Before I even say a word about either Dark Age of Camelot or World of Warcraft, let me say something-I know Dark Age of Camelot very well. Inside and out. Seven level 50s spanning all realms, over 4 million lifetime realm points, 2 ML10 characters, and have led both relic and ML raids on occasion. Oh, and I'm a recently-retired Team Lead as well.
Dark Age of Camelot is the best MMORPG you can buy right now. It's mature, steady code has tons of content with an easy interface. The leveling curve is reasonable and there's lots of nice quests in the game and cool areas to explore (Coot, I see you're hunting cincocrags-Shrouded Isles is a lot of fun.), and the way PvP is implemented throughout the game is great.
I highly encourage people who haven't played DAoC to play Dark Age of Camelot on underpopulated realms. What I *don't* currently encourage is leveling all the way up to the top levels. The battlegrounds are pretty fun and leveling is nice and fast in them. Basically, play the game a low-levels like some sort of wild BF1942 map with mages and castles and siege engines. The game is very enjoyable at that level.
The game breaks down like many other games, at the endgame. Realm imbalances are everywhere (and *no*, this game is not balanced for PvP, and don't buy it when Mythic or the players says it is. Or rather, it's just balanced very, very poorly.), the TOA PvE grind is truly the sutff of horrors, and the changes made in New Frontiers have turned the game into ranged-people-killing-and-healers-healing monotany with no real potential solution in sight.
When you level up that character in DAoC, what you are looking at is a stale endgame that has a 2-3 month ongoing PvE grind in TOA to become remotely competitive (and requiring large raids to do it in, which I could handle but a lot of people don't care for). Yes, you can RvR out of the gates when you're like 45 and perform competently, but lack of spellcrafted gear/TOA artifacts, realm abilities, and if you're unfortunate enough, a gimped class, will make things unfun. Oh, and you've got to have a decent guild or have terrific connections in the endgame to get anywhere. That goes for pretty much every other game (save WoW currently), though.
I have some other beefs with Camelot-I don't really like their extremely granular class designs that encourage setpiece grouping, and I don't like the way the Realm Point system is currently implemented since it heavily discourages realm cooperation.
These are things that are clearly evident to people who have been around the game for a while. You really wouldn't seem them if you were new to the game, or not really into the high-end, top-echelon of the game yet.
I've beem playing the World of Warcraft beta for a good while now and it's simply terrific. Classes are truly versatile and multifaceted. Leveling is very much smooth becuase it relies on hiding mob grinding and dungeon romping (like you do in Dark Age of Camelot, or EverQuest) through quests-this puts me in a place where the game takes on a more Baldur's Gate like feel than a tradtional MMORPG, which I like. The game's pace is very spirited but not catering to bnet micromonkeys, which I also enjoy-in Camelot, the PvE is very, very slow and dull and the PvP combat unbelievalby fast, while WoW does a good job of keeping PvP combat from being overwhelming quick to resolve against similarly considered opponents.
Summary of DAoC:
Dark Age of Camelot is a good game for 45 levels, with some good ideas that are usually well-intentioned but don't work out well in the endgame. It's the hot chick that turns out to be a man after you work at getting their number, taking them out to the movies, and buying them flowers.
WoW:
The game world of World of Warcraft is approximately 1000 times better than the one put together in Dark Age of Camelot. Every zone, through it's quests, appearance, monsters, and landmarks, has a unique flavor of its own. The dungeons are just terrific-they have boss mobs with nice loot, and you proceed through them in a linear progression with a clear goal of killing the big boss in the end. In Camelot, with the exception of the epic dungeons which require 40+ people to raid and often take 6-8 hours, the dungeon experience is simply finding a camp, pulling the living shit out of it until the group breaks up or you get bored and log off.
Blizzard's PvP system is currently totally fucked, but has the right ideas in place. This is the make-it-or-break it thing for my GF and I. If they don't fully implement it, we'll be all dressed up at higher levels with no place to go. An EQ-like endgame where you just raid for ph4t l3wt is retarded.
Short Summary:
World of Warcraft is the "beer goggles" of MMORPGs. It's very much the same thing that other games have already done, but it's presented in a way that's more refined and agreeable than it's competitiors. It's got good pacing, a good interface, and excellent dungeon hunts for grouping in.
I'm burnt out to all hell on DAoC after 18 or so months of playing, so maybe that's why I'm so quick to bash on its endgame. I do think it's broken, though. WoW's will probably suck too, the only difference really is that it has the potential not to suck, where as DAoC definitely sucks in the endgame.
One last bit-why do people complain about MMORPG subscription prices? For god's sakes, if you play the game like most people do (play it and very little else), you save tons of money paying 13-15 dollars a month. It's like complaining that a game that has 60 hours a month of satisfying gameplay isn't worth the Player's Choice or GH price. That's nuts, stop the whining.
......................ok, ok, I'll stop now, I promise.
