Rating: 
Summary: What were they thinking?
Review: I am going to make this short and concise. Mythic released its dark age of camelot game two years ago. It was touted as being the next great mmmorpg. For a while it was. Everyone was extremely excited to get into the game, level up and then go rvr. Mythic marketed the game as an rvr centric experience. Their website and the games box were filled with neat information bits about the fight to defend your realms. Two years and two expansions later the game has just become an everquest clone. There is absolutely zero depth to rvr. All you can do is farm realm points day in and day out. Granted, farming realm points is a very fun thing to do, but now with the release of trials of atlantis you are REQUIRED to participate in pve. You fall too far behind the curve if you lack important artifacts and items.I really cant in good conscience recommend dark age of camelot to anyone anymore. Mythic took a great game concept and completely screwed it up by catering to people that wanted a pve experience. If people want pve they should go play everquest. Dark ages of camelot pve is by far one of the worst pve games out there. If you are interested in moving to a new mmorpg i would highly suggest you either stick with whatever you are playing or wait for the next generation of mmorpg's on the horizon.
Rating:
Summary: Trials of Atlantis is SO LAME...
Review: Just the most horrible expansion ever. Mythic, the makers of Dark Age of Camelot have ruined the game with this expansion. If you do not have this expansion you might as well quit the game since you will never be viable on realm vs. realm fights. With the expansion prepare to spend weeks getting Master Level abilities and Artifacts. Once you have spent the weeks and weeks getting the MLs and Artifacts (if you can stomach the bugs and unbelievably long camping times) you will be... exactly as powerful as you were before Trials of Atlantis to those who have also gotten them. This expansion is a real real real stinker. The only good thing is that it has a very nice graphics update. Aside from that people are so annoyed with Mythic over this expansion pack they are quitting the game in droves.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Graphics
Review: Great Graphics is is why ToA gets 2 stars intead of 1. It took me a very long time to get a character to 50. But once I got to RvR it was well worth the time. Fun still just not near what it was before ToA came out. Guess I could set aside 10 hours to do a ML(ML=Master Level) all at once but that would really not be much fun and the game should be fun. Took me 3 months to finish up ML2 because I did 1,2 or 3 sections at a time(each ML has has 10 sections) and it is very hard sometimes to get enough people together to help. It's just to frustrating to go on the ML's. Even the quest items have to be leveled(another 10 levels each) which are far more painful then the ML's. 1 quest armor item took me from level 44 past 50 just to get the 3 scrolls, get the faction to get the item and then the mind numbing hours it takes to get it to level 10. So for over 2 months I was playing in one small area of ToA killing the same mobs over and over! ARGGGGGG!!! (A very sweet powerful item that is fantastic) People are showing up in RvR now covered in ToA gear and ML10. If I just cut out 6 hours of sleep for the next few months I think I can compete in RvR again. Of course as soon as I get the Gear and ML10 Mythic will do another of the ever popular nerfs. Think I will hold off, keep getting my 8 hours sleep, check back in in a few months and see if I will ever play this game again. GL all u diehards.
Rating:
Summary: Has good and Bad.
Review: First of all, unless you buy and account from ebay or have a top level character, this expansion won't give you much. This is designed for high level characters and even with that, has several major problems. 1st) You need about 30 people to advance in the master levels. The trials are so hard and take so long, even when your level 50 with perfect gear and big groups of people, your frustration level may go through the roof. 2nd) This will have a dramatic impact on the very cool "RVR" component of the game. With TOA, dark age has changed dramatically. For example, a breed of fun classes were "Stealthers". TOA introduced an element which destroyed all stealther classes (6 of them total). If you have DAOC now, you have no choice but to be affected by this XPack. 3rd) On the good side, underwater is gorgeous! 4th) Some (below 40%) of the trial and artifact quests are enjoyable. The others require mass groups huge wait lines for re-spawns and are just plain not fun. 5th) They put a lot of work in this xpack. The downside is its changing the base game dramatically and while its still new, from what I've seen, its not changing it for the positive. Who knows what it will be like 5 months from now. 6th) The game is chuggy on 512 ram... I added 1 gb and it runs much better. Recommendation: If you play DAOC now and have a lvl 50.. get the xpack, you'll need it to compete. Do it soon, because these trials require huge groups. You and a couple of friends won't be able to pass these trials, so the sooner you get in with the zergs the better. Only time I'd say DON'T get the xpack is.. are you thinking of returning to DAOC? Well, if your a stealther, 100% no, stay away. If your a caster, well, this is a caster-love Xpack, and as for tanks.. hmm... some things help and hurt you in this one, so why not come back! =)
Rating:
Summary: Amodin is a complete idiot
Review: If you go the the website 'Camelot Vault', read some of the message boards. There is a moderator there who is typical of Mythic. His name is Amodin and he posts 6000 times in 1 year and play DAOC and has no life. I would not recommend this expansion one bit. Can't reach here can you, Amodin? The guy is a complete Moron.
Rating:
Summary: Mythic Doesn't Understand Their Game's Unique Charm
Review: =======
Positives:
=======
-- Very pretty -- the undersea world is a real MMO standout
-- Some Good PvE content -- certain encounters challenging & fun if you enjoy PvE
(However, if you are a pure pVe fan, you'd be a fool to leave Everquest.) ========
Negatives:
========
Please refer to many of the other reviews here.
Basically Mythic copied much of the *horrible* aspects of EQ: campfests, mandatory 5-hour raids, etc =========
Observation:
=========
To many long-time DAoC players, the charm of the game was
once we "paid our dues" & levelled to 50, got a few Realm Abilities,
we could log on whenever we liked, go out, pVp, have some fun, then log off.
There was little mandatory raiding, little mandatory camping for items, just a few class & realm balance problems. You could be competitive at DAoC and still enjoy your family's company, a social life, etc.
If you wanted to pVe more, play all the time, you could farm cash, start an alt or try a new realm. All that has changed.
Anyone who tells you you can be competitive at level 50 w/o ToA Master Levels and Artifacts
is either short-sighted, deluded, or lying.
It is now *very* hard to start over in a new realm or with an alt.
It now takes **massive** amounts of pVe to "pay your dues" for rVr. The long and short: ToA pretty much ruined the best and only semi-casual MMO
in a misguided and poorly executed attempt at mimicing Everquest.
Pray that Mythic decimates the time sinks and releases a good Realm vs. Realm expansion soon.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible expansion and Amodin is a complete MORON
Review: This expansion killed DAOC. Everything was decent until this. Then they hire a thug named Amodin at Camelot Vault ( http://camelotvault.ign.com/ ) who bullies all the readers and deletes any negative reviews of this game. Suffice it to say he has 12000 posts there and is Mythic's lackey. He and Mythic are what killed this game. Check out how he calls himself the 'big dog' lmao.
Rating:
Summary: One Star Is Sadly Not Low Enough...
Review: DAOC was formerly a great game. A player could participate effectively in realm v. realm combat without investing too much time in a character. DAOC was friendly to the casual player, where many other mmrpg's demanded prohibitive amounts of time. Moreover, DAOC allowed relatively serious players to make multiple characters and enjoy them all, because each character did not require all that much of a time sink. Trials of Atlantis changed this by introducing a never-ending player v. environment treadmill for every character. Even serious players are hard-pressed to get a single character "essential" skills and equipmen. Almost nobody, except the welfare case that sits at home playitng DAOC 100+ hours a week, can field more than 2 characters effectively post-ToA. Before ToA I was thrilled to play DAOC. Since ToA's release, I often find myself actually more interested in doing chores around the house and studying. ToA, on balance, is probably less fun than a minimum wage job or doing the laundry. It's sad to see a great game utterly destroyed by its own developers, but there should be something good to keep us occupied coming up in the next year. Please stay away from this product.
Rating:
Summary: Trials of Atlantis - Necessary for DAoC Survival
Review: The Trials of Atlantis expansion has totally changed the way DAoC works and is completely necessary to maintain a competitive edge. Previous to the whole ToA expansion, you were able to spellcraft a single set of armor that would cap every aspect of your character. At that point, for all practical purposes, PvE (Player vs. Environment) was over. RvR (Realm vs. Realm) was the endgame and had been reached. Time was spent raiding enemy realms, defending the homeland and developing guilds and alliances. Now that ToA is here, there are infinite tweaks that can be made to your character-- overcapping of stats and resist, artifacts that can be gained (and will eventually degrade and become unusable.) This can be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view. I think I like it this way. HOWEVER, THE UGLY. Trials of Atlantis was released with very minimal testing. The first few months have been incredibly painful and buggy. Mythic customer service is by far the worst I have ever encountered in my life. I've spent 8 hours on a single quest in one sitting that was bugged at the end, causing the entire session to be wasted-- and when we contact Mythic support, they "file a bug report" and "can't help you". Completely unacceptable and stupid. Mythic had the right idea with DAoC. If they had maintained good customer support, communicated with team leads and fixed bugs right away-- along with perhaps testing things before they put them in- this game would be perfect. As is, you may as well look elsewhere unless you'd like to pay to beta test a product.
Rating:
Summary: Great Ideas - Horribly Done
Review: The launch of DAoC was beyond words. They seemed to know what a player base wanted... until they released Trials of Atlantis. Pros: The ideas behind this expansion were great. And the graphics they implemented are awesome. Five new zones to explore, and areas more driven to the players who have been around for a long long time. Cons: The concepts that actually made it into this were horribly done. The time it takes to complete any one thing is at least 1 - 5 hours. ( Some take multiple days of that much time. ) Those who are new to DAoC, will find this expansion completely useless until they have reached their highest levels. All in all, I've been playing this since it's release - and ToA is far more frustrating then fun. There is a reason a great deal of the fan base has moved on to other games. If you enjoy months of killing critters over and over - to get to the highest level - to find 29 other people who are willing to help you do something they've probably done 6 or 7 times already - just so you can have a chance at competeing - then this is definately for you. Otherwise, I would suggest looking elsewhere.
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