I know this is a few weeks old, but is it me or does he not have a clue how to help Dark Age of Camelot progress?


When will it dawn on them that RvR by it self isn't going to increase the population. Even the guy holding the mic is giving him an odd look.


http://www.gamereactor.eu/grtv/?id=9729

But Rvr is the biggest draw to this game. PvE is much better in other games. So why not focus on it the most, til the ride is over

 

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Considering how much grief most of the vocal player base gave Mythic over TOA being too much PvE, this type of post can only make Stuart chuckle.

That wasn't PVE. That was a nightmare. They should have done their homework before adding PvE content. Playing a guessing game on where to find [profanity] + having it affect the RvR was a inexperienced novice move.

What the above 2 poster said is right. Also, they have a skeleton crew...what do you expect them to do?


We have to be more realistic

 

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A few comments:


1. The interviewer is terrible. His questions and follow on questions reflected no insight.


2. Stuart's head is in the right place. DAOC's competitive advantage is rvr, not carebear pve. The more resources invested against the former, and the fewer resources against the latter, the better.


3. DAOC has traditionally made it painful and expensive to change specs because they feared the FOTM specs. This always boggled my mind, compared to other games where changing specs is easy. If the game is rvr, why make it so hard to optimize your spec?


4. There's a disconnect between his claimed focus on rvr and the news they bring. The events should be rvr events, not pve ones. This game doesn't need more pigherding or goofy hat fluff. For example, how about the GMs take over a keep and reward the realm who takes it, giving lesser rewards based on participation to the losing realms? How about creating supply lines to cause keeps to degrade if not held, etc?

Yeah, it would be cool if the events were more RvR focused. I'd like to see that.

Totally spot on.


I understand that Mythic has a small crew and they can’t focus on everything that needs work, but the interview does seem to show a lack of understanding of the MMO community. The vast majority of MMO players are PvE centric.


There are many PvE things that interns could be working on while the experienced coders work on RvR.



That is somewhat correct but the RvR/PvP crowd is very small. As the small/tiny ‘niche’ community grows tired of DAoC the population continues to shrink.


For the game to survive with more than a tiny population, Mythic needs to fix the PvE.(edit: and Mythic desperately needs to stop shooting themselves in the feet.)


"So why not focus on it the most, til the ride is over? "

Because, from the time just after SI, your suggestion has been Mythic’s attitude and that very attitude shrunk this game while an inferior game grew and showed the MMO world just how large the market really is. Mythic has mostly ignored the PvE crowd and it has caused irreparable harm to the game.


Some will point to Xpac after Xpac that contained PvE and use those Xpacs as an example of how Mythic kept putting effort into DAoC's PvE but it is an incorrect evaluation. With each new Xpac like TOA, Cat, DR and LotM, Mythic improved the drops, improved the experience and improved the quests (all to excite the RvR players so the RvR players would purchase the Xpacs to get the new toys for use in RvR). All the improvement of the drops/experience happened only in the Xpac which made the old world almost obsolete. With the old world zone area, quests, etc . . . such a huge part of the game Mythic shot themselves in the foot by making the old world mostly obsolete.


At the same time the old world became obsolete, DF also became obsolete and control of DF was one of the things that had PvE centric players flock to the Frontiers and feed the frontiers with fodder.


Mythic still has the best concept. Mythic just needs to make the game fun for more than just one play style.



You left out a very significant part of what caused TOA hate.


Additional and extensive MANDITORY PVE.


Players did not grab pitchforks, burning torches and revolt at the additional PvE of SI or of Cat or of DR or of LotM. TOA had huge additional marathons of required extra PvE time, time that could pull a player out of RvR for many months just to get one toon ready for RvR again and if the player had many different RvR toons, TOA could actually have the player removed from RvR for more than a year while the player got his characters once again ready for RvR.


No other Xpac forced players to leave RvR for such huge amounts of time and no other Xpac required so many huge marathon investments of time where a player would end up living the game for days at a time just to finish small parts of TOA.


Sorry Ravyn but you totally misrepresent what actually happened with TOA.


Some may say that TOA was not actually required, I still here that said by some. If TOA were not very important then good groups would not have required players to have TOA gear and abilities before allowing others to join up. We all know TOA was a requirement to be more than just fodder. In 98% of the cases, unless your friends were showing pity, if you did not have TOA done on a character you were cast down to the PUGs or the Zerg.


http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?feature=1091&game=11&bhcp=1


From an interview, comments by Mythic Designer Mike Stone:

“One of the last points that I feel is important to bring up is that in talking with the team the issue of Trials of Atlantis was addressed. The developers know that ToA was poorly received by the community when it was released and mentioned that the Gareth server was in direct response to that. They wanted players to enjoy the game without the ToA content. The main reason behind this was also clarified by Mike Stone, “Players don’t want to be forced; they want to choose what they do.” He basically went on to say that ToA forced players to compete in an arms race scenario when the game was already successful with its RvR content. People then felt like they had to go out and grind again. This process took away from the RvR which was so popular."



Excellent point/suggestion.

 

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DAOC was a fairly decent PvE MMORPG with RvR added on like the icing on the cake. ToA took them too far in the wrong direction, it took them years to fix it. Now it's probably gone way too far in the other direction.

It would be nice if they could add little bits of additional level 50 content which doesn't disappear after a few weeks. I'm not expecting much, I don't want forced PvE - just more updated quests, mobs, drops, etc.

What I took away from it:

1. He said they are going into the 10th year and the game is still growing and going strong. lol.

2. You can play using any language you like (as long as it's English).

3. Funny, he said RvR was the focus and they instantly started showing game images of ToA and PvE.

4. He said part of the draw for a new player is 'arrrrrgggg" got ganked by the old schoolers.

5. Is the interviewed stoned ?

 

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