Lessons I Hope They Learned from DAOC
January 25, 2008 – 6:17 pm
Even though I have a lot of fond memories of DAOC, it did have its fair share of short-comings. It’s been so long since I played, I find it difficult trying to remember all the reasons I left for WoW, but that’s probably because I tried erasing them from my memory altogether… I got to the point where I was so disgruntled with Mythic’s mismanagement and lack of focus that I eBayed my characters so I could at least recover some of cash I’d given them over the years.
Here’s a random, disorganized list of mistakes I feel they made with DAOC that I hope they never make in WAR:
- Crafting - I could endure weapon-crafting in DAOC only until the low 400’s because it was such an expensive and time-consuming venture. While delivery quests decreased the overall cost, they inversely increased the time you needed to spend. Crafting was only worthwhile if you had an alt with deep pockets and set yourself up a macro (hoping you didn’t get caught). Even when you hit the max in your craft, it was necessary to produce items of a high quality (low chance) or else you gimped yourself against people in masterpiece (100%) sets. That meant the grind wasn’t over once you capped out your skill… Bravo!
- I hope they ignore % quality altogether in their new crafting system. I also want them to include crafting as part of the game rather than some exterior task completed only by the hardcores and botters. I hate to say it, but they could learn a LOT by looking at WoW’s crafting system. You could very easily ramp your craft in WoW as you progressed in level and it gave you the feeling of killing two birds with one stone.
- Frontiers - I loved a lot of things Frontiers brought to RvR (towers, new dungeons, interconnectedness, etc.) but I disliked the overall size. I found it too large. This may have only been an issue because the server populations couldn’t support the map size, but sometimes it just felt like a ghost town. For the solo-player, it was horrendous… It was so expansive that you were forced to bridge-hump the more popular enemy keeps and if you died, it meant another 15-20 minute trek back into action.
- I hope they can find a balance between RvR zone size and the amount of people playing their game. This will be difficult because you obviously have to pre-make the zones before you even sell your first box copy, but starting off modestly and expanding if necessary seems like a good plan to me. You can’t cater to everyone, but during prime-time, it shouldn’t take groups half an hour of running around before finding an enemy to engage, let alone a solo player. I am reserved about their plans for instanced PvP because I don’t want scenarios to take away from the persistent “real world” RvR. It won’t be very cool if you can’t defend your homeland because a bunch of your allies are off diddling away in scenarios.
- PvE - I will grudgingly admit that PvE is necessary in an MMO, but it doesn’t have to be a necessary evil! Shrouded Isles gave us our first taste of larger scale raiding in DAOC and it wasn’t completely terrible. Unfortunately, the successor, Trials of Atlantis took the concept of PvE and gave it a reddish tint, horns, spaded tail, and a pitch-fork. They introduced some interesting concepts in ToA but then they went ahead and made it the most time consuming, random, hellish experience you could ever dream of in an MMO. Prerequisites aren’t fun. Insanely difficult boss encounters aren’t fun. Terribly rare and low scroll drop rates aren’t fun. Needing massive battlegroups to complete asinine tasks isn’t fun. Getting steamrolled because someone has ToA items and you don’t (because you’re not insane) isn’t fun.
- Make the 1-40 game in WAR as fun as the 1-70 game in WoW. At cap, do not force people to grind out dungeons ad infinitum for great gear then punish others for not having it by making them completely ineffective. Allow players to get as good gear from PvP as they can in PvE (yes, I know this is planned but I’ll believe it when I see it). All I ask is that if you must implement PvE expansions, do everything completely the opposite way you did it in ToA.
- Mudflation - Mudflation occurs when gear introduced in an MMORPG expansion degrades the quality and value of older generation gear. The natural side effect of this is that older PvE content becomes completely obsolete. Examples from DAOC include: Class Epics,
- I understand that MMORPG expansions need to introduce something new to the game and I also realize that I’ll need to upgrade my “perfect set” every so often. It’s fun to achieve new things (as long as you don’t make it as hellish as you did in ToA!). However, I think you can do this without turning all your old zones into complete ghost towns. Rather than placing all the new carrots, er… upgrades solely in expansion zones, why not spread some of the wealth around your older zones? Upgrade the drops on your old world dragons. Upgrade the items purchasable in
- I understand that MMORPG expansions need to introduce something new to the game and I also realize that I’ll need to upgrade my “perfect set” every so often. It’s fun to achieve new things (as long as you don’t make it as hellish as you did in ToA!). However, I think you can do this without turning all your old zones into complete ghost towns. Rather than placing all the new carrots, er… upgrades solely in expansion zones, why not spread some of the wealth around your older zones? Upgrade the drops on your old world dragons. Upgrade the items purchasable in
- Housing - As if mudflation wasn’t enough to keep people away from the older zones and city centres, housing in DAOC was also a major contributing factor. I really liked some of the concepts they introduced in housing, but I hated that it was tucked away in some sandbox zone and that you could add all the amenities you could ever want. You had no reason to leave your little shack in the woods, which killed the social aspect and feeling of MMO across many zones in the game.
- Rather than stealing people away from capital cities by creating a housing zone somewhere else, why not allow guilds to rent space within a city? How about sprawling mini villages around the outskirts of capitols like they did in medieval times? Mini encampments throughout the map? How about flagging certain neighbourhoods for RvR if they’re near RvR areas? Allowing players to raze and pillage certain enemy villages gives us one more thing to WAR over! There are plenty of ways you can incorporate housing into the world without dividing up your population to the point of scarcity in major centres.
As an ex-DAOCer, what lessons do you hope they took away from the game?
4 Responses to “Lessons I Hope They Learned from DAOC”
Why aren’t you making and designing MMO’s?! You’re ideas are almost a mirror image of what I’d like to see in a game!
By Pipoca on Jan 25, 2008
Hah, thanks! I always thought the same thing, but then, I’m probably biased towards my own opinions!
I realize you can’t please every one of your players because your game would end up a chaotic mess, but I spent months and months posting ideas and participating in constructive criticism on the VN boards before I eventually gave up on Mythic. I was far from a forum troll and racked up over 6000 posts in a 12-month period… What can I say? I had a slack job at the time!
They spent so long ignoring all our ideas that I found it funny to see them finally start bending a little once WoW came out. To me, it was a slap in the face. They only seemed to respond to the decline in monthly profits not the great feedback they were sent for years beforehand.
Rereading all this again, I see that I still harbour some bad feelings about Mythic’s game management. Hopefully, this blog doesn’t turn out to be a monumental waste of time if I find they haven’t changed much in the few years since I’ve played one of their products. Heh.
By Snafzg on Jan 25, 2008
Again, I agree with everything.
For the PvE section, I don’t think all PvE and PvP gear should be equal. I would think it would be cool if generally they were of equal power, but certain items in each were better than the other. Not insanely better, but good enough that someone who focuses on one aspect isn’t as good as someone who does both. The person who does both should be at least marginally better.
I also hope any high end raids they have take a maximum of 2-2.5 hours. (thats with your occasional death and rez) I do think, however, that difficult boss encounters are good. I think what sucks about them though is that it took you 5 hours to get to him and you have to repeat what you did, or at least run for a long time.
For Housing, it would be awesome to vandalize a guild’s house who keeps demolishing you.
Lastly, I’ve become afraid to read your blog. I know not all of these things will be in the game and it only raises my expectations!
-Travis
By Travis on Jan 27, 2008
@Travis -
The gear idea sounds cool. It would be awesome to mix and match your items from PvE and PvP so that you could have an ultimate set, as long as there are good sets (or mix and match combos) of gear from each individually.
2-2.5 hours for a PvE raid is pretty reasonable, though I’d vote for the low end on that one. Most people can commit at least a couple hours, but beyond that the raids are no longer “casual-friendly.” I’d rather have ten 2-hour dungeons than 5 four-hour ones. Give me more variety! If you want to make it more competitive for the hardcores, allow slightly better gear to drop in heroic modes similar to WoW. That way you get more use out of each dungeon, appealing to both groups of players.
Hah, thanks for the feedback! I would love to play an MMORPG of my own design, but you know… I lack the financing and the resources! I can only imagine how Curt Schilling is feeling about his 38-Studios project.
By Snafzg on Jan 27, 2008