looks like prob no origins comming :(

[Everz]

tl;dr

Can someone sum up this thread, lol?

U sukx!

 

[Afran]

Holy shit batman, they hit us with a wall of text!

 

[CorNokZ]

U sukx!

Took you 2 pages to come to that conclusion?

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Right so your saying that we should introduce a OF server simply to kill off the NF servers where people have worked and worked on characters for years, even though those servers (Devon) is hitting 2100 at prime (reached this Sunday)?

Noone wants to start over again at this stage in the game and be forced to have to move because of the one server.

Don't mix in your own preferences in your general arguments, it is clear that your own opinion is that that you don't want an origins server.

Nobody said that "we should kill off any server", if the result is that NF servers dies out it means OF servers where prefered = no harm done, since people are OBVIOUSLY enjoying OF servers MORE then NF. And the people who wanna stay on NF servers CAN DO SO IF THEY WANT TO, but it doesn't mean others HAVE to play with them for THEIR enjoyment. If you want to play on OF you do so, if you want to play on NF you do so, if you have lower population on NF servers it means all other ppl actually prefered OF and it means your a minority in your preference and have to bend to the will of the mayority, or atleast let the mayority have theirs.

The demand for OF is blinded by nostalgia, there really isnt much wrong with the game as it is atm. Again it back to the fact as to why do Mythic want to ignore there existing customers to flip them off to try and please people who will hang around for a month then leave.

Your opinion again, you have nothing to back it up with. I could just say that the reason people oppose OF is 'cus they are retarded newbies who like to zerg at bridges and towers.

Reality is, that it is 2x valid preferences, and if you are afraid that an OF server would kill the NF servers then there is also obviously a quite big demand for such a server. Now OF for me is simply OF zones, I don't care if they have warlocks or laby, or ToA still in - I would porbably actually prefer that those elements stayed in the game.

Alot of people prefer NF to OF, your going to hurt the pop either way. Origins is flawed to death people only wanted it because on paper it sounded like a rollback to 1.65 which it wasnt. Hype has long died down and most realized that the idea was wrong from the beginning, it needed more thought and work to be perfected so admittedly Mythic did go the wrong way about doing this. The game has grown in the past 4 months, theres servers (german one at 2500) and (devon at 2100) plus a host of others in the 600-1000.. how is the game withering away when it is re-growing if anything when compared to WAR release where devon was hitting a low 600 and german 1000?

Again, we are not talking about wether mythics R E T A R D E D spinn on what Origins would be like was right or wrong, everyone agrees it was a R E T R D E D idea, and probably done so to kill off they idea on its own.

Talking about OF as a new zone would be highly desired I think, NF has way more flaws when it comes to RvR then OF had, basically in NF atm you can't get any fights at all, you get zerged by casters doing 17381 dps everywhere or you get boring tank duels. The game totally lost all its appeal outside the 8v8 zone.

And if you re look at the actual ingame nummbers and didn't quote what people said around x-mas you would know the population is dwindling back down, people are again leaving.

There wont be 3k capped OF server blah blah that you dreaming of mate, the same issues that remain in DAOC will still be there. Noone wants to start from scratch as i've already said. OF on normal server.. that would cause a buzz as everyone will be able to play there old chars in OF.. minimum hassle and maximum profit by that as people will think 'ah nice, i only have to sub and i can give it a try and not have to do 1-50'.

Why bother if you clustered the ToA US servers you would hit 3k anyways?

There will be 3k pop on that server if released, and somewhat advertised prior to opening.

Nobody is starting from scratch, people know what to do already so the only thing you do is rolling a new toon, another alt..1-50+ToA+MLs in 1 week. Hardly something that people would say "noes" to after they done so on normal NF servers for 10+ times :x..

The problems with daoc will ofc still be there, but ponder you swap out the zones, NF for OF and the game will instantly get 10x better. NF is a S H I T E zone, all it offers if bridges with no cover from ranged dps and archers. Bridges are too close to towers and keeps so all you get is 1) zergstandoffs 2) runners 3) casters adding from saftey. This is NF is a nutshell for a none 8v8 person. And most 8v8 both on US and EU are done in agramon, an Old emain look-alike zone, so I doubt they would care one abit.

And the point of doing this is ofcourse to make DAoC better, atm it is shite and has been for quite abit, NF zones are not working with a lower population kinda. Too many zones are unused and there are NO travel routes so people cluster up at chokepoints, namly bridges, keeps and towers near bridges. Now people have learned over the time that the classes to play in these scenarios are 1) archers 2) bolt/stun casters. The whole gameplay have become retarded bridge wankoffs.
People stopped travling, nobody wants to take a boat anywhere to get instantly raped by casters at a bridge just standing there w8ing for people to boat in. End result is slow and none exciting RvR with nothing going on outside the 8v8 realm and zergwarfare. Talk about a stagnant game.

Dying? No, its been growing at a huge rate over the past 4 months, like i said prior point at WAR release Devon was at 700 and the others around it floating at the 300s, now Devon is at 2100 and the others hitting the 700s?.. How is that dying. thats growth man.

Not mainly talking about Devon, FH is covering european servers, if you wanna shove US facts and statistics on me and others you can go to it on VN boards~

Anyway, so devon has recovered alot over the months. Does it change the fact NF is a bad zone to RvR in? Give people an option to chose and you would see the new people comming back going to the OF server instead of the NF server. Just the fact that your scared of the "new" server splitting servers is showing there is demand for it, else you wouldn't be worried and Mythic wouldn't be worried either.

If you assume happy customes stay on the NF server regardless of an OF release or not, you also assume unhappy customers would change to the OF server rather then the NF...by reasoning like this you automatically say that the unhappy players would also stay indefenatly(regardless if you release OF or not) even if they are less happy with NF server overall..and if these people are many enough to impact the overall server population then they are more then a minority. Wich again leads to the conclusion this server is wanted by more/same amount of people then not. So basically you / perhaps mythic are hesitant to this new server 'cus they WANT TO CLINGE ON TO LESS HAPPY CUSTOMERS wich they think will hang around indefentatly even though hey are not that happy with how the NF server works.

You are saying that your jeopordizing the current population, by taking a risc at making the game more enjoyable for all, yet you just expect people who would like the OF server to just hang around indefentaly totally ignoring the fact people still quit the game 'cus they are just bored with the way NF makes DAoC play out with lower populations ( bridge camp, tower camp, keep camp - 0 roaming or fluent RvR ).

So in the end you:

1) Do nothing and let the game wither way, and just 'cus Devon got more popultion off WAR tanking, doesn't mean the same people who left daoc for Failhammer won't leave daoc for the next hyped MMO, or when they realize yet again that NF really makes for a tedious rvr experience compared to OF, and when they know OF won't be around what holds them to the game? The fact skalds get 15% celerity making yet another mid class oped 1v1 ? (hidden skald whine^^)

Only QQing ones are the minority who really havent played in god knows how many years still harping on about gimme my OF wah wah wah. It's gone and past we've all dealt with it and are still having fun, why can't y'all?

Wild speculation. And if this is true how does a returning minority affect the current population? Total gobshite argument, and you know as well as me and others how poor of an argument that was

"I got a million million billion in my room, but I will not show you"... Same level kinda, 4yoarguments~

How is it wittering away again? Have you ever seen the populations/growths lately?

I don't know the exact nummbers of Devon, European forum so I'm mainly talking about EU. Obviously US took a larger hit then EU did when WAR came. EU nummbers are slowly getting lower again, and I doubt it is unique to europe, will see same effects on US aswell...and it is due to people getting fed up with the game, we had the same fucking shite RvR zone for YEARS AND YEARS..people have nothing but complained about NF.. first 3 months over 65k subs left daoc due to NF. And you can google that official statistics fairly easily ( I have posted URLs from websites on VN aswell..so nothing I'm making up )

Everyones happy atm, the action is great and works well with NF tbh as theres fights wherever you go as at 2k~ish mark it has the population to support it.

You are happy atm perhaps I donno. From 8v8 perspective I got no complaints either about daoc, but the random RvR and solo game/small group is WORTHLESS man the game is so hopelessly bad in that aspect, you can accomplish nothing 0, nada, zero, smack.. not shit...you get zerged at bridges, at keeps, at towers and a docks. Take a tower 1) nobody comes 2) 10 fg comes. Fight 8 mans get rolled. Since there is nobody roaming you will not find anyone anywhere but at bridges, keeps, towers, docks. Thats how it is.

But theres no point shoving up a server so that it split a healthy population, thats all i have to say on the subject, focus on what you have got an improve it rather then go off onto Origins etc.

Well, there has been alot of interest in this OF zone server type ( whatever its ruleset and form would have been ), to say that it would with great certainy attract alot of old players, and yes it would split or kill the NF servers but only so 'cus it would attract ppl MORE then the shit wank NF server does. So you replace one shite server with a better one, whats the damn harm in that ~~

Your only argument to keep NF server is that the OF server would ruin your fun on NF and you cba to reroll, thats all you got. While on the other hand such a new server has the potential to renew the game for loads of people and give everyone a better RvR zone that fits the population nummbers better.

Where did you get this don't like OF/like NF etc bullshit from?

I like NF and OF i wouldnt mind a server with either on, but from what i can tell the populations that are playing at the moment are extremely happy, the action is solid 24/7 and no 'gimme OF' moans anywhere. Your coming across as quite a bitter outsider mate from the sounds of it, you havent played in what.. a year or so? So you opinion on the current playerbase is pretty much void.

It is not bullshit, it is accurate. There are 3 types of ppl, 1) the ones who do not like nf 2) the ones who do like nf 3) the ones who are indiffrent. You are obviously in diffrent.

And lawl, comming across as a bitter outsider who havn't played for a year, AAAhahahha man grasping for straws now are we Ever :d?

I been playing activly for 4-5 months now, both solo and in set 8 man
group.

And your little comparision or idea that the nummber of NONE whine about NF ingame or whatever would reflect/represent some general idea that NF is rawks the box is funny.
I don't whine ingame about NF either but I do not like the RvR zone think it is kinda worthless most of the times, only exception is middle of the night on weekdays when there are not that many online to fuck up the bridges.

Or option 3) Improve on what they've got, advertise, offer returns, emails, dev blogs and the works.. pretty much what they are doing now. Like i said you out of touch in what DAOC is like at the moment as you seem to be spouting stuff that the playerbase simply arent saying or wanting.

Your nuts dude ..

I know you whinged alot on VN boards about Origins for one. So you know there is a demand and a will of having an OF server, and if you say there is no demand for it then it wouldn't hurt to introduce one OF server for all the "QQing long gone left the game minority" to play on? I mean how could that server harm the current population when there is as you say NO demand for it?

People WANT OF back, that is a strong opinion nobody can deny that. The problem is as you say if many enough of the exisiting players also want it, it will KILL the Nf servers, personally i got no problem with that, mythic does however and thats why we won't see it ever - that and financial crysis and incompetent personell fiddling with too many new unwanted new stuff.

10k pop on shards? There a reason people play them.. there free, just because DAOC opens a server it doesnt mean they will come flooding in.

3k Pop will never ever happen, again why sacrifice a healthy current playerbase?

Yes the population on freeshards together is somewhere around 10k. Don't act surprised, and don't try to spin what I said to something like "ololol there is not 10k ppl online at the same time on x y z server Ololl" since you know exactly what I mean with 10k ..

And people play the shards since they prefer the ruleset, wich have often/always been around OF. I played Shards due to OF, you played shards due to OF, all other of the people I seen on shards over the years played due to OF - not one played as main reason cus it was free.

If Origins was launched, with only change OF instead of NF zones, with laby in homeland, like DF.. and a little PR campagain, 14 day free trial for oldies it would have 3k population no doubt. People would FLOOD the server.

Nice,
Devon hit 2100 on sunday prime and regularly gets 1800's by 10GMT.
Killibury gets around 800 on sunday prime and regularly gets 600 by 10GMT.
Bossiney gets around 900 on sunday prime and regularly gets 750 by 10GMT.

Do the maths.

65k SUBSCRIBERS left daoc during a 3 month period when NF released. Do the math. Might add daoc sub height was 275k subs alltogether. So a big chunk said F U mythic when NF released.

I dont know EU server, i can only tell by the people i speak with who actually PLAY there who tell me the pops of the german cluster currently. Theres no decline my friend, just growth, stop clutching onto straws with this one, face the facts that no OF because DAOC is gaining alot more subs off just being a better game atm.

Think your missinformed here, or confused, I play on de cluster and have been for more then 4-5 months in a row, and before that I played with you for fuck sake, totally forgot that? And the reason you quit wasnt that NF if I'm misstaken? Lawl

What broken atm? The game is more balanced then it has ever been, stop letting nostalgia block the realism heh. RvR zones are pretty fun atm, action in DF/Laby and NF alongside Molvik/Thid most nights? I'm not complaining so what if DAOC doesnt have a future, everything gotta die sometime its all about the fun factor before it does.

The general RvR is really broken.

You cannot call fighting zergs at DC bridge when albion have instant port in HIB as anything worth calling RvR. It litterally is a standoff where no side gets anywhere, the attcking force can't kill off the defending ones since they will hide in the tower and keep, and it is all archers and bolt casters. Now albion will be 100% emptied of ppl and onyl the odd duell tank will be found in HW. Mids will not log on unless they get Irvr aswell, else you won't see them anywhere but 8v8 grps on agramon.

This applies for all realms, it is all about irvr and wanking at bridges, tower and main keep. Then add retarded PVE/shitnewb grps who break ports to kill off the little RvR there was to begin with, jolly good game mate .. I mean this is NF in a nutshell.

Routes out of mainkeep to say Laby, uhm empty.. on all realms VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY rare you see anyone going that route, I killed 2 ppl the last 4 months going from Bleed to mid agramon bridge ><..

Basically if your solo or small grp you go to say Brynja find ppl at the keep, and stealthers at bridge. You won't be able to kill anyone there unless they can outnummber you, wich they will since they got stealthers there .. So when you get a nice equal nummber fight *pop*pop**pop* .. and then more will come down the keep adding..if not a 8 man rolled you before.

Same thing with solos, this applies on all bridges.

If you decide "HEY I AM GONNA MAKE MY OWN FUN" and take a tower the result will be 1) the tower is useless and nobody gives a flying fuck about it, or 2) the tower was too important and you will face numerous groups fighting to regain port to a keep. So there is nothing in between, no natrual travel routes, all the is is choke points at bridges, keeps, towers, docks and zergs.. or 8 man on agramon/zergsurf with 8 man. That is Dark Age of Camelot under New Frontiers, most certainly broken.

Now I'm gonna log on my oped armsman and get myself zerged down at Brynja :d

 

[GReaper]

I've only got one thing to say:

tl;dr

 

[Genedril]

It's all irrelevant. MJ basically said it's kind of a nice idea but..

Reading between the lines it's EA that have forced layoffs & moved personnel around. They're sinking all of their available money into WAR & that's all folks.

They reckon that the money is in WAR & not an 8 year old product that they'll have to admit they ballsed up by reverting to an histroical setup.

Long of the short of it - nice idea / they complicated it & made it a bad idea / they invested money somewhere else & it's not going to happen / The End.

(Last bit is for the tl;dr crowd).

 

[Everz]

Yeh i cant be arsed answering a wall of text so in conclusion.

Its not going to happen, thank god for that because it would have been nothing like old DAoC at all.

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Yeh i cant be arsed answering a wall of text so in conclusion.

Its not going to happen, thank god for that because it would have been nothing like old DAoC at all.

We havnt discussed wether it was gonna happend or not everyone who followed VN boards have known since little after xmas that there was no Origins comming, and mark jacobs response on some daoc guilds webpage kinda gave it away already back then. But the point is that Origins is not a bad idea in the form the general opinion on VN and FH wanted it Mythic take on it only resembled an attempt to sabotage the idea, more then anything else.

And nothing you said everz will change that it is not a good business plan to accomondate a minority when the potential, if changes are made, seriously outweigh any negative effect it could have on the remaining minority.

Statistics do not lie, when NF hit live servers, 65k people cancled their subscriptions in a 3 month period, after that another 125k subscribers cancled in a 12 month period, the month before NF daoc was still growing in population..that is hard facts and public records anyone can google.

Now you can sit there and say NF was a kickass expansion but that will be your own opinion, and catering to an obvious minority is never a good businessplan. Now mythic can freely chose to ignore all this and can just leave the game as is, and let it be a gimmick, and focus on WAR, and to be honest that is obviously their strategy.

 

[Ctuchik]

only thing that made ppl leave after NF were because they couldn't AFK leech at MG's anymore

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

only thing that made ppl leave after NF were because they couldn't AFK leech at MG's anymore

Well, in more then one thread have I said this, not to magically bring OF back but to actually come with some facts into the discussion about OF and NF.

Fact is, 65k (thats 65000) people left daoc in a 3 month period when NF hit US AND EU (wich they did at the same time ), and over an 18 month period after Nf was released 125k ( 125000 unique subbers ) left daoc.

World of Warcraft was released on US and EU on diffrent times for example, I know this since I checked the dates for another VN thread where I originally came with these statistics, so saying WoW took all subbers from EU and US at that time is not supported by the statistics on the initial 3 month period, that was with high certainy all NF. Add to that the massive storm of whine both on FH and VN at the time and there is no question to why these people left.

Now with that said, I can say that a huge part of the community did not like what NF represented in terms of gameplay, 65-125k people left because of it. One month before NF came DAoC was still growing slightly in population, after it took a 12-15k subs hit after ToA release a cupplse of months before, and had regained and passed its pre ToA release nummbers - that kills the idea of "TOA killed DAOC", it didn't NF did, together with ToA - it had an addative effect is my guess ( however you cannot prove this in an empirical way, only specualtion, though with the VN + FH whine in mind it is a strong assumption ).


Now with that said,

How is Dock camping, Bridge camping, Keep slope camping, zerging keeps and towers any better to the occasional MG standoff wich could be avoided by going to any other of the two (2) RVR lands?

With NF came the end of natrual travel routes due to porting. Instant action notification killed the needed colabiration of alliances and guilds to find out where the action where, unnatural hotspots where created around the said: Keeps, bridges, docks, towers with people PORTING INTO THEM, much like Planetside, or any FPS based action game.

Add to this that ranged classes did so much more damage, got so much more defence to melee dmg and how the structures at current favor ranged warfare so much more ( no los breaking on bridges for example, openess and exposure at keeps ). This all increases the rate and tempo at wich you get killed at if your a melee class, add now increased nummbers of people in the same area and you get an addative effect where your dead in matter of 2-3 seconds.

So NF basically clumped people together, but increased the size of the RvR land ( wich makes no sense ), it killed natrual travling and staggering hotspots ( zones of where you had to travel through wich each zone had an added probability of beeing attacked/encountering someone ), ex, walking from Svasud to Odins gate - or from Druim Ligen to Emain.

Also the keep warefare in NF highly favors unorganized ZERGs with grasshopper behaviour, porting to the closest keep to zerg down rince repeat, also a negative aspect of the game, and when you keep in mind that dmg ratios increased and that nummbers ALWAYS have been a huge advantage you see how this negative behaviour actually rewards.

Now an example to make this abit more clear.

1-2 fg take a Tower in hopes of getting some action, 1) they break port 2) the tower has no impact ont he RvR.

1) A really large force will come to take back the tower since it ruins the flow of RvR - the attacking force will steam them in minutes with little to no effort, where the defending force will get little return or no return for taking the effort to actually go to another realm and do something.

( expetions to this are groups with D, D, B, Ani, bain, ench, warden and Bain/eld/BLer, they can farm a zerg inside a tower easily - until they run out of power )

2) The tower has no impact on the RvR flow, and nobody will come since they can't be arsed to travel anywhere when they can just teleport to the instant action at a keep, bridge, dock area.

Exactly this behaviour is what is most damaging with NF, the way it rewards LAZYNESS, and not travling.

Take me for example, when soloing on my arsman, melee scout or reaver I will not travel to Brynja/Emeral bridge on prime since I know there will be 6-10 stealthers, 5-6 soloers, and then 15 adders just waiting for a fight to add on. I will get steam rolled as I get off the boat - I will not have a fair chance of doing anything. Same thing goes for the other realms. So in conclusion I have no point logging on until very early before prime, where I hardly see anyone, or very late night where I again hardly see anyone online since it is very off prime.

Same thing applies to small groups, the lack of will to travel, or natural travel routes to take where you can expect to run into people makes it impossible to face people of same nummbers, and have "fair fights".


When it comes to 8 man groups, little has changed..they can go agamon and have a blast there with like-minded groups, they are essentially their own community and punish people for breaking their rules by adding on them on puropse in fights, these are the people who play daoc on the highest level and any unorganized greif group will be offed in seconds, driving them away if they do not adopt.

If they want to goto NF and zerg/zergsurf they can do that and have enough tools and nummbers to 1) avoid greater nummbers 2) kill off greater nummbers of significally less skill, and often lower RR and organization.

In conclusion they lost little from OF to NF.

Now you can all say that NF had choke points aswell, and it did - it was at times horrible aswell, but it was always the choice there for any solo or small group to travel / or back track the route of wich enemys would have to take to get to the hotspots, or change realm and travel /back-track the enemy route there.

If you where a small group or an unorganized band of people you could also take a keep, and since all keeps had little to no influence of RvR except from enemy guild pride you could count on:

1) People from a guild would show up, often in lower nummbers just to defend/retake their keep - wich put their guild on the "map" ( beeing far less ways of doing this in OF since it was less claimable structures people fought for claiming rights ).
2) If no guild came you would have flagged the Area in Odins/Emain/HW ( for example ) as a place where there was people in, and the onces who travled there would know that someone was there waiting.
- This is abit simular to how NF was probably meant to work, but with the diffrence that it is other things that drive people towards the "keep" area, guild pride, and the natrual travel route ( not greed for RPS, wich you could get @ DC/BLED/BENO instead of hild tower 4 ).

This is the diffrences basically, and I always though NF was a bad RvR zone, I do not mind ToA, Laby, Cata or any of the new classes as much as NF where the endgame is supposed to take place, and atleast 65k people, roughly 25% agreed in some way with me when NF launched, and left the game, followed by another 20-25%, resulting in around 120k people leaving in a matter of 18 months from NF releasing.

And the whole idea with NF didn't come from public demand so much as people getting annoyed with only having one chokepoint out of respective attacking realms portal keep ( yes this was bad but was also easily fixed by adding one more chokepoint/milegate out of the area ).
The reason to the introduction of NF was not as a result of people leaving the game, voting with their feet "saying OF sucks" since if it where that would show in the statistics, and it simply doesn't - daoc was regaining population after the intial cancelations after ToA launch.

NF was a vision, that the gamemakers had, and it failed HARD, and they done too little to rectify the core flaws of the RvR zone. Thats my view on it, and thats why I argued the way I done in the other posts. I do belive that there are alot of ex daoc players playing games they find decent or "meh" okish, but if something else was offered they would try that out, and if it was a mix of how DAoC is now with a OF RvR scenary I think that would be highly attractive for people. And the potential to revive, or refresh the game is deffonatly there.

Saying that they shouldnt risc the current population, doesn't ring well with their past decisions then; since altering a whole endgame zone when you got subscription nummbers recovering from a recent bad expansion sounds very much like a risc to me.

- Then again they might think they have learned from past misstakes and see this as a simular situation, where they ( obviously ) are recovering some subscritions and do not want to risc it all *again* by, altering the endgame zone once more. Fair enough then, but I still think the potential is greater and the situation is diffrent from when they went from OF to NF. Maybe mythic should use some ingamelogger/radar program to monitor players movement patterns, and look to the ammount of travling going on, and if notihng else then to see why NF is such a terrible expansion they could atleast delete the zones that are not used and save bandwithd lol.

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Meh time went out for editing some spelling errors and wierd phrases, so I will repost the whole post so there is no confusion

only thing that made ppl leave after NF were because they couldn't AFK leech at MG's anymore

Well, in more then one thread have I said this, not to magically bring OF back but to actually come with some facts into the discussion about OF and NF.

Fact is, 65k (thats 65000) people left daoc in a 3 month period when NF hit US AND EU (wich they did at the same time ), and over an 18 month period after Nf was released 125k ( 125000 unique subbers ) left daoc.

World of Warcraft was released on US and EU on diffrent times for example, I know this since I checked the dates for another VN thread where I originally came with these statistics, so saying WoW took all subbers from EU and US at that time is not supported by the statistics on the initial 3 month period, that was with high certainy all NF. Add to that the massive storm of whine both on FH and VN at the time and there is no question to why these people left.

Now with that said, I can say that a huge part of the community did not like what NF represented in terms of gameplay, 65-125k people left because of it. One month before NF came DAoC was still growing slightly in population, after it took a 12-15k subs hit after ToA release a cupplse of months before, and had regained and passed its pre ToA release nummbers - that kills the idea of "TOA killed DAOC", it didn't NF did, together with ToA - it had an addative effect is my guess ( however you cannot prove this in an empirical way, only specualtion, though with the VN + FH whine in mind it is a strong assumption ).


Now with that said,

How is Dock camping, Bridge camping, Keep slope camping, zerging keeps and towers any better to the occasional MG standoff wich could be avoided by going to any other of the two (2) RVR lands?

With NF came the end of natural travel routes due to porting. Instant action notification killed the needed colaboration of alliances and guilds to find out where the action where, unnatural hotspots where created around the said: Keeps, bridges, docks, towers with people PORTING INTO THEM, much like Planetside, or any FPS based action game.

Add to this that ranged classes did so much more damage, got so much more defence to melee dmg and how the structures at current favor ranged warfare so much more ( no los breaking on bridges for example, openess and exposure at keeps ). This all increases the rate and tempo at wich you get killed at if your a melee class, add now increased nummbers of people in the same area and you get an addative effect where your dead in matter of 2-3 seconds.

So NF basically clumped people together, but increased the size of the RvR land ( wich makes no sense ), it killed natural travling and staggering hotspots ( zones you had to travel through where each zone had an added probability of beeing attacked/encountering someone ), ex, walking from Svasud to Odins gate - or from Druim Ligen to Emain.

Also the keep warefare in NF highly favors unorganized ZERGs with grasshopper behaviour, porting to the closest keep to zerg down rince repeat, also a negative aspect of the game, and when you keep in mind that dmg ratios increased and that nummbers ALWAYS have been a huge advantage you see how this negative behaviour actually rewards a lazy and gamebreaking behaviour.

Now an example to make this abit more clear.

1-2 fg take a Tower in hopes of getting some action, 1) they break port 2) the tower has no impact on the RvR.

1) A really large force will come to take back the tower since it ruins the flow of RvR - the attacking force will steam them in minutes with little to no effort, where the defending force will get little return or no return for taking the effort to actually travel to another realm and do something.

( exceptions to this are groups with D, D, B, Ani, bain, ench, warden and Bain/eld/BLer, they can farm a zerg inside a tower easily - until they run out of power )

2) The tower has no impact on the RvR flow, and nobody will come since they can't be arsed to travel anywhere when they can just teleport to the instant action at a keep, bridge, dock area.

Exactly this behaviour is what is most damaging with NF, the way it rewards LAZYNESS, and not travling.

Take me for example, when soloing on my arsman, melee scout or reaver I will not travel to Brynja/Emeral bridge on prime since I know there will be 6-10 stealthers, 5-6 soloers, and then 15 adders just waiting for a fight to add on. I will get steam rolled as I get off the boat - I will not have a fair chance of doing anything. Same thing goes for the other realms. So in conclusion I have no point logging on until very early before prime, where I hardly see anyone, or very late night where I again hardly see anyone online since it is very off prime.

Same thing applies to small groups, the lack of will to travel, or natural travel routes to take where you can expect to run into people makes it impossible to face people of same nummbers, and have "fair fights".


When it comes to 8 man groups, little has changed..they can go agramon and have a blast there with like-minded groups, they are essentially their own community and punish people for breaking their rules by adding on them on puropse in fights, these are the people who play daoc on the highest level and any unorganized greif group will be offed in seconds, driving them away if they do not adopt.

If they want to go to NF and zerg/zergsurf they can do that and have enough tools and nummbers to 1) avoid greater nummbers 2) kill off greater nummbers of significally less skill, and often lower RR and organization.

In conclusion they lost little from OF to NF.

Now you can all say that NF had choke points aswell, and it did - it was at times horrible aswell, but it always where the possibility there for any solo or small group to travel / or back track the route of wich enemys would have to take to get to the hotspots, or change realm and travel /back-track the enemy route there.

If you where a small group or an unorganized band of people you could also take a keep, and since all keeps had little to no influence of RvR except from enemy guild pride you could count on:

1) People from a guild would show up, often in lower nummbers just to defend/retake their keep - wich put their guild on the "map" ( beeing far less ways of doing this in OF since there was less claimable structures people fought for claiming rights ).
2) If no guild came you would have flagged the Area in Odins/Emain/HW ( for example ) as a place where there was people in, and the ones who travled there would know that someone was there waiting.
- This is abit simular to how NF was probably meant to work, but with the diffrence that it is other things that drive people towards the "keep" area, guild pride, and the natural travel route ( not greed for RPS, wich you could get @ DC/BLED/BENO instead of hild tower 4 ).

This is the diffrences basically, and I always though NF was a bad RvR zone, I do not mind ToA, Laby, Cata or any of the new classes as much as NF where the endgame is supposed to take place, and atleast 65k people, roughly 25% agreed in some way with me when NF launched, and left the game, followed by another 20-25%, resulting in around 120k people leaving in a matter of 18 months from NF releasing.

And the whole idea with NF didn't come from public demand so much as people getting annoyed with only having one chokepoint out of respective attacking realms portal keep ( yes this was bad but was also easily fixed by adding one more chokepoint/milegate out of the area - as seen on agramon, wich idea mythic took from forums).
The reason to the introduction of NF was not as a result of people leaving the game, voting with their feet "saying OF sucks" since if it where that would have shown in the statistics, and it simply doesn't - daoc was regaining population after the intial cancelations after ToA launch.

NF was a vision, that the gamemakers had, and it failed HARD, and they done too little to rectify the core flaws of the RvR zone. Thats my view on it, and thats why I argued the way I done in the other posts. I do belive that there are alot of ex daoc players playing games they find decent or "meh" okish, but if something else was offered they would try that out, and if it was a mix of how DAoC is now with a nOF RvR scenary I think that would be highly attractive for people. And the potential to revive, or refresh the game is deffonatly there.

Saying that they shouldnt risc the current population, doesn't ring well with their past decisions then; since altering a whole endgame zone when you got subscription nummbers recovering from a recent bad expansion sounds very much like a risc to me.

- Then again they might think they have learned from past misstakes and see this as a simular situation, where they ( obviously ) are recovering some subscritions and do not want to risc it all *again* by, altering the endgame zone once more. Fair enough then, but I still think the potential is greater and the situation is diffrent from when they went from OF to NF. Maybe mythic should use some ingamelogger/radar program to monitor players movement patterns, and look to the ammount of travling going on, and if notihng else then to see why NF is such a terrible expansion they could atleast delete the zones that are not used and save bandwithd lol.

 

[Ctuchik]

NF in itself were never a bad idea. its was mostly all the incredible flaming over "adding on our 8v8 fights" that started it all. first went the casuals, then the ppl that farmed the casuals, then the ppl that liked to zerg because it couldn't maintain itself, and then the hardcore ppl rerolled on FR/DE servers or went to US.

and ofc, GOA's slow fix on the naked character problem didnt help any either.

so NF didnt make everyone quit. ppl getting abused for adding probably made alot more do that.

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

NF in itself were never a bad idea. its was mostly all the incredible flaming over "adding on our 8v8 fights" that started it all. first went the casuals, then the ppl that farmed the casuals, then the ppl that liked to zerg because it couldn't maintain itself, and then the hardcore ppl rerolled on FR/DE servers or went to US.

and ofc, GOA's slow fix on the naked character problem didnt help any either.

so NF didnt make everyone quit. ppl getting abused for adding probably made alot more do that.

Thing is now, your looking through a straw at the world, your talking mainly about Prydwen and to some extent Excalibur.

8 man groups never quit over beeing added by "Evita-like newb" groups, they flamed them 'cus they got upset and it was amusing to troll the newbies on FH, and get them winded up. Tell me one respected 8v8 guild that ever quit b/c a newb zerg zerged them one times too many. Every day when you 8v8 you get zerged and added on, happends on us servers and on Eu servers.

When I talk about nummbers as high as 65k emediatly after NF release you talk about prydwen character database crash Oo..

During the NF beta everyone was zerging bridges and keep on the 3k population server, already then people whined on NF, I did alot, and many others did too. We saw that the game would be focused around instant port keeps and bridges, people compared it to Planetside already back then, and thought the whole instant and compact RvR would lead to problems.

I'm not saying it is right or wrong to like NF I'm saying that on paper it caters to less people then was the mayority back then, and the statistics agree.
Now I'm sure alot of people say what happends on VN, FH, Warcry and allakazham etc is just a minority..and it could be that way or it could well be a pure nummber in a shrinked form(a true percentual expression in for/agains/indiffrent). There is nothing contradicting it, and there is no real reason to why game devs shouldn't take to heart mayority views on their game forums, since after all that is where you express your view and if you don't you have forfit your right to whine about a change - since in retro you never bothered to say yay or nay to begin with.

Sure this might be flawed but it is as close to a democracy you can get in a game, and as said..if you don't exercise your right to express your view you have no right to say anything about a "mayority" decision. I know you havn't brought this argument, but I know others think like this.


To speedcap the events abit, see it like this:

1) People whine about OF zergs, and choke points
2) People express their wish to get for exmaple more milegates out of the attacking realms portalkeep area to minimize bottlenecks and offer an option.
3) ToA is killing RvR, since everyone is PvEing
4) People hate on ToA on forums
5) ~12-15k unique subscribers cancle in a 2 month period after ToA
6) Weeks before NF DAoC again regained the lost subs nummbers and are actually did increase its worldwide population compared to before ToA release.
7) NF releases, poeple whine on VN and FH about zergs, bridges, instant ports, adding and lack of travel routes.
8) In a 3 months period after NF 65k unique subsrcibers call it quits.
9) In a 18 month period a total of 125k unique subscribers call it quits.
10) The years go by, some people leave due to finally having enough, some leave due to game getting old, some leave due to new games, some leave 'cus all their guild mates left, some leave because of other reasons.
11) More time pass the same way.
12) More and more semi organized whinage on forums start up about OF, both here on FH and VN
13) People whining about NF beeing bad get told to stfu and adopt, and that NF is rock and roll, best thing that happend.
14) Various patches, fixes, and class balancing is taking place, classes get remodeled and nerfed and remodeled.
15) Year or two passes by and then Mythic themselves raise the question about an OF server even after they fail on Classic server, that were no where near classic since it had no OF ( wich again made 0 sense ).
16) Alot of hype about DAoC Origins is raised, and alot of diffrent ideas and wishes are expressed, Mythic post-pone the whole Origins idea - same time world wide economic recession is around the door.
17) Origins is tabled indefinatly.
18) Origins is cancled with the reason beeing 1) economical 2) too many diffrent ideas, that didn't go in line at all with the game devs own vision of how OF should be incl. the new structures, taking out certain classes that where vital for overall rvr balance.
19) Specualtion on forums as this

This is how I feel it went down, and I do not really see how you could fail to see the mayor affect NF had on DAoC. Even if NF has been tweaked and they did give NF a good fixup it is still bad, however you look at it.

The reasons in short are still, 1) lack of travling 2) instant ports 3) rvr notification in form of flaming towers 4) camping of bridges with no cover, towers, ranged chars camping keep slopes with cover of purp keep 5) zergs acting like swarms of grasshoppers porting back and forth to ZERG down all and any.

Only problem OF had was choke points such as milegates, the rest was fine, size was good, nummber of keep was good, position of keeps was good.

Portal times could be discussed, personally I never minded them but I can see how they were too long and should possible been shorted to 5-7 mins.

All the bugs and class balance aside, nobody said we wanted that back, only the actual RvR zones, since their layout was better for DAoC then NF ever was.

 

[GReaper]

We havnt discussed wether it was gonna happend or not everyone who followed VN boards have known since little after xmas that there was no Origins comming blah blah blah

There is no discussion, just huge walls of text...

 

[CorNokZ]

How can anyone be bothered or have the time to write so much shit?

 

[Cadelin]

How can anyone be bothered or have the time to write so much shit?

Its a natural grieving response of a distraught fanboi.

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

How can anyone be bothered or have the time to write so much shit?

Suggest you put your arguments where your mouth is mate. The thread discusses the fact why Origins isn't happening, and why/why not it is good / bad.

Simply comming on here saying Origins isn't comming since it would devide populations from a shite RVR zone that x y z person likes isn't an argument that the game is better off as it is now.

I raised the most common arguments I seen on the forums to why Origins was a good idea ( in whatever form it would have taken ) compared to the stagnant and uninteresting NF.

And it isn't very hard to understand why the one liner "ololol wall of text cba to reply with my own arguments!" is tossed in when faced with pritty solid nummbers and statistics, 65k people leaving pritty much right off the bat, was obviously not due to forum whinage from 8 mans haha.

 

[CorNokZ]

There's not much do discuss is there? Origins isn't coming, so end of..

Go back to being banned imo

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

There's not much do discuss is there? Origins isn't coming, so end of..

Go back to being banned imo

If there isn't anything to discuss why are you are commenting on people trying to somwhat discuss it and exchanging views on the matter?

The only thing you aspire to do is troll and attempt on making a 'funneh', wich you failed at.

I think you better find your way back to the offtopic area where you can talk about your fetisches and whatnot.

 

[CorNokZ]

1 random comment = HUGE AMOUNTS OF TEXT

Who could even be bothered to read it?

And I go where ever I like on these boards, as I still play daoc.. I'm sure that's why you are here still? Even though you have been banned about the same amounts as Thugs or Dorimor..

 

[Fuggz]

Always said the game was enough at Thid level. After that it goes to pot! - too pot? - anyways over complicated for sure!

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

1 random comment = HUGE AMOUNTS OF TEXT

Who could even be bothered to read it?

And I go where ever I like on these boards, as I still play daoc.. I'm sure that's why you are here still? Even though you have been banned about the same amounts as Thugs or Dorimor..

So you tell me to can it, and when I reply with the same coin, thats not OK anymore?

If you have anything worthwhile to say..then say it else I don't see the point to why your still writing. Your first reply to this thread was an attention-seeking nonesene snappy oneliner that maybe was a tad funny in 2005.
You need to grow up and either reply with your actual pov or step off.

Quite funny how you still mention me beeing banned like that would upset me ?

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Always said the game was enough at Thid level. After that it goes to pot! - too pot? - anyways over complicated for sure!

Just of curiousity, did you prefer OF or NF thid? I used to love the way OF thid was layed out..but was so dissapointed in NF thid, felt so bland and dull..

 

[robbe]

Sneakers<>Matriarch

a random guess from me would be that those big drops in subscribers happens when world of warcraft was released

 

[megadave]

i actually read the whole of his post and it made sense it's not as black and white as 'NF killed daoc' but thats not what sneakers has said anyway, he just said it had a big impact and was the icing on the cake for a lot of people.

so... anyone point me in the direction of OF freeshard?

why ami still awake at 6am

 

[Genedril]

i actually read the whole of his post and it made sense it's not as black and white as 'NF killed daoc' but thats not what sneakers has said anyway, he just said it had a big impact and was the icing on the cake for a lot of people.

so... anyone point me in the direction of OF freeshard?

why ami still awake at 6am

Pretty much where I stand - NF had an impact for sure. But then you throw in growing disatisfaction with ToA; WoW release; game 'ageing' & people moving on; jamming communities together via clustering'; People getting annoyed at RA changes; people getting annoyed at class rebalance #1,512,782; the frustration of just how much damage range classes could now do & it's not so cut & dried as 'NF killed DAoC'.

The stats Sneakers has bothered to look up (& kudos for him showing some effort & intelligence) only show that people left - it's the 'why' that's important.

My earlier posts was a 'why' OF isn't going to happen - not that it's a bad idea.

TBH there's parts of NF I quite like; there's parts I hate. That's the same with OF. If anyone suggested a Mile gate system in DAoC again I'd run a mile as all it did was build zergs up on each side which then couldn't move anywhere. It was a bit like trench warfare with people fighting over about 500 feet of game land.

 

[Fuggz]

Just of curiousity, did you prefer OF or NF thid?

Definitely prefered the old design - first one. With the old design you could ambush people - camp the keeps etc. The latest Thid lacks character - dull.

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Pretty much where I stand - NF had an impact for sure. But then you throw in growing disatisfaction with ToA; WoW release; game 'ageing' & people moving on; jamming communities together via clustering'; People getting annoyed at RA changes; people getting annoyed at class rebalance #1,512,782; the frustration of just how much damage range classes could now do & it's not so cut & dried as 'NF killed DAoC'.

The stats Sneakers has bothered to look up (& kudos for him showing some effort & intelligence) only show that people left - it's the 'why' that's important.

My earlier posts was a 'why' OF isn't going to happen - not that it's a bad idea.

TBH there's parts of NF I quite like; there's parts I hate. That's the same with OF. If anyone suggested a Mile gate system in DAoC again I'd run a mile as all it did was build zergs up on each side which then couldn't move anywhere. It was a bit like trench warfare with people fighting over about 500 feet of game land.

I totally agree with the milegate part 100% true, it was a trench, and at prime people dug in and then camped eachtoher. But as I see it NF does the same but it has diffrent strutures that are even harder to push on since you can enter them and they have purp guards

I mean a game where I as a solo person (just as a light example ) can take a boat for 5-6 mins ( risc something, and actually travel ), then enter in mid land, find nothing. Then when I get bored enough I go to Brynja bridge and 1) get a duel 2) get zerged straight away 3) find someone who knows he can't kill me and then runs back to his keep telling everyone there that they should go and kill me.

As I see it this is such a flaw in NF, and there is NOTHING the game devs can do to fix it..but in OF all they had to do was to add a 2nd or even a 3rd milegate out of the "attacking realms portal keep area" to offer a diffrent route out - so if you wanted zerg you go A, if you want smaller nummbers you go B and if you want "noone" you go to the most remote milegate, option C.

Now say I get fed up with travling to enemy realm, and I stay in my home realm, now I will be either the one 1) Begging for duels 2) adding in fights I could win alone = 0 challenge 3) The one running back into the keep from bridge since a stronger oponent/larger nummber warband comes by ( I will obviously tell everyone I can to come with me and then I'll use them as meatshield so I can add ). This is not a positive way of playing in my book.

Oh well I donno, think either I get taken in by an 8 man again soon or I will start playing FPS where I can throw granades on house camping newbies and then rush them with a G36E xD

(dling torrent BF2 Special Forces ~ )

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Definitely prefered the old design - first one. With the old design you could ambush people - camp the keeps etc. The latest Thid lacks character - dull.

Yah, the mainkeep in the Old thid was <3.. I remember on my Scout Estrogen )) had sooo much fun defending the keep and the bridges! Was fun on my nightshade aswell but I had no buffbot then and the nasty pre nerf Shadowzerks was qq to fight

 

[Sneakers<>Matriarch]

Sneakers<>Matriarch

a random guess from me would be that those big drops in subscribers happens when world of warcraft was released

Yes it was in the same timespan, but the thing is that US WoW and EU WoW didn't come in the same period, I had EU WoW pre ordered and just looked at my reciept and then googled US pre order launch dates to get that varified ..

Point is that, it is flawed logic to assume US populations who got WoW before EU would stick around for (iirc ~2 months ) while the EU population instantly cancled their subs and went to WoW. What you can see in the official ( easily google-able ) sub nummbers is that:

1) DAoC nummbers are slowly rasing after ToA release dip 2) WoW US Launches 3) DAoC nummbers slowly rising still 4) NF releases 5) People leave 6) WoW EU is released 7) People leave.

Ofc, some people left for WoW, no doubt about that but the statistics is showing that it probably wasn't that many, atleast if you cannot come up with some evidence of US and EU behavioural diffrences that I don't know of.