Ten Years of Dark Age of Camelot

Games
21

Oh DAOC, you lovely lovely thing. Sometime I dream of you at night.

You are the game that made me realize I would ruin my personal life for getting to the top(ish) of an entirely virtual list. In two different classes and two different realms even.

Seriously, I am afraid to even ‘sip’ any MMO for fear of relapse.

But, the gank runs through the frontiers wiping out 10 times our numbers with elite squads (sorry triggercut!) trying to find and beat the other leading gank squads for the boasting, a great guild, damn. I’m feeling an almost PHYSICAL pang just remembering it.

22

Played the hell out of DAoC. My favorite was being a Necromancer. Man, you pretty much never had to stop killing with those!

It was the first game I ever tried caring about the story. I remember going over quests all over the continent on one quest line. It was sheer brilliance.

Can’t believe it’s been this long!

23

Solution: Make your own! I ran my own pugs; CaPuGGs, Caput’s Pickup Gank Groups.

I could even kill, oh, one or two of the top GGs’ people before we died!

24

With all the memories that game has created for so many people, makes you wonder why they failed so miserably with Warhammer Online.

25

Tell me about it.

26

C’mon Copper, tell us a story of the old days!

27

I loved this game - by far my favorite MMO I’ve played. For me the golden era was after Shrouded Isles came out but before spellcrafting. You didn’t have to figure out perfect gear, you just got some decent stuff and you went out and kicked ass, and the epic raid loot was really special. I even debated seeing if it was still running (and if I still had an account) the other day…

28

A lot of the decisions indicated that the success of DAoC was more a matter of a very good concept (RvR, the 3realm concept, relics and keeps) and the luck to not botch the execution than anything else.

From a technical standpoint, a graphical standpoint, a UI standpoint, a leveling standpoint, all of these things DAoC was a monumental step forward from Everquest. But the polish that Mythic brought to those factors had become standard by the time Warhammer came around, and (great ideas like Public Quests aside) the rest is history.

But DAoC! Ah, the days when grinding was considered easy leveling because you could do it alone if you wanted, and it took a quarter of the time to level than EQ. Ice Wizards PBAoE grinding in … Avalon City, in the back, was it? With a Paladin running around grabbing as many mobs as he could, and then runnning back to throw Guard on whichever Wizard was highest level.

I leveled my Cabalist largely in the frontiers; Darkness Falls at first, when I could, and then in (I think) Emain. The leveling itself was easy - debuff nuke, every five mobs tap up to full Power off of my pet - but the excitement came when I or my Sorc buddy would spot an enemy coming in, or feel that little telltale of lag.

Ah, then! It became lowbie vs lowbie, levelers with no gear or RRs to back them up, generally casters, fighting the good fight. More than once, it came down to staff-on-staff while trying to squeeze in spellcasts through the interrupts and Quickcasts.

Good times. To debuff-nuking, three-shot kills, and a tactically- and strategically-charged deadliness that no game since has embraced!

29

Wardens and Valewalkers FTW!

So many days I went to work like a zombie because I’d been up to 3 a.m. defending some keep, taking a relic or running around trying to get RPs in Hibernia on the Classic servers and on Kay/Albion before that. And what a blast hitting the new areas when S.I. Was released.

Definitely the most fun I’ve ever had with a game, on-line or otherwise.

30

Many of the data files on the monsters were hand edited, or input via spreadsheet.

But damage was controlled by level.

So, a level 10 monster would melee for 20 damage per second with his attack speed set to, say, 0.5 seconds*, he would hit for 10 damage with each attack. If you set his attack speed to .2 seconds, he would hit for 4 damage.

*All numbers simplified for the purpose of this exercise.

One of the early bug reports was of a monster who did no damage. The initial bug report was something along the lines of ‘I attacked this monster who didn’t fight back, but it was wierd, my pet would just randomly die.’

So, yes, due to a typo in the spreadsheet, or user error, or something else, someone had accidentally set a monsters attack speed to be 200 seconds. Which meant that once, every 200 seconds, the monster would unload for 4000 points of damage in one swing, then go back to waiting for the next attack.

31

I had every class in every realm to at least 35, same for me, inf all the way. Being able to climb walls was just so much fun.

32

In and contrast, Rogues in EQ are by the the worst implementation, pretty much ever. Aside from the fact EQ is my all time favorite MMO, when they screwed up it was huge.

33

I ran with anyone who’d have me! I remember subbing a lot in a few hardcore 8 man groups with my high RR toons and then they’d be sort of shocked to see me running around with some low RR Pug. But I actually had the most fun in pugs made up of good players who just didn’t play regularly enough to have a set group or like me were in a more PvP oriented guild.

But there was nothing more exciting than keep defense and dropping a TWF at just the right time!

34

Hahaha I think I remember that. It was like, pookas or something like that.

Fun times!

35

The epicness of large frontier battles has never been matched, nor will it ever be matched again. I’m too jaded.

AE MID TO DEEP

36

pokes Keep with 16 people

watches killspam from Ravus farming on the road to the Keep

“Y’all ok down there? Need anyone to help you eat those RPs?”

That was the day I decided that I, too, was going to be as elite as Ravus - or as I thought he was called, Ravice the Wizard. Of what spec? I’ll let you guess!

37

To be honest I thought DAoC launched more than ten years ago since the launch feels like a lifetime ago. I recall Apache on VoodooExtreme pimping the DAoC beta like it was the best thing since sliced bread. That’s how I bought DAoC, if he didn’t pimp it so hard I would have ignored it.

I have played every major mmorpg since DAoC because DAoC hooked me.

I also recall spamming the http://darkageofcamelot.com/ website back in the day hoping for more regular updates. Haven’t visited that site in years – looks like they modernized the web design.

38

Personally, I wasn’t a max level player or a RvR person. I’ve always been very casual. But I’ll always remember my skill twisting Paladin and my bow womanvery fondly. Mythic made the bow skills feel more real / satisfying than in most (all?) other MMO’s I’ve played since.

Wendelius

39

Lol forgot about death spam!

40

I miss this game. It came out at a very dark time in my life and it was just the distraction I needed to get through things and for that I’ll always be grateful!

I actually went back to it about a year ago in a fit of nostalgia. While the playerbase is mostly gone, I was surprised how well the gameplay held up. A friend who had never played it before came with and he was extremely impressed with the game… And this was without the epic RVR fights!

Thanks for all the good times, DAOC and all the people who made it.