There was a relevant news about DAoC I originally decided not to comment, but I want to answer on a specific aspect.

The news is that all the stuff you could get from ToA, the used-to-be hardcore PvE stuff that many believe ruined the game till the release of “classic” servers with ToA stuff stripped off the game, well, all this stuff can now be “bought” with bounty points.

The bounty point are some sort of PvP currency, so the bottom line is that previously PvE exclusive stuff is now accessible directly from PvP. I guess everyone welcomes this (LATE) move.

It works like an alternative path but you would lie to yourself if you would think this corresponds to a “choice”. Ideally you like PvE and get this stuff from PvE, while if you like PvP you get the same stuff from PvP. Choice is good but the point is that in the practice there’s no real choice (if not when things are completely soloable): you have to stick and adapt to what everyone else does.

Then you also have to see what is the conversion ratio. Mythic could even decide to make these items absurdly expensive in order to not make the PvE obsolete. But it would be a very bad move.

So, in practice, I agree with Apache. Mythic “killed” ToA and, yes, they may as well delete the ToA zones. That content is now completely mudflated. It lost its function.

I wanted to reply to this post in particular:

On one hand, the changes look wonderful, until you realize that once again, as always, the benefit here is for the “have’s” and the “have not’s” are left out in the cold. How so you say? You need an income of RP’s from NF to benefit from any of this. How does anything in 1.88 make NF any more attractive for the casual gamer? Being slaughtered by stealth zergs and RR10 8man’s isn’t many people’s idea of fun. Standing around at portal keeps LFG for 2 hours when you only have 2 hours to play is not many people’s idea of fun. You can’t earn bounty point in the battlegrounds, why not? Last time I checked battlegrounds were realm vs realm combat… So how does the casual gamer actually GET the rps needed for the bounty points? The powergamers reap 100% of the reward here and the casuals get screwed….again.

Until Mythic realizes that the powergamer is not keeping this game afloat, casuals are, the game will continue to experience it’s steady bleed off of players. Over time, casuals get sick and tired of being overlooked while powergamers are catered to over and over and over again. up to 25% of the players of this game are the so called uber powergamers which leaves a significant pool of players 75% to further bleed off the population. Mythic needs to figure out where their bread is really buttered before the prime time population for all servers is 2500…

The real problem runs deeper. Problem in DAoC is that there’s no influx of new players, so what’s left is long time veterans in high ranks and teamspeak.

While in the past the “hardcore” portion was there, but still somewhat balanced by a group less hardcore and welcoming new players and casual groups, the more the game declines, the more those few players who are left are veterans with powerful characters and a strong guild organization.

So here there’s both a problem of game design (strong bias and support to the 8vs8 meta-game) and a problem of community (game becoming increasingly niche and driving away new players).

Problem is that all this is the long-term consequence of choices made by Mythic a while ago.