WoW is bloody ace!

[Flippant Desires]

Heh, funny you'd say that. I can't think of a single thing that is unique for WoW

Your views are of course subjective, you don't like WoW so it's not the game for you. Nothing new is happening with DAoC atm, it's all been done. Perhaps the only thing that could really give it a boost, server clustering, is unlikely to ever be part of the english servers in europe.

I certaintly didn't say 'unique', but what I am saying is a lot of the recent change to quests, starter quests, tutorial, 'xp grind', game mechanics etc have already been done by other new games. It was good in the sense it gave Mythic a kick up the arse to update the game - just new content isn't enough to keep pace. Competition always helps

I'm not going to say WoW is the death of DAoC - the current low population on DAoC is it's own problem - WoW is just another alternative. I know ppl hiped it's PvP, that's their choice, but WoW isn't RvR and never was going to be that. GLad your leaving WoW tho, seems you don't have the patience for a game to get started It's only just launched and the Honour System (that's realm rank to you) is about to be implemented - think thats' about a year ahead of when DAoC introduced Realm Ranks.

[Argyleyn]

The real advantage it has is soloability and its class balance.

No more, 'oops, our druid didn't log today, let's spend an hour looking for another one while sitting at Ligen doing nothing'.

You can like or dislike anything else about it, but really, this game showed what a ridiculous idea forced grouping is, for me at least.

[Sharkith]

The real advantage it has is soloability and its class balance.

No more, 'oops, our druid didn't log today, let's spend an hour looking for another one while sitting at Ligen doing nothing'.

You can like or dislike anything else about it, but really, this game showed what a ridiculous idea forced grouping is, for me at least.

this is the first point I have heard that makes it worth looking at maybe when I am around at a mates house or something. I hate the notion of excluded classes which comes with the idea of forced and perfect groups etc.

[Cernos]

I've been playing WoW since a few days after release. Loving it so far and dinged 40 on my Orc Shammy last night.

Yes it's true to say that nothing about WoW is unique in itself, but what they seem to have done is take many of the best elements from a number of other MMORPGs and refine them. As such the game is a real pleasure to play, everything feels polished (even so soon after beta), the gameplay and UI is smooth and the attention to detail is simply stunning. I'm still finding myself blown away by all the little things I keep uncovering.

The graphics are wonderful, but I can understand how they aren't for everyone. Personally I prefer cartoon over realism, so for me I absolutely adore the graphics. The environments are stunning - the only other game where I've found myself travelling around purely to sightsee and take heaps of screenshots is City Of Heroes (but WoW has infinitely more variety of environments). And the way the quests are structured in WoW actively encourages you to travel and explore. The quests are varied too. Yes some are like kill tasks, but many aren't and some are very inventive and funny.

The only area that still needs plenty of work is PvP. But this was always a known factor about WoW from the onset, that PvP was something that was work in progress. The new PvP honour system plans just published look interesting and Blizzard seem committed to developing a good PvP experience (with around half the servers using a PvP ruleset it's in their interest to make sure they get PvP right).

If you consider how relatively bug free, polished and expansive WoW is so soon after beta, compared to how DAOC was, then think about how far DAOC has progressed in the years since beta with several expansion packs ... then think about what WoW could achieve over the same timescale and with Blizzard's budget ... the possibilities are very exciting. Let's just hope they don't "do a TOA".

I'm not going to say "never" on playing DAOC again as Wow and DAOC are different games with different attractions. But for now I'm having too much fun in WoW to be interested in re-opening my DAOC accounts.

[Argyleyn]

The only thing that worries me about this game actually is that the end game pve designers are people coming from very hardcore Everquest guilds and they already seem to have made a mess with the high level dungeons making it impossible for anyone but eq-like 'uberguilds' to finish them (mostly refering to molten core which has all the superduper loot). I still want to see that for myself but the idea of a perfectly fun solo-friendly game turning into a 'let's gather 40 people of the right classes and do dungeon crawling for 15 hours to get 1 drop every 3 days' is kinda disturbing, i could have played eq if i wanted to. I don't really know if it's forum whine or a fact, since all the 'lowbie' dungeons i have been in can be easily completed with just one healer type, not necessarily a priest. I have been the only healer as a shaman in RFC, WC, SFK, RFK and didn't really have much trouble keeping up with the aggro and healing.

They say they are reworking their loot tables and adding more dungeon content though, so i suppose we can expect an improvement at this part of the game.

PvP is not so bad, sure there isn't much of a reward system but the rush of the battle is still there and class balance is much better that most games and all classes have a huge variety of tools to play with. Every fight against a different class is a whole different challenge and different spells and abilities must be used, even if as the overpowered monster my shaman is i can still get away by spamming frostshock on melee's and earthshock on mages And if things go bad, press wolf and hit the road!

[Rami]

Your views are of course subjective, you don't like WoW so it's not the game for you. Nothing new is happening with DAoC atm, it's all been done. Perhaps the only thing that could really give it a boost, server clustering, is unlikely to ever be part of the english servers in europe.

I certaintly didn't say 'unique', but what I am saying is a lot of the recent change to quests, starter quests, tutorial, 'xp grind', game mechanics etc have already been done by other new games. It was good in the sense it gave Mythic a kick up the arse to update the game - just new content isn't enough to keep pace. Competition always helps

I'm not going to say WoW is the death of DAoC - the current low population on DAoC is it's own problem - WoW is just another alternative. I know ppl hiped it's PvP, that's their choice, but WoW isn't RvR and never was going to be that. GLad your leaving WoW tho, seems you don't have the patience for a game to get started It's only just launched and the Honour System (that's realm rank to you) is about to be implemented - think thats' about a year ahead of when DAoC introduced Realm Ranks.

Heh, I don't really care since it's games we're talking about, I play whatever I find fun. These are my opinions, if you're glad I left then ok, good for you.

But anyway, I agree with you that competition is good.

[Rami]

I've been playing WoW since a few days after release. Loving it so far and dinged 40 on my Orc Shammy last night.

Yes it's true to say that nothing about WoW is unique in itself, but what they seem to have done is take many of the best elements from a number of other MMORPGs and refine them. As such the game is a real pleasure to play, everything feels polished (even so soon after beta), the gameplay and UI is smooth and the attention to detail is simply stunning. I'm still finding myself blown away by all the little things I keep uncovering.

The graphics are wonderful, but I can understand how they aren't for everyone. Personally I prefer cartoon over realism, so for me I absolutely adore the graphics. The environments are stunning - the only other game where I've found myself travelling around purely to sightsee and take heaps of screenshots is City Of Heroes (but WoW has infinitely more variety of environments). And the way the quests are structured in WoW actively encourages you to travel and explore. The quests are varied too. Yes some are like kill tasks, but many aren't and some are very inventive and funny.

The only area that still needs plenty of work is PvP. But this was always a known factor about WoW from the onset, that PvP was something that was work in progress. The new PvP honour system plans just published look interesting and Blizzard seem committed to developing a good PvP experience (with around half the servers using a PvP ruleset it's in their interest to make sure they get PvP right).

If you consider how relatively bug free, polished and expansive WoW is so soon after beta, compared to how DAOC was, then think about how far DAOC has progressed in the years since beta with several expansion packs ... then think about what WoW could achieve over the same timescale and with Blizzard's budget ... the possibilities are very exciting. Let's just hope they don't "do a TOA".

I'm not going to say "never" on playing DAOC again as Wow and DAOC are different games with different attractions. But for now I'm having too much fun in WoW to be interested in re-opening my DAOC accounts.

There's alot of really good things in WoW, Auctionhouse and the mail system is a good example, really good things I wish DAoC had.

Also the quests are more fun than in DAoC, but I still find them boring, both in DAoC and WoW, so there's no "pleasure" involved here for me

I don't know why but somehow I prefer grinding over questing, and you can do that in WoW aswell as in DAoC.

But the main reasons for why I really don't like WoW (At the moment, things can change) is 1.) The PvP-system, promises comming from the company that makes the game means nothing to me, if they get a good PvP-system into the game it's not impossible I might play WoW again.

2.) The graphics, like you said, it's not for everyone. You prefer cartoon over realism, I prefer realism over cartoon

[Cernos]

There's alot of really good things in WoW, Auctionhouse and the mail system is a good example, really good things I wish DAoC had.

Yeah, the auction system is great and really helps develop a bustling economy. And being able to mail items to other characters as attachments (with a reasonable delivery delay to prevent abuses of the system) is a wonderful feature.

Also the quests are more fun than in DAoC, but I still find them boring, both in DAoC and WoW, so there's no "pleasure" involved here for me ]

Well I'm not a quest person either. I easily tire of them in any game. And I rarely read the dialogues properly, if at all, unless it's a very good quest. But in WoW I've done 100+ quests already and I enjoyed the majority of them AND read all the dialogues. Says it all.

I don't know why but somehow I prefer grinding over questing, and you can do that in WoW aswell as in DAoC.

Same here really. But questing is often quicker xps than grinding in WoW and there's also quite a few quests which mix grinding and questing quite well - the non grinders hate those though

But the main reasons for why I really don't like WoW (At the moment, things can change) is 1.) The PvP-system, promises comming from the company that makes the game means nothing to me, if they get a good PvP-system into the game it's not impossible I might play WoW again.

PvP is currently quite fun, if somewhat meaningless until the honour system gets put in place. But there's no getting away from the fact that PvP isn't as sophisticated as DAOC, which was designed as a PvP/RvR game from the bottom up. However, in some ways the lightweight nature of WoW PvP is a plus not a minus. Personally I got really REALLY tired of the whole 'perfect group, perfect spec, perfect template' nonsense in DAOC. That's not to say this might not creep into WoW too over time, but currently PvP is frothy but fun in WoW.

2.) The graphics, like you said, it's not for everyone. You prefer cartoon over realism, I prefer realism over cartoon

WoW has it's own style which won't be to everyones taste. But one thing is for sure, the graphics are very well done and there's huge attention to detail

[Flippant Desires]

Never understood how ppl could enjoy an xp grind style of game (daoc was great fun when things are all new to you, but the xp grind 'perception' sticks after a while).

Mythic made loads of changes to speed-up xp'ing and make grouping a bit easier. But games like WoW take on another angle to xp'ing, you quest and so don't stay in the same 'camp' for very long. It creates someething much more fluid, you can often go back to a zone you left 10 levels ago, imo that's good for the game and keeps areas active.

The quest system, for me anyway, takes away any perception of a grind, and in return you get items, reputation bonuses (-10% to your faction merchants etc at each level of rep.), form global factions, etc. Takes a while to get used to, it's not the stand still for 4hrs in corus chatting to ppl.

[Ovi]

I really like the "grinding" quests so far.

It gives a reason to grind, and a finish point to the grind, rather than the grind 'til you fall asleep of DAoC

As for the graphics, I think they are actually really good. The clouors are bright and vibrant, but the scenery doesn't really look that cartoony (I think WoW Water > DAoC Water for example). Some of the characters do look cartoony, NE ears for example, but not to the detriment of the game.

The biggest plus for me though has got to be the fact that I can play one account and be happy with my progress, not only saving £8/month but also the cost of replacing my 2nd machine.

WoW also seems to be less resource hungry too, meaning less expensive upgrades to my main machine