Yes DAoC is dated and its PvE is lacking BUT, it has the best keep warfare PvP system in the industry and that is what will keep it alive until a better system is made. I beta'd EQ2 and got a couple of charaters into their 30's since then but for some reason that game just bores the hell out of me. Good graphics do not make a game. Now if EQ2 emulated DAoC's battlegrounds and keep warfare system when they add PvP then they would pull in alot more players.
I reactivated my DAoC account a few weeks ago and jumped into the battlegrounds and had a blast. I forgot how much fun it was. The new instanced task dungeons were made to get people to level fast to get to the PvP action. The devs at DAoC know that people play it mostly for PvP and that is what they focus on. Most of the PvE stuff is just there to get you better equiped for PvP.
Originally posted by genesis885 DAOC has instancing now? from what i remember there was dungeons but anyone and their brother could get in them, not just your specific group. Does EQII have instances?
You remember incorrectly. Many dungeons in DAoC are instanced, have been since Catacombs. Anybody can get in them, but each party gets their own copy of the dungeon.
Chris Mattern
False: The dungeons in the game are not instanced. There are adventure wings within the dungeons that ARE instanced if your group chooses to go there. There are also "task dungeons' that are only available if you choose to get a task dungeon mission from the taskmaster nearby. These do not drop any loot, only money and some junk items, but have a slight xp bonus and scale to the level of your group so they're typically used to grind XP by players who just want to get to 50 as quickly as possible.
But the dungeons themselves are NOT instanced, only the above two types are. There ARE some quest instances as well but they're rare.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by Askatan I really dont get it.... DAoC is constantly losing players and has not even 40% of its peak player level left. why? PvE in DAoC is simply outdated in every aspect. too much grind, and not much variation. and DAoCs UI and controls are really bad.
EQ2 is SUCH a fun game and even if you turn down the grafics, it still looks better than DAoC in any way. EQ2 has far superior crafting, an incredible amount of different and fun quests, great sound, and a beautiful world. I dont know how the "PvP" is turning out in EQ2, but when we start talking about PvP, DAoC is simply lousy. play Shadowbane or EVE (my favourite game) if you want PvP. the so called "RvR" is not even a poor copy of the REAL "Realm versus Realm" you will find in those games. in DAoC, all PvP doesnt matter, because you will never be able to conquer a terretory once and for all. you will NEVER be able to really defeat one realm. in EVE and Shadowbane the so called "realms" (in DAoC speak) are REAL PLAYER MADE AND CONTROLLED factions. player guilds or alliances that fight for ALL terretory in a free for all PvP. to say DAoC is better than EQ2 because of "PvP" or "RvR" is just wrong.
EQ2 is a 3rd generation game and DAoC is just a bad copy of Shadowbane with better grafics. if you want "better" grafics, why settle for better than really bad. go for GREAT -> EQ2 and EQ2 is actually increasing in player count
Askatan
1) Shadowbane is a vastly inferior game to DAOC. It came out AFTER DAOC by the way and copied a lot of it's PVP concepts from DAOC, admitted so by the devs during beta.
2) PVE is not a grind in DAOC anymore. When was the last time you played? In fact you can get to 50 faster in DAOC than you can in EQ2. This is fact. Also: There is no 'repetitiveness' to DAOC's grind unless YOU, the PLAYER, put it there. There are so many places to go on your way to 50 that you could conceivably hit 50 and never hunt the same area twice. Most people choose to go the TD route (which I find boring and repetitive) but I personally hit level 40 on a character on a classic server (no /level command to skip to 20) in under a month and never did a TD or hunted the same area twice. It was fun, and I learned a lot about the new areas I'd not seen before.
I played DAOC at release and at THAT time much of what you said would be true. But today DAOC is a much improved and vastly superior experience to what it was back then.
As to crafting: Yes DAOC's crafting is boring. Anyone will admit that. Which is why the devs are working on a crafting upgrade for the game. However, the items that you make at master levels in DAOC are among the best items you can get in the game. And on classic servers they are *the* best in the game. So crafters are very popular folks and can demand pretty good prices for their products.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by genesis885 EQII is going to be making so major changes this month
An SOe game doing that...NO! it can't be .....
Par for the course.
There is no vision.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it." Brad McQuaid Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc. Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes www.vanguardsoh
1) Shadowbane is a vastly inferior game to DAOC. It came out AFTER DAOC by the way and copied a lot of it's PVP concepts from DAOC, admitted so by the devs during beta.
I wonder which fanboi gave you that information. I followed the development of Shadowbane and DAoC for years. actually from the first press releases. DAoC IS a copy of Shadowbane combined with what they copied from EQ.
DAoC markets RvR combat which does NOT work as they had promised or as Shadowbane implemented it. DAoC had a huge backing by some rant sites that spread false rumors of Shadowbane being vaporware and a copy of DAoC. Because I had followed the development (and being an early beta tester ) I know that was not true. The beta of shadowbane took much longer than the one of DAoC, because the balancing in TRUE free for all, everywhere PvP with player built cities turned out to be a tiny little more complicated than the EQ clone that DAoC is. DAoC strangely introduced some features shortly after the SB people had introduced them in their game.
DAoC is and has always been a unoriginal and faked product. Shadowbanes problems are the not so pretty grafics and lacking financial backing (they even lost 1 or 2 publishers ). But the gameplay and especially the PvP with TRUE player built and controlled "REALMS" (cities and "kingdoms" in SB) is in every aspekt superior to that of DAoC.
I dont like a company that advertized features as great that other products have implemented 10000 times better. EVE and SB have.
2) PVE is not a grind in DAOC anymore. When was the last time you played? In fact you can get to 50 faster in DAOC than you can in EQ2.
and still 50 times slower than in Shadowbane
This is fact. Also: There is no 'repetitiveness' to DAOC's grind unless YOU, the PLAYER, put it there. There are so many places to go on your way to 50 that you could conceivably hit 50 and never hunt the same area twice. Most people choose to go the TD route (which I find boring and repetitive) but I personally hit level 40 on a character on a classic server (no /level command to skip to 20) in under a month and never did a TD or hunted the same area twice. It was fun, and I learned a lot about the new areas I'd not seen before.
I played DAOC at release and at THAT time much of what you said would be true. But today DAOC is a much improved and vastly superior experience to what it was back then.
I played it at release too. It was the most terrible MMORPG experience I had ever experienced. And even if you level faster now, the terrible UI, the stupid controls and the lack of content in combination with that carebear PvP system wont change DAoC into a better game.
As to crafting: Yes DAOC's crafting is boring. Anyone will admit that. Which is why the devs are working on a crafting upgrade for the game.
they had how many years to "fix" the crafting? all I have to say to this typical fanboi cluelessness is: ROFLMAO - go and get your reality checked out--they will never fix it.
All I can say is DON'T play EQ2... like every other SOE game, even if you do manage to enjoy it, eventually the evil devs will do something to just totally kill it. So only go for an SOE if you like to /cry and/or break your keyboard repeatedly in frustration when that patch comes that finally destroys it all.
DAoC: released Sept. 1, 2001. Shadowbane: released March 25, 2003.
As to the topic, for me personally DAoC is simply a superior game overall to EQ II. EQ II does have a few things going for it:
1. More realistic graphics on a high end 'rig.
2. Deeper and more entertaining crafting system.
3. Better quests (more of them, more varied, generally better implemented).
4. Any class can solo well (some classes are better than others, but the disparity is far greater between say . . .a Vampre and a Druid than between any two classes in EQ II).
5. You can level purely as a crafter (I liked that a lot).
So don't think I'm a total EQ II hater. But overall DAoC just a better game than EQ II to me. The PvP in DAoC is better by light years than anything SOE is even thinking about implementing in EQ II. But RvR warfare is one of the cetral design elements of DAoC, no surprise there. Now for the opinions that will get me flamed to hell and back. In my mind DAoC has an overall better graphics engine than EQ II, and it has a much more enjoyable PvE game.
The Graphics:
If you have all of the expansions and a fully DX 9 compliant card with decent RAM, DAoC looks nearly as good as EQ II. If you haven't played DAoC in the last three months with all the expansions enabled, you have no idea what it looks like. It's not the game you remember from even a year ago. It doesn't have all the lighting effects and texture layers that the EQ II engine is capable of. But it runs at a buttery smooth framerate in all but the biggest zergs. Framerates trump the extra 5-10% detail that you can squeeze out of the EQ II engine any day, in my mind. That said, I will admit that there are a few areas and mobs in DAoC that haven't yet been revamped and still look quite fugly.
The PvE game:
It is much faster paced, and much more varied, especially at low levels. Without writing war and peace about it, there are just a lot more things to do besides questing in DAoC, and the three realms are much more varied in comparison to eachother than the "good" versus "evil" sides in EQ II. That adds a ton of replayability. Once I got bored with my main, EQ II was done for me. The thought of grinding through identical lowbie areas or grinding through the exact same items for my first ten crafter levels just sounded like torture. I tried a good character, but it just felt too similar to the evil lowbie game. I've been playing DAoC on and off since launch, and there are still a ton of things I look forward to trying out the next time I fire it up.
In addition to all of this, EQ II feels very "generic" to me and DAoC doesn't (well, except for Albion). Hibernia and Midgard both have a very distinct "feel" to them that I really find delightfull, and that are pretty original (at least as original as something that borrows heavilly from myths can be i guess!). EQ II has always felt like some sort of cliched AD&D clone to me. The only EQ area I can think of that felt trully original to me was Luclin (and to a lesser extent Kunark actually). It felt very much like "Burroughs style Sci-fi" meets fantasy. I liked it a lot. But they decided to blow Luclin up for EQ II . . . .so no luck there. I should note that i haven't played the DoF expansion, and all accounts are that it has a much more intersting feel to it than the rest of EQ II. I'll likely fire it up again one day just ton check it out.
In closing, I think the OP is picking between two of the best MMORPGs on the market right now. You can't really go wrong with either choice. But you asked for an opinion, and that's mine.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Originally posted by Yeebo DAoC: released Sept. 1, 2001. Shadowbane: released March 25, 2003.
Yes, it's a fact that Shadowbane was released years after DAoC. My guild tried Shadowbane but it was just a weak copy of DAoC with a lot of bug.
I suggest DAoC as the best RvR based game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Betrayal At Krondor: "the prime example of how a CRPG should be done"
Comments
Yes DAoC is dated and its PvE is lacking BUT, it has the best keep warfare PvP system in the industry and that is what will keep it alive until a better system is made. I beta'd EQ2 and got a couple of charaters into their 30's since then but for some reason that game just bores the hell out of me. Good graphics do not make a game. Now if EQ2 emulated DAoC's battlegrounds and keep warfare system when they add PvP then they would pull in alot more players.
I reactivated my DAoC account a few weeks ago and jumped into the battlegrounds and had a blast. I forgot how much fun it was. The new instanced task dungeons were made to get people to level fast to get to the PvP action. The devs at DAoC know that people play it mostly for PvP and that is what they focus on. Most of the PvE stuff is just there to get you better equiped for PvP.
The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave
That's pretty amazing since DAoC came out a couple years before Shadowbane.
You remember incorrectly. Many dungeons in DAoC are instanced, have been since Catacombs. Anybody can get in them, but each party gets their own copy of the dungeon.
Chris Mattern
False: The dungeons in the game are not instanced. There are adventure wings within the dungeons that ARE instanced if your group chooses to go there. There are also "task dungeons' that are only available if you choose to get a task dungeon mission from the taskmaster nearby. These do not drop any loot, only money and some junk items, but have a slight xp bonus and scale to the level of your group so they're typically used to grind XP by players who just want to get to 50 as quickly as possible.
But the dungeons themselves are NOT instanced, only the above two types are. There ARE some quest instances as well but they're rare.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
1) Shadowbane is a vastly inferior game to DAOC. It came out AFTER DAOC by the way and copied a lot of it's PVP concepts from DAOC, admitted so by the devs during beta.
2) PVE is not a grind in DAOC anymore. When was the last time you played? In fact you can get to 50 faster in DAOC than you can in EQ2. This is fact. Also: There is no 'repetitiveness' to DAOC's grind unless YOU, the PLAYER, put it there. There are so many places to go on your way to 50 that you could conceivably hit 50 and never hunt the same area twice. Most people choose to go the TD route (which I find boring and repetitive) but I personally hit level 40 on a character on a classic server (no /level command to skip to 20) in under a month and never did a TD or hunted the same area twice. It was fun, and I learned a lot about the new areas I'd not seen before.
I played DAOC at release and at THAT time much of what you said would be true. But today DAOC is a much improved and vastly superior experience to what it was back then.
As to crafting: Yes DAOC's crafting is boring. Anyone will admit that. Which is why the devs are working on a crafting upgrade for the game. However, the items that you make at master levels in DAOC are among the best items you can get in the game. And on classic servers they are *the* best in the game. So crafters are very popular folks and can demand pretty good prices for their products.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
An SOe game doing that...NO! it can't be .....
Par for the course.
There is no vision.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
All I can say is DON'T play EQ2... like every other SOE game, even if you do manage to enjoy it, eventually the evil devs will do something to just totally kill it. So only go for an SOE if you like to /cry and/or break your keyboard repeatedly in frustration when that patch comes that finally destroys it all.
DAoC: released Sept. 1, 2001. Shadowbane: released March 25, 2003.
As to the topic, for me personally DAoC is simply a superior game overall to EQ II. EQ II does have a few things going for it:
1. More realistic graphics on a high end 'rig.
2. Deeper and more entertaining crafting system.
3. Better quests (more of them, more varied, generally better implemented).
4. Any class can solo well (some classes are better than others, but the disparity is far greater between say . . .a Vampre and a Druid than between any two classes in EQ II).
5. You can level purely as a crafter (I liked that a lot).
So don't think I'm a total EQ II hater. But overall DAoC just a better game than EQ II to me. The PvP in DAoC is better by light years than anything SOE is even thinking about implementing in EQ II. But RvR warfare is one of the cetral design elements of DAoC, no surprise there. Now for the opinions that will get me flamed to hell and back. In my mind DAoC has an overall better graphics engine than EQ II, and it has a much more enjoyable PvE game.
The Graphics:
If you have all of the expansions and a fully DX 9 compliant card with decent RAM, DAoC looks nearly as good as EQ II. If you haven't played DAoC in the last three months with all the expansions enabled, you have no idea what it looks like. It's not the game you remember from even a year ago. It doesn't have all the lighting effects and texture layers that the EQ II engine is capable of. But it runs at a buttery smooth framerate in all but the biggest zergs. Framerates trump the extra 5-10% detail that you can squeeze out of the EQ II engine any day, in my mind. That said, I will admit that there are a few areas and mobs in DAoC that haven't yet been revamped and still look quite fugly.
The PvE game:
It is much faster paced, and much more varied, especially at low levels. Without writing war and peace about it, there are just a lot more things to do besides questing in DAoC, and the three realms are much more varied in comparison to eachother than the "good" versus "evil" sides in EQ II. That adds a ton of replayability. Once I got bored with my main, EQ II was done for me. The thought of grinding through identical lowbie areas or grinding through the exact same items for my first ten crafter levels just sounded like torture. I tried a good character, but it just felt too similar to the evil lowbie game. I've been playing DAoC on and off since launch, and there are still a ton of things I look forward to trying out the next time I fire it up.
In addition to all of this, EQ II feels very "generic" to me and DAoC doesn't (well, except for Albion). Hibernia and Midgard both have a very distinct "feel" to them that I really find delightfull, and that are pretty original (at least as original as something that borrows heavilly from myths can be i guess!). EQ II has always felt like some sort of cliched AD&D clone to me. The only EQ area I can think of that felt trully original to me was Luclin (and to a lesser extent Kunark actually). It felt very much like "Burroughs style Sci-fi" meets fantasy. I liked it a lot. But they decided to blow Luclin up for EQ II . . . .so no luck there. I should note that i haven't played the DoF expansion, and all accounts are that it has a much more intersting feel to it than the rest of EQ II. I'll likely fire it up again one day just ton check it out.
In closing, I think the OP is picking between two of the best MMORPGs on the market right now. You can't really go wrong with either choice. But you asked for an opinion, and that's mine.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Yes, it's a fact that Shadowbane was released years after DAoC. My guild tried Shadowbane but it was just a weak copy of DAoC with a lot of bug.
I suggest DAoC as the best RvR based game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Betrayal At Krondor: "the prime example of how a CRPG should be done"