Dark Age of Camelot’s Catacombs – An early review

LAST EDIT: If you do not have time to read my babblings I suggest to still check the screenshots. I believe they are good.

There are 48 of them and, since I’m wicked, the best are the last. The Kobold city (Midgard main hub) is freaking awesome. The best piece of art I’ve ever seen in a game. And I’m not exaggerating. Who built that zone is simply not human.

I’ve moved the screenshots to a “light” page in order to not stress the site: dedicated screenshot page

—
This is an attempt at an early review. “Early” because I use to write my reviews after the first impact. I did this with World of Warcraft, I repeated it with Guild Wars and once again recently with the expansion to Doom 3. In all these cases I’m always ready to check them again after months and years to confirm that even after extended play sessions my impressions and considerations don’t change, I still believe in what I write even if it comes just after a few hours of play. This because I always try to to understand in depth the general patterns to figure out how they build the rest of the game that I still haven’t experienced. The other reason is because I give a strong value to the “first impression”. The newbie experience and the first steps allow already to understand the approach and philosophy of the game. What will happen next will be a rehash or a combination of the previous patterns. In the case of this game I also have a deep knowlodge of the overall structure since I played it for more than two years, so I can understand what this expansion adds and how it interacts with the rest. This means that it won’t be a DAoC review. I don’t want to write 20Mb of text and, since I know I can drift too easily, I’ll try to mantain the focus on the content of this expansion and glance to the latest patches when they are related.

Follow the “read more” link if you have so much time available –>

The presentation
This expansion follows exactly the same path of “Shrouded Isles” (SI) and “Trial of Atlantis” (ToA). Mythic’s expansions are like a yearly rendezvous, usually happening in early December. This time the launch hasn’t been smart considering the it was completely overshadowed by the launch of blockbusters like WoW and EQ2. The expansion could have used another three-four months of polish to then launch in March or early April and convince many more escapees to come back for a change.

The box art follows the pattern of the previous packages and I have to say that with each step Mythic has improved the overall impact. The cover has a “bumpmapped” entrance to a burning cave and the use of an ardent and glowy palette helps to hook the eye and hint an interest to discover what’s beyond. It is an improved reprise of ToA, where the portal was a sight on a sunken temple, again suggesting exploration and mystery. To stimulate and tickle the curiosity, the hopes and dreams that each player carries already and with the Celtic knot (DAoC’s symbol) to represent the “door”, the line to cross. The game represented a vehicle to deliver those emotions (a mysterious pulsing heart is another of the symbols evocated by the burning cave). The cover can then be opened to unfold three different pages and a backcover quoting: “The Unexplained. The Unexplored. The Unexpected.” Underlining again the concepts suggested by the burning cave. The other three pages are divided as one for each realm, one for Albion, one for Hibernia and one for Midgard, in this order. Each page presents a full figure of a selected character to show off the new models used in the expansion and a screenshot of the “main” zone in each realm. Near the foot of the first model on the first page you can read: “actual character model”. This is interesting because of two reasons. The first is that it’s true, those are the real models in the game. The second is that they are indeed *awesome*, but they really aren’t what you find in the game. A contradiction? Not really, just Mythic playing smart. What really stands out and impresses on those figures are the textures, the postures and the use of light. In the game you’ll find those models, it’s true. But for sure you won’t find those texture, those postures and that type of light. So a really nice trick. The overall impact is effective for sure.

Inside there’s nothing to feel excited about. The client moves from the two CDs of ToA to four (a complete installation with all the extras takes just below 3Gb). The manual is rather poor and only contains a few pages with skimpy desciptions of the new features and the “credits” that are probably more interesting than the rest. I did some comparisons with ToA and I didn’t notice an increased number of developers as Mythic flaunts. On the contrary, I noticed a few less names overall. It seems some peoples got moved, joined or disappeared but, from a superficial glance, it doesn’t look that who got moved or vanished was the actual responsible of the disasters of ToA’s design. I have the impression that there has been a lot of bustle behind the scenes and a lot of “unload of responsibilities”. But I also don’t have the concrete elements to be sure or judge this, so lets move onward. There isn’t much more in the box aside the marketing fluff and a promotional card of “Imperator” with three panels with nice conceptual art from the same artist who worked on DAoC (and, probably, this expansion).

The installation went smooth, aside a small episode where I panicked when it asked me to type the code of my original Camelot CD. Luckily I have everything ordered in an closet and the key-code from ToA’s CD worked as well. Then there’s the patching. When I first installed the game the servers were down, so I waited the evening to go through everything. The patch isn’t small, before you can access the game you have to download 80Mb. It isn’t everything. Mythic released during the past week two optional packages to install, one to upgrade the “Town Art” and another to add tutorials. I underline these aspects because there’s something to discuss. When I play a game I always install/buy/download everything related to it to experience it at its best. This means that I won’t even try to launch the game before having installed both the tutorials (46Mb) and the art patch (58Mb), but this is also *not* a diffused behaviour. Not everyone has an out-of-scale passion for this genre to know in detal what is going on everywhere and remember that there are optional patches to download for a game. In particular the newbies (so all the potential new players) know absolutely ZERO of optional patches to download. Explain me, please: what’s the sense to add tutorials for the game when only the experienced players and fools like me will know about them and spend time to download this sort of “fluff”? I know that the patch is already big for DAoC’s standards but those tutorials are useful only if integrated. A similar reasoning can be done for the new art patch, it’s to the new players that you should show “the best” of the game, to maximize the impact and feel. So this is definitely a poor choice. I’d suggest, at least, to put some work on the patcher. Mythic should learn from SOE and show there a configuration page where you can browse, select and download all the “extras” available. The patcher is something that every player can see, the Herald isn’t. The patcher should be expanded to offer more informations, not just the patch notes. Mythic should add more utility to it and integrate it better with the Herald in order to have a wider “reach”. Also: the program is still unresponsibe and it’s already hard even to scroll those patch notes. It definitely needs some usability work.

There are also general considerations to make. I began saying that the launch of the expansion was overshadowed by other blockbusters and that it could have been much more successful (and polished) if launched later, but this discussion is wider. I really cannot understand the whole marketing approach. The trial versions of the game always show it without the nicest frills. Exactly the opposite of what a trial should do. If someone likes the game it means that he will have to buy everything from zero: the original DAoC, SI, ToA and Catacombs. Even if there are cumulative “packs” available on the market, the plan is still poor. Mythic should seriously consider to transform these yearly packs into downloadable packages that the current subscribers can buy and install on-the-fly. CONTEMPORARILY launching a comprehensive box in the stores containing ALL the expansions plus the last addition. This would help *greatly* to convince the old players to quickly upgrade with a mouse click and attract the eye of a casual customers in a shop without their eyes falling on a list of “requirements” they cannot fulfill, so making them moving forward to consider something else. This is how you maximize the impact, instead of erode even more the possible customers that can see a WoW box just aside.

The first launch
I finally move in the game. The client is patched to the current version, the optional packages are installed. I’m ready to reactivate my account and finally launch the actual game. Here I was expecting to see again the movie I already discussed. I thought that the 80Mb patch was so big due to the movie itself and I also sort-of believed the ass-licking propaganda and other fanboys that Mythic is incentivating in key-positions to still have a space in the news. Instead there is no movie. Nothing. It seems it was just the promotional thing on IGN and nothing really related to the game itself. So there’s just the old client I know even too well with a new splash screen and layout for the selection screen and character creation. After being spoiled by Blizzard I definitely tolerate less and less the awful limits of DAoC. The first really annoying limitation is the lack of a decent windowed mode. I don’t believe there are many mmorpg players left, out there, playing in full screen. DAoC works in a window but lacks a decent support for it. You cannot use a maximized window and you can only select the default resolutions. This means that you can choose only the resolution one step BELOW your current desktop resolution. The window won’t fill the screen properly and you’ll always have to bear with this smaller window, ruining directly the immersion and wasting space on screen that you could surely use in a better way than show a part of the icons on your desktop. I think it’s time to support the window mode more properly instead of having it as an option telling you that it is unsupported and may produce a long list of problems. Today that attitude isn’t anymore acceptable on a commercial game and if Mythic has chosen to not buy anymore new versions of the engine they use, they should start to develop the client by themselves instead of just ignoring and using it till the game will resist with a public. As I already explained there’s no “Catacombs client”. The expansion uses the same bugged and awfully optimized ToA client. The rising minimum requirements are for the new models that for sure are more graphically intensive. The option screen is the same with or without the expansion and there’s only a new option to decide if to turn on or off the new models or select which you want to use case per case.

The new general layout instead is nice and well planned. Here most of the improvements aren’t really tied to the expansion. In general the largest part of the new additions that both old and new players will appreciate are the result of what Mythic has patched in the last few months and available to everyone, also with the help of Blizzard to point to what actually matters and that Mythic blatantly ignored for years. When you were creating a new character in the old version it was always rather hard to decide how to distribute the points in the statistics. Only an experienced player with a deep knowledge of the ruleset could know in advance the best choices. Even if those points don’t have a severe effect in the game they can still represent a first step to “screw” your character and ruin it without a possibility to go back and fix a wrong decision. This narrow design was the result of the inheritance of pen&paper games. In these games the character creation is always rather deep and, in general, it has always played a major role in every type of RPG. The problem is that the transition from RPG to “mmorpg” didn’t go well. Even today the largest part of these games is a “combat simulation” and nothing else. This means that there is no “ruleset” aside the combat. It made sense for a warrior in a pen&paper game to boost the “intelligence” because EVERY stat had a purpose in the ruleset. Those choices were always meaningful and pertinent to the game. In a mmorpg this is completely lost. As a warrior you can spend points on charisma but the result isn’t a badly optimized character. You are *wasting* points. There’s NOTHING in the ruleset that uses the stats that aren’t tied to your class. Only a few numbers are used, while the rest is flat-out ignored. This stupid design, of course, cannot be understood without knowing the mistakes behind. The new players do not know how to distribute the points because they use to think that every statistic is useful in a way or another. Instead it’s simply an objective waste of point and consequence poor design. Now Mythic has tried to plug this design hole. At the character creation screen you can “ask” the game to automatically distribute the points in the most effective way for the class you are going to choose. This means that, while you can research a class and the best use of the points to make different choices, the newbie has still a “safe net” to figure out a decent choice without simply go with a clueless guess. Of course this won’t fix the design shortcomings that will come next. The specialization system that DAoC uses to drive the character progression and the classes is still way too hard to understand and use for new players, and, I can add, even for those who are experienced. Creating a character still obliges to a deep research outside the game (on message boards or spoiler sites) and this is for sure a serious limitation and problem. A well-designed game should never allow a player to “ruin” the character due to a mistake because of a lack of informations. The game should never force a player to look elsewhere for informations. The game itself is supposed to deliver what the players need and teach what they need to learn in order to play in the “right way”. Instead Camelot punishes the player who tries to experiment with the system and this is obviously a major problem even if the playerbase will learn to live with it. Right now distributing the spec points is still a guesswork. You don’t know what will be the effect of those points, you cannot see in advance the new skills you will acquire and you can easily screw up your character. There are rare moments in the game were you’ll gain accesses to “respecs” but I think it’s rather obvious that this whole system strongly needs a complete replan and reorganization in order to continue Mythic effort in softening the newbie experience. Which is an important goal.

Again, I’m drifiting out of the path of Catacombs and I’m discussing the rest of the game. But I think it’s useful to discuss the latest additions like the tutorials ad the new town art. All these elements are integrated with the game and define what Camelot is now. Even a direct judgement on the expansion is tied to all these elements because it cannot be considered directly as something completely separated. It’s also interesting to consider that all these parts were supposed to go live with the expansion but Mythic didn’t find enough time to pack everything together. This is why some features were delayed and became normal patches. This is also why I wrote above that they should have held the release to fit everything together and also gain a better exposition.

New player models
The main feature of the expansion is the graphical upgrade to the player models and the improved customization. My first comment when I finally launched the game was: “so, how can I turn on these new models?” Yeah, they were active and I didn’t notice any difference. It required me a fair amount of sighting before I finally realized that the client was using indeed the new models. In general I’m happy here despite this comment, my impressions by looking at the screenshots were really bad and I expected changes that I couldn’t consider as an objective step forward. Instead Mythic was able to “retain” the previous overall style and this isn’t bad. All races have now a “realistic look” and this is for sure a change in style but the overall impression is good and rather self-consistent, without unappropriate or clashing parts. The game looks nice and I passed a good amount of time on the PvP areas watching the other characters before forming an opinion. Everything fits really well and I consider the addition positive for the most part. Still, there are many, many minor problems, graphical glitches and inconsistences. To begin with, these models go on top of the ToA client, already buggy and heavy on its own. You need top-notch hardware to play the game smoothly, in particular if you expect to participate in large RvR battles without being able to sing a song between a frame and the other. The memory usage goes up and the framerate goes down by a fair margin when using the new models (I’ll add the specs of my PC at the bottom), so who doesn’t have a powerful computer could choose to predilige a better and smoother gameplay than the graphic upgrade. In particular considering that all the new details will vanish in the actual RvR, where for sure you do not go in first person for a close up. In general the upgrade is aimed to retain the same feel and style and adding more detail and realism. It fits better with the look of the environment, in particular when considered along with the “Town Art” upgrade added with the optional patch. You pay all this with a hit on the performance that isn’t critical but still considerable on a client that for sure doesn’t shine in quality and performance.

The customization is so-so. Even here there isn’t a “revolution”. You have more control on more elements but everything still comes in some sort of “packages”. One of the most evident limits is the style of hair and beards. Everything is bundled together and there are only an handful of choices available that you can then mix with seven or so different “faces”. There are also problems with the rendering of colors that, in many combinations, clash together badly (it’s a problem of the graphic engine for the most part) and there is the strange decision to use “jagged” borders for the hair and beards. The final result is bad, in particular because these small pixels tend to flicker considerably and, of course, you lose that sort of detail already when you are at than one meter away, so kind of useless. But in general this part can be considered a definite improvement over the previous character creation even if it’s still rather hard if not impossible to come out with an idea and try to recreate it in the game. You’ll just finish browse through all the possibilities choosing the least bad combinations. It’s important to consider that we are still dealing with a “face”, the rest of the figure is unaffected if we exclude the height (tall, medium, short) that is simply a rescale of the model and that is unmodified from the classic Camelot. On the early stage of development Mythic was planning to add more customization, giving more control on the size, for example, but it seems these features were discarded. I’d also have appreciated a brighter room in the customization screen in order to be able to get a better idea of my tweaks.

A lot more could be said about the specific cases. As I said, there’s an infinite list of minor glitches and inconsistences in the form of flickering textures (in particular around the necks), relevant clipping problems and “holes” in the polygons. For example some hair styles don’t behave properly and you’ll see white jags at some angles. There are problems with the hair and some cloaks melting together in bad ways and other combinations that don’t really match together. The use of dyes is still done badly despite Mythic claimed to have redone it. I don’t know if this feature was discareded or not but I didn’t notice *any* difference between the old and new system. The colors are still rendered unrealistically in every case and they fit badly with the smoother and more natural rendering of the light in the environment. The cloaks are improved. Some of the cloaks in ToA now can be branded with the guild’s symbol and the final result is awsome. Their aren’t anything to die for but still better than the old versions and pleasant to see. The inconsistences start if you put a weapon on your back or wear particular types of armor. I believe Mythic ignored a good amount of work to reposition properly the “attach points” and check the animations in order to solve the awul clipping problems. You can notice a good amount “lazyness” overall. I plan to gather a whole article in the next days, explaining with screenshots all these problems. But everything goes along the lines of the inconsistences I’ve described here. The characters could have used more polish about these details and, in particular, more originality and personality in the animations between the races. Postures and animations are extremely important in a game but here Mythic mostly cloned the old client and the same “default” figure. All the animations mimic exactly the old client beside really minor and hard to notice details (for example they modeled the fingers and animated them during the casting animations). There are some races that definitely need a more specific work. The half-ogre race packs together major problems and finishes to look rather horrible. It’s basically impossible to recognize an half-ogre from another character aside the errors. Once again Mythic forgot to rescale accordingly the weapons and an half-ogre with a two handed weapon simply looks ridiculous. Since the two handed sword looks like a toothpick and its handle is minimal you see the first hand of the character using all the space available on the handle, while the second hand goes completely off the sword itself, hodling just the air. It was also fun to see the character put this sword away on his back. In the old Camelot Mythic didn’t consider to reposition the attach point on the figure and its curved back made every weapon stick right through the cloak in a bad way. This time Mythic fixed the whole problem by making the character stick the sword right in his flesh. And yeah, it looks kind of lame, in particular if you consider that this race lost also its original curved position and so its only actual unique trait that made it recognizable and fun to see. Of course this is an example, I didn’t go through all the races to study the various combinations but, in general, the animations and the postures are the parts less considered and developed. They simply look generic and uninspired. They show no work or attention. Too often the graphic is considered as a model and a texture but this is just a limitation of the point of view. We are used too much to look at stating screenshots and we often forget how important is the movement and the concrete “feel” of a character.

To notice also the coordination of the animations with the actual movement: there’s none. Walking or running you’ll just see the character “skating on ice”. Try to jump and you’ll see the character landing and sliding on the terrain. The legs of the character won’t resume the proper movement till the landing animation isn’t over. Rotate on the place and you’ll see the character rotating without moving a foot. And so on. While in combat these problems become even more obvious. This is in general the approach (including the monsters). Every animation is approximate and rather imprecise. There’s isn’t even an attempt at giving these elements some consideration and value. Obviously these aren’t showstopping or critical problems. You’ll accept and “forget” all of them quickly but this also define a general attitude that for sure isn’t chasing an ideal of perfection or refinement. The result is an overall impression that brings to the scope and the quality level of the game itself, in particular considering that these aspects go systematically ignored by Mythic in order to focus on brand new content. The approach is superficial and gross, you definitely notice the difference when you move from a game with an high production value and another with narrower ambitions. In this case there is no improvement at all, nor an actual loss since all these problems existed already with the classic animations and models.

In general I’m strongly critical on many aspects, there’s a long list of glitches and problems along with more substantial poor choices, like the decision to make every animation, in particular from race to race, look rather generic and unimpressive. Both these problems (graphical glitches and animations) are the result of a low production value or, at least, a bland attention for the detail. But *overall* my impression is positive. It’s different if I try to express a general opinion about the game or if I compare directly the “before” and “after” states. Many problems I’ve pointed out are an inheritance of the past, I simply underline that those aspects haven’t improved substantially while other parts have. The work on the customization is a step forward and the models in general are a definite improvement even if they could use more work and you’ll “pay” the upgrade with a corresponding framerate loss. If I had to put these elements from the worst to the best I’d order them like this: animations – customization – models – textures

(some animations are also broken like the wizard casting animation that “jumps” awkwardly at a point. You can notice this even in the promotional video at 1:15 minute)

The world graphical update
Here I’ll join two parts, the merits of Catacombs related to the upgrade to the graphic of all the dungeons of both the classic game and Catacombs, plus the graphic update of the towns delivered with an optional patch free for everyone, Catacombs owners or not. In both cases the aim is to rehash the look of the old world. With the various expansions Mythic has always continued to improve the graphic of the various elements. With SI they upgraded the engine from 16bit to 32bit textures, replaced the trees models with more detailed ones, added shadows, added pixel shading to the water and replaced all the textures (monsters, players and world) with higer resolution versions. With ToA they added the underwater environments, redid again the trees with the SpeedTree technology, changed again the pixel shading on the water and added multi-texture support to the terrain that was completely redone everywhere. We can fit in this quick excursus even the “New Frontier” free expansion which upgraded all the keeps with brand new models and possibilities of interaction. In general this is a “layered” approach. With each reiteration Mythic chooses the layers that they consider obsolete and proceed to upgrade them. This time, with Catacombs, it’s the turn of all the dungeons in the game (including the monsters populating them) and all the towns via an optional patch that everyone can download free of charge.

The first consideration is that if you are a player of the game, you already know what to expect. Both the work on the dungeons and the work on the towns is limited to a *reskin*. Nothing changes concretely, it’s not a “remake” of a zone. You’ll just see the the exact same content with better textures (and upgraded models in a few cases). This means that the interaction is unchanged. It’s the same type of gameplay, the exact same structures and the exact same layout. It just looks better. The walls of the classic dungeons are now more detailed, there are glowy webs moving with the wind (if you’ve been in Caer Sidi you know already what to expect), the light system is redone and everything looks more gloomy and dark but again you won’t notice differences aside this reskin. I say that if you are an old player you already know what to expect because the work on these textures (and, then, all the work on the new Catacombs areas) seems to come directly from the same hand who worked on the epic dungeons of SI and all the content of ToA. You can expect that type of quality and I think it’s not detrimental.

DAoC has finally a recognizable style and also a *good* style. It’s evocative and fascinating even if these praises cannot be extended to the rest of world design. The general design of the actual landmass is flat, uninspired and featureless. This is whats jumps to the eye now that everything looks “nicer” on the first impact. DAoC, for the most part, is built with generic terrain looking realistically but without respresenting or “reaching” anything else. Hills, trees and rocks. Maybe realistic and good looking hills, trees and rocks but there’s here a definite need for some personality. The world isn’t supposed to be just an horizontal floor where you randomly plug groups of trees or buildings. World of Warcraft really set a new level here and demonstrated concretely how poor and irrelevant has been the world design in DAoC till this moment. I always underlined this weakness in DAoC and other games and now I’m glad to be able to bring examples to confirm my point of view. But this again goes beyond the scope of what I’m supposed to say even if I consider always useful to broaden the scope of what I’m commenting in order to be more clear and inclusive.

What I want to add is that the work the artists have done is really good. I like the style as I said, in particular I like the fact that DAoC is *trying* to create its own specific style instead of looking just as a nice but generic and featureless world. So my comment on all this is definitely good without reservations. What I underline, though, is the narrow scope that even here Mythic chose. It’s not true that the graphic impact of a game is just what you can show on a screenshot. DAoC looks nicer but it also looks the same. The “world design” is a type of study way deeper than a reskin. Right now this is what you feel from the game: it’s up-to-date if you consider the textures but it’s definitely obsolete if you go to delve more, including the layouts and the organization of the spaces. So, while the graphical upgrade is a definite improvement, it isn’t true (as Mythic would like) that this is enough to keep up to date the whole graphic layer. The graphic, in a game, is a more extensive concept. You can keep reskinning and even remodeling some parts but for sure the actual gameplay, layout and interactions won’t change. The graphic is a system used to deliver “feedback” from the gameplay perspective. A nicer texture can help the immersion but it isn’t the whole scope of what the graphic *really is*. It doesn’t add possibilities. All concepts I’ve discussed extensively here for who’s interested. I underline that even on this aspect Mythic has a rather superficial approach and consideration.

(Little problem: Mythic broke the lightmaps with the “town art” patch. At least in Cotswold. This means that the player’s torch won’t work and it’s basically impossible to see during the night since you’ll be in PITCH BLACK. I hope they’ll fix this rather soon.)

The underground world
From the “content” point of view this expansion represents a full retreat from the positions of ToA. While ToA (and SI to an extent) added high level content, so an extension of PvE to discover and achieve with already maximized characters, with Catacombs the focus is completely elsewhere. The target, this time, is the elusive “casual player” and the design is aimed to break the content in faster play sessions that are compatible with players that cannot remain logged for hours to complete long raids. Everything within the new zones is aimed to accompany the players along the levels and not to be farmed to obtain powerful items to use in the RvR. There is still loot to acquire but the bonuses are focused to the PvE portion of the game, so again to support the treadmill itself and not to replenish an endgame. In a few words I could say that there’s a definite line between PvE and PvP and they do not overlap anyomre as it happened with ToA.

In general the travel and movement in the whole game has seen major tweaks and facilitations. It would be too long to examine every adjustement but for sure it’s easier to move between the zones without losing too much time. Recently Mythic increased by a fair amount the running speed (one of the most common complaints between the players) in the case the player isn’t engaged in combat or in an RvR zone. Overall they did a good work, the travel isn’t anymore a chore and they also organized the various passages and portals in a comprehensible way, so even a new player will be able to take advantage of all these new possibilities without feeling completely lost. The in-game maps are a wonderful addition to the UI and they help greatly the questing. Finally I can consider the quests as a viable path. Before Catacombs the quest system was *unusable*. The quests were always approximate and boring. In most cases you finished to pass an hour or more on a horseback while fetching stuff from a place or another. There was no way to know which NPC was offering a quest and there was no way to understand if a quest was a waste or time or something useful. At level 50 you could get a level 10 quest and to discover who if there were quests available you had to click, *one by one*, over every single NPC on the whole world. When you dinged a new level you had to repeat the whole process to see if new quests were unblocked. Along the months Myhtic learnt from WoW and started to make the quest system progressively usable. They began by showing the level or range of levels of the quest, then they finally added a visual mark (and it’s really nice and unobtrusive) on the NPCs offering the quests and, finally, they tweaked these marks to show only the quests in the proper level range and added the in-game maps to help the orientation. After all these tweaks the quests are viable gameplay. Of course these utility fixes won’t solve the fact that the largest part of the content in the classic game is now completely obsolete and badly written.

I commented the travel not only because of these additions, but also because Catacombs has the function to “join” the various dungeons together. You can find cracks in the walls of a dungeon and by entering them (zoning out) you’ll finish in another underground zone built by a system of caverns with the corridors leading to all the other classic dungeons. So, while in the old world to move from Mithra to Keltoi you had to exit the dungeon and walk till the other side of the world, now you can simply access the caves and check your map to understand where to go, without losing time. These caves have also a few carts on rails that you can use to move from a side to another of a tunnel, one-way and without the need to walk from a point to another. You can simply click on one and the cart will start to slide on its rails in a straight line till you “dismount” or arrive at the other end of the tunnel. While this isn’t anything impressive it looks rather cool and fun. This system helps the travel since this ensemble of tunnels obviously doesn’t match the space you’d need to cross in order to arrive at your destination. While it’s surely unrealistic and not consistent I don’t think it will perceived as a major issue. I liked how these zones are built and, again, the in-game maps helped me a lot to figure out where to go. The last feature is the implementation of “magical obelisks” working as “save states”. By exploring the new zones you find these objects that you can “touch” and unblock. Once you activate an obelisk you’ll be able to quickly teleport to its position from the central, underground hubs in every realm (the kobold undercity for Midgard, the Inconnu crypt for Albion and the Shar labyrinth for Hibernia), so another type of travel to quickly reach your destination without walking through all the aqueducts and tunnels (similar to the djnn stones in ToA).

All these points are joined together because the result and the aim is the same in every part of this expansion. The purpose is to deliver an usable system, without too many oddities or problems. It’s a “gentle” expansion. The newbies are supposed to learn all these tools and never feel overwhelmed in situations they cannot understand and manage. While all this may be put for granted, it wasn’t the case in DAoC. The game severely suffered from a badly planned system that was hard to understand and use even for experienced mmorpg players. While now all these little fixes may be considered irrelvant, I believe that they represent, instead, one of the best improvements. With Catacombs, the new tutorials and the new features of the interface, the game is now comprehensible and accessible for everyone. Mythic did a good work for the most part and they also joined the different “starting points” to just one per realm, adding every new player to a “starter guild” that is another bright idea. Instead of being hurled in a silent game with zero feedback, now the players finish in a shared space and chat. This surely helps to offer an interaction that can easily lead to solving problems and open up the socialization.

This is the area where Catacombs probably fulfilled better its ambitions. It’s a “bridge” between the experts populating the majority of the world and possible new players. Without these types of bridges a mmorpg would easily die no matter of the quality. Now the game is more accessible and despite there are many parts that still need work (the spec system I explained above, for example) I can only appreciate these efforts and believe that Mythic reached an important goal. The content is not amazing or particularly fun. The first quests are easily predictable and go from fetching objects to kill stuff. At least you aren’t asked to walk for hours. What still could need a polish is the actual system used to build the quests themselves. Someone coming from WoW will have to deal with other usability problems that aren’t that intuitive. For example to use a quest object you’ll have to right click and type “/use”, or target an NPC and write down a set “string” that you are supposed to say or whisper. This means that the viability of a quest depends strongly on how well it’s written and this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the quest log won’t save useful details and you could finish in situations where you cannot easily figure out where to go, what to do, or how to trigger the particular event that is supposed to unblock the next step. But I also can confirm that in this expansion there’s at least an effort to make all the informations clear. A new player can easily get stuck with these problems but after some reasearch he will also able to solve them.

From the graphic quality point of view I repeat what I said above for the graphical update in general. I like DAoC’s world artists and while these underground zones look rather repetitive they are still inspired and of a good quality. I wouldn’t judge positively the client instead. This is again DAoC’s major problem, its client is awful and antiquate. These zones aren’t that graphical intensive and still there are parts that you can judge rather heavy without any logical reason. In particular I had framerate hits on the zone with the carts on rails I described above. The framerate suffers despite you are only within tight tunnels relatively featureless. The game is surely playable (the real problems start with the RvR) but it’s still not acceptable to have a low framerate in an empty zone and on decent hardware. In particular because the zones aren’t that complex and just show the limit of an awful engine that never worked properly since release. Here you’ll definitely notice the difference between proprietary engines developed for specific purposes and third party licenses filled with bugs and inconsistencies. So, aside these technical problems, these zones are beautiful even if a bit depressing and boring in their “mood”.

As I said right at the start this is a review coming from early impressions so I didn’t have the time to experience a lot of content in order to describe all the various parts and judge them altogether. I believe I was able to point out most of the important traits: the orientation exclusively to the PvE, the ease of travel, the good quality of the graphic, the bad client performance in some zones and the attention on the content and presentation for the new players. In particular on this last aspect I can say something more related to the expansion. As you finish the tutorial, you arrive out of Camelot (in my case). Here you can start to talk directly with your trainer that will offer you two “paths” one if you want to follow quests on the classic game and one to reach directly the new Catacombs zones. As I said the directions are precise and this will help the new players to start directly with the actual game. What I didn’t say is that you have a third option. Near the bindstone in the center you can find a “taskmaster”. This NPC explains you that he can offer quick tasks to perform in instanced dungeons. He will let you choose between one with long corridors in order to play it with a caster or one suitable for close combat for the melee classes. The tasks are rather simple like slashing your way through the dungeon till you find the named and kill it or simply clean the place from every monster. The entrance to these private dungeons is nearby, you’ll find a pile of rocks just by the village and by moving in the opening you’ll zone in your private instance.

Here I’d say that designers often confuse “newbie” with “idiot”. My first dungeon was a corridor (with nice texture and nothing else) and a row of mobs standing completely still. My duty was to melee my way through this row. One kill, two steps, another kill, two steps, another kill .. and so on. That’s it. At the end you’ll receive a reward in experience and some money. This is the philosophy behind the game. These tasks are simply grinding facilities. They offer no gameplay and they *blatantly admit it*. There’s nothing to do, you just enable your dungeon, zone into it, farm the mobs and go out to rinse and repeat. There’s nothing else. At various times I felt like playing “Rubies of Eventide”. The positive part is that this is… relaxing (Eve-Online mining relaxing). There’s nothing better than a row of mobs not moving and just waiting to be whacked. They range from blue to green con, so easy targets. You are really just supposed to go there and whack them at little to no risk. The reward, both money and experience (and occasional drops), is really, really good by DAoC’s standards so this makes the solo-grind as a viable path to progress in the treadmill. But.

Well, I hope there isn’t a need to explain that “but”. This type of design makes the game way too much self-conscious. It doesn’t even *try* anyomore to excuse or justify the grind, or hide it behind some actual gameplay. There’s simply *zero* effort. It’s a void with the aim to be just a void. DAoC never reached this low level even if its PvE has always been weak and bland. This time the game goes beyond. It cannot be considered bland because there’s simply nothing at all. There is a generic collection of featureless corridors (the same you’ll see in all the other dungeons) and rows of mobs to play bowling with. It’s sort of ridiculous because it’s spudorate. They serve you the grind on a plate and they even brand it properly: “here’s your grind – enjoy”. It’s only yours, the dungeon is personal and private, noone will come to interrupt your gameplay, nor the monsters will move to attack you in the case you need to leave the pc for a few minutes. Everything will behave politely to deliver you your daily dose of safe-progression. Have a fun ride in the world of emptiness.

Now you would expect that this happens because it’s a task for a starting character. This is why I logged in my level 50 infiltrator to check the tasks at the highest levels and compare them. Well… there’s no change. At all. It’s the same corridor, with the same texture and the same row of “immobile mobs” (the contradiction is already in the word) waiting to be farmed. Actually there is a difference: you’ll have from two to four REAL minutes of downtime between a kill and the other. Fun. Each kill will give you one gold, if you die you’ll spend around 15-20 gold at the healer. Here I guess the downtime will be used as an excuse to bring friends with you but again I cannot avoid underline the archaic design. Grouping should come as the result of offering deeper gameplay, more involving mechanics. Grouping to achieve communal goals and as a research of fun. Instead the incentive for grouping in DAoC is different. You group to cut a downtime. Instead of grouping because of a fun or, in general, positive element, you group to avoid boredom. It’s always to cut or diminish a loss, not to reach a different scope. This is gameplay that becomes self-conscious and blatantly states that the “king is naked”. So you get your personalized timesink, with downtime included, and go on playing a ProgressQuest that doesn’t pretend anymore to be something else. It’s so sincere that it becomes disarming. You can only remain speechless.

Now, if you pull all the pieces together I do not think this is a smart addition to the game. Mythic could defend the idea saying that it’s just a possibility you have and you can ignore if you do not want to use it, but this is also aimed to the casual players. I’m not sure these players will appreaciate so much the choice. I believe that the system will just underline the actual waste of time. It shows that layer that should remain hidden as much as possible: “you are wasting hours and money on a game where you have to kill an endless row of mobs”. And once you are over you rinse and repeat. This is what the task dungeons make evident. They make this idea emerge and shine and I really do not believe this is good or will have a positive effect.

To conclude this section I’d say that the quality level is not so high. Some ideas like this last one of the task dungeons goes too far and it actually sounds like a provocation from Mythic to their players: “this is what you asked, here it is”. After all the critics to the content in ToA they seem upset and completely overturned the approach. If the players want shit they’ll receive shit, this time. But it’s rather obvious that this is a bad mistake as much was bad the design behind ToA. It shows the lack of aim and direction at Mythic. It shows that they are upset at how the players react, at their rants, their critics. Mythic didn’t take all that easily. Some of the content looks like if Mythic threw the dining table in the face of the players. For sure there isn’t anything at all to be excited about in that type of gameplay. I believe Mythic lost for the most part the ability to enthrall, to fascinate, to build anticipation, propose new ideas. They are now probably more jaded and cynical than their players and this isn’t a good sign. I see the task dungeons as a symbol of all this and I don’t think it is something good for the players, the game or Mythic. It’s just negative.

On the other side the rest of the actual, non-faked PvE content is decent and on par with what Mythic used to deliver. The PvE doesn’t shine in depth or compelling gameplay. Everything is rather dull and monotone but this is an inheritance of the classic game and every players knows already what to expect. DAoC never used to be a good PvE game and, for sure, there are way, way better offers available on the market. If you come here it’s for other reasons and, in particular, for the game outside the scope of this expansion. What is important to underline as extremely positive is the attention to the early game. The newbie experience and its “flow” is way, way improved and I do not have anything to criticize here if not suggest Mythic to not stop here and continue down this path. The quality of the art and the ease of travel add to this, but I know Mythic is able to do way better than this. They have good artists, now they also need better designers.

The new classes
This is the second major selling point of the expansion (the first is the new player models), the one more discussed and harshly debated between the players. It’s also the one I’ll wrap more loosely. I do not feel competent enough to comment in depth. The classes and the PvP balance isn’t an easy topic and requires an high amount of research if you don’t want simply to repeat the obvious or just backup the most retarded and superficial statements.

This expansion adds five new classes. It doesn’t happen from SI (ToA only added new races). What jumps to the eye is that Albion receives just one new class (Heretic), while Midgard (Valkyrie, Warlock) and Hibernia (Vampiir, Banshee) receive two. I appreciate this choice because one of the critics I’ll repeat on this section of my review is that the PvP model isn’t felt unbalanced because of a problem of perception like Mythic states, but because of design mistakes done at the origin. Not a perception but a fact. Albion since release had more classes than the other realms, this is why this expansion is a step to bring the situation nearer to a normality (Midgard still misses one class to be on par with the other realms). I appreciate this choice and I believe that Mythic should go further if anything. The second important element to consider is the system in general. I do not think that offering a huge number of different classes, that are further shattered in a number of combinations of specializations, is a good choice if opposed to a system built with way less classes but more unique, diverse and multi-purpose. Mythic learnt this but decided to solve the problem only with “Imperator”. DAoC will remain the bastion of this approach. The addition of more classes is a consolidation of this trend. This is how DAoC is built and it won’t change. An opinable choice but still respectable.

I do not think it’s important to argue about the choice because it won’t change and because it would be just a pointless, arid rant. What I think it’s important and interesting to consider is if these classes add something new, something creative to the game or they are just a copy/paste and a shuffle of the existent classes. I believe there is creativity and this is why I pass a positive judgement on this aspect. The classes add something new, they add new mechanics and types of gameplay. They aren’t cut/paste and they show an effort. I won’t go in detail to discuss the skills because it’s an endless (cess)pit. As I said, the balance problems produce infinite discussion that do not go anywhere so I won’t comment the nerfs and the overpowering skills (I wouldn’t work as a Team Leader even if paid). What is important to underline is that, beside the balance, those new powers offer interesting, creative and valuable mechanics. Mythic did a good work, the classes are cool and appealing, I believe aside and not directly because of their actual effectiveness in RvR. That’s a balance problem that I won’t comment, while the design of the classes themselves is noteworthy.

In general each new class is a mix of classic abilities plus the introduction of a brand new mechanic used by a range of new skills. These mechanics, along with a rather interesting (imho) mix of old skills, makes these classes absolutely interesting and worth playing. Briefly:

– The Heretic class introduces the possibility to resurrect friendly dead players as “monsters” under the control of the respective players for a set amount of time before they revert to their normal form with low hitpoints. It’s basically an “animate dead” spells where the players will be temporarily transformed into monsters instead of just being resurrected. The other new mechanic is about offensive spells based on “focus”. This means that the effect is usually delivered over time (like DOTs, Damage Over Time) but where the caster cannot “fire and forget” but must, instead, maintain the focus, so without being able to move or cast new spells if he wants to maintain the effect active.

– The Bainshee is a caster class introducing different new types of spells and mixing many different effects both old and new, in general focusing on Area of Effect spells. The special spells are: long ranged taunts (also used as interrupts), a temporary charm to make enemy monsters attack a target, a bolt (finally an actual “bolt”! doing area damage around the target), a spell to temporarily increase the hitpoints of a target to use to absorb damage, a ranged area spell reducing the attack range of the targets in the area of both spells and arrows (a focus spell, so following the rules explained for the Heretic class), a group shield against ranged physical attacks (archers, I think) and a mix of Cone Of Effect spells (also used by the Valkyrie).

– The Vampiir is an odd class. It’s a “melee caster”, fighting with one hand while the other casts spells. The mana builds up as the player damages the target, so opening up choices with the time (I’m not sure how good this translates in RvR, where a fight usually lasts only a couple of seconds due to the overall damage skyrocketing through the roof in the last couple of years). It relies on a list of self-buffs and the possibility to cast spells while in melee along with a “vampiric” effect draining the endurace pool of the target to add to its own that sounds extremely effective in a close combat against another melee class. Even here it’s the mix of different and well thought skills to make the class interesting with also another implementation of the Heretic’s “focus” spells, castable in melee in this case.

– The Valkyrie is a women-only class with both melee and magic attacks. On the contrary of the other melee classes in this expansion, the actual styles aren’t coming from the spec lines of the classic game. Instead they are unique and only accessible through this class. The other personal trait is the addition of Cone of Effect spells that are then reused partially by other new classes as in the case of the Heretics and the “focus” spells. These Cone of Effect spells add to the gameplay and the evidence is the comments I read in a guild forum. The players aren’t used to this and just stand there taking the full damage, then they go on the message boards to rant that the class is overpowered. In order to not die when facing these attacks the players are required to move, and not just stand there and counterattack. The fact that this mechanic is new and effective is demonstrated by these types of new tactics that the players still need to learn. It’s good.

– The Warlock. Here we are. This is the most discussed class. “Bring back precasting, beyotch!”. They did. The Warlocks can chamber spells and release them all at once. Already by design this means “balance nightmare”. “Unloading power all at once” means moving between something completely useless and weak and something absolutely overpowered. The point is that once the Warlock has unload its charge, it’s done. Or this action is overpowered and effective, or the Warlock will leave the enemy half-dead but ready to beat the hell out of him. It’s situational gameplay, if you are lucky you win. It’s like throwing dices, you’ll just hold your breath to see if it worked or if it’s over. To regulate the scheme and which spells can be chambered and released there’s a rather complex system I won’t explain in detail. For sure this class adds something completely new and will mantain “hot” the debate about its balance.

This completes my glance over these new classes and the creativity I’ve praised. There’s also an effort about the graphical aspect, the new spells look unique and have beautiful effects to see, maybe even too much showy if compared with the classic versions. The work on the graphic also includes special traits like the Bainshee form and the Vampiirs moving by hovering the terrain. All this adds to the personality of each class and I can definitely say that of all the features on this expansion, this is probably the most refined and developed. It’s here that something new is actually added and where we don’t see just repetitive design showing its age.

But.

Daoc is now (and has always been) famous for its unbalance. This can be considered a myth or not but for sure there are problems that have been ignored for too long and that Mythic is still determined to keep ignored. The reasons why the game is considered unbalanced aren’t a problem of perception as Mythic states and would like to believe, they are design problems in a system unbalanced already on the foundation, already at the origin. All the rest is a consequence coming from an original problem that Mythic never solved. You cannot state that you are going to fix the problem of buffbots by adding new classes that buff themselves. This is naive at best. It will still mean that another class will be able to compete only if buffed, so a new direct unbalance. Not less, but more unbalance. The whole system was planned badly already at the creation of the game. There are strong problems between how the classes of the three realms were built. All these problems stack together and Mythic has kept to add workarounds and bandaids without never ever attempting at fixing the *causes* of the problems. They are probably too scared to have a more radical approach and fix the problems at their root. The result is that the system is unbalanced as the consequence of a definite choice and not “the perception of the players”. To sell the expansions they needed to hook the players and the result is overpowered classes that will be nerfed consequently. While the players always finish to adapt to the these scenarios, the game is progressively damaged and it’s not surprising if at some point many will leave to move on a game that takes those problems into consideration and doesn’t just ignore the legitimate complaints.

The demagogy works only till a point. You can repeat that the unbalance is just a biased perception, that the discussion boards don’t represent the actual playerbase and so on. The truth is that you cannot keep hiding the dirt below the carpet while whistling a tune. After some time the problems will reemerge if you didn’t try to solve them *at the source*. The balance is a design choice and not an impossible chimera. Mythic consciously decided that a conservative approach was more productive but for sure they won’t convince me, nor any other player, that there weren’t other, better solutions.

The game remains to be plagued, after years, by the same basic problems of day one: damage going out of the roof, one-shot kills, buffbots, interrupts, resists, instants and unbalanced classes already at the root of the design concept. Without some courage those problems won’t go away on their own. The new and better designed classes aren’t a good reason to ignore all the rest. Mythic needs to react to these problems, in particular now that they are losing subscribers (and that Matt Firor is busy elsewhere). And no, it’s not a contradiction.

The lonely world and mudflated content
This isn’t an actual feature of the expansion, or maybe it is. Between January and February Mythic clustered the servers in groups of three. This because the RvR wasn’t anymore acceptable due to the lack of players in the less populated realms. No players and a barren world kill a mmorpg about with the same effectivity than an horrible newbie experience and a complicated ruleset. This problem would need a deep discussion but I don’t want to drift away even more than what I did already. The problem is both in the RvR and PvE, this is the point.

This is probably an aspect that may be considered critical. In the past months a good improvement was to offer the players more “choices”. This means that now you can progress through the quests, through farming mobs in the classic world, through the task dungeons and, finally, by dedicating yourself just to the RvR. The RvR now is a choice from the first level to the last. But is this true? From my early experiences it’s not. It’s not enough to build battleground zones for the low levels. It’s not acceptable that I can be hit for 300+ damage by some sort of siege stuff when I don’t even reach 100 hitpoints. We all know that one-shot kills are bad, here we are talking of stuff dealing three times the pool of my hitpoints. I speak of all this because the attention to the newbie experience doesn’t seem consistent on the RvR side. These battlegrounds seem an afterthought without enough attention to make them actually fun and viable. On the second battleground (level 5-9) I was finally able to see enemies (the first was completely devoid of players) but I had very bad flickering problems on the terrain textures, with many graphical errors. I do not know if this is a specific problem of a drivers set but my impression is again of a complete lack of attention. The gameplay absolutely needs to be tuned in order to be viable for new players. You cannot throw a newbie in an empty battleground, nor you can add siege engines doing three times and more the pool of hitpoints of a player.

While the clustering helped to pack more players in the RvR zones and battlegrounds (but the battlegrounds seriously needs to be instanced between all the players in order to be always active on all the servers) the situation isn’t that positive for the PvE. The problem is divided into two parts. The first part is the mudflation, the second part is the socialization. The PvE side of DAoC suffers from both these horizons and this expansion plays a role here. It’s fundamental for the game to bring the players together. Mythic improved this by unifying the starting points on a realm to just one and by putting all of them in a starter guild. But it’s then the gameplay that should incentive a collaboration. The problems of the pointless task system I described above have their effect even here. If this expansion is targeted to the casual player and if you can have your private grind dungeon where you can farm good experience and money, you are actively isolating the players. Everyone minds its own business. You have your pocket-world and noone can disturb you, if not the boringness of repetitive gameplay.

Finding someone to do something together is hard if not impossible. The treadmill became a pure grind and Mythic failed again to offer an alternative that isn’t the RvR. All the classic world is *completely empty*. We have a 90% of the content completely wasted and made useless thanks to the mudflation. Part of the reasons why there was the need to improve the travel in the game is because there’s an insane amount of space that is now wasted, forgotten. This means that the content that was there is now lost. Lost to be replaced continuously by something better in order to sell expansions and whatnot. This is the result of the “mudflation” and I’ve explained extensively why it is bad. And this is also another of DAoC’s main problems, now and in the long run. I believe that content must be valorized, not made obsolete. This is why the scheme of expansions doesn’t fit properly the need to mantain the world cohesive and new. With each expansion, and in particular with this one, the game world become more dispersive, empty and useless. I believe that Mythic should reorganize and reconsider everything in the game. All the parts of a game must have a role. A role *always* and not a role to be replaced by something else. We should talk about the epic quests? The plan and the design cannot keep going in its own direction without considering the whole game. You cannot shatter everything in smaller pieces and simply put aside what’s obsolete. This model will bring to a crumbling game. A desolation. A ruin of an ancient game that is now abandoned.

The early impressions and comments I wrote in this thread are confirmed, Catacombs is a “plug-in” in the game to pensionate old, obsolete content that will still lay around as a “memorial”. I underline this as a comical trait. We have the double dichotomy of above/below <-> old/new. Catacombs represents “what’s below”. In general for our perception (and for the lore in the game) what’s below is an ancient heritage, a discovery of our past, our ancestors. But concretely what happens with an expansion and in this precise case is exactly the opposite. The catacomb, literally, is the world above, the classic, archaic world now completely devoid of players and home just of memories of the past years. It’s there as a memorial for the old players that lived on those zones for so long. I defined this as a “cumbersome and inconvenient symbol of decadence”. And it’s true. It’s the result of mudflated design that doesn’t consider a game as a “whole” but just as an enlarging stain, where the players “surf” on the border by experiencing the new content while the rest of the world becomes arid and “vanishes”.

I believe that the eroded content is valuable and should be valorized (and reconsidered and reworked). Catacombs for sure doesn’t have this as a goal and bring this awful model further. The players are segregated, the zones barren and obsolete. The result for sure isn’t “healthy” for the game. It’s a dispersion and a loss of the potential that was there but than now becomes obsolete to promote what’s new. I believe that this is also the heritage of the american culture of the “frontier”. Continuously at the research of more, more and more space, burning the earth along the passage. As an european my perception of this isn’t good. I believe the gameplay is way more fun when it’s kept together, where all the elements have a purpose and can be understood instead of being put aside and forgotten.

I’m sure that if Mythic will move along this path the game will suffer more and more. The scope of this discussion is deeper because it’s not just this game but a general type of design considerations shared by all the mmorpgs following the same scheme. This is also the direct consequences why these fantasy worlds gets consumed and replaced. It’s again the burning process of the approach and it’s the same problems that EverQuest and other games are suffering. Another way is possible. I’d be glad if this problem wouldn’t just put for granted as “something that happens”. No. Worlds are replaced because they are created with *that* type of approach. It’s symptomatic of a problem and I’d like to see it recognized and addressed.

While these aspects could be not directly considered by the average player and sound abstract, they aren’t. This is something concrete, something that has a strong impact on the game. It isn’t fluff and will have relevant consequences. As I wrote above or below (cannot remember) it’s important to anticipate different approaches to make this genre move instead of losing terrain. This is another crucial point.

Smaller elements
I’d like to spend a few words on the new tutorial (again as an optional patch). My impression is good, in particular because it will offer to new players a direct taste about how poor is the client. You just need to turn right as you enter the game for the first time to already experience an unnatural loss in performance, in this case because of badly optimized z-buffer code (basically the client renders the whole scenery, even if in this case you cannot see anything of what’s beyond a wall). Aside this, don’t expect anything amazing, it’s a quick tutorial, easy to follow that will only last a couple of minutes if you don’t waste too much time bird-watching. Unfortunately that’s what I did and I discovered for example that the dock has flickering textures (old ToA glitch), that Hibernia starting keep is half textured properly and half wrongly textured as Albion keep, a flying pile of grain that the world designer forgot to locate properly (and oddly corrected only in the Hib tutorial), the flickering textures around the neck of a character right as you start (just go upstairs in the Albion tutorial) a missing of the lightmap in the first room of Midgard’s tutorial and other glitches.

But hey, this is what the tutorial is supposed to do: give an idea of how the game will be, so poor client performance, a bit clunky quest system, flickering textures here and there and a bunch of other errors caused by carelessness which is the trend I criticized above. On the other side it still helps the newbies to figure out the mechanics and give them the ropes to be independent once they enter the actual game (I covered this transition above). In particular I want to underline how, right as you exit the first room, you’ll meet a row of practice dummies. They are there in order to teach the player how to target, how to enter the attack mode and how to swing the weapon. But not only. Because Mythic is *smart*. There are also ordered by “level”. The first is grey, the next green, then blue, yellow, orange, red and purple. These colors in DAoC represent the differences in levels between the player and the target (yellow means “equal”). What is smart is that this part will also teach how stupid is the design. In fact a normal player would surely think that dummies with different difficulties do not make much sense. You know, they not move. Maybe they’ll have more hitpoints? Maybe they are more resistant? You wish, the truth is that they are covered by soap.

Miss… Miss… Miss… Yeah, you’ll quickly learn that it’s not easy to hit a purple target. Even if it’s a mannequin and it’s just standing there for you.

And this is another design lesson. We are still before archaic game design. You do not look at the monster to figure out how mean it is. No, this would make too much sense. You just look above its head to check the color of a text string. Some MUDs are more advanced than this and I’d like to see Mythic reconsider again this part (“reconsider” because there have been already many tweaks in the past from the perspective of PvP).

Another element I haven’t commented is the sound. There isn’t much to praise here but Mythic redid many sound effects. In the dungeons you’ll hear spooky sounds and the combat sounds have been redone. Honestly I believe that there isn’t much to notice because I don’t consider these changes as an improvement. These sounds are muffled for the most part. An arrow launched with a bow sounds like a stone falling in the water and in general the feel is rather approximate and unrealistic. Of course the sounds don’t make an expansion alone but I consider every part in a game important and all the elements are there to produce one final result. These new sounds do not add much to the package, do not stand out and aren’t an improvement on the old versions. Even if I still underline that Mythic worked on this apect as well, so it’s another of the changes that you’ll notice with the expansion (but ToA was better).

The UI was also reworked in many parts (for all the players, not just Catacombs owners). I’ve already covered the new in-game maps and I noticed that the names you’ll see above the heads of characters and monsters have been redone with a new font that looks definitely better. It’s a small detail but one of those you have constantly on your screen and I believe still with its own relevance. Another very good UI change is the addition of tooltips. They are nice and absolutely non intrusive, I believe Mythic did a good work with these. They are even better than WoW implementation even if they do not provide as much information. In fact I hope Mythic won’t stop to add functionalities and will keep enriching the informations they show. The good idea was to use them on the statistics. It’s informative for both new and old players. The new players can better understand how the magical bonus work and how the caps are set (because the system is terribly complicated as Sanya knows when compiling the weekly Grab Bag) and the old players can still use them to check quickly the informations and the bonuses (like the resistances). They are one of the additions I appreciate the most (these tooltips are also used to show the buffs duration and informations about the “free level” system, the awful copy Mythic did of WoW’s rest system).

I believe there aren’t other new elements beside these UI improvements, now sounds and the newbie tutorial, so I won’t comment further.

Last considerations
Catacombs is a good expansion even if to wrap up a conclusion I have to widen the horizon of my considerations. The point is World of Warcraft. Why I keep bringing this up? WoW is a completely different beast? No, the truth is that WoW was so insanely successful also thanks to Mythic mistakes. With their conservative approach they left around too many glaring problems. A good (smart) competition isn’t about copying features and ideas. No, the good competition knows your faults and fixes them. Then they throw back everything in your face. This is what WoW did. They fixed most of the glaring problems that DAoC (and other games) ignored for too long. It fixed the interrupts, it fixed the buffbots, it improved the PvP model and its balance, it offered more comprehensive and well-featured classes, it fixed the quest system, it built a wonderful UI, added a personal style in the graphic, rised the level of world design and so on. I can continue for long even with a superficial glance.

If Blizzard was able to achieve and fulfill all those goals it’s because they were able to use for their own advantage the mistakes that the other companies ignored. It’s not the launch of WoW to hurt the subscription base. It’s the approach in the development that ignored for too long what matters. The conservative approach that will show its narrow scope in the long distance (that for some games starts here). Now, what matters at *this* point? The ability to anticipate. Everyone is able to copy or chase a tail, but there won’t be relevant results with that approach. Mythic needs to dare more and develop a more *aggressive* attitude about the problems in the game. They must stop to work around them, to cut the development without fully supporting the features in the way they are supposed to behave. The buffbot is a clear example: in order to retain a few hundreds of accounts, they are losing a few thousands. Courage, interest, commitment and even some knowledge is what is missing. DAoC has already an infinite potential that is still completely untapped. This is a resource but it won’t come out by itself. This is why there’s a need to anticipate instead of watching the game progress along a slow decline. I do not accept the excuse that the game is old, that every game gets finally replaced and that you can only work to slow down this process. This is *false*. What happens is a choice. Mythic has the talent and resources to achieve better results. And with this game. Not with Imperator or DAoC 2.

I rant as a conclusion of this endless and worthless review because all these points are strictly tied together. Catacombs is a *good* expansion despite the many flaws I’ve pointed out, in particular if I consider the whole game and how the new features are integrated with the rest. But at the same time Mythic’s potential is NOWHERE what they delivered this time. I noticed for sure that the scope was way reduced if compared with ToA. This expansion is more modest even if at least it works without damaging the game as in the other case. But, again, this is not what Mythic CAN deliver. This is also not what the market, and the genre as a whole, needs. Catacombs is nice but forgettable. There is nothing at all standing out even if all the parts are relatively good if picked one by one as I tried to do.

What is to underline, instead, is that only after Catacombs the game actually improved radically. With the live patches of the last few months. Now, is this the result of a consistent loss of subscribers? If the answer is “yes” I sincerely wish Mythic to lose a few more thousands of accounts. The game definitely needs this.

For sure I wouldn’t like Mythic to not finish like this. Please.

—
This review is also an answer to something Walt (Mythic live producer) said to me:

I look forward to your additional commentary when you have actually played the expansion.

It doesn’t matter if that actually meant: “Oh, shut the hell up! You do not know anything. Go away.”
I took it literally. Here’s your “review”.

PROs
– Some zones are simply breathtaking – An unmatched masterpiece
– Upgraded models and improved customization
– It does a very good work to redefine and soften the newbie experience
– Interesting additions to ease the travel
– It’s viable and designed for casual players
– It adds more choices to the treadmill and makes soloing viable
– Interesting new classes bringing something new and creative to the gameplay
– Well-done upgrades to the look of the classic dungeons (and towns if including the optional patch)
– It offers the game a more personal graphic style, consolidating the work of the wonderful artists who worked on ToA and “New Frontier”
– Improved interface (not exclusively a Catacombs feature)
– Questing is finally viable (not exclusively a Catacombs feature)

CONs
– Bad overall design principles on which the classes are built
– It mudflates the classic world even more, creating more problems in the long term
– It segregates the players and hurts the socialization
– The gameplay is poor and repetitive without really adding anything
– Too self-conscious
– A general low production value due to carelessness
– The new features make an awful client even more problematic
– Modest ambition

Value (from 1 to 5): 4
(I’ve changed the overall “vote” from 3 to 4 after having explored more zones. I’m not a fan of just beautiful games with no depth but in this case the quality of a few zones is really unbelievable. This alone deserves the price of the expansion. You cannot find anything even remotely close to this, it’s unique. But what I wrote along the whole review still applies. The design is, for the most part, poor and uninspired. I’ve underlined a low production value about a long serie of graphic glitches and bugs plaguing the game constantly, along with an awful engine that isn’t anymore acceptable. Overall the result is nowhere what Mythic is able to deliver and the vote would be lower without those talentuous artists that they had the luck to hire.)

Last minute comment: The more I explore the new PvE content the more I love it. The new locations are awesome and you can finally play in solo and having a lot of fun while exploring these new underground zones. It’s a type of PvE that DAoC never had since the quest system was unusable and it was impossible to do anything if not without a full group. The new features, like the ease of travel and the in-game maps (working greatly in the underground zones), make the experience really accesible and fun. There’s only one major problem: even if the content can be now experienced even if you are alone, the first thing that jumps to the eye (in particular if you come from WoW) is about the *awful* downtimes. Mythic should consider this problem as the highest priority. If the solo experience is supported they really have to remove radically the minutes required sitting on the ground between a kill and the other.

My computer:
Athlon 64 3500+@2500
1Gb RAM
Geforce 6800GT – 76.41 (drivers)

I’ve moved most of the screenshots to a “light” page in order to not stress the site: dedicated screenshot page

See what I wrote here? I lied.

I actually ordered the box of the expansion on Monday and I had the game installed by Tuesday evening. This because I always considered to order the game from the USA. So wait a few days for the delivery, spend money on taxes, shipment and so on. I *hate* when I have to wait for something so when being tempted about going back to DAoC or not I kept putting the idea aside just because the process was too complicated and I didn’t feel like going through it. If the expansion was downloadable I know I would have been there on day 1, no matter of the promises I made to myself.

What made me go back to reconsider all that is the fact that I was actually “forgetting” that this expansion has been out for months. And italian shops have it already. Since it’s years that I don’t buy games from local shops (I hate localizations) I didn’t consider that as an option. On Monday morning, after watching the video, I got the “new” idea and decided to order the box.

This brought me to write down a “comeback review” to wrap up again these past months and gather my new considerations on the game. I’ll publish the result in a few minutes. The article isn’t actually finished because I want to add some screenshots and minor stuff butI wrote for days and I’m glad I’m done. Amen.

I think I can go back to something more “normal” now. I wrote too much and I’m definitely drained.

Hm.

Yesterday I passed about half an hour studying the introduction movie to Dark Age of Camelot hosted by IGN. This is the actual movie that is now part of the game itself as an intruduction/presentation for both new (if they still exist) and old players. I was expecting some sort of in-game scene, instead I found an actual movie and not even that bad. When I read about this “feature” on the patch notes I considered it as the lowest peak possible, another blatant copy of World of Warcraft, this time about an aspect completely useless. The best idea of fluff you can imagine and a definitive declaration of inferiority: we cannot compete, let us at least copycat what we envies.

Watching the movie didn’t change my opinions but it still moved something. I canceled my account at the beginning of the last September with the determination to never go back. No matter what. It wasn’t the game to drive me away, it was the general attitude at Mythic. I wrote endlessly about the problem but I never tried to join and explain all the points in order to make sense. My site documents what happened at that time in an extremely superficial way (here and here) but it also portraits how I was feeling. I simply didn’t see any other choice if not leave a game that I liked for so much time and that now I was seeing standing still, without even trying to react and produce some creativity, some discussions, a debate, a confrontation or whatever. It just stood still, deep-rooted in its own bad habits and problems, sinking in its own bleeding bandaids and becoming just a springboard for Imperator’s hype: “Imperator will be great because we won’t have some of DAoC’s problems”. Leaving was an obligated choice, in particular because what I like in these games is how they develop, the new plans, the new ideas. Exactly what I wasn’t able to digest anymore.

If you check the day I cancelled you’ll see that I write about “little things that hit on my nerves”. It was the day that the team leaders received the feedback from Mythic: another declaration of surrender. After many months of poor answers to the complaints, ignoring directly every attempt at building a constructive and informative discussion, they finally showed what those reports really were. Garbage. The “feedback” from Mythic moved from a few lines of explanations to this shit. That was the last straw for me. After months fighting to propose a more meaningful and involved communication that choice was another definitive surrender and a retreat. It expressively says that the Team Leaders reports are garbage and that Mythic didn’t directly scrap the whole thing just to avoid the bad publicity. What is left is a just an habit to repeat for the sake of it. A pure formality. For me it was a definitive goodbye, along with a “fuck you” and a “shoot me in the head if I look back”.

As I wrote in other occasions I HATE discussions about the classes. I avoid them as much as possible and for sure it’s not something I like spending time to consider and discuss. They finish to become redundant and superficial without an active confrontation, in particular on the Vault boards (because it’s not like there are other places that I know of where peoples care about DAoC and discuss it). But it was again the *attitude* that angered me. While they preach to be so passionate and close to the playerbase they just demonstrate conceit. They ignore directly the legitimate appeals for an open and honest discussion. What is left are the detached announces on the Herald and a dying community that is losing any interest left in the game. Indifference. That’s probably the comment where I was able to explain better what there is wrong in the attitude. Matt Firor repeats with each letter that Mythic will keep supporting DAoC the best they can till the community will demonstrate interest in it. But it’s not the community to originate the interest and the passion, it’s the game to do that. The community is a vehicle, but you need to own already that passion and commitment in order to express them.

Who cares? There’s Imperator on the horizon. DAoC is a way to market it. “It’s better than DAoC”. In my opinion Imperator could become not DAoC’s death, it could become Mythic’s death. I have absolutely zero confidence in the game and for sure it will erode more than before what is left in DAoC. Mythic isn’t and shouldn’t aim to become a network of games (even if it is already on some level if you count their group of muds and stuff). What it needs is focus and commitment. Exactly what the larger companies cannot deliver. They should aim to remain small and solid in the development in order to grant that continuity that right now is severely hurting “structures” like SOE, with pompous licensed games that now fumble in the need to find a direction. Too many developers switching projects, moving from a company to another. Everything becomes relative. Noone in the development side cares anymore for ONE game. It’s too risky. The commitment (and responsibility) is hard. It’s better to jump here and there, collecting compliments and being fast and experienced enough to abandon a ship before sinking with it. The “Vision” becomes an in-game poll, the highest peak of constructive discussion we can afford today. I believe this is horrid and the result is under the eyes of everyone in the quality of the games and in their systematic waste of potential.

But I didn’t want to go on a pointless rant. I just wanted to say that from a few weeks and in particular from when Mythic proposed the tower razing idea along with the RvR mission (as opposed to pointless instanced arenas that were going to become another bleached copy of what WoW will deliver with the battlegrounds), I felt some sort of nostalgia. I was driving home the other day and I found myself thinking back to the community involvement on the RvR, thinking about epic scenarios, about feeling at “home” and part of something more involving than a pointless treadmill with no aim nor relation with the other players. When I left DAoC I was already in WoW’s beta from six months so it definitely wasn’t the cause of my leave. I miss strongly that type of gameplay and I feel more and more that WoW will never even consider to go in that direction and simulate an environment with purposes and relationships. The reasons why I loved DAoC for so long are because of its scope. It’s sad that after various years Mythic barely improved on that type of potential and, even now, its stongest feature is the RvR model that was there already on day one. Just refined and slightly broaden. But still that’s why it is unique and why on those aspects the game still stands above the competition. I miss all that, I miss in particular the infinite potential that is still in the game. And I miss the work and commitment that Mythic expressed with a restless work. I always praised the pace of the development. DAoC is the game that, by far, was able to evolve and improve more radically. It’s more dynamic. It’s the only who was able to retain my faith for so long and as my hopes became stronger for the game the same happened with my disappointment for the mistakes and the delusions, because I cared for the game, I believed in its potential and I wanted to see it rise instead of standing still in the self praises and bathing in the most rooted problems. I criticize and follow only what I care about and what I consider full of potential. Of new possibilities that aren’t simply a temporary diversion to replace with the new shiney the month after. This is why I HATE the idea of mmorpgs like disposable goods. There’s more, there’s a model of evolution, of discovery, of relationship. There’s something you build on, not something you keep loosing. It’s an endless, constructive path, not a relative replacement to substitute with “entertainment”.

That’s why I hate to stop following a game. Not from the player perspective, but from a contributing perspective. A participation. The game becomes something where I’m the first to invest my time and my passion. When I feel that my expectations are crumbling it’s simply a loss. And it’s also why I feel nostalgic even if I keep repeating to myself that it’s better to not bother. That it’s wasted time in its purest form and it’s better to stay away instead going back to repeat the same path. But, still, I kept watching the video. I strongly criticized the plan of the last expansion and the new style of the graphic but I examined carefully to find out glitches and inconsistences in the video. Instead I have to say that it was great. Maybe it’s a case of carefully picked scenes because from the screenshots I remember plenty of problems, but I watched the new animations, the new models, the movement of the cloaks, I searched continuously for clipping problems and broken textures. It was simply awesome. The voice acting fits perfectly, the opening scene is wonderful and also the scenes from the game are well picked and composed. The only part I didn’t like was the music that felt too much dull and inappropriate, in particular with the starting of the RvR action. I would criticize the presentation of only a fragment of all the classes available but I’m sure that the movie couldn’t fit everything together without forcing the players to simply skip the whole thing. Maybe a divided presentation for each realm could have helped but it would still have lacked as a global glance at the game as a whole. And I loved it. From the movie the new models look awesome. Completely the opposite of the impression I had while looking at the screenshots. I feel taken away at some moments. Some scenes are gorgeous, I remember standing on top of a tower, panning the visual. I remember those battles I used to live. I remember the joined efforts, the strategic RvR, the large-scale organization and goals. I remember the charges, the chaos of large battles in the open and in the keeps. And I miss everything. Luckily it isn’t hard to also remember what drove me away. Mythic’s attitude in the first place. Then the endless downtimes, the repetitive, ipermudflated PvE, the dull environments, the supported cheating in the form of buffbots, the endless camping and farming, the decaying items, the limitations of the classes, the annoying interrupts. The awful quest system, the clunky interface. And, well, the endless problems with the client. But the “what if” grow stronger. They kept growing from some time. They become “what if they solved the problem with the client?”, “what if the decrease of popularity opened them up a bit to a confrontation?”, “what if I could find a less chaotic place where to have less superficial discussions?”, “what if I’d be able again to share their expectations and plans for the game?” and finally “what if I can still find my place and renew my passion for it?”.

See, I couldn’t care less for an invite to beta test Imperator. But I cared to have an invite to Catacombs beta. How stupid I am. I just hope to not be so much stupid to actually fall for the nostalgia.

(I was just planning to comment the video. I hate when I go dispersive for zero reasons.)

There’s a news about DAoC giving out for free the last upgrade to the graphical engine that was included in the paid expansion released the past December: Catacombs.

But is this true? The slashdotted news comes from Vodoo Extreme and the author manifests some perplexity:

In a somewhat confusing way, Mythic has released the Catacombs engine client as a free upgrade to people running the Dark Age of Camelot Trials of Atlantis or Shrouded Islands.

Then follows the actual quote from Sanya, stating (in an “edit”) that the patch contains the newest client along with the town art patch.

But I’m not sure it’s true and this is also the reason why I believe they’ve been “silent” about this freebie. My suspects aren’t an “absolute truth”, I do not have access to the game right now but I know decently the story of the game. My suspect is that this patch doesn’t contain the Catacombs engine for a simple reason: Catacombs doesn’t have a new engine. It’s a fake.

Why I say so? DAoC had three engines that I know of. Mythic never developed the graphic engine from zero, instead they bought the licence from another company (something that is becoming more and more frequent in the industry). This engine was called “Netimmerse”, built by NDL and used by decent games like Morrowind. When you buy a licence you probably get full access to the source code so you can then reprogram parts of the client so that they fit better your project. But considering that you buy a licence to focus on other elements of the game you can imagine that the modifications to the client aren’t that frequent. And you also don’t have a very deep knowledge of what is going on at the low level. This is the reason why DAoC always lacked on this aspect. The game always had an infinite list of minor (non-gamestoppers but still annoying) problems and incompatibilities, sometimes even rather “heavy”. For example everyone who played when the game was launched remembers the “memory leak”. This leak had the result to make the performance of the client slow progressively. After playing a couple of hours and moving to different zones the client started to crawl and stutter, bringing finally to graphical corruption and crashes. On a game strongly based on large-scale battles this was obviously one of the most serious problems but Mythic never figured out a solution.

This brings to the first transition. One of the major selling points of DAoC’s first expansion (“Shrouded Isles”, the most successful and appreciated) was the deploy of a new version of the Netimmerse engine that, beside other improvements (shaders on the water, shadows, high-res textures, better spell effects, trilinear filtering and more), finally removed the awful memory leak. This brought the marketing department of Mythic to strongly exploit this “feature”, publicizing how faster the new engine was and how better it was able to handle the large-scale battles. Of course this was false. Any simple test with FRAPS could demonstrate that the new engine looked nicer (even if introduced many incompatibilities and graphical glitches) but was also more taxing on the hardware, around 15-20% slower. Instead it was true that the leak was gone and this meant that at least the performance was stable while the previous client was completely unplayable after about two hours. This was already enough for the players to appreciate the progress and finally have a more reliable client.

Second transition. The companies developing the graphic engines need to keep working on their code to add new features and possibilities, this in order to sell more of “the same” to the game companies that already own and use the previous versions of the engine. This brings to some sort of “joined effort”. Mythic didn’t have the competence to delve into the code and fix, improve and develop the client but they could still rely on NDL and their continuated effort on their engine. Each year, Mythic could buy a new version and plan the content of their yearly expansions around these new features. With the ill-fated “Trials of Atlantis” (the expansion with the most potential but wrecked by horrible design habits and wrong planning) it was the case of the underwater environments along with a brand new engine working “on-top” of Netimmerse (which with this version becomes “Gamebryo”): IDV’s SpeedTree. This “double” engine basically coexisted with Gamebryo and was able to render realistic trees in the game without messing with the older clients. This expansion offered many improvements by joining the new features of the Gamebryo (multi-layered textures for the terrain, the underwater effects, a complete new UI, a new version of the pixel shader code for the water and more) and SpeedTree but, again, it had a relevant impact on the performance of the client and reintroduced a minor memory leak that still made the performance progressively worse along with other minor problems like stutters, unbalanced use of CPU power, sound glitches, input lag and so on. For me this became a major issue because all these problems joined together made the daily use rather tiring and annoying, in particular after Mythic released “New Frontiers”, bringing to the game some masterpieces of art, the new keeps. (parenthesis: go see how “HRose” contributed to the hype at that time) A problem because these wonderful structures were also another strain on a too bugged client. Despite some efforts to balance the load, like limiting the use of AoE spells and some other superficial optimizations, the performance went down again, making the memory leak and the day-to-day gameplay worse than ever.

Third transition. Here we are about a year ago, the third transition doesn’t come with “New Frontier” because there are no changes to the client itself aside more graphical-intense environments. Instead this third transition was supposed to be with “Catacombs”, but does it exist? For what I’m able to remember (here for something slightly more on-topic) it doesn’t. I’m not aware of any new purchase of another version of Gamebryo. Mithic never talked about it and it was rather obvious at that time that they were only going to add the EMotion FX 2 SuperLeet Engine (the official site vanished, by the way). This engine doesn’t replace Gamebryo, instead it’s another layer, exactly like SpeedTree, so existing on top of the ToA version of Gamebryo, one year old. This is, in fact, what Mythic delivered this December with Catacombs. There’s NOT a new “global” graphical engine, there’s instead the addition of the brand new models for all the characters that are used with the new engine.

Now. The patch they released this week is about 50Mb. I really do not believe that it includes all these new character models and this is why by applying it you’ll find that only the towns have the improved art, while the new characters models are still disabled. What does it mean? It’s simple. This is nowhere a “new” client because no new client was released with Catacombs. The EMotion engine that was the real major selling point of the expansion is NOT included or, if it is, it is kept disabled. Instead the players probably just had access to the slightly modified version of Gamebryo that Mythic is currently using and that is basically identic in features and performance (and problems) to the awful “Trials of Atlantis” version. The last that they bought from NDL.

So a “fake” along with a more than good reason about why Mythic was careful to not publicize it too much blatantly.

EDIT: On the Vault I commented Jeff Hickman promotion by posting his AWFUL quote. Then I gave a glance also at the source and I found this funny quote that completes perfectly the article I’ve written here:

Catacombs runs on the Trials of Atlantis engine.