ToA > Wow pve

[Haarewin]

always thought toa was one of the best things to happen to daoc. At first it was a bit shite having to level on specific mobs, but the encounters were always fun and i liked the challenge of getting a rare item like SoM which was f*ck hard to get when toa first came out. daoc needed something like toa to keep it up to speed.

remember when we got your cloak. aww!

honestly there are plenty of games with 'good' pve. in every game it can get repetitive. i'm really liking CoH/V. the missions are ridiculously samey but story-arcs are very interesting and what keeps me going is that i dont need to have fantastic equipment - just "enhancements" which are easily attainable. and one of my chars can fly! beat that.

[Argyleyn]

Each game is vastly different really, daoc is mainly a pvp game, wow is mostly a pve game. Both have pros and cons.

For pvp specifically:

wow pros:
-you can't get zerged since it's instanced

-you rely a lot less on reflexes

-you don't need your rank for anything once you buy your items (other than buying cheap potions perhaps). Not giving abilities for pvp ranks as in daoc was an excellent idea imo.

-you have clear objectives, victory and defeat are distinct

-you can face pugs at a higher frequency than daoc (some might argue with this but i feel it depends a lot on your server). In daoc if maels/pe was at emain one night you simply couldn't access that area unless you were in 1-2 guilds.
You fight elite teams in wow too, but those end fast and you fight lots of similar equipped teams too.

-it's easier to get back there (if you have no queues)

wow cons:
-the competition is impossible, the higher ranks are unattainable unless you are playing 24/7 more or less. Ofc you can get hw in 2 months whereas it's impossible to get rank12 in daoc in that time, but the amount of time you play those 2 months is without exaggearation unhealthy for the average person. Both games are not casual friendly at all when thinking about the higher ranks, but the 8-11 or 12 ranks in wow should be more accessible than they are now.

-there are queues and quite lengthy at some unlucky servers

-no outworld pvp, that's a minus to some, personally i don't mind, i have bad memeories of zerging. But seeing the same terrain becomes monotonous after a while, a new bg would be fun now even if perhaps kinda dangerous for servers with not much pvp active population.

-good matches are avoided by the 'elite' teams because they are time consuming. They just afk out a lot. Which makes it kinda stupid. Generally the honor system could use a big revamp.

----*----

As for pve and the original topic, daoc was a game that existed 2 years before toa and had a heavy pvp orientation. Its customer base reacted so negatively to toa because the designers made a 180 degrees turn when they implemented it. Previously they had crafting as the main source of getting eq which was insanely easy. Toa was something totally different, it made pve a big part of the game when before it wasn't even a concern. People in daoc didn't want to pve at all. Wow is very different. If difficult pve endgame content isn't added in wow every 1-2 months, people WILL complain, unlike daoc. It's a playerbase with a totally different mentality.

As for the matter if toa was easier or not, i think you are wrong again. ToA was a really painful experience, not because of its difficulity but because it was a huge timesink at start. You had to

-compete for the spawn, it wasn't instanced.

-it had no logical progression, best artifacts dropped from mobs that could be 2-manned (gov? cloudsong?) and totally useless stuff dropped from extremely difficult encounters (the artifact boots from that centaur encounter?). It was extremely annoying sitting on your ass at cloudsong spawn and waiting for that guy to spawn.

-it had no guaranteed drops. In wow, if you kill any 40 man boss, it will drop at least 2 epics. Your guild will become stronger. Every boss in game has at least a basic itemisation that makes it worth killing. In daoc you could kill the cloudsong mob for a week and nothing good would ever drop. And a bazillion other artifacts were the same. Atlantis Tablet? Nailah's? They had a low drop chance off mobs that took either forever to find or brute force to be killed.

-it wasn't challenging. Cap limits in wow makes all the difference. Some of the daoc encounters had a nice and innovative principle behind them, yet you could zerg them with 120 people and ignore any kind of tactics. Sure, you could bring less, but noone did that. Below 40 people and most didn't even try. See 10-man strat/scholo. So apart from being something you didn't want to do in the first place and something that had massive time sinks it was a bore as well for the most part. Killing ml10 for the first time was perhaps one of the most anti-climatic things i have ever experienced. Only Olcasgean and the original bugged Hib Dragon were good encounters and that was mostly because they were bugged. The fg ml's were too easy really compared to almost anything in wow. And casters were doing absolutely nothing in daoc in raids as everything they cast got resisted. I played a void and then a mana eldritch and all i did was spam gtaoe at Olcas. That was my contribution in 3 years of pve content.

-Let's not even mention the timesink of farming scrolls and leveling artifacts. I have played daoc for 3 years and wow for 1 and i have never done anything more frustrating than trying to level Atlantis tablet killing crocs in those 2 small isles, god forbid there was anyone else there too. It wasn't challenging or anything, it was just a pointless grind. I bet someone could have similar experiences grinding furbolgs at wow, but meh, if you do endgame raiding you usually avoid that.

In wow, all you really have to do in pve is raid the endgame instances. You can skip the 20 man completely, they have some good stuff but nothing is essential. You do them weekly, but only twice per week.

The bottom line is, I have killed everything up to and Sartura in aq40 now, we raid 3 times a week for 6 hours, where you have to have 50% attendancy. That's 9 hours per week and i have a full epic set and all the other time i can do whatever i want. And that's after 5 months of raiding or so. With 9 hours a week i barely would have gained a couple of levels for my Atlantis Tablet when toa was released. It was just brutal.

In daoc, the time spent was at least 3X as much from any serious pvp guild. I was doing rvr from sun-thurs for 5 hours daily for about a year before i got bored and i did NOT have a full toa set leveled and done and we were only like rr6 or rr7. Perhaps we sucked a bit, but still, i have accomplished much more things in much less time in wow.

I am level 60 with a full epic set and rank 7 or so at 32 days played when in daoc i only hit 50 at 38 days played or so. And didn't hit rr5l8 which wasn't anything special anyway until after 55 days played. Daoc's time commtment was huge compared to wow. I enjoyed both games greatly, but i am sorry to say that wow is way less time consuming and relaxed, unless you are set to go for rank14.


ps. That's all with ignoring the sense of achievement you get in wow after doing some things. PvP wins against better teams were a great feeling in daoc, but i never was happier and more impressed playing a mmorpg than the day Vael went down. It's really an encounter that tests your limits the first time.

ps2. Nik, Nefarian these days is cakewalk compared to Vael, especially if you are alliance. We did it on like 5-6th try, the only problem was waiting for his cooldown. Vael is a brick wall like nothing i have ever seen before. Once you are done with him you have pushed yourself so far that the rest will go down like caboom.

[Xest]

I enjoyed both games greatly, but i am sorry to say that wow is way less time consuming and relaxed, unless you are set to go for rank14.

You're comparing then to now though which is a little unfair, seeing as the ToA mistake was made a year before WoW was even released it's a kinda silly, by the time WoW was released most major ToA flaws were long fixed and nowadays you can easily go from level 1 to fully kitted out and ToA'd + RR5 in about 2 weeks flat. My sorc dinged lvl50, CL5, ML10, RR5, level 10 zo/cb/gov/erinys/scalars/foppish/jacina's + all SC done and farmed/quested items gained in under 5 days /play. Even now after doing a few 4 cluster dragon raids with ML9 pets and other random crap/afk'ing and @ 606k rps I'm only on 5 days 17hrs /play and 50 plat in the bank from selling stones/RvR. To suggest DAoC isn't more casual than WoW now is just plain dumb imo

[Argyleyn]

Well, it's a matter of coincedence as well. You happened to play a druid in wow which gave you a different view about it than most people had. Especially before the druid review druids were really an unpleasant class so i guess your opinion is justified, even if it had little to do with the real endgame which is what takes most time in a game.

I happened to get, activate and level 8 artis during the early toa days and that was an experience that slowly turned me away from daoc. I think the Atlantis Tablet and Nailah's leveling was what eventually drove me mad.

But even then it's the real endgame you have to compare. Daoc's endgame is pvp. Wow's endgame is 40 man raiding. 40 man raiding you can be on the top of your server by playing 2-3 days a week. I don't believe there was ever a daoc rvr guild that only played 2-3 days a week and stayed at the top. We played 4-5 days and competing with the likes of pe/maels/others i can't remember was impossible. Ofc if you are going for rank14 in wow your playtime makes pe look like random casuals but less and less people follow that road anymore. Hence why i think wow is more casual.

But it's a totally different game, since even if it is more casual if it's 80% pvp you are looking for it's irrelevant. You will propably end up at daoc.

For me it's not pvp, it's not pve, it's the immersion and the world. The first time i heard the 'TOO SOON...' and other similar lines in wow i was hooked for life.

Ragnaros emerging for the first time or following Vael's storyline from lbrs to ubrs to blackwing lair or Nefarian landing on his balcony and a red fog covering your view are just unforgettable moments for me and is what keeps me playing. Gameplay is good, but feeling you are a part of a world is what gives me personally the kicks and i don't think i can really do without it.

[Cernos]

by the time WoW was released most major ToA flaws were long fixed

Not true. Major bugs might have been fixed but many of the ToA game design flaws to do with time sinks and poor balance weren't properly addressed until 1.81, which was some two years too late and even later in EU.

There's no disputing 1.81 has changed ToA, some will say they could go even further. But the basic fact is that for a *long* time it wasn't like this and early ToA in particular drove a lot of players away from the game. some would have left anyway and some returned over time, but many didn't and the game lost a sizeable chunk of its player base, vital in a PvP game where more players = more action.

[everz]

The excuse of that DAoC takes up to much time is crap, daoc is never been soon easy, only way to make it easier is if it was insta 50..

[Elrandhir]

The excuse of that DAoC takes up to much time is crap, daoc is never been soon easy, only way to make it easier is if it was insta 50..

Yeah, it has become very easy now tbh, the only timesink atm is ML's as you will have to wait until there are some running, but there has been rather often tbh.

[Shi]

Hellos,
I basically totally agree with the original post from Cernos.
Now I got over 1.5 year experience of WoW I can look at it from a more less objective perspective since for me the hype is long time ago gone

1st, indeed bad luck Xest, since you really picked the wrong class to start. Hehe. I aknowledge druid can be some fun since it’s a very nicely designed class but I also never could get a grip of it and it must be the only class I dumped prior reaching lvl 20 since I was dead of boredom. Anyhow, I think druids can shine later on, I met few in pvp that kicked seriosuly arse so I lacked bit of patience here I think, but that is after lvling 3 toons to 60 and several over 40s, so bit different story.

2nd, 1-60 in WoW is really fun and beats by far DAOC lvl grind. But that is mainly due to game mechanics, in matter of which Wow is really superior to DAOC - lil downtime, no crap interrupts , etc etc

3rd, immersion. I don't think in that matter WoW beats DAOC or other way around. There are many players that don't care anyways, all that they want is to rush to max lvl, rank, real rank, name it.
I recall after 2 years of Hib I started out Mid chars and Albion ones, and spent in those realms respectively ca 3-4 months each. I didn’t care to rush, just took my time doing quests, sightseeing etc. DAOC has it too, as WoW does. Quests and the lore are not about some revolutionary solutions, it'sabout those lil things hidden in the text, all those things make up the feeling of immersion.
Imo WoW is filled with plenty of brilliant or funny stories, same as daoc is, only pb is that the all round present 'rush' spoils it, is often hard to spend time on it when a party awaits or such

4th, end game
I can't agree to any kind of statement that WOW is casual, it's absolutely not. It's all about grind of items. It requires you to raid in 40 man raids and join rigide organised guilds with fked up rules regarding attendance and loot. Indeed a raid can be done smooth in 3-4 hs but that is after months of practice and a fix core team. A casual will never get anything out of it since the omnipresent ruling dkp system that promotes hardcore players and assures they are 1st to get the best loot. All a casual can get is some scraps but it will anyhow lose in the system towards a player that raids 4 times a week.
I can think that it is interesting to progress in suhc enveronment but as the only alternative as for the end game it utterly sucks.
I recently dinged 60 on my 3rd toon and that's basically it. I just see no purpose since all progress itemwise I can do now is to join a 40man raiding party.
PvP, the system is totally sick.
I'm 100% sure it will be revised and changed, since all you can hear about it is ppl beeching all over the forums.
But that will not change the fact Wow PvP has no sense whatsoever as it lacks a general tangible target, is just a rinse and repeat grind for items.
So for sure DAOC PvP >>>>>>> WoW PvP, conceptwise.

ps. im a total ignorant in the matter of warhammer, but im looking forward to warhammer online, hoping here Mythic makes it right

[Lieva]

Yeah, it has become very easy now tbh, the only timesink atm is ML's as you will have to wait until there are some running, but there has been rather often tbh.

or you can run one yourself

[Xest]

Now I got over 1.5 year experience of WoW I can look at it from a more less objective perspective since for me the hype is long time ago gone

Pfft, DAoC's changed so much in the last year and a half, unless you play both games ofc Mythic did a lot to fix downtime etc. also most MLs can be done by 2 good fg now. You only need artifact credit and scrolls to activate an arti now and scrolls are silly high drop rates, means you can just run an all arti-zerg raid and zerg every arti on the planet and be able to activate all with just scrolls, also they level at roughly old style SoM speed which is nice and fast. As I mentioned above it takes absolutely no more than 2 weeks casual play on some evenings then a little longer on weekends to be fully twinked now then you're just free to PvP as you want.