I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…
I stopped here to comment. You say you really enjoyed DAOC? Do you remember the time it took to get back to the fight? 10 minute portal waits, long runs through the borderlands… At least here if you take a keep, it’s possible to get a waypoint built there for fast travel.
Edit: got to gear repair QQ. DAOC gear slowly broke down to useless and you had to make an entire new set!
The money stuff, daoc gave zero cash reward for player kills until NF. Here you can make a profit in WvW. You can’t judge it by going as an up-level. In daoc, do you remember trying to fight a purple? A red even? Yea.. can’t even hit them, at least here you can contribute as an uplevel. Seriously did we play the same game?
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can suggest this is better than DAOC in any way…? Sure, you had to wait for portals… but only to invade, you could run straight out into your own frontier with no loading screens because it was (before NF) one zone. Running through the borderlands was actually fun, I remember going there in the early days of the game as a level 30something Warrior with a Skald friend… skirmishing outside the Hib frontier keep and killing 5 equal level opponents through a combination of tactics and luck.
I have a lot of fond memories of that game, and most of the “negative” things about it I see as positive. Stuns, mez? That was half the fun, if you knew what you were doing you could wipe a badly-organised army with a group of 8. Balance was a mess, sure, but that’s the same for most MMOs… and don’t forget the sheer number of classes DAOC had… 44 classes. That’s right. Each class felt different. How many does GW2 have? Or WoW, or SWToR?
As for gear degrading, sure, but it took FOREVER compared to this game. And they changed it so that artifacts didn’t degrade permanently. I rarely had problems with gear breaking, and I played the game for years. Still, that was a different time when gamers demanded more complex games with an incredibly complicated array of stats to balance (weapon types and armour types matching up, for example). Since WoW this genre has gone mainstream and quality has suffered, inevitably.
That’s not to say I don’t like some things about this game. Combat feels more dynamic, although with any lag the dodge mechanic is often hilarious/frustrating. I also like weapon swapping and… erm, well I’m sure there’s other things.
Anyway, like I said, I’ll be trying WvW a little bit more before I make a final decision on it. But I’ve yet to see anything approaching a convincing argument for items degrading in WvW.
I didn’t actually say this was better than DAOC :P I am just pointing out that some of the flaws you are finding existed in DAOC as well. I mean, running out of your own border keep took forever. Most of the time you had to get all the way to a MG for action and if you weren’t with a speed class it was a long run.
I honestly think the combat in this game is far better than daoc though. Active evading and for the most part, no need to a target adds a lot of twitch feel to PvP.
DAOC was amazing no doubt. This game though really is the closest there as ever been Aside from maybe old school Aion. They are missing some key stuff but hopefully they will get there. Prestige system has a shot to be good and I still have hopes they will add options to show names so we can have rivalries.