It lost it with Spellcrafting. In the old days gear was important and handed down from players as they leveled. Spellcrafting ruined that interactive part of the game and it's been downhill ever since.

 

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I don't mind the fact that new characters start out at lvl 1 as their desired class. I don't think 5 levels was a necessary sub class. Kind of a waste of time and energy on mythics part. Now, if you had to stay in your pre class to lvl 20, and got a free respec at 21, that would be a little different. That would give you some real time to consider heavy tank like I planned or light tank now that I've got some game experience.

I miss all the old start up stuff, nothing is as good as it is when it's new and fresh. Like my first car, a pile of crap, but I loved that car and miss it today.

We all have wishes, but I fail to understand how how loot and mob upgrades weren't across the board. How do you introduce 12 different attributes and abilities, 3 expanions and your class epic armor is the same as it was during launch. ( or nearly, I'm exaggerating )

There has to be a balance ( i know we hate that word ) between grouping and solo play. I like to solo, and sometimes my alloted game time only allows me solo play. I ain't got time to wait 30 mins for a group to form. Then again, I shouldn't be able to solo my epic encounter either.
Items should have been available through epic pve, and the same items should have been craftable by those who don't desire to engage in epic pve. A balance ( once again ) would have to be reached to prvent crafters from banging out TOA items. And it's counter productive to engage in epic pve to aquire materials to craft. Perhaps a soloable quest line to retrieve materials. Encounters can be manufactured to be equally difficult and time consuming for a solo toon to accomplish vs what an encounter it takes 8 fg to perform. I'd say make the 8 fg version a bit easier ( but not much ) to encourage group play. You just can't make group play an absolute necessity, nor can you make solo play a more attractive viable option. Solo play just has to be possible, I'm ok with more difficult, just as long as it's possible.

And let's see... flatten...
noob friendly easy mode eh?
I don't see it as such, as it turns out the end game has continued to evolve too far. It used to take 9 months to hit fifty, now it takes nine months more after you hit fifty. ( or it used to, or maybe it still does, they keep making things easier that should have never been difficult)
What really needs to be implemented is a set of battle grounds modeled after the IROC races. Where every driver, drives the same car. Now it's about driver skill, not mechanical cheats.
So old style port over to a bg. Medallion vendor stands next to a storage facility for your attire. You port over and are handed out 89% quality gear, with no bonuses. Now it's about your character's race, stats, class, spec, and most importantly your uber l33t skilzorz. It would be a true test of who's performance is dependent on ability, and who's performance is dependent on items.

It would also be wise to introduce relics to the bg's so lower level toons, and people that don't want to rvr at fifty can still participate and contribute to the overall benefit of the realm. How about a dex relic? qui relic, acuity relic, con relic.

One thing I hate about modern MMOs is the preeminence of the "on rails" exp quest design. Grouping up DAOC style was actually very rewarding. I can see why they have done the starter towns + a quest chain seeing as how few people are leveling nowerdays but I hope this is not always going to be the way future games work (although it probably will seeing as how it has been this way ever since WoW released.)

It won't be. MMOs are slowly working towards more "dynamic" content that gets you engaged in the world/story without making you talk to an NPC and read two paragraphs of text that most people probably don't read anyway. Rift attempted it a bit with its rift system, and Guild Wars 2 is taking it further by completely removing "quests" and making all of the outdoor content be large event chains. WoW won't be the standard for MMOs in the future simply because technology is getting to the point where MMOs can do things it couldn't back in the day. Active, twitchy combat and dynamic, public content that reacts to and scales with the players participating would have been a pipe dream when DAoC/WoW came out, but it's becoming more and more a reality now.

GW2 is worrying me a bit, as it almost promises too much and sounds like it could almost be too synthetic which can keep the player from feeling immersed. These events still seem staged and rather theme-parkish even if they are making it more spontaneous. It sounds cool, but I'm still worried.

I think that next-gen MMOs need to address a few issues:

* I think that the concept of a "level" is old and tired, as is questing or grinding to get your levels. While its true that working your way up through levels does give people a sense that they are achieving things, but in a game with large scale PvP like DAOC, most people seem to see the requirement to level up as an annoying barrier to actually playing the game.
* I think the worlds we play in need to be dynamic, where the actions of NPCs and PCs give rise to the events that happen in the game and all of the so-called content is "emergent" from the gameplay itself. The NPCs should just be set in motion and AI should control how they operate. Player actions could make a permanent change in the game, events on each server would be different because each would have its own distinct history.
* Equipment should not be the overwhelming factor that it is most MMOs. Lack of it, gathering it (usually a grind), etc usually acts as another barrier to participation in the game. (As a point: I am trying to equip an SB, someone in my guild suggested it will likely cost me around 200p. I spent the last 3p I had to get the first item on my list. Its gonna take me along time to finish templating him. This is a substantial barrier to anyone who hasn't been building up their bank account over the past 5 years).
* PvP should be fun and have an ostensible point, as with RvR here, and I think it should be persistent as it is in DAOC, but the power of the abilities you get should not be overwhelming as they can be in this game. As soon as a substantial part of the population reaches high realm rank, anyone else who shows up has another barrier to entry.

Substantial barriers drive people away in the end.

 

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play eve online...

 

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There should be barriers to just running out to rvr 5 minutes after you start playing, if you don't have them all the work that longer players have put in is wasted time for them and they will leave besides if you just want to jump right in that's what first person shooters are for.

The fundamental problem in DAoC is that powerleveling killed all on-level grouping so they had to convert to a purely solo, ezmode leveling experience.

Powerleveling and buffbotting, the two exploits that Mythic never addressed and slowly leeched this game's population and community away.

 

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I agree these are the two biggest factors, although I would argue the current difficulty in templating is a third obstacle.

The above two reasons drove off the PvE players - always the bulk of the population with any MMO game - but the later prevents new players from actively participating in RvR as well. Until you are at least half-decently templated you are not going to survive in RvR at all. Dying constantly will discourage new players immensely, particularly as they might not realize its their (lack of) equipment that is causing them to die without ever getting a kill.

As well the game is likely too fast in combat. A new player seldom has any idea what has just happened before they die. This has always been a problem mind you...

I recently returned to the game after leaving when NF arrived. I have been here about 2 months, playing casually when I can. I am still working on templating my first character sufficiently to be able to participate in RvR (I have 6 other level 50's still to work on). Thanks be to the proverbial gods I was given a lot of the items I need by a friendly player I met (I calculated that this saved me 160+ iterations of a Task Dungeon, plus endless hours in Malmohus). I am almost done Champion Levels (working on 9), but only just started on Master Levels (working on 3). I expect that in another few months I will be completely templated and ready to give things a serious shot. Of course I am only RR 1L9 so even then I will die most of the time for the following few months.

The difference between being templated and not templated are so extreme, its practically mandatory.

(Before anyone smugly suggests I join a guild, I have already done so. I can't afford a buffbot (see the quote above), and I work graveyards so most of the people I might group with are not on most of the time I am playing. As well, I play casually so I might only be on for an hour or so at a time. I am doing the best I can, and TDs are the easiest route to leveling up and getting the immense funds required to template).

So IMHO, we have a still great game, hampered by the lack of a PvE game to speak of (almost no one is interested in PvE grouping these days except in TDs where most people want to be PLed anyways), tremendous barriers to participating in the end game, and a requirement that means a massive amount of grinding to be on an even vaguely even field. If you aren't templated, your screwed. If you aren't high RR, you are likewise also screwed but can eventually get to the point where its less of a barrier.

The ultimate problem is that Mythic - and they are hardly alone in this - listened to the hardcore PvPers and changed the game accordingly. If we were able to look at the history of all the players who have ever played this game, I bet we would find that less than 10% of them ever visited the forums more than a few times, if at all. The players who are solely focused on PvP may scream the most and be the most active in providing feedback (often biased or uninformed) but they are not the majority, and no game company should fall into the assumption that they represent the community. Every MMO I have played has seemingly made this mistake and its population has dwindled as the bulk of the population who want to have a great PvE game are slowly marginalized. The people who pay the bulk of the subscription revenue just want a friendly game they can enjoy with their friends on a casual basis. The rest of us who like PvP/RvR are the exception, not the norm.

 

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