DAOC casting mechanics were terribad. The only people who loved them were of course, casters... which is why the game is known as Dark Age of Castalot...

DAOC's melee mechanics were excellent with the exception of the armor type vs. weapon type stuff which was just an unnecessary level of complexity and imbalance to throw into the mix.

WoW's casting mechanics are excellent, WoW's melee mechanics are terribad.

 

-----signature-----

Roleplaying-wise, I fully support idea of casters having problems to spell the spells
while 10ft high troll wield huge 2h axe toward their head...it just makes sense

 

-----signature-----

I didn't play WoW because I am too awesome and unique for the MMO of the stinking masses, so I can't comment on its PvP. I played a lot of Rift PvP, however, and many peole claim it was a WoW clone, so I feel comfortable extrapolating that into general statements about WoW and its players. Casters were insanely stupidly easy to play in Rift (as was all PvP basically) as every class was designed to button mash around 3 or 4 win buttons on cool downs. As a result, fully 9 out of 10 Rift PvP players were atrocious, because the game was designed to take no skill. I took the survival skills I learned playing a caster in DAoC (positioning, kiting, battlefield awareness) and turned it into flat out domination in many PvP arenas while most casters stood toe to toe with tanks spamming their Instaheals and Soul Purges.

I hear what Yuki is saying about WoW's timed ability and counters, which frankly sounds like an awful game mechanic similar to Rift where it is all about whose win button is off cool down and whose guild helped them get omgpurples. I don't equate memorizing abilities and rotations with skill though. Actually I'd say that is a compete blight on MMOs based on my experience in Rift. I am pretty sure I'd be better than 90% of WoW PvP players within a few weeks in that case.

 

-----signature-----

Thx dude.

 

-----signature-----

DAOC was all about alpha strike and RA dumping - much less so than WoW's mechanics.

To say that DAOC was not about the alpha strike and RA dumping is either blatant fanboyism or simply an error of recollection.

WoW's mechanics are all about balancing abilities on 6 to 30 second cooldowns. For one or two classes though it's all about the alpha strike and dumping longer cooldown abilities (which play a lot like DAOC RAs except that not all classes have them). For most though, it's about managing cooldowns and reacting to the other player.


It's true that 90% of WoW players are terribles, but if you took away 90% of WoW's subscribers, you'd still have 400% more people than EVER played DAOC.

In the early days of WoW it was pathetically easy to wtfpwn people if you had any experience with DAOC RvR. That remains true today unless you run up against people who have actually played WoW PvP with anything other than FOTM one-button-wonder classes. With every expansion, and with most major content patches, WoW creates and removes FOTM classes. The "left-axe" concept is repeated ad nauseum with WoW, just with different classes on a somewhat rotating basis.

 

-----signature-----

If you sucked or played a stealther I guess, but those two are one and the same thing.

 

-----signature-----

I played a Cleric, a Cabalist, a Necro, and a Scout. Admittedly my scout was my favorite toon, but I had the most playing time on my Cleric. I rolled my cabby to see how life was "for the other half" - the Necro's caster mechanics at that point were wholly different than the cabby's or cleric's.

I zerged, I soloed, and I ran 8v8. 8v8 and solo was all about alpha strike and RA dumping. Zerging was all about numbers, though with a proper RA dump much smaller numbers could overcome much greater numbers.

In DAOC the fight was about achieving first interrupt/CC and /assist chaining proper targets. The way to overcome the loss of the alpha strike fist interrupt/mez was to dump RAs, at which point it was about whoever had the most RAs ready to dump.

 

-----signature-----

What was the Cabalist "alpha strike" or uber RA dump?

 

-----signature-----

I have no idea lol, I stopped playing DAOC when WoW went live. That was back in 2004 fully 7 years ago now. I had very little RvR time with my cabalist.

I do know that I could pick off people at near max range with my cab by hitting one button which I think was a debuff, and then mashing another button which I think was a lifetap and keep on mashing it and before a target could reach me if they weren't gettting healed, they'd be dead. None of my other characters could do that, not even close.

 

-----signature-----

Well, I don't think you have enough experience to make the statements you have made. For one, Cabalists were all about using the right ability at the right time, they didn't have an alpha strike. And fights between skilled groups were never about dumping RAs to start a fight, that would be a stupid tactic against a competent group. I thnk you are extrapolating WoWs crappy mechanics onto other games, whch just sort of reinforces my belief that WoW PvP must be crap for crap players just like Rift.

 

-----signature-----