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Shards are a poor example of the general population's interest in a game because one must 1) know about the game in the first place and 2) jump through several hoops to use them.

MMORPGs that go "f2p" often generate quite a bit of news by doing so, which draws far more people than would ever stumble onto a pirated/illegal/third party shard server.





Losing customers 9-12 months after launch isn't the sign of a fundamental flaw in the game - it's a very respectable amount of time for people to keep doing the same activity over and over. People who bought the original version of the game and played for 9 months still paid Mythic $10*8 months + ~$x royalty fee from the box sale.

Yes, rolling the game back is only a start. Keep in mind that having a population willing to purchase 'adventure packs' to level and farm loot provides Mythic an incentive to produce more content. I wasn't active during the Dragon's Revenge campaign, but you could view this type of game content as something that would sell for about $15 in "f2p" games.





You basically just described Turbine's system in LOTRO. There are 3 basic tiers: $10 month accounts that have access to everything (full char slots, preferred log in access, character bags, all classes, monthly Turbine point stipend, etc), a tier for people who have spent money on the game at some point (a few more char slots, preferred log in access, and access to customer support), and the free accounts. I'd further add that "f2p" accounts should be barred from the Battlegrounds until they spent at least some money on the game.





Again, the shards aren't a fair comparison as they're a fringe idea from the start. At its peak, DAoC had around 250.000 subscribers and, outside of being an older game, there is no reason it couldn't do at least that well again. Also keep in mind that expense of buying the game + expansions, monthly fees, and pressure to feel as if you're getting $15 per month out of the game were factors in preventing DAoC from having even more subscribers.

"Free" to play is a great model for many casual players because it lets them play a game on their own terms. For example, someone who only wants to play a Valkyrie in the battleground might be satisfied enough by buying access to the class for $10 (assuming they didn't buy the Catacombs expansion when it was required) and a mount for $10. A lot of casual players have trouble justifying a $15 monthly fee to play 10-15 hours per month, but might be willing to pay $20 for permanent access to an expansion class and a mount. This is a sale Mythic would have otherwise lost and there is potential to sell them more tokens to buy gear enhancement or other classes down the road.





No, they are all raiding focused games. Just like DAoC, PvE focused end games have gear requirements. "Free" to play games generally let free players reach the same point as paying players, but at a far slower rate (we're talking about a year to get there).

Here is the best comparison I can draw: a subscriber or person who purchased ToA could farm glass while a person who doesn't subscribe and didn't buy access to ToA must complete daily quests in a Classic zone and can therefore only earn about 20 glass per day. They would also have a low gold cap (say 1p at level 50) that prevented them from trinketing the gold to buy artifacts and masterlevels.





No one can accurately predict what Mythic will do, but the "f2p" MMORPGs don't out right sell loot in their cash shops, but there are usually armour and weapon enhancements. These would compare to a scroll that adds 2% melee damage to your weapons and a scroll that adds +10 to all stats to your armour. You can usually get less reliable versions of such scrolls in these games for gold. For example, in Runes of Magic you can buy such scrolls from a NPC merchant, but they have a high risk of not working and a low risk of actually downgrading your gear. The cash shop versions have a much higher chance of upgrading your gear and a far lower chance of downgrading it.





The end games of many of the "f2p" games are in fact very similar to ToA and possible worse. See my example above about gaining glass via daily quests for people who don't have access to ToA. I took this specific example from Runes of Magic, where you can do daily quests to earn in store tokens at a snail's pace, or you can just buy them and not take a year to template your char. You can actually buy anything in the store with these stones (LOTRO has a similar system, but you earn tokens by completing things similar to titles in DAoC (e.g., kill 200 -> 2,000 -> 20,000 spraggons)), but they're best used towards your end game gear. In this regard, both RoM and LOTRO are truly free to play games, but playing free only is an excruciatingly slow experience.





I agree that these kind of bugs desperately need to be fixed. The original Mythic certainly never bothered to do it.





Neither of us can quantify that. Mythic also claimed that it was impossible to grant respecs for almost 2 years and that it was impossible for them to fix the issue with Bards gaining empathy instead of charisma. It's not that they couldn't do it with relative ease - Mythic's entire history with DAoC involves letting mobs eff players in any and all ways possible, and the pathing problems are an extension of their "let mobs eff players over in PvE in every way possible" mindset.



I agree that many of these changes are needed, but they're not all absolutely necessary. The UI updates would be very helpful for new players and there are at least 3 dozen /slash commands that should be placed into a configuration window somewhere. I still meet people who didn't know about the /hood command.

However, there is no good reason to re-itemize every single quest, mob, and dungeon in the game. RoG items are fine as is - they play a very important part in spell crafting and preventing everyone from having the exact same template. I've never had a PvE character, never will, and have never farmed for RoG items (but I did farm for things to salvage in the old days). There are plenty of good enough items in the housing zone and missing +30 hits cap or 5% matter resist isn't going to make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps I'm nothing but a garbage player, but I used second rate templates and earned just over 10 million rps before Catacombs was released



Once again, I disagree with these points. DAoC does not need to be completely rewritten, but it is important that things like pathing bugs be updated. The UI itself is border line, but the way you interact with merchants and various NPCs should absolutely be updated.

It would not take 20 developers and 2 years to do simple things like rerolling PvE to late ToA stages, deleting task dungeons, correcting pathing bugs, and updating the UI. Something as simple as removing the task dungeons and task masters (and the in game help documentation) would only take a few hours for someone familiar with the DAoC's source code, but it might take a new hire a few days to figure it out. Updating the UI would probably take a month or two.

 

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Semi4,

I hope you don't mind this personal request, but would you mind sharing your level of education and profession (feel free to send it as a PM if you don't want to share this information with the board at large). Although we disagree on a number of topics, I always look forward to seeing your responses to threads as you invariably provide a logical and well thought out topics to threads.

 

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I don't think DAOC is "poop". It's old and it's got a load of issues and I'm not a subscriber now because of the state of the game. But the game does have a unique open world RvR experience that I miss and have not been able to find anything like in any other MMO. I think this is still something that could draw some players back to a F2P DAOC.

But the main problem for DAOC is that it's not EA's baby and it's not a valuable name. EA is still trying to bring life into Warhammer Online, a much more valuable name. And it's hard at work with an upcoming Starwars MMO. EA could easily afford to try reviving DAOC, but I think they just want to focus on newer titles now.

So many that like DAoC are blinded by their emotional ties to the game and they have a difficult time seeing the game through the eyes of the typical MMO player. Those that love DAoC often think that if only other MMO players would try out the game those noobs would fall in love with DAoC and everything would be wonderful, so I use a descriptive like “poop” to try and slap them awake to the realization of the severity of the problems the game has.


DAoC is the best game concept, even after 10 years it is still the best game concept. Sadly it has the worst implementation. Mythic could not have done worse by DAoC if they had been planning on killing it.


You are correct, the game is not “poop”. But it does stink quite a bit. Many that are still playing have grown immune to the stink and tend to ignore the smell.


Most MMO players come to DAoC from other games that have a lot more polish, games with a tremendously better UI, with fewer bugs, etc. . . and the noobs expect something less frustrating than DAoC.


Also, most MMO players are PvE centric. In the past even the PvE centric players would RvR from time to time but their main interest is in good PvE and Mythic has gutted DAoC’s PvE. The typical MMO player can level a toon to 50 in under 2 days /played. Then they roll another toon and in 2 days /played that toon is also 50. Then the player goes to a different game that has better, more prolonged and more interesting PvE.


In the past there were reasons for PvE players to explore most of the game world but today there is no reason to explore except to see a few sights and go back to the quick leveling spots, the TDs, etc. . . Most of the game world is a ghost town.


DAoC also is riddled with bugs. Most existing players have learned to exploit the bugs or to live with the bugs but the challenges are still there to frustrate the noobs.


Then there is the bot. What ever excuses players want to make, bots still give advantages. Mythic made sure the bot is still important because Mythic still wants the income from bot accounts. Bots allow better buffs, very rapid leveling and make it extremely easy to farm huge amount of plat (which adds to the runaway economy).


The game has characters that have almost no group utility (for 10 years now this has been a problem). The game has terrible pet pathing problems, especially in dungeons. Etc. . . .


Some that blind themselves to DAoC’s problems will jump in and say, “but. . . but . . . other games have problems too.” Not anywhere near the magnitude of the problems that DAoC has.


No, the game is not “poop”, but it is close to it. From a noobs perspective it almost stinks as much as if it were poop.





The game is unique. It is a brilliant concept. Unfortunately it has been twisted into something that the typical MMO player does not want to play. Even if it were free, most would try it out for a bit, get frustrated with the bugs, find the PvE horrible and mostly pointless, get stomped in PvP/RvR by twinked and botted players and then the noob would say, “What a load of crap” and leave, never to return. After they departed they would tell all their friends about their horrible experience at the stupidity called DAoC.


It is a brilliant game but it is not what the typical MMO player wants in a game and all the PvP/RvR centric players that would love something like DAoC, are already playing DAoC.





Based on EA buying into MJs pabulum when MJ convinced EA to purchase Mythic it seems that EA never had a clue what was going on with DAoC. EA never understood the uniqueness of DAoC. EA never understood how MJ was killing DAoC. EA never had a clue and that has not changed.


Many think that noobs who come from other polished games will view DAoC through the eyes of the existing players, who over look all of DAoC’s problems and love the game.


It will not happen that way. Noobs will judge the game based on their experience with other, more polished games.


Even rolling back the game to pre TOA is not the complete answer. When the game first started it had 2+++years of content and at the 13 month mark another 2 years of content was added (SI). But only 9 to 12 months after launch the game began bleeding huge numbers of players (as show by the graphs at darkzone). One month the game was adding 21,000 players a month and suddenly the population graph was level. As the game added another 21k noobs, 21,000 existing players began departing every month.


While DAoC had 4 years of content, players were leaving after only 9 to 12 months (exceptions do not break the general rule. Exceptions do not cancel general trends).


Rolling back the game is a good start at fixing a lot of problems but even rolling back the game will not save the game. The game has some fundamental problems from inception and Mythic never fixed those problems, Mythic just kept adding more and more problems as time went on.


Not seeing the problems or not being able to identify the problems does not make them vanish. The numbers are the numbers, the trends are the trends. It happened.


No, the game is not “poop” but simply offering DAoC as F2P does not change how noobs will view the game.

 

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Excellent posts Dannica. That 2nd to last one was pretty much perfect.

 

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