There are a few differences on Uthgard from old DAoC, but for the most part it is 2002 DAoC (pre-SI, pre-ToA, pre-NF)!
You'll notice that some of the frontier mobs have been moved around or removed entirely, there are no doors on the old mile-gates, and there is a new zone called Tajendi that they invented for over questing over level 40. Tajendi is really cool if you are a fan of SG-1, but mostly it's just a zone that has a few drops and some puzzles to solve so you can skip it if you don't care. There is a Tajendi patch to install before you can actually enter that zone (Uthgard forum has links).
The epic quests have been removed as a long serious of quests and replaced with a couple of useful low level quests that mirror the old epic low level ones, then there are no more epic quests until level 50. That last epic quest is similar to the old last epic quest in that you go kill a mob, report back to an NPC and you get your epic gear. There are some new quests for low level people but about level 15 or so there are only the old quests to do and some of those have been removed.
Some of the crafting stuff is bogus since those new rams and things from NF do not apply, but alchemy now has the bottles (10 pots) and barrels (100 pots) to make carrying potions around easier. There is an Uthgard-specific patch to clean up some of it, so if you're going to do any crafting then install the patch (Uthgard forum has links).
The battlegrounds from NF have kind of been adopted, but very poorly imo. There are only three BG's (Wilton: lev 20-35, Braemar: lev 36-43, and Thidranki: lev 44-49). They really should have broken Wilton into three parts because going in there at level 20 is just dumb, and most people wait until mid 30's.
There are a lot more Europeans than Americans that play, but I've not had any trouble finding someone to group with if I needed to despite the time differences. For me, population level feels a lot like old Gawaine (hits 1k nearly every day), though the RvR action is at its highest during my daytime and really early evening. There is RvR going on in my late evenings when I can actually play, but usually it's the leftover stuff (killing odds and ends, re-taking keeps, opening/cleaning DF, etc.) So RvR for me tends to be more of a weekend thing. Relics move around quite often. Currently Hib has all six, but prior to that Hib/Mid shared three each, and prior to that Mid had all six. Alb has gotten a relic here and there, but I've not seen Alb with more than two at a time. It has been a lot of movement in the three months that I've been there. The '/who' command shows you the number in your realm and the number on the server. In Mid it seems to be about 1/3 nearly all the time, but I don't know about Hib or Alb. There has been a resurgence of Hib in the last couple of weeks so there may be more of them than Alb right now, but since you can make separate accounts and play the other realms, it does not really matter much. Some of my Swedish guildies are taking a break from Mid and playing Alb right now.
Mostly, if you are digging it and excited then you are in the right place. Since it's free I have no problem not playing if I'm not in the mood.
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-I liked it when things were simpler. Gravity wasn't known. Things just stuck to the Earth because they loved it.
-The day I can't do my job drunk, is the day I turn in my badge and gun.
-There are two types of people in the world: those who need closure
