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Another expansion which discourages new players from joining

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 24
Date: April 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Dark Age of Camelot is centered around 3 different realms fighting each other. To have fair chance in battle those should have access to similiar combat abilities. Lastest expansion Trial of Atlantis is a very time consuming and bugged piece of you know what. It takes any chance from casual gamer to be competetive or even participating in realm warfare unless he is able to spend literally months in player versus enemy environment(so he has those fancy new abilities and without them he'll be on loosing end constantly). If newer expansion falls into same category i wouldnt recommend anyone without too much free time on their hands and iron nerves to cope with all the bugs and very poor support to buy it.

Bah, wait for WoW

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 22
Date: April 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

(...) The game is slowly losing its player base and I would imagine by the time this money-pit expansion comes out the game will be on the back burner. Keep in mind, you will need the SI and ToA expansions to even be competitive before you even think about this one. Not worth it.

I wouldn't recommend this product based on...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 28
Date: July 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

..what direction Mythic is going with DAOC. They are trying to create 'campfests'. That is, having you devote hours of steady time to this game. What this does is it forces casual players to leave the game. The subscriber base is dwindling. Players are upset at Mythic. Overall, I think you'll be much happier with World of Warcraft or Everquest II.

Read Trials of Atlantis and see what people think of Mythic

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 31
Date: July 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you're going to give this company your hard earned dollars, read what kind of garbage they are putting out. If you're new, read the reviews and see for yourself. That's all anyone expects from you. I'll tell you that many many people are unhappy with Mythic. This expansion looks to be no different. The last 2 expansions Mythic put out, Trials of Atlantis (retail) and New Frontiers ('free'), have been uniformly detested by their playerbase. 0 for 2 and we're supposed to trust Mythic? Never.

Never trust Mythic...ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 13
Date: July 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Look at the review of their horribly-done Trials of Atlantis. You'll know whether to purchase this or not. Oh, and if you're a new player, forget about DAOC. It will be 2 years before you'll have a character that can compete.

Mixed Review

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: February 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played DarkAges since the first day of the games release, across 2 servers and 2 realms (I have not played Albion).

The Catacombs Expansion will give a solo or casual player a much less stressful time levelling and earning decent PvE gear. The instanced hunting can make for relatively fast levelling compared to the old zones.
All in all, it is a good expansion if you like the PvE content of the game. Its not if you only play for PvP.

Regardless, if you are new to the genre or DarkAges in particular there are a few things you should know...
Levelling may be quick with the Catacombs expansion (if you are casual or solo and dont have friends to powerlevel you), but that is less than half the battle. That is the only selling point.

The real flaw in the game comes from the amount of time required to farm gear - very much of it with poor drop rates (soon to be increased, though spawn times will be made even longer which is just robbing peter to pay paul) and excessive camping by people (including guilds that will log in as a mob spawns and steal it). These items however are 100% necessary to the completion of a character. Some characters, such as the warden, are almost useless if they have not done the full run of MasterLevels and ToA farming. The time for this farming is very intense.

All in all, there is a Very Steep entry level for starters.

On top of that, there is a confusing and easy to mess up specialization system, where you spend your skill points. Respecs (rechoosing your skills) for these points are rarely handed out by Mythic (once per year or less), and the stones you need to use to retrain your skills go for insanely high prices that nobody but the most dedicated and equipped players can afford. In a recent statement Mythic said they were happy with this system.
This means once you create a character it will have to stay like that. Once you have put in the time to level, gear out, masterlevel, and then begin the realmpoint treadmill - you will have put in hundreds upon hundreds of hours. If you made a mistake or found you do not like your specialization, or found it to be in poor demand, or would just like a change - you will be stuck with it for good.

The game is plagued with a poor interface, strict class selection for PvP (many classes are unwelcome), finicky PvP (as the interrupt system attests to), and Extremely Fast paced PvP. Literally there are classes that can kill you instantly, and there is almost no give and take in a battle.
The hallmark of the game is PvP, but the pace of it makes it very difficult to enjoy. It is faster than most FPS games. If you do not have a planned organized competitive group you will just be farmed & frustrated.

So in the end, even though I play it to this day, I have a powerful guild and support network to make levelling or getting gear tolerable, and PvP a success instead of being repeatedly killed over and over. Guilds like mine however, do not invite newcomers or people who play less than 6 hours per day.

I cannot, and do not, recommend this title for a beginner or a newcomer.
If you are a veteran DarkAges fan, you may enjoy the solo exp of Catacombs, or the change in appearances (though SI is still the superior PvP engine if you do not depend on healers helper, etc).

Rates are now increased to the same price as Warcraft, EQ2, etc. The President now only promises to support the game as long as the community does, and such a non-committal message does not bode well for the future.

I hope this review was helpful.

Both Highlighting and Degrading the Beauty of the Realms

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: January 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Envrionmentally, the graphical upgrade Catacombs offers is fantastic, and the new classes are welcome. The new character models, for the most part, are a graphical improvement without any change in style. However, the character models of the Avalonians and Elves, while graphically superior to their predecessors, have undergone a drastic change in style. Gone are the lithe and eerily ethereal Elves of the Dark Age of Camelot I used to know, replaced by the standard long-eared, tanned, shapely, bulky Elves similar to the EverQuest franchise. Gone are the delicately studious Avalonians, suffering the same new affliction of weight gain that the unfortunate Elves have. It is truly a travesty.

Mysteriously, the other races are, apparently, stylistically unchanged.

Character creation itself is a disappointment, with extremely limited flesh tones, hair colours, and hair styles (about four for each race/gender). If Mythic's reasoning for this is a matter of resources, I would have recommended waiting a year or more to do this well, rather than releasing such a minor improvement in appearance customisation with such a major change in the aesthetic style of the Avalonians and Elves.

Newest expansion pack

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: April 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This catacombs expansion is the third major expansion of the Dark age of camelot MMORPG online game.Each expansion Mythic have improved graphics quality and features, and also added new areas to play.

Their last expansion, Trials of Atlantis, was not great, its true. Mythic admit that due to publishing deadlines they shipped it with bugs that they have had to fix later, and some even they are still fixing, but this is true of most online games, they are in a state of flux always.

For the main game review, check out DAOC gold and the expansion reviews, we have yet to see how this newest expansion changes things and how it works, the original game and its expansions to date are well worth playing.

Online games create strong loyalty, and some negative reviews here do show that they were written by people loyal to other games. As a player of DAOC I would say it is one of the best I have played, with a great community and many features that other games lack. I will be buying this newest expansion, but I am wary that it may have problems that their last expansion had because it was rushed out.

neutral review because I, as everyone, has no clue how good or bad this patch may be. Anyone who reviews it at this stage otherwise is heavily biased one way or the other.

DAoC Catacombs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: August 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Catacombs basically renders all the old zones useless. Why waste time in them when you can level up twice as fast running the insta dungeons. The new Catacombs areas themselves are pretty boring and ill conceived. Pretty stupid release imo but at least it makes the grind to 50 alot easier.

Piss Poor Loyalty Maintenance

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Don't get me wrong, DaoC is a great game and I have two accounts and 14 toons to attest to this fact. The good news, at least for those just entering the game, is that you'll have an easy time immersing yourself in the game, at all levels. The bad, for long-term gamers, is that Mythic has made all of those levels, Master Levels and achievements that took you months and months of work MUCH easier for noobs to achieve, without actually giving you anything in return (you DO get the nice title of "Elder" if you've player for four years or more). Given the ridiculously exaggerated prices for artifacts and scrolls achieved through Atlantis (now available for free download along with the basic DaoC software and Shrouded Isles expansion at Mythic's site), Mythic has made scroll drops vastly easier, and dramatically increased the cost of repairing artifacts (in addition to adding Epic Armor in Catacombs that comes close to approximating artifact quality, and which anyone can, and almost has to, get as part of general class quests).

It's genuinely sad that Mythic, rather than responding to its long time, loyal customer base, has chosen to pander the game to potential new subscribers. It wouldn't be such an issue if something were done to balance this, like giving long-time players some advantages in crafting (getting an LGM "has never been easier"), or benefits for toons leveled prior to the Task Dungeons of Catacombs (where "leveling has never been easier"). Sadly, this is not the case, and new subscribers continue to join, which is, in some ways, great news. What should concern them, however, is one day they'll be veterans, like the rest of us, and will find out first hand how deaf Mythic can be to that group.

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