I loved this game.

LOVED IT !

I have resubbed 4 times now. 

You ask anyone who played it, 9 times out of 10 they tell you it was the best game they ever played. 

So why is it so dead right now ? Why, if this game was so amazing, and so many people adored it, does it have such a small population ?

I know the coffin for me, was when they forced Trials of Atlantis on us. I came back with the classic servers and loved it again, but then i dont know what, the game faded, maybe it was because of the New Frontiers. 

What i do know is if they kept the same formula (no forced ToA expansion, no redoing RvR lands) and redid the Graphics, i would be back in a heartbeat for DAoC 2. WAR was fail from release, DAoC was a gem that just got plain muddled and then ignored when Mythick got a fat head and figured WAR was better then there Flagship DAoC.

Mythick, you can recover greatness if you pulled your heads out of yer asses and redid DAoC, and ditched that fail of an idea called WAR.

Or take it back a sec and added a 3rd clear faction to WAR and ditched Skirmishing (instanced PvP) in favor of objective based world RvR, and toss the moronic RvR Lakes !

I dunno, so many have mirrored this sentiment, its like Mythick thinks only they know what works, well umm, both your games are on life support, maybe you need to Re-Think your stance on what the Players want, not what some asshat developer thinks we want.

Mythic took a huge gamble on WAR and lost... They should have been making DAOC 2, and totally scraped the idea of WAR.. But can't go back in time to fix their mistake...

I'd love to see DAOC 2 some time in the future,, but won't be holding my breath on that..

I think dated graphics and wow happened. Loved DAoC, even with all the expansions, it needed a little more polish but that could  easily happen in DAoC 2 if it ever gets done.

Yes it is/was one of the best games ever made. Like the above poster said, Mythic took a gamble on WAR, sold their soul, lost and now DAOC2 will probably never happen. Mark Jacobs pulled a real D**K move, and i know a lot of people will never forgive him for that (even though he left mythic).  Even if EA gave the approval for DAOC2, they would never let it be like it was. They would make a 3 faction WoW clone (See the 2 faction WoW clone that is coming out in December :(   ) and not let it be like it was.  WAR was an attempt at greed, and they lost, big time. 

Also, the game is really old and most people have played the S**T out of it and there isn't really anything else to do. IMO, in this MMO age of stale, bland, copies, a DAOC 2 that is a lot like the original would be a breath of fresh air and probably take off.

Originally posted by EvilChemist

I think dated graphics and wow happened. Loved DAoC, even with all the expansions, it needed a little more polish but that could  easily happen in DAoC 2 if it ever gets done.

   yup i think this say it all , wow and dated game and altlantis killed it for me .

Buffbots and /level 20 command also didn´t exactly help bringing fresh blood into the game, nor places like "Finspot".

DAOC was my first MMORPG. I had a blast leveling up several characters over the years. There really wasn't anything I really disliked about the game. I loved the PvE-mob grinding and dungeon crawling with a group on a daily basis for 4-6+ hours straight. I loved the BG's, especially defending from sieges. I loved the Epic Quest lines, Master Levels and Trials, and the RvR at 50.

I don't agree that ToA destroyed the game. It added an extra layer of PvE to the game, which I enjoyed. The only part I didn't enjoy was camping a mob spawn for hours on end only to have it taken from me the moment it spawned by some asshat, but gear never was all that important to me. In RvR, it's the skill of the group that won battles, not gear. Sure, maybe gear mattered more in 8v8 or 1v1 battles, but I always played with the zerg going around assaulting or defending castles/towers.

I left after a few years of playing DAoC...the spring when SWG: The Total Experience package released. I was starting to get bored doing RvR day in and day out, and I'm a huge Star Wars fan, who never knew SWG existed. I fell in love with SWG quickly after trying it and played it until the CLassic servers released for DAoC. Until the NGE ruined SWG, I would play both SWG and DAoC, or switch between the two.

I don't play DAoC anymore because the game has changed, the community has changed, and the game is old. What I loved most about DAoC was the dungeon crawling or mob camping with a group. The tactics used in grouping depended on what classes joined your group. DAoC of today, the leveling experience is so fast, and there are "WoW-like" quests, which I hate, so that's out the window.

I think WAR was a lot of fun at release. I ended up leaving when WoTLK released, because WAR was having problems with abilities not firing off during PvP, plus WoTLK had the Death Knight, the one class type I gravitate towards in every MMORPG. WoW didn't have any classes I liked previous to that, plus I hated soloing and quest grinding, so I never got into WoW until WoTLK. After I finished WoTLK, I never really could get back into WAR. Only for a couple months.

Oh, another thing that pissed me off about WAR is their promise to release everything on launch day, yet they were missing several cities, a couple classes, AND the classes felt rushed. They had good mechanics and all, but they weren't sticking to the lore, which irritated me, because a Sword Master was the only type of class I liked to play, but they were tank oriented in WAR, but should have been DPS oriented according to lore. Oh, Shadow Warriors blew in the beginning and that was my second choice for a class. They didn't even have bow strings!! WAR just failed in being complete in my book.

Originally posted by Mizzmo

Yes it is/was one of the best games ever made. Like the above poster said, Mythic took a gamble on WAR, sold their soul, lost and now DAOC2 will probably never happen. Mark Jacobs pulled a real D**K move, and i know a lot of people will never forgive him for that (even though he left mythic).  Even if EA gave the approval for DAOC2, they would never let it be like it was. They would make a 3 faction WoW clone (See the 2 faction WoW clone that is coming out in December :(   ) and not let it be like it was.  WAR was an attempt at greed, and they lost, big time. 

Also, the game is really old and most people have played the S**T out of it and there isn't really anything else to do. IMO, in this MMO age of stale, bland, copies, a DAOC 2 that is a lot like the original would be a breath of fresh air and probably take off.

 

I agree. The PvP in WAR was a lot of fun, but their PvE sucked. The PQ's weren't used as much as I'd of hoped. People were either scenario grinding or quest grinding. Quest grinding is what I hate about WoW and that's all the genre offers now.

People just aren't as group oriented or sociable like they were before WoW came out.

Time is a great equalizer like death, and time has taken its toll on this old favourite. I hope it goes on for as long as it can.

Originally posted by Herodes

Buffbots and /level 20 command also didn´t exactly help bringing fresh blood into the game, nor places like "Finspot".

I forgot about the buffbots, which is odd, because now that I remember, it was the top reason I didn't stay with the game. Classic servers fixed that, but by that time the community changed from open world group grinding to instant dungeons.

i think it is the out dated graphics because most people judge on graphics.

Said it before and I'll say it again, It was'ent just ToA that killed the game for alot of folks, it was the enforced cross-over of playstyles.

At its heart DAoC was a PvP (RvRvR) game, but it also had a decent PvE game as well. Yes there were raids and all that good stuff.

The cross over I'm talking about was'ent just ML's / Artifacts from ToA is was also the application of RR skills in PvE.

To be the best in RvR you had to PvE in ToA to get your master levels and artifacts. This was a blow to the pure RvR crowd who did'ent want to PvE .. ever. They wanted to RvR and that was it. Likewise the PvE crowd and there was a PvE crowd - dont be fooled, (the popularity of the Gawaine server - 3 faction co-op PvE server) was proof of that, well they just wanted to do thier dungeons / raids and play the PvE game. So when they had to go RvR to grind rank in order to play PvE (Tanks in particular, asking to go into a raid without some MoB - Mastery of Blocking - levels etc was a no-no)

The game designers mistakenly believed that everyone was an all around player who ran PvE and RvR with equal gusto. This was thier (IMHO) biggest mistake. Players tended to gravitate towards one side or the other. Sure even most *hardcore* PvP'rs at times did some PvE, and visa-versa the PvE players went to tool around in RvR at times, it was'ent thier focus though and to have that playstyle forced upon them, in order to progress in thier chosen playstyle, was a turn off for alot of players.

In hindsight, Mythic should have seperated the two playstyle totally. ToA Master levels / Artifacts etc should have been geared towards and had the most impact in PvE play, likewise RvR abilitys gained through Realm Rank should have had an impact in RvR and not so much in PvE.

Had they had this total seperation of playstyles I believe the two player types could have been kept happier.

FYI- For myself I played in both spheres of the game alot. However I had different characters for each, I mainly played Tanks in the PvE game and Healers in the RvR game, the changes were a double blow to me as I then had to take my PvE tanks out to RvR to gain ranks to better tank PvE content, and had to take my RvR healers into PvE to better heal / suvive RvR encounters .... /sad panda

Trials of Atlantis is what happend in November 2003,  a full year before WOW

TOA still is the worst expansion in mmo history (that I'm aware of)

DAOC wanted to compete w the #1 mmo, Everquest, a raiding game

and had the playerbase leaving in droves

heres one bloggers overview of the disaster of TOA

http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/arrogance/is-blizzard%E2%80%99s-cataclysm-the-worst-expansion-in-mmo-history.html

It wasn’t the quality of the content that made Atlantis such an utter failure. It was the fact that DAoC used an entire expansion, all that budget and manpower, to create an expansion that essentially tryed to EQ-ify (in the same way games now try to WoW-ify themselves) the game.

ToA introduced massive raids – some of them requiring 12 hours of straight gameplay with groups 50-100 large. It introduced massively powerful artifacts that completely dominated the PvP (RvR) landscape. Within a few months, if you did not have a full complement of fully leveled up artifacts you simply couldn’t compete in RvR.

This was an absolutely titanic shift in the game. Before ToA, you could cap all your stats, resistances, etc. with crafted gear. It might be expensive, but it didn’t require any raiding or specific boss farming. People loved this because it made PvP a level playing field where skill, team composition, etc. were everything.

ToA utterly ruined and destroyed this

Originally posted by EvilChemist

I think dated graphics and wow happened. Loved DAoC, even with all the expansions, it needed a little more polish but that could  easily happen in DAoC 2 if it ever gets done.

dated graphics? the clear crispness of daoc is not to me missed..

All looks nice to me, the only thing that might of been spruced up was the UI really.... rest was fine.

I honestly like DAOC's graphics better than any other fantasy mmorpg on the market. I don't see why people dislike it so much.

 The game is still fun there is still a lot of people that play the game. But Mythic just need to show alot more love to the game and drop Warhammer Online it was a big failure. 

Originally posted by demarc01

 

The game designers mistakenly believed that everyone was an all around player who ran PvE and RvR with equal gusto. This was thier (IMHO) biggest mistake. Players tended to gravitate towards one side or the other.

I agree.  From what I understand Aion did the same thing.

For myself as example, I'm a casual PVEer.  Force me to PVP to level and I leave.  I'm no good at it.

Originally posted by Herodes

Buffbots and /level 20 command also didn´t exactly help bringing fresh blood into the game, nor places like "Finspot".

thats mostly why i quitted

Originally posted by syrusmag3

i think it is the out dated graphics because most people judge on graphics.

Out of about 30 guildies who left DaoC, not one ever complained about graphics.

Things like buffbots & multiboxing pissed everyone off instead

The posters here have explained well their feelings but I also thought to add that another reason people leave (and never come back) is because the original game they left is not there anymore. Also DAoC really needs an automatic Group Finder to counteract the voice chat centric mentality that took over RvR and then PvE once Trials of Atlantis came out.

I wrote what is below this sentence recently and emailed it to Mythic Entertainment DAoC Feedback.

Some people think of MMORPGs like music. They are both media. So why not? Here is a little written explanation about MMORPG Media and why it has been so special throughout the last decade.

Music is not a good comparison. Here is the reasoning as to why.

If the Beatles ever decided after releasing their music for years that they don't like their original music and wanted to change it, then there would be a lot of angry Beatles fans assuming of course that the changes to the original music meant that there was no other way to hear the original songs now that they've changed it. Would you be happy if one of your favorite songs suddenly changed its entire message, beat, and feeling it once had and there was no way to hear the original, ever again?

Similarly the man, the legend, the respectable Mr. George Lucas who invented Star Wars is recently up to no good with this kind of trickery with the original Star Wars Trilogy movies by making Darth Vader say "No... Nooooo!" in one of the final scenes where the emperor is thrown to his death. Now of course the Star Wars movies belongs to and is copyrighted by the proper owner and so they can do whatever that they want. However, this doesn't make it right to do so. It is also true that people can still find a copy of the original Star Wars films and watch them. This turns out to be the only saving grace for those movies; but, this turns out not so for MMORPGs. So MMORPGs are also not like film either.

This is why MMORPG Media has been rough through the last decade. They are a different form of media. Not even regular video games suffer from this same problem that I am beginning to call "Pulling a George Lucas," or at least calling it that for now in hopes that it is understood now. Poor design implementation which doesn't allow players to stay in a Safe and Stable Original Version of the game has lead to change(s) that fans are not able to handle and left with no choice but to unsubscribe. This type of effect is an emotional scarring.

What happens is after a creator of something has released their creation, they need to be very careful about changing it too much later on because people become emotionally attached. When people are emotionally attached to something, the results of severing that attachment can lead to the pains of mistrust and fear of instability. This is not good for business where a subscription fee is involved.

Expansions and content patches in MMORPGs should work like placing a piece of paper onto a stack instead of like placing a card randomly back anywhere on or into a card deck. They should also allow the players to delevel back to the original version and back to the expansion level if higher levels are involved.

The point is to preserve the original envisioning of the creation by working around it. If the game is old and some players are scared to try it because most players are already at the end of the game? Then add an option to play with increased exp gains. Don't just erase the original exp gains so that players can't still experience how it was meant to be.

This is one of the greatest hindsight lessons that should have been learned over the last decade.

Another is that automatic Group Finding features are needed.

One of the main reasons people played old school MMORPGs like Dark Age of Camelot, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, and so on is because of roleplay or just talking/making friends by using text chat. In these game's original versions, resting took ages. Sometimes 5 to 10 minutes to regain health and mana. This was called down time and was spent by text chatting or AFKing.

Text chatting is great for many reasons. One being that if a male dwarf is talking, then you can imagine it is really a male dwarf. Recent MMORPGs like World of Warcraft focus more on voice chatting and no downtime. There is absolutely no imagination left in the roleplaying department because of this. Of course, down time is very bad and is why World of Warcraft was created and found a completely new genre of MMORPG to fill that nobody else had filled yet. All we really should have learned from this, however, is that down time needs to be more like 1 minute, not 5+ for these types of games.

Still, this has led to all MMORPGs trying to copy WoW, but not all MMORPGs are meant to be like WoW! These MMORPGs are about people becoming Hogoth the Dragonslayer! Stop trying to be about Billy at home or Bob in Accounting like World of Warcraft is! They need to go back to being about text chatting in a fantasy or science fiction setting. They need to bring people's imaginations back!

Text chat is the reasoning behind needing a Group Finder, so everyone doesn't need a guild in voicechat to be able to play.

Sources: I played Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years till I couldn't anymore due to too much changes. I got a level 50 Mercenary after playing for 1 year. I was also there in the Dark Age of Camelot open beta test and bought the game as soon as it came out. When I got to level 50, I could never really enjoy the game's RvR because other players wouldn't take me in groups and everything became Voice Chat Centric. The only solace I could find was in PvE, so I actually went back to PvE to enjoy raiding and pve groups until the Trials of Atlantis expansion pack. When Trials of Atlantis came out, PvE became heavily voice chat centric and so there was no longer anything left for me to do at end game ever again in Dark Age of Camelot. I began to find joy and entertainment in leveling new characters and trying different classes and realms. This too was ruined once Catacombs introduced Arulite, faster exp gains, Task Dungeons, and new classes that didn't quite meet the high level standards of quality that current DAoC classes did/should. The world had also become too big to find anyone else to level with so it became big and empty (It was big enough as it is with Shrouded Isles' new continents!). That was my last straw that I had left in this game...(Also the New Models really made me mad and the new Water was no longer blue and the new trees all these changes were just too much) Of course, WoW had come out so I went to play that for 5 more years but it is also making the same mistakes DAoC did with Heirlooms and PvE/PvP being heavily voice chat centric and so I am slowly being kicked out of that too. I've also played most MMORPGs ever created and Dark Age of Camelot (its original version) I would say is the best one ever created.

A good automatic Group Finder that can be used for doing anything would have solved all Voice Chatting issues with DAoC and would have allowed text chat culture to stay alive in the game instead of dieing out.

An understanding of Stack based addition of game content instead of random or replacement insertion would have preserved the original version as well as all/any emotional attachments of the game.