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ToA KO'd DAoC

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: January 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As a Commerce student in the last year of my B. Comm. degree, watching a company do something like this to themselves really makes my head hurt. The first, most basic, fundamental lesson they teach us in second-year Marketing is: Understand what your customers want. I have been playing DAoC since its release years ago, and ToA is what drove me to quitting for good.

Mythic either did not understand what their customers wanted, or decided to deliver something that they knew they did not want anyways. In either case, the result was an unmitigated (and in my eyes, unsalvageable) failure. Customers WANT to have enjoyable fights against other players in this game; what ToA gave them is a truckload of barriers to that enjoyment that only people with an obscene amount of time to devote to a computer game can possibly hope to accomplish.

The main appeal to DAoC was it's RvR (team-based player vs. player) fighting. However, to get to the point where you were good enough to be relatively successful required fighting monsters from levels 1 through 50.

This was rather time-consuming, and by the time people finished, the last thing they wanted to do was to "level" their character more. Mythic did implement more powerful rewards, but they tied the rewards to PvP fighting, so the method to get the rewards was palatable to the customers, even if the many rewards themselves were horrible unbalancing.

With ToA, what Mythic has done is to force players who want to be competitive in RvR to endure a HORRIBLY time-consuming process of getting 'master levels' and insanely powerful artifacts that unbalance the game even more. It's Everquest tedium all over again to get the latest, greatest ML or item, with the exception that the PvE fighting is much, much worse. Now DAoC consists of a crazy arms race with two categories of people: Powergamers in large/elite powerguilds who can devote hundreds of hours a month on a computer game, and casual players who play when classes/jobs/social life allows. Casual players are leaving the game en masse. Playing DAoC now necessitates a huge time commitment to PvE in order to enjoy the RvR element which is what most customers enjoyed. DAoC has an environment now where the uber players rule and casual players drool. Elite powergamers will stick to the party line of "Oh you don't NEED to do MLs and artifacts to compete", because they like having people around to slaughter like cattle. Unfortunately, this situation isn't much fun for the cow.

The new timesinks involve camping the same monsters for hundreds of hours to "level up" items, waiting for hours hoping a certain monster spawns, and hoping you can get into trips with the power guilds for hours at a time to complete stages of quests.

Did I mention that ToA has more bugs than most beta tests? Practically daily, Mythic publishes patches to problems in ToA rather than making fundamental game changes that customers really want.

Mythic really slit their own throats with this one. Save your money for a computer game that can be enjoyable, rather than a second job that you have to pay for.

Has good and Bad.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 21 / 28
Date: November 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all, unless you buy and account from ebay or have a top level character, this expansion won't give you much. This is designed for high level characters and even with that, has several major problems.

1st) You need about 30 people to advance in the master levels. The trials are so hard and take so long, even when your level 50 with perfect gear and big groups of people, your frustration level may go through the roof.

2nd) This will have a dramatic impact on the very cool "RVR" component of the game. With TOA, dark age has changed dramatically. For example, a breed of fun classes were "Stealthers". TOA introduced an element which destroyed all stealther classes (6 of them total). If you have DAOC now, you have no choice but to be affected by this XPack.

3rd) On the good side, underwater is gorgeous!

4th) Some (below 40%) of the trial and artifact quests are enjoyable. The others require mass groups huge wait lines for re-spawns and are just plain not fun.

5th) They put a lot of work in this xpack. The downside is its changing the base game dramatically and while its still new, from what I've seen, its not changing it for the positive. Who knows what it will be like 5 months from now.

6th) The game is chuggy on 512 ram... I added 1 gb and it runs much better.

Recommendation: If you play DAOC now and have a lvl 50.. get the xpack, you'll need it to compete. Do it soon, because these trials require huge groups. You and a couple of friends won't be able to pass these trials, so the sooner you get in with the zergs the better.

Only time I'd say DON'T get the xpack is.. are you thinking of returning to DAOC? Well, if your a stealther, 100% no, stay away. If your a caster, well, this is a caster-love Xpack, and as for tanks.. hmm... some things help and hurt you in this one, so why not come back! =)

Beta Tester - Expansion Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 40
Date: October 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Trials of Atlantis expansion pack for Dark Age of Camelot is a full expansion with all new worlds to explore. The basic premise of the game expansion is to add lore from the lost world of Atlantis, to the already existing lore of Camelot, Norse and Celtic legends present in the current game.

In addition to the new lands of Atlantis the game developers Mythic Entertainment, have revamped the game engine to bring a new level of beauty to the environment. The updated water reflections give realistic reflections of trees, clouds, sun and moon and even your character. The new tree models bring more variety and realism to the landscaping. Creative use of textures allows each expansion engine and video card to see varying levels of realism. The only negative with the new engine is that it is unproven in player versus player combat situations (called Realm vs Realm). Each sucessive engine update tends to be more beautiful but be a bit harder on the player's machines requiring upgraded video cards and memory. This one is no exception and you should verify your computer meets at least the minimum requirements.

If you are a story driven MMORPG fan, you'll find plenty to enjoy as you unravel the mystery of Atlantis. This expansion is unlike previous ones in that it is highly quest and story driven. The worlds are designed to be played from level 20 through level 50 and there is plenty to see. The bulk of the main areas are islands and at first glance are really beautiful but somewhat thin on monsters to fight till you remember that this expansion is about an underwater civilization.

Submerging underwater leads to much of the new content in the closer in areas, and completely new fighting experiences for those of us who were weaned on land. Without getting a magic potion to assist in breathing you have about 30 seconds to look underwater. Various potions can be purchased with vendors, bounty point vendors and alchemists allowing you up to 30 minutes to explore without surfacing for air. There are atlantean equivilents of mermaids and mermen, sharks, rays and other sea creatures - some aggressive and some not. You can survive most underwater encounters as a single level 50 character and if younger bringing friends would be advisable.

As mentioned before, the heart of this expansion though is for the storyline and quests. The goal is to complete 9 Master Levels and gain new abilities that can be used in battle. Mythic is very tight lipped about what the master levels are but will be releasing information on them just before the game ships. Even the beta testers got very little exposure to the master levels other than testing the encounters and partial quests so everyone gets an equal chance to discover for themselves what the rewards are. What I can tell you is that each master level is made up of a series of quests that require thought and strategy to complete. I was able to complete some of the quests and they were quite fun and challenging to figure out. The end encounters were even more difficult and require many players to group together into battlegroups and use strategy to solve each puzzle. Each battlegroup can contain up to 200 players in one team broken into groups of 8 (regular groups). Some end encounters appear to take UP TO 13 full groups of 8 players. Experienced players should be able to make do with significantly less, but be prepared for new challenges in strategy. Zerg mentality approaches will fail and you must be creative to solve them.

Speaking of rewards, the expansion adds a whole new type of armor and weapons to the game. These new armors obtained through quests are of the highest quality and add interesting new stats to your character. Your armor may contain + to your Caps, + to melee skills (as in ALL melee skills at once), + to your fighting speed, and more. These + abilities are new and will cause many experienced players to rebalance their character to take advantage of the higher caps. It has been speculated that the master abilities will take advantage of these new higher caps allowing your level 50 character to be more powerful than before. Only time will tell.

For more information on the game, visit the following official websites or your favorite player run site for DAoC.

http://www.trialsofatlantis.com/
http://www.camelotherald.com/

See you in Atlantis!
-Toysmith of Bedevere

Dissapointing at best

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: November 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Trials of Atlantis is dissapointing at the best if you are looking for game content. I have been playing for two years now and left the realms of norrath in everquest to search for a better game; I thought I had found it in DAOC but with Trials of atlantis it has become everquest revisited. here are a few reasons why.

1.) The jump in system requirements for the graphics engine. Yes this game has better graphics, beautiful. But, it uses up so many system resources its not funny compared to DAOC.
The original everquest was a nice game with decent graphics, but each succesive expansion pack the programmers at verant were determined to show their skill with code, and made this beautiful world, you would have to upgrade your system with every release jsut to keep pace.

2.) What made DAOC a truly distinctive game was the concept of realm vs realm. All the classes were generally balanced in the beginning makeing it viable to compete on any level. With the advent of Trails of Atlantis it reminds me soo much of Dragon raids among others from Everquest its not even funny. At least verant made its expansion packs scaleable to level with new releases. TOA has failed miserably in this aspec as you need large groups of lvl 40 + charactres to complete a master level. On a further note, there are several long standing issues with the classes that have severly unbalenced the concept of r v r. Everything from buffbots(which is not in the spirit of the game) yet mythic allows, to spel crafting system, toindividual class/pathing issues. Trials of Atlantis threatens to further blow this imbalance out of proportion. Well assumeing that it doesnt take poeple the next 4 to 6 months to complete the master levels, compleely disreguarding the new people that come to the game.

In everquest there was no realm vs realm it was just who had the biggest baddest gear to kill slay the beast.

3.) A point similar to the above two. If I wanted to do a strictly player vs environment game I would have never left Everquest in the first place. This game has started to kill the very base that people switched from everquest in the first place.

The only real reason for me to stay in the game right now is to hang with the few friends I have in DAOC who have not closed or sold thier acounts. Its my sincerest hope that either this game gets back to the heart from which it was formed or something similar but better comes out. Its also my hope that with all of the recent patches with Trials of Atlantis tha have come out, that for the next release that Mythic be more comprehensive with its Software quality assurance program, lest players pay for its mistakes.

One last note, there is a post on DAOC Catacombs in the necromancer section saying "Help they are trying to Ruin TOA". Reguardless of the suggestion of the sugesstion in the post. I have to be totally honest on this one based off my own expereinces as well as my experiences of my friends in this game. Have a great day and think twice about bying this one.

gotta love nerfs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: December 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Mythic really messed up a fun game with all of the timesinks they introduced with this expansion. I won't reiterate the comments below, but I wanted to post this caveat ---

Some of the new artifacts in this expansion are quite overpowered. When players complained about how overpowered one of these artifacts in particular was, Mythic reduced its power. However, they reduced its power so as to make it useless.

So if you're considering buying this expansion, and are willing to spend the hours finding your dream artifact, and the hours sitting around waiting to find the scrolls that activate your artifact, and the hours levelling up your artifact, beware --- it may very well be that Mythic will decide, after you spend all that time, to make your artifact useless.

Dark Age Indeed...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

DAoC Classic and Shrouded Isles was an excellent combination, where DAoC Classic still had some great exp sites, SI added new PvE content and Items. PvE was well balanced with RvR, in the sense that players could exp for a while and then go to RvR without much trouble. The Items from SI had little effect on RvR.

ToA ruined this perfectly balanced relationship of PvE with RvR. ToA turned the game for the casual gamer into a game that is going to be won by the powergamer, for the following reasons:

Artifacts: First of all, Artifacts take a LONG time to activate, and i'm talking from personal experience here.
Do the encounter, get the item, farm for scrolls, and hope that your activation is not bugged. (Did i mention this game has so many bugs that it seems it hasn't been beta tested?) Once you have the item activated, enjoy 4 days of non stop farming a certain mob to level it to 10, where you unleash its full power. Many artifacts are extremely powerful at level 10, and a power-gamer that wears a full suit of Artifact Armor and Items is most definitly going to be VERY successfull in RvR compared to the casual gamer who does not have that.

Trials: The Trials *CAN* be fun, however, expect to do some long hours of waiting before you get a chance to finally get it done. Once again, as stated before, you *WILL* need large groups and a LOT of time to do all Trials. Does the Casual gamer have the capability of this? Nope. Once again, the Power Gamer is the one who benefits.

Overall: Mythic made a *HORRIBLE* expansion that i would DEFINITLY NOT recommend if you are a casual gamer. Paying $30 for a graphics upgrade is not worth it in my opinion. With Trials of Atlantis, Mythic made a bold statement that they prefer the Power Gamer over the Casual Gamer, and not only that, but they lowered their own image among other Gaming Companies by releasing such a bugged game that they have to make patches to fix errors daily. Patching Daily is what Alpha and Beta Tests are for, and DAoC would have been better off had ToA been delayed and tested more.

Buy it if you are looking for a Timesink a la "leveling to 50 all over again", and want some pretty graphics.

Don't touch if your a casual gamer, you will only get frustrated with the game.

Horrible Timesink

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This controversial expansion changed an excellent game into an unbalanced mess. Much of ToA is built on group puzzles for Master Levels and "camping" for objects such as artifacts and scrolls (which you need to activate the artifacts--phew!). The group puzzles are sometimes fun, but often frustrating if your group does not have the ideal combination of classes. Spawn times for "boss" monsters compound an already frustrating experience. Often you will just have to sit and wait...and wait...and wait...and wait some more until the boss mob magically appears. God forbid any key member of your group should need to depart in that period of time. If that happens, you are screwed. That's not to mention the poor people who have real life obligations (imagine!) and cannot devote 24/7 to a game. If you cannot invest a minimum of 4 consecutive hours per session, you will have difficulty accomplishing much in ToA.

Obtaining artifacts is even less fun. First, you have to "camp" a monster type to get the items necessary to activate the artifact (called scrolls). This involves idly killing the same monster after monster, hours on end, hoping the random number generator rolls your way. Then, after you obtain the artifact, you have to level the artifact, often by killing a different monster repeatedly. Boring!

Some people will enjoy this timesink. Unfortunately, those who just want to RvR will be impacted by the new items and master levels. Without these things, you will not be able to compete. DAoC has changed from casual-gamer friendly to hardcore only. Unless you are a serious hardcore gamer who has hours and hours of free time, I do not recommend this game.

Total POS

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game emcompasses everything DAOC players didn't want and hurts or ignores everything DAOC is about.

Mythic Doesn't Understand Their Game's Unique Charm

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

=======
Positives:
=======
-- Very pretty -- the undersea world is a real MMO standout
-- Some Good PvE content -- certain encounters challenging & fun if you enjoy PvE
(However, if you are a pure pVe fan, you'd be a fool to leave Everquest.)

========
Negatives:
========
Please refer to many of the other reviews here.
Basically Mythic copied much of the *horrible* aspects of EQ: campfests, mandatory 5-hour raids, etc

=========
Observation:
=========
To many long-time DAoC players, the charm of the game was
once we "paid our dues" & levelled to 50, got a few Realm Abilities,
we could log on whenever we liked, go out, pVp, have some fun, then log off.
There was little mandatory raiding, little mandatory camping for items, just a few class & realm balance problems.

You could be competitive at DAoC and still enjoy your family's company, a social life, etc.
If you wanted to pVe more, play all the time, you could farm cash, start an alt or try a new realm.

All that has changed.
Anyone who tells you you can be competitive at level 50 w/o ToA Master Levels and Artifacts
is either short-sighted, deluded, or lying.
It is now *very* hard to start over in a new realm or with an alt.
It now takes **massive** amounts of pVe to "pay your dues" for rVr.

The long and short: ToA pretty much ruined the best and only semi-casual MMO
in a misguided and poorly executed attempt at mimicing Everquest.
Pray that Mythic decimates the time sinks and releases a good Realm vs. Realm expansion soon.

Highly NOT recommended

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you are just starting this game, this expansion pack is most definitely not for you. You cannot start Trial 1 until you are level 40. Frankly, if you go to TOA before you are 50, you will end up losing alot of gold and xp. I have several level 50's and die frequently in TOA. The main reason *NOT* to get this expansion is that you will be extremely frustrated. You will not be able to find a group to help you complete the trials. Why? Because they have all moved on to the higher level ML's. No one..I mean NO ONE..is going to repeat any trials or help you complete them. So all in all, you're paying for a slight graphic upgrade. The trials themselves are worthless. You need HUGE groups to complete them and if you are somewhat casual gamer, you won't get them done for all the reasons I stated above. This expansion turned a nice game into a horrible game. Many people are leaving due to this expansion. I would not recommend it.

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