This game is so dead.

On the forums people are complaining because it is now pretty obvious that noone is left on DAoC after Warhammer, the expansion and everything else. And I don’t mean the players. Apparently there isn’t anyone anymore working on the game beside all those guys they hired from QA and CS that are now probably rolling their thumbs and stare blankly. Or have VERY BAD ideas.

The pace of development is spiraling down at a much faster pace than the subscribers count.

The last test patch segment arrives after more than two weeks and only contains some database changes. These changes have an impact on the gameplay, but quite “cheap” to implement. As if the designers are trying hard to impress the players more than trying to seriously make a better game.

At a first glance you could say that the new changes are good. All the buffs will now last (WoW-like) from half to a full hour. So less annoyances for the players.

But you see, DAoC isn’t designed as WoW (where there isn’t a “buffbot” class that casts nearly all the buffs in the game) and you cannot port those kind of features like that without breaking the game. If the timers are shorter THERE IS a reason. In fact this applies even to the resists buffs, which have a *significant* impact on the gameplay if you can specialize a toon completely on them, with then the possibility to cast the buff on just EVERYONE (since the resists buffs don’t use the concentration pool).

And yeah. This means buffbots EVEN on the classic servers.

Why? Because the resists buffs, again, aren’t concentration based. And the range limit on buffs on the classic servers works only on concentration based buffs.

P.S.
And the minotaur model was shown on the test server as well. And, ugh, it’s not so good.

Standard troll model with a different head plugged in. No tail, no hoof. Probably no dedicated animations either.

Complete lack of style whatsoever, and the hair are ridiculous. Mythic is getting lazier than ever. Shadowbane isn’t my idea of good art, but at least they gave it a more beast-like feel and not just a standard body with a super-deformed head taken out of a Disney’s movie.

Mid and Hib versions are even uglier due to bad colors/light used.

P.P.S.
Haha. Best quote from FoH:

I saw that minotaur this morning. It was on the front of my cup of Brown Cow brand Yogurt.