ToA > Wow pve

[Nikolas]

To compare both games from my own personal experience in wow and daoc.. I did 99% of my game solo or in a battle group and in my own time in daoc.. I made rr7.5. I made realm rank 5 - 7.5 in approx 10 weeks all completely solo.

I started ToA from playing SWG and in the first week joining some random raid i made ML1, 4 weeks later i was ML10. I spent the next 3 weeks farming artefacts with casual guild raids for about 4 hours a week. At the time i was playing Daoc for 20 hours a week.

I'm no big fan of pve tbh.. this is probably why i dont enjoy raiding for 20 hours a week with our guild.. same old shit week in week out.. or until they bring out items that are 5% better than the last items you grinded for months. This is why i feel wow isn't as casual as daoc but i guess it comes down to how you play mmorpgs. I really don't want to spend the rest of my mmorpg days just jumping to the newest best instance to grind super items that are 5% better than before!

I like pvp games and to this end PvE in Daoc was much better for me than the shite that's presented in wow.. I can complete content in daoc at my own pace, in wow i have to rely on guild runs.. on the weekend, same days, same time slots. I could organise my life around daoc, but i have to organise my life around wow.

I would enjoy wow a lot more if I wasn't continually pressured to join 40 man raid instances every week for 20 hours.. If the pvp system was flexible or considerably much better than 'as is' id do much more.. but then again i'd probably get pwnd by those casual pvp players who join bgs in their best 40 man raid items and kill you with their macros at the press of a button..

...but wait? If i don't want to roll an alt, have reached my highest rank in pvp. what else is there to do in wow if i dont like raiding?

Sure 6 million people play wow.. good on em. Blizzard created the perfect hamster ball. It doesn't make wow a good game though. The lack of pvp content makes for a very boring predictable game that lacks good pvp themes for me personally. Blizzard has done all the marketing for games like Warhammer, Age of Conan or Daggerfall.. People can't wait to stop playing wow, but can't bring themselves to take steps backwards to older games. I know this because half our guild is as bored as I am and can't wait to jump ship.

So aye, i saw loads of whining about ToA in daoc pre WoW launch.. yet they joined the biggest pve grind in the history I liked ToA, I liked farming artefacts because for me it took weeks me 6 weeks, and i'd still be playing daoc if our entire guild didn't decide to play wow.

I miss daoc every day when playing wow. On our last guild meet in Brighton all we seemed to do was talk about the good old days in daoc.. I very much doubt anyone will talk about the good old days in wow in years to come on our future guild meets because it sucks donkey balls.

Anyway, i've bought a lapop now so i can play other games at the same time while raiding <3

See you in Warhammer aka daoc2

Love

Nik

:sheepskip

[Argyleyn]

Tbh if you don't like raiding you shouldn't be now in wow. I don't know about the expansion, but right now the game is focused around raiding. If you are doing raiding for the items and you don't like the challenge and the wiping, it's just not for you.

For pvp though, you can get your items from mc and do it fine and easy. You don't need tier 2 from bwl, as you said, it's a very marginal improvement.

[Shi]

ditto Nikolas, exactly my feelings

Argyleyn and Ovi, you seem forgetting WoW raiding lobby forces you to spec exactly as it suits it. Majority if not ALL raiding guilds will put a reservation on a spec type in thier guild rules.
Mostly of course on all healing classes aka priests, druids, shammies and pallys.
indeed it isn't as bad as used to be in DAOC since in wow for the 1-60 none really cares, but later on it's even worse

[Ovi]

ditto Nikolas, exactly my feelings

Argyleyn and Ovi, you seem forgetting WoW raiding lobby forces you to spec exactly as it suits it. Majority if not ALL raiding guilds will put a reservation on a spec type in thier guild rules.
Mostly of course on all healing classes aka priests, druids, shammies and pallys.
indeed it isn't as bad as used to be in DAOC since in wow for the 1-60 none really cares, but later on it's even worse

No, I'm not forgetting it. It is quite up front in my mind actually having just respecced to a better raiding spec (Druid, now 46 Resto).

Raiding does require certain specs, especially as you say for healers, but all classes are needed, especially in the raid groups. Probably helped the the limited number of classes Blizzard have to give a job too.

[Argyleyn]

I know that, i am playing a disc/holy priest. I like raiding and i spec for raiding, not much more to say about it. I mostly pvp with alts like my shaman.

It depends on your class really, dps classes have very few limitation on what they spec apart from mages perhaps, while healing classes are more cookie cutter with priest/druid being the most cookie cutter of all. But after the last priest patch i think there are at least 3-4 different viable healing specs so it's not that bad anymore. And the main problem here is that pve and pvp specs are different but no (well, no logical) spec is useless. In daoc you had downright useless specs for all occasions. At least it's not like 'oops, i rolled a mentalist, those /35 days played to get to 50 matter for nothing no matter what i spec'. I know it's easy to reroll now but back then it was pretty much desperate.

[Succi]

Twitching is, in my experience, rarely dictated by Brain speed. Quick reactions do not equal quick brain speed, invariably the quickest act on instinct i.e. very little brain involvement at all. Instinct comes from repetition of tasks, oh wait, another reason DAoC favours the hardcore over the casual!

I play games for fun, I don't want to have to practice for hours on end to be able to compete, I like to sit, relax and chat too. DAoC probably does take more skill to be competitive at, that doesn't necessarily make it the better game.

The point is , it limited some players ... imagine in Q3 if you could only move crosshair at certain speed to make it easier to play ; same theory

Therefore its fustrating for some people , cuz they were dying in circumstances where in other games greater skill would prevail

[Xest]

[quote="Succi"]The point is , it limited some players ... imagine in Q3 if you could only move crosshair at certain speed to make it easier to play ]
Yeah it's like non-mouselook players expecting to compete with mouselook players and crying when they can't. It is one of my pet hates about many modern games now, they cater more for the unskilled so it's harder to shine if you're talented, that's why I really hate things like /assist and /stick - without those it'd seperate a good light tank from a bad but right now any retard can /assist /stick. I never understood the whole "you were strafing in combat and miss" thing either, surely you should be rewarded for being able to strafe whilst styling etc. rather than penalised?

[Ovi]

Xest & Succi,

The problem I have is your assertion that it requires "greater skill", or others are "unskilled".

In my opinion it is different skills.

The example with /assist and /stick I think is different from what I was saying. I do think they take skill away.

The difference between Wow & Daoc systems though I think is a case of different skills required. Daoc requires quick reactions, Wow requires a little more planning in advance.

[Xest]

Xest & Succi,

The problem I have is your assertion that it requires "greater skill", or others are "unskilled".

In my opinion it is different skills.

The example with /assist and /stick I think is different from what I was saying. I do think they take skill away.

The difference between Wow & Daoc systems though I think is a case of different skills required. Daoc requires quick reactions, Wow requires a little more planning in advance.

I think DAoC requires as much planning - just quicker. On my theurg I can't just randomly pet spam anyone, I want to get certain classes locked down ASAP so I have to make a good guess based on what I know about the various classes (do they weild an instrument? a small sheild? a staff? what races can they be?) and about character names I recognise to decide which target out of a fg I'm going to lock down first. Some classes are mindless for sure (light tanks are fairly mindless as are pure DD casters like Bainshees and Wizards - of course I'm not saying they're not totally mindless, just more so than most classes). You can't however generalise and say because light tanks require very little thought that all classes do, my minstrel has so many abilities yet so little DPS if I get ambushed by 5 enemy stealth zerglings I can either bunker down with warguard, IP2, ablative, WH, CL5 aco etc. up and maybe kill 2 before I die or I can SoS away to get some distance, /face and start mezzing them and maybe kill all 5, or at least more than 2. Fact is it's still "planning" at the end of the day, just rapid planning that requires much quicker thinking - it's not purely just about reactions. Reactions are only 50% of what makes a good player in DAoC imo even on a very simplistic class like a wizard or bainshee you could have insanely fast reactions and instantly target someone and start nuking the hell out of them but if you just targetted an AoM3 warrior with full resist buffs then you're still more worthless than the player that takes that extra second to target but successfully destroys the much easier to kill and much more group crippling when dead shaman.

[Ovi]

I think planing was the wrong word, (a problem with rushed posts from work ).

To me the real difference between the 2 games is reactions. In DAoC I know what I want to do, and invariably get let down by hitting wrong buttons, combinations of buttons in the wrong order, failure to target in time etc. In wow I have the time to hit the right buttons and get the right targets. Leaving the results down to my knowledge of class & decisions of what to do.

Take you Mincer as an example. If I decided to get distance and Mezz, instead of hitting SoZ I would probably hit mezz, still with a wondering mob targetted.

Then I would hit Sos on my second attempt, but which time I would have already taken some damage due to the delay. Then I would turn, and hit /stick instead of /face so moving towards danger before it is CC'd, finally I would go to hit mezz and end up DDing one for a tiny amount of damage while I proceed to be cut into small pieces, and pincushioned.

Whilst that is an exageration, it does only takes one missed button to screw up a fight. Wow still needs reactions, 1 sec global cooldown isn't a huge amount of time to target and get ready to use a new ability. To me it is enough to reduce the reaction dependancy to a level I prefer.

The other thing that the global cooldown does is penalise indecision or a change of mind. If you decide to do something different then you have to accept the penalty of a time delay before you can perform the new action.

If you die then it's your lack of skill in WoW that gets you killed, you can't say I wouldn't have died with superior DAoC skills if the game was DAoC. It's like saying an International Rugby player is unskilled because he can't play football.