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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
I have been playtesting different characters/realms in Dark Age of Camelot, taking most of them to about 7th level - just to see how this game plays and if it could be the first MMORPG after UO that I really like. This is no review, just a collection of my thoughts.
There are some good points to Dark Age of Camelot. First of all, and I consider that important, the look is great and immersive. You can change between 1st person and 3rd person view in a rather detailed landscape. The realms are beautifully crafted, with lots of sights. Day and night look very realistic, and the weather, although meaningless, adds something to the overall qualiy of that aspect of the game.
One thing I absolutly HATE: you can only run in the game. That's right, there is no walking. While you may consider walking useless, I think that it adds to roleplaying. Running around like a broker is something I don't want to do in a game unless I really have to run.
DAoC is about combat, and nearly only about combat. There are some qests you get from NPC's, but they are mostly deliverances from a to b or from a to c via b. Sometimes, you are asked to kill a specific monster, but well, you do that anyhow all the times. Gaining levels totallly relies on your fighting, with some XP you can get from quests. Personally, i prefer the way UO handles levels: the skill based way.
There are trade skills in DAoC, but you are restricted to class specific skills then. No way to create a tailoring fighter. There are no secondary skills that would allow you to roleplay more, like fishing, cooking and such. So, actually DAoC is more of an interactive combat game that a real MMORPG.
However, what is there, is done nicely. I am roleplaying a Briton cleric right now, on the roleplaying server of Nimue. I am sixth level, and so far, this char seems to be the most interesting one so far. With his spells and treats, he makes a decent fighter and he is able to aid others in their quest. Since clerics are popular in groups (they stand in the second line, pulling monsters with their smite spell and healing the fighters that attack later on, I have a lot of interaction with other players. Because Nimue is a roleplaying server that doesn't allow out of character talk or unfitting names, atmosphere is dense, although a lot of powerplayers from EQ seem to have invaded the servers lately.
One word about lag: for me, it is nearly absent. I seldom encounter situations where things seem slow (maybe three times since I started), and the slowdown was caused by my connection, not their servers, I suppose.
If I could send a wishlist to Mythic about what could be done better: the fighting aspect of the game is well done, but it is missing some roleplaying aspects and social interaction. I would like to see player run cities, housing, more social events and a guild system that allows more than a gathering of friends under one name. Mythic is enhancing the system quite often, and they finetuning things quite nicely. But they will have to add more features on the long run to keep players interested.
Will I keep playing beyond the free trial month? I think so. I tried DAoC and AC Dark Majesty in January, and while AC has more to offer, I find it less interesting and infested with players that spoil my fun. Besides, I think the look of AC is bad now, while I thought it was ok a couple of years ago. |
Mon Jan 21, 2002 10:12 am |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Mostly agree with you Rend 
However, the "always-run-issue" didn't disturb me too much. You have to travel some pretty far distances in DAoC and I guess -if there was an always-run button- you'd activate it anyways sooner or later. But, admittedly, an *option* to turn always-run on or off would be nice.
My biggest complaint is the absence of quests (as you also noted). I talked to just about everyone in and around Humberton village but could hardly find any quests.
It also seems like certain NPC's are reserved for assigning quests at a later time, i.e. they don't give you a quest unless you've got a certain level. Well, my level 6 Paladin was obviously not considered worthy of quests. So what do you do ?
Leveling, of course. So I ended up camping spawn points to get to higher levels but even at level 6, with the limited time I have, it's not easy to level up. It takes a lot of precious time and it gets boring real soon. It's cool when you find some other people that are equal or about equal to your level. I had good fun once with two clerics and several fighters in my party. But you won't find a "perfect" party like that every time you log on.
IMHO, Mythic should put in more quests and more NPC interaction. Players who solve quests and interact with NPC's should be rewarded more XP than they were in the beta. An MMORPG is all about time and everyone wants to become more powerful quickly. In the current state of the beta you *can* spend a lot of time searching for NPC's who assign quests but you definitely *do* level faster when you're just camping monster spawn points. The latter is not much fun though.
I also wish they wouldn't have the highlight colors for monsters that you can or cannot beat at your current level. The way it is now, you can easily determine whether it's better to evade an enemy or whether it's no problem to take him/her/it on. Leaving the player not knowing whether a giant spider is too strong or too weak for him/her would enhance player communication and the will to team up.
Dark Age of Camelot -despite its flaws- has been a very enjoyable experience for me so far. However, I hope that Mythic will be putting in more RPG elements (like quests).
I will not buy DAoC because DAoC is just another MMORPG that doesn't make the game interesting enough for the casual gamer (that's what I am due to my RL job, social life, RPGDot and other spare time activities ). If I had more time (and money ) I'd not hesitate to give it a shot though.
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Thu Jan 24, 2002 1:03 am |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Oh, BTW, my experiences are based on the European beta. I played on Avalon (German server) and Broceliande (French server). On both servers I chose Albion as my home realm. At first it was really hard to find a free server spot due to the limit of 2000 players per server (servers were always full). Last week, the server capacity was enhanced to 3000 or 3500 players per server + one more server was added for each country (U.K., France and Germany) which helped a lot but connection troubles prevented most players from logging on last weekend.
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Thu Jan 24, 2002 1:14 am |
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Drakhan
Village Dweller
Joined: 24 Dec 2001
Posts: 23
Location: Drakhan |
Umm... yeah, you can walk, in the U.S. version at least, you just hold down "W" by default :smile:
[ This Message was edited by: Drakhan on 2002-01-24 02:05 ] |
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Thu Jan 24, 2002 8:04 am |
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Rathpig
Village Dweller
Joined: 27 Jan 2002
Posts: 6
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The efforts of my crew we transfered from a long and infamous Ultima Online career to the World of Camelot during the U.S. beta 3-4 period.
My short impression of DAoC:
1). Levels 1-25 DAoC is perhaps one of the best MMORPGs on the market. The economy is tight and items are precious. Even though it is a "level threadmill" the game offers a sense of adventure and accomplishment,
2). Levels 26-35 DAoC is basically EQ Lite. By this point you have learned the game. You are no longer a "newbie", but you are an easy one-shot kill in the PvP frontier, so you log-on to the killing-o-the-MOBS for yet another day of watch the bar n' bubble advance.
3). Levels 36-50 (especially post 40) in DAoC are when the game falls apart. You are faced with the dilemma of either accepting the level grind and making the best of the PvP, working up other characters (levels 1-25 are then a system only), or quitting.
(After level 30 for 99% of the population an active guild network will be required to advance in levels and ever succeed in PvP. DAoC chews guilds up and spits them out due to the numerous problems of becoming "uber".)
The current high level game in DAoC is vapid.
Not a pretty review, but almost everyone would agree that it is accurate. Only about 50% of DAoC has been delivered. I believe Mythic Entertainment will fullfill the dream at some point in the future, but Mythic doesn't really understand their game very well.
As always PvP exploits, cheats, and hacks are common. The 3 sides of the war have some serious imbalances. And that is just scratching the surface.
I still recommend the game to anyone who came from the "d00d" school of UO or EQ because it is possible to powergame to the end rapidly. We have some great wars. Serious roleplayers, even on the "Rp" servers, may not be impressed with what is afterall EQ Lite with a "racewar" PvP system.
_________________
Rathpig
< Convicted Killers >
Bedevere - Hibernia
Dark Age of Camelot
Grandmaster Looters Association, Inc.
[ This Message was edited by: Rathpig on 2002-01-28 03:52 ] |
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Mon Jan 28, 2002 9:49 am |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
Interesting opinions, thank you all for taking the time to post them. I can't talk about the higher levels, because I haven't the time to play the game fast and furious enough to level that fast. My cleric is now level 8, and I will stick with him because I like the diversity of the char (he can fight alone and aid groups, as much as I like). I spend most time travelling the lands, on my chase for sights and nice spots. I am soloing most of the time (I really enjoy that more than being in a group).
Social interaction is really low in DAoC. As a cleric, you get the most of it, becuase you can save lives of lower level characters when you run by *g*. This brings you the occasional "thank ye, sire", but that's about all. I don't want to join a guild yet, I fooled around with the idea to build one myself (pure clerics, the red cross of camelot *g*), but first of all it is hard to find 7 other clerics interested in that, and second it would mean a lot of responsibility for the group.
Every second day or so, I stick my nose in AC Dark Majesty, too, although I thought I would leave it alone. The amount of d00dz in the game makes it a pain in the neck, but the sheer diversity of items and places makes AC better than the players allow .
So, after the time I spent on these games, my resumee would be that *sing it* I still haven't found what I'm looking for *stop singing*. You would think that MMORPG's could be a complex, very entertaining thing, but single player RPG's still beat them hands down. Sometimes I think playing DAoC falone with better NPC's would be even more fun than the multiplayer game, because all the MMORPG's I know are a chase for higher levels. You don't play with your fellow gamers, you play against the time.
Nevertheless, I will stick with DAoC for some time and try out others. I am looking for graphic splendor, but I am also looking for a skill based system without PK'ing and with lots of non-combat skills. Any suggestions?
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Mon Jan 28, 2002 12:06 pm |
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Rathpig
Village Dweller
Joined: 27 Jan 2002
Posts: 6
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quote:
On 2002-01-28 06:06, Rendelius wrote:
I am looking for graphic splendor, but I am also looking for a skill based system without PK'ing and with lots of non-combat skills. Any suggestions?
What puzzles me about the MMORPG genre is I would think a HUGE market exists for exactly the game you describe. Perhaps the need for a steep continuing development curve has limited this type of a game. But from what I have experienced a roleplaying-based, skills system character based, limited/no PvP game focused on social interaction type skills would be extremely popular.
/boogle
As a long time PvP player, PK, and non-roleplayer, it seems to me the player population looking for a "kinder gentler" game is ten times the population of PvP players. Seems someone would tap this market, but it would require a well designed and almost complete (in design, not content) game for launch (which no one seems able to accomplish currently).
(It seems that Star Wars: Galaxies (SW:G) may be closer to this concept than anything else in serious development, but SW:G is still a PvP game at its core (as it should be given the theme). But this doesn't help the huge non-PvP sword/spell fantasy player base.)
[ This Message was edited by: Rathpig on 2002-01-28 10:02 ] |
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Mon Jan 28, 2002 4:00 pm |
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Shrapnel
Rocket Scientist
Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 1325
Location: Newark, NJ |
Yea, thats the way of every MMOPRG sadly enough: The enthusiasts get in first and search and explore and catalog...few months down the line the d00dz run in, suck up all the info off the web and start their quest to power-level and get Ub3r. AC when it first came out, had people sitting around in circles, talkin about the hunts they experienced and planning their next quest or how to improve their guild. Today its all about your xp chain and your macro program to earn you millions of exp points while you are at work/school/the club. No one wants to enjoy the game anymore, just want to exploit the hell out of it...sad.
DAoC, first off, has great graphics, very smooth, and from the time I was in beta, had no lag, at anytime. But two things hit me about 5 min into the beta:
1) This game is slow as s*@t. No walk feature? I thought I WAS walking. OMG its like running underwater in that game.
2) Feels like an re-vamped EQ. All that 'name-over-the-head'...ugh, so tacky.
All the toons look so rigid, like they are thawing out from an ice age.
On the plus side, I realized these cause I was drooling over the background and wanted to more of it faster.
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Mon Jan 28, 2002 4:07 pm |
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