DAoC's Still Arround, and Still Fun!

April 16th, 2010

I re-installed Dark Age of Camelot on something of a whim recently. I played the game to the point of detrimental addiction the year it came out, I eventually had to cut my ties and sell my account to get away from it. It seems I did it at a good time, too, because, from what I hear, the first two expansions weren't all that well received by the remaining players.

But I digress. Some 8 years later I'm playing DAoC again and I find myself pleasantly surprised by a number of things: it's still fun and it's still quite populated. The latter surprise may be the result of the game being merged into one (or 10?) servers. I'm not entirely sure why, but there are 10 "Ywain" servers, but everyone on each of them seems to actually play together in the same virtual world. Oh well, I try not to over-think it.

I created a hunter; it was a class I enjoyed quite a bit my first time through, but never played much since my main character was a Hibernian Enchanter. I also tried out some of the new classes: a Bonedancer and a Reaver. It was a thrill to see all those old areas again, as well as to explore all the new content available. More importantly, the game is still quite fun and quite playable... though a bit long in the tooth when it comes to its interface.

You see, DAoC is still tied to its relatively archaic command-line-based interface, where you type /commands (such as "/keyboard") to access menus and interface items. Sure, you can macro them, and sure, they've added buttons for many of these, but it's nowhere as polished as any MMO that's come out in the last five years. It's actually kind of a curious anachronism too, because DAoC came out in fall of 2001 if I recall correctly, only three years before EQ2 and World of Warcraft reshaped the MMO-scape in 2004. And yet, in the past 6 years, MMOs haven't changed much, visually or interface-wise. I suppose, in a sense, DAoC is one of the last great "golden age" MMOs, along with Asheron's Call and the original Everquest... all of which are all still running with strong, dedicated fan bases.

If you're interested in a bit of nostalgia, or you're willing to take a leap way back in time to see how us old timers used to game, check out the official site and give the 14-day free trial a whirl.

Posted by: Soulrift