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A Sense of Community
Bordog
Member Posts: 34
DAoC was my first MMO. Within the first hours of logging into my friends account I had a random person start talking to me as we leveled in the same area. After running around together for about an hour he asked if I wanted to join his guild. I was a little intimidated because I wasn't sure what would be expected of me. I eventually decide to join the guild, aptly named "Icemen". I came to find out the guild was made up of men and women from Iceland and even some from the UK and United States.
I loved this guild. It was a small community of people who were polite and wanted to play with each other. They were willing to help a newcomer and were quite active. As time went on the guild slowly dissolved as DAoC became less popular. I have since played many other MMO's and never have I felt such community in an MMO as I did at that time in DAoC.
It wasn't just the guild though. The Alliance that our guild was a part of was very active. The players there were mature and enjoyed playing the game. Maybe I'm just pining for the good old days, but it seems to me that the gaming community has become a harsh and uncaring environment. I'm not sure why that is. Is it that more young adults are playing? Were the DAoC players a more mature crowd? Has the internet society changed in general?
I'm sure you may have had a different experience than me, but I still hope that CU will attract back that crowd of people who played DAoC in part because of the community.
Comments
I feel the same way man.
I think it's a combination of factors. The MMO genre as a whole has grown a LOT with the introduction of a lot more "casual" mmo's (wow namely drawing in a huge playerbase).
Back then, there were a LOT less mmo players, and the mmo's were a lot more hardcore than casual. Also, there were a lot less MMO's to choose from. There are so many to choose from now, it's pretty overwhelming.
So you pretty much HAD to socialize and work together to even play back then, and you knew that the people that were there REALLY wanted to be there, and weren't one of these modern A.D.D. here today, gone tomorrow type mmo players. Back then people were in it for the long haul. Also leveling took a lot longer back then, so people felt a lot more attached to / immersed in their character. I remember it being a big deal when people re-rolled a new character to get to 50.
There would be gossip around that so and so is actually so and so re-rolled. To me that's funny now, because nowadays nobody would really care haha.
Although, people used to get "blacklisted" back then too, so people tried to keep track of who was who for that reason.
A lot of blacklisted people would try to re-roll to get away from their bad name, but usually it ended up leaking out who they really were. 
I dunno though, I think it's mostly the introduction of so many casual gamers into the genre. It makes the genre bigger, but I feel likewise that the quality of the gaming decreases significantly. That's why I'm excited about a niche game. Let all the casual players have their themepark mmos. Us REAL mmoers need our own mmo now hehe.
MMO history - EVE GW2 SWTOR RIFT WAR COH/V EQ2 WOW DAOC
Tuktz - http://www.heretic.shivtr.com/
Yes, the community in DAOC was an amazing thing, almost a perfect storm of several factors that made it superior to any that I've experienced before or since.
I too had a great experience starting out, with official player guides (volunteer) that would let you ping them to ask noob questions.
The game had a strong grouping emphasis, and the combat model pretty basic, (kill mobs in camps) so people were always willing to pick up the random stranger and even show him the ropes if he didn't know his role. (without mocking him either)
Your reputation mattered, and once established you could count on people actually pinging you on log in and asking them to join their party, and no, they weren't even necessarily your guild mates.
Now, the above was all on the Blue (normal) servers, over on the Red side (Mordred) wasn't nearly the same experience.
Everyone outside of your guild was an enemy and you really couldn't trust them. Game mechanics prevented you from damaging your party but more than one unsuspecting person fell victim to the trick of allowing themselves to be invited to a group only to find themselves ungroupd and killed by their new "friends", sometimes immediately after completing a successful hunting day. (happened to healers a lot)
Of course, you wouldn't group with those folks again, so people who attacked healers and other support usually suffered the worse for it in the long run.
People on Dred were still far more social and not really too many jerks, even though we were permitted to talk between players unlike on the normal servers.
Overall I had a great time in both models, and stil feel DAOC will be the unobtainable model for a good social MMO that I yearn for.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Wow, that part about picking up people that didn't know what they were doing, and showing them the ropes is so true, and so lost in current mmos.
Back then, it was WELL worth it for the group's benefit to group anyone to help, regardless of their ability. Basically you'd do better with a bad player added, than none at all. So groups would actively add you regardless, and then try to make you a better player once they got you. The dynamic worked really really well. And if people saw you get a lot better, then tended to become your friends and possibly guildmates.
Nowadays if you join a group in mmos, if you instantly aren't an expert at your class, or know every caveat of detail of a particular boss fight, you are ostrasized, ridiculed, and sometimes kicked from the group.
That's so bad for a sense of community.
MMO history - EVE GW2 SWTOR RIFT WAR COH/V EQ2 WOW DAOC
Tuktz - http://www.heretic.shivtr.com/
It was lost in DAoC too, after a while, which helped kill the game.
Once /level 20 was added to the game, all the veterans just made alts and jumped right to the battlegrounds. DAoC didn't have anything in terms of a tutorial. So, new players would log in for the first time, and instead of being greeted by veteran alts, shown the ropes, the dungeons, given gold, they were met with empty zones. It entirely killed new players from coming into the game. Then ToA happened, which drove off Vets. It was a steady decline after that. People always seem to underestimate just how devastating /level 20 was to DAoC's population.
Soon the game transitioned into a "solo to level cap" game.
But wow, Icemen! I saw them around on Albion Pellinor ALL THE TIME. I started out in Council of Order, and grouped with some Icemen. Then I followed some guildies to Heroes of the Realm once I got my own account. And after that, I followed our guild leader, Cadilaa, to Icemen. She eventually became guild leader of Icemen and, after almost everyone left, I inherited the role.
Small small digital world. I think that old character, Signus, is still the guild leader of Icemen.
I´m pretty sure the success of Camelot Unchained will raise and fall with the community. It will be inevitable to socialise with other players and in doing so, you will have an impact on how the atmosphere on your server is going to be. A lot of the current games promote solo-play and are in general filled with handholding mechanics. Thats something, you won´t see in Camelot Unchained.
People will have to be careful with their own reputation, because not doing so could ruin the game experience for you. Start behaving like a jerk and you will be treated like one. There is no cross-server instant dungeon finder or battlegrounds where you can group with new players all the time.
Here your name will be the first thing that counts. If you treat people like crap, then you will get a response for doing so. No hiding behind name changes, cross-server groups or easy solo-gaming. It is time to relive the fascination thats called socialization.
And personally - I´m looking forward to earn my respect again and by doing so maybe gain some new friends. Its so sad, that all those millions of new MMORPG players, that came with World of Warcraft, never experienced, what it meant to be a part of a real server community.
They would favor different things today, thats for sure.
Camelot Unchained Fanpage
https://simply-gaming.com/camelot/
Several reasons.. some of these are generalizations, but on the whole they are more true than not..
1) Most gamers these days are entitled babies that want everything now and don't want to work for it. They don't want to grind - they want to hit max lvl in days (see WOW, SWTOR, etc).
2) Most gamers these days demand to be able to solo 99% of the time and be able to get good gear as they level up very quickly. That results in games that CAN be soloed quite easily and that are very rewarding even if you solo because most of the rewards are given as quest rewards and those are far better than anything you can get from grouping up and going out and taking on challenging content. So today's MMOs have become very anti-social in nature because there is no requirement to work with anybody else. Same goes for the crafting in today's games, where there is no forced interdependency.
3) Yes, there are more and more gamers coming into MMOs thanks to WoW's broader appeal and marketing efforts. This has drawn the types that like to smack talk and play Call of Duty (I'm a COD: Black Ops 2 fan, so i know how obnoxious and rude a good majority of that playerbase is). Plus kids coming into MMOs these days grew up on games like WoW where you can solo everything, so they are less aware of the value of a game with challenge, interdependency and grouping, and whine like the kids they are if the game is too hard or they aren't getting the phat lewtz that they see others carrying.
Communities were the strongest in the more challenging games and the games with greater interdependency. SWG had one of the best communities I've ever seen. I had a PA (Imperial Army on Chilastra) that was VERY close knit, very large, and it was what kept a lot of us around far longer than we would have stuck in a game where that community did not exist. We built a player city, built player structures, had all sorts of dedicated crafters and social players (musicians, entertainers, etc.), and then of course the combat types.
This is all why what Mark Jacobs is saying is so appealing for so many of us. Harkens back to the older school MMOs were choices mattered. Where interdependency existed. Where community was key. Where challenge was prevalent.
I get the feeling that if you can get the newer generation of MMOers to get into a game like CU, they might never go back to the ezmode mass market MMOs that are out there today.
I remember leveling up a character on Mordred, fighting tooth and nail to stay alive long enough to level, weaponsmithing to keep my gear competitive, and trying to act in an honorable fashion on a ffa pvp server.
Coming from a RP server (Guin) to Mordred, I didn't know what to expect aside from rampant griefing, which was to be expected. So I tried my little experiment out, helping newbies when I could by protecting them from gankers, giving them quality gear, and generally trying to play a RP server toon on a ffa pvp server.
I won some, lost some, and generally had a blast, though I didn't have that sense og community.
Then, a group of people found me. They were a RP guild devoted to playing a kind of "peacekeeper" role on Mordred. We were a perfect fit.
Keep in mind that we were CREATING our own gameplay at this point. Forming a community with certain goals actually changed the game for us in a fundamental fashion. Our DAoC was VERY different than John Smith's, and that was a testament to that era.
I hope to recapture that kind of magic.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
I had never thought of the /level 20 but you are right. I remember it was around that time that things were in decline, especially with the ToA expansion. I think what everyone has said is so true and am glad to see that others feel the same about the community in DAoC. I hope that CU can rekindle an environment like that, that the community I'm seeing here in these forums will transfer to CU.
I had forgotten how much your name meant on your server. Yes, there was gossip about which alt beloned to who, because it was a big deal to start a new character (until /level 20). People were actually concerned about someone leaving the guild, or where a new guild member was coming from. I remember an individual in a guild called Epic on Albion Pellinor that was a Cabalist and would run around Snowdonia, Pennine Mtns and Forest Sauvage. The point is, I remember people that weren't in my guild and respected them because of the roles they played on the server as leaders or just being a persistent presence. With so many new players it has been hard to really pick out players like that in other MMO's for me.
I remember Cadilaa! I wasn't in the guild too long before that merge happened, so I don't really remember it, but I do remember Cadilaa.
Yeah, I haven't really quite found a sense of community like there was on DaOC as well. Hell, my guild I last associated with back on Ector (Hey Yall/Athena's Avatars) I still talk to this day. It's a bit of a nostalgic "getting the band back together" feeling whenever we pull everyone together for some other game or go back to daoc for a few weeks. Though, it always peters out because, well, games aren't what they used to be from the days of the first mmos and even MUDs (I still talk to people I mudded with back in the day also).
The mmos now are not endearing, or satisfying for that matter. It's liek all the restaurants out there turned into hamburger joints, hyping their own rendition of the hamburger; although, at the end of the day it's still a hamburger not really much different from the others. You get sick of it. Quick.
Hi everyone, I decided to join these forums after hearing about Camelot Unchained.
Agreed DAOC had the best community, in game, forums and the herald (I wish they could hire Sanya Thomas for CU !!! ). Since DAOC I've experienced a bunch of MMO's and not one has come close to DAOC in sense of community, and yes it's partly because things were way different back then. But I remain optimistic that if the game is built in a way that it stimulates peoples awareness and participation, there is a chance that CU can come close to this.
I've always thought that even controversy is a good thing, it gets people talking and involved ! Remember those buffed stealthers ? Or late night relic raids ? Oh, and while I'm talking about things that cause controversy, I'm totally against identical, mirrored classes between realms. There should be differences! It doesn't matter if it causes a tiny unbalance between a specific classes if it doesn't hurt the general PvP. Bard, Minstrel and Skald had different abilities and that's one of the things that got people talking.
Welcome chief. You'll find plenty of discussion here. There's a good bit on Joystiq and a couple other places as well. If you haven't already, I definitely would read through the founding principles.