Once more into the breach, my friends. For the Watch! For Albion!

Bright Age of Camelot

I’ve played the shit out of Skyrim. And I’m – heaven forfend – kind of bored with it – at least until the modding community has proper tools and a few months to work with. Skyrim’s satisfied my single player quota for now; I’ve been jonesing for online goodness.

Spreadsheets, err, EVE Online has little appeal to me these days – the PvP aspect would be nice, if not for the impossibility of forcing a fight. PSO2 isn’t out and will disappoint me but I’ll play it anyway because damn you Sega and your sexy Numans but it’s not out. WH40K: Dark Millenium, not out. EQ2 has gone free to play, and really – Skyrim’s fixed me for PvE. World of Snorecraft is finally in the die back stage. It’ll take a few years for that abomination to finally bleed out, but the entire MMO industry should celebrate when it does. Star Wars? Is it out? Do I care? Absolutely not.

Well, damn. What else is there? Oh, it’s Dark Age of Camelot’s ten year anniversary this year? And – wait, what? It isn’t dead yet?

EA hasn’t shut off the servers?

What do you mean, population increasing over the course of 2011?

…

EA Nonsense

Account systems for DAOC have apparently come and gone, and after signing back up I had to go through some hellish rigamarole to end up with my DAOC account moved to a Mythic Master Account which ended up being folded into an EA account. Annoying, but not that difficult. The real issue is – game accounts are separate from master accounts. That makes sense, and honestly, I give props to EA for this – individual accounts should have separate credentials. Security for the win. Yet there remains such a thing as too much security. To change a game account password, you need to know the old password.

The old password that you probably haven’t used since 2003.

There is no password retrieval function; only the change password form within the EA account page. There’s talk of a secret word, but even that doesn’t exist on the change password form. To change your game password, you need to unfortunately call EA’s support line, wade through menus to get to DAOC, sit on hold for forty five minutes (even if you call right at the start of the business day the day after Christmas!) and explain your situation. Infuriating, but to ElectronicBioMythicArts’ credit – their support guy was pro. He had me up and rolling with a temporary old password in about five minutes, after checking some info to verify I was who I said I was.

The Glory of Thidranki and Low Levels

You can’t think of DAOC without Thidranki Faste springing to mind. Thidranki is more active than I remember it being several years ago (the game was all but dead in the wake of clustering); to be sure, there are slow periods, but there’s seemingly always something going on – and this is without the /level command. Yes, that’s right – on Ywain, the new server/cluster, /level has been disabled. It’s annoying to not be able to quickly raise Thid alts – but at the same time, /level was one of the nails in the coffin of DAOC. Now that /level is gone, and seemingly perhaps with the 10th anniversary – you can actually find low level characters. Grouping is actually happening! With no shortage of lowbies, I expect there shouldn’t be an impending decrease in Thidranki activity.

In terms of levelling, taskmasters exist – from Catacombs, I believe? – and it’s now relatively easy to burn through levels. Get task, take short walk to dungeon, kill. Rinse and repeat. It is kind of sad that this leaves the heart and soul of Camelot’s lands abandoned – but let’s face it – PvE (while damned good for its day) was never the heart and soul of DAOC itself. Anything that gets people into RvR faster is a good thing. At the end of the day, rolling Hibs is the point of the game.

Clinical Trials of Atlantis Failed, Causing Heart Attack and Erectile Dysfunction in 100% of Subjects

…Seriously, even female players were suffering from ED.

I haven’t looked into it much yet, but from what I hear, ToA is entirely optional at this point. Purportedly, you can spend bounty points to get master levels and artifacts. I want to give BioMythArtstronics mad props for this, but I’m still bitter over the debacle that was ToA. ToA ended DAOC, folks. Oh, I know some like to quibble over numbers. The fact of the matter is, a few months after ToA was released, I was a top level guild officer in my guild because nobody else was left. My alliance was, in a word, gone. Veterans fled the game with increasing speed. At that point, Camelot still had an influx of new players – but that was already dwindling thanks to /level. By the time I left, it was rare to encounter a true, new low level player out and about in the starter zones. Population went into decline and never recovered.

I’m not going to rehash the reasons why ToA was such a damnably bad idea for DAOC. The point is, it’s fixed by virtue of being able to ignore it entirely. Would I sound entirely hypocritical, though, if I have the slightest bit of sadness over that? ToA was, after all, a masterpiece of MMOG design. For a PvE game. DAOC was not a PvE game. It had PvE, to be sure, but the endgame – the entire point of the game – was realm vs. realm conflict. While I am thrilled it’s optional – it’s not in the way of RvR… There is some tiny piece of me that is going to miss never again running Sobekite Eternal.

Welcome to the Suck!

Haven’t done much in terms of true RvR yet – I’m having far too much fun in Thidranki. Still, judging by DF changing hands, relics being moved and constant alerts about watchtowers, outposts and keeps – the frontiers are quite active. A cursory glance around community sites that remain shows 8-mantrain bitches whining about the zerg. Thank the gods – RvR means Realm vs. Realm, not butthurt sporting match. Right, my personal feelings about the tactical wisdom of numerical superiority aside – zerg. There are enough players active to zerg, my friends.

The better news is there are now buffing NPCs. Slip them some coin and you’ve got buffs. I still see buffbots; I’m sure buffbots are more effective – but this at least closes the gap. If you don’t want to/can’t dual box, you’re no longer at an extreme disadvantage.

Come Back, Damn You

DAOC isn’t exactly a healthy game. Ywain’s active population is comparable to any individual server back in the golden, post-SI days of the game. But that’s pretty much it – overall population is terribly low. The Herald is completely broken. Patches aren’t quite exactly regular. Graphics and the interface are pretty damned dated (though SI reflective water is still beautiful, and damn – can you believe we had that way back when?!)

Still, the most glaring flaws of the game have been fixed – and RvR at all levels is extremely active.

At ten years old, DAOC is ailing, but it’s in a stable condition. She’s not dead yet, folks. And for all the flaws remaining; despite the old school graphics and interface and mechanics… No other game has ever surpassed, compared or come anywhere close to DAOC’s RvR. This is fact. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. Even those who haven’t played DAOC know it, because the moment you drop the acronym, ‘DAOC’ on any other MMO’s community, there’s nothing but a cacophonous, soul-rending mourning over the pinnacle that has never been matched.

Chances are you have fourteen free days attached to your account. If you enjoyed DAOC in its prime, you owe it to yourself to use them. Draw once more your sword in defense of keep, guild and realm. And roll over those damnable Hibbies.