Is Daoc dieing?

[cHodAX]

Too many people in this thread are deluding themselves, ask youself how many people you know are unhappy with the way things are and how many are on the verge of leaving? How many veteran players have left and are leaving once ToA goes live? Judging by the amount of people posting on BW it will be 100's just from the English servers. You have to admit that the overall quality of RvR has drastically decreased since SI and ToA will only adds more problems into the mix rather than addressing the old ones.

People who have played for 2 years are sick of waiting, plain and simple. The game itself and RvR in particular has amazing potential but potential means nothing when the developer is more concerned with selling expansions than fixing the current code to make it a more satisfiying experience for the majority of the players. For EU players add ontop all the hassles with slow patching and poor support from GOA, it is a wonder that so many people still play and I think it is a great testament to the potential that this game has. That said, £6-8 a month over 2 years starts to add up and Mythic/GOA need to realise that people want RvR fixing now before they add more PvE content. Frontiers could be the patch that fixes DAoC but I fear that ToA will do so much damage to RvR that only a comprehensive review of RvR will start to undo the damage.

 

[-Nxs-]

Listed to Chodax he knows his stuff.

Alot of old players have now left - some come back to look at the addons, some stay away.

If account numbers are up - then its almost certainly due to buffbots. The game is unbalanced, and ToA just makes that even worse, but the game is addictive and many people will stay because of this.

Personaly, I think DAOC has a lifespan of about 12-18 months then you start to get bored and look around, if something takes your fancy, you wont be back

 

[cHodAX]

The sad truth is that there is no other MMORPG around to touch DAoC even in it's current poor state. I have tried most of them now and DAoC is just much more fun to play than all those I have tried. If there was something better then people would be leaving DAoC in droves, the majority of people are just hanging on for something better. When the end comes it will be quick, if it isn't WoW that kills DAoC it will be Darkfall, DnL, DE or one of a handful of other games. The only thing that can save DAoC long term is Frontiers and it is going to have to be stunning to keep those 40,000+ veterans playing.

 

[-Nxs-]

Agreed, but there is nothing in the pipeline that groups players in different regions, lets them level in safety then throw it all together in a big mash of PvP (except planetside, which isnt my cup of tea - give m a sword and a dragon anyday)

Until such a MMORPG comes out, I believe DAOC will keep its playerbase, despite the unbalanced state the game is in. I too have tried and read about the vast majority of mmorpgs comming out this year, the only one for me that stands a change of grabbing my attention will be EQ2, but that wont have the same level of PvP

DOAC will be around for a while yet, the playerbase will continue to moan about GOA but keep paying.

 

[darbey]

not dying as often as the freakin wanky servers do

 

[Tumult]

Originally posted by Shike
think he meant this :

new link, shows numbers of players on english servers over the last month

I dunno, but looks ok to me

Thats not it either, cant link the right graph for some reason


Just have to say how you do it, first set the date as any day in December 2003.

Then select Year from the first drop down box, and English Servers from the second.

 

[Lochlyessa]

If I remember rightly..

Shadowbane was going to kill DAoC

SWG was going to kill DAoC

Planetside was going to kill DAoC

Alot of other games that I can't quite remember atm, were going to mean 'amagad everyone's going to quit DAoC!!one!'


And.. shockingly.. it's the same people harping on about the next game that they're going to leave daoc for.

Daoc isn't going to die anytime soon, though prydwen in particular has always had a low population, making it seem to players like less and less people are playing

And let's face it, if you take everything posted on forums as gospel, you'd think that daoc rvr was ruled by groups of 3sav,4 healer, 1 shamans, killing everything all day, until suddenly up pops a rr10 alb tank group, or a rr11 hib mage group to kill them Oo

Thats my little pro daoc rant over with anyway, the game gets a bit boring and repetitive at times, but there's still no better multiplayer rpg out there atm, at least for pvp content

 

[zerz]

Played since Eurobeta and still going Strong Change servers, try another realms

RvR is some unbalanced.....gah Dont mind...push those toons to limits ! But in what came You can have Rvr Battles like in Daoc ?

Never loved any game like this

Go go go !

 

[Nightchill]

I was another one of those who abandoned ship. I didn't want to be around when ToA arrived. With now limited spare time having to do some serious grinding/xping to remain RvR competitive just didn't, surprisingly, excite me.

If I were you, I'd be more worried about GOA deciding to pull the plug if the playerbase carries on dropping. As soon as it stops making a profit... Incidentally, and unrelated, the Italian one has closed I believe. But 1000 players spread across 3 servers will do that

 

[old.Ramas]

All games die eventually - but daoc has a while yet.

Not least because there is very little - even in development, to touch it.

WoW maybe, if Blizzard get their attitude to cheating sorted. But even that is realistically at least a year away.

Nothing else in development at the moment with any pvp/rvr element shows any realistic signs of (a) making retail or (b) having a workable game design thrashed out.

 

[snoz]

Originally posted by Lochlyessa
If I remember rightly..


And let's face it, if you take everything posted on forums as gospel, you'd think that daoc rvr was ruled by groups of 3sav,4 healer, 1 shamans, killing everything all day, until suddenly up pops a rr10 alb tank group, or a rr11 hib mage group to kill them Oo

rofl such lies !

 

[sundra]

from wot ive heard from people i know playing USA daoc is that vast amounts of players have left because of people using cheats more and more.Whether this trend will come to euro servers who can tell

 

[Kallio]

Daoc will most likely loose a lot subsribers when WoW is released, everyone is talking about that game...

 

[cHodAX]

Originally posted by Kallio
Daoc will most likely loose a lot subsribers when WoW is released, everyone is talking about that game...

WoW looks better in alpha than most games look on release, if you compare WoW as it is now with Horizons/AC2 there is no comparison. Blizzard have probably 10 months to finish the game so I am expecting something stunning when it goes live.

 

[Solid]

I still remember reading about the DAOC alpha in magazines like EDGE back in early 2001, the concept and the genre all melded together sounded revolutionary, and tbh DAoC was quite a revolutionary game imo.

However I think they have over-indulged in adding content in an ambition to develop the game and as has been said alraeady, its been done at the expense of balance (and more often than not its skewed the balance to extremes). The community feeling has moved from being a nice friendly casual environment to something that more closely resembles the Battle.net DiabloII heyday.

Most people that have left have left because the fundamental essence of the game has shifted so far from its humble beginnings that its is not worth hanging around when all the friends you made in the old days leave.

I am positive that new players JUST joining DAoC will find good year of thorough enjoyment, but once you get past the warm feeling of excitement at starting a new game, exploring a new world, making a character, and reach level 50, begin RvRing, those new players will enter a totally different PvP arena than the one most of the oldskool experienced and enjoyed.

DAoC has become insanely competitive (ref to the "DAoC - Game or Sport" thread is an apt example) and those that LIVE for the game, excel at the game.

The Casual player has no home in DAoC these days, they will never get the enjoyment that was once possible in days gone by.

I can see transformations in people I once knew as casual roleplay enjoying, laid back individuals into agressive RP hungry rabid PvP junkies.

Like Nikolas has said, the game in effect forces you to conform to a playstyle that has evolved through it's development (optimised groups, buffbots, stealthers, epic farmed uber items etc...), else you just dont belong.

I very much doubt its dying tho, its just mutated into a nasty monster that is no longer the game many older players remembered and enjoyed. As they say in GOA land, "Cest la Vie"

 

[Flimgoblin]

Originally posted by darbey
not dying as often as the freakin wanky servers do

thought you were retired?

 

[Flimgoblin]

Originally posted by Nightchill
If I were you, I'd be more worried about GOA deciding to pull the plug if the playerbase carries on dropping. As soon as it stops making a profit... Incidentally, and unrelated, the Italian one has closed I believe. But 1000 players spread across 3 servers will do that

the post on the front page of www.daoc.it seems to be saying something about "getting the patches to you quickly!"

 

[xplo]

DAoC will lose most of his players when the new next gen mmo's are released, though a core of players will stay.