Advice Make Massively Editor play Daoc

[Punishment]

Justin Olivetti over on Massively is asking you to dictate what game he plays! With a list of 12 options, Justin is asking you to "Choose My Adventure."

Take control of Justin's life and suck him into DAoC with your vote...he'll never want to leave

It's a scary thought, putting the fate of my gaming time into your hands, but so be it. Life is about getting out of your comfort zones, then realizing why those zones were so comfortable in the first place and racing right back to them. But before I reclaim my own destiny, I must navigate this dark valley of capricious voters.

I guess it's tradition to kick off a new series by giving y'all the chance to pick my new game of choice, and so until Sunday, you can attempt to dictate to me which title you'd like to see in the spotlight for the next couple of months. I thought long and hard about what games I was OK with trying and ended up with a list that fell into one of three categories: the old-school, the modern F2P wave, and the promising Asian imports. Read on to see the possible paths for my future, and choose wisely -- I'm counting on you!

The old-school

Are you interested in seeing a blast from the past get a few weeks of fame and glory here on Massively? Are you constantly telling your friends just how awesome these games were -- and still are -- and yet nobody listens to you? Or would you simply like to see a gamer from 2012 attempt to tackle content from the Stone Age of MMOs?

If so, you can take a shot at Dark Age of Camelot (2001), Anarchy Online (2001), or Asheron's Call (1999)​

Get on over to Justin's column on Massively and vote for DAoC!

Posted on Camelot Vault.

 

[svartalf]

Good idea. Come on people, it's a two-horser between DAoC and Anarcy Online (at the time of writing).

 

[Tilda]

Lets do it for DAoC!

 

[Billargh]

I'd vote, but I see no way how to, so balls to it.

 

[svartalf]

So far:

CMA: Choose my fate, gamers!​

Dark Age of Camelot 2217 (37.3%)​

Anarchy Online 2214 (37.2%)​

Runes of Magic 27 (0.5%)​

Asheron's Call 68 (1.1%)​

DC Universe Online 175 (2.9%)​

City of Heroes 967 (16.3%)​

Age of Conan 108 (1.8%)​

Free Realms 32 (0.5%)​

Vindictus 31 (0.5%)​

Eden Eternal 37 (0.6%)​

Champions Online 29 (0.5%)​

Dragon Nest 39 (0.7%)​

 

[Coldbeard]

It's either closed or I'm too stupid to figure out how to vote.

 

[CorNokZ]

If it is closed daoc won by three votes, lol

 

[svartalf]

If it is closed daoc won by three votes, lol

And that's not all... now we can choose what race/class/realm he rolls on...
Original: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/14/choose-my-adventure-dark-age-of-camelot-week-one/
Go Midgard!

Choose My Adventure: Dark Age of Camelot, week one

by Justin Olivetti

on Mar 14th 2012 3:00PM

Fantasy, Dark Age of Camelot, Classes, PvP, Races, Humor, Choose My Adventure


Hol. Ee. Crap.

Seriously, folks, I don't know how it usually goes down in CMAtown, but I've never experienced a week of my life when I was literally watching strangers decide my destiny -- and go neck-and-neck in the process. After thousands and thousands of votes, it all came down to a difference of... three. Really.

Three MMO communities caught wind of last week's poll regarding the game I'd be playing and writing up over the next several weeks. Dark Age of Camelot players fought valiantly against Anarchy Online fans for the privilege of this column's focus, often times trading spots for first and second place. The City of Heroes community got into the game late and racked up several hundred votes in an attempt to secure the win, but ultimately it came down to a last-minute brawl in which DAoC garnered three measly votes more than AO, which means I'll be heading off to Camelot starting next week.

With the insane voting over a game at an end, today begins the real fun: You get to roll my character for me. Join me as I lay out just how this is going to work with DAoC's crazy setup.

Typically on Choose My Adventure, this post would be pretty cut-and-dried: pick a race, pick a class, tell me what kind of underwear I should pack, and we'll call it a day. This is not as simple as it sounds for Dark Age of Camelot, as most races eschew underwear as a general principle and DAoC has a bajillion races and classes. So instead of allowing you to pick specifics in these regards, I'm going to have to boil it down to general themes lest our polls break under the sheer strain of so many options.

Please note that all voting will be completed by midnight on the 17th in order to allow me time to play!

Page one: Choose my server ruleset

As a realm vs. realm-centric game, DAoC has one more server type than other MMOs. The standard ruleset -- "normal" or "traditional" -- is PvE within your own realm but PvP between the three realms in certain areas. Then there is the PvP ruleset, which is completely free-for-all open PvP: anyone can attack anyone nearly anywhere. Finally, DAoC has a cooperative server that is PvE to the core and shifts the struggles between the realms from direct conflict to competing against PvE keeps.


CMA: Choose my server type!Traditional (RvR) serverCooperative (PvE) serverPvP (FFA) serverVote

Page two: Choose my realm

The three realms of Dark Age are very much at the core of the game itself. Players strongly identify with their chosen realms, and even years after playing this MMO, continue to defend its honor in conversations with other expats.

We've got the realm of Albion, which is probably closest to what you'd think of when you conjure up images of old England, King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table. Next up is Hibernia, a realm steeped in the culture and lore of Celtic mythology. Finally, there is the Nordic-themed lands of Midgard, what with Vikings and fjords and all that. Choices, choices!


CMA: Choose my realm allegiance!Albion it shall be, and not a moment to waste!You must be part of Hibernia or all is lost!Only Midgard can give you a taste of the good life!Vote
Page three: Choose my racial type!

As all three realms boast their own races and classes, I'm going to have to generalize these next two polls. Depending on which realm wins the day, do you want me to roll the most human-like character I can, the most exotic or beast-like character I can, or the most Elvish character I can? Or, you know, a Minotaur?


CMA: Choose my racial type!Pick a human-like characterGo for an Elf -- Elves rule!I'd like to see you try an exotic or beastly raceThere's only one option for me: MinotaurVote

Page four: Choose my class role!

So, with a measly 47 or so classes to pick from, I'd say my options are fairly limited. To keep things less ridiculous in length, I'm going to simplify this choice between the four main archetypes -- tank, casters, rogues, healers -- as well as the option of a hybrid that combines two of these together. Depending on your vote, I'll do my best to roll a class that best exemplifies this role in the realm.


CMA: Choose my class role!I think you need to mix it up in melee: Roll a tank!Show off your sparkly power: Be a caster!Strike from the shadows: You should totally go rogue!We need a medic here: Stop being selfish and start healing others!Why not try a hybrid class instead!Vote
That's it for this week! I'll bow to the majority opinion on each of these to roll my very first character in Dark Age of Camelot. I'll let you know next week how my first steps into the world went and definitely will be asking for your guidance.

It's time to put the screws to Justin "Syp" Olivetti, as he enters the Choose My Adventure chamber and pits his wits against your will! Check back each Wednesday for a recap of the last week's play, then sound off in the polls and the comments to determine his course of action for the next week.


Tags: bioware, camelot, choose-my-adventure, classic-mmo, cma, daoc, dark-age-of-camelot, ea, electronic-arts, fantasy, featured, hands-on, mythic, mythic-entertainment, mythology, opinion, poll, polls, pvp, readers-choice, rvr, vote, voting

 

[CorNokZ]

HO wizard on the pve server!! Let's do this!!

 

[AngelHeal]

lol cornokz

 

[svartalf]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/21/choose-my-adventure-dark-age-of-camelot-week-two/

Choose My Adventure: Dark Age of Camelot, week two

by Justin Olivetti

on Mar 21st 2012 3:00PM

Fantasy, Polls, Dark Age of Camelot, Hands-on, Humor, First Impressions, Choose My Adventure


Some of you probably know that I first got into the blogging scene with my Warhammer Online blog Waaagh! Back then in early 2008, I was a veritable Mythic and PvP newbie, and I spent a good portion of the lead-up to the game's release reading up on Dark Age of Camelot. I figured that, after all, WAR would be built on the foundation of DAoC. In a way, it both was and wasn't.

The one thing I never did was actually play DAoC. Older MMOs can be quite intimidating; they have deep-rooted communities and tomes of updates and history, and they were more rough around the edges. Rough in their cores, too, if we're being honest. So the intimidation factor kept me away until this past week, when Massively readers sent me on a quest to Camelot for the first time in my life.

Last week readers voted on the character I was to roll. An impressive 82% of you said to check out the realm vs. realm ruleset and roll a a Midgard (43.2%) beastly (40.8%) hybrid (43.3%) character. After reading some of the recommendations in the comments, I ended up making a female Troll Skald on a traditional server. She may be lumpy and bulky, but I took a shine to her right away.[/url]

Old school takes me to school

One thing I'll say in favor of World of Warcraft: It helped to solidify a standard friendly and intuitive user interface across the genre. I'm not saying that WoW did all the work here but that titles since then have pretty much followed this template and titles prior are often all over the board in UI design. (Pause here for commenters to type furiously.) Upon logging into DAoC for the first time, I was slightly overwhelmed by the foreign-looking UI that awaited me.

Oh, it wasn't all bad and all unfamiliar, but I spent the first half-hour just trying to figure out the basics. Where's the hotbar? I need a hotbar! Oh, there's the hotbar; it's just hiding. OK, got the chat window, but where's the minimap? I guess I can toggle on the bigger map, but man that takes up a lot of screen real estate. Hmm, how do I enable anti-aliasing? (Turns out that you have to do this outside of the game from the control panel.) Keybinding and slash commands and... I NEED AIR!

In fairness, I experienced much of the same feeling when trying out EverQuest last year. Experienced players probably don't give the UI a second thought, but those coming from modern MMOs have a substantial obstacle to overcome right off the bat. Fortunately, DAoC's design wasn't as strange as I initially thought, and the more I played, the more I grew comfortable in its decidedly old-school approach.

Getting off to a good start

Going into this project, I was most interested to see how Mythic's recent update of the "new user experience." From what I could tell, the team redesigned the introductory quests both to better teach you the game and to gear you up for RvR fights. As I'm squarely in the I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing demographic, I clung to the thought that the game would give me water wings before throwing me in the deep end.

I needn't have worried. As it stands right now, DAoC's beginning zone is quite similar to what I've encountered elsewhere. There are quest givers that walk you through basic tasks while outfitting me with better weapons and armors, and there are lesson NPCs that serve as additional tutorial resources on specific subjects. While about 80% of what I read was standard MMO stuff, the rest was quite specific to either DAoC or older-style MMOs and needed to be absorbed. For example, I had a whole menu bar on my screen with words like "face" and "stick" on it, and only after talking to an NPC was I able to learn that they were helpful shortcuts for battle positioning.

The most difficult aspect of that first hour was dealing with the camera. You don't tend to think about how MMO cameras work too often until you're thrown into a game where it's different than "normal." In this case, the camera wasn't necessarily snapping to the over-the-shoulder view I'm accustomed to in games but instead would sometimes just stay on the front or side of my character, requiring me to manually swivel the view. At one point the camera disconnected from me entirely, and no matter where I moved or ran, the view remained constant. That was a log out, log back in moment.

No time for chat -- there are pigs that need killin'!

One of the things that I ask of any new user experience in an MMO is for it to not rush me through quests -- just give me some time to just figure my character and combat out on my own. After learning the basics of DAoC's combat, I went to the side of the hill and began slaughtering my way through a Ron Swanson-level of bacon.

Let me back up and talk about my character for a moment. I won't be sharing her name or server just because I want my experience to be free from artificial help or harassment. Thank you, however, to the folks who offered to give me a hand -- I do appreciate it.

After listening to readers and doing some research on DAoC's beginner's guide, I agreed that the Skald would be a solid pick for a new player. It's a hybrid that incorporates a melee warrior (who uses axes, hammers, and swords), decent armor, and some spellcasting abilities. Pretty quick into my journey, I already had several melee skills, a heal spell, and a sprint spell at my command.

Fighting wasn't too tough, particularly as the beginning critters won't attack unless first bashed across the backside of their noggins. The Skald starts off with a simple 1-2 combo, but I learned from my reading that it would be good to get in the practice of pulling a mob from a distance using a minor damage spell. That way when the mobs do have an aggro radius, I'll hopefully be able to separate one from the pack.

My biggest disappointment with combat is that there is (from what I could tell) no way to trigger floating damage above heads. Let me know if I'm overlooking something here, readers, but it was definitely a lesser experience triggering my skills and then studiously observing the combat window to see how much damage I was doing and if I even hit.

My biggest surprise? When I killed a critter, loot would automatically be put in my bag. No need to waste time clicking corpses!

Once upon a time in Midgard...

Once I was comfortable with the way fighting worked, I buckled down and started going through the beginner quest chain. It's not Shakespeare in quality and content, but it did the job. After performing a few chores for the village and getting stuff because, hey, I'm a big Troll so gimme, I was sent to a nearby island to help fend off a minor Hibernian invasion. Smacking around humanoids was a definite improvement over swine, although the end result was far less tasty. Even Trolls have their standards.

Soon enough I was level 7, and I had become an unstoppable juggernaut of death (well, at least in my own mind). In just a few short hours I'd gone from wearing a leather jerkin my mother made for me when I was but a 200-pound Troll toddler to a suit of the finest chainmail. For fashion, I had a bright yellow cloak that was perfect for getting the attention of everyone in the area who might be looking for an easy target to kill. Fortunately, I figured out how to dye it baby blue because blue is soothing, comforting, and a PvP invincibility shield.

I discovered that DAoC's leveling interface is actually pretty engaging. Every level you get a handful of points to spend in your various specialties (such as weapons or spells), and as you go higher in those areas, the game grants you new abilities. It's easy enough to understand, and before long, I had gone from a two-button hotbar to seven. This Troll's going to community college, yessiree!

Eventually I came to a natural stopping point when a quest-giver gave me a clear choice between... well, I'll let you read it yourself:

So there you have this week's CMA decision! Do I continue questing and gearing up in PvE areas for the time being, or do I forsake all bonds of fellowship with this newbie village and dive right into the battlegrounds? Decide for me, and next week I'll let you know how it turns out!


CMA: PvE or PvP?You're just a baby yet: Stay in Hafheim and continue to explore and level up in the PvE content!Grow some chest hair: Dive right into the Lion's Den battlegrounds! Nothing bad could happen!Vote

It's time to put the screws to Justin "Syp" Olivetti, as he enters the Choose My Adventure chamber and pits his wits against your will! Check back each Wednesday for a recap of the last week's play, then sound off in the polls and the comments to determine his course of action for the next week.

Tags: activision, bioware, blizzard, blizzard-entertainment, camelot, choose-my-adventure, classic-mmo, cma, daoc, dark-age-of-camelot, ea, electronic-arts, endless-trial, eq, eq1, everquest, f2p, fantasy, featured, free-to-play, hands-on, midgard, mythic, mythic-entertainment, mythology, opinion, poll, polls, pvp, readers-choice, ron-swanson, rvr, skald, soe, sony, sony-online-entertainment, troll, vote, voting, war, warcraft, warhammer, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft, wow

 

[svartalf]

Week Three...

Choose My Adventure: Dark Age of Camelot, week three


by Justin Olivetti

on Mar 28th 2012 3:00PM

Fantasy, Polls, Dark Age of Camelot, Opinion, Hands-on, Humor, Choose My Adventure


Frustrating and boring: These are two words that don't bode well for any MMO, and yet that's exactly what my Dark Age of Camelot experience this past week was.

Now, granted there's always an adjustment period with new MMOs, and I like to think of myself as a fairly patient person. I know that sometimes it might be a matter of minutes or understanding to flip "frustration" into "joy" and "boring" into "addictive," which is why it's good to stick games out until you're sure that the issue isn't with you playing the game wrong or being ignorant of what makes it work.

That said, if I wasn't covering DAoC for this column but was just trying it out for myself, I certainly would not have subscribed after finishing the 14-day trial. New player journey or no, I found more aggravation than fun this past week and kept wondering to myself, "When does it start to get good? Where's all that great stuff players are telling me about? And as a Troll, how much lotion do I need to get my skin feeling silky soft?"[/url]

Extra leeway

Before any DAoC fans out there start constructing their Justin effigies and voodoo dolls, I want to say that I totally understand that this is the sort of MMO that asks for and demands some extra leeway and patience. I'm in this for a few more weeks to come, so I'm not passing down a final judgment, but as a new player, I found that my first experience in an RvR battleground was, shall we say, less than satisfactory (and since y'all sent me there, you have a share in the blame, muahaha).

As a Warhammer Online veteran, I was comfortable with the idea of battlegrounds. From what I could tell, the game teleported me to an isolated zone that was in a perpetual state of PvP. Called The Lion's Den, this area was a roughly triangular piece of land with a keep for each realm at the tips and a contested keep in the center. It wasn't too complicated to grasp.

As the only NPCs in my keep were a quest-giver (who handed out three PvE and two PvP quests), a "hastener" (who buffed my run speed), a merchant, and a guy who could teleport me back, there wasn't much reason to stay and hang out. The tooltips told me that this battleground was for players up through level 9, so I anticipated the quiet. However, it wasn't just quiet; it was downright morgue-like most of the week I was there. Just to see another player was such a relief that it brought tears to my eyes.

Off to adventure and drudgery!

Part of my growing frustration with DAoC is that, as with many older MMOs, there simply isn't enough information given to newbies. I mean, I can see that Mythic's made progress in this regard, but I had to engage in a lot of tabbing out to Google questions and a lot of in-game trial-and-error.

For example, battleground quests award bounty scrolls, and there's a singular bounty merchant. Easy enough to figure out. But even after completing several quests, I couldn't buy anything from him, even with several scrolls in my inventory. It took me a little while to realize I had to use the scroll to "unpack" the bounty points within, but how to do that? I right-clicked on the scroll and then clicked on the "use" button, but all that would do is give me a hand icon. Honestly, it took this MMO vet 10 minutes to figure out what I had to right-click on the object to pull up the tooltip, then type in "/use" into the chat window. Sounds simple enough but wasn't intuitive at all -- and I was tripping over stuff like this all the time.

With few players around, I trotted around to quest objectives (helpfully marked on my map), killed my prerequisite five giants and five snakes and five little guys, then headed back for an instant rinse-and-repeat. It was a tedious way to level up, and with very few items in the bounty shop that were worth purchasing, I decided to jettison the PvE quests and try to pick a fight wherever I could.

/Release?

This was tougher than anticipated, however. With extremely few-to-no players around, simply finding someone to fight was almost impossible. I struck out for one of the enemy's keeps, thinking that I might be able to fight my way inside, but the guards insta-gibbed me as soon as I got within spitting distance. I guess that's not one of the intended goals of this battleground. Fair enough.

So as soon as I released back to my keep and buffed back up (thank God for speed buffs!), I headed out to the central keep, which was in the hands of Albion. Filthy Albs, with their six-pack of albs and all. Yet there I was met with almost the same result: Guards swarmed; I died.

By now I'd realized that if a fight goes south in DAoC, there's really no escaping it. Whether it was guards, a swarm of mobs, or a high-level snake, I could not run away from the encounter if I saw that there was no way I could win. Even with two speed boosts and a healing spell at my disposal, I would be cut down within 10 steps. That was discouraging. What was even more discouraging is that every death set my XP bar back some -- another old-school trait that I'm glad we've left in the dust.

So there I was, most of the way through the week, and apart from NPC quests and dying to guards, nothing had really happened. Without active PvP, The Lion's Den was as dull as a declawed tabby. Not a good sign.

The French connection

With extremely lowered expectations, I logged in on Saturday for my final day of play before writing this up... and then's when it happened.

ANOTHER PLAYER. Like, in front of me! Waving and everything!

My fingers trembling with excitement and a blood sugar drop, I said hello and sent him a group invite. He responded "French, no speak English," which was the full extent of our conversation apart from "Go" and "Hibs." Still, grouping with him and a second player did wonders to alleviate my boredom, and we chewed through PvE quests quickly while keeping an eye out for enemies.

Lo and behold, enemies did appear. With three members on our team and (I think) three on theirs, it seemed like it should have been evenly matched, but we got steamrolled not once but twice.

As thrilling as it was to actually see some PvP action, the actual fight was anything but enjoyable. DAoC seems to go out of its way to keep information from you, so enemy players didn't have names over their heads, just generic descriptions, which confused me when they started summoning humanoid pets as well. DAoC also doesn't indicate your target with arrows or circles or anything other than changing the name color to white, which is easy to miss when tab-targeting among a rainbow of name colors (as the colors also indicate con strength).

While I'm sure I didn't know what I was doing, the fight as a whole was just a mess. Thrilling, but a mess. Having two long-range instant spells plus a mez helped, but their spellcasters seemed to shrug those off while pounding me with nukes, and I could never get within melee range to return the favor. What's even worse is that in the middle of a fight, my keyboard utterly failed, and I had to log out for the day and get a replacement.

So that's where I'm at: frustrated and bored but patient and resilient. I'm definitely listening to your advice in the comments, and I'd like to know what you think I should be doing this next week:


CMA: Lead me onward!Stick with PvP battlegroundsHead back to the safety of PvE questing and get your game legsTry something new: Go to the border keeps and engage in REAL RvRVote

It's time to put the screws to Justin "Syp" Olivetti, as he enters the Choose My Adventure chamber and pits his wits against your will! Check back each Wednesday for a recap of the last week's play, then sound off in the polls and the comments to determine his course of action for the next week.

Tags: bioware, camelot, choose-my-adventure, classic-mmo, cma, daoc, dark-age-of-camelot, ea, electronic-arts, endless-trial, fantasy, featured, hands-on, mythic, mythic-entertainment, mythology, opinion, poll, polls, pvp, readers-choice, rvr, vote, voting, war, warhammer, warhammer-online

 

[- English -]

Tbh I think he writes like a spoilt american kid who's been playing WOW for too long, and has no idea what to do if it's anything out of that scope. Now I know daoc is far from perfect, but 1 of the good things about it is that it isn't a WOW clone unlike 90% of the other MMO's - partly because it was out before WOW.

 

[Everz]

Agreed.. he like most, want a game fed to them with ease.

 

[CorNokZ]

Daoc might not be the best MMO out there but if you don't know what you have targeted unless they light up and have ten arrows pointing at them then please go back to the failure that is WAR.

And staying a week in the lions den? Doesn't he talk to other players at all? If he did he would k ow that thidranki would be the place to go for low level rvr. I hope he gets to lvl24 and he gets to see it.

Him and his kind is whats wrong with gaming thes days. "I have to think all by myself? What a shit game!"

 

[eksdee]

What an utter shitcunt. People like him are the reason that no good multiplayer games get released anymore.

 

[Punishment]

Dunno how he didn't get 50 inside a week

 

[CorNokZ]

Cause he is a bellend

 

[Everz]

What an utter shitcunt. People like him are the reason that no good multiplayer games get released anymore.

Agreed, kids need to be spoon-fed.

I remember printing maps for DAoC because there wasn't any in game, and most of those were woefully inaccurate.. but by fuck it made it more fun!

 

[CorNokZ]

Agreed, kids need to be spoon-fed.

I remember printing maps for DAoC because there wasn't any in game, and most of those were woefully inaccurate.. but by fuck it made it more fun!

When I bought my daoc box with SI I got all the maps on nice shiny paper along with it. Needsless to say my irl friends who also played daoc at the time were green with envy. Still have all of my boxes and all the old maps

 

[Everz]

When I bought my daoc box with SI I got all the maps on nice shiny paper along with it. Needsless to say my irl friends who also played daoc at the time were green with envy. Still have all of my boxes and all the old maps

We had them all printed out, staples together and arranged so that each zone corresponded and led on from one another. Even a few had markings on with lines drawn of where to go for Pygmies, or where I found a good camp that wasn't on map.

Thems were the days... brings me on to quests that went to the middle of nowhere and it was guess work. Remember alot of the early SI ones being totally confusing, doing Arawn for the first time for example.

 

[eksdee]

You know what I had to do to learn about DAoC? Talk to people, socialise, make friends. I still play games with a lot of the people I knew from DAoC to this day, people from PE in 2001 and so on. Of the people I've met and played with in subsequent MMOs, there's literally two people who remain close friends. Having everything spoonfed just kills online gaming. It's so, so sad the state that MMOs are in now. I know it's very easy to look with rose-coloured glasses at a game like DAoC, but nothing will ever come close to replacing it and I'm not ashamed to say it makes me really sad to come to that realisation.

 

[- English -]

We had them all printed out, staples together and arranged so that each zone corresponded and led on from one another. Even a few had markings on with lines drawn of where to go for Pygmies, or where I found a good camp that wasn't on map.

Thems were the days... brings me on to quests that went to the middle of nowhere and it was guess work. Remember alot of the early SI ones being totally confusing, doing Arawn for the first time for example.

I was the same. I used to play with my bro at the time, and we had them printed out and put on the wall behind the computer.
It was what made the game fun imo.. not having any maps, you having to explore .. and I don't remember any rush to level 50 ..
nowdays, its all about the highest level, who does this first etc .. but in daoc, people made new characters for fun, and therefore it took months for people to get the top level. Infact, I had so many characters, it took 6 months
Theres too many websites with item lists and so forth, too many guides on what to do, too many pre build websites etc

 

[Ctuchik]

Him and his kind is whats wrong with gaming thes days. "I have to think all by myself? What a shit game!"

You can't blame him for not being used to play a decade old text based MMO.

He's used to modern MMO's and if you want to fling dirt at anyone because of that, fling it at the devs making those modern MMO's.

 

[Everz]

I was the same. I used to play with my bro at the time, and we had them printed out and put on the wall behind the computer.
It was what made the game fun imo.. not having any maps, you having to explore .. and I don't remember any rush to level 50 ..
nowdays, its all about the highest level, who does this first etc .. but in daoc, people made new characters for fun, and therefore it took months for people to get the top level. Infact, I had so many characters, it took 6 months
Theres too many websites with item lists and so forth, too many guides on what to do, too many pre build websites etc

Allakazam was my mecca.. seeing those early pics of diamondback toad and ellyls glowies were thing of godlike. Getting the Cabalist staff (Staff of the Creator? Dropped off a big named in Forest near Drag) from Dartmoor on my first attempt was one of my highlights, beasted up OF with a matter cab on that. I was the opposite as I chose one thing and stuck with it till it was 50.. hence my extremely low amount of lvl 50 characters, even on excal I only had 4 after years on there hah.

 

[svartalf]

Here we go again...

Choose My Adventure: Dark Age of Camelot, week four

by Justin Olivetti

on Apr 4th 2012 1:00PM

Fantasy, Dark Age of Camelot, PvP, Hands-on, Choose My Adventure

By participating in Choose My Adventure, I'm starting to realize that this column is perhaps one of the most meta projects that we do here on Massively. It's not just a popularity contest between games (although it begins that way) nor a mere hands-on play-through of a title. Instead, it's a bizarre combination of one person led by hundreds of puppet masters with the added layer of forging a path as a complete newbie so that others who follow in my wake may learn from my mistakes.

But with all of you as my puppet masters, I have the added pressure of not wanting to let any of you down. I know that last week some of you were disappointed with my progress (or lack thereof) and could identify dozens of things I was just doing flat-out wrong. That's another layer to this experience, I think: It gives experienced vets the chance to see the game through virgin eyes and to pass down sage advice that they themselves wish they had gotten right out of the gate.

So this past week was all about taking in your advice and attempting to execute it to the best of my ability. Some of it worked, and some did not, but the end result was a series of Dark Age of Camelot play sessions that were far less frustrating -- and even, dare I say, intriguing?[/url]

The vote: Go back to PvE and get your game legs!

I was relieved to see this as the mandate of over half of you voters last week. I'm not against participating in PvP (I wouldn't have put Dark Age of Camelot on this list otherwise), but when the vote went out to send me to PvP battlegrounds, I'd scarcely been in the game a few days and had little-to-no idea what was going on. Plus, as many of you pointed out, players tend to level right past the 1-10 battleground bracket, so its barren landscape came as no surprise.

I headed back to the relative safety of PvE lands, determined to figure out a lot of the little niggles of gameplay while putting some serious levels at my back. The game sent me to the town of Mularn, which was rife with quests and a few additional lessons from trainers. Many of the quests were forgettable (or extremely easy), but they helped me rack up XP and gear in record time. Before I knew it, I was level 20 and had a completely new set of armor hanging from my lithe Troll frame.

I've grown to appreciate the Skald as a class. While I would not have picked it as one of my top-tier choices in the game (nor a Troll, for that matter), it's certainly grown on me. The flexibility of its buffs (you can have two up at a time), the run-speed boost, heavy armor, and the combination of long-range casting and close-combat melee makes me feel tough and dangerous. Sure, the fights are slow, but at least there are combos to set up and cooldowns to watch.

While I wouldn't put DAoC in the same ballpark as Skyrim, I enjoyed the same Viking flair in Midgard as I did in Bethesda's recent RPG. The graphics really aren't as bad as you'd think for a 2001 game, and the night-time effects are particularly atmospheric.

But enough about routine PvE questing; let's get to some of the advice that y'all gave me last week.

Advice: You need to create macros for and use /stick and /face more.

As an immigrant from modern MMOs, I find it a really foreign concept to have to use a slew of slash-commands to get the most out of my gameplay, but it's a fact of life in DAoC. I took this advice and created a macro for /stick that ended up transforming fights from clumsy affairs to smooth-as-silk battles.

The command /stick essentially turns your character into a homing missile for your target: It makes you face it at all times and run toward it until you're in melee range. With that macro, you don't have to worry about proper facing (which is essential for most skills) or picking your target out of a crowd. This was great advice, and the macro is occupying my "1" key for good.

Advice: Ditch the shield and go for a two-hander.

I don't know why the Skald starts out with a shield if it gets no benefit from it -- the game certainly never goes out of its way to inform me of this -- but now that I know that, a two-hander is a no-brainer. Or a brain-bludgeoner.

Advice: Guards give kill tasks if you type /task at them.

I'm not entirely sure whether the game ever tells you this (I certainly don't remember it doing so), but it is a nifty way to get an extra PvE quest when you need the XP. I went up to a townsperson, said /task to him, and was ordered to clear out a nearby cave. The cave ended up being a private instance that challenged me to best 19 critters, and once I had done so, I got a huge XP reward right away.

Advice: Find a guild.

Honestly, I tried, but nobody was in the market for wet-behind-the-ears noobs (and I think I outed myself to some Massively players by shouting across regional and advice chat). On the whole, I didn't see a lot of chatter at all in any of the channels save for the occasional trade or gold spam.

That's a shame, and not so much for me (after all, I'm not going to be playing this game for too much longer) but for any new player who might dive in and hope to find a guild right off the bat. Most of these older games tend to be hungry for recruits, so I just found that puzzling.

Advice: Get back into PvP battlegrounds when you hit 20.

This is my full intention and the reason I pushed to get to 20 this past week. I want to end my time in DAoC with the main selling point of the game and hopefully evaluate PvP combat from a slightly more seasoned perspective.

Because of this, the vote this week won't be whether or not to send me to go PvPing; that's what I'm going to do, period. To be honest, I'm having a really difficult time coming up with any sort of vote that has to do with battleground PvP because I already know that I'm going to look for a group and do whatever the group wants to do. There really isn't any other big option other than to solo (and die), so a poll might be counter-productive for this.

So let's break with CMA tradition and not have a poll, just this once. Shh, don't tell Shawn! Instead, what I'd love to see is as much DAoC PvP advice as you gave me PvE advice last week, and I will do my best to follow that in the bloody encounters to come. What say you, experts, seasoned vets, and general spectators? What would give me the best chance of not only surviving but thriving in the battlegrounds?

It's time to put the screws to Justin "Syp" Olivetti, as he enters the Choose My Adventure chamber and pits his wits against your will! Check back each Wednesday for a recap of the last week's play, then sound off in the polls and the comments to determine his course of action for the next week.

 

[CorNokZ]

Gonna read it later.. Waaayyy too hungover to read something in italic now

 

[Coldbeard]

When I bought my daoc box with SI I got all the maps on nice shiny paper along with it. Needsless to say my irl friends who also played daoc at the time were green with envy. Still have all of my boxes and all the old maps

I had that box version as well! Remember looking at the maps all the time, trying to figure out where the hell I was and where to go

 

[Raven]

We had them all printed out, staples together and arranged so that each zone corresponded and led on from one another. Even a few had markings on with lines drawn of where to go for Pygmies, or where I found a good camp that wasn't on map.

Yep, same here

 

[Everz]

Yep, same here

When SI came out and we 'found' the graveyard near Clifton.. many hours PLing there. Used have a decent group up there, including a certain Jaddi who everyone seems to hate now..