I run my sb in nf on the npc buffs and it does pretty good.

 

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As someone was speculating elsewhere, its possible that they will be introducing some type of F2P in DAOC. Why work on improving the new user experience so heavily if you are not expecting an influx of new players? Why start expanding and improving the NPC buffers if not for the same reason?
I think someone in charge has finally realized that one of the biggest barriers to getting a new player to come subscribe to the game is the fact that you really needed to commit to subscribing 2 accounts to get balanced gameplay. The new NPC buffers are a step in addressing this problem. Sure, they may lose some 2ndary accounts to this, but by no means all of them (some people will have crafters and other characters on their secondary account I am sure, they will want to keep access to those characters). In turn they may well gain a much larger population of people from opening up say levels 1 to 34 to F2P and asking for a subscription to play characters any higher than that.
They should have done this years ago, 10 years ago in fact. I hope they add the NPC buffbots to the PvE areas of the game and start working on improving those areas. If we get the PvErs back into the game, it might have some life in it yet. PvE players are the bread and butter of any MMO subscription wise. PvPers are always a much smaller percentage of any MMO population.

If you want to know why the games subscription rates are so down from where they used to be, look at the death of PvE in this game for a cuprit. When they ruined the PvE, they lost the people, period. The PvP oriented portion of any population is only enough to pay for maintenance, expansions require a much larger population. Now, DAOC does PvP far better than any other game, but its still not the most important part of the gaming experience if you want a game to survive.

 

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To bot or not to bot, that is the question...

 

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Yes.

I've been playing in Molvik for years without using a bot. Buff potions, +20% buff gear, and just accept that you have to be a bit more careful to win reliably.

Of course, now that the NPC buffer is in Molvik (117 stat bonuses, as opposed to 120 with a bot), it's depressingly easy to go without a bot. Not nearly as fun to watch the other guy's bot buffs fall to the ground when you kill him when you've got essentially the same buffs he has.

Note that you need to get a couple-three kills per death to break even on cost of the buff guy's buffs - if you're clumsy enough to get run over by a trio leaving the PK every time you buff up, you'll spend a lot of gold to very little fun. In that sort of situation, you might be better off buying buff pots (which are somewhat inferior to the buff guy, but not overwhelmingly so), since they cost less per death if you're dying more often than once every 20 minutes.

Next patch, the high-end buff pots, assuming they are usable at BG levels will give you buffs only slightly below molvik buff npc, and be unshearable, so that'll be another option.

 

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Three points, not five.
But buy haste pots, since they're 1% better than the buff guy's haste buff (while still being 1% worse than the bot's haste).
Buy invig pots - two for every haste pot.
And then you're ready to rumble...

And you can kill people with regular old potion buffs in Molvik, even though they're 14 points worse than but-grade buffs. Just takes good (not perfect, just good) gear and a reasonable amount of skill.

 

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Yes Zone in to NF get buffs there will cap you for level if your really worried about it. I have even used them in NF guildie and I were experimenting few nights back earned 50K on hunters in a few hours on Realm buffs ONLY. We actually played a lil more aggressive with the realm buffs because we didnt have to alt tab to refresh them. Also you can go in to Poc with them. We had a great deal of fun with this since people like to run inside poc to escape/pl

 

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" I disagree. I think a lot of people are put off playing or returning to the game because of the need for buffbots. If they can break the dependancy on second accounts, yes they will lose subs from the cancelled bot accounts, but at the same time I think they will actually gain more subs from players who decide to stay or return because there are now buff NPCs. They should have done this years ago. "

Agreed. I was thinking about coming back for a while and not needing a buffbot is definitely a plus. I still don't like ToA though.

If you don't already, you should know that ToA has been very dumbed down. ML raids are a thing of the past: you can either farm the glass or use bounty points (or pay someone else to) to reach ML10. Artifacts are obtained the same way.

It's not the game you left 5 years ago; if you accept that, you should be able to enjoy it for what it is now. It's still an awesome game.

 

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Some people sell ML1-10 for 15p. Its not that hard to get 15p by the time you reach 50.

 

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