For some of you this will be of interest, especially you Ex-DAOCers and it most certainly will take you back a few years. So thanks to Bluesky who dropped this golden nugget on the guild forums. When I actually started viewing the screenshots and videos, there was definitely a nostalgia trip going on, maybe even a hint of a tear in the corner of my eye.
When I started viewing all this material, what concerned me the most, was how much I had forgotten about the old frontiers in DAOC. I struggled to remember places, especially when there wasn’t a keep or milegate around to provide some kind of reference point. I could blame the camera angles, but I honestly think it’s my memory starting to show signs of wear and tear and that’s without the aid of any mind altering substances.
As an ex DAOC player it was lovely to see the sun coming up over the hills, the shadows and such, but as a friend commented, it does show you how sparse these old landscapes were in comparison to modern-day games. What made me chuckle were some of the before and after water scenes. I just remember being wowed by the water in DAOC and yet compared to the Crysis engine equivalent, it has all the artistic merit of a corpse. Again another example of how much progress has been made in video game art/engines these last 10 years.
I remember with fondness all the action that took place at the Milegates, which were positioned at the end of area belonging to one of the THREE realms. This one was positioned to protect the Midgard teleport keep, if I remember correctly. If you went a little bit south from here, you had the Albion milegate and since the Albion and Midgard factions were the most populous, there was always a shedload of action between these points. Poor old Hibernia had to hike all the way up from their ORvR main gates. Don’t feel to sorry for them, at least in DAOC you had speed, I mean proper speed. Of course that was assuming you had a skald/ministrel or bard in your party, otherwise you were destined for life in the slow lane. This was also the reason you always had one person in your group panning behind, looking for faster moving incoming groups.
Those mile gates were places of intense action. The place would be riddled with stealther classes, reminiscent of the scene at the end of Predator 2, when the aliens all decloak. But in this case, it wasn’t to thank you for your efforts. It was to leave your rotting corpse on the ground. You would then wait 5 – 10 minutes before you could port to that particular frontier again.
Oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t all as rosy as that, but it was still glorious for its time. You’d never know that all that experience gained from DAOC: Old and New Frontiers, had been imbued into Warhammer Online product, now would you?
I remember all that so much. Actually the graphics were even a step back from that originally. They upgraded the engine when Shrouded Isles came out. I remember the water just being a solid light blue graphic when first released. If only I still had screenshots of that. I really should burn my screenshots to dvd for memories 10 years later.
I remember alot of fun pvp action in DAOC, but I also remember as more and more players hit 50 it was becoming a zergfest just like every other MMO at primetime. Of course you could venture off for small battles, but most of the time the action was always at the MG’s. I always remember how much fun it was to open the door to find 500 people killing you instantly.
I had a blast in the Battlegrounds in that game. I think they were called that. The Thidranki was my favorite to play alts in. I don’t know how many people I killed with my hunter there called Rubberband on the Tristan server. I only logged in when Midgard had control of the keep so I could just sit on top, and shoot people while stealthed. It was great.
I had one other fun time when I logged in one time with my skald, and saw like 5 assassins or whatever they were called (I forget their class name), trying to ninja the keep. I so destroyed all of them. Of course the Lord was helping matters, but I held them off for over 2 hours before they got reinforcements and actually took the keep by breaking the doors down.
DAOC was my first pvp game so I will always have a fondness for it. My main was a warrior named Xorg, a skald named Zoxxor, a Shammy buffbot named Kergoar, hunter named Rubberband, and a few other alts that lived only in lower level battlegrounds.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by werit: Check this out, DAoC running in the Crysis engine. http://twurl.nl/dvssjj…
Yes those are some good memories. DAoC was my first mmo and ever since quiting I have played a couple other mmo’s and to me nothing matches it DAoC needs to come back. I was mostly on my stealthers which I had all of them. I remember being in MM and playing my Luriken ranger and going to the top of the tower and taking people out while standing inside the crystal or being on my enchanter and standing right outside the healer hut and aoeing the whole place. List of classes and lvls
50’s are Theurgist,Bard, Zerker, Eldritch, and Druid, 40+’s are Shadowblade, Nightshade, Infiltrator, Necro, Skald, and Enchanter and then I had an 35 Ranger and 30 Wizard. I’m pretty sure but I think all my stealthers were 4LR or higher. Characters I played the most were my Shadowblade Dualblade Stunner and my Nightshade Decapitater.