lol toa. Lol.

Do we have a choice any more? ToA is why I played Classic servers and also why the game population dropped like a rock when WoW was released. Arti's were a complete pain in the ass back then and people couldn't wait to jump ship to another game. My original guild, Knights of the Sacred, left completely. Bring back Classic where you either kick ass or get yours kicked, plain and simple.

^ no, you don't have a choice anymore. Clearly the classic server had more going for it than no toa, otherwise we'd be playing that ruleset instead of ywain. Most of which made to the ywain server to some extent with having buffing available to everyone.

Started out as 3, clsutered to 1 then bam its gone. Everyone was playing the Dev/Kil cluster. Don't take no toa as a clear cut meaning that it must have been the only reason classic was popular. New and shiny probably had a lot to do with it, as well as a fresh start with no transfers.


I will agree ToA was much worse back then, but it enabled massive group raiding on a very large scale. It also added, as well as future expansions, new levels to achieve, but without raising the cap xp level.

And I really don't think toa was daoc's big problem when wow came out, lol.

 

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Lol. Massive group raids. that's why I play a pvp game.

if you look at the amount of content, toa was one of the best addons ever released for any mmo out there. the problem was, that a lot of the content was bugged and time consuming like hell. if toa would have been more player friendly right from the start, i guess it would have been a big success.

mythic [profanity] it up and they didn't even recognize it at that time. they even told players that masterlevels and artifacts will not influence rvr and will not be needed to be able to compete in pvp.

anyways, it is far to late to discuss such things, we have to live with what daoc offers today. play the game if you still like it or leave if you don't. there are just no other options left and there will most likely be no other options in the future.

 

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It took me 5 years to figure that out. Tired of waiting for a new game, will just play this one until they kill the server.

 

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Even Mythic has admitted that TOA was a mistake. IMO TOA was the worst expansion Mythic ever produced and it did the most overall harm to the game.


TOA was a huge and brilliant bit of code but TOA forced huge numbers of casual players to take their RvR ready toons back to months of forced PvE before those casual players could once again RvR.


No longer could a player simply log into one of their RvR ready toons and have almost instant fun in the Frontiers because suddenly none of anyone’s level 50s were RvR ready anymore. Not only did TOA require huge long raids but TOA required huge long raids in a horribly buggy expansion.



I agree with this. The vast majority of MMO players are PvE centric. While the PvE centric player will RvR, they need good PvE to keep them subscribing.



The Classic servers were killed by Mythic who constantly added TOA like stuff to the Classic servers until, for many, there was no point to playing Classic.



Yes and no.


Mythic’s biggest problem when WoW came out, was pissed off players.


History has shown (other games have shown) that happy players do not exodus when a new game launches. Happy players may check out other games but happy players keep their subscriptions even when other games launch.


WoW has weathered the storms of many other game launches and WoW kept growing through those launches.


Also, if you watch the WoW boards and consider that there are over 10 million WoW subs, the WoW boards have just a bit fewer angry posts than the DAoC VN boards had back when DAoC only had 250k subs. Back then, and even today, Mythic seemed to enjoy pissing off players. MJ created and fostered an environment of disdain for the customer, an attitude that seems to continue today.


DAoC is a far superior game to WoW but WoW has far superior implementation. While WoW has challenges, Blizzard seems to be genuinely concerned with the players where as Mythic (now Bioware) seems to act as if the players are a nuisance. I know that Mythic (now Bioware) would disagree and spout that they are very concerned about the players but they have continuously lied to the players, ignored bugs, neglected the UI, treated the customers like mushrooms, created expansions that broke the old world and mostly made the old world parts of the game obsolete, created expansions with game damaging OP items and OP characters with the intent of pandering to a players dark side and hoping that the OP items would sell more Xpacs, etc. . . .


TOA was damaging but TOA was a symptom of a much larger challenge that was killing the game.



Overall I agree with your point that TOA could have been a big success, but I would state it differently.


Because of the problems that TOA brought to the game I would never use the phrase that “toa was one of the best addons ever released for any mmo”. I consider TOA a brilliant and creative endeavor that by itself was/is as extensive as many games but it was so harmful to the game of DAoC, and TOA showed a vast psychosis in not just MJ but in many who developed TOA, that TOA was one of the worst expansions ever devised. TOA was brilliant and vast, but it was psychotically brilliant and vast.



I agree.


TOA could have been great if it had been:


properly tested and debugged.


coordinated with the old world so the old world areas were not made obsolete


coordinated with pre-existing quests so that pre-existing quests were not made obsolete


coordinated with crafted gear


NOT mandatory but instead optional (isolated exceptions do not change a general rule. As a general rule TOA was required.)


designed without OP gear or OP abilities


designed so that there were alternatives methods for smaller groups that could not devote an entire day to a BG


scaled so as to be in line with the old world skill requirements


etc. . .

 

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The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is.
Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can,
and keep moving. - Ulysses S. Grant
Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

This.

 

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That.

Indeed. TOA and Jacobs' refusal to see the damage it would cause was the primary reason Matt left as well as 2 other developers. Jacobs got his way and the game suffered.