It’s about two hours that I writhe in the bed trying to sleep, so I decided to get up and write something. As my Xfire profile shows I’m spending some time playing DAoC (and having fun), so it is becoming prevalent in the arguments I choose to write about here.

At the bottom of a recent entry I write:

Finally a note for the would builders. The quality of the art has increased considerably, this is undeniable. But there’s still a gap between the “beauty” of an environment and its usability. The new zones in Catacombs are wonderful to see but AWFUL to navigate. Often the players jump from odd places and breaks the normal paths exactly because the environment is NOT MEANT FOR THE PLAYERS. This is a critical design problems. These areas should not be designed just “to be pretty” but also to be functional.

A day later I find a brilliant post on the Vault that backups my points but in that humorous and effective way that I so totally miss (and I’m envious):

Albs, join the ‘I hate Baint’ club!!

Recently I decided to delete my Hibs on Lamorak and re-roll Alb there. I hadn’t really been in the Alb catacombs areas, except for a brief visit in beta, so it’s all new and confusing at times.

There are issues with the Alb catacombs area. First of all, they can call it an Aqueduct all they want, but everybody knows it’s a sewer. (As Freakazoid would say “Ewww ..poo gas!”)

Second, there are Ladders of Doom all over the place. Lag the tiniest bit, and its ‘Hello floor, Goodbye 99% of my HPs”.

But the worst, most evil thing about the Albs catacombs area is an Inconnu guard in shiny plate armor named Baint. I’m convinced this pasty, fish faced little creep is really a Lurikeen Vamp sent to Alb to wreak havoc among the under 20 crowd.

If I go up to any other guard in the sewers (Excuse me, Aqueduct)and say “Hey there, howzabout a kill task?”, they say “Sure buddy. You see that green mob standing right across from me? Stroll over there, whack it once on the head, and come on back for half a bubble of XP and a little pocket change. By the way, do you smell poo gas?”

But go up to Guard Baint, and it’s “So, you want that XP and silver, eh? Well, the only way you’re going to get it is to travel to the most out of the way, foul smelling part of this cesspit I can think of offhand. Someplace far enough away that nobody can hear you scream. When you get there, I want you to find this yellow con mob that has a good chance to BAF with a few buddies who are all resistant to whatever type of damage you deal. And don’t get any ideas about running back here for help. You’ll be dead before you even see a guard at clip range. Now, if (and that’s a BIG if) you make it back here, and ask real nice, and let me wipe my feet on your cloak, you’ll get that XP and whatever loose change I have in my pocket at the time. Now, beat it!”

Needless to say, I hate Guard Baint. Why do I keep going back to him for kill tasks, you ask? Because surviving his latest attempt on my life gives me a certain feeling of satisfaction. And it gives me incentive to ding 20 so I’ll never have to talk to him again. Well, at least not until I get to 50, and come back fully buffed to punt his smug little tin-plated behind all the way to the Abandoned Mines.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

Ahh.. I really wish I could write like that. Without sounding overdramatic, without being so awfully monotone and verbose. And still take a smart stab at a few flaws of the design.

But I just cannot.

So that’s your imaginatory link between my critics on the design of the Catacombs zones and the beginning of that post on the Vault. My analysis is more deeper even if completely inefficient in its purpose. But that’s also what I can do.

There are many different ways to tell a similar concept and I’m writing this to show these two ways and again focus the interest to point out another important problem of the game. The layout of the new zones is confused and definitely not player friendly. Even with the map sometimes the navigation is hard. Too often the layout is just not consistent on its own and fails completely to be functional. Many players reported the difficulty of the navigation or the hate for the ladders, but these two are just the superficial manifestation of a general trend that affects the whole approach to how a new zone is planned and built (often recycling and repeating the same “corridor” asset over and over).

From my point of view this becomes a trend that can be related to another bigger trend typical at Mythic: the superficiality with which some problems are considered. The fact that it’s “enough” for a zone to be pretty, removing completely the importance of its functionality. So, with this attitude, they do something that only apparently seems a good work but that, consequently, shows a bunch of problems that are a result of a lack of polish and attention. A lack of reiterations in the development.

Beta tests (and here I take a stab at what will definitely happen with “Darkness Rising”) isn’t about the “detail”. It is about the whole process. If “Catacombs” had a real and effective beta test, instead of an hype pitch in the last two months before release, it would have taken just a few minutes to observe how odd is the behaviour of the players when navigating around these zones. My minstrel moves around the Inconnu Crypt constantly BREAKING the patterns of the space. I need to constantly jump off the first level in order to arrive somewhere else without taking the whole tour of the place to pass over a bridge. Again I need to *fight* against the level design in order to move around.

Useful reiterations in the development should have observed these odd behaviours and adapt the design of the zone accordingly, for example building a bridge in the point where most of the players thecide to “jump”. That’s exactly what an In-Character architect would do. And that’s also what the actual world builder is supposed to do.

Again because the zones in the game should be designed considering many important different layers, from “the pretty”, to the functionality of the environment, to the ease of navigation, social spaces, gathering points and so on.

(and at this point I was supposed to link a wonderful story written by “Ole Bald Angus” about a crazy architect building a castle for a king that explained even better all these ideas… just to discover that the whole archive on that site is completely gone and I cannot link/quote. ARGH. My poor smart references…)

My minstrel is now at level 13 on Lamorak and, after months away from the game, I could fill pages and pages of comments about the problems and quirks that the game still has and my point of view about the direction where it should go. So I put all this aside to gather up a small list of fixes and new features that (as CCP defined them) I can call “quality of life fixes”. Meaning that they aren’t much about opinable changes but just direct and sensible improvements that could be accepted positively by everyone (without considering the difficulty of the implementation, though).

They also follow a principle that I think should be always applied to every game and that is a recurring fault in DAoC: when a new patch is ready to be released publicly, one of the devs should browse through each fix and new feature to see if it passes a simple test. If the test is passed the fix can be approved and published, if the check isn’t passed the new feature/fix must go back in development and adjusted accordingly.

The test is simple: a player should always be able to understand a change or use a new feature without reading the patch notes.

You’d think this is obvious but you would never believe how many times, even recently, this simple rule has been broken. It’s important that EVERY part of a game is directly accessible. Noone should be required to read manuals, FAQs, Grab Bags, spoiler sites and 3rd party programs to enjoy the game at its best. This because, shifting Lum’s quote here below, “a vast majority of your customers doesn’t have access to or doesn’t share that knowledge”.

Previous part here.

My proposed additions/fixes (for now):

– There are now visual marks for quest givers but they do not appear when you move between the steps of a quest already started or when you have to return to an NPC, which is a big usability issue in the actual quest system. I suggest to add a new mark that should appear in these situations and similar to the one already used but as a vertical glow around the legs of the NPC, like an aura that will be easily noticeable from the distance.

– I noticed that the tooltips on the stats often do not update correctly when the numbers go above the caps. Aside fixing this problem I suggest to add a tooltip to the hitpoints (to show also here the default value and the cap) and to the other fields like WeapSkill, WeapDam, Armor, to add informations about how these are used in the ruleset and on what they depend. These new informations could be added as new tooltips that expand themselves showing the new informations after a few seconds the mouse hovers on a field (like it happens on Paradox games, ask Lum). With some radical work the delving process of spells, skills and objects should be completely replaced by mousehover tooltips.

– NEW (slipped from my list): Add a mark to the map window to show not only the position of the character but also its direction. Maybe even tooltips to show the names of players in the party. Add the possibility to select maps freely, without having to be in the specific zone.

– NEW (slipped from my list): Instead of forcing everyone to click multiple times on the loot bag in order to get each item (which is extremely clunky and annoying), just modify the interface so that one click only (right click maybe) brings up a loot bag window. This bag will show each item dropped with a checkbox next to it (already checked by default) and an “OK” button. As this button is pressed, all the items with the check will be automatically looted.

– Adjust the /who command to be accessible from a dedicated UI panel with selectable fields and with the support for complex queries (with and/or operators) between the various fields (Name, Class, Level, Guild, Current zone, Grouped or not). Integrate this panel with the LFG tool to have a powerful, accessible and centralized panel where to search players. Maybe transform this new panel into another tab in the social window.

– Crafting. Add a consignment system. This can work through a new NPC that takes orders from the players and makes them available publicly to the crafters. A player can set up an order with the item he wants to buy, price and time available for the duty. The price is paid as the order is created and refunded if the order wears off without being fulfilled. The consignment system should also show the medium prices for an item so that the players can see and set reasonable prices. The crafters can then have access to the NPC and browse (and filter) a list of everything that they can craft at the moment. As the item is produced and consigned to the NPC, the crafter will receive the money for the order and the item will be stored in the NPC waiting for the player who made the order to claim it. The crafters can also “tap” an order for an hour so that they have the time to create the item and consign it without the risk of finding the order already completed by someone else. During the hour the order is tapped, noone else will have access to that order. In the case the hour passes without the item being consigned, the player that tapped it won’t be able to tap it again for 24 hours.

This system may be rather innovative for the genre and it has also the quality to work as a complement of the market system used in the housing zones. So it doesn’t overlap the functionalities and is supposed to provide more tools that both crafters and buyers can use actively to enjoy the game more directly. (the two system are also supposed to have the positive effect of balancing each other).

– Add a new panel to stat_index_window. This new panel will offer a direct access through a dedicated UI to ALL the functionalities available on the Herald. So the players can track themselves from this new window or a particular player, the ranks, the guilds, the status of the realm, the crafters and so on. This should work as an outgoing connection directly to the Herald and not as new features to support in the server code. The goal is to make all those informations accesssible and easy to use for everyone directly from the game client. The client shouldn’t bother the actual server but just open an external connection to the Herald and format the informations with an appropriate UI.

The statistics on the Herald are one of the best and unique qualities of this game. Having a direct support of these directly in the game doesn’t appear an added functionality but it will, instead, help it to show its real qualities in a more accessible way and not as a detached, optional feature that most of the players do not use. New players often aren’t even aware of this. Having this feature bundled with the interface will put it in front of everyone and easily accessible. While this isn’t really something new for the game I believe it could be a *major* improvement that definitely deserves the development time required to support it.

—
Finally a note for the would builders. The quality of the art has increased considerably, this is undeniable. But there’s still a gap between the “beauty” of an environment and its usability. The new zones in Catacombs are wonderful to see but AWFUL to navigate. Often the players jump from odd places and breaks the normal paths exactly because the environment is NOT MEANT FOR THE PLAYERS. This is a critical design problems. These areas should not be designed just “to be pretty” but also to be functional.

I took some screenshots of Agramon from the test server.

Running around it I found various glitches, in particular on the Midgard side, but I tried to select those showing the nicer parts. The last two also show strange pentagrams that will be probably connected to “Darkness Rising”, the expansion to be released this December.

Agramon screenshots page

I’m extra-busy with a bunch of stuff, so I went quiet for a bit despite there would be a lot to talk about.

I didn’t change my opinion about the decision to bring back “Emain” to provide an accessible playground where players can go without caring about the more complex PvP gameplay around the keeps. It’s still a short term good decision that will ultimately hurt in the long term.

From Sanya:

Anecdotally, the main concern among those I spoke with (who didn’t like the idea) was that “regular” RVR would be too drained by this Island. We hope that the design will make people gravitate to the Island when they’re looking for something to do, and that raids will form from the players in this natural staging area. Regular RVR is just a quick trot across a bridge, with no elaborate planning or logistics required.

Once again this is an extremely superficial view on the problems. Again the consequence is put ahead of the cause.

“The Island” (Agramon) isn’t bad just because IT WILL kill the RvR in the mainland. This is the consequence of a problem. A symptom. Looking at the symptom, and just it, is completely useless. What will naturally happen (the fact that people will prefer to go to Agramon instead of playing with the more complex RvR) should trigger a damn DOUBT. Why the fuck the players would prefer the “hot tub” arena when DAoC “is supposed” to offer so much more?

So, “The Island” is bad not “on its own”, but because it again shifts the focus of the designers on what DOESN’T MATTER. It’s again the usual workaround, a bandaid. The truth is that the complex RvR action in DAoC has the same “accessibility” problems of ToA. The players hate it simply because of this. It’s not accessible, and so, it isn’t fun. It isn’t fun as it should be. As it could be.

The strength of DAoC is not in a simple PvP arena where to farm the Realm Points. This feature is offered in a better form in other games and Mythic is doing a big mistake by chasing the trend and choking the true unique traits of their game. Instead of differentiating themselves, they, once again, chase the tail of other games without even the remote possibility to reach similar results.

The classic RvR has serious accessibility problems that undermine its potential. There are situations extremely static that need more dynamism in order to not bore everyone to tears like they do now. A quick PvP arena is not bad on its own but as a way to DISMISS these problems. To look elsewhere and ignore them. The players will like Agramon and prefer it over the rest (so it must be good? no, this is superficial), because the other part of the RvR has problems that weren’t solved. In the same way the players prefer the new classic servers with “no ToA” because the problems ToA had weren’t solved (effectively, I know they worked constantly on it, but not on the real, radical accessibility issues).

The result is that Mythic keeps wasting resources to invent fanciful workarounds when the game would need a completely different approach to face the real problems directly. The success of the game in the long term will suffer these superficial solutions that can only work in the short term and will damage the game in the long term (the unaddressed problems that choke the quality of the game).

—
Beside all this. I just finished a quick run around the isle on the test server and, despite the negative implications I’ve explained above, the design is nice. The movement around this island is rather intuitive. The terrain is well planned and for the first time not extremely flat and featureless. The impression I had is good and you would think that they learnt something from WoW in the way to shape the hills and valleys so that they finally matter for the gameplay and not just as a pretty scenery background. There ARE actually hills and valleys now and the line of sight will have a role since the terrain isn’t anymore a flat box. There seem to be space for some strategy and well planned encounters and ambushes.

So I believe that within the limit of the engine of the game they did a good work and even graphically the zone is nice despite it’s still a cut&paste of exisitng assets. Only the transition to the snow (the Midgard section) still looks rather bad.

The only negative note is the *extremely annoying* aggro that constantly breaks the groups and speed.

If anything, it looks like a very good Emain.

As another positive note they finally readjusted the power and health regeneration rate:

– We have increased the Health and Power regeneration rates at lower levels, to make leveling a more enjoyable experience for everyone. The increase is significant at lower levels and slowly rises back to its current state as you level your character.

– The penalty on power regeneration when power is below 50% has been removed.

The second in particular is a fix to something that was just “bad design” and nothing else. DAoC needs less of those quirks that just make the gameplay more frustrating.

The simplification of the ruleset should always remain a goal. DAoC has always been “complicated” without really adding to the gameplay, just too filled with odd quirks, exceptions to rules and special cases.

It’s unbelievable. I passed most of the last days writing and analyzing the PvP systems between the various games, focusing in particular on the strengths of DAoC. For once I even seem to have people agreeing with my points. I happily reactivate my account to play on the new servers, play with the interface, even plan to build a guild if possible. And then I see once again the game take a bad direction.

It’s unbelievable that every time I reactivate my account Mythic systematically manages to push me away with poor decisions about the future of the game. My motivation to level up my Minstrel on the Lamorak server is now close to zero.

I also wonder if the problem is just about myself. If I just cannot appreciate anything at all. But I believe it isn’t so. There are concrete reasons why I believe they are doing yet another mistake and there could be plenty of interesting ideas that would make me happy, instead, and would help the game to move again in a positive direction.

Concretely. Mythic is planning to throw the players in a “Hot Tub” PvP arena, through the implementation of an island that will now connect the classic frontier zones of the three realms. The main goal is evident:

It has become obvious that the Camelot community misses a central battleground area served in the old frontiers by the Emain Macha zone.

This is in fact one problem of the implementation of “New Frontier” that was already isolated by the players when the patch was still in its design phase: The frontiers are too big, the action is too dispersive, there isn’t dynamism and the actual gameplay consists in painfully long downtimes about your group running endlessly around or eternal sieges at the keeps lasting for hours without a slight evolution (“playing tennis” with siege engines).

A way better solution (still possible and valid today, even more so considering the lack of players on most of the servers) could have been about trashing the concept of the frontiers as three separate homelands (four zones for each realm separated by two zones filled with water for a grand total of fourteen fucking zones) belonging to each realm and replace that with a SINGLE mainland that is kept always contested with a total of ten keeps (so that the realms can never be “even”).

That would have helped to consolidate the RvR in the same environment shared by everyone and removed that painful boat transportation that has always been unfun, unpolished and completely pointless. If this site didn’t start just slightly more than one year ago you would have seen archived plenty of complaints about that foolish, stupid idea of “pirate battles” in the ocean that was used to hype the expansion along the other features.

Instead what we have here, with the announce of “The Isle”, is the repetition of a trend I know even too well. Mythic wants to be “trendy”. Back then at the planning stage of ToA they looked at more popular games (EQ). They saw that those games had PvE raid endgame that was popular.

The stream of thoughts at Mythic was evident: Hey, EQ has a PvE treadmill and endgame raids. DAoC has the PvE treadmill and PvP endgame. So EQ is like 1+1=2 if now we add the PvE endgame raid to DAoC we are like 1+1+1=3! We win! The better of all worlds!

I believe that today it should be evident how that approach was utterly superficial and stupid. All games are successful by building on their own qualities, not by leeching ideas coming from other games. That will just ruin progressively the identity and qualities of your own game by suffocating them in contexts that aren’t appropriate.

The trend is now about quick PvP battlegrounds and Mythic wants to be there as well for its slice of the pie. But they are just fools if they believe that this is the path that will bring them there.

My comments follow:

—
I’m the only one with negative comments ready?

With half the servers currently dying what we DO NOT need is more landmass to spread even more the action. Even worst if we go back to the Emain model for repetitive and pointless zerg rush.

A better idea could be about removing those two retarded zones filled with water we have right now and connect the three frontiers via the same bridges but WITHOUT the island in the centre. Or at least a very small isle instead of another full zone.

The players, in particular at this moment, are in a finited quantity. The battlefield need dynamism, not to get rooted in the same form and never move from that point. What we are going to lose is the sieges at the keeps and the actual conquest system that made this game unique. Instead what we will get is a bleached version of the Alterac BG in WoW. Just more dull and without mini-goals. There will be just groups and zergs running around in the new “hot tub” while the other TWELVE zones are left to ROT. Along with the uniqueness of this game.

Believe me, this game is still (partially) successful for the uniqueness of the PvP. Not for the old and obsolete mechanics of the combat. With this island you are erasing the qualities to put the players back in a small garden where they can play. It will be extremely fun for a few days. A week at max.

Then we will be once again all bored to tears. Once again with wasted landmass that noone uses, like 90% of the old PvE.

What DAoC needs is definitely NOT more obsolete space.

—

The Island should help concentrate RvR. I don’t see it diluting it at all. Sure, NF is way too big, but this will help in giving players a common fighting area.

But this is yet another poor workaround instead of getting the problem addressed. The “common fighting area” is going to REPLACE the action in the other zones. Sure, you can still go on with the conquest “if you choose so”. But you’ll do it ALONE. That’s the point. How is fun to PvP alone? Really, that’s the point. There aren’t anymore incentives to play anywhere but that damn isle. That’s where you find the action and that’s where you are FORCED to go if you don’t consider the PvP as a stroll to watch the panorama.

This is the mudflation applied even to PvP. A mistake (the zones too big, not enough players) is replaced by “Yet Another Zone” (flavor of the month) where 95% of the players will go. Again with the rest of the world all left to rot.

The fact is there won’t be any incentives to “play the conquest” again. Everyone will go to the “improved zone” and the rest of the system will be left there as ruins of an old game that Mythic refused once again to fix. Instead of addressing the problems they shove once again new stuff to replace what was broken and needed to be improved. And the result will damage the game by dumbing down the gameplay to a level that simply cannot hold the competition with other games.

They are erasing the complexity of the PvP to throw everyone in the “hot tub”. As I said this will last for a week. Then the players will start to notice how the game became dull, pointless and without any depth.

—

This decision simplifies RvR again to its basic elements.

For God’s sake, the RvR in DAoC isn’t interesting for its basic elements.

The mechanics of the combat in DAoC are utterly obsolete and the players that just like those basic elements *do not play anymore this game*. The context is different today.

If some players still like DAoC it’s because it has a more complex, meaningful PvP endgame. The players who didn’t care about that endgame aren’t anymore playing THIS game. They are playing Guild Wars and WoW where the focus of the development has been on THOSE mechancs that are now way better than what DAoC can offer.

If Mythic still hasn’t realized this basic point, I really don’t know what could. DAoC isn’t still popular because it has fun combat mechanics. WoW is head and shoulders above it, it is way more fun, it gives you more tools, it is way more fluid and complex.

If Mythic now plans to throw the players in an “hot tub” PvP arena, they’ll just kill those few qualities that are left instead of building on them. The PvP will go back at the old and pointless zerg rush in Emain to give the players an illusion about how cool were the old times. But it’s a silly illusion.

It worked a few years ago. Now it’s just an announced failure. The enthusiasm of some players is about an illusion that isn’t anymore actual today and that will reveal its ephemeral nature as it will get touched. As the players will remember what Emain was and as they’ll notice how that type of gameplay is now available in a better form in other games.

Emain was not pointless. It was the Hub/Mecca/Center of the PvP universe before NF diffused it.

I agree that NF has the problem of diffusing the action too much. But that’s the problem to address so. Adding another zone where the players can go is just nonsense.

I wouldn’t complain if they were planning in a consolidation of the zones. But they aren’t. The model would work if before they add they also rearrange or remove space. But instead they are adding something that will have the result of suffocating all the rest.

Who cares about defending or taking a keep when you can heap 5x more RPs by just roaming in the hot tub?

—
From the Herald:

Some nights it’s hard to coordinate a war and you’d just rather kill people.

Every night.

I spent some time (while trying to log in Lamorak) to port my old tweaks to the interface, enable the last additions like the tooltips, the social window, the maps and blatantly steal some features from more popular mods.

It seems that Mythic is maintaining just the “atlantis” skin that is too yellowish and kludgy for my likings. So what I did was just to port the look & feel of the classic “midgard” interface and tweak it some more for usability. The purpose was to show some more informations but still being conservative on the space and maintain a “minimal” approach.

So you can give it a try if you are going back to DAoC to try the new servers (I removed the “Master Level” window for example) and need an usable interface, with a neuter color and a slightly better layout than the standard one without becoming incredibly messy like the popular “Derida” (the “Cosmos” of DAoC).

Screenshot

Download Interface

Instructions:

– Unpack the zip in the ui/custom/ directory where you installed the game.
– Select the “custom” interface in the options before logging in with the character
– Type /clock so that the window with the bundled clock+compass+perf monitor shows up
– Make sure that both the compass and performance monitor work by pressing a few times ALT+P (for perf monitor) and ALT+C (for the compass)

NOTE: It is supposed to work with the small fonts, so suitable for 1024×768.

I have so much to say that I’ll have to put it out in tiny steps.

On F13 Mi_Tes comments the recent press release rather harshly. Which is something I’ve never seen her doing:

Had they made this decision over a year ago, I agree it would support both goals and come off reasonably savy. However, waiting so long to carry this baby hurt Mark, the company, and DAoC. Now they are scrambling to save DAoC – where they should have continued to focus on this game for the past 2 years. Being ballsy in making decisions is great, but losing touch with reality and not listening to others gives you what happened with Imperator. A lame idea for a game, with more money sunk into it that DAoC had, and nothing to show for it – a complete waste of time for the devs working on it. I feel sorry for them in this whole mess. Yea, most of them have jobs, but having spent a year or 2 working to achieve absolutely nothing.

This comment goes along to one I quoted already before from Corpnerws:

The “it will inevitably turn into a niche game over time” is a load of shit. The problem is, the core developers move on to new projects, companies cut back development costs and concentrate on other things.

And, finally, this line of thoughts arrives to the last Grab Bag from Sanya:

I appreciate the many notes of regret about Imperator, and I equally appreciate all the posts and letters from die-hard Camelot players celebrating the news that the staff was largely reassigned to Camelot’s expansion and live teams.

Excuse me but there isn’t anything to celebrate in the failure of Imperator, in the removal of ToA with the launch of the new servers and in the return of devs to DAoC when they should have never left it in the first place. We are really bordering the absurd. Of course I appreciate, to an extent, what is happening but you cannot dismiss the responsibility of these choices by just launching a party to celebrate “comebacks” as a direct result of failures under your responsibility and as *deliberate choices*.

Sadly I wasn’t able to find again that message from Sanya where she laughed at people doomcasting DAoC one year before the release of WoW. Mythic had the luck to enter the market when the situation was completely stalling and they considered that short span as a perpetual condition that could never end.

Mmorpgs die if there is no support and for the most part DAoC has been taken captive from its possible development. None of his core problems have been radically addressed in order to chase a conservative development. If now it strongly suffers the competition from “better” games it’s just because this is a result of a choice. A choice that doesn’t deserve to be celebrated.

I really wonder where DAoC could stand now if Mythic decided to *truly* commit and support the game at best.

I also believe that people should take responsibilities, something that doesn’t seem happening. This doesn’t mean that I’d like to see those devs (or management) fired because it would just damage even more the situation (I repeated the concept somewhere on this site, but I couldn’t find the exact post). It’s a point of view that comes from far away about my ideas on the community and the relationship between devs and players. I want the developers out in the public so that they ARE accountable, so that they are exposed to critics. This is the only way, when this process is accepted and felt natural, to keep things moving and improving.

I do not want people fired because it’s just a way to dismiss a problem. Instead I want them accountable and then committed to face those responsibilities instead of dodging them. Admit the faults and start to honestly search solutions.

This is still not happening.

So, what is your decision now? Are you going to accept the possibility to go back to the “Lum days” when the discussion was open, honest and passionate toward a positive direction with the aim to build something or just keep lagging trying to stretch the current situation as much as possible, till it lasts?

Without a different attitude nothing is going to change. Go read again that last link and you’ll see how those points are even more valid today.

I would like so much to see them moving part this point so that I could go back to dicuss again the *practice*, the concrete design and the possible ideas to implement instead of wasting time to criticize the managment. I could fill 800 pages with ideas and suggestions to address some of the most radical problems in order to see the game move again and regain an interesting position. But till they don’t go past that point about the attitude I can just waste my time writing worthless stuff in the same way the developers are wasting their own time.

I don’t see often Walt Yarbrough releasing interviews but there’s a decent one on IGN that was able to draw my attention:

Walter Yarbrough:
The landmass of the worlds of Camelot has grown throughout our many expansions. So much so that with Darkness Rising, we are consciously trying not to add additional hunting areas to the game, because it does not need much additional landmass at this time. Instead, we are striving to incorporate as much of Darkness Rising into the existing game area as we can, while telling the story of a mounting rebellion through the tasks that the players will complete.

I quote this as a coincidence. In the last hours I wrote endless posts on forums delving exactly on that concept. In particular to catch up the occasion for a confrontation of ideas with Brad McQuaid. The other thread is here.

So I definitely support and appreciate the idea of consolidating the content and finding a definite role for it, melting it with the fabric of the game instead of chasing a mudflated model that just makes a game progressively crumble. It’s the very first time I see DAoC not chasing EverQuest, and that’s good.

It can also be an occasion to revise and adjust the design of some zones or parts of them. DAoC has a lot of “space”, in particular in the older, dull zones. The expansion could be used as an occasion to join the work of the live and the expansion teams and carry over the result to the basic game.

Which is another point I touched in one of the threads I linked:

And about the development, it would be extremely useful to have both teams coordinated and sharing their achievements. So that a possible new technology for an expansion can then be integrated also with the rest of the game through the live team. Using the expansion team to feed up progressively even the rest of the game.

What worries me is that just after the quote I pasted above Walt said that the content will be instanced. Old zones? Instanced? I just hope we won’t finish with holes in the grass teleporting us in new dimensions…