f13.net

It's never finished, just more refined (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1095794986&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&).

Cheers on another excellent review.

I suppose, my opinion is this:

Being that I was a past subscriber of DAoC and am a current subscriber of Everquest (again, and times 2) I think all games eventually "return to fashion" because the MMORPG will never really leave our systems. We all return to it whether out of sheer fascination or sheer boredom.

It is the true addiction. Unfortunately for DAoC, though the Role-playing content has always been there it has never been able to match the sheer ferocity of other games and I think the prospect of a constant and supposed PVP environment  is good in theory and was and is able to draw adequate subscribers, but falls far short in the reality of a genre that is all about competition.

Gaming, thanks to EQ, is all about being an item hungry loot whore. And you either get tired of it, or sick of it or flourish in it.

DAoC lacks that.

But great review. I love all of your reviews. Even if most of them are pessimistic as hell. lol.

Ohh, didn't I tell you, you'd just end up disgruntled and quitting rather quickly?  Well, you did manage to make it 7 weeks farther than I figured you would.

Beyond the level 20 battlegrounds, there's just not much room for a casual player to compete in DAoC.  I have a couple of friends, that between the two of them, have around 8-10 level 50 characters.  So, they're pretty much near the top of pyschotic uber-grinders but oddly enough par for the course for many of the DAoC diehards they know.

Even they tell me constantly, "you don't want to play, really, it'll be too tedius on the way to becoming relevant in RVR."  I ignored them once and tried out played a level 50 paladin for a bit and without massive RRs, MLs, and artifacts I was pretty much nothing more than a healer decoy.  The combat did have an intriguing pace to it, fast enough that I sucked terribly at it off the bat, but not too fast in that I couldn't see the tactical components and realize that it would just be a matter of practice. As much as I love playing with them, I couldn't materialize the time to play during primetime to RVR (it's dead late night) or the will to grind up some artifacts and other bullshit.

Anyhow, I'm amazed you made it that far.  Out of everything on the market, Dark Age has to be one of the least forgiving for a casual.

Perhaps what we need is a CoH approach to Battlegrounds.
 
Lets say you are level 15, and you enter the level 15-20 battlegrounds called "noobisle".  When you go to enter it, it lets you know how many people are in the instance, either by exact numbers or a population level that could be per acre or whatever, low/med/high concentration.  It also gives you the number of times someone was killed in the last 1/2 hour or so. This will tell you how many people are in, and if they are all participating (how active the battlegrounds are).
 
Now, lets say you go to enter noobisle and it tells you that the population is low and that 2 people were killed in the last half hour.  Not good.  It then gives you the option to get a "Report from the Front" on a random battleground that is higher level than you (35-40), "muchkinland".  You scout munchkinland and find that the population is medium and 42 people were killed in the last half hour.  Sounds like fun right?  You can click "Go to Munchkinland" and it will perform the 'sidekick' system on your avatar.  Giving you the HP/Mana/Stats of a level 35 character, but you don't get any new skills.  This way you can still potentially be competitive, some lands are always active.
 
You only get the option to move up if your current battlegrounds have low population.  Keeps it more fun that way, because you're always fighting against someone who has comparable skill selections to you.

Actually, you could do the same for lower level areas, using a reverse-sidekick system like CoH just implemented, which reduces you to the powers you had at that level, as well.

I think CoV should use a system like that, I think it'd be incredible...  Tho you'd see the popularity of the 'stealth' power pool go WAY up.  8)

--
Alkiera

I saw an idea kicked around to help out the low-pop battlegrounds:  tie them in across servers.  All servers sort of have the same issues with the same underutilized battlegrounds, so make all battlegrounds instanced and drawing from a larger pool of population.  Split them if the population gets too high (say 30-40 aside).  Then even the "Lion's Den: should see some action.  I was actually surprised the low level BG's never see any action when I first went there.  Newbie PvP was a massive blast the first day Mordred went live and I was hoping to have the same fun there.  I guess part of the issue is that there's no RP's till the 15-19 BG and people want to keep score so they can get some useful RP's and compare E-peen's.

You know oddly enough I see that differently. I think that of all the games in this genre DAoC is the MOST forgiving. You don't have to or aren't required to level to do the things you want to do because really there are things for everyone. They are just ultra repetitive..


CoH is awesome..

I miss playing that game..if only I'd drop Everlag.

On buffbots and crafting...I think Haemish touched on an interesting duality that still exists within DAOC.

I still find it interesting how buffbots have evolved to the state they are in today:  they still project influence of the game from essentially complete safety.  Using of buffbots is sanctioned (officially, if memory serves) by Mythic since Mythic says there is no way for them to discern decisively whether a player is a bot, or simply an active player that chooses to not move for hours on end.  Regardless of having a great name like 'Willbuffj00 IfYouAsk'.

However look at the crafting system:  to steal Haemish's words, it's one of the most 'eye-gouging' processes one can go through in the game.  There are stories of people who read completely through Tolkein's trilogy, while listening for the Pavlovian 'dings' that indicate crafting successes or failures.  You can play the crafting game with one finger on the keyboard:  check your sanity at the door.

However if someone sets up a software macro to push the buttons for them, they are committing a bannable offense!  According to Myhic, macro's are against the Terms of Service since they create an advantage that not every player can obtain...

Got irony?

Thoughts from someone still playing this wretched game:

1) Thid is still the most fun in the BG's and with the /level command, you will always find people there during primetime.  Many even suicide upon getting close to 25 so that they can prolong their BG time.  

2) Wilton is the next worthwhile BG and its population is very server dependant.  After Wilton theres' Molvik and after that, most work on getting ready for NF.

3) It's possible to be competitive in NF without all of the artifact crap.  Granted, you won't be all min/maxxed like the lifers, but you'll have a solid rvr experience with 1/4 the time invested.  Do quests to get good resist gear and then fill out the rest with crafted equipment.  You won' be uber, but you won't be a rp cow either.  I have been trying to find artifacts that can be obtained with 1 or 2 people, quest for a few nice items (padrain necklace in Hib, beaded resisting stones in Mid).  

4) Zerg for teh win.  Most rvr in daoc is 8v8 or larger.  Solo encounters are rare and the victor is usually the one that catassed the most artifacts to level 10.  If you see point 3) and you run with a group of skilled people, the rvr game remains enjoyable for a while... at least until you realize that you're essentially raiding the same castles over and over but that takes a while to reach.  

5) Like any mmog, fun in game is all about playing with good people.  If you play with a regular group you'll find the game to still be enjoyable at all levels.  Yes, the treadmill sucks ass... on a populated server you can bypass most of it in the BG's (below 20 and 25-29 being the empty BG's).

DAoC is flawed... but I still think that it's the best fantasy pvp game available.  I'm willing to put up with its shortcomings (for now) with the hope that something better will come along.  

I feel your frustrations about the game.  I think that much of it is alleviated when it becomes more about a group than solo.  If you had some regular people to play/hunt/rvr with, you'd find many of the aspects less frustrating.

I did mention that. Like most MMOG's, it is going to be better with people. But if you don't already have that support system in place, it's going to be hard as hell for a new player to get it. On my server at least, there just wasn't anyone around to group with or talk to.

Oddly enough, within a 3-day span, I got 3 different random tells asking if I wanted to join the same guild. Random class tells are the surest sign that a guild is sucking wind and needs zerglings. Needless to say, I ignored them, especially once I saw their guild roster.

I'm very picky when it comes to playing with other people. I have had my share of playing with lewt whoring cockmongers; therefore, I only play with groups that I feel are worth my time, like the House Daenyr folks in Shadowbane. I'm a snob. So if I can't go into a game and play it solo, it is that much harder for me to get into the game, thus my choice of solo-able class.

I dunno, both times I've reupped or borrowed an account to try out the "end game", I've had huge support structures.  My friends could get me into any RVR group, any raid I wanted, anything.  I always had someone to play with and yet I just saw the futility and lack of fun staring right back at me.

I think several factors worked against me:

1. If I can't really solo effectively, I won't like your game.
2. DAoC server pops seem to die at night, thus making RVR at off peak hours more of a lethal form of hide and seek.
3. I've listened to the same two people bitch about how ineffective Mythic is at balancing their game (and they really are) for years now.
4. No level 50, small scale battleground.  Sometimes I just want to fool around and gank/be ganked.
5. 90 minutes a day starting at level 50 isn't enough for the game in order to be competitive.  If they'd remove all master levels and artifacts, then I'd stand a chance.  I don't like being sub competitive due to real life obligations.

Anyhow, I guess DAoC never clicked with me at any level especially now as a casual.  I'm sure even if I had a 50th level account, /level 20 battlegrounding would get old after a week.

I have to say that I agree and because of it, I've become a server nomad.  I started playing on Pellinor and all of the people I played with left the game.  Since pick-up groups largely suck, I went to Guinivere and played with an established guild there. Soon the leaders of that guild changed into a bunch of pre-pubescent pricks and I found myself moving to Gawaine.  I found Mid-Gawaine to be loaded with some of the worst that mmog's have to offer... these guys were elitest pricks that had little/no skill at the game yet had attitudes.  I moved along.

Rasix: I agree with the largest majority of your complaints.  If I could find a solid pvp alternative, I'd leave daoc in a heartbeat.  For now it satiates my mmog and pvp cravings... I'm really hoping something better will come along though I'm not very optimistic.

This is exactly why I like to use your reviews as a barometer- we have very similar attitudes and expectations.

Almost exactly my experience, except i haven't quit yet. I was lucky enough to know some people on the server i resubbed on so had some pve support when needed. But honestly - i HATE the PvE in DAoC.

It's fun for precisely 20 minutes and then the mind numb sets in.

Dunno, given that i play a "underdog" realm on an underpopulated server the free levels have helped me get an assassin and a caster to 40 in about 4 weeks. The problem now is do i grind to get both NF ready or just get one to 50 so i can /level Thid alts until WoW ships.

The most irritating part is going to wilton or molvik and finding noone there and then doing a /who and seeing 30 people of the right level range online. "Um, hey, if we all go pvp we won't have to do this mindless grind shit".

Ah well, when it's good it's pretty good and so i'll play for a while longer.

This is quite true. I think that of the PVP MMOG's I've played, only Shadowbane was better... when SB worked that is. DAoC has a higher percentage of working, and when it's good, it's pretty damn good.

But the amount of "when it's good" time is highly population dependent, and in my case, it wasn't enough time to make the process worthwhile.

Fundamentally this was why I left the game.  Crafting pretty much became the realm of the super guilds.  Perhaps since then the player housing, etc fixes are a better distribution mechanism, but the actual act of crafting is only a challenge to those customers who have motives other than enjoying the actual merchanting playstyle.

I think that most of the above mentioned gripe would be resolved if the player had chosen a different server - MODRED, to begin with.

With RVR servers its a fact that only certain BGs have a decent number of players. Even in RVR it revolves around keeps, which can be very frustrating if you do not have a class that have a decent ranged attack.

On the PVP server Modred however, you get PVP anywhere out of the 3 capital cities and the housing zone. You get xp, you get gold when you kill your opponents. Best of all, you will never lack opponents for PVP - log on 5 mins after a server patch, and you can already see death spam in Cotswold and Mag Mell. After NF, the population of Modred is already reguarly amongst the top 5 populated servers for DAOC.

On Modred, I can go to anyzone in the Game - be it Alb content, Mid content or Hib content. Many quests from different realms can be done; I can wear similar classed equipment from all three realms - trolls in scale armor, plated pallys with the ridiculous hibby hammers, and firbies in Chain...

The server is not easy, and not meant for those who loves to afk. But its full of action, and made me stay on DAOC after leaving it twice for FFO and COH.

You read the part where he realized how underpowered his level 30 was when he went into open RvR combat right?  What does Mordred have to offer other than the PvE level grind, with an added bonus of getting jumped by level 50s?

Much like Shadowbane, except DAOC has the added bonus of radar programs!

On a RVR server, 99.99999 percent of the people you meet in the frontiers are lvl 50. Many of which have mid and above MLs and RRs with TOAed equipment. All out looking for PVP. So if you go out there as a lvl 30 - you WILL be ganked.

What you do get in Modred, is people who are lvl 20-49 that are still lvling and farming... and guess what? You can attack them, sometimes even catch people who are afk/semi-afk.

The groups of 50s do not patrol lvling areas for lvl 20s and 30s - its simply not worth their time. In fact, its only when you reach 36 that you are worth any cash or RP to a lvl 50. Most of the time, the 50s will be found at the SI portals, DF, TOA zones and running the Hib loop.

The original poster said he loved the PVP, and he moans for the lack of players to kill. On Modred and Modred alone, he can actually find plenty of people his lvl or lower for him to PVP.... not restricted to 1-2 lvls for certain battlegrounds, where you tend to find twinked players with full SCed suits anyway. For the ambitious/grouped, higher con players can be targetted - if you win, its alot of xp and much sweet gold drops.

On Modred, you will get ganked, whether you are 20 or 50. The players who stay are those can take the lumps and kill more than they are killed. One simply cannot expect the opportunity to gank others, without the corresponding risk to themselves.

As for Radar, since the last sweep, many...many players were hit. Imo, radar is largely stopped - maybe only a very small number of players still use it. I have run solo, and in small groups, and I hardly get ganked in the middle of nowwhere like during the time of the Dark Ages of Radaralot.

Perhaps you have experience to the contary - please share your encounters with radar in DAOC since patch 1.71.

Radar is still alive and well as are speed hacks. But at least they made an attempt to do away with it.

No. Hellz no.

Mordred provides all the suck of a very level-based PVP game, without any of the "protections" that the normal servers provide. I like the idea of RVR; I like the "invader" type of separation between the PVP opponents. I also like the fiction. Mordred turns the whole goddamn game into a ganker's paradise. If I wanted that, I'd have gone back to Shadowbane, because frankly the PVP play is a bit better when it ain't borked by bugs, and the leveling is faster.



There you go, that right there is why I wouldn't play on Mordred. Frankly, that kind of pussy shit is why I hate some full-on PVP players. There's nothing like zoning out of a portal only to be three-shotted by 6 level 50's who were waiting for hapless zone-ins. That's the same kind of "PVP fun" that caused Shadowbane to make the Safeholds on the mainland into no-PVP zones, which partly killed the whole idea of accountability in the game.

Useless, mutton-headed fuckups who like to abuse helpless players who just portal in are what kills PVP games for the masses.

Frankly, in every PVP game there will be griefers, campers and losers that exploit every bit they can.

In Modred, theres 2 timers that can protect a players - zone-in timer, and the death immunity timer. Know where you want to go, and move immediately upon porting. Sprint to the horse and ride out of the SI town when your immunity is still on. To be safer still, bind at the SI bind point before you ride. If you die, just release and ride again. The death immunity is 2 minutes - usually long enough to get through whatever killed you earlier unless you waste time moping around. Or just port to another area if you see a purple PK group roaming around the portal. Key is : you can't camp a smart player, and there's no easy mode where Pvp is concerned - learn what others do, and how you can counter it.

In normal RVR servers, there are 'protections' like the Portal Keeps. And what happens is buffbots that abuse the immunity the keeps gave them; players zergs that camp the PK entrance; stealthers that camp the milegates so that you cant get through without being perfed by 5-6 assasins unless you ride with a zerg. And Darkness Falls in normal servers is no different from DF in Modred - you still get ganked by groups of 50, Attacked mid-pull by lvl 50 buffbotted assasins, crit-shot by sadistic archers hiding amongst mobs that are grey to them, but aggro to the victims... and still people flock to DF whenever its open for their realm.

Personally, I choose Modred because it offered a challenge. After playing there, I find the hostile environment survivable. When I was lower, I choose my lvling spots carefully, keep my eyes open, and killed any player that cons green or higher if its looks like it's doable. Having a bunch of friends there helps, but there is no substitute for alertness and fast reactions unless you are being powerleveled by a bunch of 50s.

For old time players, Modred is a melting pot where they get to meet and even ally up with old friends and enemies of their home server; where they get to PVP finally against players that were legendary on their respective servers, but moved to Modred since the Dark Age of Seigealot. (i.e. New Frontiers)

On Modred I tried my best, I have no regrets, and I have no professional training. That's the attitude I aim for - try your best, if the game's not your type then move along. Crying unfair gets one nowhere in real life or cyber.

Buffbots don't HAVE to be a problem on the regular servers. It's just that they've become so entrenched in the game itself that removing them now would shock so many of the pussies out of their routine that they'd lose a shitton of revenue. The situation of buffbots doesn't exist because the PK's are safe zones, it exists because the buffs can be maintained from a range of half the goddamn zone. To me, Mordred's openness is not a solution. Level-based PVP with such a steep leveling curve does not work well in an open PVP environment. At least Shadowbane's leveling curve was very, very shallow; it's still more leveling than I care to do, especially in an open PVP environment.

I think part of DAoC's magic is making its players suffer.  The pain of finding pve groups, the pain of finding a guild, the pain of wondering if "your class" measures up to other classes, the pain of leveling to 50, the further pain of ML's, farming cash for spellcrafting and finding a willing spellcrafter, the pain of gathering and leveling TOA items, the pain of finding rvr groups, and on and on.  

Mythic's secret is the carrot on a stick.  I wish there was some metric of evaluating the time spent on trying to find fun or kill time versus the amount of time spent actually having fun.

You just described 99% of MMOGs and MUDs created to date..

But I think Mythic's really got this one pocketed.

To think of the promises of endgame realm vs realm combat which should be a stand-alone game in itself and the long ass grind for xp and social/political jockeying needed to find a good group and guild, so you can finally play the game as intended.

Only other thing that comes close in my mind are Jedi in SWG, but I never cared for playing one in the first place.

This is another reason mmogs will always suck.

And chinslim, it really does describe most other mmogs.

It's the great conundrum of MMOG existence.

If it's not a timesink, why play?  One major advantage of online gaming is buy once, play indefinitely.

But if it is a timesink, ultimately you find yourself spending 4 out of every 5 days preparing to have some fun on that shining beautiful day #5.

   As one of the masses, I'd just like to add that this aspect, combined with the "you don't PvP because you can't handle a real MANs game, you pussy" attitude is what kills PvP games.  The whole idea that PvP = accountability is laughable, if you look at the evidence.  Yes, in theory, it could make players accountable.  However, in every real instance so far, it has made it possible for them to be less accountable.  It's like communism, good in theory, shit in reality.
   Give it up.  If you want to PvP, play a FPS like I do.  Stop trying to smash the triangular peg into the round oriface, and calling it a pussy for not fitting.

I was calling a pussy the people who like to do nothing but hang around portals waiting to attack people who are zoning in and thus vulnerable to attack without being able to attack back. That's cowardice, the typical kind of stupidity that gets PVP curtailed.

PVP can be used as an accountability mechanism, but only with lots of work on the dev side to make it possible. So far, no game has allowed PVP to be properly used. SB had the problem of the "trash tree" whereby people would attack their enemies using a tree/guild crest that was throwaway, or would attack while pledged to Safeholds.

For PVP to be pretty good, I think it needs to be more like an FPS (low time requirement to be competitive, flat power differentials) and less like StatQuest.

MMOG pvp shouldn't be level-based, it needs to be an even playing field statistically for all players. It also shouldn't be the current paradigm of "lock on, attack" that every mmo but planetside embraces.

Really, Planetside comes closest to perfection, but has suffered from some balancing problems (on the side of too much damage, not enough armor, imo, I wish it were a bit slower and more strategic, more BF:42, less BF:V) and some pretty horrendous map problems that are all but insurmountable.

That's the kind of pussified asshole behaviour that ruined UO. No honor, no sportsmanship. Until there is some kind of external accountability for one's behaviour online, mmogs will always be stunted and never live up to their potential. Word.

    Didn't mean to imply that you had the "if you don't PvP, you're a pussy" attitude.  I was just saying that it exists, and is one of the reasons why PvP isn't popular.

I enjoyed the PvP in DAoC when I was a class that could hurt others(read, 'do something').  When I was playing a Bard, tho, I was just a moving target.  'Target Practice' is not a fun role to play in PvP games.  No one seems to have learned this yet.

In real combats, there aren't really any 'support' classes like their are in mmogs...  Medics are usually far from the front lines, and we seem to prefer making people actually tough and strong thru good training before combat, not by shooting them up with steroids just before every firefight.  What little we have in 'crowd control' type abilities, flash grenades to blind, propaganda to encite and confuse, are either available to all combatants(and not really applicable in many situations), or are dropped from airplanes well before a fight.

Really, I think the classic 'archetype' system of tank, healer/buffer, melee damage and ranged damage won't work in a PvP game.  Primarily because half the archetypes aren't fun.

--
Alkiera

In EQ( disclaimer...I never played EQ ), you pve and level...and pve and level and gain phat lewt that helps you pve and level more.  I can't imagine a carrot in sight anywhere.

In Planetside, you just fight, like the box promised.  Whether that actually stays fun for another month depends on you.



Let's compare DAOC to football...8(11) players on each side playing various roles as part of the whole.  Your QB can switch over to TE if he sucks or someone else is better.  Coaches can make adjustments on the fly, inserting a 3rd wide receiver, going pro set with 2 running backs, or inserting a dime package to counter 4 wide outs.

 In Camelot, if your healer quits or wants to play something else, it's akin to the whole group having to go through another 50 levels for the readjustment of 1 or 2 players.  When the group is supposed to be the central tenet of the game, inflexible characters are totally unnecessary and very often detrimental.  Who is to say but Mythic that someone who pressed "heal" for 50 levels just can't do "/assist main, anytime style"?  The character limitations are assininely artificial and only serves to prevent more players from becoming involved in RVR and any other group participation activities.

Tank, healer, mage roles can work in PvP, but it's Mythic implementation that made it suck.

The Carrot is the next level for spells/hp/ to-hit +es , the next AA ability, or the next piece of phat lewt that you'll be able to go on a raid for when you get that next level.



I won't go into the whole 'why football is a bad analogy for current online PvP games'  argument, but I expect others will.

That said, give me a situation in a class-based PvP game where your strategy isn't, Kill the healers, kill the mages, then cleanup the tanks.  You'll find you're reinventing all the classes from their 'traditional' roles if you do, or turning everyone into the same class.

What Alkiera said is true. Support classes suck to play for most people.  When they don't they're usually overpowered in relation to the other classes.  Hell, even when a company goes a long way to make a support class somewhat fun (wow priests) the PLAYERS fuck things up by forcing the old standby roles instead of reinventing strategies for a new game.

Since you love my football analogy so much(don't refute if you can't give good reasons why), I'll give you another: you can try sending a cornerback or safety to blitz the quarterback(mobbing the healer) but you risk leaving a man open and they may pick up the blitz and dump the ball off real quick.  There also happens to be collision detection in football so you can't just rush 5-6 guys at the QB without running into big 300 lb linemen or getting in each other's way.

You can do anything if you program it, so there's no reason why tank, mage, healer can't work in PvP. Healers in DAOC PvP don't work simply because there's no disadvantage or counter to attacking one.  There are many ways of doing this, and the ML tank ability Bodyguard comes to mind.  Too bad you have to grind to ML8 for it.  This is an example of how in order to even step on the playing field(most RvR groups won't take a tank unless he has BG), you have to grind your butt off.

To continue with my football analogies: I mentioned earlier how if you have 5-6 guys chasing 1 person, they can get in each other's way.  It won't work in a game without collision detection, but you can still simulate it, for example, by limiting the damage a character takes relative to the scaling of the number of attackers.

Get creative, yeesh.

The carrot is new content.  You fight in areas you know until you're strong enough to survive traveling to areas that are new.  This is why they keep adding new zones, new quests.  The achievers just go after the big levels and AA counts, the explorers use those so they can survive the new content.  Socializers tend to hang out and chat, and therefore either aren't high level, or have friends who they group with while chatting.  Killers don't have much of a place in EQ, tho the PvP servers do have some devoted followers.


The position of coach is played by the guild leader or raid leader or group leader in an MMOG.  In PvE, there's often someone who is familiar with the encounter and lets people know what to expect, and how to handle the situation, like a coach does in practice.  In PvP, with no rules of engagement, it's hard to know what to expect, really, so tactics devolves into 'zerg'.


The character limitations are limitations of the decision to use a class/archetype system.  FFXI lets your character have every possible class, more or less, but you still have to level each one.  Aside from subclassing, they all might as well be alts with the same name, and no inventory space.

While I agree that Mythic's implementation is not neccesarily the most desirable one, my opinion is that 'tank/healer/mage' is a broken system in PvP AND PvE.  Once we can get past that system, I think some more innovative, interesting things will be possible.

--
Alkiera

And you expect me to keep reading beyond that? Stick to what you know.

As far as tank/healer/mage being broken in pvp, I don't think that's it at all. It's the power curve/time sink that level-based mmog advancement uses, plus the crappy lock-on target idea.

Battlefield uses several archetypes like the medic and I guess the sniper is kind of a mage :) High direct damage output with little defense, anyway. Or an engineer who has some decent aoe 'spells'. But the medic never has to worry about not being able to hit the sniper, or have the sniper be buffed up, or any of the other crap the crappy mmog system brings into play that makes pvp crappy.

Don't blame Mythic's implementation, blame the whole DikuMud paradigm, which is where DAoC's implementation comes from. Just about every MMOG on the market uses some variation of the tried and tired DikuMud Tank/Healer/Mage combo. DAoC's version of it is decent, but it's still chained to its DikuMud origins.

Just like EQ.

Mythic does deserve credit for offering a game that held my attention longer than any other MMO.  I would say the high point was after the Shrouded Isles expansion, pre Trials of Atlantis.  For that period (around spring 2003) I had a lot of fun for these reasons:
1)  The PvE grind ended at 50, and player-crafted armor was the best out there.  If you had a decent guild, you could create an RvR-viable toon in a couple weeks.  Then it was ALL RVR, 24/7.  ToA added a whole new grind, much longer than the 1-50 treadmill.  
2)  Radar utilities were not widely available.  There was Linux-based radar used by some hardcore types, but the Windows-based radar was still on the horizon.  By fall of 2003, RvR was dominated by hardcore 8v8 "gank groups" using radar.  Up to that point, it was still possible to make a pickup group of decent players, and be reasonably competitive.

I was a guild leader and serious RvR player, until Trials of Atlantis arrived.  Yet I still managed to be semi-casual, maybe 2-3 hours most weeknights.  ToA was simply so time-consuming that I quit.  Like you, I re-activated for New Frontiers, mainly enjoyed the new battlegrounds for about a month, and cancelled again.

This genre evolves slowly, with few developers willing to try anything revolutionary.  To Mythic's credit, the original DAOC avoided some of EQ's mistakes, and added a viable team PvP system.  At release, DAOC was much less item-centric than EQ, and arguably the PvE treadmill was a bit more tolerable.  

Unfortunately Mythic radically changed their game with expansions, with ToA being an absolute disaster forcing every character in every realm to spend enormous effort gaining "master abilities" and artifacts.  I suspect this change was related to Mythic getting a huge influx of investment capital that year, with their new masters saying "Make this game more like EQ with more high-level raid content."  Meanwhile, EQ was evolving toward a more casual-friendly model with instanced dungeons and faster experience.

Here's hoping that Guild Wars can offer the team-based PvP that DAOC players loved so much, without all the groan-inducing repetitive PvE!!

Nice site, by the way.

Radar was probably the reason behind the move towards keep-based RvR promoted in NF.  I've always thought Mythic should have relented and build in radar into every client.

The Tank/Healer/Mage combo has been around since Wizardry I in CRPGs, as has the six people per party convention.

I think NF was a sincere effort on Mythic's part to add more complex strategy and tactics to RvR, and radar was just one of the factors.  I remember back last December when Mythic first asked for ideas on a new design for RvR.   Some of us were very vocal on the early NF Vault forum, and the design of NF ended looking uncannily like our suggestions.  It was one of the rare occasions when I've seen a productive use of the VN boards.

Even without radar, the original RvR had grown stale, and NF really did shake things up.  But even with experience as a closed beta tester, I did not foresee how quickly the new RvR would get old.  The old "8v8" players are bored stiff, and most of the battles have devolved into massive army-vs-army lag fests, with players mainly participating to farm realm points.

Finally to Mythic's credit, at the time of NF release, they began some serious efforts to suspend and ban radar users.  I always figured these programs had to use some detectable "hook" in the graphics memory, and sure enough Mythic found a way to sniff them out.  Combined with their encryption of network traffic to defeat the old packet-based radar, Mythic has done some nice work vs. the cheaters.  I just wish their game was still fun to play.

This may work on the Windows version of the radar hack that is running on the same box as the client, but the Linux/Unix version that is run from a separate box is still completely undetectable. Not that many people have that version or are capable of running it, but on your own home network, it's still a simple matter. The encryption also does not prevent this. But they've probably done away with a good amount of radar users at least and that's a good thing for the game.

One of the causes of zerging is, ironically, the expansiveness of the frontiers.  Everyone wants to be where the action is so everyone stays in Emain Macha.  It just compounds from there.

Someday, Mythic will have to bite the bullet and drastically reduce the frontiers to 2 or 3 zones.  Heck, why make it more than 1 zone during certain time periods?  After Catacombs, maybe they can even figure out a way to rotate maps to keep things fresh.




All it takes is 1 bad apple...at least when "everyone" had it the playing field was more even.  So now you have just 1 or 2 elite gank groups, what's changed?

Good point. The 8 man elite radar groups are back and can still work unscathed. I didn't look at it that way. It'd be easier if they just put in a radar mini-screen for all players. They could chalk it up to "our scouts report there are 87 Albs to the southeast" sort of RP thing. But it's their prerogative and if the community as a whole has quieted about the radar debacle, then all is well. Ignorance is bliss, especially when they're paying customers. ;)

Er.. earlier than that.. from a little thing called Dungeons and Dragons...

The whole Party concept needs to be revised, not just the class system.

That's why I said "CRPG" and not "RPG". In D&D, though, you didn't necessarily need a healer or tank or mage or whatever since the DM could adapt the setting and encounters to match the make up of the group.

Sorta liked the scaled encounters in CoH. Dynamic instanced missions are a must have in any upcoming MMOG. If they can be streamlined and "made better", it would be able to mimic that DM adaptation for players.

I have yet to understand why CRPG's/MMOG's can't use the scaled encounter principle for most encounters. Why have a con system at all? Why not just dynamically scale the encounter's difficulty based on a number of factors determined at the moment the encounter begins?

Oh right, because it's easier to put in cockblock levels and monsters in choke points to herd your player base into the treadmill.

Sarcasm aside, this would be one nice way of removing the "level-itis" most MMOG's suffer from. I have no idea if dynamically scaling the difficulty of a monster is possible, or if those calculations would choke the server. Certain encounters could be gated, such as say dragon raids, to only be opened after other encounters are done, to keep complete newbs from wandering into the "high-end" content.

Well, I think it's more that something that is static is much easier to program than something that is dynamic. If your mobs are constantly adjusting based on the players involved, that increases the levels of complex computations going on every minute. Basically, it could be done but the cost/benefit of the time involved to do it wouldn't be the high in my view. The difference between the two types of mobs would be noticable by the player, but the market won't bear the workload yet since we accept the current system.

The biggest problem any player(especially a new one) coming into DAOC is really the social hurdle.  Thanks to inflexible class restrictions and the nature of high-end PvE/RVR content, you simply can't get anywhere without a full group.  Buff bots aren't really a problem so much as a symptom of this.  Even with buff bots and the best items, you still won't get anywhere unless you make friends.  Being in a healthy-sized guild or belonging to a good alliance helps with TOA raids, and the encounter AI is such that everything has a writeup and can be done with the right numbers.

No, I don't think the "grinding" is really the problem.  With the right group, all that PvE is cake, and even a blast.  The fundamental problem right from DAOC's release is the difficulty of assembling a regular group of 8 players multiplied by the difficulty of forming the right(or even close to it) combination of classes.  This is really where class restrictions are a pain.  Hell, I've seen good guilds fall apart due to petty jealousies from who got to play in the "main" group.

I think DAOC can be alot of fun, but I shudder at the thought of waiting around LFG for hours before being able to do anything or trying to convince 6 other people to stick around as I desperately try to find 1 more healer.  I've got old 50's I'd like to pick up again, but without old friends who quit, those toons are basically useless.

I'm really interested in hearing ideas for alternatives to the Mage/Tank/Healer system... something that makes everyone useful, but still gives them a role to play.

Even CoH uses M/T/H, it's just Controller/Tanker/Defender.