Showing posts with label DAoC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DAoC. Show all posts

Friday, August 11, 2023

GamesMadeMe: Actual Games + My Gaming Origin Story!

 GamesMadeMe is a series of posts that cover gaming-related topics that have shaped who I am as a gamer today.  Since I've covered specific moments in games and related topics like gaming magazines it is about time I actually talk about some games that made me!  Today let's take a jaunt down the gaming history that has informed my current day preferences.

 We'll start at today and work backwards as best as my memory can recollect!

new world
  New World is my current jam and holds the record of "most played" across my entire gaming career.  As of this post I am nearing 2,500 hours played!  Whats most amazing is that I never planned to play this game.  I only found out about it because it was hosting an early preview event at the same time as the Crowfall beta test.  

 While testing Crowfall the population numbers plummeted one day and when I asked why the New World preview event was mentioned.  I decided to give it a go because I just wasn't feeling Crowfall and I was absolutely hooked from the moment I set foot in New World.  I am still hooked.  I love New World.

 

gw2

 Guild Wars 2 (GW2) is next on the list.  Between New World and Minecraft (which we'll hit after GW2) there were a lot of games but Guild Wars 2 was the one that stuck around and kept coming back around.  I own and have played the first three expansions but admit I am all about PvP so spent a lot more time in World vs World vs World (wuvwuv for short).  

 Also as I mentioned in my Game Markets post I was a huge investor in Guild Wars 2 and truth be told that is where most of my /played time was invested in GW2.  I earned so much gold and converted so much of it to premium currency that I have piles of stuff and knick-knacks on my account. I also have several level 80 characters.

 I never really got hardcore into GW2 even though I played a ton (1,000+ hours).  I didn't have a guild and never played with one during my time in the game.  The game is very solo friendly so it was never pressed upon me to need to group up.  I did a lot of things but aside from playing the market one specific thing never grabbed hold.  I never finished the original story, never did dungeons/fractals/raids, really didn't finish any living seasons, and outside of some ascended gear pieces and a single legendary greatsword don't have much gear.  I own the first two expansions but barely played their stories/areas.  But I still loved the game and should I ever break up with New World it's likely where I'd go back to.

minecraft

 Minecraft launched in 2009 which was a special year as that is when my oldest was born.  I tried Minecraft off the recommendation of a co-worker.  At the time there was no survival mode and the game was a very basic block building game.  The UI still showed how many players online; I used to have a screenshot showing there were about 500 total users online!

 The beauty of Minecraft way back then was that it ran on our work computers.  When the survival mode launched my co-workers and I filled our breaks and lunch hours with Minecraft.  We had our own server and played the crap out of the game (some of my Minecraft videos from this era exist on my Youtube 1 2 3).  

 As a first time father Minecraft was the perfect game in those first few years of my oldest son's life.  Relatively non-violent and abstract blocky graphics = perfect for a kid to watch.  I played Minecraft pretty hardcore for it's first four years.  Lots of fond memories and I wish to this day I'd of stuck with making videos (I could be super famous now!).

 And that would have been the end of Minecraft after I moved on to other things, but right as I was breaking my addiction my oldest son hit Kindergarten and Minecraft was every kids world at the time.  My son picked up Minecraft about 2013/14 and he still plays it to this day.  We've played together on and off and we even got mom (not much of a video gamer) to play.  Some my fondest gamer dad moments are building stuff in Minecraft only to find out my son cheated and spawned a wither the next day and destroyed it.  I still have the worlds saved and a personal cherished digital artifact is when screen recording accidentally recorded my son exploring a new castle I had built for him.

war

  Before Minecraft my passion was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR for short). WAR also holds the record as the game that broke me.  I was the uber fanboy for WAR. As a long time Dark Ages of Camelot player I was confident that Mark Jacobs could do no wrong.  WAR was going to be the best game ever.  It was the World of Warcraft killer (remember we are going new to old so we haven't gotten to WoW yet).

 WAR is also unique in that the entire rise and fall of the game is captured in this blog's history (see tagged posts here).  If you were interested you could watch as I go from eternal fanboy to ex-cult member.  I loved the premise of the game and had a great group of folks to play with.  

 We formed the Casualties of War guild on the back of a bunch of World of Warcraft/MMORPG bloggers (400+ members at its peak).  Running that guild taught me I never want to run a guild again even though in every aspect of real life I am a leader (people leader at work, leader when I was in the military, leader in boy scouts, always my kid's sports team coach, etc).

 WAR was really fun to play when it launched. Unfortunately the game was never really finished and it showed.  End game zones were mostly devoid of content and the advertised end game of city sieges never really worked.  When it did work it was exploited heavily.

 WAR ended up crashing and was shutdown.  Fortunately I broke my fanboyism long before it was in shutdown and even though I revisited it for a little bit it never got it's hooks back in me.  It did forever change how I want to interact with new MMORPGs.  I'll be optimistic about games.  I will play them hardcore like I do New World and be a cheerleader.  But never again am I going full fanboy and expecting a new MMORPG to be the next big thing.

wow

 November 23, 2004.  A day after my birthday.  World of Warcraft launched and there I was on the Azgalor server with my mind blown (even though I had played in a beta phase before launch).  How could a game be this good?  12 hours later I realized I hadn't left the computer.

 World of Warcraft (WoW) holds the spot in my record book for the longest gaming sessions.  I could not put the game down and my addiction was aided by an odd work scheduled at the time where I basically had half the month off and the other half 12 hour shifts.  I was also in the military in full on real-life-war-mode so interest in anything other than work and then getting home to play WoW didn't exist.

 I loved playing WoW launch.  I was fortunate in that I never really had problems accessing the game and playing.  It was just a magical time to be playing online games.  So many new players, and gamers, coming to check this once-in-a-lifetime game out.  I played as a Horde Troll Shaman but refused to heal; I was all about the DPS shaman with windfury on the great axe.

 My time playing WoW was focused on PvP.  I really didn't care about dungeons and did very few.  I never participated in a raid nor did I have interest in raiding.  I wanted to do nothing more than prowl the Alliance zones looking for trouble.  Since there were PvP servers I was given that opportunity.  Later on battlegrounds came out and that was my jam.

 As magical as WoW was though it didn't hook me long term.  I gave up playing before the first expansion came out and it was months later before I gave The Burning Crusade a try.  I really don't know why I went from playing 12 hours straight to not interested.  Partly it was landing an amazing girlfriend who then became my wife, but mostly I just stopped playing.

daoc

 Before WoW it was Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC).  DAoC launched Oct 9, 2001 and I played it faithfully until WoW wrenched me away.  I loved the Realm vs Realm and played a Runecaster for Midgard on the Merlin server.  I was at or adjacent to many of the world firsts in the game: there when the first relic was captured, in the race to be the first player to 1 million realm points, and there when the guy that did make it to a million realm points got part of the game world named after him (screw you Dakkon!).

 Mixed in with my time in World of Warcraft and Dark Ages of Camelot was Star Wars Galaxies.  I was an early adopter as I was heavily involved in the Star Wars roleplaying forums the game hosted before launch.  I was in the early beta/alpha tests when all there was to the game was an empty sand zone and speech bubbles.

 Star Wars Galaxies had some of the best possible MMO systems ever created.  It is a shame they never got the time of day if they were not strictly combat or Jedi related.  As I tell people I want to be the moisture farmer so as the game steered more to letting anyone become a Jedi the more it wasn't for me.  But systems like housing, vendors, gathering, and crafting - no game has done it better.  No game even comes close.  Damn it game developers; give me SWG 2.0! (No; I am not interested in SWG emu servers).

 Ultima Online is the first graphical online game I played.  It is the first game I bought when I had my own PC and my own place as a young adult.  I rushed to get internet solely because I wanted to play Ultima Online.  

 I was introduced to Ultima Online years before that moment when I was working in a grocery store as a teen and my manager played it.  I would get a chance to go to his house and watch him play on a potato of a computer.  At the time it was original Ultima Online with all it's craziness: no safe zones, red players killing anyone that walked out of town without a plan, player run cities, game masters that would literally play god in the game, and houses you could lose if you lost your key.  To illustrate how early we are talking: there were still tons of open spots to place a house.  I never got to play, but watching was enough for me.

 Fast forward back to being in my own place with my own PC and I was joining right as Ultima Online Renaissance came online.  The Renaissance expansion brought a mirrored version of the world, called Trammel, that was completely safe and it opened up a flood of new land to fill with houses (the "open spots" having long ago been taken up in the original Felucca realm).

 Being a new player I had zero idea what the land grab was and other than some memory of watching my old manager play the original game I didn't know what I was doing.  So I treated the game like a virtual world; more intent on interacting with other players in a social aspect than getting the next progression item checked off.  If that meant just picking up garbage people left on the ground (oh yeah; items could be dropped and picked up by other players... how novel) then that's what I did.

 Eventually I did catch on that I needed to progress and that spun into having multiple different accounts so I could abuse all sorts of systems like the faction system, housing, and more.  Unfortunately I was so late to the housing party the only way to get a house was to buy it off eBay (yes, I bought my UO houses off eBay!) because all open spots were taken so even if you wanted to place a house you could not.

 I was very fond of PvP in UO.  I was not a player killer, but I loved faction warfare (player killing without becoming a red player).  I also got into the provoking skill which was basically the easy mode of end game PvE content as you could entice monsters to fight each other while you hoovered up the loot they dropped from killing each other.  

 I also got big into taming anything the game let you tame; my favorite being the white ice dragons.  Anyone that knows taming in UP knows the saying "kill all"; nothing more satisfying than a half dozen dragons suddenly vaporizing an enemy.  While in today's PvP metas it is "kill the healer" back then it was "kill the tamer".  Many a fight was won based on how many dragons were brought.

mud mush

 Now I need to fill a gap between my gaming origin story and Ultima Online because before graphical MMORPGs I was addicted to text MUDs (multi user dungeon).  Without MUDs we wouldn't have the MMORPGs that we have today.

 The one that got me started was a MUD running in IRC on the Xnet IRC server.  I stumbled on it joining a chat room and a bot posting a puzzle; once you figured out the puzzle it let you in fully to the MUD.  It was like virtual Indiana Jones! I have no other recollection other than those pieces, but it was tons of fun and featured perma death PvP.  I killed my younger brothers character at one point.

 Probably my most invested MUD was a Star Wars themed one.  I don't remember the specifics and the websites are long gone, but I do still have notes I took on paper about it.  I used graph paper to map out areas of the game and take notes about things like "droid here" or "viewport overlooking space dock".  It had space flight as well as many planets.  I do vaguely remember getting into some drama and getting banned at one point. 

 I played plenty of other MUDs as well along with MUSHES and whatever other acronym soup we used back in those days to differentiate one from the other.  I even got into Medievia MUD for a bit which was the largest MUD ever and still running to this day.  It was mind blowing they were aiming for things like 20,000 players online and wanting to get to 200,000 (not sure what they ever peaked at).  I was used to MUDs with 5 people online; thousands was crazy to think about.  One of the coolest part of Medievia and many other MUDs was player created content.  It was just text so the barrier to entry to have your dedicated players help build was very low.  I honestly wonder if some of my poorly worded room descriptions are still floating around somewhere in Medievia!

 We'll finish on the origin story of gaming for heartlessgamer and recount the day I won a Sega Genesis.  I had played Nintendo and Super Nintendo at friends and extended family houses, but in my house we were still stuck in the "black and white" television era.  Without easy access to them video games were no different than any other toy to play with when visiting friends and family.  

 That all changed the day that I won a Sega Genesis.  The Sega was a possible prize from selling magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser.  I (really my mom) had done a good job getting folks to sign up so I was in the running.  It was towards the end of the school day and classes had just let out and announcements were coming over the intercom.  I hung back in the classroom to hear them.  I really, really wanted that Sega Genesis.  Then I heard my name and to this day I can remember looking at my teacher at the time and seeing the biggest smile on her face as I sprinted out towards the office to get my prize.  I hoisted the box over my head and for a few glorious moments I was the king of my school.

 I walked to school so had a few blocks to get home with the prize.  I really don't remember my parents reactions, but they were supportive of me getting it up and running.  I wasn't kidding when I said we still had "black and white" televisions.  Our main set was too old to get the Sega working and after phoning a friends parents we were able to get it set up on my mom's tiny little kitchen TV.  From then on I spent many an hour at the kitchen table playing Sega games in black and white. Some favorites from the time; Wrestlemania, Shining Force, and of course Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

 I will never forget winning that Sega Genesis and I swear the movie 8-bit Christmas is loosely based on that time in my life (I already had an awesome treehouse my dad made though; I just needed a video game console).  And that is the gaming mode that started it all and therefore is what truly made me a gamer!

Friday, September 30, 2022

Old Post, New Thoughts on Games and Business Models

 Getting back into blogging (apologies for missing yesterday for my post a day commitment) has also had me reminiscing through my 17+ years of posts.  I stumbled across This is WHY Free 2 Play works, quote from Pirates of the Burning Seas team today and it got me thinking.  I find it odd how, as a gamer, I jumped in to defend a company making money.  More odd is I still hold to this line of thinking.

It took me reading a few posts to wrangle what my younger self held as opinion on the topic of business models for games, but here is my "years later" assessment of that journey.

  • Back in the day you bought a game in a box and got everything with it.  
    • If the game was online you paid for a subscription and that made sense.
    • Online games with player trading often had real money trade (RMT) where players would sell in game items and game accounts to other players for real cash (usually via eBay)
  • RMT was part of how we played Ultima Online back in the day; you had to go to eBay to buy a house as an example.
  • After moving on from Ultima Online to newer games like Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) it became clear to me RMT ruins these games
  • Anti-RMT, buy the box, and pro-subscription became my mantra; just look at how much a player could get out of World of Warcraft for $15 a month!
  • Micro transactions (the infamous horse armor DLC) made no sense
  • At some point I then tried some free 2 play games and I still remember when I posted: My First Microtransaction (in retrospect that was money NOT well spent)
  • I seem to have turned the corner around the time of this post
    • "So, color me conflicted on micro-transaction business models. I still don't believe it beats a subscription model, but no longer is it the EVIL that I thought it was."
  • Ever since that time I seem to have adopted the moniker of "games are a business and have to make money first"

With that last bullet I am going to hop off the autobiography train and focus on "games are a business and have to make money first".  In my older age I find this really odd as a position for a consumer of a product to take, but as a gamer who really-really wants to see my niche of games (MMORPGs) have new options to try.  Basically I want to "vote with my wallet" for games that I want to be successful or from developers I want to be successful.

Speaking of "voting with my wallet" that brings us back full circle to business models.  In the subscription model players have a single vote; my vote counts the same as yours -- either I am a subscriber or I am not.  In a micro-transaction model each player's vote is variable.  A player in a free 2 play game may abstain from voting by just playing for free or a player may be a whale 

There are so many issues with this.  The biggest problem of video games making money is that it preys on human weakness.  For some of us it's just a case of "I have more money than time so I want to buy my way ahead or buy things that are fun", but for others it preys on impaired decision making (children, addiction, FOMO, etc) and works to extract maximum cash.  Yet, I still defend that a game is a business first and has to make money.

To the post I kicked this off with on why free 2 play works (which is really to say micro transactions work) is that it does let players invest at their level so developers/publishers can maximize per-player return. I do still believe as I mentioned in that post that good game design can keep the playing field level.  

At the simplest level for my argument are the games that "just sell cosmetics"; games like New World where after you buy the game you can play for free (no subscription) but then there is a store that offers all sorts of goofy outfits and stuff to put in your house; none of which affects power level when playing.  If you really like and want to support the game then drop $50 on the store, but there is no requirement to do so.

In the more complex category are games with things like battle passes/premium/season pass (for my purposes just called battle pass).  I think battle passes came from a marriage of game design and business model.  For many games battle passes offer unique rewards and drive players to participate in the game in a certain manner.  Good game designers marry battle passes with great game play and it's a great experience.  Every time I jump back into Apex Legends I snag the battle pass and it is worth it.  In Guild Wars 2 I've bought multiple living seasons (which are battle pass like).  Battle pass is the modern day subscription, but this time around players get a benefit.

Of course there is the opposite end of this where battle passes are required to make any meaningful progress and the entire game is designed to get you to pay up.  This is where I start drawing the line as it falls into an area of abusing players.  This is basically why I don't play any mobile games; every single one I've ever looked into, while looking fun, are just designed to make me depart with my cash.

In conclusion: I support game companies making money and I believe good game design can go hand in hand.  It is important to keep this in mind when looking at future games; the sooner they outline the business model the more likely it is the game design will support it in a positive manner.  The later a game decides on it's business model the more likely it is to be abusive and/or insufficient to be successful for the game.  

Want me to review more of my old posts?  Want to argue with me?  Leave a comment.




Saturday, December 26, 2009

10 Days of WAR: Day Nine (Set pieces)

My ninth day and disapointment in my return to WAR can be summed up by this picture:

That is a tank sitting in the Empire starting zone of Nordland.  It hasn't moved in almost two years (and not a spot of rust anywhere!). 

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Mythic Does Get It

Mythic does get it. Need proof? Read about WAR's upcoming Keep Upgrade System.

The real question is, why has it taken them so long to "get it"? They had these sort of features figured out with Dark Ages of Camelot years ago, but completely dropped them off the face of the earth for WAR. Sad, truly sad.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

What to do, what to do

So, I'm not playing World of Warcraft at the moment. Most of the people I know are playing Age of Conan or Vanguard. Both games I could care less for. Most of them are about bored of AoC already, so I am sure they will be back in Vanguard soon enough. Actually, I doubt they ever left.

Once again, I sit wondering what to do with the few hours a week I get to play games. Here are my options:

Mythos Beta - The developers are launching a new "over world" patch soon that will bring Mythos in line with a more standard MMO where players share a world instead of being separated into a bunch of instances. Oh, and its free of charge.

Team Fortress 2 and other FPS games - I still love to play TF2, but I don't think it is my solution. I need something else to play along with my action games.

Dark Ages of Camelot - I could go back, fight the old control scheme, and choke down some nostalgia. Maybe even get an account to borrow to cut out the leveling process. I am just worried about not having expansions available and getting bored before getting back into some RvR.

And thats about where my brain stops.

Bleh.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Warhammer Online Delayed: Picking Sides

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) has been delayed yet again. Now, for most MMORPGs, the vapourware police would be bouncing off the walls right about now. Fortunately, that isn't the case here. Unfortunately, the "WAR will suck" haters have taken their place. I don't care. I'm dead set on playing WAR, whether it is complete trash or not, and damn the players breaking the NDA (I will post about them soon enough).

With that said, I want to take some time to talk about picking sides in WAR. Literally, what side are you going to play? Destruction or Order? Race? Class?

I've struggled with this decision since I started looking into WAR. Having played a fair bit on the "evil side" for the last few MMORPGs, I figured I would just fall in line with Destruction (Greenskins, Chaos, and Dark Elves). However, I didn't want to constrain myself. I sat down and thought about what would be important to me in choosing a side.

Overwhelmingly, visual style WILL play a huge role in my choice of sides for WAR.

In Dark Ages of Camelot, I rolled Midgard with my guild. Ironically, I caught myself staring at Albion's buildings, cities, and castles. They had working doors! Also, I found myself envious of the fairly human looking races offered on the Albion side, especially considering that my Kobold Runemaster was blue and furry. To me, Albions looked the part of Epic Fantasy Hero, plate armor and sword at hand, but most importantly human.

Then, I started as a Troll Shaman of the Horde in World of Warcraft to roll with a new guild and there I have remained ever since. Aside from Thunder Bluff, the Tauren's home, there wasn't a single visual aspect of the Horde that I enjoy. The races are ugly, the main cities are depressingly drab, and not until The Burning Crusade launched, and with it Silvermoon City, did the Horde even know colors other than brown and rust existed.

Moving back to my topic, picking a side for WAR, visual style will guide me more than any other aspect. Screw class and population balance, they will be sorted out regardless of the side I choose. If a side has a class and race combo that interests me with the visual intrigue I am looking for, I am taking it.

So far, that looks like the Empire, the relative good guys of WAR. They have a very old-world European look to their world. Plus, they are humans and not since Ultima Online have I played something with a normal skin tone.

I completely accept that as the "human" faction, the Empire will attract a lot of newbs, because the human sides in MMOs usually do for some reason. I don't care, WAR is going to be about FUN for me and FUN starts with what I'm looking at as I play the game. So far, the Empire screen shots look amazing.

No, I will not be playing a Witch Hunter, probably the most hyped class for WAR.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Numb3rs

0 - Number of active days left on my Dark Age of Camelot subscription.

1 - The average number of walls a bullet goes through before killing me in Call of Duty 4.

2 - Number of kills I achieved in my first Call of Duty 4 multi-player match. Sadly, I also suffered 32 deaths.

3 - Number of days until my birthday, Thanksgiving, and the next Green Bay Packers game.

20 - Number of deaths I suffer on average in a CoD4 match.

47 - Number of kills I average in an a CoD4 match.

50 - Number of Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley tokens I need in able to purchase arena season one gear for my Shaman in WoW when season three starts later this month.

70 - The level I need to reach in WoW before I can use arena season one gear. I'm currently level 66.

2,637 - Number of points I've scored in Team Fortress 2.

65,250 - The amount of honor needed to attain an entire set of season one arena armor for my Shaman in World of Warcraft.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Showdown: World of Warcraft vs. Dark Age of Camelot

William requested that I discuss some of things that made me turn away from Dark Age of Camelot and return to World of Warcraft. However, I want to stress that I did not quit DAoC because of WoW's new 2.3 patch. I quit DAoC because of real life time restraints. I just so happen to have access to my WoW account for the time being and play it casually (very casually).

I want to start this showdown with the one thing I strongly feel that DAoC has cornered the market on, something that WoW has struggled with: PvP. In DAoC, PvP is called Realm vs Realm (RvR). That is a term that can only be found in a Mythic game. Seriously, they trademarked the term.

Semantics aside, RvR is DAoC's form of PvP. RvR pits three realms of players against each other for control of castles and relics. Frontiers are the zones where the castles and relics are located. Open PvP can occur anywhere in the frontiers and there is no shortage of castles and towers to fight over. Both the castles and relics can be captured by opposing forces. This gives real weight to RvR, both for the individual and the entire realm.

WoW on the other hand, focuses on instanced PvP battlegrounds and more recently arenas, both of which have little impact on anything other than the players involved. Since launch, Blizzard has tried several different approaches towards their PvP systems and through numerous rebuilds and tweaks, PvP has simply become a secondary issue taking a backseat to the more popular PvE side of things. That is OK, because WoW's PvE is great and Blizzard should focus on it while letting players bash in each other's heads every once and a while.

The distinguishing trait between the two games PvP, is that DAoC has focused on providing that RvR experience to every single level of play. There are now level-restricted battlegrounds and dungeons for every level range in the game. Players can level from start to finish doing only RvR battlegrounds or dungeons. DAoC knew what people enjoyed and highlighted it. Their only fault is a side-tracked PvE themed expansion that became the bane of DAoC RvR enthusiasts everywhere. Fortunately, Mythic learned their lesson and were able to set the wheels in motion to keep the game afloat.

WoW has tried desperately to fix their PvP, and after dozens of changes the system is still fairly focused on just doing instanced PvP as fast and as often as humanly possible for epic gear. WoW's PvP is still enjoyable, but it holds no weight and is nothing more than a "my l33t sauce is hotter than your l33t sauce". With that said, Blizzard has started tossing around more open world, objective based PvP that shows promise. DAoC does PvP right, with meaning and reason behind it. Hopefully, Mythic will showcase this in their next title: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

With the PvP topic discussed, I will throw down a bullet list of what WoW has done so much better than DAoC, and then we can discuss them.
  • WoW's UI, both in modifiability and out-of-the-box functionality.
  • WoW's control scheme is unmatched in the MMORPG industry and should be the starting point for any game. I can not stress how important this is.
  • WoW's quest system trumps the shambled mess that is DAoC's quest system.
  • Leveling is actually faster in DAoC these days, but WoW does it with style and without the grind.
There are some other bells and whistles, but those are the four things that have drawn my back into WoW time after time after time. Oh, and sexy elves.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Return Is Over

I chose a really bad time to get nostalgic about Dark Age of Camelot. Between real life and kick ass new games like Call of Duty 4, I have very little time to dedicate to an MMORPG. Especially one that is six years old and fairly set in it's ways.

I enjoyed the thirty or so hours I put into the game over the last month, but I ended up at the same conclusion I did a few years ago: the genre needs to improve. The genre has grown up and new games do some very basic things very well. Things that DAoC has not improved on over the last six years.

World of Warcraft's controls have honestly spoiled me and I can not seem to adjust backwards to the heavy-handed systems of DAoC. Also, the flexibility of WoW's UI mods trumps any of the custom UI packages available for DAoC. There are tons of other items that I've grown used to and playing DAoC again just made me wish for WoW. There is so much to be said for the little things that WoW managed to get right.

But I don't want to make this a WoW is better than DAoC post. DAoC was the game back in the day and I do not regret the three years I invested into it. In my humble opinion, Realm vs. Realm is still an amazing concept and extremely well implemented throughout DAoC. It is just sad to know that the rest of the game aged like rotten cheese.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

Monday, November 05, 2007

The Return

I am officially dubbing my return to Dark Age of Camelot, The Return: Heartless Pwns Noobs. This morning I ran into the newbie RvR dungeon, Demon's Breach, and proceeded to lay waste upon the scum of Albion. Then I killed a lurikeen. Yes, they really do exist. I killed so many newbs that I gained two levels! What!? Players can gain levels by killing people? The ability to gain experience from killing other players is one of my favorite aspects of DAoC, and it is even greater now, netting almost three times the normal experience rate.

However, I did all of this without playing the class I had originally planned and researched for. My initial character was going to be a Norse Warrior, but I quickly found out they are slow to level, constantly out of endurance, and pretty much no fun for a returning player. Also, Warrior's are expensive to get started. So, I chose to play a Kobold Bonedancer. Let the LOLs begin.

The Bonedancer is a very strong class for someone that solos a lot. The more I thought about it, the more I justified to myself that it was the right thing to do, regardless of the fact that Bonedancers are an easy-mode class. I don't care! I am here to have fun and kick ass. Not only does a Bonedancer allow me to do both, but it also allows me to easily farm to support other characters like my Warrior.

One of the coolest things I discovered during The Return, was the fact that players can receive their first horse at level ten by simply completing a "go get the saddle" quest. Before I knew it, both my characters were galloping across East Svealand wasting away precious grinding time.

I am having a ton of throw away fun, and that folks, is the reason I returned to DAoC.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Back Into the Dark

I'm heading back into the dark; Dark Age of Camelot that is. While Team Fortress 2 has my action gaming covered, I need a new game to replace World of Warcraft for a bit. It is nothing that WoW has done, but I am just tired and can't force myself to login lately. It is probably my fault, because I really needed that fifth epic mount and the brewfest quests were fun. Well, fun for a day. But it doesn't matter, I have my epic Brewfest Riding Ram!

So, I reinstalled Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) today and resubscribed my account. I decided that I'm going to give the Classic servers another shot. After all, the Classic server cluster fixes pretty much every complaint I've ever had about DAoC. No more buff bots. No more Trials of Atlantis, which means no Master Levels or Artifacts.

Of course, there is a couple expansion packs I need to catch up on. Darkness Rising and the Labyrinth of the Minotaur have both launched since I last played, and there appears to be a ton of stuff to do in both. For example, Darkness Rising has mounts, and we all know how much I love collecting my mounts!

For those interested, here are my plans:

Server: Gareth (Bossiney Cluster)
Realm: Midgard
Class: Skald or Warrior

If you play and want to hook up, just let me know and maybe we can get in on some newbie Realm vs. Realm. Oh, did I mention players can almost level completely from Realm vs. Realm now? Awesome. And, experience gain is doubled in the original world and dungeon zones! Leveling like this makes WoW look like a grind.

PS. Please give me plats.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

DAoC clustering... the way to fix WoW Battlegrounds

For anyone that has ever played World of Warcraft during non-peak hours you unfortunately know that the PvP battlegrounds are rarely, if ever, open during that time. Two days in a row where I've just wanted to hit the battlegrounds for an hour or two has resulted in the following... two hour waits for nothing. Both days I waited from about 7 am EST until 10 AM EST and not one Alterac Valley or Warsong Gulch opened. This is not a limited occurrence to two days either. This is a normal occurrence on Azgalor and most other servers during the weekdays.

Battlegrounds normally do not open until after 6 pm EST on Azgalor and even then you have to be one of the lucky people who were already standing in line since 4 pm to get in. The battlegrounds usually remain open well into the night and about midnight is when they start closing up.

So for gamers like me all the previews in the world can't sell me on Arathi Basin. Outside of the first couple of days I will never see this battleground. Plus with the 1.7 inclusion of battleground holidays rewarding ONLY players who get to play at prime time, there is once again no point in me trying to compete in the PvP ranks.

I make limited gains and put in 3x the amount of work to get my honor. I have to do it the good ole' fashioned way. Ride out to enemy lands and hunt them down. Three hours results in maybe 30 HK's. Three hours in a battleground for random newb #1 results in 100's of HK and 1,000's of bonus honor. This needs to be fixed.

And here is the fix, thanks to Dark Ages of Camelot. When DAoC servers started having severe population imbalances and PvP combat was becoming few and far between Mythic decided to cluster servers together, but only their PvP combat areas. Now 3-5 servers are joined together and share PvP areas.

WoW needs to do the same with battlegrounds. Combine 3-5 servers and have the battlegrounds pull people from each one. This way if there is 1-2 people waiting in line at 2 am in the morning 5 servers will combine to make 10. What a brilliant idea! The coding can not be that hard and it makes complete sense. Give everyone equal chance to compete in PvP ranks regardless of whether they are logged in at prime time or not.

Oh and remove the battleground holiday, as it insults the non-peak hour gamer.

Update: 6 Sept, 2009 - Edited post and applied labels.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

6 hours... 8 levels... 12 hour shifts

After fumbling my way through the new Catacomb's newbie quests on my scout, Favre, in DAoC, I finally got rolling after level three and the new Catacomb's instanced task dungeons really helped.

My impressions so far:

1. Catacombs newbie quests make 1-5 enjoyable!

2. The task dungeons are great for solo gamers like myself and can be relatively easy to complete.

3. The graphics are a good upgrade, scratch that, GREAT upgrade.

4. The community on Gareth/Albion is nice. No asshats to be found, yet. Keyword being yet. Did you get that yet???



On a side note I have switched over to 12 hour shifts 4 days a week for work. That means a lot of my gaming time is now being devoted to sleeping :( The good thing is I get 3 days off a week now... hmmm...

Update: 9 May, 2009 - Edited post and updated labels.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Favre... no not Brett!

I have rolled a Briton Scout on the Gareth DAoC Classic server. This is my first time in Albion and marks a stark change of direction for me. I am all but done with WoW. Second of all, I absolutely hated scouts when I played DAoC (considering them an "EZ mode" class to RvR with in keep or tower battles).

But here I am, playing a class I've always wanted to play. I love archers and archery and have since I started D&D pen'n'paper when I was young. A few of my friends over at Bakerton.com are setting up an Albion rogue team: scouts, minstrels, and infiltrators. We are focusing on scouts for our main attack. It should be fun.

Are you getting fun out of the game you are playing now? If not, switch to something you want to play and that will bring the fun to you!

Update: 9 May, 2009 - Edited post and updated labels.