Mythic's DAoC - Still In Development (Beta+), Goodbye

[Saxonlight]

I am basically done with this game. I will not be renewing my subscription at the end of the month.

Mythic has restricted the leveling capability of my primary characters class to such a degree that the game is not fun to play. And the amount of time I would have to invest in keeping up with all the other classes in levels is way too much for the amount of reward.

To all of you ingame who think this game is the BEST and your class is still powerfull, well your day will come. The archery patches were not tested by Mythic, right now they are looking to customers to give them feedback on the amount of damage archers do because they dont have a clue what they are doing.

All I can say is Mythics stupidity will lead to a quick death for this game. There are other games on the horizon.

All people out there thinking of playing DAoC, you would be well advised to wait and check out Mythics competition.

An example can be found here: http://www.blizzard.com/wow/

Mythic have given us an ok game, however, this game is still under-development, not all dungeons are itemised, bugs have gone un fixed for weeks (the horse bug), every new patch nerfs a new class, every new patch introduces more bugs. Like I have said in my other posts, Mythic would rather swing the nerf bat (anger customers by making their character inaffective)than fix game breaking bugs.

Potential new players I would strongly advise you not to play DAoC. Mythic totaly screwed over all the enchanters, archers and pet classes in the game making it extreamly hard to level and progress and above all have fun.

I give this game 6 months, people will leave in mass numbers for greener pastures.

SaxonLight
32 Ranger
(A month of work wasted - thanks for the burn Mythic way to treat your customers)

BTW - today I will be posting messages similar to this on all the gameing sites I can find, to warn people of Mythics stupidity and rip-off of a game.

Yes, dungeons are not fully itemized and there are a lot of things that could be added for characters when they hit 35+ (such as more epic quests). However, Dark Age of Camelot is by far the most advanced and entertaining (in my opinion) of *any* MMORPG during their initial release.

Take Ultima Online for example, which was practically unplayable from the amount of lag and serious amount of bugs during the first few months.

Or how about EverQuest, which had huge class balance issues and bugged monsters, even alloweing Necromancers (whose lifetap spells were irresistible in the first few months) to get to level 50 in a week or so by simply lifetapping level 40+ monsters that had pathing issues. And once you hit level 50, there was nothing to do except Lower Guk. Period. There was no PvP, no Plane of Fear, nothing until several months after release.

I would bring up Anarchy Online or World War II Online, but I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of how many problems those games went through. You can't even begin to compare them to DAoC's smooth release.

Face it, every MMORPG is going to have its share of problems during the first few months. Nobody can prepare for what 100,000 players are going to do when the game is released. Out of all MMORPGs released, I think Dark Age of Camelot is by far the most stable and fun to play, and I'm sorry you feel that it is a "rip-off".

[ParadoxIncarnate]

I'm sorry, but those games were pioneers of the genre. ultima online has the best excuse being the FIRST mmorpg, and one of the best, in my opinion. it was very pvp oriented and created a natural faction system with its initial release. blues vs reds. you either chose a faction (which probably reflected more than any other forced alignment system in ANY game, judge by actions not by words), or you became a tradesman whose skills were actually profitable and player-oriented. later on after the reputation patch, things became more of a guild v guild squabbles rather than the larger war. which was a great deal of fun as well, blasting each other in town, regrouping, raiding guild hunting spots or meeting places. lets not forget ownership of property or the ability to run it in windowed mode.

then came everquest, the first 3d mmorpg. pulled it off beautifully; literally. while the servers were relatively inaccessible for the first week or two, when they did come up (and when i did upgrade my machine) it was quite a sight to behold. full characters. delicious spells. races that could be judged accordingly by npcs. it didnt really hold my interest due to the enormous amount of time necessary to play it and be among the elite, but thats not to say it wasnt a visually stunning, wonderfully written, extremely welcome shift of the paradigm. also, class balance issues you brought up sound mostly like former class-envy. the first level 50 was kalaran on the veeshan server. a rogue.

but after this, what happened? verant saw what it had to take its target audience away from and acted accordingly. ultima was a great game which had a sense of community. EQ took the scene with a game that was years ahead of UO graphically and had a much deeper feel to it. other companies saw this. they didnt realize the effort put forth by both of these companies and just figured it was a way to make money.

anarchy online? a joke. WWII online? cant give a personal opinion because i never played it, but that also seems to be the problem with the people that bought the game as well: they could never play it.

now, camelot? when i first started playing, i just thought, "i run really slow and this game is really huge." And it is. good lord the landscape never ends. after i learned the steps i proceeded to evaluate it.

now, as far as class balance goes, i would have to say that camelot has its share of problems as well. im fairly confident that my first character, a mercenary, is the worst class in the game. it is outdamaged by armsmen. cant wear the armor they can. doesnt get parry until 17 while the other tanks get it at either 1 or 5. doesnt get dual wield until 10, while the other dual wielding classes get it at 5, etc etc. there was a post on them awhile back that addressed every issue one could ever be concerned with, but telling you that mercenaries are a weak class is not the point. the point is that while this game doesnt have any egregious class flaws (necro petkill feign, take ghoul lord by yourself) the classes are not quite balanced.

as for game content let me just say, at level 50 killing off other players is not going to satisfy the needs of most. there will be no loot to reap. no strategy to employ unless you manage to find a group with characters your same level. camping lguk for an item nobody else has will seem a welcome endeavor when you are 40-50 and everybody else in your class is wearing the same thing as you, and you are just gating around getting killed by purples and killing greys. while i admire the inclusion of pvp into the engine (*cough* everquest *cough*) i must say that it is not a crutch to lean on because of lack of content.

last few issues in a nutshell because its geting late. spells and models? standard fare, now. nothing to get excited over. stable release? yeah, if you really feel that the first couple of weeks a game comes out reflects on how it should be reviewed as a game, sure. also, i wasnt particularly keen on the idea of fighting for the last ant drone or lough wolf cadger with 800 other newbies. sense of community? no medium of direct travel + no icq/aim = "eh, maybe if i see them around ill group up."
trade skills? only helps people 5 or more levels below you. i can actually feel my time being ripped from my grasp as i watch the yellow ticker fill.

all in all, this is the game that made me feel like im wasting my life playing MMORPGs. while its conceivable to argue that you are wasting your life playing any game, i didnt feel as though i was getting to share an experience with friends or make new online friends. i didnt feel wowed or excited while learning the basics of the game. i didnt feel, well, anything as i leveled from one to fifteen. go find blue, kill, get xp to next level. go find group, kill, get xp to next level. if you happen to be in a dungeon, you get interesting random drops. you want to go do a quest, give this thing to this guy or kill that there and give his loot to that guy and get a new thing you can use. above all, im not having a great deal of fun. sure, you can force a smile, sing some praises, and kill some more blues to make your level, but are you really, truly having fun? the trend of MMORPG quality is that it is rapidly degrading, which is perfectly understandable seeing as how companies are just trying to get a piece of the MMORPG demographics pie, but until we start playing online games because they entertain us and not because we want the newest thing out there or because we like to compete with other people by seeing how much more time we can pour into a game than they can, we arent going to see anything new or revolutionary any time soon.

[Vongol]

Sorry to hear people are so unsatisfied with this game, personally I love it. Unfortunately it is true in comparision to EQ there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever to play it except for the RVR, but the RVR is what counts.

It has just as many issues as EQ did when it was released so I don't agree with you there Buck. The enchanter is basically the equivilant of the Necro and can solo REDS and Purples easily. Also the Hybernia realm is very poorly designed and needs considerable work not only in it's pve but in rvr as well. The Midgardians on the other hand are very over-powered.

You are correct thought that no new game will be flawless and I think they have done very well just as I thought EQ did very well considering the scope of what is involved in these games.

The biggest downside of this game I would have to say is the blatent lie about it's customer service. I have done several very valid appeals about in game problems and never even been given a response back by Mythic support. For example one problem is what I call the "running bug". Occasionally you will get stuck in running mode and the only way to get out of it is to cold boot. Last time I had to do this (and this happens quite frequently) I re-entered the game with rez effects on and a 20 minute run from the spot I was on in the frontier. Not being a complete idiot before the cold boot I ran to a fortress and stuck my character running into a wall so he would not go off and get killed by a mob. Didn't work. I had not been killed by a mob, I had lost no exp, but I did have to pay for 3 constitution points and run 20 minutes back to the spot I had just ran to!

Let's be honost now, Mythic is doing the same thing Verant did, they know they have a cool game to play and therefore do not treat their customers with any respect or put effort into supporting them. And to make matters worse in this regards they claim to charge more for their game monthly because they have superior customer support, when in truth they refuse to interact with their customers at all.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game and all and will continue to keep playing it due to the RvR'ing which is the whole purpose of it and really the only fun offered by the game over any other MORPG. Though I would appreciate it if there was a little more honesty on their part.

Lower their price since they do not provide CS as claimed and work a little harder on getting the realms evened out as far as class power are concerned before the servers all get too lopsided.

[ 12-03-2001: Message edited by: Vongol ]

[ParadoxIncarnate]

If bugs and pricing were my only concern with the game, I would consider myself lucky. Unfortunately, they aren't. I feel as though I'm wasting my time with this game. Soloing is painful, no matter what class you are. Either the spawn you have in mind is too sparse, or you will eventually get trampled by other things in the camp and there is nothing you can do about it because of (duh) a lack of group-mates. So we either seek out new adventures in places where people will collect and we can group, or we craft. My idea of entertainment is not watching a yellow bar slowly fill, so for the past few days I've been hunting in a nearby low-level dungeon. I've gone from 10 to 11.5 in three days, not because of lack of playing, either. Stupid people that are a necessary stepping stone to my advancement of experience are probably my biggest level-gaining-inhibitor. (Note: I am not particularly misanthropic, but for some reason, 90% of the people I meet either get themselves killed every other fight, or wind up getting the group killed by doing something asinine like attacking a mezzed mob, doing a pull that only a blind person with a low-gamma monitor could manage screwing up, going afk repeatedly, nuking to much to early, or healing too little too late. Or, even worse than getting the group killed, tanks sitting around while everybody is full waiting for something to fall in their lap instead of pulling.)

But what is beyond that? If I do pour more time into it, group with more stupid people, go through agonizing (note the use of "agonizing" as opposed to "entertaining") experience-gaining sessions, all for what? Some rvr action? So I can die because I'm a healer or kill somebody for a realm point? The exclusion of loot is necessary in a level-based game like this, but replacing it with a "realm point" is no better.

So all my countless hours of torment boil down to are "realm points" and more hit points to fight other mobs with more hit points. While a surprisingly complete game, the other side of the coin is zero depth and for some reason, idiots.

[sp8472]

I dont entirely agree with you here paradox. I'm not as experienced at these massive online games as you are, but I have found DAoC very enjoyable. I've tried EQ and found it to be very repetative, much like what you have already said here.

DAoC is not claiming to be a revolutionary new game. It borrows alot from previous games. This is a given. However, the thing about RvR is exciting. I've read a lot of books about Arthurian Legend and to be apart of the Post Arthurian age is very intriguing. The names of races, places, and people give me a link to the literature. Going a bit deeper, the RvR allows me to be a part of this struggle that happens after all the things that I've already read about in the books. That and the Camelot Herald is up which lets me know which realm is winning.

I don't want to tread on your toes here, but you sound like an disgruntled EQ fan that bought this game and find almost nothing intriguing for the price that you've paid. I've done some more reading and this game has a myriad of differences that make it much deeper than EQ. Now that a new addition to the EQ family has been released things may be different, but Mythic has put out a very good game here.

I wouldn't complain too much about class differences. This game like EQ will evolve. If you say that camelot should not have these problems because it is the latest mmorpg then you are mistaken. Look at Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction. It is the 3rd in the sequence and it too had class imbalances still being resolved.

Also, this game is meant to be group orientated, almost to the point of discouraging solo play. I also find that the sense of community is much stronger in DAoC then in EQ. People are much more willing to group at lower levels, and are in general much more friendlier than other games that I've played. Maybe I haven't played EQ enough to experience this but take this for example. I wasn't even at 100 in weaponcrafting, but a person I met and grouped with for a while was an armorer. He made me some boots and when he found out that I was weaponcrafting he instantly said that he'll have to make some trades when I was ready AND that he will refer people to my business. Maybe he was just being polite, but I really felt a part of the game at that point. I wasn't just a computer game player online hacking and slashing, gaining levels, and experiencing the game from the outside. Rather I felt as a person inside the game interacting with my realm, the people in it, and the enemies outside it.

Maybe Mythic should have made soloing more feasable as to not alienate people that just want to play, but If you can find a good group then you will level quicker, albiet very slowly, and at least for me the quality of the gaming experience was much better in groups.

If you are more interested in powerleveling then this game is not for you. EQ is a better fit.

One more thing, although repetative, I find that combat styles are neat to watch and execute when the time comes. Once again it makes me feel like my character in the game as an RPG should.

monks rule

[ParadoxIncarnate]

My purpose is not to tell you that YOU aren't having fun, I'm merely stating that this game's entertainment value is rapidly decreasing.

I'm glad you feel a sense of community. That is how I felt when I first started playing MMORPGs, too. In ultima I was a part of a powerful guild and we made many friends and enemies throughout our days. I held grudges over people that killed me, I gloated over the people I killed, and I made strong relationships with those that fought at my side.

Personally, I don't feel that *at all* in camelot. If a friend you've made plays more hours a week than you, you are going to lose that friend. Same with if you play more hours than your friend. That aside, I am not able to make friends in the game, anyway. I play with two rl friends that have been gaming with me since the days of muds, and our first graphic online game, netwar. They seem to be the only competent ones in the game. Everybody that is available to group is either 12, or has the competence of a 12-year old.

Keep in mind that I'm not praising everquest, or any other game, when I say these things. I just have the ability to realize that I would be more entertained by a playstation game or would find more of a sense of community in a message forum (heh) or playing CS even.