Ten Years of Dark Age of Camelot

Man, I can’t believe it’s been that long since it launched, and at the same time it seems like forever ago.

Lum has a great post courtesy of Matt Firor over at Brokentoys. I knew about a lot of this, but this has to be my favorite:

Everything was done on a shoestring at that time, so to get internet access over to the CS “center” 50 yards away, Rob Denton, the Development Head of Mythic at the time, and an electrical engineer by training, set up a pair of IR “guns” to make a link between the two spaces. We put one “gun” in a window in the development office, and another in a basement window, pointing up, in the CS center. The link worked very well, and allowed us to share our one Internet line with both spaces. However, because the CS Center was below grade, we had one problem: if a vehicle over a certain height (about 5 feet) parked in a particular parking spot, the link would be broken. We lived in fear those couple of weeks that a delivery truck would park in that spot and cut off Internet access to the CS center. We arranged a quasi-official parking schedule to ensure that an employee car (a short one) be parked in that spot 24/7. The link, fortunately, was never broken.

To me, there will never be another game like it.

I should add: Pendragon (and later Nimue) represent!

Being a TL and working with the guys and gals at Mythic is something I’ll always remember fondly.

To midnight relic raids and 500-person pitched battles!

raises a glass

Although, for me, the PVP in this game was overshadowed by Shadowbane a couple years later, it was a lot of fun if you had a gaming system that could handle it.

As for faction, Midguard all the way! Loved the dreary frozen landscape of that part of the world, and nothing was better than swooping down to Hibernia and wiping the blissful little smiles off those spastic Lurikeen faces.

What ultimately killed this game for me was a combination of A) My wife never really took a liking to it, and it wasn’t something I wanted to play alone (Unlike Eve Online or Shadowbane), and B) Two exceedingly shitty expansions in a row at a time when there were other games out there vying for my attention. Trials of Atlantis & New Frontiers (I wasn’t a real big fan of the Foundations housing expansion either) just killed it for me.

Although flawed, I think the game had a lot of charm, and I really liked their take on a new style of combat system compared to most MMOs at the time, and I like their take on certain playable races.

True story: if not for Dark Age of Camelot, I’d have never met Athryn, then I’d have never found QT3. So you can blame her for me stinking up the LoL group. ;-)

Scott Bakker inspires me:

The important thing isn’t to arrive first, but to arrive big.

DAoC was the first MMO that utterly hooked me and the first video game that I worked on.

Also my first MMO. Took toons through Hibernia and Albion, but never Midgard. Loved my pally and his twisting.

My first MMO as well. Great article. I remember it took me a while to figure out you actually had to type in some keywords to advance in quest dialogues. I was also part of a very cool guild.

My first to, and the one i have the best memories of. realm pride, what a silly concept but it worked. first time in the frontier, the enemy for the first time, the mile gate fights, man i miss it:(

I had a great run on DAoC and have fond memories of it. IMO it was the true predecessor to the successful design of WoW, more so than EQ. It had so many features that were steps in the right direction, that when built upon by Blizzard’s vast budget became the linchpins of WoW’s success.

To being sniped to death from the treeline over and over again. Skoal.

To losing 100 people just to bust one 8man Hibernian group out of a Keep and calling it a victory.

To Albion!

38 toons to level 50.

6 to RR 6 or higher.

Loved DAoC. I’ll always maintain that what killed it was the emergence of strictly regimented 8-man groups.

My first power leveler! :)

Infiltrator is still my favorite rogue class in an MMO.

DAOC is still running? I didn’t know that. I played it back in the day, and while I didn’t get very far, I still remember certain parts of it vividly. My wife and I played together, and it was just a very fun game.

My first MMO. My first character, created the week it launched, was a Kobold Shaman. He sits at 49.5 today still (Shaman had… issues). I did level a few other characters to 50 but definitely not 38 of them.

Had a great time with the Wanderers in Midgard, then I played for a while in Shadowclan on that open PVP server (Mordred?). That was a fun time. Though I didn’t have a ton of level 50s, I did level a Legendary Grandmaster Weaponcrafter, which was completely insane (he was a level 5 toon in Shadowclan, too!).

I actually remember Trigg and another guy leveling to 20 or 30 and then deciding to run around the frontiers and see what was out there. They had some awesome shots and stores about running away from basically everything, since all the creatures and keep guards out there were so much more powerful. They snuck up to an enemy keep and got demolished, but they got some good pics of it, and it was a great story.

My enchanter apologizes for your pain. And thanks you for the awesome death spam!

Nimue represent, yo. <Fellowship of the Glade>

Man, I miss the good ol’ days of DAOC. I probably don’t miss trying to get my Thane or Valk into an 8 man.

Mid/Pell forever.

God, I loved that game.