DAoC Vets: What made DAoC RvR appealing in the long term?

[Bachais]

what made DAoC fun:

'Neck Check!'

'Call to Arms!'

[Bachais]

Originally Posted by Chin

I can understand the appeal of the few vs. many concept, but I wonder what motivated the unorganized zerg to keep playing =P

Also in that second vid were they AEing through walls? Was there in-combat ressing, or AE ressing, in DAoC?

Because, in the end, the zerg would win. And the zerg IS fun, LOL.
Relic captures during prime time hours (if one was so brave) was all out zergs...which once again..was fun.

Early on Casters could AoE through walls, it was fixed...many times, lol.
Ressing during battle, yup. Only thing I liked about ToA was the Egg artifact that allowed you to instantly res a whole zerg wipe if you got so lucky. Fun times.

[Indrid]

Originally Posted by Masterrepo

Anyone else from Lancelot Alb? And do you remember Mistwraith? OMG that dude owned everything in his path...Those are things that you dont forget and WAR does not currently have. :/

That is what made DAOC so awesome. I remember playing Hib on Lancelot for the /level 30 and running around seeing mistwraith's group just destroy everything. Games these days just do not have that kind of feel to them. I am afraid that warhammer will turn the wrong way when it comes to rvr.

Right now the game is not about RvR, as mythic calls it, it is about PvP. Pointless PVP.

[DonJulio]

Originally Posted by Draig

What made it appealing to me and my guild in DAoC, was that you kept meeting the same enemies/guilds and formed rivalries with them. You wanted to fight them, they wanted to fight you. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If a certain enemy guild held a keep we would try and take it and slap our own banner on it just to antagonise them and piss them off. They would be doing the same.

Holding a keep benefited both your realm and guild and would draw enemies to try and take it back. You would try and out do guilds in your own realm.

All the time your own char was gaining rank as well.

The info on the herald helped maintain that of course (I played US servers).

Remember it took quite some time for all of that to build up and happen though.

All the ingrediants are either in WAR or will be soon, so given time, I hope the same sort of thing to happen, but it is very early days yet.

The "honor" thing did happen, but it was often pre-arranged and again took a long time to get to that stage of mutual respect for your enemies.

Also there were very real consequences if you or your guild got a bad rep, you would have extreme difficulty getting into any decent group and whole guilds were excluded by their own realm from taking part in certain events if they allowed their memebers to behave badly. People were kicked out of guilds instantly for ninja looting for example, and they would never get an invite to another guild or a dragon raid again for example.

If they were not dealt with by their own guild with recompense paid to the offended parties, their whole guild could be excluded. This was the great thing about having a relativley small populaton per server. Everyone knew everyone else within reason. You may not know the actual person but you would know his guild, someone in his guild and their reputation.

Those sort of alliances and politics took time to evolve as well of course but it all added up to a great game until TOA ruined it all.

I have my doubts if that will be the case with todays gamers. Times were different back then, and people were, truthfully, generally more pleasant to game with and less selfish. Still I have some small hope that given time it will be that way again.

You would never hear of a healer refusing to heal his realm mates back then for example, or going solo as they would be (rightly) shunned.

That works with an old game like DAoC that never had much of a subscriber base. If this game is going to explode like they want it to, you will have so many people on a server you will probably rarely have those encounters as you desire.

[Lightingbird]

Also let me say this,

I'm glad for the things mythic didn't bring into this game. So glad. Well unless GDworkshop just shut them down upon attempts. Who knows.

No real long standing CC (freeze tag as I call it)
No vamps, reavers, warlocks, Bd's, valks, champs(present day), stun nukers, or wardens. Classes that just had stupid abilites or made them all too easy to play but hard to fight against.
No bots
No BS element like toa, champ levels, drops from hell, or anything just ignorant like that.

So far Warhammer is right on the money for me. I like it. I'm hoping, assumptions aside as most of us are doing, that they indeed do add similar rvr to this game. It will never be the same. Although, as of right now, I'm enjoying warhammer with no real problems but minor things.

As of right now, I agree with what has been said. This game has good pvp but its somewhat pointless pvp.

[Gisborne]

Originally Posted by aika

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkl_f...eature=related

also relic raids! :>

WTB action like that. This game has managed to suck any interest or life out of RvR.

[Gisborne]

Originally Posted by Anachi

Also, my chars are only L18/20 at the moment, but from what I've seen in T2, huge fights end because one side is losing and they start finding something else to do, but there's never a complete defeat where one side gets wipe and the other side has a few men standing. The respawn points are too close. it kind of gets dull when it's just about pushing a line, rather than fighting so that the field is clear of Order scum

This is a big problem and what makes this game fundamentally all about zerging. When it's easier to release and run back than to wait 30 seconds for a rez, every win is a huge grind and every loss takes forever.

[Mamm0th]

Originally Posted by entrails

i agree on all these points. everyone knows the problem with scenarios, but i really think mythic made just as much of a mistake by completely separating pvp and pve the way they did. the rvr lakes feel empty because there's no npcs/story/attention to detail, and the pve areas are lifeless because of the lack of players. even on open servers, since most of the pve areas are so isolated from the other side. they could definitely live up to the "war is everywhere" slogan quite a bit more, and the best way to do that s to add hot spot, high reward (and high risk) pve areas within the rvr lakes.

there really needs to be something for solo players to grind on in the rvr lakes while they wait for opposition, or a place for people to start when they go out looking for enemy players. something to spark up small scale fights and get the ball rolling. as it is, if you go to the rvr lakes and there's no one there there's very little for you to do while you wait, which means you end up waiting somewhere else (scenarios/pve areas) and the next person that comes along has the same problem.

I just wanted to quote that for emphasis.

[tungstun]

i hope mythic reads this and pays attention because it's one of the best threads i've read on these boards in a long time.....


sticky?


hahahahha.

[Saen]

Almost makes you wish they would've just done DAoC 2, doesn't it? Hopefully the first expansion will be the addition of a third realm (Vampires or Skaven would work, lore-wise) but I doubt it.

[Korathik Dark]

DAoC was a great game, I only quit because my account got hacked (after they robbed all my stuff, the hackers got my accounted banned from the RP server), Mythic didn't help so I left for WoW.

ToA and that whole concept of forced grinding killed DAoC IMHO. In a competitive RvR game, you can't just force people to PvE to stay competitive (especially when the PvE overall is tedius).

I might go back to DAoC for shits and giggles, if they open those origions servers. The gameplay was so damn good overall. Sure it had issues, but the issues are worse in every other game I've played since (even WAR).

Things that DAoC did right...

#1 Compartmentalized game play (PvE and PvP were in there own areas). Darkness falls combined them, but the system was perfect with only one realm having acess at any given time.

#2 Eight man groups and specialized roles within the group. Anybody who has played organized team sports know why this is a draw. In WAR, it feels lacking IMHO.

#3 CC classes. The AE CC was the problem, take away the AE part and CC was balanced IMHO. The counter-mes spell, purge ability and diminishing returns kept single target CC from being over-powered.

#4 Realm ranks. Great system, much better than renown ranks. It was a grind, but aren't all these games grinds? I'd rather have options of rewards as opposed to some item. The passive bonuses aren't usually worth it, all realm rank abilities should be active, because options are always better. I always thought that realm ranks would have been the perfect way to implement the champion levels (access to specializations outside your class). The funny part is that I felt this way, years before they made that expansion (which I never played btw). I left DAoC a couple months after ToA came out and never played it again.

#5 Character specialization. I liked it for the most part. I'm not a fan of WAR mastery trees.

#6 Three realms. It added a huge element to the RvR. I had even thought a 4th realm would have been very cool. They could have used Asian based lore... Samurai = Armsmen, Ninja = Infiltrator, Wu Jen = Wizard, Monk = Friar, etc...

#7 Gear (until ToA). Everyone was on equal ground with a little effort. Further development came from the end game (RvR). PvE is the worst carrot IMHO, the more fun a grind is the less of a grind it feels like. Raiding is WoW is boring and frustrating.

#8 The combat system was pretty balanced and smooth IMHO. At least way better than WAR.

Things DAoC did horribly...

#1 PvE was way too slow. Although grouping should be part of the game otherwise you have the issues WAR is experiencing (a severe lack of community).

#2 Too many classes... well let me rephrase that, too many classes that weren't able to adequately fill a role in a RvR group. Classes should be able to fill a general role, albeit just in a different way. Which would mean that ranged and melee DPS need to be balanced, because they fulfil the role of DPS and each type should do their job equally well (just played differently).

#3 Tanks specced to be tanks had no role in RvR. They're headed in the right direction in WAR with this issue.

#4 They eventually spread the RvR too thin, making finding a fight a pain in the .

#5 Balancing. They were way too sweeping with nerfs. You build up slowly and take away slowly... they were clueless when it came to this aspect of balancing. It's like they didn't even play their own game sometimes.

#6 Population balancing. Seriously, allow people to reroll to their mirror class and transfer to under-populated realms, without having to relevel and regear. I deleted and rerolled on the same server once, but gave up after getting to about level 37... I like to PvP not kill NPCs. I'm helping you out, don't punish me for it, by making me level all over.

#7 If people want to PvE, they'd play EQ or WoW. Stick to your niche and do the best possible job. Just like hybrids in these games, you're gimped compared to the parent class in that particular role. There's a plenty big market for it, no need to get greedy and try to get all types (simply because more specialized games will generally out do you in their niche and you'll eventually fail in all areas).

#8 I liked some of the new frontiers aspects, but overall it kind of sucked IMHO. Performance is very important for player's enjoyment, cut corners when possible. Having pretty foliage is nice and all, but not when you have 100 vs 100... the last thing someone is looking at is texture details on the environment.

WAR has a long way to go IMHO. It lacks some very fundamental aspects that made DAoC a great game. They did improve on lots of things, but gameplay > anything else. WAR is fubar'd atm.

[Hammurabi]

I've read all the replies and I beta'd for over a year. I am not a subscriber to retail WAR.

The biggest difference I saw between DAOC and WAR can be summed up in this way:

In DAOC, I volunteered to fight.

In WAR, I felt like I was drafted.

[Tiraldric]

Originally Posted by Chin

I'm curious as to what exactly kept people taking, losing, and re-taking keeps in DAoC for a substantial period of time and which of those elements exist in Warhammer.

I've read about a sort of honor-bound roving 6v6 or 10v10 combat where it was generally the rule that once two groups were engaged no one else would assist. Was that a big part of it, and do you think the same thing might become a part of Warhammer's RvR pools?

Minstrels. If I could explore WHO on the back of a toon moving around at mach 4, with stuns, mezzes stealth, my day would be complete.

[Pogo]

Originally Posted by silentsoldier

The thrill of battle.
Memorably, 3 hour keep sieges/defense with wave after wave of attackers, and finally when the enemy had the upper hand, the mids or albs would roll in and flank them, thwarting a strong push.

Strategy. DAOC had real strategy. Groups to block, flank, patrol, screen, and stealthers all over the realm map sending up intel on enemy movements to the battle group or region chat.

DAoC also had that real feeling of accomplishment when you helped your realm keep its relics or defend or take a pivotal keep or tower. It really was a game where one single player with a good idea or leadership skills could change the battle.

I enjoyed the social nature of RVR. You could solo just fine if that was your prefrence. And to be certain, if you were in a group it was enjoyable meeting people, talking strategy, or just messing around. I can honestly say in the many scenarios ive played in WAR there was no strategy employed whatsover(rush and meet in the middle) and nearly no social aspect as well(im unguilded) no one is communicating.

Guilds in DAoC seem much more tangable than in WAR. You had your banners and leaders and when you capped a tower or keep everyone in currently RVR'n would know.

Skill was another major factor. Positionals, strafing, LOS, it all played a big part.
I think the combat mechanics sets DAOC apart from WAR as well.

I logged on my main DAoC toon today and I suspect that unless thing change in this game, I will return very happily back to DAoC.

GO GO GO orgins server....!

Man After reading this, this makes me feeling like even my best pvp expierences were all for nothing. THIS IS WHAT I WANT FROM WAR! Have the mindsets of people changed so much that they just want to grind for their next piece of gear instead of having pride in what they do. When you rally emotions into a game it makes so much more enjoyable. It makes me want to start a rally to go back to DAOC. Atleast there I know what I'll be geting.

Even taking on a group of 12 with my shaman and two close warrior friends is completely eclipsed, and that was my pinnacle for my pvp expierence for awhile.

[Rhyna]

Originally Posted by silentsoldier

The thrill of battle.
Memorably, 3 hour keep sieges/defense with wave after wave of attackers, and finally when the enemy had the upper hand, the mids or albs would roll in and flank them, thwarting a strong push.

Strategy. DAOC had real strategy. Groups to block, flank, patrol, screen, and stealthers all over the realm map sending up intel on enemy movements to the battle group or region chat.

DAoC also had that real feeling of accomplishment when you helped your realm keep its relics or defend or take a pivotal keep or tower. It really was a game where one single player with a good idea or leadership skills could change the battle.

I enjoyed the social nature of RVR. You could solo just fine if that was your prefrence. And to be certain, if you were in a group it was enjoyable meeting people, talking strategy, or just messing around. I can honestly say in the many scenarios ive played in WAR there was no strategy employed whatsover(rush and meet in the middle) and nearly no social aspect as well(im unguilded) no one is communicating.

Guilds in DAoC seem much more tangable than in WAR. You had your banners and leaders and when you capped a tower or keep everyone in currently RVR'n would know.

Skill was another major factor. Positionals, strafing, LOS, it all played a big part.
I think the combat mechanics sets DAOC apart from WAR as well.

I logged on my main DAoC toon today and I suspect that unless thing change in this game, I will return very happily back to DAoC.

GO GO GO orgins server....!

Yup very nice post.