One of the universal truths of the MMO gamer is that there will never be a time or a game as great and epic and amazing as your first.
For those people who started in UO - there can never been another game with the depth of freedom and the ability to dictate your own gaming style.
The EQ players out there will tell you that no other game built camaraderie and told such an epic story. The people who started out in Shadowbane will regale you with stories of building and destroying empires... (When the servers were up for longer than 15 minutes(or when there were less than 10 players in a zone)).
Then there is me: Dark Age of Camelot was my first MMO experience. Quite by choice I might add - I had shunned the MMO as a "hardcore" PC FPS player and part-time RTS player I was against the idea of a subscription and to be blunt - I knew that it was a time-sink. I knew a little about UO and I had heard lots of interesting things about Asheron's Call and Everquest and from what little I knew; I was certain that playing them meant succumbing to an abyss of endless RPG goal achievement.
In retrospect I can tell you I was right I never should have started ;) - but I digress... It was April of 2002 - and it was SLOW - as it always is in the game cycle. Nothing was out, and nothing was coming out that was going to be interesting to play and so as always we were looking for something to do. I had just moved up to Portland Oregon in 2000 and started a new Job in Jan of '01 where I met Spencer. Spencer was a PC enthusiast as well and we spent copious time playing Baldurs Gate at the lan parties I hosted. That year we were into Tribes, Baldurs Gate, and one of the iterations of Doom/Quake but we were always looking for something to do. One evening in April he came by for a bit of the ole
LAN Partay and we were playing... I think Tribes - to be honest and he was telling me about how he had just subscribed to DAoC, how it had just come out in October the year before and that it was in a word -
AWESOME. For some reason I decided that there was something out there to be had and I joined Spencer on Lancelot.
Spencer was a Champion which meant he was a Hibbie so since I couldn't imagine a world where I would be a male toon and be small - I rolled up a Firbolg Blademaster.
We. Had. A. Blast. It was awesome; progression was gruelingly slow in PvE and coordination was an absolute must. Most mobs were aggressive, and BAF (which meant if you pulled it or aggro'd it there was always more than 1 mob in its posse) and that almost certainly spelled doom for you and possibly your group if you were a fool. Quests were something that didn't make a lot of sense - there were monsters in the world and they needed killing, but the idea that someone would send you out there to do it for them was not really the deal. That is not to say that there weren't quests; there were - but they were not something that guided you on your path to progression. The more prevalent guiding factor was the dungeon and the "camp" a concept provided by Everquest.
Basically for every level range there was a place where monsters of the right level spawned faster than you could kill them and so you would try to find a tank and a healer and some DPS and head out there to handle their bidness.
Mudmen, Siabra, Pookha, the pit and countless other camps until the holy grail of PvE leveling. The cursed forest and Finlaiths...
The cursed forest was the big-bad-mamma-jamma PvE spot - real level 50 epic mobs roamed there and not many people knew about groups that could successfully kill them. We speculated that you needed more than one group but noone was sure.
Finlaiths were the best XP camp in the forrest a densly packed group of level 50+ mobs that spawned fast and were weak to energy magic. Meaning that the group composition was Tank, Warden, Druid, PBAOE Chanterx2 or 3, Mana Ment, and Bard. There was a list on Lancelot that was maintained by the person who had been in the Fin group the longest.
You would literally send a tell to the list guy and he would add you to the list of people waiting for someone to leave this perpetually running group. It was hands down the absolute fastest way from 47.5 to 50 so there were always at least 2-3 people on the list. If you were a blademaster like me you were waiting for a non-support slot to open up. If there was an amazing Druid there then sometimes you could get in and be extra DPS which was super helpful since Blademasters had 1 AOE attack.
Then - voila! 50! Ready to head out to emain an defend the fronteir from the evil Albion swarm and the insta-stunning Midgardians.
I am feeling like I may have to recap PvP in a separate post - but suffice it to say that no other game has put together the real feeling of reliance that DAoC created. Suboptimal groups were punishing and as a result players played needed support classes because they knew they would have a spot. Its a far cry from the WoW/Rift world where every class can fill a role.
It was 9 years ago for me but thanks to Mythic and DAoC for the glory days!
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