The Campaign - do you really give a toss?

[old.Tbird]

Serious question, do you actually care anymore about the campaign? I've read most updates even though I play 99% Mid, i've seen and attempted interaction with a lot of the NPC's, i've seen killed and been killed by Geesha spawns.

Problem is now I really cba to read the updates, it might be nicely written but frankly if I wanted to read i'd buy Lord of the Rings. I no longer interact with the NPC's because i've long since forgotten their original replys so have no idea if they have changed. I dont bother mob hunting anymore because from what i've seen they are just a.n.other spawn.

It turned from anticipation to just one great big yawn for me, what about you?

 

[old.Gombur Glodson]

I got to the tepok thing, but I've never read any updates.

 

[trigali]

I tend to agree.

However I would not throw the stone at GOA. It was the first attempt and had never been done before, and maybe it was a bit ambitious to have a server wide campaign.

On top of that, the arrival of Darkness Falls in the middle of the campaign took everybody's minds off the roleplaying and certainly did not help.

I have kind of lost track of this campaign, but when the next one is announced I will be looking forward to participate.

Come on GOA, have an other go !

 

[liste]

Campaign was good. it was very good!

it had only one flaw, though.
It took too long for anything to happen, that required a playerbase to solve it. Most things built up in tension, but too much tension, makes people go away

 

[Brannor McThife]

Liste, you're talking about an Albion event that stretched a few weeks. TBird is speaking about the full on Epic events. AFAIK, all three realms are still going in various ways.

The Geersha, are something completely different? no? Dunno. I just think they're two seperate things.

I'll post this link for GOA to see, so please, give feedback. They already know my view... :sleeping:

-G

 

[inqy]

just seems like a failed attempt at pretending there is news on the news page to me

still if I could be bothered to look into all this campaign stuff I'm sure it's ok. the updates seem nicely done at least, so I'm not complaining really

 

[Flimgoblin]

I like the stories on the web page but can't say I've seen much going on since the Geershas....

That dodgy fellow has been harassing Lord Adribard for a week or two waiting for him to go do something....

maybe I'm just not looking in the right places...

 

[munkey_blue]

Take a look at Asheron's Call for a server wide campaign...

The event is good.. but there is litte player base support (sites documenting the event) and little news about what has been completed.. so what needs to be done (both linked) however.. it IS a good thing,a nd I wanna see more

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

http://forums.barrysworld.com/showthread.php?threadid=31788

Ive been bumping that thread for ages now.

This campaign blows. Tension...eh? Updates...wtf? All we have had (on mid) so far is a bunch of gershas we wiped in a few minutes, a strager who vanished, weird chars appearing all over the place who utter gibberish and a story line on the main DAoC-europe webby thats pretty but absolutely twat all to do with anything actually happening in game!

Even when we had disbanded the mob of gershas, we didnt know if we had done right or wrong, good or bad, completed the task or fooked it up. Oh, and we got drops that we could not sell / equip / salvage.

As for not throwing stones at GOA, all i can say is they should not make promises they aint gonna keep.

Im pretty damn sure that there are a couple of thousand ppl playing who would be willing to play NCP for a day to give this campaign some zest. Either from a script with his / her own char or having access to a predifine char on the server (assuming you have a free slot). Or what about some kind of competition to create a campaign? Prize a T-shirt (not to be worn in public pls geeks) or a months subscription or some exp (like that idea meself).

Just my angle on this. As you guess im a lil dissapointed.

 

[Belsameth]

I still think they should announce it, or at least partly.
while it ruines some of the RP part, in that you don't have to search for it (much), it will prevent a lot of interested players who are looking in all the wrong places.

also, a lot of smalltime events would be great as well. events such as a goa controlled NPC that gives a quest to everybody that happens to be at that location or something.

(hope I'm making myself even remotely clear)

 

[Brannor McThife]

Originally posted by Soulcatcher
also, a lot of smalltime events would be great as well. events such as a goa controlled NPC that gives a quest to everybody that happens to be at that location or something.

Once apon a time... we had this. Then GOA recruited fulltime Event people. Now we have longterm event(s) that most people have no idea of what's going on.

From what knowledge I have, and that which I can speculate on:

Longest event prior to GOA (payed) "Event Team" - EoB (1 week).
Average length of live event - 1 day.
Regularity - frequent, all realms.

Post "Event Team":
Longest event - Epic multi-realm (?) event (Still going?).
Followed by - Albion/Midgard/Hibernian Geeshra. Albion complete? Hibernian complete? Midgard pending?
Regularity of short-term events (1 dayers) Infrequent, irregular on various realms.

I will forever stand by my oppinion that the "Epic" multi-realm event with these ghostly characters appearing all over was/is too big. It has lasted MONTHS now and doesn't appear to be going anywhere. Occasionally, a mob disappears, and a new one appears. I laugh at the fact that you have to take every single class/race combination to each new NPC just to see if they'll respond in some way.

"Dark Age of Camelot the MMOG where you click on static NPCs."
I thought it was supposed to be-
"Dark Age of Camelot the MMORPG where roleplaying interaction with live PC's brings out high adventure and role playing for all."



-G

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by old.Tbird
Serious question, do you actually care anymore about the campaign?
...
It turned from anticipation to just one great big yawn for me, what about you?

Yeah, very disapointed. Ive been on a lot of over the last months (Hib - Exac) and to me the campagin has consisted of :-

a). A bunch of strangers posing as merchants. Only usefull to pull to relieve boredom while waiting for groups in innis carthag. They could have at least sold something new.

b). Some new npcs who responded to only one or two words, probably in french.

c). The geisher invastion, which was fun for the day, before being confind to the dungeons and causing most people to be upset that quest npcs and their favourite leveling spots were out of use for a month.

d). Some dueling outside tnn, only of interest to level 50 tanks.

e). I read every article on the news pages, in detail, looking for snippets of useful information, places to visit , clues etc, and found very little of use.

When I see the news and read the campaign waffle I now accept that its just background writting of no real relevence to the world I am playing in, and that really theres nothing of interest to go looking for. Shame.

 

[old.Tbird]

OK so it's not just me then.

Well should GOA read this take a small leaf out of the much maligned (deservedly) LoM. Tomorrow being Halloween the ghouls will escape the dungeon and terrorize the outside world for a day. Oh so simple, a one page 'the dead are rising' post and they could drop Miserable Zombies etc in prime spots all over Mid.

Imagine taking a keep and finding half a dozen Fenrir inside, trying to port to emain and having to fight your way into Svasud first, nothing major to achieve but a diversion that makes you go wow or wtf.

Ah well i've said my bit, time to return to the routine....

 

[PJS]

The main thing is that its frustrating if you dont know if theres anything you can currently do event wise. IE can I go somewhere today and do/say something that will trigger some event content OR do I have to wait until the event 'code' is updated because Im wasting my time otherwise. Like there was no way to clear spraggon den until they 'let' you be able to free slaves.
Its all very well having nicely written stories on the website every week if they werent, so cryptic/translated from French sometimes poorly/contain characters that dont exist/contain chars that dont talk about the story content/dont affect the event (edit: come to think of it what event? has it finished? ).

WE NEED AN EVENT FILIDH/CRIER/mid version that gives hints about what can currently be done/ what day large scale happenings will occur (geersha invasion) so people who want to dont have to play 24/7 to avoid missing anything

 

[Damon_D]

Aye we need a town crier like on UO , if anything happend any where he would yell it out and everybody and there mom would come rushing for the fun. Also you could click them anytime for news related to the gameplay , city take over , new mob spawn and what not. I want to defend a city from take over , and I want the mob's to give decent xp and maybe some nifty drops or reward for serving ya realm ( A helm with horns ?? ) But most of all it should not be for lvl 40 + chars only.. and there should be mob's who would maybe reflect aoe spells or something , so 5 high lvl's aoe and a stun healer could not take em all out , we had the problem in UO where high lvl tamers would gate in with 5 dragons in tow each .. was fix'd with some nice mob's who would hit a pet like a tank would hit ya lil sisters playhouse. Ofcourse they have had longer time and more experiense , but tis ongoing qiest is just to borring.. I read the stuff the first week.. watched if anything was happening.. not... so I stop'd

Got to stop typing...Well all in all..yes we wants events but STUFF has to happen..as someone said if I wanted to read a story I would go read a book..And peopel need to be informed , so not just the few and lucky/ well informed / borred gets a chance to partisipate

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

I liked the small encounters I've had with 'alive' NPC's.
Fantastic roleplaying and a big grin on my face.
Three Cheers for that.

The big campaign, though, has no appeal at all to me.
When the worms 'invaded' Druim Ligen - I went there, watched my framerate go down to slideshow level - and left again.
It's pretty much the players ruining it for themselves.
dumbnut a: "lo m8!1 killing sum worms 2??"
dumbnut b: "lol!! heard it on irc and came rite in time to get sum"
etc. etc.
No, I don't demand everyone should rp (it would end up in in "thee" and "thou") - but at least shut the fuck up if you have nothing to contribute other than mindless spam when there is a roleplaying event going on.

Balancing: remember my rant about the Spraggon Den?
Still think so.

Rather go for frequent but small events. Those are always great fun.

and now for my favorite quote:
"All servers are roleplaying servers!"
*chokes*

 

[liste]

Excactly, Brannor. too long.

I like the story, i like the weird stuff, and i like the Geersha invasion. but to keep people interested, i think the months of time, should be boiled down to 2-3 weeks.

 

[Archeon]

Maybe this was just me, but the only things i've heard about the campaign was some kind of dude cooking wee-wolf-on-a-stick and those little mobs that ran arround vendo killing people. both of which i missed, all in all i've heard and seen very little of this so called epic event which left me a little dissapointed :/

 

[butcha]

Someone was talking about an Albion event stretching over a few weeks, apart from the campaign. Has there been anything of that kind in Midgard? Anyone knows?

This campaign blows... It's like watching a horror movie and they use the cinematic trick of not letting anything happen... and so you keep building more and more tension... and WHAM then it happens... GOA... It hasn't happened yet, and it's getting dull.

This is a MMORPG, some sort of roleplaying game... For those of you who have played some RPGs, there are some RPGs like Vampire that are called storytelling games, because of the focus to tell a story more than rolling dice... This must be the extreme form of storytelling when the characters of the game can't influence the plot one bit. All we can do is sit by and watch the story unravel in texts on a homepage.

I agree... might as well read Lord of the Rings...

 

[old.chesnor]

No.

I'm not a natural RPer, but was looking forward to some events. The kind of small scale gigs where a GM would harass your group somewhere and send you on a mission to do x,y,z for fun and maybe a modest reward.

Sadly the event ballooned to the behemoth it is today, leaving most people bemused, ignorant or disinterested. A shame really, because the idea of events was a big plus over the US game.

Another thing. Events and roleplaying are not neccessarily linked. Non-RPers can be engaged in events, and I don't see a problem with 'lo m8, lets gank it RAR!' type language/behaviour, as long as the event is designed to deal with this kind of (inevitable) response. RPers must understand they are the minority, and any event, whatever its scale, should be designed in such a way that it is not totally messed up by someone ganking an GM controlled PC before he has uttered his first 'Thou'....

P.S. And don't mess with our lowb dungeons again...k ?

 

[robillard]

the events are a half hearted attempt to add more content into the game, when what they should be concentrating on is making tradeskillling more indepth(ie. make it a more viable way to spent your time) and GUILD HOUSING

 

[Blood]

I had thought the campaign would mean a fun and eventfull storyline, unfolding on a daily basis, where we would activly interact with PC's..

The total opposite happened, a loooooong boring storyline(and i use the word in its loosest form), with very few events, and lots of gibberish posted on the website. And alot of NPC's we can click on that loads off some more gibberish.

In my book i've seen 1 event the last many many many months, and that was the one in Uppland, and i must say it was great (allthou the PC's were too easy 400+ damage on a purple con? ). It was a really good way to announce it, with the blue text "warcry echoes trough the mountains etc..", so Wagn and I went to investigate, in the end not even our 2 guilds could handle all the mobs, so we called in the alliance, and drowe the evil from Midgard.

 

[ImLestat]

I agree with what most people here have said, the current campaign is boring and unintelligable. There's imo no point in keeping up to date with it.

I've never myself experienced any events first hand yet, but I've been close to. (Well, I stumbled in on two small events just as they ended. One when the arachites attacked Askheim, and the other when some controlled NPC had lost a sword in Huginfell or something.) When something has happened that I heard of I tried to make my way there as quickly as possible, but was always too late.

What kind of events would be fun to have? Well, personally I remember the events that happened in the beta, as I read about them on the boards. There was an event where arachites attacked Galplen for example. There was also of course the end of beta event, which in my opinion was great. It was also a bit long, and almost bordering on becoming dull. It certainly had become that if it had not ended when it did. People all around just didn't have the patience to find out about the staffs and such. The event Blood described is also a great example of how good an event can be. (Though I think it started way before you heard that warcry. I sat many times on the Svasud pad and heard that cry. Probably at least a week before it ended.)

Oh well. Just a few thoughts from a tired dwarf stumbling off to bed.

 

[butcha]

Oh, it seems I owe GOA an apology here. I never knew there were events going on in Midgard since I've never heard of 'em (except for the cartographer one which was great). I have tried to read the forums looking for such though.

An idea could be a special forum dedicated to campaign and events here, so that one can easily find out what has happened. Those events yer talking about sounds fun. And since it is impossible to involve all players, this is all I ask for really - An honest try. I can enjoy reading of passed events, and knowing they exists also gives me motivation to try to seek for these events. Maybe we just need better ways to communicate with eachother.

Maybe there are things happening in the campaign as well, just that people don't tell us about it here at Barrysworld.

If we have a dedicated forum about campaigns and events, another idea would be that GOA posts what events have happened in separate threads, and those who participated can fill out with their own details.

Just a few ideas....

 

[exc_hib_boo]

To answer the question in the topic: NO.

How the events are handled just dont work in this game, ppl dont wait a full month to get the next clue. It is _very_ seldom anything event-related happens in-game, which at least bored me out and I quit bothering.

I did however try to help clearing spraggon den out but that was so buggy it wasnt even funny, I mean speaking french to an NPC on an English server, come on.

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

LOL @ GOA

Think they must have read this, last night a new bunch of gershas appeared outside Hugerfell.

Only prob is about 40 of them were easily despatched by 5 level 50's. No reward, except the poor amount of cash they dropped.

Again tho a big fat /yawn

Has anyone else also noticed the amount of new blood in the game has decreased lately? If you cant keep the old players happy, how do you expect us to promote your game to others?

 

[-Nxs-]

Tend to agree here, most L1-5 players are running around in a black cloak or nice armour. Seams to me like everyone is now playing some form of Alt and there are very few fresh players.

When GOA announced the events I thaught... ohhh nice... but agree with the previous posts, time to move on.

 

[Blood]

Originally posted by old.ImLestat
The event Blood described is also a great example of how good an event can be. (Though I think it started way before you heard that warcry. I sat many times on the Svasud pad and heard that cry. Probably at least a week before it ended.)

It probably wasnt triggered before Wagn and I actually went out and and found it.

 

[Belsameth]

Originally posted by robillard
the events are a half hearted attempt to add more content into the game, when what they should be concentrating on is making tradeskillling more indepth(ie. make it a more viable way to spent your time) and GUILD HOUSING

there's always at least 1 who doesn't get it

Mythic does actual gameplay improvements. (like the tradeskilling you mention)

GOA (the one we're dealing with here) has to work with the stuff Mythic builds. and it's the latter which is discussed here
(in a shockingly civil matter too, I might add )

 

[old.Revz]

A lot of the options in making quests fun and interesting are limited by the nature of the game. It just doesn't have a great deal of different ways of doing things. For instance :

• There are no real languages. Everyone in the same realm speaks the same "common" language regardless of race. The game doesn't include the possibility of different language within a realm or even languages that are completely unknown to everyone and part of the quest is researching how to speak/read it so you can progress.
• Faction make little or no difference (at least in Albion, I know it is a slightly bigger issue in Hibernia but still not much). You don't need to be in good standing with a particular group or person before you can speak to them or get quests from them. This means that there is no consideration of quests that are unlockable by gaining faction with a rare and powerful group. Half the difficultly in a lot of quests can be gaining enough faction such that the person giving the quest will speak to you. The tradeoff is that whilst gaining faction for one quest you might be losing it in another area.
• Tradeskills are not tied into the game world. How much more interesting would it be if you had to research the recipe/method for making a rare and powerful type of sword? Perhaps you have to spend a lot of time in the bottom of a dangerous dungeon finding out about the history of it. When you finally work out how to make it the process involves combining rare and potent item drops together rather than just stuff you buy from the store.
• There is no lore in game other than what you get from the mouths of some NPCs. Where are the books? Scrolls? Parchments? Diaries? DAoC still has no method for actually opening a book and reading what it says or browsing through the contents of a scroll. It is much more interesting to gather together pages from a diary, put them all together in order and then find out the story or history of something important than to be told about it on a website or hear it off an NPC in great volumes of text that you might need again at some point.

GOA are very constrained by the crappy quest system in DAoC. It would be much nicer if the quests themselves were more cryptic and involved the game lore much more. In that way you would have to go and find clues and research things yourself by browsing through all the old tomes in a library or piecing together the ancient map pieces you find in a dungeon. Instead you get a quest NPC telling you to "go here and kill this then come back to me". You "epic" quest which is basically the defining point of your character at 50 takes all of an afternoon to complete? Not very exciting to my mind. Why do we even need to know where the quests start? (from you trainer again? zzz) How about this :

Pages of a diary start dropping from mobs down in Lyonesse. They are in a language no one can read. Looking through the library in Camelot someone finds a reference to "ancient languages" that leads them to seek out an old wizard who, after some persuading (maybe help him on a quest of his own?), agrees to teach you the basics of that ancient language. With a bit of hard work of your own (this could be an actual logic puzzle you solve out of game) you manage to translate the pieces of diary that you have and they read as a slightly broken up story.

You go and collect as many pieces of this diary as you can get from friends and other guilds. Finally after a while you can put the whole thing together and it might hint at a quest for getting a key which will let you into a new zone where you can start questing for bigger and more exciting things...

And so on. You just need a lot of functionality that the game simply doesn't have at the moment. It would be really nice to see tradeskills being valuable for questing for instance. Perhaps the guy who spends ages learning loads of languages will have it pay off in the end when he gets asked to translate some documents for people? Maybe you have to research that amazing new spell instead of getting it by spending points at your trainer.

There are loads more options for fun, interesting, exciting and involving quests.