Dark Age of Camelot

The Good
The style of art for this game was unique for the time. The cities were well done. The forests looked how they should. And for the most part the game was one big zone.

The Bad
This game was the most boring slot machine I have every played. The game consisted of walking up to a spawn with your friends, having a friend attack a creature, and then everyone else in the group pressing the same attack key repeatedly until said creature dies. And you would do this for 300 hours! The game highly touted its PvP, but that PvP was almost 100 hours into the game play for the lowest most non-complex tier. That is way too long for all but the most rabid of players. And the few players who reached the pvp battlegrounds reported that they were extremely buggy and impossible to defend.

The developers went thru many iterations of pvp design but could not save thus sinking ship. The extreme level dependency in pvp combat meant that unless you were willing to play for 8 hours a day, you wouldn't stand a chance. Even if there were 20 players a few levels lower than a single enemy that single enemy could easily wipe them out.

Finally, the hacking of this game was atrocious. Some high level players used 3rd party apps that let them hunt down lower level players, while evading the more difficult players. So the pvp lands degraded into a grief fest instead of quality pvp game.

The Bottom Line
If you want to grind your way thru 200 - 300 hours worth of static spawns this would have been the game for you. Expect to spend hundreds of hours standing in one place killing red badgers, just to graduate onto black badgers. After fighting black badgers for days, you then graduate onto fighting big skunks and thus the pattern repeats.

Finally, after running on this treadmill for hundreds of hours you can fight in pvp, only to discover that you can't possibly win a fight until you spend 100 more hours on that treadmill! And even if you take all of this time power leveling, you will still lose because of the hundreds of players who were hacking the game.

This game was a perfect example of an "exercise in futility".

The Good
As with all MMORPG's, DAoC is centered around building a character and climbing the ranks of the game. This is accomplished by killing monsters over and over and over. Consisting of a 50 level character curve, DAoC will appeal to those who don't mind investing the time and effort (usually measured in weeks as opposed to days) to bring your character up to that level. In this arena, Mythic has provided an impressive array of areas to hunt in - but it will always come back to killing monsters. No matter how you look at it.

The difference between DAoC and traditional MMORPG's is its three realm system. On any server there are three realms - two of which will be unavailable for you to explore and play in (at least on that particular server). Once you have reached the higher levels (40 plus is the usual marker in the game) you can engage in sanctioned PvP in "frontier" areas for control of any of 21 keeps or 6 "relics" (items which give either magic or strength bonuses to all players in the land). A great deal of strategy, planning, organization and politics can go into the playing at this level - and is not for the faint of heart. Two sides will always loose and the strife that comes from that can get intense.

The graphics, gameplay and product support from the company are all very good.

The Bad
The traditional leveling system - present in all MMORPG's - is here in force. You will spend a great deal of time leveling your character to be at the point at which you can engage in the PvP aspects of the game. Should you change your mind on the type of character you wish to play you are doomed to repartake in the same leveling again. It is often hard to gauge what type of character will serve you best at higher levels so this almost forced repetition can be even more tiresome.

Success, at least in the PvP arena, relies a good bit not on yourself but also on your realmmates. Picking a good server - and a good realm on that server - is paramount before you begin to level. That is often hard to do without inside information on the structures, success history and information on quality of other players.

The Bottom Line
I personally have spent a great deal of time in the last year playing this game. Even with the downsides, the game itself is astounding. If you can stomach the "level grind" there is a great game to be found here. The people management and strategy of leadership challenges inherent in this game come closest to real life combat of any game I have ever seen.

It is also, at least as far as I have seen, the prettiest of the MMORPG's out. The leveling is a little easier when it is surrounded by pretty scenery.

The Good
While I still pine for a MMORPG that isn't set in a cloneworld of Middle Earth or Blade Runner's LA, DAoC is a refreshingly different fantasy game. Some argue that it's dumbed down, I counter that it is (wisely) less encumbered with annoying minutia. It's also a rather fine looking game. Most importantly, both solo and group combat are fun.

The Bad
As Ummagumma noted, the quest/task journal is pretty lame (although it's worth noting that quests and tasks are completely optional). You might take on a quest from Bob the Smith in town X. Part one is to deliver a scroll to Joe the Enchanter in town Z. If you review your quest log, your instructions are Deliver scroll to Joe the Enchanter. It doesn't record what town Joe is in. It doesn't record who assigned you the quest (Bob) or where you received it (town X). So if you log off before completing the quest, chances are you'll never be able to complete it unless you wrote down Bob's initial instructions.

The Bottom Line
Everquest light, but not in a bad way.