more like DAoC's base game play mechanics (hard interupts, combat styles/reactionaries/positions? ) or do you just mean 3 realm pvp... if 3 realm pvp, dominus but its scifi not fantasy, or guild wars 2 will have 3 way wars, between servers... 3 servers that share a common area for rvr, wich kinda helps balance sense its basicaly a 3 way war between the same class sets...

but there is nothing that comes close to DAoC's base mechanics... and probly never will, they are all WoWesque in spells and combat...

 

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totally agree with last post. daoc is unique and will always be. Its concept is not as profitable as others. Gaming industry is nowadays like every other industry all about the money. not saying it wasn't 10 years ago but its a lot more advanced in terms of budgeting and return on invest sensitivity.

i think WoW did not take too many players away from daoc. The large amount of wow players came from people that never ever played mmo before and got hooked easily. (same as that farmville facebook s**t - housewives becoming super nerds)
I know a lot of people that could not handle WoW and RL (we deny it, but online gmaing addiction is real - we are just better at concealing it ... coming from someone who put in at least 6 hours gametime a day, back in 2003, with a girlfriend - who did not play at all - an is now engaged to me)

the daoc players that quit, quit because they played for more than 5 years and - lets face it - found better things to do then time consuming online gaming. (like single player console gaming for example) - Daoc just got old.

The people coming back now (like myself) just did not find the same pvp mechanics in any other game. and when the nice graphics are not impressive anymore, something uninspiring is left. Its just sad that there is not a lot new pve stuff and its stupid how fast you can get a heavy equipped toon to 50 and into action.


OT: I think the game is active enough to have loads of fun. Do not expect fair 1on1 situations... they do not happen very often anymore

I think GW2 will be closest to Daoc in design. I look forward to it.

Not as active as it should be. And it shouldn't have 1 huge server either. Make 2 or just go ahead and make a daoc 2

 

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They'd need to make a GAME OF THRONES mmo with rvr and similar mechanics to DAoC for me to go for it.

 

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DAoC is unique, I agree.


While game companies are more advanced they are also somewhat nieve and do not really understand the customer. We see this in the WoW clones where a company will copy random things from WoW, put their own spin on the game, and hope they copied enough so that their game is successful. If the developers really understood why WoW is so successful then we would see less random copying and we would see more greatly successful games as developers built on what makes WoW great.


That we do not see grandly successful copies of WoW is a sign that no one really understands why WoW is what it is (except Blizzard, they understand).





In a way you are correct but in other ways I think you missed the mark.


It is difficult to be incorrect when saying that most of WoWs subs came from other places than from DAoC. Heck, DAoC in its best year only hit 250k subs and WoW is over 10 million. There is no way WoW got more than half its 10 million from DAoC (sarcasum).


But, when WoW came out there was an exodus that began from DAoC and it has not stopped. You can see the graph of DAoC subs dive with the launch of WoW. WoW most deffinatly grabbed large numbers of DAoC subs.


I do not believe that those players left DAoC because WoW is better. IMO those players left DAoC for WoW because they were tired of being frustrated by a game company that only gave lip service to its customers, and often Mythic played mushroom with its customers and did not even give them lip service.



Sorry but DAoC began bleeding players at about the 9 to 12 month mark, not the 5 year mark. Again just look at the graph. For its first 9-12 months DAoC gained about 20k to 27k subs each month. In about the 10-13 month the game suddenly declined a small bit and then leveled off.


As the noobs probably continued to arrive at a rate of about 20k-27k each month, the only reason the graph would level off is because the game began bleeding subs as fast as it was bringing in noobs. That was the beginning of the end, it should have been a brisk slap in the face but Mythic (MJ) was too arrogant to understand what was happening. Here was a game with 24+++ months of content that began bleeding players after only 9 to 12 months. That should have been a wakeup call for Mythic but they misunderstood the significance of the graph and they never seemed to understand what the customers actually need in a game.


It is not age that is killing this game. This game is not much older than WoW and WoW is still running with over 10 million subs and DAoC is down to about 15k to 20k. Age is an excuse that Mythic developers use to obfuscate their responsibility for their failure with DAoC. Age is a red herring. It is a good sound bite but it is not true.


While it is true that players will grow up and find other IRL things that take up their time, if the age of a game is the defigning thing that leads to its death then WoW should be in its death march, but it isn't. Again, age is a read herring. DAoC isn't dieing, it was killed by those who do not understand what the customer needs.

 

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