Could it be? DAOC listened to the players?

[Nebu]

HRose: I see the PvE in DAoC as nothing more than the price of admission to RvR.  It's not fun nor is it interesting.  Aside from CoH where the PvE was fun for about a week due to its fast pace, no MMOG has interesting PvE.  PvE to me is killing a mob to get better gear to kill a mob with more hit points to get better gear... etc.  It gets old fast.

For my $$$ I want to log on and hunt other players.  The encounters are more varied and the tactics more interesting.  My personal conclusion was that I had to come to grips with the fact I have to grind a treadmill for a week in able to do that.  I think the problem that DAoC has is that the barrier to entry into the endgame is what's limiting their subscription rates. I really have found that the PvE there is just about as boring as in any other game.  WoW has "better" PvE in that you get a better treat every time you push the button.  DAoC caters to more of the delayed gratification crowd.  

I wonder what would happen if DAoC opened a /level 40 or /level 50 server.  Imagine being able to log on and spend a couple days obtaining gear before being able to RvR.  Perhaps some of you GW folks could address this.  Do you typically start with a PvP ready toon or do you find it worthwhile to grind one up so that you can more readily tailor it for PvP?  There's some psychology in there that would be interesting to discuss.

I've played every major MMOG released to date and always return to DAoC.  The others were fun for a while, but they lack the depth and type of endgame that I enjoy best.  I think this goes back to the thread in the Development thread: As soon as you get a clear picture of the endgame, that's the point where you make your commitment to long term retention.  Well that and the social hook.

[Soukyan]

Quests provide context. Context provides some modicum of story. I preferred questing in DAoC, but you couldn't level exclusively with questing, and after 20 or so, there were no quests to speak of.

There are quests after level 20, but the problem is that they are spread far across levels. What I mean is that you need to level to continue your questing rather than questing to gain levels. The questing to gain levels is a better system (see WoW). I can't tell you how horrible it feels to go to continue your quest and be told to come back when you are more powerful. Very disappointing and disheartening. Nothing like being told to go grind some levels before you can have some more fun. ;)

[Paelos]

The pschology is zero investment in your avatar, and thus easily walking away from a subscription based game, shooting profits in the foot. It works for GW because of the no sub model.

[Nebu]

The pschology is zero investment in your avatar, and thus easily walking away from a subscription based game, shooting profits in the foot. It works for GW because of the no sub model.

I disagree.  I think there is a sub model for guild wars.  They have just disguised the subscription fee in their expansions. It's a similar money scheme to what we have seen in the past, they have just painted the horse another color. (i.e. avatar investment will encourage players to obtain more and more expansions)

[HaemishM]

In GW, starting with a PVP level 20 toon is fun in short bursts, IF you get good groupmates. But you'll have a lot more choices in character creation if you've ground at least one character out.

[Nebu]

In GW, starting with a PVP level 20 toon is fun in short bursts, IF you get good groupmates. But you'll have a lot more choices in character creation if you've ground at least one character out.

This is EXACTLY what I was getting at.  Players are willing to invest some time in a treadmill if they feel that they are properly rewarded for that time in the endgame.

The real question is one of marketing and psychology: How long can you drag the treadmill out without losing subscribers along the way.  Obviously, we know the answer was too long in the case of DAoC.

[HRose]

Having played this game off and on since beta, I was very excited about the new server concept initially.  Then I began to consider how ranged buffs and the lack of ToA would effect RvR gameplay.  Sadly, it seems that the release of NF and catacombs both relied heavily on balance currently in place with ToA.   As a result, I think that these two servers will be heavily populated initially, but the problems inherent in the system will cause some huge balance issues unless Mythic is willing to address the special needs of such a server.  I personally don't see Mythic willing to redesign the game for 2 servers, so the problems with balance will simply become a game artifact that the players there will work with.  The people unwilling to live with the imbalance will leave after a month or so.

That's also what I wrote on my website. The rulesets are divergent and I don't expect them to split the work in two in order to let the two ruleset develop.

It will be also fun to see how they'll show the horrible design even behind Catacombs. We have now powerful classes like Vampiir planned as workarounds to the buff bot problems. Now the buffbots are being removed and those "already buffed" classes will simply be completely unbalanced.

I preferred questing in DAoC, but you couldn't level exclusively with questing, and after 20 or so, there were no quests to speak of.

That's not true. The problems were *radical*.

To begin with you couldn't know where to get them. You had to visit a spoiler site to understand what you could do since in the game you could just click on EVERY NPC in the game world and NOT EVEN KNOW if the quest was appropriate for your level. There was NO Con system, you couldn't know if you could complete the quest alone or if you needed a full group.

All this becomes recursive in a system simply *inaccessible*. Noone was questing, so it was impossible to build up a group to complete your goals. The reward were always awful and the quests required HUGE downtimes by riding horses constantly. Most of those quests offer that exact gameplay: run around endlessly trying to figure out imprecise informations (that required spoiler sites in order to not waste REAL HOURS) and kill sporadically a few targets that were inevitably impossible to solo.

As I wrote many times, the questing in DAoC was a BURDEN. You did that only when absolutely FORCED, like in the case of extremely powerful items you needed for the endgame.

Why is it more fun to do a quest where you kill 50 foozles to collect 10 widgets then go back to Angry Dwarf 12 for Hammer of bashing 3?  Also what are the /played of the people hitting 60 in wow?

Because WoW is often seen superficially and trivialized when there's a complexity under the hood. The fact is that too many times its accessibility is confused in a lack of depth (which exists, for example in the PvP).

I passed the whole 55-60 range by trying to figure out the quests in BRD. Those are five levels, the longest in the game and ny running (and not completing) just ONE instance. I was actually "lucky" to be able to join groups where I was systematically the most expert. I proceeded by little step, doing something more each day and finding out what was behind the next corner and how to face it. The fact that the game is designed WONDERFULLY is proven by the actual mechanics. Once I knew what to expect it was way easier to face it and move onward. So it wasn't just repeating the same kill over and over and over for hours. Instead it was a learning experience, constantly renovating and limited by smaller steps in the form of the quests.

Figuring out those quests isn't easy. Especially if you don't get powerleveled or just join raids to trivialize the experience. The game is HARD. It requires competence in the sense you need to know how to play. It's not just relative to how much you know your class but, especially, how much you know that precise place.

To date those runs through BRD have been the most rich and fun experience I've EVER had in a (PvE) game. And that's just one small example of what is available in the game that isn't "reheated food".

[Yegolev]

If I were going to start in DAoC at max level for RvR, maybe I'd rather play CounterStrike?  You know, something not based on phat lewt, otherwise I'm just grinding for equipment anyway.  Today I'm getting sleepy just thinking about a grind.

The thing these devs don't get is that the grind doesn't have to suck ass.  Last time I played DAoC, I spent lots and lots of time killing spores with a valewalker.  Boooriiiing.  Let me do something else when I get bored.  Pack more shiny trinkets into their corpses or something.  Make crafting less like working in a Cambodian sweatshop.  Is there any reason to perform any of these tasks SO MANY TIMES?  If then end goal is RvR, please let people get there instead of crippling their soul with life-devouring PvE.

Maybe RvR was worth all that effort but I never found out.  The grind basically filled out the cancellation form for me.

[Paelos]

I was a 50 Blademaster with Legendary Weaponcrafting. The thought of doing it from square one again makes me wake up screaming.

[HRose]

HRose: I see the PvE in DAoC as nothing more than the price of admission to RvR.  It's not fun nor is it interesting.  Aside from CoH where the PvE was fun for about a week due to its fast pace, no MMOG has interesting PvE.  PvE to me is killing a mob to get better gear to kill a mob with more hit points to get better gear... etc.  It gets old fast.

From Dave Rickey's interview, which is really worth-reading:

After about 4 months of that, I became convinced that we needed to focus on improving and expanding our RvR game, as our unique competitive advantage. PvE wasn't why our players were coming, and too long of a treadmill on the way to RvR was losing us a lot of them. This put my "malcontent" status at a whole new level, rather than pushing for 1 or 2 new positions, a few days of programmer time, or the reorganization of a half-dozen people, I was essentially saying that the entire strategic direction for the ongoing development of the game had to change, and since TOA (with a total PvE focus and a new levelling system to be stacked on top of the old) was scheduled to come out in 7 months, the change had to happen right *then* if we were to put anything else on the shelves that Christmas.

[..]

At an analytical level, TOA was an attempt to make Camelot more like EverQuest 1. Hugely complicated multi-step quests to earn "Master Levels", that required the cooperative efforts of large numbers of people, doing them over and over again, and a new set of items that were bigger, better, and more shiny to collect. It was the antithesis of what I thought Camelot needed at that stage, as it added yet another treadmill that players would have to climb before they could be competitive in RvR.

For my $$$ I want to log on and hunt other players.  The encounters are more varied and the tactics more interesting.  My personal conclusion was that I had to come to grips with the fact I have to grind a treadmill for a week in able to do that.

Firstly, I believe that DAoC shouldn't ditch its PvE. I strongly believe that it IS possible to make it fun and not a burden. That's why I HATE "/level 20" and those unacceptable task dungeons.

Those are, exactly like the new ruleset, ways to DODGE the problems. Nothing will improve if you do not SOLVE or at least TRY to address the problems.

"The PvE sucks, so no PvE" I do not accept that. That's secnding a problem not solving it. When "Wish" was turned toward the GM content the exuse brought by the devs was: "we tried to go in the PvP direction but it wasn't fun".

OF COURSE it's not fun. Because to make good things you need to work on them and expand their potential. The quality or the "fun" in general don't fall from the sky, you need to hunt for it. So I don't accept that DAoC has to become just PvP because PvE isn't fun. It should instead START to work in order to offer something interesting. Because they definitely have the resources.

The second point is about the battlegrounds. They are a WONDERFUL idea. They allow you to do just PvP from day 1 till the last. But even here the idea is ruined by an awful implementation. Most of these BGs are devoid of players. Most of the times they are PACKED with stealthers behind siege equipment to one-shot you constantly. At best you find super twinked players where again you can just watch and feed them with points.

Even here there's A LOT to do. There's the need to cut out the twinking as a mechanic at the roots, there's the need to draw the population of the BGS from ALL the servers in order to keep them populated, there's the need to SEVERELY NERF the siege engines, there's the need to make the economy accessible again for the casual player, there's the need to ease the accessibility to good equipment, there's the need to balance the classes specifically for PvP at the low levels. AND SO ON.

But it's dodging all these issues that brings nothing to the game. In fact this new ruleset is again a withdrawal from solving the problems. A workaround.

[HRose]

If I were going to start in DAoC at max level for RvR, maybe I'd rather play CounterStrike?  You know, something not based on phat lewt, otherwise I'm just grinding for equipment anyway.  Today I'm getting sleepy just thinking about a grind.

But the point is that PvP in a persistent environment is able to offer A LOT MORE. This is in fact what is happening to all the successful FPS. The deathmatches, today, are considered obsolate and all the design and the development is leaning toward more complex and interactive environments. This is why we have vehicles, large environments, semi persistent and tactical elements. And so on. This is why we have "onslaught" and "assault" modes instead of deathmatches and CTF, this is why the next Unreal Tournament is going to bundle them in an even more complex "battleground".

The point is that mmorpgs have AN ADVANTAGE on this field that is completely WASTED. Noone is doing anything at all.

This is a genre that "is supposed" to move faster than everything else out there. That should push out "innovation" at a daily rate. Instead it's severely lagging as the worst console game. Look around and you'll see that the innovation is coming from everywhere BUT the mmorpgs.

[Nebu]

You know... if someone could generate a PvE experience that actually improved our PvP skills along the way, well... that world be worthwhile.  The problem I see in the current implementation is that after you've killed a mob 10x, you really have a feel for its mechanics.  If there were a way that they could implement PvE that required you to utilize every one of your abilities to its potential, then it may make a good tutorial for the endgame.  Killing 1000's of mobs really does little to make oyu a better player. It's all about tolerance.

PvE as a competency exam may be a good idea, but spoiler sites would render it ineffective after the first few people had passed.  There has got to be a way to make PvE interesting to us non-PvE types.  For now the challenge only lies in killing things that others have said were impossible to kill that way.  Even that loses its luster fast.  

[HaemishM]

For my $$$ I want to log on and hunt other players.  The encounters are more varied and the tactics more interesting.  My personal conclusion was that I had to come to grips with the fact I have to grind a treadmill for a week in able to do that.

Firstly, I believe that DAoC shouldn't ditch its PvE. I strongly believe that it IS possible to make it fun and not a burden. That's why I HATE "/level 20" and those unacceptable task dungeons.

Actually, the leveling from 1-20 was the most fun leveling for me in DAoC, because they had lots of quests and there were some that were actually decent. It was also fast, and you generally get stuff every level.

BUT... the /level 20 did show one thing. None of the other battlegrounds is/was as populated at the level 20-24 battleground, mainly from people using /level 20 to quickly get a PVP-enabled character. And those battles were damn fun. Once they put in gold and experience, as well as realm points being gained from PVP, I never leveled by PVE until I had capped out my realm points for that BG. I got new items from the marketplace in the housing zones. At that point, the game didn't exist for me outside of that same zone, and it was the most fun I had in DAoC ever, counting both times I subscribed.

Not only was there very little wrong with the fundamentals of DAoC PVP, it WAS the competitive advantage. But it really is killed by the long treadmill required to effectively PVP. If there was a DAoC server that made you a level 50 with skill points enough to trick out a template and jump right into the frontiers, with the only upgrades in items coming from the market place clustered together from all the other servers, where the only advancement was in realm ranks, I'd play that. It would be fun.

Which is why the Guild Wars level 20 PVP toons are fun, because I don't have to go through bullshit to have fun.

[eldaec]

Guild Wars did a lot of what you guys are suggesting for pve.

They made it so that it is hard to get through if you play like dumbasses, enemy mobs are set up with the same skills and classes as players, mobs regen/hp/energy works exactly like it does for players, they do require things like all targeting the single mob, and killing the priest to stop the two miniute rez cycle, and holding the hill practice, and capture/hold the five flags simultaneously, and so on. You never have to camp a spawn point. Ever. Everyone moans because they have to help less good players through this.

[HRose]

BUT... the /level 20 did show one thing. None of the other battlegrounds is/was as populated at the level 20-24 battleground, mainly from people using /level 20 to quickly get a PVP-enabled character. And those battles were damn fun. Once they put in gold and experience, as well as realm points being gained from PVP, I never leveled by PVE until I had capped out my realm points for that BG. I got new items from the marketplace in the housing zones. At that point, the game didn't exist for me outside of that same zone, and it was the most fun I had in DAoC ever, counting both times I subscribed.

I agree on that. But these are two different beasts and both need work. The PvE needs work to be attractive, not to be just as quick as possible in order to forget it. It needs value.

On the other side I believe that to give the possibility to advance completely through PvP is good for the game. I always suggested this and I supported them when they decided to go in that direction. A choice is always a good thing to have. So you can choose to do some PvE and PvP mixed, or just PvE, or just PvP.

"/level 20" just broke the community and jumpstarted the trend of super twinked characters. I found always hard to do anything in the BG exactly because I didn't have a chance to compete due to those balance problems.

Again, with the introduction of BGs from level 1 to 45, there is no need anymore for commands used to jump levels (like the "free level" idiocy) because there is finally something worthy and interesting to do. But this is only a potential because the reality is WAY different. Most of the BGs are empty and have the serious issues that I listed above. So without a direct work this choice isn't really a choice available for everyone.

It's from day 1 that DAoC has accessibility problems. In the design, the ruleset and the gameplay. Games like WoW have been hugely successful exactly because they eased the accessibility (good UI, controls and so on till every tiny detail that has been defined as "polish").

And if someone remembers I was the FIRST to suggest to hand out premade characters at level 45. On these boards, in fact.

But my idea wasn't to systematically give the possibility to the players to jump all that experience and break the game for the new players. My idea (that I still consider worth a try) was to bundle in each expansion pack like "Catacombs" a key code. You use the key code and you can pull out a maxed character. Just one.

That would allow EVERY player to see how the game works at the latter levels and enjoy the best it has to offer. At the same time it doesn't break the community at the low levels that is CRUCIAL to keep the game healthy. "/level 20" was a superficial workaround that I believe damaged the game way more than the benefits it brought.

[MahrinSkel]

"The PvE sucks, so no PvE" I do not accept that. That's secnding a problem not solving it. When "Wish" was turned toward the GM content the exuse brought by the devs was: "we tried to go in the PvP direction but it wasn't fun".

Keep in mind I'm now talking in hypotheticals, that are beyond the scope of the interview:

I wouldn't say that a complete abandonment of PvE would be a good idea for any game.  Very few MMO players want to PvP *all* the time, non-stop, and I think this is why totally PvP games like WW2O or Planetside have limited appeal.  Many like it as a sideline, to greater or lesser degrees.  And most of those want the ability to say "I am *not* getting ganked today, I'll just whack mobs."

But when you have a long treadmill, most of your PvE content is just filler.  If it wasn't intended as such, it will be after the 100th time the players see it.  If you have only a certain amount of manpower to devote to building content, and you need a lot of filler to satisfy the demands of the treadmill, then you're going to have to produce less *good*, interesting, novel content, and you're going to use up the attractiveness of what you build through sheer player fatigue.

So I would say that what I would be a proponent of would be shorter treadmills, more use of AI-based content creation tools for the filler, and where content is being hand-built that content is high-quality, well thought out, and highly polished.  Spending a great deal of time and effort building minor variations on what you've already got, in order to fill out an extended treadmill, not my idea of a great plan.

Then if you add in that your PvP game requires your players to be within shouting distance of the top of the treadmill, telling large numbers of them that already achieved that stage and are now happily PvP'ing that they have to climb another treadmill to stay competitive is even less my idea of a great plan.  Especially since it may give them an impression of a nightmare "infinite hallway", feeling that every time they do reach the end, you're just going to move the goalposts again.

--Dave

[Johny Cee]

The major attraction of bgs is the one that no one mentions:  The reason it's fun is the overachiever min/maxxers are all in the end game.

In bgs,  you generally don't run into organized CHARACTER min/maxxed groups with dedicated healers, mezzers, and dps machines.  Occasionally,  you see one and they will completely rip through 2-3 times their numbers of opponents.  Most players are there with a "fun" class, there isn't a whole lot of organization,  very little mezz and heals.

Twinking isn't particularly advantageous unless you solo.

With insta level 45 or 50 characters and no-ToA/uber items,  the gank groups would still drive off the casuals or force them to run in a zerg to rvr. 

If anything,  this points out the major flaw in DAoC:  Too much specialization of character/class abilities.  The organized rvr/gank guilds can tweak the class mix until they reap huge economies of scale that a pick-up player can't match.

The day I realized this, was the day I stopped looking for group v. group rvr.  No matter what items, MLs, or realm abilities you get you're still going to die because your mezzer sucks and your lone healer is afk smoking (if they knew how to play the class at all in the first place).  There was still some good fun in the end game with either the zerg vs zerg (evenly matched, especially in major keep takes/invasion/relic raid situations) and small groups in unused zones (OF mid land was good,  NF alb land is generally decent).

[chinslim]

I'm pretty tempted to resub for this new server, but if Mythic really wants to attract the "casual gamer" back and not cannibalize their current server pops, they're going to have to take it one step further and remove realm abilities(but keep titles for recognition).

Without doing so, the game dynamics will not change much from a power-gaming few dominating the server, just without the PVE grind.  I played DOAC from the beginning, and the paradigm shift from "RvR" to "8v8" was brought on by the introduction of realm abilities.  What's the f%^ing point of rewarding good players/groups the abilities to more easily roll over the less-skilled?  In keeping RA's, within 6 months...the server will look no different from any other.  At least with TOA, if I couldn't get into or form the "perfect" 8-man group, I could go farm for scrolls.

[chinslim]

In thinking of it,  I think Mythic would be better off with a TOA-enabled/no RA server ruleset.  TOA was actually great in all the new raid content, IMHO. 

When I resubbed DAOC a year ago(on a small RP server where your rep was everything, so being unknown meant you were nothing), what I found the most fun was that hardly any ML raid led by whatever big-swinging-dick-guild turned you down, so you could get in and enjoy a night of action.  But try to get into RvR, and if you didn't have the RR's or the right guild, you would sit on your ass and do nothing.   RA's, overall, are way more powerful than ML's.  Realm points are best earned in 8 man groups, and thus encourage exclusiveness and selfishness.  Having played on a small, competitive server, the intra-realm rules against "ass-jamming" and the politics of engagement ruined it for me.  I think I hated more people on my realm than the ones I was supposed to fight against.

None of that was really the case where you were actually had to work together to take or defend keeps, the kind of stuff that was supposed to define RVR, and the game.  But doing so didn't earn you realm points efficiently and optimally.  That wouldn' have mattered until Realm Abilities were introduced.    Now, the selfish players and guilds who looked to themselves, and not towards cooperative play, were made more powerful.  From there, DAOC went downhill.

[Arnold]

If I were going to start in DAoC at max level for RvR, maybe I'd rather play CounterStrike?  You know, something not based on phat lewt, otherwise I'm just grinding for equipment anyway.  Today I'm getting sleepy just thinking about a grind.

I played UO:Siege Perilous until they fundamentally changed the game with AOS.  For a long, long time, my friends and I had maxed out characters and we were able to log on and fight without having to worry about keeping up with the Jonses.  What made it different from Counterstrike was being in a world.

It wasn't about being on a map and fighting another, numbers balanced team.  We liked to cruise through different "turf", looking for the "owners" of said turf.  We might find an even fight, or we might run into 5 times as many people.  The unknown factor made it fun.  When you mow through a group of 12 fully developed characters with 3 well coordinated people, it's loads of fun =P

[Nebu]

"I wouldn't say that a complete abandonment of PvE would be a good idea for any game.  Very few MMO players want to PvP *all* the time, non-stop, and I think this is why totally PvP games like WW2O or Planetside have limited appeal.  Many like it as a sideline, to greater or lesser degrees.  And most of those want the ability to say "I am *not* getting ganked today, I'll just whack mobs."

I have to agree that there is some wisdom in this statement.  I play DAoC most days and during that time I RvR almost exclusively.  There are days, however, where I like to take a mindless break and PvE while chatting with people.  I do this maybe once every week to two weeks and it really helps keep the game fresh.  Though the high end PvE game is more like playing a slot machine than it is fun and engaging combat, it can still be a nice break from the intensity of RvR.

"Then if you add in that your PvP game requires your players to be within shouting distance of the top of the treadmill, telling large numbers of them that already achieved that stage and are now happily PvP'ing that they have to climb another treadmill to stay competitive is even less my idea of a great plan.  Especially since it may give them an impression of a nightmare "infinite hallway", feeling that every time they do reach the end, you're just going to move the goalposts again.

[cough] ToA [/cough]

[HaemishM]

All this talk about DAoC's RVR reminds me of how good WoW's battleground instancing could have been, and just how badly myopic the design of those things actually turned out. Queues? WTF? PVE Quests that give really lucrative rewards in the middle of a PVP battlefield? WTFX2?

The level 20 battlegrounds in DAoC was some of the best PVP I've seen in MMORPG's, including Shadowbane, before Guild Wars came out. And it has something over Guild Wars in that it's not numbers restricted and there's a good siege game involved as well as just field battles. As an untwinked, reached level 20 through PVE with some crafting character, I never really saw much of a problem with twinked characters. The only real issues I ever had was with the preponderence of buffbots and the absolute ownage of the entire zone that a well coordinated group of 8 could pull off. The buffbots is an issue that's already been discussed to death, and the coordinated groups are ALWAYS going to own over solo/pickup groups, because that's the way things are. That's what strategy and tactics is all about. If they COULDN'T WTFPWNBBQ 9 out of 10 times, something would be wrong with the game.

The biggest detriment to DAoC's PVP? FUCKING CROWD CONTROL. It broke RVR from the day of release, and everything they've done since to weaken it has still never made the difference that removing CC would in fun factor. Guild Wars does not have this problem, and is better for it. It has its own problems, of course.

Realm abilities don't need to be removed, just controlled. They shouldn't add more power, they should add more flexibility. The true genuis of the battlegrounds was in the tight level ranges, which just goes to show that levels in PVP equals bad.

[Pococurante]

The biggest detriment to DAoC's PVP? FUCKING CROWD CONTROL. It broke RVR from the day of release, and everything they've done since to weaken it has still never made the difference that removing CC would in fun factor.

This exactly was what drove me from the game.  I endured the shallow quests, the pathetic excuse for a crafting system, and tiny zones full of wide aggro radius critters to enjoy RvR.  Just to find myself turned into a salt piller and one-shotted.  DAOC was the last sub I maintained to "invest" in a game to "encourage them".

I know they've corrected a lot of things.  But with WoW and CoH demonstrating all the past assumptions were incorrect I just can't bring myself to spend my money with the earlier service providers.  Branding is at least as much of a problem as much as a plus.

[chinslim]

That a well-coordinated group WTFPWNs 9 times out of 10 is precisely what this new server should NOT be about.  There's already every other server for just that kind of play.  As long as RA's/RR's exist, the end game is really not going to change much(dominating gank groups farming RP's and getting stronger) from the other servers.

And yes, crowd control is and has always been whack.  But instead of finding solutions and balancing things out, Mythic released band-aids and expansions that contained solutions(group cure disease/cure nearsight as an ML ability).  The band-aids have gotten so bad as to turn some classes into an absolute mess of hotkey bars(bard/skald/paladin resist chants).  Starting fresh with a non-TOA server is a way of testing the game out by controlling the variables(no TOA abilities and items), because the game should be balanced at every level, instead of patched up by realm and master abilities.

For example, how would I balance crowd-control?  First, modify spell interruption mechanics to allow casters a chance to get spells off in close combat.  Then, get rid of all area-effect crowd control.  Now, you can adjust the timers of single-timer CC's(to maybe 30 seconds max in RVR), cap the maximum number of simultaneously mezzed targets at one time by a caster, and possibly get rid of immunities.  With that, you'll no longer need to have RA's such as purge balancing crowd-control out.  (Actually, these are the crowd-control mechanics of WoW...guess I should stay there.)

All this talk about DAoC's RVR reminds me of how good WoW's battleground instancing could have been, and just how badly myopic the design of those things actually turned out. Queues? WTF? PVE Quests that give really lucrative rewards in the middle of a PVP battlefield? WTFX2?

The level 20 battlegrounds in DAoC was some of the best PVP I've seen in MMORPG's, including Shadowbane, before Guild Wars came out. And it has something over Guild Wars in that it's not numbers restricted and there's a good siege game involved as well as just field battles. As an untwinked, reached level 20 through PVE with some crafting character, I never really saw much of a problem with twinked characters. The only real issues I ever had was with the preponderence of buffbots and the absolute ownage of the entire zone that a well coordinated group of 8 could pull off. The buffbots is an issue that's already been discussed to death, and the coordinated groups are ALWAYS going to own over solo/pickup groups, because that's the way things are. That's what strategy and tactics is all about. If they COULDN'T WTFPWNBBQ 9 out of 10 times, something would be wrong with the game.

The biggest detriment to DAoC's PVP? FUCKING CROWD CONTROL. It broke RVR from the day of release, and everything they've done since to weaken it has still never made the difference that removing CC would in fun factor. Guild Wars does not have this problem, and is better for it. It has its own problems, of course.

Realm abilities don't need to be removed, just controlled. They shouldn't add more power, they should add more flexibility. The true genuis of the battlegrounds was in the tight level ranges, which just goes to show that levels in PVP equals bad.

[Pococurante]

Now, you can adjust the timers of single-timer CC's(to maybe 30 seconds max in RVR),

Ok I haven't played DAOC in a long while but it does seem to me most encounters were over so fast that 30 seconds is 27.5 seconds too long.  I realize you're talking single-target effects with a chance to fail but I'd still push the timer down to no more than ten seconds with a qualititative chance to break calculated every two seconds between.

[HaemishM]

One thing I liked about Shadowbane? They had abilities that would let you break crowd control spells on yourself.

They didn't work all the time, but they had them.

[Jdub]

One thing I liked about Shadowbane? They had abilities that would let you break crowd control spells on yourself.

They didn't work all the time, but they had them.

Shadowbane also has some limited group crowd control breakers as well.

[Shockeye]

Shadowbane also had sb.exe

[tazelbain]

That's the ultimate form of crowd control.  Keeps the crowds away from your game.

[Johny Cee]

The biggest detriment to DAoC's PVP? FUCKING CROWD CONTROL. It broke RVR from the day of release, and everything they've done since to weaken it has still never made the difference that removing CC would in fun factor. Guild Wars does not have this problem, and is better for it. It has its own problems, of course.

Realm abilities don't need to be removed, just controlled. They shouldn't add more power, they should add more flexibility. The true genuis of the battlegrounds was in the tight level ranges, which just goes to show that levels in PVP equals bad.

Crowd control is a pain in the ass, but....  We saw what happens when you have no CC.  The OF tank /assist trains,  which had virtual CC immunity due to RAs,  would gut casters almost as fast as they could target them.  I think Mythic is just fucked here.  They can't fix CC because of the problems ("glass cannon") having no CC at all would cause.

Essentially,  fix CC and you'd have to overhaul all your caster/support classes.  

[Llava]

This server addition might have meant something to me 2+ years ago when I finally gave up on DAoC in frustration and rage.  Now?  I've got better games.  Guild Wars PvP is more fun than DAoC RvR and doesn't require the 2 hour setup to get started.  And the best part is that I didn't have to PvE for a YEAR before I could play it.

All interest I ever had in DAoC died long, long ago.  Mythic will never have my money again unless they come up with a Free Blowjob Server.  And even then, I'd have to have every single one of my DAoC friends convince me.

[Pococurante]

All interest I ever had in DAoC died long, long ago.  Mythic will never have my money again unless they come up with a Free Blowjob Server.  And even then, I'd have to have every single one of my DAoC friends convince me.

Free blowjob services from every single one of your DAoC friends?

Nothing wrong with that of course.  Just sayin'.

[HaemishM]

sb.exe

RAGE SPLEENSUCKING ANAL JOCKEYS

[eldaec]

Essentially,  fix CC and you'd have to overhaul all your caster/support classes. 

That, or they could just flick the collision detection switch to 'on'.

[chinslim]

The solution was ML abilities such Bodyguard/Grapple and Phase Shift.  Without collision detection, Bodyguard was as good as it gets.  But even without those ML abilities, uninterruptable single-target CC(which I mentioned earlier) without the various bandaid immunities should be enough to thwart the /assist train.

Mythic allowed problems to compound on top of one another, which is why the game is such a patched-up kludge today.

Crowd control is a pain in the ass, but....  We saw what happens when you have no CC.  The OF tank /assist trains,  which had virtual CC immunity due to RAs,  would gut casters almost as fast as they could target them.  I think Mythic is just fucked here.  They can't fix CC because of the problems ("glass cannon") having no CC at all would cause.

Essentially,  fix CC and you'd have to overhaul all your caster/support classes.