Dark Age of Camelot

Rating:
Summary: All that is good, with a few minor bugs
Review: This is a similar game to EQ, but has eliminated a lot of the hassles of EQ. Nice items drop even on mobs that are low level and if you cant use it, its nice to give to a lower level friend, yes GIVE, many quest items and drop items have enhanced properties but have no real monetary worth. If you die and choose to wait to see if someone will rez you, in most occasions it is done in a cheery way with the Cleric, Friar, Paladin and others in other realms doing so with no expectation of anything in return, unlike paying a lot of game loot in Evergreed. Should you choose to release your corpse and go back to pray at the grave you get some experience back for the cost of a few silver at a healer to return constitution points. You CANNOT lose a level even if you just got it and died immediately afterward. The only real drawback that I have experienced in Camelot is that occasionally I get a video problem that I have to camp out to correct. Also if you get stuck in the world and cant move out just type /stuck and you will camp to a safe spot near to where you were stuck, instead of waiting for a GM to answer a petition to pull you out. Overall this is a very satisfactory game especially if you hate beggars and overpriced auctions and want some real fun.

Rating:
Summary: Dark Age of Camelot delivers fun gameplay and a leveling tre
Review: Although I no longer play this game, when I did, I enjoyed it. It is a great game if you have Unlimited time to kill. As many other reviews here say, it improves upon the MMPORPG genre. If you must play an online game and burn many, many real time days away this is a great choice. I no longer play this game only because of the vast time requirements to compete and enjoy this game. It is not really for the casual gamer who wants to play 10 or fewer hours a week because then you miss out on the online guilds and friendships.

The game has great replay value because of the 3 realms and different classes. Expect a 4th realm and better graphics in an expansion. The gameplay was good but as a veteran gamer it left something out, possibly that OOO.. and AAAWWW.. feeling when I first played Ultima Onine or EverQuest. Those games had a little extra content that was unnecessary but added more flavor to their universes. In DAoC you don't feel like you're in an alternate world but rather in a massive First Person Shooter. There is little conversation that is game related (except tactics) and very few players role-play in any way.

I give it 4 stars because it improves upon previous games in the genre and should provide countless hours of entertainment (maybe too many? There are lots of good games these days.)

Rating:
Summary: Succeeding in a more Perfect Union
Review: My God..Well, if you rated this game lower than 4 stars..Don't talk to me..In fact, tape your mouths shut. This game is possibly the greatest MMORPG of ALL time. It rules over EverQuest in every which way, providing great support and by using their profits to make the game better for everyone. Kudos to the developers. The multiple realms, and realm vs. realm battles are amazing. The war is realistic, and the classes are enticing. Just looking at the box should make you want to play it. If that doesn't do it, look at some Screen shots, otherwise, don't bother even THINKING about this game. It's time consuming..The developers are attempting to take over the world with this game, stealing our free time with their innovative stories, races, and everything else that makes this game near perfection..The reason it isn't perfect? Nothing is " Perfect ", but I would think so.
- BJ

Rating:
Summary: Can't blame 'em for tryin'
Review: I can't help comparing this game to Everquest, since Mythic obviously attempted to come up with a 'better Everquest'. And although, in some areas, they succeeded with flying colors, as a whole this project is a dismal failure.

I'll begin with the positives:

Craft Skills - This aspect of the game is a definite winner. They've made working on a craft actually 'worthwhile' by causing items to deteriorate and making player-crafted items more durable than looted ones. In Everquest, anyone who does a reasonble amount of adventuring (i.e. camping) will be able to loot items MUCH better than anything I could make --- so why bother, right? Also, by performing 'consignments' you can actually make a profit while raising skill in your selected craft --- although performing consignments can be overwhelmingly boring and time-consuming.

Down Time - In general, you will spend less time reading that book or magazine in Camelot. And since you re-enter the world after a death fully equipped, reclaiming your corpse is really not necessary, although not doing so will deprive you of a substantial amount of experience (at higher levels). You can actually decide if the trip to your corpse is worth the trouble.

Zoning - Very little zoning in Camelot. Ahhhhh....!

Sprint - You have the option, if things in battle aren't looking too promising, to 'sprint' from your foe. Mind you - the window of opportunity is pretty narrow, but this is a nice option for folks who prefer to solo and don't care to wander around looking for 'SOWs' (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) all the time.

Camping - No such thing in Camelot.

Customer Relations - Let's face it. Verant could use some schooling in public relations and they could learn a few lessons from Mythic. Verant established themselves, very early after launch, as the pompous, omnipotent decision makers who were so lost in their 'vision' that they were unable to see some serious 'playability' issues. In addition, having a 'skeleton crew' of GMs and Player Guides with various levels of competence in dealing with people, gave Verant's catch-phrase 'You're in Our World Now' an ominous, echoing ring. Their "Yes, I know it's unfair, but thems the rules" attitude was a huge turn-off to ALOT of people. So dealing with Mythic's polite and professional staff of 'communicators' is a pleasant change.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the negatives far outweigh the positives:

Graphics (technical)- The frame-rate is pretty clunky in this game and, compounded with the horrendous lag (I play on a cable-modem), causes any kind of extended movement to be a chore. Movement around a city is a daunting task. If you happen to be turning a corner as one of the numerous lag-spikes comes along, you'll, quite often, find yourself turned a complete 180 degrees and running back where you came from. This makes performing the aforementioned 'consignments' even more laborious than they already are. Lotsa weird lines and anomolies make any sense of 'game immersion' virtually impossible.

Graphics (design) - Although, initially, the game is very pretty, it becomes apparent early on that there's very little variety. A player chooses one of three realms to exist in and spends most of the rest of his/her life in this realm. The problem with this concept is that none of the three realms has any variety of landscape.
There appear to be only a dozen or so MOB models in the game. Beyond that, everything else is just a larger or smaller version of these basic models. Huge corners were cut in MOB design, resulting in a very large boredom-quotient. And whoever decided that the 90's hair-gel look was the way to go for PCs as well as NPCs needs to get his gelled and spiked head out of the sand.
Towns are identical. A little more variety and imagination would have gone a long way toward making this game something I'd want to play for more than the initial one month trial period (...)

Sound - The environmental sounds are cheesy and the sound of your own footsteps remind me of the footstep sounds in an old Coleco game (Am I dating myself here, or what?!) I understand that many players (especially those who play MMORPGs) turn the sound off when they play, but Everquest proved to us just how much good sound could add to the immersiveness of a game.

Shelf readiness - The marketing department's decision to rush this game to the shelves before the release of Everquest: Shadows of Luclin was an ill-advised one. This game was not NEARLY ready to be played by a large player-base (neither was EQ: SOL, but that's another story...) when it was released in the fall and now, months later, is still not ready. There are far too many bugs in this game and they're being resolved at, what seems to the playerbase, a very leisurely pace. It's about time the computer gaming industry stopped getting away with this. What other industry is permitted to charge you full price for an unfinished product?

Atmosphere and immersiveness - Hands down, Everquest wins on this one. The whole concept of Camelot and the Arthurian Legend should have been a goldmine for these folks. But either they didn't have the imagination, or they didn't have the budget and they dropped the ball big time. Probably the strongest aspect of Everquest (for those of us who didn't spend hours at a time sitting in a room in Lower Guk) is the sense of place established in each and every zone of that game.

Content - Well, the folks at Mythic keep promising that some content will be added to the game as time goes on. My feeling is that if there was content to be included in this game, it should have been there when I bought it. Everquest added stuff as they went along, but that was more in the line of progressing the story-line and evolving the world. In Camelot, there's very little there to begin with.

Bottom line? With Asheron's Call as zero and Everquest as ten, Dark Age of Camelot weighs in at around four.

Rating:
Summary: On-line only games not for me
Review: DaoC has lasted about 6 weeks for me, which is a very long time for a game to stay interesting. But I doubt I'll be playing it much longer. The main problem is more with the type of game--online only--than with the quality, etc. I can't imagine what Mythic could do, really, to make the game worth-while for me. In-group voice communications is one improvement I recommend, but I doubt that would be enough to make the game really worth it.

For me, playing DaoC is too much like work. I play games to escape reality, and dealing with other people is the hardest, most frustrating part of reality that there is. While I've met lots of nice people in DaoC, I've also met plenty of not-so-nice ones. And it only takes one "bad" person in a group of 8 to destroy, in 10 minutes, what it took a hour to organize.

Lately, I've found myself being more and more bored playing the game. The pace of advancement is very slow, moving from place to place is slow, forming groups is slow. And now I've discovered that even being in combat is boring. Now that I'm no longer oggling over the fireballs and other effects, I've discovered that the most exciting part of the game involves, mostly, sitting and watching the computer do things for me.

As I said, I doubt there's anything Mythic could do to fix this. I think it's the nature of the game. And for me, the single-player computer game is still king: something I can come home to, depend on, and know that if the power's on at my house, I can play. I don't have to worry about my ISP being down or the servers being down. And I don't have to sit around for a hour waiting for a party to form--when I only have 2 hours a night to play.

Rating:
Summary: did these guys even play the game?
Review: sounds a lot like the previous opinion givers were hardcore evercrack addicts. you couldnt break into that game as a newbie with a jackhammer. the economy is dead, and everyone is already high level. daoc has the stuff for new people, and experienced players are encouraged to help out.
i am new at the mmorpg thing, and this game really turned me on to the concept. it has grabbed my attention. very worthwhile for new people, but i must tell you to get the strategy guide because there are really thin explanations in the game booklet. also if you want to know what spells and such are out there, what they mean and do, get the guide.
awesome game.

Rating:
Summary: Game is great - you need the music as well
Review: This is by far the best MMORPG out there. I recently got the brand new soundtrack for the game which features authentic medieval music, celtic music and nordic music which compliment the gaming experience....

Rating:
Summary: Good game, but VERY SMALL
Review: I played this game for about two months before I decided that I was sick of looking at the same scenery over and OVER again. If you play in any of the realms, all it is is forest, plains, or dungeon. I recently switched to EQ and I'm pretty please so far. DAoC has some pretty good graphics, but I think I'll go back to it when some content is added.

Rating:
Summary: Not Impressed
Review: This game isn't as impressive as the reviews would have you believe. Here are my problems with this game:

1. It is incredibly easy to powerlevel yourself to the current level cap of 50.

2. Everything looks the same. There are 3 lands to choose from for your character where you'll be stuck for life unless you participate in Player vs Player (PvP). Each land looks absolutely the same from coast to coast. No variety in terrain or monsters.

3. Boring Dungeons. There are just a few dungeons in each land and each one is quite small and boring to adventure in.

4. Interface. The interface is cumbersome and un-intuitive to use. There are so many ways in which the interface could be improved!

5. Graphics. People go on an on about the graphics, they don't impress me at all. They're decent but don't buy this game because you think the graphics are gonna be on par with other games out there. They're not. The charcters look very cartoonish and goofy.

6. High level game. After you scramble to get into the upper lvls of this game, don't get yourself pumped up to go fighting giants, dragons, gods, or other epic enemies......you'll be fighting other players. Right now, the high-level game in DAoC is all PvP. If PvP is something you like, by all means buy this game because that's what you'll be doing once you get into your 40s.

I think there are better online role-playing game choices out there.

Rating:
Summary: The good, bad and ugly sides of DAoC
Review: I first got my hands on DAoC about five months ago during the early beta stages and it was an instant addiction. The landscapes were lush and beautiful (or grim and menacing if you play the dark realm of Midgard), creatures and player models were well designed with new ones being added every patch, leveling was fun and easy and new things kept popping up with every step. These are the things that most positive reviews address and it's all true. However, after you've been around for a few months this is not something you will pay a lot of attention to. You will see all the landscapes a hundred times, you will kill the same creature a thousand times over, and nothing new will please your eye for a very long time, if ever. This is what it will break down to:

The leveling grind; fun with gaining levels stops around 30. After that it's a slooooooow process that gets simply unbearable after level 40. At that point it will take about a week to gain a single level (provided you don't die too often), a week spent killing the same creatures in the same setting over and over and over until either you level and finally move somewhere else or quit altogether and start from scratch on another realm to maybe once more experience that "it's all nice and new to me" feeling.

But wait, what about the much talked about revolutionary realm vs. realm system? Those huge battles, where armies of players from each realm struggle for domination, leaving for everyone a chance to earn for himself fame and glory and rich rewards through skill in combat? Please. RvR (for short) is for people over level 40. Period. Any "younger" group, no matter how large/experienced/organized will get slaughtered by a single high level character because of the enormous gap between levels. Balance between classes is also a joke in RvR, dividing everyone into three categories: archer, assassin, and fodder. You either shoot people from very far away for huge damage while hidden, or you sneak up while hidden and backstab them for the same effect, or you serve as a target dummy for both because there isn't a thing you can do.

No, wait, you can, of course, go on raids so let me define that concept in terms of the DAoC world. In a group of 8 you run around the enemy's frontier (which is where all the fighting is) and kill everyone you can find. Since most people are there to level (past level 30 there is nowhere go other than hostile frontier zones) they never even see you coming and fall prey to your group without ever knowing what hit them. Even if you are on the dealing end of this situation you get bored after a while.

You could take keeps, but again you'll need to be pretty high up there to do it and there seems to be no incentive whatsoever for you to do so. Keeps allow safer passage through a particular realm, something that people leveling there could benefit from greatly, but by the time you get to take some over you will no longer care about that aspect of the game. As a result hardly anyone bothers to take keeps, and nobody ever bothers to defend them.

In short, RvR is only fun for very high level characters against which nobody lower has a fighting chance. To get there you must spend (at the very least) a month pressing the same pattern of buttons over and over to kill the same creatures the sight of which you already could not stand before you even hit 30, the level where it all slows down to a crawl. There is also an extensive system of restrictions in place that prevents you from going up faster than a certain pre-set speed (slow) that includes everything from monsters only a few levels about you being virtually immune to your attacks (both magical and physical), same monsters not giving you any experience beyond the pre-set "cap" should you somehow manage to kill them alone (preventing which seems to be the only job of the AI), and giving you even less experience should you get a high level character to help you.

Quests are also rather boring and repetitive and are composed under the archaic (yet still the only) "go kill this creature or talk to this guy and bring me what he gives you" system. Interesting at first, those quests quickly turn into errands you do to get new stuff, often without even reading the story behind them. To prevent, yes, forcibly prevent, not ameliorate, this unfortunate situation, many quests will send you out with very vague instructions that you will most likely not be able to finish without asking somebody who did the quest before, having himself stumbled upon the solution by pure luck...

To summarize all the ramblings, if you get this game prepare to be amazed by the quality of the product that in your eyes will blow all competitors out of the water. Visually pleasing, rich, intense, and, above all, new and refreshing world of DAoC will suck you in and become an addiction faster than you can flip through the last few pages of the manual. But if you think this feeling will last all the way up to the end, you are dead wrong. The high level content is dull, frustrating and in essence empty, taking you away from the beautiful and exciting world of exploring and interacting with a rich and skillfully designed immersive universe of DAoC and landing you into that of an endless grind where the only reward you see over the faraway horizon is finally getting back at (the lower level realmmates of) those who have been making that grind ever more tedious. A MMORPG is supposed to be an investment and this is exactly what Dark Age of Camelot isn't. 'Nuff said.