summer mmorpg editorial

[Nadia]

My return to DAoC, among other things.
http://www.massivemultiplayer.org/modul ... cle&sid=78
The past six months have been interesting in the MMOG universe. I held on to AC2 like it was like it was the last erg of electricity in New York City, while all of my friends figured I was just insane. I actually bought a bargain-bin copy of AC1: Dark Majesty, just to see where that game went. I played Star Wars Galaxies for a period of 2 weeks before I nearly returned it to the store and demanded my money back.

AC2 is finally coming around, what with the high-content monthly patches, and the announcement of the world consolidation. They appear to have some really cool things on the horizon, as well. I’m still playing this game.

The trip back to AC1 was a bit of a bust, as the world is populated with extremely difficult monsters, “Buff-Bots” abound, and power-leveling is the only way to play the game. Like its successor, the world appears barren to the beginning player. I cancelled my account 2 weeks after opening it. If it weren’t still a money-maker for Microsoft, I’d imagine that they’d have closed it by now. They really need to take a page from “A Tale in the Desert”, and close out this episode in AC1’s life.

SWG was less lacking in people, and more lacking in heart. Where AC1 had so much content that you could spend the entire beginning levels just talking to NPCs and going on quests, SWG was a test in your patience for mindless tasks and mindless killing. The whole draw of the game was the setting, and that’s nowhere to be seen. It might as well be Anarchy Online with a better graphical interface. Once again, it only took me 2 weeks to close out my account.

Just recently, I revisited Dark Age of Camelot. I did it because they’re announcing a couple of things: A new expansion, and, well, another new expansion. There must be something in the water down there in Maryland, as Mythic is working on a new game (Imperator) at the same time. I think they’re trying to tie Turbine for the Most Projects on the Plate at One Time award at this year’s MMOG Awards.

Here’s the strange thing: DAoC still does it for me. In a series of 3 weeks or so, I’ve tried out 5 different characters in each of the 3 realms. I’ve played on servers so populated, just standing in the main city causes the chat window to scroll with all of the broadcast announcements from players. I’ve played on the test server, where population levels were still active, but not so active as to be intrusive

(more daoc commentary at link)