What surprises me most is that the game has 92,000 subscribers already! i expected something of around 100k at most til xmas... very surprising.

I'm really addicted to DAoC ... and i thought the gameworld was small til i ventured (stoopidly) into the frontiers... its very large. AND a Albion wizard fried my butt with a catapult fireball... my elf champion died instantly!

BTW, you're playing a Cleric? What server? Too bad I'll have to bash you're head in with my Hibernian Warden/Champion muahah!

etc

I can imagine the Everquest developers in a mad rush to change the feature set of their game.

Makes me wonder why the Everquest folks haven't streamlined their game before.

Sean, making changes to these games like reducing the rate at which characters heal is hard to do -- the game is balanced for characters and monsters healing at a certain rate, and so on. I suspect that's one reason why Sony hasn't made too many significant changes to EQ. They may be forced to now though to retain customers.

Mtkafka, I'm on the Lancelot server. I checked out one of the Albion castles near the frontier and it's impressive and obviously designed for PvP battles. Good luck to Hibernians and Midgardians trying to take it, though. The ramparts are lined with high level archers and wizards. An approaching army will take a lot of damage.

DAOC is great. Rather than stay up all night playing it, I'm going to stay up most of the night finishing the review for GameSpot, then stay up all night playing it. Mark, I'll see you on Lancelot. My theurgist Merideth is there. My main man (or troll) is on Percival, killing elves and humans alike when opportunity arises.

--Greg

I'm pretty hooked. I'm on the Pellinor server basically acting as a Dirge hunter (or huntee) with my 6th level warrior. He kicks it with his blue gloves and two handed battle axe. I've played the last two nights in groups and its been a blast. Only fear of my girlfriend's wrath stopped me from playing anymore tonight. I can't wait till I'm strong enough to hack Albions and Hibernians into little dainty pieces. Hail Tyr!

I'm just popping in long enough to agree with Greg. It's great. Now I'm going to play some more.

Find yourself a good guild to join, Rob. PvP isn't really possible unless you're part of a large raiding party. Well, unless you play as a vigilante ranger of some sort. You can sneak your way into enemy territory, snipe some sapsucker mage, and then get the hell out of there. I don't care for hunter/ranger characters, but I can imagine how satisfying that would be.

hey rob im on pellinor.. nice "quiet" server after moving from Morgan Le Fey which had suddenly become very "leet" (supposedly the AC meeting place).

My characters name on Pellinor is Azhor... a Champion... oh WAIT your Midgard! muahhaha slash you with my sword i will!

anyway, good game. glad theyll be adding stuff and more stuff to it. I like how the game caters both solo and group orientations. And ANY class can solo, including melee (at least so far for me up to 20).

etc

Well, I would love to meet you on the battlefield mtkafka, but its going to be a little while. Getting up to 6th level was a cinch, but I'm sure 20 will take some time. How's the champion to play? I'm enjoying the pure melee aspect of playing a warrior, but eventually I'll try one of the hybrids. Last night I was with a hunter who had a pony for a pet and it made me pretty jealous. Pellinor is pretty mellow, which I like. Last night I saw this huge guild of Trolls romping across a bridge, and it made me proud to be Midgardian.

Eventually I will join a guild. I just haven't gotten there yet.

By the way, I used to think the combat systems in these games were horrible and boring, especially AO because it is just dumb, dumb, dumb, to have a submachinegun on a timer with the *special ability* being "burst". F'ing stupid. But swords and spell fits this model better as far as suspension of disbelief goes. And I've started seeing the game as Sacrifice slowed down by 99%. If you think about it (maybe mentally squint a little) you'll see what I mean. In sacrifice you could run around the environment and target enemies you wanted to blast. And you could send you're pets out to attack other enemies. They probably attacked on something like a sped up timer basis. In DAoC we can do all these things, but in Sacrifice it moves at the speed of light. So now I feel better about the whole thing.

Well I'm on a guild on Morgan Le Fey, but the server seems so powergaming frenzy (each realm in MLF already has more than a few level 35+'s), that i think a few of us are moving on to other servers.. most of people in my MLF guild are "casual" player types. Its not the levels its the attitude i think.. though maybe im just complaining. its not nearly as bad as the leetness of eq powergamers.

ANyway, once you know the game and the spots to hunt in your realm getting to 20 shouldnt take too long... im 18 now as champion and probably will make 20 b4 weekends end. Another way to get xp and money, for early levels, is tasks... try them! They are a nice change of pace from bashing and killing stuff, mostly fed ex quest types witha few kill monster types. Also the tradeskills are doable at level below 10... you dont need massive amounts of money.

With a Champion im kind of a "light" melee with debuff magic... sorta like the Thane except debuffs instead of pure damage... though we get a nice dd blast spell thats castable while running its not as powerful as the Thane spells.

anyway, hope to meet you in battle !

etc

Ahh, neat. I'm a 14th Troll Shaman on Pellinor and my fiance (she got a promotion from girlfriend recently) is a 14th Troll Warrior. We joined up with Valkyrie Basin about a week ago and have been having a blast grouping with them. Great group of very mature people. No leet speak, no "dammit, we need to hit 30th this weekend!! You're slowing us down!" that I got from one of my old guilds in EQ. They're just there to have a good time like I am.

I have had great luck so far with Pellinor and Percivel being my 2 main servers. Haven't run into many powergamers or leet kiddies.

Started a Paladin on Pendragon a few days ago just to try out Albionia and to help with the testing of patches. I figure it will take the sting out of bugs introduced in new patches if I turn out to be one of the 300 people who missed it before it hit the main servers. And, well, it's nice and quiet on Pendragon. It lets the two of us hunt pretty well anywhere we want, but there are still enough folks around that you can get a good 5 person group together for a dungeon run.

"I'm a 14th Troll Shaman on Pellinor and my fiance (she got a promotion from girlfriend recently) is a 14th Troll Warrior."

Congratulations. You got a similar promotion, I hope?
-Andrew

Thanks, and yes, I was promoted the same day. :)

We're having a very small wedding; just family and a few friends. The big day is Nov. 16th (3 weeks from today...eek).

Wow. Don't waste time with long engagements -- they're killer.

Congrats and best o' luck to you and your lady!!

Ok, its QUARTER TO THREE! I have officially F'ed my Saturday in the name of gaming. I played DAoC all night. The first 2 hours were boring because I couldn't find a group. The last three were fun because I had a group. There's a lesson in here somewhere.

Soloing is ok in short bursts. Doing the Tasks is kinda fun.

But the group play is better. It makes for some memorable events.

Bruce and I played tonight and grouped with some other players on the Salisbury Plains, and we were killing giants, wind mephrits, and basiliks. Then we went after a monster boar and it killed half the group while the other half escaped. As the other half came back to resurrect us, the boar attacked again, routing them. Then they came back again and res'd us, and the boar came back a third time and killed us. Damn! Finally we killed it, but the death toll may have been in double digits.

Yeah, the stories that come from group play are pretty much the star attraction in this game. I found the Midgaurd frontier keep last night, which was cool, but it was 10 times better because I was with another guy who was seeing it for the first time as well.

Got to 7th level last night. I'm starting to turn the corner on being able to beat the dirges outside of Auditland. This is the sort of game that could get me fired from my day job. ;-)

Hah! I just started reading Greg's review of DAoC on Gamespot, and I love this thesis-statement-thing:

"Based on extensive research and play time, this review is intended to empirically evaluate every significant aspect of Dark Age of Camelot, and, in doing so, to imply the broad scope of the game. Rest assured, you wouldn't have spare time for too many other games if you get into Dark Age of Camelot--but we'll suggest that such a sacrifice would be worthwhile. Furthermore, note that this review is based on Dark Age of Camelot as it exists to date--less than a month after its release. The nature of online games is one of constant change, which means that, over time, some of the following statements may no longer be applicable. In light of this, it's important to try to anticipate how a game like Dark Age of Camelot might change over time, using all available evidence to support the predictions."

Greg you are taking your job seriously, and I'm all for that. Its just so clinical man! Ok, gonna finish the review now.

Excellent review Greg, especially for such a big game. Hard to encapsulate so much stuff in five pages, but I think you captured all the right things. Nice work.

Heh, it's even harder to "encapsulate" it in 700 words (1 page). But then Greg has the advantage of being an editor in that regard.

-Andrew

Thanks, Rob. "Clinical" is a flattering way to put it, but I'll also accept "Covering your ass." I do take game reviews seriously, because games (and this one in particular) are a serious investment. I tried to mention everything (in favor of writing a much more concise review) because I think online RPGs now demand that kind of treatment. They're so time-consuming and demanding, and so competitive against each other, that it can be very hard to give a clear picture of how they're different and what they're like.

I went out on a limb giving the game a high score. I doubt anyone would really argue with a "safe" 8-range score, but I went higher because I think Dark Age is important to this industry right now. It was done on time and on budget, it's from a little-known but obviously talented developer, it's already a commercial success, and it worked like a charm on day one, right out of the box. Sure, there's some content that needs to be added, and the game could be better in certain ways, but there's every evidence that these things will indeed improve.