Daoc Europe keep losing players

[Esselinithia]

Nemo: New players need to learn the game in the first few levels, this is why they don't have access to /level now.

Kinag: You outgrew the game, and some others can say that, with my figure of 80%, 10%, etc. the outgrew people would be still several hundreds.

Read the people who post here and inactive / quit and you will see how common this reason is.

Zede had one bit of truth: RVR is varied, and have some changes inherent to it. You can find other aspects dull and boring, and can feel you outgrow the game. No reason do denny this.

The question: can community offer a long term reason to stay? Various chat rooms, irc networks/channels, etc suggest that it is possible.

Question 2: Can new expansions, new PVE content, new events, etc. help the "PVE gets boring" problem? Yes, they can, if there are groups for them.

Question 3: Is Player run RP events (like on some RP servers) help to make the game varied? I think the answer is yes (again)

Uberlama blamed the hunting for RP on the system, which is about 40% true. Yes, the system is a strong motive for this. Your desire to win and be better is another motive. And the lack of other fun elements is another motive. And the lack of groups for other task: another motive. The fact that repairing is slow, and repetitive, and not much better than using a chat room (no action, no variety, and takes long time) is another problem.

But the problem isn't too much PVE, repairing, crafting, etc in the game: but the fact we are quick to outgrow the game (lack of updates in these fields), and they aren't fun anymore.

If we remove them, they won't be fun.
If we enhance them, they will be fun.
If both we and Mythic do our best to enhance them, they will be fun enough to attract many people.

 

[Nemo]

Nemo: New players need to learn the game in the first few levels, this is why they don't have access to /level now.

ofc,

Then: 3times the XP up to level10 - double XP to lvl20. I know they gave better XP nowdays, but it must still suck when you have no armour/arulites/money.
Whats the fun about farming arulites ? crappy XP, low chanse of dropping arulites - compared to those who go farm arulites with their lvl50's/transfers to lowbie/go chainkill yellow-orange with BB

Maybe make it impossible to quit newbieguild untill lvl20 (if you have lvl50's on the account) then maybe the new ppl might have someone to talk to/level with.

 

[Esselinithia]

yes you can but you forget how fuckign boring it is to solo to lvl 20 as a new player with nobody to talk to.. If i wantet to play solo i would go play a single player game not a mmorpg..

This is the key to the problem

 

[Esselinithia]

Don't know, when cumbria was new, I decided to give it a try, and I realy liked stroming the dark elf castle with a group of newbies, and we had a real lotto after the raid, since everyone wanted some glowies.

Did anyone get RP? no.
Do these glowies worth anything? Only for the newbies.

But we had fun, and this is why we play the game.
It is sad that only them hibs have a such nice raid target.

But the problem is: Most newbies won't find groups, and most of the now 50 peope don't go with them to explore, and have fun with them. Low level groups, inviting new people, etc would help.

 

[Danya]

you people are seriously putting me off bothering to come back here :/

Is it really that bad nowadays ?

Seems so, glad I like PvE.

 

[Esselinithia]

you people are seriously putting me off bothering to come back here :/

Is it really that bad nowadays ?

Not THAT bad, if you are lucky.

But the player count droped, the number of casual and PVE guilds droped. And not too many casual players left in RvR.

 

[Skaven]

Ive moved to WoW until WAR comes out.

Played Daoc for 4 years. I've had breaks when ive felt that the game has got boring, then come back as im sure most of you do. But unfortunatly the game has just become so boring for me as of late. Its the same old xp grind if you want to level up a new toon, nothing is new anymore.
Whist rvr is fun (sometimes) its generally the same old crap, if your a soloer your either steamrollered by fg's, or get double teamed by stealthers or whatever. Full groups im sure proberbly still get some enjoyment out of it, and people who make set groups etc. But for me, the casual player, I really don't want to have to wait around to get a pickup group. I just want to log on, have some fun, then log out, and I can't do that anymore.
As a friend said, I can't keep playing the game just because of all the fond memories I have - met great people who will be my friends for the rest of my life, it was my first mmorpg etc etc.
Whilst WoW's pvp is crap compared to Daoc, the pve is just soo much better, and has much more depth to offer you. Also as ive not been playing it for over a year, and re-rolled to alliance everything is all new The mmorpg has become fun again for me, so i'll be canceling my sub's to cam at the end of this month.

 

[Raven]

most days i just cba to play daoc, go out into RvR, get zerged by casters, pve is pointless, i dont need any items, i dont need any money etc. made a few toons on alb but i dont really see it being any different so not going to bother toa'ing them.
The game has gone to shit because most of the people who do still play it are mongs who only play for RPs.

 

[Esselinithia]

As a friend said, I can't keep playing the game just because of all the fond memories I have - met great people who will be my friends for the rest of my life, it was my first mmorpg etc etc.
Whilst WoW's pvp is crap compared to Daoc, the pve is just soo much better, and has much more depth to offer you. Also as ive not been playing it for over a year, and re-rolled to alliance everything is all new The mmorpg has become fun again for me, so i'll be canceling my sub's to cam at the end of this month.

Atm, I play daoc on EU 1-2 times a week (mostly 1 time for a single raid), and play a lot in WoW, and know where I noticed a big difference? In WoW most patches add some new PVE content, so you don't get too bored with them, and most players haven't seen quite big parts of the game yet. Not to mention different server types, and the events on RP servers.

 

[Dorin]

i would say toa + of was quite ok (maybe without grapple and 10% bonuses stuff at launch toa woulda been quite nice, despite teh retarded scroll/arti system that time)

But nf and toa + catacombs (classes basically, warlock - bainshee lol) are just beyond a point ><

 

[RS|Phil]

Hell no I likd that my Frostalf shaman coiuld cast heal so fast his arms would ignite from friction build-up.

 

[Eregion]

Atm, I play daoc on EU 1-2 times a week (mostly 1 time for a single raid), and play a lot in WoW, and know where I noticed a big difference? In WoW most patches add some new PVE content, so you don't get too bored with them, and most players haven't seen quite big parts of the game yet. Not to mention different server types, and the events on RP servers.

For the casual player though that is IMO a bad thing, simply because the difference between a tier2-3 epic geared character vs someone who dont have any epics at all, the gap between them is way bigger then the difference RR's does in daoc.
And as you say they just keep adding new and better items all the time that afterall, only will be available to the hardcores. In daoc atleast everyone has a chance of getting the best items due to the pve encounters not being so hard (artifacts etc).

 

[Oldleaf]

Glastonbury was my home server for some time, played on it from the day of opening. I didnt want to leave but was forced to due the lack of you all know...

Playing Gareth now, a higher player database, lots of high end PvE raids and all times of the day you can find RvR action.

I still hope players come back to Glaston to make the server healthy again, in that case i will return, if not Gareth will be the last server i play on.

 

[phandaal]

IMO DAoC should die... and reborn as DAoC 2 with new interface, different balanced classes and.. more realms with a chance to allie themself. May be in only one server (like D&L)

There aren't many new players and most of them scare when arrive to RvR an are owned and owned by old power players. Old players leave DAoC tired because there isnt anything really new.

DAoC is best pvp MMPROG, but its old and can't live forever


SORRY MY SPELLING

 

[Ctuchik]

Yes, that's a given. MMORPGs are about the journey, not some hypothetical 'end' - there's no end-of-game boss in any MMORPG. Although, with that said, I always wanted to take a screenie of Draco's corpse and add the arcade "GAME OVER, INSERT COIN" thing on top of it...

I've always been uncomfortable with people saying that - it infers that you were supposed to RvR and only RvR once you've hit the maximum level, which is simply not what the game was about. People who lived for RvR only always said it was, but it never was; at any given time, there were always more people in PvE than RvR. If people genuinely felt PvE was something you "had to do to RvR" that would imply that they really didn't want to be PvEing at all, and only did PvE with gritted teeth because they couldn't wait to get back out into RvR and PWN PWN PWN...if they - meaning players in general - found PvE that objectionable they would have gone to a game with no PvE at all. I think it's significant that the biggest MMOs out there have been pure-PvE or mainly-PvE. DAOC was never an 'RvR game', it was a game with RvR and PvE.

Which is exactly what I mean. A lot more people enjoyed PvE for its own sake than most of the 'DAOC-is-an-RvR-game' crowd would admit. Many is the time I've been with raids that have said let's go kill (for example) Chimera and see if we can do it with this group...or whatever. Set yourself a challenge - and much of the stuff TOA brought to the table was challenging - and see if you can beat it. Lots of people enjoyed that, and enjoyed it more than what RvR turned into. Very often people would go and do some PvE to de-stress after RvR, because while they may have made some RPs, it sure as hell wasn't all that much fun a lot of the time. RvR ended up making more people grit their teeth, more of the time, than PvE.

Another way of looking at that; that DAOC's subs are now so low because the state of RvR - and the attitudes rife within it - put off everyone else, and the 'DAOC-is-an-RvR-game' crowd are, for the most part, all that's left. Hell, my guild's pretty much moved to WoW (which, by the way, is significantly better than I thought it would be), mainly because DAOC just wasn't fun any more; RvR had become so alienating and un-fun that people just didn't want to subject themselves to it any more. Read the RvR forums and tell me that's a happy, healthy community and mindset you're seeing in there.

Group setups...? What happened to RvR, then? The hijacking of RvR - the realm war that was the real premise of the game - and its being forced into this nonsensical '8v8' mentality killed the idea of RvR for many, many people. We didn't sign up for Quake Team Deathmatch, we signed up for a realm war; but anyone wanting to fight a realm war got ridiculed by the '8v8' crowd who just wanted maximum gank RPs per hour and didn't give a shit about the basic premise of the game itself.

The problem being that high RR groups ended up becoming so powerful that low RRs are the ones who went "what's the point?" and just gave up on RvR altogether. And then RvR just became a high-RR circle-jerk.

Yes, and the RP-horny '8v8' attitude is what fostered that. The opted-FG approach started to be visible not long before SI came out, and it started because people realised that an optimised FG of people was the most effective way to kill enemy groups and get those RPs; I am utterly convinced that if siege warfare had given more RPs than ganking enemy players, we'd have ended up being knee-deep in opted siege teams going "DAOC is a siege game!".

You see, I thought the 'DAOC is an RvR game' people RvRed because it was fun, and for the 'honour' and the 'challenge', and all the other excuses the '8v8' crowd come up with.
You're right, of course - in the end, it's all about the RPs. The holy RPs. If there's one thing Mythic should have done, it was bias the RP rewards very heavily in favour of participating in the actual realm war - sieging, taking enemy keeps (and defending your own), denying the enemy territory, breaking their supply lines...doing things that actually mattered in the big picture. But when ganking one enemy player gets you more RPs than destroying a war ram, guess what people focus on doing? Even though the war ram was more important in terms of the siege as a whole, the RR1 grunt becomes a higher-priority target because killing that player is going to be what gets you the RPs.
And so people focused on their RPs-per-hour and forgot about the realm war.
And so the realm war turned into team deathmatch.
And that's brought us to where we are today.
The endgame has turned out to be pretty much the end of the game.

...

couldent have said it better myself. rvr was fun when u was able to just get a healer and shammy and whatever random players was around and go rvr just for the fun of it. never caring about how much RP's u got or any other shit.

most fun ive ever had in my life were pre SI when u could get the guild out and take a keep just to see how long u could keep the enemy out. many many times that was the start of a RR suggestion if enough ppl came to defend. there was rarely any planning ahead more then what keeps to take to get rid of those uber guards. other then that all it took were someone asking if we should do a RR.

anyone remember when mids held renaris in OF for over 2 weeks before alb made 99% of their realm come help taking it back? THAT imo is what daoc rvr is about. and it was FUN!

hell i'd give anything for those times back when rvr was for the fun of it and not to see how leet your FG are.

 

[atos]

I think all people on EU should come US insetad when we finally get something serious goin'.

If everyone from EU moves US,t here is no problem.

 

[Ctuchik]

I think all people on EU should come US insetad when we finally get something serious goin'.

If everyone from EU moves US,t here is no problem.

that doesent make the problems with the game in general go away tho...

still gonna have all the same issues as we always had.

 

[Lamp]

How different is playing on the US compared to EU ?

 

[Thorwyn]

The difference is huge. They got Yanks over there.

Seriously.. I played US for a while and the people were quite strange at times, typical american behaivour, either your "best friend" right on the spot, or flaming you to hell and back if you dare to say anything that´s even remotely criticizing the US (not neccessarily politics, just anything like "damn.. the lag from EU to US is quite bad today"... KABOOM... flamefest inc! ).

 

[Lamp]

The difference is huge. They got Yanks over there.

Seriously.. I played US for a while and the people were quite strange at times, typical american behaivour, either your "best friend" right on the spot, or flaming you to hell and back if you dare to say anything that´s even remotely criticizing the US (not neccessarily politics, just anything like "damn.. the lag from EU to US is quite bad today"... KABOOM... flamefest inc! ).

In that case, probably a good job there aren't religious servers ! Could you imagine !

 

[Tafaya Anathas]

poping a stealther infront of a zerg is common there.. so lame

Which is never happen on the cluster

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

i find it amusing that people are flaming some of the nicest and best old guard rvr players out there when they themselves know little of what they refer to....

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Esselinithia - christ no offence but having taken 5 mins to read 1-2 of your posts you don't have much of an idea about how people work, let alone the different movitators people have in their personal lives...

 

[suelothvar]

I think all people on EU should come US insetad when we finally get something serious goin'.

If everyone from EU moves US,t here is no problem.

yeh because paying mythic for even more accounts to start on US servers on a game going belly up is smart move...

might consider it if goa mythic merged us all over to US servers, but that will never happen expansion is expected start of next year, but tbh i really do doubt will be any form of daoc worth playing left by then sadly..

love the game but starting to have to accept its death, now its becoming more and more pointless loging on before 7pm if wan't to rvr

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

And what i still dont understand, why is Gareth so healthy and Glastonbury near dead?

Three reasons:
1) Perma-hibzerg
2) Language barriers
3) Perma-hibzerg

Sorry i know that was only two but 1 and 3 were such big points i felt they deserved another mention. When you find 3fg hibs on stick at 4am on a weeknight, without even attempting keep or relic raids - just zerging soloers at the docks, you know time to move back to cluster...

 

[atos]

They should merge both US and EU and get a decent playerbase on all servers and force the germans/french to speak a real language.

 

[Oldleaf]

Three reasons:
1) Perma-hibzerg
2) Language barriers
3) Perma-hibzerg

Sorry i know that was only two but 1 and 3 were such big points i felt they deserved another mention. When you find 3fg hibs on stick at 4am on a weeknight, without even attempting keep or relic raids - just zerging soloers at the docks, you know time to move back to cluster...

But what about lowbies?

On Gareth there is still a large amount of players exping, besides that there are PvE raids off all kind, every day and not even on US prime time to.

But so far i can see RvR is pretty equal compared to Glaston.

I think GOA need to help Glaston abit to get it more healthy and balanced, give Mid and Alb /level20, give a free level every 2 days, and give Alb and Mid some RvR bonus atleast until realms are more balanced again. Maybe more can be done, but this will be a start atleast.

The ppl who still play on Glaston are allready fully spellcrafted and high RR, the rest cant compete and i think that is one of the reasons so many players left.

 

[Danya]

For the casual player though that is IMO a bad thing, simply because the difference between a tier2-3 epic geared character vs someone who dont have any epics at all, the gap between them is way bigger then the difference RR's does in daoc.
And as you say they just keep adding new and better items all the time that afterall, only will be available to the hardcores. In daoc atleast everyone has a chance of getting the best items due to the pve encounters not being so hard (artifacts etc).

WoW PvE isn't very hard either, it's a bit different as you can't just get 100+ people and zerg the shit out of every encounter, but in terms of actual difficulty, it's fine, especially for T2 and lower stuff.
Not to mention, they tend to nerf the lower dungeons when harder stuff comes out which means people can get stuff more easily over time.

 

[Flimgoblin]

The ppl who still play on Glaston are allready fully spellcrafted and high RR, the rest cant compete and i think that is one of the reasons so many players left.

We need an extra classic classic server. Lets limit it to the level 30 max of beta, with no itemised dungeons above level 20.

(sorry, not meaning to take a shot at you but part of the complaints about the ToA servers were that everyone was fully ToAed out and people couldn't compete... so classic was born... and sure enough same problems)

 

[Danya]

We need an extra classic classic server. Lets limit it to the level 30 max of beta, with no itemised dungeons above level 20.

(sorry, not meaning to take a shot at you but part of the complaints about the ToA servers were that everyone was fully ToAed out and people couldn't compete... so classic was born... and sure enough same problems)

Limit to level 5, training weapons only! Let the true skill shine through.