Should I get it?
I was really into EverQuest and Asheron’s Call for a while- but the rampant bugs and just plain silly accomodations for online play drove me out (I played a Rogue early on in EQ, and Dereth’s Only Aluvian Brawler in AC- pity me).
Those of you who’ve played the beta- is it good? Is it worth it?
I have been playing DAoC beta for a bit. A lot of the game mechanics problems that EQ has have been addressed and fixed. (I.E. every class can solo to some extent, item camping has been virtually eliminated thanks to questing, smart quests that give you different things to do in order to achieve the same goal with creatures always dropping what you need and defaulting to all those who need it on the given quest do to the smart quest, trade skills that don’t cause carpal tunnel, “music classes” that don’t cause carpal tunnel, twinking isn’t easy since items have a “con” to you… items can con from grey to purple with blue to yellow being ideal for you to use… higher ended weapons you will basically ruin by using them, making money through merchants by using trade skills and doing tasks, lack of zoning except if you go into the walled cities, and a lot more.)
Overall the game pretty much blows everything else out of the water that I have played so far. It is a lot prettier than EQ if you like the grittier realistic pictures rather than total cartoony looking pictures. The only issue I have is some video lag when there are more than 30 or so people congregated in a given area and I see some goofy lag jumps. Also, there are currently some bugs that are being fixed where you can get stuck in a wall or a floor inadvertantly. Luckily there is a command that you can use to fix it “/stuck” and you don’t need to petition a gm.
What else would you like to know?
HUGS!
Sqrl
I’ve heard some great things about the game, but personally I’m holding out until at least 2002 before thinking about it. Why? Well, first off, that way there’s a better chance of any issues having been addessed. More importantly, I figure all the uber l33t d00dz from EQ are going to head over there on day one to be the first to do whatever. Good for them, but I don’t feel like hassling with them. I’d rather kick back and enjoy the lighter server loads on Everquest 
That’s what I needed- thanks, SqrlCub! I’m kinda looking forward to this- I’m in serious need of something to tide me over 'til Neverwinter Nights- and it sounds like I’ll be able to do a character concept I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, but have been unable to in any online games: a blacksmith who has earth and fire magic.
Gonna pick it up this weekend, I think.
You made me get my wife’s hopes up, darn you! I told her that it was coming out today (she’s been looking forward to it) and then she called Fry’s, who told her it won’t be in stores until the 16th. She was quite disappointed, and ended up buying that Everquest package with EQ and it’s two expansions.
From what I heard (take that as you will), it’s out-sold the expected server capacity for all those people. I believe they’re holding back on shipping more units until they get more capacity on-line.
Vanilla go away. I hate you and don’t want to ever see you in any thread I start. You are a bad, deluded person. Bad bad bad. Now go away.
HUGS to everyone but Vanilla!
Sqrl
Damnit, mods, that was meant for the following thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=92251 would you kindly move it? I don’t know how it cross posted here since I only have one browser open.
Thank you,
Sqrl
:: crickets chirp… chirp… chirp… ::
(Ethilrist begins applauding slowly)
God, I love performance art. That was beautiful.
That’s not true. I picked it up yesterday morning at GameStop in Plano. Last night I was Best Buy in Frisco looking at CDs and I asked about DAofC. They were supposed to get it, but it hasn’t come in yet.
Damn. She’s really pissed about Everquest too, she hates it and feels like it was a total waste of money. After Frys told her DAoC wasn’t coming out for a while she talked about it with some EQ junky friends of hers, and they told her how great EQ was and basically talked her into buying it. I’ll check some of the GameStops in the area for her.
I spent my first day on DAoC today. Love it love it love it. I’m another who’s fed up with EQ - even the new Shadows of Luclin expansion looks absolutely horrid. DAoC has fluid, moving (spiritually) graphics and gameplay… absolutely stunning. From reading their EULA, they seem to be well on top of issues that Verant completely ignored - and they are able & willing to enforce roleplay on specified roleplay servers (whee!).
My only gripes so far deal with the customization. You can’t change settings for graphics, mouse, or keyboard layout while in the game, you have to quit out to do so. And the keyboard mapping seems a bit weird - you can’t do ctrl-* bindings, and sometimes pressing one key sequence does the opposite of what you expect it to do. (ie, I hit my key for ‘attack’ and I sat down, d’oh!)
But this game has me hooked already. My EQ account is no more!
I’ve been very carefully combing the message boards, and two surprising things keep coming out:
TEchnically, the game is way more stable and finished than other recent additions to the MMORPG, such as Anarchy Online (bug jar) and WWII Online (hardly ever works.)
Yet, strangely, the response has been a lot more muted than I would have thought. There aren’t as many people screaming “My God, it’s terrific!” as I expected. Some have suggested the game is too easy.
I’m willing to believe it’s a good game and I’m impressed they’re got it running smoothly, but I still like EQ, so I’m going to play EQ until I get sick of it and THEN switch. Of course, by then, there might be something else out, so who knows what I’ll switch to?
What server do ya play EQ on, RickJay? I still think we should get a doper EQ group going.
Badtz How come your wife hates EQ? Do you hate EQ?
DAoC is sitting in my truck as we speak, and I’m leaving in five minutes to go home and install it. Roleplay server, here I come!
I never played EQ. She seems to hate it mainly because of the graphics and the interface. She doesn’t play games in 1st person view, but in the 3rd person view there is significant ‘head-bob’ which apparently can’t be disabled and makes my wife nauseous. She’s used to games with better graphics, like Asheron’s Call and Anarchy Online (which we had very little trouble with, but we played on the less populated server). EQ moved too slow for her, too much down-time. All is not lost, though - one of her EQ junkie friends wants to buy her copy from her so he can start a new account. She’s holding off on getting DAoC now because she has a lot of schoolwork to do.
Seventh Hammer; Twilight’s Solace guild. I’m Senoje Alakcir, and Mrs. RickJay is Seranity Tranquilis.
I’ve actually been playing a lot of DAoC and to be honest i’m not all that impressed so far, but I’m going to keep giving it an honest try. The control system is almost sadistically bad, and it’s… well, it’s sort of boring. But I didn’t like EQ at first, either.
I suspect it’s all personal preference. For instance, the complaint has come up here that some classes in EQ are hard, or night on impossible, to play solo. I don’t think that’s a weakness of the game; I think it’s a strength. I like playing group-heavy classes sometimes and solo classes other times, and i thiknk it gives the class distinctions a lot more flavour. So I really like that part of the game, where others do not.
I’ve noticed, and not noticed alone, that a lot of DAoC fans have had some blinders on about some of its issues. Not their fault, it’s as if most gamesites and messageboards don’t want to spoil their golden child by admitting it may have some opening day faults like any other massive online project.
Some comments made on another board while talking about how Slow News Day seems to be avoiding saying anything bad about DAoC…
*Hmmm…
I have been following the message boards on VN for a while…
Apparently the game has compatibility issues with versions of VIA chipsets on motherboards…that seems big to me…never made the news…was confirmed by CS for DAoC as a reality in the thread
INcompatible with the most recent version of Nvidia’s drivers…advice has been to downgrade to an earlier version
frequent LD and server outages…again confirmed by CS on the message board…seems to be an issue with @home…then DSL providers…oh wait…make that everybody…oops! at least they are not EQ…right?
In game bugs like “camp in camalot and you never get to play again with that character”…again confirmed on the thread by CS from DAoC
Networking setup in the game being piss poor for tolerance on connection…a tech posted a very long and well presented plea for help in trying to get past the weakness of the way the game networks,(if it loses any kind of integrity the game quits you out), along with his analysis and proofs…was flamed by fanbois…people from all over the world on different kinds of networks also posted that they were having issues…the thread was locked…the thread he started to try to get help was locked…havent seen him post again since then…
A waiting list for help numbering in the thousands…again confirmed by CS for DAoC…
off hours help being a total of four people…thats right…four TOTAL…again confirmed by DAoC CS on the page…
An apparent memory leak in the game that causes the game to crash out after long playing sessions…again…CS confirms…
None of this has made the news…nobody seems to be talking about this…
here is my example…
My buddy here at work gets the game and I say it will probably be a rough first couple of weeks…he says nah! DAoC ROXXORS…
next time I see him he has given his computer to another friend to fix…but DAoC was ROCK stable…AWESOME!
I talk to the buddy about the computer problem…seems that John could only keep connected to DAoC for 15 minutes until it would suddenly crash on him…
A reinstall of the BIOS on the MOBO seemed to alleviate the issue…something he was running corrupted the BIOS…what could that have been?
Its just amazing that I could, with casual browsing, come up with that many things that are wrong with the game…problems that are real and happening…and the only news I can get on it is “this game is so great!”…
made me wonder…’
edited to include…oh yeah…you cannot run any kind of firewall when you play this game…again…CS confirmed in advice on how to fix issues*
That’s off an EQ board, but there’s a fair number of DAoC players and fans on there and I haven’t seen any rabid pro-EQ sentiments that’d imply this person was lying.
Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against DAoC. This isn’t a slam on DAoC. If a game was to spawn fully coded from the head of Athena it’d still have some bugs; that’s just how it works. But since the release of DAoC, I was looking to see what problems people may have been having to see if the game was ready to buy yet and found it very strange that no one was posting a single issue to the boards.
Oh, and let me tell ya… Pro-DAoC zealots who crash EQ boards are every bit as exciting as reading a Mac vs. PC debate :rolleyes: (If there’s any of the reverse, it still holds so don’t get snippy if you’re a DAoC fan 
)
RickJay, I’m with ya. I bought DAoC on Thursday night, and racked up about 11 hours between then and now. My overall impression? Too dumbed-down. The graphics are beautiful, I like things like auto-loot, and the monsters are neat. But it’s EASY!
I remember my first few days in EQ. I died a bunch. It was impossible to get enough money to buy even the most basic armor and weapons. When I did get some decent stuff, I promptly ventured into Nektulos with my lvl 6 warrior. Died, lost all my stuff. Couldn’t do a corpse run. Wrote it off, started over. Got really scared of dying.
That fear of dying makes stuff scary. When I’m in places where I know I could easily die, my hands get shaky. I get tense. I’m completely and totally into the game. Hell, I dream about Spectres at night! Scary scary scary.
In DAoC, things come easy. Dying? No big deal. You don’t lose any of your stuff. Worse case, you lose some xp. Even that’s easy to avoid. I can’t afford the best armor & weapons for my class, but I can afford pretty good stuff. Monsters? No problem. How can they be scary if dying is no big deal?
Conclusion: DAoC is a game. It’s fun to play, but I’m just not into it emotionally. EQ is an experience. It’s much more “real” to me. When I log on to EQ, it’s almost like taking a vacation in Norrath. When I log on to DAoC, it’s playing a game.
BTW, I’m on Ec’i as Fenaena (lvl 19 human warrior) and Tunare as Bryllyn (lvl 17 dark elf chanter)
Also, on DAoC, Gawaine, Kreekow, lvl 6 Shadowblade in Midgard.
Jophiel wrote:
I beg to differ. The games that spawn fully coded from THIS head are perfect!