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Dark Age of Camelot: Re-Reviewing Camelot
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Nine years after its original launch date, Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot is still running and our own Adam Tingle ventured back into the game to give it a new review.
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Like the world economy, Camelot has been going through some tough times. For almost a decade a Dark Age has been virtually upon us; a trio of factions equip loyalties as weapons and engage in bloody conflict; rebellious forces threaten to tear apart once peaceful lands; for close to ten years, heroes have been called upon; champions have been created, and a new age of Camelot has been long sought after. It is time once more for me to clutch my sword, grab my cloak and head out into the lands of Albion, Midgard and Hibernia with critical eyes.
Returning to an older MMORPG is always a somber and almost depressing prospect. The slight hints of anticipation are usually punctured with desolate hunting zones, entrenched veterans and an overall feeling of neglect. In Dark Age of Camelot however, things are a little different. Herein lies a game of activity, event and life even after an almost decade long life span. It is genuinely inspirational to see a game of such age still have crowds of players populating hubs and various activity driven destinations. With this however, comes a price, DAoC is no longer the MMORPG experience it once was, the game is now busied solely with PvP, and while this is by no means a terrible thing, anyone looking to find virtual life in these lands will find little else. With further ado, let’s get ready to rumble…
Read Re-Reviewing Camelot.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Man, DAOC still lives?! Amazing, good for them!
But its old. Very old. Are there still people playin it? It must be, but it cannot be many. So many newer MMORPGs now.
But, RvR of DAOC was very good!
the game actually has a small yet faithful fan base that actually cap the servers so people cannot get in game, Mythic in its own way did what they could by making changes that adversly effected the whole game instead of just 1 realm or class, way to go mythic forget an upgrade to the server capacity change some code and make the people angry as a method of population control
I recently went back to DAoC as well. I played for over 5 years before coming to the conclusion that I had done everything that I wanted to do in the game and finally moved on to WoW. I went back after being pressured by a friend who used to play and we both fired up our dusty old accounts after what must be four years.
Like the author stated some aspects of DAoC have aged gracefully, while others have not. The graphics still don't look terrible, though you will notice in some areas such as keeps a very small number of textures repeated over and over, which makes it look a bit strange and repetitive. The repetitive textures are repetitive.
For me, it was like walking through a dream that you can never go back to. I had so much fun and loved the game so much back in the day, but after years of playing WoW and now Age of Conan, going back isn't an option any more. For one thing, the GUI is extremely out of date, as well as a few of the game conventions. There aren't any super flexible key bindings that I can attach to any key or mouse button and casters still cannot cast after someone reaches melee range. I was considering giving it another run, but those 2 things for me were a deal breaker, since I always play casters and the, you can't cast while in melee range, was always one of the biggest frustrations for me.
Also, newer games make it much easier to solo in pvp, which is what I tend to do most of the time. I find fun in fighting against other players, not joining a group that runs some poor guy who is by himself over and then doing a happy dance. Back in the frontier in Dark Age, I was always the guy wandering around solo looking for 1v1 pvp while chatting with my guild and then suddenly being run over by a group of 10 people who barely even needed to slow down to take me out.
Without a doubt the rvr was a really fun aspect of Dark Age and with some developer attention it could again be great, but as it stands now, it is but a faint shadow of it's former glory. A misty dream filled with the memories of all the fun I had back when it was new.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
"Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!"
This quote sums up DAoC for me. For some reason, maybe I'm just crazy, but I always end up returning to DAoC. Other than AoC, I can't stay away from DAoC for more than 3 months. I've never been a real glutton when it comes to graphics. I've seen the days of the old 2d, horribly-pixelated mid-90s MMORPGS. So anything that even resembles a smooth curve in graphics is ok with me lol. It only takes about an hour to get back into the swing of things, mainly because all of macros are still saved on my computer. DAoC will always be the best in my eyes. The frontiers and battlegrounds are just so great, nothing else comes close in any other game. The feel of going to Thidranki for 2 hours, seiging a keep, then having to go eat dinner or sleep, coming back, and the keep is still under seige just seems so realistic. I, like many other DAoC fanatics, hope for a new age (DAoC2, yes please!) with new experiences with the classic feel of the original.
Yep, this is how I feel. I always liked PVP, but I was more a fan of Mordred's style of FFA combat and not the traditional game.
Hoping if they ever make a DAOC 2 the promote alternate rules servers on it one day as well.
"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
I tried returning to DAoC a while back, just before the last server mergers. The OP hit on a lot of the topics that made me leave again. Having a buff bot as a requirement was a big one. I tried the Classic server but it wasn't much different. Instead of paying real money for a 2nd account you had to pay large amounts of in-game money for potions. Which as a new player to the server you really can't do, so the older richer players still had the advantage.
My original choice for realm was Midgard at release , which was bad since they were the most under played. I ended up leaving about 6 months after release when finding out our realm was outnumbered at least 3 to 1 by Albion and almost as much by Hib. I returned a short while later and played for a few years in Hib.
Anyway i decided to give Mid a try again when i returned, since realm balance is a lot better than it used to be. Although i really enjoyed the classes the community in Mid was just horrible. People were just down right rude, you'd get flamed for asking simple questions. There was almost constant bickering going on in the main city. No one seemed to group in battleground either , everyone seemed to try to solo. This may have been due to the fact that you absolutely need a healer and very few people play them. I always though that was a big downfall of midgard at release. They put all the best CC and healing into one class that got very few skill points, couldn't solo at all , and no one wanted to play them.
After a couple weeks i ended up going back to Hibernia. It was the exact opposite of Midgard. People were warm, welcoming and friendly. My old guild was dead but i found a new one very quickly and they were nice a bunch of people. The problems i ran into here were that i had played this realm for years and there really wasn't much new to experience. Also i had a hard time finding RvR groups out of my guild cause i didn't have the top end gear and i had a very low RvR level. I ended up playing alts in the one battleground that was still populated. (39-44 i think) I had a lot on fun in there but you cap realm points so fast that in a couple of days I'd have to leave. I ended up deleting characters and making new ones and just starting all over again so i could go back in there. It was really the only option for constant action in RvR. They really need to either find a way to populate the next battleground or make it so you can turn off your RP's and stay in the 39-44 one as long as you want. I don't think upping the realm rank would help , because it would cause imbalance.
The last thing that really bothered me were the boxers. When going to RvR with my guild we would usually go to a dungeon. It saves you from zergs and a lot of meaningless running around in those huge frontiers. Most of the battles in here are group vs group and a lot of fun. Until the boxers come. Out in the frontier it's easy to see a group coming but in the dungeons that are all twists and turns you just can't. So one person with characters with names like BobA BobB and BobC run through these dungeons with a bard and all PBAoE classes. Takes them about 2-3 seconds to kill you and then they just run off til they find another group. After a couple times of this everyone in your group is pretty well ticked off and most of them leave.
The only real solution to boxers is staying out of dungeons , because as i said frontiers are more open and they don't do as well out there. This of course means you have to be in frontiers though and i found a lot of people don't like them because they are just too big and it can take a long time to actually find some action and which realm it is happening in. It would be nice if they would make the frontiers a bit smaller or better yet combine them into one area so everyone is in the same zone. One of the reasons i think the 39-44 battlefield has remained so popular is that it is a fairly small area and is very open. This makes for fast action RvR.
One thing i really missed were those huge battles that used to take place out front of your frontier keeps. There used to be only 2 ways to get out into the frontiers and you'd have to run from there. Now of course they have porters to take you to any keep you own. While this really helps cut down on travel and helps to avoid the stealthers more, it took away all those battles i loved around the time of release.
More devs need to steal from DAoC -- it is flattery to do so. Blizzard stole a fair amount, but not enough.
There was an earlier article on What If, for DAoC2, and that would be amazing. Just don't let Cryptic touch it. And it would seem that Mythic is busy trying to figure out how to breath life into Warhammer -- it may take a while but it's going to die too.
Hopefully some company will come along, pull their collective heads out of their butts and realize that it just makes good sense to do a DAoC2. The IP is recognizable, the setting is familiar even to the uninitiated, the concept of MMOs is FAR easier for people to grasp -- someone make this happen!!!
@senjenn: actually, you CAN (or at least could) turn off both your XP and RP and stay in a BG forever with a character. Many people did it. Commands were something like /xp off, /rp off, etc.
DAoC is still my favorite MMO of all time. Only reason I even tried WAR was I *hoped* they could recapture the magic, but of course they failed miserably.
Holy crap, the UI is bad? You realize that a) everything you ever need is in the UI and it's not a just clunsterfk on the screen like other UIs, and b) ITS FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE!
Also, game is top heavy.... it's 10 freaking years old, no kidding!
Broken for the new player? How do you figure? You can get to level cap where every else is in literally a week and a half without trying too hard.
And when a game from 10 years ago STILL has features that MAJOR multi million dollar titles like WoW haven't even slightly implemented (all those siege weapons, destructable keeps, naval warfare, HOUSING zones) and you mark it.. AVERAGE?? I knew there was a reason I had no faith in this website.
Hmm i knew you could turn XP off but was told you couldn't turn RP's off. Although i probably asked this question while in Midgard. It wouldn't suprise me if they were lying to me instead of helping. As i said they weren't a very friendly bunch.
yep, /xp off and /rp off, you can also remove all your rp on your toon if you forget to turn it off and cap out of a bg. My bg toons have been restarted so many times I lost count. I never understood the whole beef with the UI. They have the same hotbars and same macro making abilities of most games. You can also bind just about anything to anything other thing and using macros can hit any key to do anything the xml interface will let you do. Things that keep me coming back are the things that no other game has come close to getting right. The seige/keep dynamic being the biggest thing. Lol, that game had so many things that others didn't still don't when it came out even current players forget. When was the last time one of you veterans played a game of virtual dice or cards while waiting for something to happen? Ambiguous macros that spawned specific macros? Ah, the time I've wasted exploring just the 'extras' in that game. I laugh every time I log into my inf with her dual light sabers and boogey mask.
I've been around MMORPG for some time now, and I've read more than my fair share of the articles that have been spewed across the home page. That said, I have to say, this is by far the most one-sided, BULL&*(^, article that I've read to date.
First and foremost, the article appears to have never been proofread or viewed by an editor. The commonality of missing words makes me immediately believe that the typist was lying through his teeth as he puked forth this ridiculous article. (Much like liars that are writing something by hand, not typing it, will skip words in their discourse.) I sincerely hope they were not paid for it.
Secondly, the overwhelmingly positive review is nothing at all like what a player will really experience in the game. At least, not as far as any interaction with other players is concerned. The vast majority of players left in the game are the same people that you will find on the VN Ywain (google it) forum. They are not the kind of people to welcome, group with, help sincerely, and least of all, give money to, new players.
When it comes to completing different aspects of the game, forget it. The high end pve content requires groups, and groups are damn near impossible to get. And if, by some miracle of luck, you do manage to get a group for something major (a.k.a. - Dragon raid, Big 3, epic dungeon raid), expecting the raid leader to steal the best items is not far from realistic.
Join a guild, you say? Good luck with that. The average player in Dark Age of Camelot knows absolutely nothing about loyalty, let alone realm pride. Without those, you're going to find it very difficult to even reach level 50 legitimately, let alone gearing up your character "properly" to participate in the end game content. The players left in the game, for probably the past 4-5 years at least, have been extremely quick to change from playing one realm to playing another. (Typically, these people are refered to as "relic jumpers", "relic riders", "spies", and "cross realmers".) The minute realm X is under siege, especially if they are losing, people will begin logging out, changing over to realm Y (that's kicking their arse), and begin playing for that realm.
When it comes to player versus player (realm vs realm) combat, you can expect to be left out in the cold again for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, there are requirements to get into a "real" pvp group. (That's a group that makes more than 2,000 realm points before disbanding, or that doesn't take takes 30 minutes to buff, 20 minutes to find some bad guys, and then 30 seconds to die.)
Your character must be well known.
Your ability to play your character must be well known.
Your character must be "templated".
You must have a 2nd account that you pay $15 a month for specifically to buff your characters. (Must own a buff bot.)
Your character must be a higher realm rank. (Realm Rank 5+, on average, to even get someone to look at you.)
You must have ventrilo or teamspeak or gsc, whichever the group is using.
If you don't meet ALL of those requirements, you might as well resign yourself to running solo characters (that will always get killed by "small man" and "8man" groups) or play solely in the battlegrounds (where the first 3 to 4 points listed above still apply). Regardless of where you play, in pvp, the game has been heavily unbalanced in favor of one realm for the past 5 years. From high level abilities being available to very low level character's pets, to high value, instant, area of effect, realm targeted (does not have to be in your group) heals, to flat out ridiculous amounts of damage when their realm has NO relics giving them bonuses, the battlegrounds game is, especially, VERY one-sided. (And the battlegrounds are still home to bugs that were reported OVER 8 years ago.)
One of three things that might be even remotely "great" about Dark Age of Camelot nowadays is the crafting system, and that's only because it was massively overhauled a few years back. One character can now master every crafting skill in the game, so there is no longer a need to switch characters. Where once you needed 4-5 characters to "gear up" a character, you now may only need one. It used to require 1) an Armorcrafter or Tailor to make a suit of armor, 2) a Weaponcrafter and/or a Fletcher to make melee and/or ranged weapons/staves, 3) a Spellcrafter for enchantment and spellcrafting, and 4) an Alchemist for procs, reactives, potions, and dyes. And if you aren't in control of all of the crafters that you need, good luck finding players that are a) poor enough or helpful enough to want to do the work for it, b) reasonably priced, and c) aren't logging off the minute you ask for crafting assistance.
Second of three in the "might be great" category would be the Dark Age of Camelot housing system. There, a single character (per account, to avoid people greeding up all the available house space) may own a house. Each house is capable of storing up to 2,000 slots worth of items inside their house vaults (for a mansion, which costs 20 platinum to purchase the mansion deed, XXX gold/platinum to purchase a lot on which to place the mansion, and then 200 gold per week for rent). Each house may be decorated with a huge variety of items (via in-house decoration stores and hookpoints) as well as a very large number of player-assembled trophies. And finally, every house is capable of displaying the owner's guild's banner (if there was actually any sense of community or loyalty left in the game, of course).
And finally, in the "might be great" category would be the Consignment / Housing Explorer system. Forget all those bull^&*% games filled with auction houses that you have to wait hours and days to buy items through and those "What do you want to pay for it? (Insert your answer here) Nope, that's not enough." item sellers of World of Warcrap and just about every other game on the market. In DAoC, players set prices at their home's consignment merchant, and other players shop around for the best prices to purchase the items they want/need in the Housing Explorer (conveniently located at the entrance of housing, and at each housing zone's center). Once an item is found, the item can be purchased at 20% markup through the Housing Explorer, or a character may travel to the seller's house and buy the item at the posted price. I find it absolutely ridiculous that any game supports a game where, essentially, you go to the store for a loaf of bread, and the grocery clerk tells you to tell them what it's worth. Thankfully, Dark Age of Camelot is NOT one of those! Oh, I know, there are a few WOWtards in Dark Age of Camelot that still try to sell items that way, but they are definitely a very small minority.
And there ya have it. A much more realistic, and truthful, account of what Dark Age of Camelot is really like.
About the author:
Stormbow has been playing Dark Age of Camelot since 2001, has been part of 2 expansion closed betas, has seen the players come and go as new expansions were released and as other games went gold and turned into tarnished brass. Stormbow saw the RP servers go from hardcore roleplayers to assinine players that were only there because the RP servers had a higher population. Stormbow has been the guild leader, the guild officer, and the guild newb. Stormbow has been the noob and the 1337 dood; he has been forced to solo and has held his own and then some while running with the hardcore bad asses in 8man guild groups getting 200,000 RPs per hour. Stormbow has even created his own custom user interface for the game, to include pioneering some features of custom UIs that are now used *cough*plagiarized*cough* in many other's UIs. And through it all, Stormbow remains the single most reliable person to help someone out when -HE SEES- they need a hand, not JUST when they're running around asking/begging for handouts. (And as soon as he get done moving state-to-state, he welcomes anyone to challenge him on that. ;p ) Stormbow also likes to talk about himself in third person in this "About the author" section because he's crazy like that. :P
Quoted for truth. Well said, Raventree. Well said indeed.
it s too bad they gave up Daoc when they landed Failhammer and now they gave up Failhammer for SWTOR.
I like what Stormbow wrote. He should have a nickname like strongbow :P
I7@4ghz, 5970@ 1 ghz/5ghz, water cooled||Former setups Byggblogg||Byggblogg 2|| Msi Wind u100
Adam Tingle made some decent points about the game. Stormbow's review is a lot closer to what I experienced when going back though.
I played DAOC from the day it was released, for about two years. To date, it's still the only MMO I've played for longer than a few months. Largely due to RvR, but also for the oft overlooked PvE. IMHO, it also had the best group PvE gameplay, back in the days when everyone still grouped. A little too formulaic maybe, but they took the EQ formula, and (again, IMO) improved it a bit. You could solo, but it was slow and tedious, and there were always groups to be had, just by hanging out in any number of well populated leveling spots. To me, that was a vital part of what made the game what it was, too. Not just the RvR, but the solid PvE that supported it.
Seems like almost every game since that's tried to have both PvP and PvE has failed (if not outright neglected) one or the other. The only exceptions that even come kinda sorta close are Aion and WoW. Think it's coincidence that they're the top two pay-to-play MMOs these days?
It's too bad there's probably no way to bring new life to DAOC's PvE. Understandable, but without that, it's just too much of a niche game.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Me and my guild loved daoc but in the end it boiled down to, we had done everything in the game multiple level 50s all crafting skils massive house different horses high realm rank. in the end it turned from a game into a job.
i will say this dark age of camelot still holds the best pvp of any game ive played and nothing will fill me with joy than seeing 100 people from each realm clash in a massive fight outside a keep and trying to work out who do you kill first.
the pve was never its strong point even back wen leveling was quite slow you needed certain classes else it was a pain all that mythic did was double exp gain and in some cases trippled it.
also the other problem is you dont learn your class from pve you learn to play it at pvp a bard in pve plays end and maybe power song (both chants now) and heals in pvp its totally different if your bard is healing he isnt crowd controlling.
This is exactly why I don't typically watch posts and/or address anyone that replies to my posts, but I find this laughably hypocritical, so I'll indulge the troll with a feeding.
Proof, huh? My experiences over the past 8+ years (as posted in my previous "wall of text") are every bit as valid a form of "proof" as what is likely someone's "free trial" played time so they could write a review. So, yeah, I had a good laugh over that line.
As for your own personal played time, well, let's just say I doubt you get paid to play video games for a living. Oh wait, this is the internet, of course you do. My bad. You win. And really, that's one of those "even if you win, you're still retarded" classes of things to try to bring up ... anywhere. Good job. (And let's be completely honest, I'm sure I'm not the only one around here that would bet your job, or mine for that matter if I wasn't a stay-home dad, is more related to- DING! Fries ready!) What's next? Your level 50 character can beat up my level 50 character? LOL Classic!
Mr. Tingle's played time aside, and as has been attested to by others in this thread, a player is much more likely to find negative players and a negative experience in Dark Age of Camelot nowadays than they are to find positive players or experiences. That was the entire point of my original post, setting the record straight after that bogus, overly-positive (read: misleading) nonsense.
As much as we may wish to the contrary, the truth remains. And, like that bad T.V. show once claimed, the truth is out there. (Note to the woefully imperceptive: That's a link to the free trial. As in, everyone's entitled to their own opinion of the game. For some "reviewer" to come along and post so much "positive" stuff about the game without being realistic or objective was just ridiculous and someone had to get in here and post the truth: the negatives are more numerous than the postives.)
I don't really like to reply to the comments I receive on my reviews but here goes. You’re entitled to your opinion that’s fine, however, I feel you are being overtly aggressive.
I have played this game on and off since its launch. I am not a hardcore veteran neither a "free trial" player as you put it. I own this game, I enjoy this game and I feel I was objective in my comments. I started this game with a dozen level 50's and also rolled afresh. I spent a fair amount of time over the last few months playing this game, I enjoy writing these reviews as much as I do playing games, I have nothing to gain by lying.
in regards to the state of the community; on my new character I received money and armor from almost every veteran I happened across offering help. On my older characters I received numerous guild invites, lots of help and guidance. Please do not insult me and tell me exactly how I experienced the game, from what I have seen, the community is friendly and very welcoming to new comers, your experience may differ.
This is a great game, I had some issues with it as mentioned but there is a lot to be positive about. Surely the easy path for any review is simply to outline the faults? Only see the negatives in an old game? I respect your feedback and take onboard various comments; I just feel you are being a little unfair.
And this shakermaker0 is why re-reviewing old games is generally a bad idea. You just piss off the old and former players and you aren't going to convince any youngins to play it if they haven't already.
Your criticisms of the UI does make me scratch my head...the UI is totally cusomizable and very easy to with drag and drop, no setting involved at all. What "macro creating hell"? Shift left click on the command. All usable items have icons if open their info. What macro would a new player need to create?
Communication is a very rough edge in the game compared to more modern one's but you don't mention it at all...having to tyoe someones full character name and server name to send a tell is a pain...
You talk about "power leveling" but you don't have to do task dungeons at all. You can do several other things in its place like do the original quest. You can do missions in the PvP areas, you can grind in the places like Darkness Falls if you are nostalgic for the good old days. You can do so many things to level quickly these days its not even funny and you didn't mention anything about gaining free levels.
You don't really touch on the actual RvR experience whatso ever just kinda kick at it with more criticisms about bots but then say it's great.
Many of your criticism exist in many aged games...the populations are aged and new comers are rare. The isn't filled with players who do want to "explore the world", they already have...years ago. No one forces you to power level to 50 in 5 days....in any game.
So if I was to look at your "re-review" as someone who knew nothing about DAoC, I really don't get any idea what the game itself is actually like but I did get an eyeful of criticisms of things that maybe aren't necessarily even worth mentioning.
So while your re-review was a nice endeavor on a classic MMO, your criticism IMHO have more to do with playstyle then actual game issues...and then all I really see in the re-review is the negative aspects but no real depth to anything actually happening ingame. How does PvE compare to new games? Reading this I would say "dunno". How does the RvR or PvP rate to other games? Reading this I gotta honestly say "dunno". You very briefly touch on the classes of the game but there are over 44 of them...how does this compare to modern MMO's...again "dunno". How does the game world stand up to todays games..."dunno". How does DAoC stand up to other MMO's in terms of complexity? Again "dunno".
How has the game changed since the disasterous "Trials of Atlantis" expansion? This is what old vets really want to know and after reading this re-review...dunno.
If one can't handle a little criticism, especially anywhere a forum is involved, one probably shouldn't be writing for the public. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it goes. I'm as "overtly" aggressive as the review was "overtly" positive and an "overtly" atypical experience. The public has a right to know how atypical the experiences were, and to be forewarned about the true average of behavior in the game. "Officially" reviewing a game and "painting a pretty picture" of the game is, at the least, misleading. Any one of us could log into the game right now and, before too long, see that the majority of players in the game spend their time ignoring people that ask for help (if not specifically and intentionally being sarcastic or flat out misdirective in response) or talking trash and hating on others, known or unknown. (Well, outside of the tutorial anyway. Almost no one talks to each other in the tutorial.) The point I was making is that the community is more antisocial than it is social.
For all anyone here knew, this very well could have been a review based on the playing of a "free trial". And really, how objective is reviewing a game from the viewpoint of well known or established characters? There was no reference to how long the game was played, what classes were played or how long they were played, or what level of experience and control of the game was had prior to the review.
Powerleveling is extremely common, as was mentioned in the review, but this is hardly a common occurrence without paying for such a thing, either with gold, platinum, items, or real life cash. Getting powerleveled as a level nothing newbie to the game? Virtually unheard of! That's another mark putting the reviewed experience with the game into the "atypical" category.
I'm glad for you that you find the game to be enjoyable, and that you have been playing it for so many years. I'm glad that you had such a pleasurable time, however atypical, during your play time for the review. I wish you all the luck in the world to continue finding the game to be fun. (It gives me more people to kill or help, depending on which side of the game you're playing. :P)
I would also like to point out, I did not "focus on the negative". I very specifically listed three things in Dark Age of Camelot that could be considered great aspects of the game. But I can understand how you might have felt personally attacked by my review of the game, after I definitely attacked your review of the game, and may have skipped over or forgotten about those paragraphs.
As the old saying goes, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. With Dark Age of Camelot, that's the best you can do, and you can't prepare for what you don't know about. It's "a little unfair" to chastise me for preparing anyone for what I have have experienced in the game, for the majority of the recent years I've been playing the game.
This is the internet, so it's not surprising that a couple here in the thread have thought I was mad about this review. In fact, I am not. I just don't believe it was a legitimate review of several aspects of the game. (Those being pvp and the community.)
I know that some are not aware of it, so I'll go ahead and mention it here- Before the Use1 and Use2 abilities of items had their own icons, you could make macros to access said abilities. Those macros may also be used to access whatever is in a specific slot of your inventory. Why is that helpful? It might not be to everyone, but if you always keep your water breathing potion (for example) in slot 30 of your inventory, the macro will always access that slot without you having to replace the potion's USE icon every time you replace the used up potion. (Some people are epic lazy, they like crap like that.)
The more common macros used in the game are:
To make an assist button: ( /macro make /macro MA /assist %t ) That macro button is then placed on a quickbar slot and you can instantly create your assist icon by targeting someone and actvating that macro. Knowing how and when to assist is of the utmost importance if you want to "run with the big dogs".
To create range finders / ground targets: ( /macro DISTANCE /groundset #### ) e.g. /macro 1000 /groundset 1000 to set a ground target mark quickly at a range of 1000 units. NOTE: The game was patched to include bonuses for being at a higher elevation than your target, and penalties for being at a lower elevation than your target. THE BONUSES WERE REMOVED, BUT NOT THE PENALTIES, so plan accordingly. (That means being on a tower, trying to set a ground target at your spell's maximum range 1400 for example, will net you the error message of the ground target being out of range.) (Also note: /groundassist charactername is used to see other's ground targets, and coordinate trap placement, etc.)
And remember, you can modify the keybinds with the /keyboard window.
You guys just don't seem to get what he means by his complaints with the UI
the fact that you have to type all these stupid commands to do anything at all is the point. Why should I have to type /keyboard to modify keybinds when it should be in the controls part of the options menu. Why should I have to type an insane amount of shit to make one macro?
The UI is very dated and should be re-done. But it is good for it's age, but the age is showing hardcore.