Dark Age of Camelot through the eye of an EverQuest player An article from Alex van Kaam Months before DaoC was going to be released I heard many people in my EQ guild talk about it, of course in extreme, either seeing it as the next best thing or seeing it as pure evil. The first weekend of release of DaoC and the following week had a huge impact on my guild, I guess about 50%, if not more, of the people left and went to DaoC, of course these were all the high level characters reducing a once proud guild to a small group of lower and mid-level players. Soon after that the European server opened and I left my US server for that one. Anyways enough history, a few weeks ago DaoC was finally available in stores in Europe so I thought I would give it a try. Installing went fine, updating (which is more common then you can imagine with an MMORPG) went smooth and off I went. First thing I had to do was to select a realm, since DaoC is RvR (realm vs realm). I selected Hibernia and started creating my character, since I had lots of fun with my Monk in EQ I selected something close to that, of course I first looked on the web and the dozens of fan page to make sure I did the right thing when selecting the stats and all that. To make a long story short, Xilanaz trained in the way of the Arms was walking the lands of Hibernia. Probably the biggest shock I had at first was that instead of the usual first person perspective I gotten to love in EQ I was now playing in third person perspective. I soon found the button to correct this issue but must admit I went back to third person perspective after a while, it seems to fit the game better. Next shock was the graphics, they were several levels higher then those in EQ, my machine also noticed this as it got a bit sluggish when reaching crowded areas, nothing serious though. But enough of this, on to the comparison DaoC has all the things that we EQ players complain about removed or improved: - Levelling: goes faster then EQ, especially at the lower levels, it is possible to reach lvl 10 in no more then 10 hours soloing, in a group this can even go faster. The only way to do this in EQ is to be playing a twinked character. - Resting: again goes faster, from almost death to full health only takes a few minutes, this can take 10 or more minutes in EQ, especially if you're a tank. - Death: die and you will be restored at your bind point with all your equipment on you, no more dreaded corpse run, you can still do a corpse run though, and you will find a cross, pray there and you will get some of your experience back - Twinking: no longer possible, items you buy or collect all have a certain range, this goes for armor, weapons and anything else in the world. So getting a lvl 40 sword will simply mean you can't use it, you can use items a few (2- 4) levels above you till a few levels below you. After which they almost have no effect and you might as well chuck them away - Harvesting: no longer possible, like the items if you kill something too low you will get no exp and no gold - Skills: much much easier, want to become some sort of blacksmith, simply go to the local big city, find the oven and next to it the vendors selling all the items you need - Quest: they really do give you enough experience to see your bar move when you finish them - Camping: no longer possible as there don't seem to be fixed spawn spots for monsters, and monsters seem to start to camp you if you camp them.. - Power levelling: changed, a low level will still get good experience with a high level group, thus there is no use for a high level friend to sit in the background and buff you So as you can see it simply seems to be an improved version of EQ but because I played EQ so much I also noticed the side effects of these things: Faster levelling: Killing a monster your level when you're still lower level, is possible in both EQ and DaoC, the experience you get from them is about the same in each game, the only reason you can level faster is because the game seems to run faster. In DaoC combat the hit rate is faster then in EQ, battles last shorter because of that and since the game time is faster you heal faster. This is nice but also means I had this feeling of being less in control, fighting a monster with a group in EQ can still give you a normal battle, in which all people hit and have time to cast spells. Reason for this is that in EQ as a group you can kill a monster about 2 levels above your (and your group's) level, if you think about this it is not really logical. But as an effect it has battles you can control. In DaoC as a group you can (and will) go after monster that are several levels above you, this makes sense since you're with so many. But this means battles that go way too fast. As a group you can kill a high level monster in 20 to 30 seconds and if your unlucky you are killed in that same time, it often goes so fast that your group healer does not even have time to click on you and heal you. As mentioned above, because the game seems to run faster so does the healing/resting, only difference I noticed here was that because you sit down more in EQ you talk more and learn to know people better. Death... I remember so well the first time in EQ I entered Black Burrow and fell down a trap in the middle of mob 10 levels above me. I remember still the worry about getting my corpse back with those items on it I collected the last few level, nothing special but all I had. I also remember the gratitude I had for this lvl 25 who fought his way down into Black Burrow with me in his slip stream, healing me, showing me around and getting me my body back. Death in EQ means something, it means problems, it has you cursing yourself or who ever was the fault, it means a corpse run with all the possible issues like another death with it. Because of that people seems to be more helpful, I even went so far as to test this, in both games I started a quick newbie and went to a - for my level - dangerous area, started a fight and at half health I did the /y to yell for help Out of the 5 times in EQ I had people rushing in to rescue me, healers to heal me, or tanks to kill my mob. I did die once and the person who came to my rescue to late even arranged a healer who revived me and my lost experience Out of the 5 times in DaoC I died 5 times, there was not 1 person who lifted a finger. I personally this has nothing to do with my aftershave but more with the fact that death in DaoC does not mean as much it does in EQ. Part of this probably also is the fact you can bind at any town and always close to where you are/where fighting, so a corpse run (if you want to get that experience back) is always short and easy. Twinking: I never was to happy when I saw a twink in EQ but I must admit I did start a twink myself, and believe it or not, it is fun, you're the hero of the party (if you group) and you lvl at an extremely fast rate if you solo. Not being able to twink in DaoC is a good thing though, as you don't want to be in a RvR combat with low levellers using high level weapons Not being able to harvest is simply a good thing and I applaud DaoC for that, I do see it's not really possible in EQ since you often need items from monsters for quests, and if your too high you simply miss out on many quests which is a shame Skills: because they are so easy in DaoC they really don't mean much, in EQ I am amazed to see a master smith, in DaoC I am not, it just is someone with a lot of cash spending a lot of time in one spot, in EQ you at least need to travel to get your stuff. There is nothing wrong with the easy skills in DaoC but it just means it does not mean so much Quests: I really like the good experience you get from them in DaoC, it's just a shame they are so simple, often they are simple Fedex deliveries. Quests in EQ are way way too hard and complex at times though... if one could only mix these two. Camping, I have mixed feeling about this, the bad thing about camping is you have a group of people sitting in the same spot camping a monster and others are out of luck. The good thing about camping is that - if you do it right - you control the area around you totally, this gives a huge thrill, you can get a reputation as being a great puller since a good camp all depends on the puller, have a wrong puller and you have a party wipe out, have a great puller and you can do this for hours. And although explaining this sounds boring believe me it will give you a great kick if you're in the right group and you're holding a difficult camp. Since camping is not really possible in DaoC I feel grouping goes pretty ridiculous at times. See eight people running around the area killing anything that moves, this goes so fast that at times one group is killing monsters on three locations, the healer is totally lost as to heal who and people die pretty fast and often.. It's just totally opposite to EQ really, in EQ the puller pulls the mob to the group, in DaoC the puller runs to the mob with the group in his slip stream. And as I said before, you rest longer to heal and thus you start to talk more with people. ------------------------------------------------------------------ So right now I have mixed feelings about DaoC, it fixes all the things people complain or hate in EQ but by doing so it creates other issues. DaoC simply seems to be about getting a higher level as fast as possible so you can go do RvR Maybe if I never played EQ before I would look at DaoC totally differently and I am sure that a person who never played EQ but is a long time DaoC player will come up with loads of issues when he played EQ . What I probably miss most about DaoC is that it does not feel like a world, in EQ you have so many zones, so many cities, cities that like your race or your religion, cities where you get killed on sight... and of course DUNGEONS, EQ has dungeons.. Those 4 or 5 in DaoC are too small, too little and no fun at all Sufficient to say I did not continue my free subscription to DaoC but to be honest I have to say I also am no longer playing EQ... I thought maybe DaoC would add something to the EQ style of MMORPG that would draw me in, but it just fixed EQ complaints and that did not make the game better then EQ -Alex - o -