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10 Things DAoC did right in the early 00s that MMOs today ignore, are ignorant to, or took a decade
40Hz
Member Posts: 36
Foreword: I'm not claiming DAoC was the perfect end-all-be-all of MMORPGs, nor am I claiming that any of the points below were only found in DAoC.
1: Every content update was heavily tested for weeks/months on a populated, open PLAYER-BASED test server BEFORE mass deployment to regular shards.
2: The chat system doubled as a command prompt for the core game client. You could player query(search for players based on any parameter[name/level/class/guild/location]) your zone, or any zone by doing a search with that zone's name. It also made it very easy to find other players in your current area, players from a certain guild, players of a certain level range, etc. The way it worked also actually fostered social interaction via chat.
Almost all non-combat functions could also be executed from a simple typed command. Games today flood you with tons of visual menus that don't function half as well as a simple command prompt built into the chat system.
3: Crafting ruled the player equipment world. It was really tedious, difficult, time-consuming, and BENEFITIAL. The best armor/weapons in the game were crafted via an item "quality" system and reasonably expensive because they required a large amount of refined or rare resources. It should be noted that these items were not un-attainable for the average Joe, they just cost a lot. Raid and dungeon items were still very good and often had special colors and effects, but top-end crafted items held the title of max possible stats.
4: Replayability. Your options were huge. Three "Realms" (not one or two), each with its own lore/races/classes and entirely separated from each other except in open world PvP.
Each one of the three realms also had 11 UNIQUE classes (16 currently), which each had different skill paths you could take, making the possibilities vast and interesting. Today's MMORPGs barely manage one starting area/realm with 3-5 tired-to-death cookie cutter classes.
5: PvP/RvR. Three completely segregated and proud "realms" constantly jockeying for realm-wide benefits via "relics". It fostered such a strong nationality for each realm that people of all levels and skills were mobilized and extremely motivated to go and do REAL, non-instanced PvP that actually mattered to everyone. It even mattered to strictly PvE players that never set foot on the frontier to do PvP, because their PvE stats would be mildly affected by the status of your realm's relic control.
6: Mixing high level content with low level content. The zones in each realm had their target level, but they also had pockets of much higher level mobs that were necessary for quests or dropped special items. I think this is important because it makes the world more interesting, mixed, more like a sandbox, less linear, and less like a packaged theme park. (i.e. Mario 64 vs. Crash Bandicoot).
7: Active out-of-game web access to current in-game data. DAoC had a web portal to it's current in-game status that kept track of every player and guild on every server. It also allowed you to see, in real time, what was going on in the 3-realm warfare on your server without even needing to log into the game. This was in 2001. Games today don't even have this level of coverage.
8: Dungeons were open-world, not instanced. A lot of people will probably argue that instanced dungeons are a positive evolution, but I disagree. Instanced dungeons promote solo and exclusive play which can be boring and predictable. I feel like open-world dungeons promote social interaction between players and gently force strangers to work together and find solutions ad-hoc. Often times strangers would become friends through these interactions. It is simply more engaging and memorable in the long run.
9: Darkness Falls. A huge three-realm dungeon, connected to three-realm PvP(RvR) that offered the best of every world. PvP, PvE, strategy, amazing gear...it was all a master stroke combination to get people to come together to really challenge one another to have access to various enticing benefits. Darkness Falls was simply MMO developer genius that I haven't seen repeated since.
10: Guild emblems. This may seem goofy or irrelevant to some but it actually created even more of a guild/realm pride when you and your whole group of friends could run out onto the frontier in matching guild emblems/colors. People knew who you were with visual impact.
Comments
In addition to what you said, one of my favorite things that DAOC did with pvp that I have yet to see,
-Stealthers could see other stealthers. This included rogue/thief types and archer types. It added another level to combat.
(rogue types could also climb keep walls)
-Some spells that I loved, just haven't seen in any mmos of late, NearSight for one. And never have I seen a spell I liked as visually as RuneCaster flaming that spear that went up into the air and then came down.
I missed the whole stealth point. Good call. DAoC had an amazing stealth system that really had it's own unique way of contributing to PvP with scouting, beyond just owning certain classes with DPS.
You might be right, but which modern, active games do this? I only know of Aion...
On the runecaster spell effect bit, I'm quite surprised but the attack and casting animations for FF:ARR are actually quite amazing. The leather straps on grimoires flop about, the hems and bottoms of robes flail in the etheric winds when you start casting....And I unno, the build up looks really cool. This is one of the things I like about the game so far....But for the longest times casting hgas been SO BLAND.
Every game I have played till now put absolutely no effort into the casting animations and effects, this is the first one to have that....I unno, it looks like magic is building around the caster...For arcanists atleast.
So I can see why that'd be quite appealing in DAOC if it had very well done spell effects.
Video linked doesn't show attack animations, but they're really cool with geometric sigils and stuff spinning around.
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At least GW2 does. It has special guild armor items that have your emblem on them. It also has #7, with things like http://mos.millenium.org/matchups for its RvR matchups. And, arguably, #3 and #5.
With the new wave of RvR titles coming, we may see some healthy competition in this field. Still, I think people tend to forget DAoC's faults in topics like this. For example, its matchups were often really unbalanced, which is something a modern MMO would get bashed about endlessly.
Too many things have changed player wise, such as attitudes, for a lot of what worked back then to work now.
It's my opinion that current players really wouldn't care at all about faction/realm pride. We'd probably see one side heavily stacked prior to release with dozens and dozens of rather large guilds teaming up and setting up alliances to guarantee victory. Once that happens, all the "free agents" will transfer their way or reroll to the winning side. People won't like losing.
The players themselves would kill any sort of competitive balance any game attempts to implement.
I agree with the OP, but i just can't see most of those elements working with todays players.
You make a good point.
By no means was I trying to say DAoC was the perfect MMORPG. It definitely had it's flaws and many aspects of it are very dated by today's standards.
My point with this thread was to try and create some discussion about how people feel about today's options vs. the options that were provided early on in the MMORPG timeline.
EQ and AC did the majority of those points before DAOC.
Personally I found the PVP scene on Darktide to be one of the best of any PVP game I've played to date.
― Terry Pratchett, Making Money
Darktide was a lot of fun.
Remember the Fort Tethana wars around 2000? Before Blood took over the PK scene?
I think we have different options. Now, the only new, released game with RvR is GW2 and many DAoC fans were very disappointed with it. It lacks many of the features DAoC was loved for, such as your #4. However, the reason why it's missing all the unique classes is that it (almost successfully) tried to eliminate the unbalanced matchups I mentioned by using a server vs. server approach to RvR and autobalancing it. Is that better or worse? I don't think it's either. However, I'd say it's more modern, because the current generation of MMO players hates losing constantly more than the DAoC generation did. I think you must give them relatively balanced matchups or they'll just quit.
Darkness Falls is the one feature I really miss. I don't think ESO will have something like it. Maybe CU will? Haven't been following that for a while. GW2 teased us with its DF-like dungeon, but it's just different enough it misses the mark completely. I even remember an ANet dev saying they'd love to make a proper DF later on and then... yep, nothing.
I really hope ESO's RvR is good and successful, because then both ANet and Zenimax will have to put more effort in it. Competition is a great motivator.
I played GW2 through 80 and well into RvR ranks for months. To me, it was similar and ALMOST as fun, but it just wasn't the same. For one, the culling issue was really a dealbreaker for me. I don't know if they resolved that, but I've moved on.
Part of me really wonders if I'm just outdated and hoping for something that will never come.
Most likely, you know what they say about refusing to adapt and change....Slow death and what not. Oh, sorry....That's overspecialization. Which could be argued that this is the case, seeing as your needs can only be met by a very specific niche that is fading into non-existence and no longer catered to...
However I hear there are some hardcore leet full PvP RvR games out there and all that....So keep hope!
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I don't think that's it. GW2's WvW is really not the same as DAoC's RvR, although it's almost as fun IMO, too. ESO promises to be a bit closer to DAoC, but we'll see how that turns out. Their early "we wanna be like WoW" interviews still haunt me.
They did fix culling, by the way.
Aika online has guild emblems. But, it is kinda hard to call Aika active anymore. It's not under Gpotato, but t3fun and I think any notoriety it had is pretty much gone. Those are fully customizable though, you make the icon much like you would a favicon (yourself and with a bit of frustration). And then, associate it with your guild and all members will sport that (unless they have show guild turned off).
Runescape has clan capes, that the logos are customizable on...a lot like how it used to be on halo 2 for live. You can choose from a range of emblems up to 2 emblems total.change their color, the background color and the trim color. This is displayed as the clans cape, as the flags to the clan vexillum, one the clan avatar, On players profile on the runescape website, and at the clan citadel.
I really like features that let one show their allegiance. The thing is it usually seems to be on one extreme or another for how it is implemented. Usually I see that you either get to pick from a range of things and do some mild customization to them, or you have to make it all yourself.
Making it all yourself has the benefit of total customization, but you end up seeing a lot of bad logo's, either cause the maker didn't know what they were doing or they they made it look to good for the venue and a lot of it is lost on those viewing it. But, with the other road while they all look good and clean and like they all belong. Variety and one being all that different from another is kinda squashed by it.
don't have time for a long answer - but I agree 100% with OP - especially the Darkness Falls, I simply dont get why other games dont use this idea as well
Current gameplay is the effect of changing demand, I can assure you there is no such thing as ignorance in this industry. Every company does research, not to mention that most of the developers are also players. If a feature is not implemented, it means that there was reason behind it, not because it was somehow forgotten or underestimated.
1. Can't comment since I don't know how that worked out for them. You can never know if it was because of the system, or maybe their programmers were just good at coding, this should be a question targeted to developers directly.
2. Command prompt is not appealing for majority of new gamers who aren't acustomed to this type of interface. Basically the entire evolution of IT is all about hiding the code under graphical interface, you can't say it is a bad thing. As for the advanced search options I''m trying to figure out if the benefits from it are big enough to bother implementing it and then raping the entire player database with those queries. So maybe current companies think about it the same way. What did people use it for? If you want to find a friend, you just pm him. If you want to find someone with a specific abilities, you post message in global chat, and if someone is interested he will reply. The advanced search feature sounds like an overkill. It would be annoying if people pm'd me and bothered all the time just because I am a certain class. So how often was it used in that game and what for?
3. If the best item was only possible to obtain by crafting then it is just as bad as having the best item only obtainable by doing dungeons. Either way you are unfair for a certain group of players. The way this should be resolved is that all items dropped by monsters and items crafted should have identical stats, so you could choose whatever way you like without any loss. Modern games have that feature but unfortunately it is hard to balance difficulty between those two ways and there is always one that is easier to do, so it will be done, and the other group will be unsatisfied. Also, if a game wants to target a specific group of people, then it has rights to sacrifice one system, and use their time to work more on the one that is more popular. It is not wrong decision, it is the right one to follow current player needs.
4. If you lock classes/lore/races with a certain realm you are reducing the number of possibilities for a player. It was possible back in the days when it was a niche, but now players are more demanding and there is the mentality that I should be whatever I want to be. So developers need to adjust to what players want. Also that does not mean that it is wrong and before it was right, it changed because it needed to, there is no mistake in development here.
5. Segregating player base into realms is risky, because it generates even more hate in pvp than there already is. It becomes a kind or agressive racism. And it is similar case as in previous example, you force players to do, what they might not want to do. If a player chooses to do strictly PvE, but the game requires him to also do PvP in order to benefit in PvE then he will have a bad time. It is a progress and a right thing to do, if you give a player choice in gameplay, not wrong.
6. I would argue if this is still used in many games, maybe in different forms. GW2 has a system that adjusts monsters to your level, you could argue which solution is the right one or simply better than the other. Games like Rift or FF:ARR have their random events that have increasing difficulty that can be even higher depending on number of people taking part in the event, and the rewards are better than in case of regular monsters so you might say that they are doing the same thing, so it is nothing abandoned.
7.I am not sure what you mean, but most games that have PvP, have some kind of rankings on their website. Some have more detailed than the others. Server status is a must on every game website. Other than that I see no reason to post data about all the PvE players.
8. Very arguable, I can't say instanced dungeons are evolution, but you most definately can't say that open world dungeons were the right thing too. I can't see how any dungeon can promote solo play, since instances require you to group. I can't see the difference in social interaction between the two systems, you would have to elaborate more on this topic.
9. So it is a dungeon, in which there is PvP and PvE at the same time? It might have worked well in that particular game for some reason, but in general it is very risky and in effect avoided type of gameplay. Many games back in the days had that type of places. Knight Online had Abyss, Neo Steam had location like that too - first games that came to my mind, but there are more and I haven't played all too. This type of gameplay was slowly abandoned throughout the years. Why? Because it was the kingdom of griefing. Paradise for griefers. And it was intensified thousand times when you had faction rivalisation you mentioned added to it. I remember there was for example so much hate between orcs and humans in KO it felt, like people took it way to seriously. There were groups made just for ganking solo players or weaker groups. All the time you saw people luring tough monsters on someone, killing entire parties with it. There was so much bad mouthing in chat, it was worse than LoL now.
10. No need to comment, this is normal in current games that pressure PvP, nothing forgotten.
Take into account that DAoC doesn't have very big population, and some of the negative effects that I mentioned might appear only in case of bigger community, or might be intensified by it. That is also something that developers take into consideration. Also have in mind that it is not a very popular game, and you can't tell for certain what caused this. It may have been the exact things that you praise in this game, it is just your opinion really, unless you can prove my argumentation wrong, then I am all ears.
There, a wall of text for a wall of text.
TLDR; There is no such thing as ignorance in this industry, and nothing was suddenly abandoned. It is a slow evolution of genre that is steadily going in one direction. Every feature that you might find amazing and flawless, actually has some downfalls and risks. Developers take everything in consideration, most importantly the demand that players create, and the lack of features that you in particular want is the effect of it.
There are two things in the OP I will really comment on... because I see similar statements made and its like everyone has blinders on in regards to today...
When DAoC was young... EverQuest was still the largest game in the Western MMO market... and in that regard we are talking about a game where the bragging right was 450,000'ish concurrent subscriptions. The reason I bring this up is because for much of this time the MMO market was relatively small and this directly impacts....
Open world dungeons.... I have my personal view points on instances and I don't think they are something which should be everywhere. I do believe they have their uses especially when you want an area to convey the amount of danger it is supposed to have. Which is one aspect of it because you can think of Avalon City (yes I played Albion most of the time). During its peak zoning in there would often result in every single camp.. being camped and every single mob being dead. When you expand the size of the market and end up with servers that have even more people on them... guess what? This to me is something early games could get away with simply due to market size...
Darkness Falls while it was a fun place to um cause people grief or take part in the portal wars when access changed.... Did you ever take part in those keep sieges that were so epic... if you happened to go link dead you couldn't log back in? Well imagine what would have happened if that many people had ever been in DF....
The number of people is something companies are trying to work on to support epic battles.. but I'm not sure how you get around the lack of mobs for people to kill. Which is one of my biggest issues with "open" content... when something is supposed to be dangerous.. it should not instead convey a feeling of being in the DMV... waiting for your ticket number to be called...
Avoiding the blood zerg whilst ambushing stragglers was fun.
The 1 thing I liked above all else (and smth i think has been brought up in this topic) was the sense of realm pride. You actually liked/loved your realm to a lvl that if you were in the middle of a dungeon to lvl up an alt or were doing pvp elsewhere if you heard your relic was under attack you dropped everything to help. Not because you would get alot of rp there but because it was YOUR realms relic and THEY were trying to steal it from you.
You truly saw it as ppl from your realm as us and other realms as them. I honestly believe no other mmorpg (or at least none I have heard of) have really achieved this. Which is a shame, because it also made you play the game more. It encouraged an active community that wanted to work together. You wanted to go on pve raids to make new friends and allies, ppl wanted to lead pve raids to help other players be more effective in rvr and in rvr if you claimed a tower/keep you upgraded it as much as poss so that if the enemy attacked you could warn the realm and they would come to the rescue. And the side effect of that is that long after you would normally give up a game you keep playing because the community was such pleasure to be a part of. When I eventually gave up the game I think I would have stopped probably 3 months before I did had it not been for the community. During the 3 months that I would have quit I lead a pve raid, made 3-4 SC templates for some new guildies and SC'd it for them as they were poor for free... oh and obviously did a lot of rvr with friends
I hope that camelot unchained is like daoc... or the new wh40k mmo since that has 3 factions and is v rvr/pvp based
I think that is an extremely good point about scale of the customer base and respective scale of games...I mean they have to not only keep a lot more kinds of people happy (or at the very least for some niche placated) at once...they literately have to manage bigger volumes in bigger areas. The sheer bulk of MMORPG's today almost demands a fair degree of streamlining to make things run smoothly.
Or it's like a destruction derby even at a clown convention (every car has 7-10 clowns in it and being clowns they didn't build spectator stands cause every ones an entertainer. So, they goto duke it out in between the crowd).
The way it works now vs. the way it did one could compare to a feudal system of government over a participatory system of government. When you have small areas with few people one guy in charge makes a lot more sense. though less free and not as 'advanced' as it could be, more simple pleasure and a more direct to your ability to make do style of living occurs...But, you have to start delegating and having representatives of various areas, and polling people for what they think once populace grows and you become more spread out. A lot of jobs become surplus and many might seem very much the same. but the core of the society has changed at that point and demands that to continue standing the method of it's government and residing within it also change.
I remember 3 things about DAoC that pretty much made it unplayable for me:
1. interrupts in spell casting...it sounded good in theory but was awful in practice...I could never play a spell caster in this game because of that
2. stealthing-while alot of you thinkl this was the greatest thing ever, for others it was a gamebreaker......I spent too many frustrating times where I got killed in 1-2 hits by stealthers
3. crafting-crafting was long and tedious and you had to have several crafters for it to even work...It had potential to be the best crafting system ever, but ended up not being very good
Also I never liked the graphics and the game always felt laggy...The world was really nice looking and combat was pretty good except for some minor things.....