Dark ages of Camelot? Should I get?

[faded glory]

http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/


Should I get it? Anybody here got it? I hear there is great mplayer action.

[Zkribbler]

Ugh, one of those mega-players online games. I tried Everquest and hated it. Half the time when you log on, it's nighttime & you can't see anything. Plus, you start out the game so weak, you can't really do anything. I found Everquest to be a frustrating waste of time, and I doubt that Dark Ages is any better.

[FrustratedPoet]

I got it, played it for quite a long time and then just got bored of it. I think that MMORPG's only work if you're prepared to give over your life to them. Building up your character is so slow and painful that I always get annoyed with it and give up. Playing solo is pointless and finding a good group is very difficult, although it's great fun when it happens.

In my experience too many people on these type of games take it far too seriously. I suspect that for many of them it is the only form of social interaction they get and the power that comes from the faceless gameworld causes many of them to behave like a$$holes. The best way to have fun with it is to join a Guild, but I never found one where you weren't expected to refer to the Guild Leader as 'Master' or something similarly stupid. Also, many seem to demand that you spend the dozens of hours required building up your 'Weaponcraft' skill (or whatever) in a hugely boring way just so they could buy slightly discounted swords from you. There must be good guilds out there, but I never found one.

I'm biased because I don't like these type of games, generally speaking. DAOC was the first one I tried and I don't think I'll bother with any others. If one of my friends buys it then I'll probably be tempted to give it another try, but the genre feels kind of souless to me.

If MMORPG's are more your style, though, I suggest you give DAOC I try ... the Realm .vs. Realm combat sounded really good, but unfortuantely I gave up before my character was a high enough level to compete.

You could also check out Shadowbane - I know nothing about it, but there's a lot of talk...

[faded glory]

thanks. Any other reviews? ill get it this weekend I think. But the massive mplayer games are really somthing. Im not hardcore to it. But 4-5 hours a week...no big deal.

[Sarxis]

Of all the genres out there, this one is the only one I have yet to try. I think the monthly subscription fee is the one that keeps me at bay.

I still would like to try it out someday- but I have 250 other games already.

[Grumbold]

DAoC is a newbie-friendly MMORPG so I suggest you give it a go. The game leads you in fairly gently and its possible to gain levels relatively fast, especially compared to Everquest. They've also minimised the amount of time you have to sit on your butt waiting to heal after a tough fight, "camping" and other EQ tricks to make you waste hours of time. I never had a problem with finding good people to team up with even though I avoid guilds.

If you can only play 5 hours a week you may not get enough out of it, however. You can get something productive done in an hour soloing but really it gets better when you can find a team and hunt for 2-3 hours or (later) go on a raid into enemy territory. Playing so little you will always be having to find new people because most will outlevel you too much within days. Joining a big guild will help there because they should always have some new recruits who will be happy to team up with you.

[Sarxis]

A query: what happens when you die?

[FrustratedPoet]

you can either type '/release' to reappear at the last bind stone you bound yourself too, or you can wait for a friendly healer to resurrect you.
but most people just spam "rezzzz!!!! rezzzzzzz!!!!!RREEEEZZZZ!!!!!" for about 20 minutes until somebody gets so annoyed they decide to help.

you DON'T lose any items or gold when you die. Diablo 2-style corpse popping is impossible.

you DO lose some experience (a certain percentage of what you need for you next level-up), but half of what you've lost can be regained by returning to where you died and typing "/pray" in front of your grave.

you also suffer from "resurrection sickness" (or something") after you die. it last for a few minutes. i forget exactly what it does, but it can be easily removed by talking to an NPC in most towns.
another thing is that you lose a few points of Constitution, but these can also be regained - at a price. The price to regain them is fairly small, but increases with your level. You don't have to restore your lost constitution points, but if you don't do it for ages then you'll only end up dying loads more anyway.

[Grumbold]

A nice touch is that your first death per level (from 5th onward, before that there is no penalty at all) is only 1% and 1 CON point, the second 3% and 2 CON points and only your 3rd onward are the full 5% penalty and 3 CON points. Until you get to level 30+ those sorts of XP losses can be regained fast. You can never lose a level by dying, a big difference to Everquest.

If you /release or timeout then a tombstone is left at your death location and has a further XP penalty (same amount) bound into it. You appear at your last bind point (monoliths usually found in towns) can visit the town healer to immediately lose all rez sickness effects (you don't want to fight solo with it after level 10 or so, you're damage will suck unless you're a caster) and regain your CON. Best to do it fairly soon as the cost gets more expensive every time you level. You can then go anywhere you like, but if you return to your tombstone and /pray you will regain the XP bound up in it. The tombstones last a considerable time at high level but you cant have more than 1 or 2 at a time. Die again before you /pray and your oldest tombstone will be gone forever.

If a local PC healer resurrects you (they get the first version of the spell at 10th level) then you will resurrect next to them and they can cast the spell from several yards away from your body as long as they can see it to target it. This is very handy if you died at the feet of something very nasty they don't want to get too close to They can't regain your CON or remove the rez sickness so you need to spend a few minutes resting unless your team can cope fighting with you in a weakened state. You don't leave a tombstone. I've found using the tools to discover healers in the vicinity and sending them polite requests is a lot more effective than spamming for a Rez on the general channels

[Victor Galis]

Get it, so that I can k... er, we can work together

Building up your character is so slow and painful that I always get annoyed with it and give up. Playing solo is pointless and finding a good group is very difficult, although it's great fun when it happens.

-Ah, but you are mistaken. Getting good groups is not so hard... well, unless you play something like a ranger (D'oh!) and then it takes an insane amount of patience But I've seen some people level up insanely fast.

The best way to have fun with it is to join a Guild, but I never found one where you weren't expected to refer to the Guild Leader as 'Master' or something similarly stupid.

-Lol... you should have joined my guild. Except we were very small and crappy, but I inherited the Guildmastership which I share with a friend who is currently able to play. The guild is very small, and rank is just about irrelevant.

Also, many seem to demand that you spend the dozens of hours required building up your 'Weaponcraft' skill (or whatever) in a hugely boring way just so they could buy slightly discounted swords from you. There must be good guilds out there, but I never found one.

-We had people who did this voluntarily... though never weaponcraft. I tried weaponcrafting... it stinks. Fletching though 8 hours and about 5g, got me to 500 skill.

the Realm .vs. Realm combat sounded really good, but unfortuantely I gave up before my character was a high enough level to compete.

-It's great fun, but yeah, it really does take too long to be able to take part, especially as a Hibernian Ranger who has waited until level 33 to regularly start grouping... but hey, my next character will level up much faster.

[General Ludd]

Do you still play the game, Victor? (Or anyone else, for that matter)


I was thinking about trying this out (against my better judgment) 'though I was wondering about a few things...

Is there as much of a focus on levels and powergaming as in EverQuest, ie. will you be forced to sit around and powergame/camp to reach high levels before you can actually go on some interesting adventures, and enjoy yourself?

Is level advancement as slow and rigid as in EQ, or something more fluid, like Asheron's call?

Have any of you played on the RolePlay servers? Do people actually roleplay, and what's the difference between them and the regular servers?

[General Ludd]

Oh... and, could anyone direct me to a good fansite with active forums and everything?

[Victor Galis]

Do you still play the game, Victor? (Or anyone else, for that matter)

-Yes and no. My current locatyion makes it difficult for me to be able to play the game, but in a week's time I will be back, sort of. Two weeks from then I get my high speed dorm room connection and no parental supervision... then I will dish out the pain

Is there as much of a focus on levels and powergaming as in EverQuest, ie. will you be forced to sit around and powergame/camp to reach high levels before you can actually go on some interesting adventures, and enjoy yourself?

-Depends on what you consider enjoying yourself. On the normal servers, you need to be fairly high level to take part in the real action, but it's not too hard to get there. If you can powergame well, you can hit level 40 in a week. I'm assuming you wouldn't want to do that, but even so, most people can get to a decently high level fairly fast as long as they're playing a good class (some classes just suck for gaining levels fast). Also, find groups. Gaining experience in groups is much faster, easier, and possibly more fun. On the regular servers this shouldn't be too hard to find a group (but some classes suck at this). I don't know about the new PvP servers, where you can be randomly killed, but I intend to try those out soon.

Is level advancement as slow and rigid as in EQ, or something more fluid, like Asheron's call?

-I haven't played either of those, but I'm told level advancement is much faster than in EQ. Certainly you can hit level 7-8 in your first day/evening of play, 10 if you're good or you don't like sleep much. It slows down, but with good groups it can be pretty fast. I played a ranger, and up to level 33 I hunted largely by myself and was starting to get really frustrated (this took me about 4 months, though I started out as a newb with no guidance, a crappy guild, and wasted time exploring, and took weeks off to do stuff like go skiing). I found a nice group in a dungeon. I got level 34 in 1.5 hours, and 35 in 4 more (where alone levelling up took days). I hit level 40 by the end of the week, and I got to start making some sort of a difference in realm wars. So that was fun.

Have any of you played on the RolePlay servers? Do people actually roleplay, and what's the difference between them and the regular servers?

-I only play on RolePlay servers (Hibernia on Gwen and Albion on Nimue). People don't roleplay too much, but it's a lot better than non-roleplaying in terms of naming and lack of outside world comments.

Oh... and, could anyone direct me to a good fansite with active forums and everything?

-http://www.camelotherald.com might have some links.

[Victor Galis]

Say what class or type of class are you planning on playing, what realm?

[Grumbold]

I'm not currently playing but my subscription is still active. Just too many good games out at the moment to devote my life to a MMORPG. When their patch mugged my cleric I decided it was a good time to take a break.

[Victor Galis]

Hehe. Smite clerics were over powered, though one has to wonder if they really did Albion a favor. You might have more healing power now.

[Victor Galis]

Of course, as a ranger my views on the matter are quite understandable

[General Ludd]

I know that I'm gong to play as a hibernian on a Roleplay server, I'm not sure which one, but it'll probably be Nimue since that seems to be the least populated. I was thinking of being either a (celtic) druid or warden, or possibly even a ranger... but I'm not going to decide on that untill I get the game, which will probably be tommrow.

[Victor Galis]

Hmm... I will have to hunt you down if you play a Hibernian on Nimue I've got a couple low level characters there, a wizard and a friar.

As for suggestions:
Rangers tend to have trouble finding groups, which makes for slow leveling, and enemy assassin classes can see through their stealth easily, which makes them not very good at hunting enemies in RvR combat. On the other hand there is talk of giving them immunity to this realm ability that assassins have as long as they don't attack for some time, giving them back the scout role that they once had. Rangers are a decent class for soloing. Fun class, you get to do considerable ranged damage, and sneak around, while wearing armor thicker than a T-shirt.

As for wardens and druids:

Wardens: if you spec properly you get some really fun spells that make finding a good group really easy. And you get weapon skills as well as healing abilities. This makes the warden more fun for RvR action.

Druid: The ultimate class of all the realms (my opinion). You have healing, buffing, and a pet. Firbolg druids are even decent fighters without any weapon skills. With the pet you can solo well. With healing and buffing, you can find good groups. (Though if you are specialized in neither it gets harder). Problems: the level gap between you and your pet gets really wide towards the end and playing supporting classes in RvR isn't quite so fun. The druid's damage dealing potential doesn't increase as fast as other classes, so you will find yourself kicking less ass and doing more healing. Still, druids can take more of a beating than rangers.

[Victor Galis]

Also remember that you can create up to 4 characters per server and so try out multiple classes. Had I done this earlier, I might have been a level 50 druid by now instead of a level 40 ranger

[Bosh]

Osweld: if you want any roleplay at all on the non-PvP servers the best place to go is probably Guin, Nimue ended up being a place for power gamers to go to prove they were good at gaining levels very fast. Also you WANT the higher population, there's plenty of critters for everyone so the higher pop just makes it easier to find groups.
I played Guin for a while then moved to Mordred (one of the PvP servers) with the bulk of my guild. If you want something different you might want to check us out at www.shadowclan.com/mordred we're a huuuuge well-organized (guild's been around since '97) zenophobic kobold horde that stay's in character 100% of the times and we're really community-minded and take care of our new members very well. If you're up for playing on a PvP server and getting smacked by other players a lot (althoug we've claimed a zone and keep enemies out of pretty well so you won't get killed THAT much) I'd really recomend it, it's VASTLY more fun than the regular servers and I'm not very good at fighting myself. I'm Daztur in-game and will be able to give you a hand if you pop up on mordred.

[Victor Galis]

Also if you go to Guin Hibernia, I might be able to help you out financially once I get home.

[Victor Galis]

Don't know if that's really worth much. Also, I don't intend to play on Guin much. My guild is much more active on Nimue (Albion) and I play on joining the xenophobic kobold hordes on Mordred.

[General Ludd]

That sounds fun Boshko, I'll keep it in mind.

[Victor Galis]

Remember, you can have multiple characters on each server, so you should probably try out a bit of everything. (Theoretically you could have dozens of characters, but the time commitment would be outrageous. Still you can try out many classes and see what you really like).

Nothing beats a good fire wizard at dishing out the magical pain though.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
Remember, you can have multiple characters on each server, so you should probably try out a bit of everything. (Theoretically you could have dozens of characters, but the time commitment would be outrageous. Still you can try out many classes and see what you really like).

I know, during the time I played EQ I must of had atleast two dozen characters.

Nothing beats a good fire wizard at dishing out the magical pain though.

I prefer more combat oriented characters, though like to have some magic or special abilities aswell, to keep things interesting. But that's from my experience with other MMORPGs, it sounds like the melee combat in Camelot is supposed to be more interesting...

[Victor Galis]

I prefer more combat oriented characters, though like to have some magic or special abilities aswell, to keep things interesting. But that's from my experience with other MMORPGs, it sounds like the melee combat in Camelot is supposed to be more interesting...

-Hmm... for melee and magic, I think wardens are your best bet. They can heal, fight, and buff.

[Victor Galis]

Ranger spells consist of self buffs and running away spells. Not terribly exciting, but you've got a bow, and if you want you can do some melee, but don't expect to be any good at by the very late game, unless you specifically chose that path.

[Bosh]

That sounds fun Boshko, I'll keep it in mind.

If you do here's a quick guid to kobold classes:
-skalds: Very nice melee class, especially for killing other people with. They get run songs, damage-add songs, and HP regen songs as well as insta-cast damage, mezzing, and snaring. They also fight just fine and can wear nice armor, their only weakness is relatively small amount of HP. They spec one weopon skill and keep battlesongs up and throw the leftovers in parry.
-warriors: best defensive tank there is, especially when played by a kobold since they block and parry insanely well. Not that good at fighting by themselves but a good addition to a group, especially a monster bashing one.
-hunter: archers with bows that hurt a lot (unlike EQ ones), decent melee ability, OK stealthing (which the next patch is making better) and the ability to charm animals to fight for them (including some bugs that will buff and heal you an cast DoTs on your enemey).
-shadowblade: Nice assassin class. Excellent at taking out solo casters, often with one-hit kills. They're two general ways to spec them either with lots of steal and crit (ie backstab) where you'll be an amazing caster-killer, or with lots of left axe which will leave your stealth pretty low but you'll be able to dish out insane melee damage and be more useful in group fight where there often isn't time to sneak in and pine up a backstab.
-shamans (me!) hybrid healers with heals, nice HP regens, nice stat-buffs, debuffs, root, and DoTs. Good grouping class, sucky solo class.
-spirit masters: Kind of like a gimped version of EQ necros. They get ghost pet thingies, life tap, life transfer, and lots of debuffs. There's a big demand for suppression SMs since they got a point blank area affect spell and a mez-breaking spell both of which are very nice. Sup-SMs also get very long-duration single-target mezzes.
-rune masters: very nice caster class. Runecarving and Darkness spec lines give you nice nukes while suppression has a lot of fun stuff. Supp gives you blade turn chants (blade turn is insanely useful if you get hit with a BT the BT goes away and you don't get hurt), nukes that hurt and slow, confusion (great anti-pet spell), and a range-debuff which is very usefull against other mages and archers since if you spec enough in supp you can reduce their range by 60% which really really hurts.

The most popular are skalds, shadowblades, and runmasters.

[Victor Galis]

I would start out on a roleplaying server, just to get a feeling for gameplay first then move on to a PvP server.