MMO Was It Any Good Though? - Dark Age of Camelot
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- Опубликовано: 13 янв 2022
- Today we go further back than the launch of WoW and check out a cult PvP Classic MMO and try to answer...Dark Age of Camelot, Was It Any Good Though?
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Songs Used:
► DAoC OST
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#mmorpg #mmo #daoc 
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![[DOKKAN BATTLE] August Producer's Letter](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JUTYpaV_4Ic/mqdefault.jpg)
DAoC was subjectivly the best MMO ever created besides WOW. DAoC was JUST INCREDIBLE
Even aged and slow I still think DAoC combat is rewarding.
You are correct. Nothing like it even since. The memories....
Daoc still my favorit game. Miss the days when alot of ppl played and expansions still came out. (i know small expanisons still come out. But not on the same level as the old days)
it was a lot better than wow for me, since i prefer pvp over pve. but i guess that is a matter of personal taste.
Totally agree. Great game. So many great memories. So many fights at mile gates before new frontier...too much
I loved this game so much. Just hearing the intro at the mythic entertainment screen still gets me to this day.
No other MMO has ever been this good or even close. Especially for PvP.
Damn EA
here's a tip, and most of us know this. it's not EA, it's "BROADSWORD". EA will even tell you they have no control over
what broadsword has been doing to the game since BS bought the rights for it, from mark.
The experience of playing DAoC from launch until it died off after ToA will never be matched. Mordred PvP was legendary.
Best experience of my lifetime in gaming was Mordred..
@@corylepire342 easily - no other MMO has even come close for me
@@corylepire342 the salt though. So much QQing
@@vknight7497
I played from shortly after release until a few months into ToA. The trials were nice, but i was annoyed with the more and more growing "Animal-RvR". It looked stupid when 8 wolves wiggled a bit during the fight. But Classic and Shrouded Isles was the best i ever played, especially because of the community back then.
@@christianstachl yea ToA introduced stuff that ruined the game imo. That’s basically why it died. Artifacts were cool though.
My wife and I lost 7 years of our life in this game. Most fun we had in an MMO period, and probably will never experience again.
I'm a simple man I see DAOC I upvote
DAOC was probably the first MMO I ever saw as a kid. Rewatching it is breathtaking, and a sheer reminder at how fast time flies.
I miss this game so much to this day it is still my top MMO of all time.
I'm so excited for this, I can see you growing so much more (as you deserve)
when classic came out I would watch your videos for hours, cant wait to continue that tradition with new content
Cheers! Hope I can build something here that I can carry on doing!
I enjoyed this game back in the day but can't get beyond the dated graphics. I don't mind the character models but the environment is just ugly.
@@henrythegreatamerican8136 you're like the gf that likes the enemy team becuz of the color of the jerseys
I still enjoy this game i plan n gettin the f2p
DAoC has so many great memories for me. I was an altoholic, playing almost every race and class. I especially loved friar, sorcerer and cave-specced shaman. The zones were immense, and RvR meant something. There were alarm clock relic raids when an entire realm would set their alarms for 4am, jump online and grab a relic. Taking the lead in RvR would trigger ownership of Darkness Falls, a huge dungeon that only the leading realm could enter. As soon as ownership swapped players would drop everything and bee-line to DF to push through and kick the other realms out, or to log in a stealther to grief the lowbies leveling near the entrances.
Darkness Falls was such a great idea. Your realms RvR success benefitting PvE players by unlocking it, providing almost a mini-game for stealthers leaving their chars in until it swaps sides, having pretty decent PvE dungeon with just a little thrill of PvP risk.
Who didn't love playing the friar when it was still quite unknown and be confused for mages by assassins. "Whoops..." - "Last mistake you'll make today, buddy".
@@KafkaDatura lots of Albs used to dress Friars like a mage, poor assasins when they found out too late :P
Hands down the best PvP of any MMO ever. I doubt it can ever be replicated. The society of gamers has gotten far too toxic.
Interestingly, the DAOC community was, to today's standards, pretty toxic. But it wasn't the same toxicity... The 3 realms structure allowed everyone to kind of "belong", and seeing people flame each other on web forums after yet another fort taken at 3am was just fun for everyone.
'twas the good ol' days when a healthy dose of toxicity was just good fun. Not like today when people take everything so fucking seriously.
Agree. It was a special time. It would sadly be impossible today to replicate the experience back then.
I think we need a daoc 2 which is based on teamplay like back in daoc 2001. You were not really able to rvr or pve without a team. That made daoc a social game, a community with reputations so you needed to be kind or the other players judged you and didnt play with you anymore. That was great and smart cause youre able to play solo in the modern mmos today, thats why you are allowed to be an asshole.... Just like irl ...
@@hylianrover that’s super early DAOC. I didn’t play until new frontiers. I would love Daoc2. I think that was the failed attempt of ESO though.
I ran in strict 8 mans. I also solo a bunch. RR11 reaver pre Levi nerf. The player base was so much better back then. Majority respected 1v1 or 8v8. Even the VN boss’s were rarely toxic.
@@hylianrover this is 100% right. Solo leveling was just so punishing, even if you created an 8 man group with a very suboptimal synergy, it was still much faster than going it alone.
This "forced" you to meet people and make new friends. I still play games today from some of my daoc friends that I met in 2001.
In daoc you get baseline spells for free as you level, then when you add to that line you get the spec spells. and points in the spec make the baseline spells better. I am so glad I played this game from the start. The game was very different at the start, even less handholding. This game needs a real come back.
So true. I remember getting constantly lost in the woods at night after my first login because i didn't know you had a torch.
And lvling...tell someone in this day and age that you often searched 30-60 minutes to have a full group, then go to a spot, and chainpull enemies. Well..."chainpull"...one or two pulls and then you sit down for a few minutes to reg life/mana 😅 But it was great, back then online communities were way less toxic. You talked, laughed, died and after a few hours of grinding you had some new friends. And on your journey you would often see them again aand just chat a little bit.
Man, i could go on and on how great these times were 🥰
EDEN DAOC CLASSIC FREESHARD SERVER.
You would have had to experience DAoC back in its heyday to truly appreciate the scale of some of those PvP battles. Severals types of seige warfare, hundreds upon hundreds of players coordinating skirmishes upon towers and forts, so much so that the potatoes we used to run back then would hardly be able to render the amount of action on-screen. The Frontiers were really something to behold, a massive PVP/PVE sandbox with a seemingly endless sprawl of towers and forts held by each faction, each vying for control. For its time, this game was truly innovative. The muscial score, as well, is superb. I still go back and listen to the ambient tracks today, some truly stellar work from composer Rik Schaffer (who also composed music for Vampire: The Masquarde Bloodlines 1 & 2 and Elder Scrolls Online). I'm really happy to say I experienced this game when it truly was great.
Someone on the VN boards a long, long time ago said something to the effect of "who knew that the best way to foster realm animosity was through class mechanics?" I always thought it a shame how homogenized other MMOs were with standardized classes across factions. Another thing that made DAoC great. *sigh*
Yeah it was so damn amazing. When like 150ppl decided to do a stealth relic raid in the middle of the night etc. Talk about community all over the place. ToA killed the joy tho, damn artifact and ML10 grinds etc. But the community was so damn good at the EU servers even tho only like 2500 players on peak
Remembering this game gives me chills, it wasn't my first MMORPG but it really was the first one that I was emotionally attached to. I will remember this game fondly for the rest of my life, I have friends in real life that also played with me and we had so much fun on it. Occasionally I will download a private server or try to retail version but it never captures the feeling I had all those years ago when I was about 15-16 years old.
I can't actually convey into words how much I love this game, it's like a scrap book of memories for me. Thank you for making a video on it.
I played DAoC a lot about a 16 years ago. I played every major mmo in the day, and I still have such fond memories of DAoC.
DAoC was the first MMO I actually played. I "played" Everquest before it, but I used it more like a chatroom than actually playing the game lol. I still play it every once in awhile. It's nothing like it used to be. I can remember there being hundreds of players fighting over the relics. I stayed up all night once while fighting over a keep and then had to go to school. I came home only to find that we were still fighting over the same keep. It was the last one to open the relic gate and we finally did it. Easily Top 3 memories of gaming for me.
Thanks for covering Dark Age of Camelot! It's unfortunate that you couldn't experience the game in its infancy. Classic WoW showed that there is just no way to recapture the magic of these titles without a true relaunch of sorts.
DAoC was a great MMO and those who got to experience its origins got to take part in some unforgettable moments. I will never forget some of the large scale battles that took place - dozens or hundreds of players squaring up over keeps, relic fortresses, choke points. (Many of the players weren't even max level) It was beyond epic. The Frontiers were truly dangerous, and the conflicts had meaning to the player base beyond some arbitrary rank grind.
There was also a special FULL PvP server called Mordred in the early years was pretty wild as well. Only Capital Cities were safe. Imagine trying to kill those Crouches and Wolves with a dozen hostile players in the area. Brutal!
It's really true - from what I saw on the PvP on Classic servers it was way different from ancedotal experiences I had heard from the past - I still would have at liked to experience a little of it, but oh well!
I think my best memory was from EU Prydwin server, mids and Hibs double teamed alb to take a relic each at the same time, we didn't have the defenders for a relic defence on both, so one group decided to try and bomb the Hibs when they went through the mile gate. To everyone's surprise it worked and we saved the relic! Best moment of my DAoC career tbh.
Mordred and Andred, the full PvP servers, were dumb and died quickly. We gave them soooo much feedback on how to implement a good PvP server ruleset and they ignored it all and decided to do a bootleg Rallos Zek from EQ. Utterly stupid. Another game came along and implemented all our suggestions into their PvP server and it worked so well they are among the most popular servers ever. That game was called WoW. DAoC just had the most incompetent developers I've ever seen.
@@QarthCEO Mordred was the best server for 8vs8. During a time were guilds that massively switch to that server (same for camlann in EU) . Wow is a kid game. You needed skill to play daoc with his hard interrupt meta
I still log in to my EA/Mythic account from time to time just to look at it. That game was the game that changed my life. For what a lot of people found in WoW I'd found in DAoC in the years leading up to WoW launching.
Will truly never forget those times, and long for a day when I see PvP implemented that well again. There was just such a specially community element to it. You really felt like these other people were invading your land, to steal relics, smash towers and keeps. It was your job to defend that.
8v8 and open-field PvP was a blast too, but man those call to arms where the whole server would show up to defend their territory was fucking epic.
we played this from 2002-2008 then took a 12 year break. came back when we found out there was a free to play version, and yes started playing to play again.. It's still so much fun! we made great friends, and I'm just sad that there aren't thousands of players on anymore... I wish more people would sign up as it really is a great game.
Celestius freeshard big fights zergs way 2000 plus on prime time weekends quick to level so if u don't have alot of time u hit 50 quick and it's a rvr based server so always action frontier has a pvp area like mordred for grp vs grp or solo fights you fight your own realm there as well great fun come join us
Celestius is awesomr
No it wasn't good. It was perfect. So perfect to me, that I fell heavy for it in the age of 14, 22 and 31.
I wish it would still be popular and stuck with the SI addon :')
Went back to live. Man this game still rocks :)
@@YISP7
Are live servers really any good nowadays?
I searched a bit a few months ago and it seems some private servers with only SI are kinda well populated.
And yes, it was absolute perfection back then 🥰
@@christianstachl I'd say it really depends what you want to do. Pve? Dead. You can go from 1-50 solo in one day. You won't find xp groups other then asking in the official disco. Leveling is the most effective in the BG's. And super fast. You can buy armor, that will always cap your stats/resi. Even at 50. And there is a NPC, will sells full-buff potions. So you will be ready for rvr in no time. But there comes the little downside. They have drastically increased the rp gain. So rr5 is nothing. And you will face a LOT of rr10-12. Even casually. So you need to group. Every realm still has its zerg. It's not as big as it used to be, but big enough. You can solo, but you have to be good and play a solo viable char. Other than that, it's awesome. Freeshards (I've played plenty of them) , all go extinct at some point. I had 8 full tempted RR4+ on Phoenix on all realms. Gone. Guess what, my Vamp from 2009 on live is still there 😎 oh and... You'll get veteran rewards for an old account, which gives you a lot of super nice items to start catching up ❤️
@@YISP7
Thanks for the info!
Private server community is pretty good if you want the classic experience :)
Miss daoc so much, best mmo of all time!
I sunk untold hours into this game thousands on thousands of hours. My all time fav PvP mmo hands down
Ugh! I miss this game! I played this at release. I really wish they would update it and relaunch it. The all night relic raids, pvp, community, overall gameplay, was epic!! I've never played anything that made me as happy as DAoC did!!
You should check out Camelot Unchained. It's more or less the successor and is almost exclusively PvP. Hopefully it launches this year.
I second this
EDEN DAOC CLASSIC FREESHARD SERVER.
7:48 that feature was definitely added much later into the game. At least a couple of years. In the beginning your options were run or pay gold to take a horse whose route would be on the way to wherever you were going and jump off near your objective. The longest horse rides going from one end of the world to the other was about 15-20 minutes.
Yeah I was so surprised when I got a horse the other day.
reminds me of josh strife plays except with your style on it, big fan
Willie is definitely among the best British MMO retrospective content creators out there.
The Blizzard employee bonus joke had me rolling
Dark Age of Camelot will forever have a special place (along with Quakeworld) in my heart. I played DAOC alot, to the point of dropping out of school. Had alot of fun though, probably worth it.
I got taken out of school because I was really sick. Played all day and night. So much that for a while my bed was pushed right up next to my computer (was too painful to sit in the chair to play).
DAOC it to date my most favorite mmo I have ever played. It brought me to the genre more then anything else. I still crave the pvp aspect everytime I play a mmo now. If any game current or future could remake the realm vs realm concept with 3 factions again the game would bring so many people back. I was part of a 8 man and the thrill on using skill, communication and dedication and spending time on one character could take on zergs ( groups of real players over 100+). I still get chills now watching bedlam video's still now on youtube. also that fact that a realm vs realm war could unlock a dungeon was one of coolest feature's. god even talking about it makes me miss it so much :( RIP DAOC
Pvp in Daoc is easily the most fun I've had in an mmo ever. From my troll berserker in a melee group to my cabalist flinging aoe dots from a keep wall, thidranki keep defense and darkness falls. I loved this game and have so many good memories.
DAOC 2 is my most wanted game ever. DAOC PvP system is the best thing I've seen in any MMO.
Tbh, they could just relaunch DAoC imo but with updated graphics and I would be happy!
@@Chipz1337 new graphics and definitely a new engine
Well that's Camelot Unchained.Backed it.Now it seems to be a neverending processs of testing.doubt it will ever release...
@@hebbe61 yea I've been following Camelot Unchained, sadly looks like it's stuck in development hell
All Hib wizard classes have baseline stun which makes them massively op and the game unbalanced. /Whine
DAoC was very, very good. Played from release to the Phoenix PS until its shutdown and loved it all. The best PvP MMO (imo) ever made.
A Phoenix player here, wondering where everyone went after
@@ameliarichardson9689 is Phoenix up and running still?! I heard while playing RoR it was going to be shut down in August. I feel betrayed if it’s not…
@@DonutGod69 celestius server is the latest and greatest bunch of fun 1500 players yesterday
@@DonutGod69 It did shut down, sadly. I haven't picked it up since, but my dad (which introduced me to DAoC Phoenix) has moved on to Celestius. I believe another good option is Atlas. Sadly though I haven't played much of either, and I can't tell you the differences.
@@AcuRobbie good to know!! Thank you for this!
Played daoc for 14 years on and off from 2001, I was 12 years old at the time but stopped playing on official servers in 2008 and really enjoyed the free shard for quite sometime!.. it's one of those games that destroyed my effort in trying to enjoy other games, because in my head it was and still is simply the best game ever. I'm remembering just now for how long I hoped in a daoc 2 or decent upgrades for the existing game.. ehhhh
Thanks for covering DAoC! Often gets looked over. My first and favorite MMO
20 years later i still have so many great memories like in no other game. It was especially because of the community, which wasn't as toxic as it is today.
You stuck together as a realm. When you were leveling an alt and there was a message in the alliance chat that the relics are under attack, you dropped everything, logged onto your main and hurried to defend them, no matter what. Heck, even once a buddy called me in the middle of the night, just saying "get up, relics are under attack" and i did!
The bond inside the realm between all guilds was so good you were kinda doomed when you tried to scam or just be a shitty person.
No guild would have you anymore, no raid group, no pvp group. And playing solo, even as a stealther class, was brutal back then. You were branded. If you want to join the community again you had to make a new character.
I could go on for hours, it was such an epic game! 🥰
I feel like I could hear WillE get a little choked up at 0:38, I know I do too when I think back on those days.
Even hearing the music today gives me chills. I had some of my best life experiences in and with this game and the people i met there. What a wonderful time. This would be the only reason i would love to be young again.
Dopest MMO ever, hands down best PvP mechanics to date. 🙌
I played almost two decades ago and still vividly remember loading into South Black Mountains, going to PKB, leveling on the golems.
The whole vibe was great. Great music, excellent environment. Ill never forget the game.
If you wan't to experience fast leveling with a healthy population ( 2000+ players online and leveling ) try celestius, it's a daoc freeshard they use old frontiers but you will be able to live the golden age of large scale pvp you were longing on this video.
I played an Albion scout from release until game death after TOA. PVP was hands down never replicated in any game, but the real draw was the community. There was no greed, always someone willing to help and the guild atmosphere was amazing with the right players. I was in a 35 player guild that was very strong in PVP, dragon raids every week, we had guild crafters to help everyone make gear. I miss those people, we actually spoke on the phone all the time, traveling in real life to meet and share long weekends. Truly amazing gaming community. The likes of which can never be duplicated, such good times.
This is like seeing an old friend who has fallen on hard times. Sadly this is a shadow of the DAOC experience of old and they've even done stuff like changing the starting zones for the worse imo. The originals were so much more thematic and interesting but I get what they were trying to do I guess. I think one of the key things that made DAOC so good was actually needing a group of 8 people to work as a team with interlocking skills to complete much of the content efficiently. When you got it right it was such a brilliant experience with a shared feeling of achievement that rarely happens in modern gaming. The "Realm vs Realm" PvP was also just amazing and I really don't understand why another MMO hasn't successfully copied it. People love competing on teams but it's always compromised somehow in modern MMOs. Finding out on global chat that the Albion faction was launching an attack on your relic keeps and in response having the entirety of Midgard mobilising to defend them with large guilds of players deploying to the frontier clearly recognisable in their chosen colours was just an amazing thing to be part of. In the early game you had to get a preset horse route to get around so you'd literally see hundreds of people riding by heading to the nearest frontier keep. Truly epic stuff.
Arena net devs cited DAOC as the inspiration for WvW, which is that game's stab at a relm vs relm pvp mode.
@@zakwilson3276 I've played both GW2 and DAoC (mostly GW2) and, thanks to my dad's guidance I was able to experience again the RvR on the Phoenix freeshard, and... There is no comparison. DAoC, despite being more than 20 years old, still has (in my humble opinion) the best RvR experience on the market. GW2's WvW feels so much more... Barren. Ignoring the fact that the game mode has been ignored for years now by the developers and content is stagnating, but the core systems surrounding it are still worse than those you can find in DAoC.
You should play Warhammer Online's private server next. It's similar to DAoC but it has a good amount of players so there's an active end game.
Private server contents gonna be an issue - could run into copyright/video takedowns at some point in the future, i'd like to stick to official clients/approved clients where I can
@@WillEmmo Probably a safe bet, though I think WAR is safe from copyright. 7 years without a single take down notice, both EA and Games Workshop are aware of the server, and ex developers from mythic have voiced their approval. They're pretty strict about following GW's IP user guidelines.
@@WillEmmo Warhammer Onlines Private Server is Official and rights provided by the designers once the game shut down.
ReturnofReckoning
It's made by the same developer as DAoC.
@@porcu12345 Yep the developers gave full approval to use the game engine for the official private server Return of Reckoning. It's been going strong since.
when you say i give it X out of Y keep Y short and firm, it really helps emphasise the humor in the final score
thank you for good vids
I played DAoC…Midgard after playing UO FOR five years. Played up to beta of WoW. My wife and I loved DAoC for the RvR. Put a skald I. The front and form a train. Was fun as hell.
You have solid points in your review. The new player experience today is a complete disaster if you have never touched DAoC.
I was there at launch in 2001, and today the game is much more friendly than it was back then, so that says a lot about the initial launch state :)
The frustrations you have today is due to lack of game knowledge (not your fault) and the old school feedback from the game in the few chat windows you have. Specifically for new spells you get for free while leveling, they are communicated to you in the chat window right as you level, but it shares the same font colour as the bunch of other messages, so it gets lost in the spam.
The best way to level up today if you are running solo is either the city hub quests up until 30 or 35, or the battleground kill tasks until 50. Both will reward you with level appropriate gear. Once you spend some time in the battlegrounds, you will encounter other players though.
The thing is, with a few people in group, you will only spend little time in each battleground bracket, because you will level through them very fast. On your way to 50 through the battlegrounds, you will find 2 important brackets where you want to make a stop and focus on the PVP and work on your real levels: level 35-39 in Molvik and level 45-49 in Cathal Valley.
If there are people doin rvr sub-level 50, they will be there. As a new player, you need to group up and prepare for a lot of deaths, as a lot of people there are very experienced and have templated characters and realm abilities that will make them very hard to kill without the proper game, class and real ability knowledge. This knowledge only comes by playing, a lot, in RVR. So don't give up too soon.
What makes me come back nearly daily is being part of active guilds, and joining their discord channels to stay up to date and chat in-game. For competitive RVR, discord or TS is mandatory, as split decisions will decide the outcome of an encounter.
There are very nice players out there, that will help you level and learn the game (including myself). Just reach out in chat in the main city or RVR town and people will respond.
After all these years, there's still a reason why people come back to DAoC, but just like 20 years ago, it's the community that's important. Without it, you are indeed playing a solo and barren game, while the actual fun is right there, waiting for you.
Listen to the people that will guide you, it helped me a lot. The official DAoC Discord channel is actually the place to be, their website is from the Netscape Navigator era...
Sorry for the wall of text and maybe I'll see some new faces soon :)
Thanks for covering DAoC. This was my first MMO, god it was so good. Lots of stuff from this game that WoW and later MMO's could have copied and improved upon, but never did.
I forgot to add, every three months they do an event called catch up in Caledonia. Basically you level through PvP only, no PvE. Mass fights with lots of groups etc. I would recommend revisiting dark age of Camelot during that event. I think it will give you the no barred entry your looking for.
Sad thing is, many people left DAoC because of the constant zerg fest and nothing says come back to the game where there is an event that is nothing more than a glorified zerg fest! Regardless, the game is still around 20 years later. Not many MMO's can claim that simply because it does have the BEST PvP out there. It could however, use an graphics refresh and relaunch.
If I remember correctly one of the first things I did when playing DAOC was change the key binds for movement so that they work a bit more intuitively.
Nearly 20 years .... my god
Thanks for the nostalgia :) I loved this game.
Keep these up man great vid!
If you didn't jam to AFI while playing daoc back then, you were missing out. Whenever I hear something from "sing the sorrow" or "the art of drowning" I'm instantly transported back to that period of time, and specifically, daoc.
this is the game that introduced MMOs to me. I loved this game
Really enjoyed the vid! Your humour laced information-style is great for this sort of thing imo!
It's an awesome game. If you ever needed help grouping, I'd gladly show you around Hibernia. I've played since launch pretty much.
Man... watching this video was like hearing a childhood friend just died. I played this game for well over a decade and a half. Seeing it like this puts a hole in my chest.
It had so much to offer in so many ways. Character growth was like no other game before or after. The loot system and economy was dynamic and deep. Such a sad end to a great game.
I played high level end game RvR on iseult for like 5 years then came back around 2008 or so and just played all the battlegrounds. My favorite game of all time.
I'm a true supporter - every time a new video drops I click on one of the ads and buy whatever is advertised on the channel. I have some new solar panels on my roof now!
Best game I ever played. Very interesting blend between pve and pvp. I'll always love pre-ToA Dark Age of Camelot the most.
True, Classic+SI was perfect 🥰
A note on the repetitivness of the quests: When I leveled my first several characters, the best way to level was camping a spot and grinding. With a buffbot. Let's not even get into needing to pay for two accounts to play the game to its fullest.
The insane level grind really killed this game before it ever got a chance to build a devoted PvP audience. PvPers don't like mindless PvE grinding just to get to the PvP endgame. 200+ hours of mindlessly grinding mobs is just, well, insane. Had it only been 50 hours, so many would have been able to get hooked on RvR and the game would have persevered for far longer. We all told them this on the official forums and their responses were always the same "we aren't changing anything'. Until WoW came out and they lost their entire player base, then all of a sudden they started changing, but it was too late. The devs of this game just weren't very bright, and their continued failure in the genre speaks to that.
Alright gonna horribly suggest Maplestory as one to look into. It for me at least was my first big MMO along side Runescape and is the first game I think of for the huge array of Free to Play Korean port MMOs
noted!
DAOC is hands down the best PvP-centric MMO ever created, but live servers have been a shell of its former glory for going on a decade now.
Since 2017 various densely populated free shards have launched with a new one releasing just last week.
If anyone wants to experience a DAOC renaissance search out the free shards they’re worth playing.
DAoC killed itself from the get go by having an insane level grind that required hundreds of hours of mindlessly grinding mobs (barely any quests) just to get to the real RvR game. It was a totally broken leveling system that most PvPers just would not tolerate. So many people in my guild quit before ever reaching 50 because the grind was just so utterly boring. Leveling needed to be 3 times faster at least. It was only popular because it was the only other sword and board MMO besides EQ. As soon as it got competition from a dev team with actual intelligence, Blizzard, it died.
@@QarthCEO I would prefer to sit on a camp killing mob or run a dungeon than doing stupid quests...daoc needed players together to progress if you had no buffbot. And minimum amount of skill
@@QarthCEO I mean, I knew hundreds of people who went to WoW to turn around and come back a few weeks later because Vanilla was straight up garbage. Especially if you wanted PvP, which was common to DAoC players. I wouldn't end up playing Warcraft again until Legion. The game had a thriving population for years, by any realistic measure it was an incredibly successful game.
You could grind mobs, or you could literally play RvR battlegrounds all the way through the leveling process. It's not like you were locked out of a style of gameplay.
What WoW did was make the genre accessible to everyone. There are some people who very much enjoy grinding, and others like yourself who dislike it. Neither is wrong. DAoC was not a game built to take players away from WoW.
I personally prefer to grind with a group of players than to be led around the map by hand holding quests. I cant stand questing.
@@keyoke69 It took over 200 hours of grinding mobs in a group to get 50 before WoW. No mounts, no run buffs, no teleports, either, until AFTER WoW had been out for awhile and DAoC pop was on life support. It wasn't the activity of leveling, it was the length. Mythic eventually shortened it drastically, but not until they lost the vast majority of the player base. Yall look back now with rose colored glasses, but when I look back I see a game that had HUGE potential to last the ages and was killed by arrogant devs who didn't take any player feedback until those players literally left.
20 years ago I was 14 and played daoc for the first time. It was my first mmo. After creating a character and running around Camelot hills for the first time I immediately knew that I was experience something amazing. I felt completely immersed and pulled into the world (no VR necessary); I wanted to interact with the other players and explore Albion. It made an unforgettable and profound impact on me, moreso than any other game before or since.
For the next 1-2 years I would spend most of my waking hours, outside of school, inside my favoured reality. Until eventually I would have to give up my happy addiction and yield to the interfering demands of real life. At the time I was annoyed by having to give up my loving relationship like this, but in hindsight I appreciate it. I left the game while still deeply infatuated with it, before it became routine or even tiresome. I believe this is one of the reasons I still have such a deep affection for it to this day. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. I hope someone reads this and shares my own thoughts about the game.
even after all those years, i still miss the complexity of daoc pvp (especially the 8vs8/1vs1 community was a great place for pvp lovers) and the endless possibilities of the crafting system. they just don't make games like this anymore, seems like everything has to be easymode nowadays. :-(
I wish it were socially acceptable to still make games that look like this, with that early 2000's fantasy art style.
Sadly if a game like this were to come out to day tho, it would be immediately dismissed for being "ugly" or "dated". I never even played this game but there's just such a charm to the visuals of this era.
I looked fast and thought those enemies were called "Wild Crotch"
Awesome to see you covering more titles and growing the channel this way. I'm really interested to see more!
Nice recommendation, just in time :)
The map is a new addition... It was in what, catacombs? The third expansion. Back before that you had to use the compass and asking other players where to go from this specific tree
I had printed out maps at some point, but i also remember asking how you get over the bridge to the plains to kill basilisks.... or what angle you need to run to end up in keltori fugo or how that dungeon was called.
I was begged into running so many relic raids not because I was a master strategist or military genius. It was just because I learned my way around the frontiers early on. I would group up run with 250 people locked on following me drop a battering ram at the door and let everyone else do the work while I played with my big siege toy.
@@shauncrawford6529 like herding cats :D
Great video Will E as usual.
Lol I loved how you were about to copy JSH rating system and then gave it another spin XD
Daoc had the best pvp. No other mmo has ever measured up
Dude just keep it up, I love your diversity in content.
without watching the video: DAoC was my first mmo back in the days and I still remember everything. Hearing the music just gives me nostalgic memories. DAoC was mindblowing
I played DAoC a LONG time, it was one of the best PvP games that I've ever played, mostly due to the fact that there's 3 factions instead of the usual 2. This made the game very different compared to WoW or other PvP games back in the day. Granted I was playing on the EU server and on average it had at least 1000 people online at any given moment. I do miss that time, but probably more the others from my guild and less the game itself.
Love this concept for a new series! :)
Playing it on the Celestius server now will always love this game
Love this style of content man!
WillE: *encounters multiple mobs on a bridge* "I know what to do, I play a mage in Classic WoW!"
The mobs: *won't let him aoe kite them, teleporting through rocks and the rope bridge*
I had the idea, the mobs had another one
"Wait - that's illegal."
Bitchin' new series, love it
How about a video on Warhammer Online? I would love to hear your perspective on that one!
Daoc Live had a great little renaissance around 2011-12 right before they were bought by EA. It was a lot of fun and the rvr was great. I have to say though that broadsword really did try. However the lack of support from EA and the conflicts between the aging players people like myself who were there at the beginning and the new generation. WoW type players who wanted WoW type qol and instant action really made the devs just give up on pleasing anyone lol. Btw I see you had it on your bar later but quick cast really helps whenever a mob or player gets in on your caster. Quick cast a stun or root sprint away face melt. Also /SnapBack off helps with the camera issues. I always change a and d keys to strafe instead of turn. Thanks for checking out one of my favorite mmo of all times though.
This the first mmo I ever bought as a 12 year old kid. I saw it in a store and bought it and convinced my mom to get me a subscription. I had no idea what I was doing and couldnt figure anything out, so I stopped playing. I would later pick up vanilla wow about a year later lol
That is what WoW had going for it, it was incredibly accessible to people. I was a few years older than you, but I started playing in a LAN center with friends that were older than me and taught me the ropes. That age of the internet, in either game just feels like a different place than what it is today.
Not sure if you ever played Ragnarok Online, that was the first mmorpg I played before wow; the idea that you begin as a novice class and then go to a guild to learn you class always felt cool to me. Also some specific classes like the gunslinger that was there with your more traditional classes.
DAOC had what most MMORPGs can't find --- a community of players that got along and even respected the opposition. It did not matter whether you were an Alb, a Hib or a Mid, in DAOC we all got along even during relic raids or even playing stealther wars. It was incredible just how much respect players had for each other. I have played many other MMORPGs and none had the community that DAOC had.
Thid, the level 20-24 Bg used to always be packed and so much fun
Amazingly well done
DAoC Was the best game ever made. I remember giant battles and tons of quests! They had even talked about remaking it DAOC 2 , but that soon died. I really thought they revived it when they made NEW WORLD but I was disappointed. Oh well we can always remember the old days!
Anyone who reads this, and remembers me, knows how much time I sunk into this game. Loved it so much, and was the Druid class TL for a while!
DAOC from launch to TOA release was something special! Almost 23 years later and no game has touched that peak for me.
Private daoc servers have been much much better and more popular than the live daoc servers for many years now. The game was amazing in the 2001-2004 era (i.e. what the pservers emulate). Many amazing childhood memories and mad nostalgia for this game. Was truly a once in a lifetime thing that can never be recreated just with how the internet has evolved.
DAoC was the !best! MMO I've ever played. I was active in the old days about 2002 to 2014 and since then I have tried over more than 2 dozen different MMOs.
DAoC is different with its RvR and theoreticaly endless battle between the realms. I have spent over a whole decade with +5000 hours playtime in this game (Mostly on Midgard).
It was really an open ended eternal game. BUT there are three major points these days that make DAoC almost unplayable.
1. The unjustified high subscription fee to receive all benefits (like access to all races and classes, housing etc.). You simply experience just a fraction of the real game without the subscription.
2. You can't even lay a finger on the really high end items because you need several groups to slay those monsters.
I remember Dragonraids (not the mini versions), ML10 Raids or Raids in the Glacier Dungeon / Labyrinth / Summoners Hall / Atlantis / Darkness Falls to get the rarest and best items.
You needed about 2-3 full groups (16-24 players) if you wanted to face those bosses.
I consider it next to impossible that you can gather even more than a single group for high end PvE today. And it's very hard to find any legendary crafter that makes you Lev51 100% Quality Items with max overcharged spellcrafting on it. So your equipment stats and bonuses will be clearly ~30% below all other RvR Players.
3. The worst thing is the extreme low playerbase in a game that was concepted especially for huge group acitivities. It's just meaningless to level up a character (mostly alone on your own!) to participate in RvR where everyone has MUCH better equipment, a MUCH higher realm rank, champion-level and master-level (and therefore surperior abilities, skills, hitpoints, damage-output and other fancy stuff) and on top of that - those hardcore fans/players have MUCH more experience in RvR than a new player.
So new players are only cannon fodder and they will die 99,999% of the time to those demigod players.
My conclusion:
Today it simply makes no sence to invest any ammount of time, effort and money to even get somewhere near a competing setup only to see that the high end content also is quite empty at all and when you have a fight you certainly die. That is no fun at all.
It's nice to have the nostalgic memories back to the 2000s and the early 2010s but this game today is a corpse. Empty and lifeless zones with roaming NPCs.
It makes me very sad to see this game in such a rotten state because I've spent so damn much time in this game.
I currently made a few rounds on Ywain/Midgard in the Capital, RvR Zones, Housing, Thidranki and Molvik just to get an impression on the polulation.
It is almost dead. A few ppl here and there but no Zerg like in the old days with hundrets of players having a massive battle going on.
You can't even pick a "solo" stealth class if you don't have a subscription. With the "Endless Conquest" free2play-model you only get healing classes (Yay, they are shitty for solo play), off-tanks (also not the best to pick for soloing), a hybrid class and a caster class. So new players certainly won't be appealed by the free2play model because they can chose between heavy group-depending classes and (at best) mediocre solo classes.
*edit*: The only way to experience DAoC these days is on the freeshard server EDEN. The population is quite good at 2000-2700 players total / 650-900 per Realm at prime time. There you can find fast groups in all level areas. But there is less QoL and it takes longer to get exp than on Ywain.
The Daoc Eden Freeshard Classic Server is starting this weekend December 10th. Beta was a blast. Hope to see some of you around too! See you on the battlefield.
You can go from level 1-50 solo in 8 hours or less when grouped. PvP is amazing, it's a shame you got discouraged with the low level PvE. If you would like aid to get to end game, please message me so you can try it out.
Also the 9x people you saw were the non-anon players and those on your realm of Hibernia. That didn't include those on Midgard or Albion.
So you can hide yourself from /who? i did try creating a character on other realms to make sure that it was displaying cross realm and it did from what I could tell
@@WillEmmo yes there is a command /anon and /stats anon which hides you from the /who. The count is also only for your realm as you can't /who someone from another realm. They are separated.
Each count from /who is for your realm only, unlike similar commands for joint games like wow, ffiv etc.
Back in the day it took hundreds of hours of mindlessly camp spawn grinding to get to 50 and soloing wasn't really an option for most classes. It was the #1 reason people quit the game before ever getting to RvR. The devs made a very dumb decision putting a huge PvE grind wall in front of a good PvP experience.
Yes, yes it was.
Now that video brings back memories, the early days of MMO roleplaying ... I'll never forget this game got me through thin and thick .... Cheers to my old mates ... The Order of the Knights Templar from Prydwen
I got into Closed Beta thanks to running a notable RPG website at the time. To be honest, I was surprised DAoC managed to survive long as it did.
The game was nowhere near complete months after release. For instance I had reached max level while using lvl 30's gear because no dungeons above that level had been itemized. Taking advantage of unfinished quests not intended to be repeated was how I generally kept my weapons in check. RvR mechanics were also not present. No siege features, just /stick the run speed character and run around fighting. Very Terran Mill style but with way more empty space and for the time traditionally awful netcode to try and PvP with.
It was actually quite easy to solo max level and even dungeons. The game suffered from massive balance issues. Midgard being the supreme overall faction with some other faction classes able so solo purple cons all day. Months later the high level dungeons were itemized. I max geared in a week and there were still no RvR mechanics so there was nothing to do. I then quit.
I do have fond memories of the game. Esp finding a glitch in the border walls and taking pics with other factions at their main cities. Almost got banned by the mighty GM crystal for that =D
DAoC was amazing. I had such a great time. I miss the game and the people! What a time it was....
So many fond memories of DAoC. Played until the ToA expansion then went onto WoW.
Yea, ToA spilled a lot of players to WoW. Combined with that the devs made classic servers and further split the population. Game still had a great community for several more years and expansion but ToA and WoW launch really changed the landscape. I still miss that style of leveling, and don't think I'll ever see anyone do PVP that good again. But it sure was fun for a while.
I always played human in any fantasy game I don’t know why, I think cause I liked to picture it was me myself in a fantasy world.. felt more immersive. Plus they always looked cooler in armor to me
This was pretty cool WillE. I've always been curious about this game that I've read about in short comments on different forums, but I've never actually seen any gameplay. This must have been really cool back in the day.
Game was so good back in the day. I really wish they would make it again. The RvR battles taking the forts so so much fun. Game damn near caused me a divorce