A dark age upon DAoC?

So here it is, the inaugural post for this, my blog. I imagine that should this ever go anywhere I’ll look back on this as the start of something I’ve been throwing around my head for a while but am only just now getting around to.

But enough of that, onto my thoughts.


I downloaded the 14day free trial of “Dark Age of Camelot” yesterday.I think what drove me to do such was a combination of boredom and curiosity. Having recently quit WoW and been somewhat unable to find a new MMO that provides the same experience I've been hopping around from game to game, trial to trial from EQ2 to Titan Quest to this. It should be noted that I had played DAoC for approximately 9months about 3 years ago. I had an Albion Cleric which I ultimately grew tired of. I came back curious to see what a company could do to a game I had been paying no attention to whatsoever for the last 3 years. I was also interested because Mythic the creators of DAoC are releasing “Warhammer Online” sometime near the end of 2007 (or early 2008 I suspect) and I wanted to get a fresh outlook on their company.

What I discovered is that the population of the game has dwindled greatly. Though this is obviously to be expected, I still found it shocking to see servers that had listed populations of 200 or 300 people. It’s a shame really since in its time I recall that many people attending just one of the many RvR battles on a single server. I am curious to know if Mythic has considered a merge of its severs, as they still have around 10 or so and it seems that given their current population, and the focus of DAoC on large scale PvP it would be foolish for them not to try to consolidate their users to provide the best experience for those that they have remaining.

This brings me to my next discovery.

I left the game shortly before the release of “Trials of Atlantis” their second expansion. It seems clear that this expansion was very ill received by the players and might be responsible in part for the massive drop in subscribers the game seems to have suffered (though all MMO’s have no doubt suffered from the monster that is WoW). However in a surprising move, Mythic, seemingly admitting their fault has opened a number of “Classic” servers which contain the same game as other servers, however completely omitting “Trials of Atlantis”. This is not the first time I’ve seen a game all but ruined by a single expansion (I would argue that the downfall of “Ultima Online” was its renaissance when the worlds where split into PvP and PvE areas). I think it was a great idea for Mythic to offer its players the option to omit something they feel was poor, and its no surprise that the “Classic” servers are the most populated of the remaining servers. I’ve often said I’d return to UO if they opened a server with pre-renaissance rules.

Another positive thing I immediately noticed is that DAoC has received a rather large graphical upgrade. I was amazed by how much better the game looked then I remember it. Everquest was the first game that showed me the power of a graphical upgrade and I’m glad to see that DAoC continues to improve its look along with its game play.

Which brings me to the next point, DAoC’s strength has always been its RvR. It PvE is acceptable but ultimately sub par to most others, and previously it was a bit of a wall preventing you from getting to the PvP goodness. Before I left they added a number of instanced Mini battlegrounds starting in the 20’s but I’m happy to see that they now have them starting at level one.

Sadly it seems that due to both the games age, which results in most players having already reached the maximum level, combined with the low player population it appears that most of these low level battlegrounds are empty It seems that for all its improvements it may simply be to late to revive DAoC.

But fear not, It seems to me that they’ve learned from many of their mistakes. They’ve shown that not only can they admit when they screwup, but they’re willing to fix it, and improve on it. And I’m confident that they’ve learned from their mistakes and are taking all they’ve learned and applying it to Warhammer Online their new game has the spirit of DAoC with the amazing setting of the Warhammer IP.

Now if only EA wasn't involved with Warhamemr Online I'd be all hardcore fanboy over it already.