't know how many players have chars on diff realms (I only have alb chars), but it is kind of lame at times the way some switch.  In any event, there're still plenty of people to kill, and so I'll have fun regardless :)

I'll also add that it seems like the majority of people playing now are oldschool players that either played long ago and came back, or have been playing the entire time.  I actually ran into half a dozen people I used to play with 6+ years ago in my first two weeks back (but other than those ppl, everyone else has been new, as many servers were merged together).

Don't bother re-upping the game at all.  Everyone needs to stop playing DAoC and begin asking for a sequel.  Stop giving them incentive to continue the original game and they'll stop keeping it alive.

Originally posted by Phaeron

Don't bother re-upping the game at all.  Everyone needs to stop playing DAoC and begin asking for a sequel.  Stop giving them incentive to continue the original game and they'll stop keeping it alive.

Well, while I wish this was true, if people stop coming DAOC will likely just die a final death, never to be reborn.

If you're not going to complain, sure.  They'll just shut it down and not remake it.  The point is withhold their money and ask for a sequel in masse.

Zenimax Online Studios, a subsidiary of the company which owns bethesda, just received a 300 million dollar investment earmarked to create several mmog's.  The president of Zenimax Online Studios is Matt Firor; an 11 year veteran at Mythic and lead producer of DAoC.  Zenimax Online Studios is currently working on an unannounced MMO project.

If you vocalize a demand for a game, it will get noticed.  If you stay resigned to the possibility that a sequel won't be made and don't say anything because you're afraid that they'll shut down the original, then you're giving them every reason not to make it.  This is a business.  If you demonstrate that it's in their best financial interests to make a sequel instead of milking a 10 year old game, then they'll do it.  This is precisely why the game is still P2P instead of F2P.  People still shell out 15 bucks that makes it worth their while.

I guarantee you that the game isn't just going to disappear.  The IP of this game is too valuable because of the street cred it has with old skool players.  The moment DAoC drops it's subscriber base below the cost to run the game, it will either go F2P or will be sold to another mmo developer who will do the same, which I doubt.  MMO's rarely get trashed entirely these days.