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1 question
zaltar
Member UncommonPosts: 125
Ok , I have to ask this question ,
As someone who has not played this game and is trying to gain a little information primarily from the veteran and current players ,
You all have something in common which I find almost amusing from the perspective of an outsider looking in.
Most of you say this is the best game you have played but it`s not the same now because the community that once existed is gone. Yet your all here talking about it etc. Sentiment.
The question is , if it`s a great game then why are you no longer playing it ? If the reason is based on lack of community then why are all of you here talking about it rather than playing ? Did the game go through some mechanical changes that became a detriment , perhaps some intolerable nerfs ? Clue me in please.
If your looking for a good pvp/rvr game , trust me there is nothing out there worth putting any time into. So then why is this game no longer good enough ? Or is it a matter of the posibility that WAR will become to much of a dominant force once it`s released therefore everyone is waiting to jump on that ship rather than invest time into DAOC ?
Comments
to answer your question yes it is the best pvp/rvr game ive played so far... but when i quit playnig it i started playing WoW and met new ppl and did invest some good amount of time in this game so going back into Daoc was pointless cause i would leave behind some ppl i love playing with and that damn pally i was able to epic with all 3 spec... i dont think it worth it... i have many 50 on daoc and lol i completly forgot how to play them... Anyway another game similar to Daoc comin out soon so i will see and try it when it come out... i just hope they dont do the same mistake they did with Trial of Atlantis with War hammer online...
I think your question should be addressed to recent former players and not the current ones. The current ones are still playing the game so nothing has driven them away.
As for the community, that is easier to answer. The community used to be much larger. It used to have people that were loyal to their realm. People used to know people in the game and in RL that played the game. The game was well designed to get people to group up and make friends. People have memories of all of that.
Now, after years, most of the people you may have know are gone. People play multiple realms with ease. RvR has become just a way to kill people and not defend your realm.
I think this is the aspect that people are most concerned about when they talk about the community being different. It is not like you have a bunch of people being jerks, it is just that the solidarity and sense of belonging to a realm is gone.
Daoc is still the best game Ive played thus far. Every game I try out now I gauge against it. However, you cannot play the same game forever. Even a good thing gets stale after a while (Reminds me of an old twilight zone episode). None the less, Wether we play it now or not, it was a great game and deserves to be rememberd fondly.
SWG players also are very similar. They LOVED the game before NGE, now they also have similar posts.
I, like many, feel that WAR is like the second coming of DAOC. NOt the same game, but I have same feeling in my GUT when I think about playing it ...an "us Vs them" kind of feeling ...a "defend the bridge at all costs" kind of feeling ...an "I hate Hibbies" kinda feeling.
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I feel the same too about War but ill defintly miss the " I hate hibbies" or freakin Hibgard combo haha
I see , so then for the most part the players who made up the majority of the community had a greater sense of loyalty to the RVR aspect of the game so when many of them moved on IRL or to other games , it took something away from the overall appeal of the game.
It seems that it`s become more common in games for players to play more than one side primarily for the sake of either spying or increasing their pk targets with no real concern for any RP aspects. Perhaps it would be more logical to limit participation to one side at a time in order to preserve what appears to be a much needed RVR environment thus maintaining some sort of integrity in gameplay.
It sounds like it must have been a really great experience for those who played the game during it`s peak. I envy you .
Loyalty to RvR and to ones realm. Unlike a lot of MMORPGs in DAOC you had to chose one side, once you did you cannot make another character on another side (least back in the old days you couldnt). So, If I chose MIdgard, for that server, I was midgard, all my alts were midgard. If I wanted to play another realm (Alb or....gahh...I must fight it.....or...Hib) I would have to play on another server.
I put a post regarding this specific loyalty and it was widely followed and discussed on this board. You can read it here
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/153593
Torrential (Midgard forever)
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
LOL @ "I hate hibbies." I hear you. When I first rolled on alb I had that sense of realm solidarity too until I quit due to balance issues for wizards (no nearsight back then made combat very difficult). After I came back I played hib but the sense of solidarity wasn't as solid. Too many people cross realming at the drop of a hat.
LOL. As a Hib...I hated albs with a passion. ON my server we were soo outnumbered back in the day. If all the albs showed up to the mile gate you'd be looking at a nice screenshot for about 5 minutes and then crash, heh.
I think age and new frontiers killed it. TOA sucked, but new frontiers, in an effort to make things easier...took away the challenge.
In the old days, people would rally to the keeps that were under attack and defend them. There were certain choice routes people would take to get to the fight. Sometimes half of the strategy was just getting to the fight in one piece without getting mauled along the way.
The best pve grind was in the frontier, so you could always find groups of 45ish toons out there trying to grind to 50. It was easy to pick a fight..you just kill them, and all their buddies would show up 10 minutes later and the chaos would begin!
New frontiers made it too easy to get around and such. No one really had to run the route to get to the fight, they just teleported there.
It took everyone completely out of the game except casters and archers. (and some assassin types.)
People would just hump towers and lob fireballs at people pretty much.
Around that time WoW came out also, and a lot of the veteran population left.
My entire guild hopped to WoW and left me stranded. I joined another guild for pvp that disintegrated almost as fast.
Solo'ing was never really an option unless you had a buffbot or two laying around.
But it was still a pretty cool game when I quit...I had just been playing it for too many years, and all my friends had left. (and I didn't feel like making new ones.)
D. Former elf ranger/lancelot :cP
I think we need to be fair in that you cannot blame NF. The original frontier was good because there was a central area to fight with large groups of people. The portal system was actually good because usually a large group of people would come out at any one time. Without the maps giving you information, assassins had to give the information. Archers did not have MoS at the time so assassins actually had a role to play.
The problem with OF, is that all of the fighting was in Emain. This placed Hib at a huge disadvantage. They had to constantly defend their homeland against invasion. They had to fight/avoid mobs to get to the fight. What was a 1-5 minute port with no danger for Alb/Mid was a dangerous 5-15 minute trip often filled with death for Hibs.
Then keeps could only be taken by bashing the doors down which has its problems.
Many people had left before ToA/NF came out. In fact the population went UP after they came out.
The problem with NF is not so much that it made things easier, it is that there was no longer a central fighting area. This is to make sure the disadvantage Hib had, no other realm would have. Also, there were no longer any ports. Without the ports, no large forces coming out that were organized on the fly. Changes to the RA's took assassins out of the fight. It made relic raids too hard. It was designed in such a way to make assassins group with other assassins and camp certain spots picking off lone targets. Lone targets are far more common because of no more ports. ToA gave more advantage to range casting and increased the damage too much.
I really think there needs to be a NNF. There needs to be a central fighting area. Not a place that people choose to go to as now, but a place that funnels large groups of people there. It just should not be in any of the realms backyards.
LOL. As a Hib...I hated albs with a passion. ON my server we were soo outnumbered back in the day. If all the albs showed up to the mile gate you'd be looking at a nice screenshot for about 5 minutes and then crash, heh.
I think age and new frontiers killed it. TOA sucked, but new frontiers, in an effort to make things easier...took away the challenge.
In the old days, people would rally to the keeps that were under attack and defend them. There were certain choice routes people would take to get to the fight. Sometimes half of the strategy was just getting to the fight in one piece without getting mauled along the way.
The best pve grind was in the frontier, so you could always find groups of 45ish toons out there trying to grind to 50. It was easy to pick a fight..you just kill them, and all their buddies would show up 10 minutes later and the chaos would begin!
New frontiers made it too easy to get around and such. No one really had to run the route to get to the fight, they just teleported there.
It took everyone completely out of the game except casters and archers. (and some assassin types.)
People would just hump towers and lob fireballs at people pretty much.
Around that time WoW came out also, and a lot of the veteran population left.
My entire guild hopped to WoW and left me stranded. I joined another guild for pvp that disintegrated almost as fast.
Solo'ing was never really an option unless you had a buffbot or two laying around.
But it was still a pretty cool game when I quit...I had just been playing it for too many years, and all my friends had left. (and I didn't feel like making new ones.)
D. Former elf ranger/lancelot :cP
What Daelnor said. I spent about the same amount of time playing both hib and mid. One thing I noticed during that time was that albs were universally hatedI think more games comming out in the near/distant future should look at the model of 1 server one realm/faction/side type of thing. I believe it spawns loyalty and passion. It just makes the game just that much more personal. You begin to feel for the game, for the events that go on. I guess it becomes an emotional attachment if you will. That's why most of us talk about it.
"you had to be there"
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
The lack of a central fighting area is probably one of the reasons the battlegrounds were so popular
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
That may be the case. I can personally admit that I did enjoy the battle grounds but I enjoyed them because they were not instanced, "fair" matchups. I went in there knowing that there is a definite posibillity that I will be outnumbered or that my team will outnumber theirs.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I think this is the aspect that people are most concerned about when they talk about the community being different. It is not like you have a bunch of people being jerks, it is just that the solidarity and sense of belonging to a realm is gone.
And yet, it has never been seen since in any game Ive tried to this point. As stated before, I guess thats one of the main things we are hoping from WAR. "A place to belong"
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
People have a few different reasons for leaving back in the day. Mine was the dismantling of my class once Frontiers was released. Seeing my caster dps drop 30% literally overnight, sapped the last of my will right out of me.
That was my only grief (personally I enjoyed TOA on the flip side). It was a concern of many, perhaps a few but a notable few of heavy adding and nerfing of classes even 3 years after initial release. It's one topic I hope has been addressed by Mythic on WAR.