As for “breaking the contract,” while I am aware and even welcome the fact that my game experience can and will change over time, I had been lulled into the expectation of a certain degree of “sameness.” My casual playstyle, trioing with my wife and bot on my laptop, had taken us successfully to 50 multiple times, and was sufficient for all but epic dungeons and very tough bosses. As a player, I began to treat this situation as a given, that certain things will always stay the same and that I can only get so far, to a well known point in Darkness Falls, before I would be necessarily stopped by the difficulty of the mobs.

What happened is that the point shifted back, to what had been lower level (by comparison) content. Now, I was blocked from content that had enjoyed by what seemed a capricious and unexpected change to the rules that I been living with for three years. (Another of those rules says that even when a mob tells you “Back off or I’ll lay the smack down,” he’ll chase you anyway, so it’s better to die swinging than running away.)

Without studying patch notes, how was I to identify that the change had taken place? Dommel now wielded a rod, which I didn’t notice until it started to glow. Dommel was a grape, but there was nothing strange about that. I went from low-grape, high-red mobs that, as you put it, we could “roll over,” to a very high grape, minimum 6-8 person mob within the same room.

This is what I mean by a non-pourous barrier. A new barrier to content has been placed in Darkness Falls, and like any good animal confronted with an unexpected barrier to what I want, I’m going to scratch and claw and howl and bite at it until it goes away, or until I’m too bloodied and tired by the effort.

We purchased three copies of Catacombs. My wife enjoyed levelling her Vampiir in the Hibernian solo instances for a while. But for me, I haven’t been in any instance that has the character or charm of Spindlehalla, or the old Marfach, or Varulvhamn–I have to admit I like hand crafted zones, and that’s one of the reasons I liked parts of Darkness Falls. Of course, Catacombs had the misfortune of arriving soon after WoW was released, so we spent less time than it deserved exploring that expansion (i.e., I’ve never been to the new Hibernian city).

Understand, Walt, that I have the highest respect for your team (past and present members). I feel that you’re a member of one of the the few MMO companies that usually gets it right, even down to making gutsy decisions (c.f., Imperator). I don’t agree with how you made the content change to DF–I think Dommel should have been shoved back closer to the Princes–but I trust that you made it for what you believed were the best reasons. If I’ve been burned out on DAOC, it’s because you managed to create a game that held my attention for months at a time since the week of release. You responded to the desires of the people who don’t like PvP and RvR by creating Gaheris, which I applaud heartily. You responded to the community’s outrage about ToA by releasing Classic servers, an excellent move. And you released Catacombs, which while I might not enjoy as a person with a bunch of 50s, I would have adored when I was levelling up those characters.

My complaint, if you will, is a sign of how much I love the game that you’ve had a hand in creating. I want to continue enjoying DAOC, but I also want changes and barriers to content to be more obvious–if Dommel was two rooms farther down, I’d never have felt the need to write this rant because I would have known then that something was different, and I would have approached the situation with uncharacteristic caution.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to what I wrote.

We’ve also adjusted the loot attached to the ‘minor lords’ that you used to roll over with your threesome, to make the reward more commensurate with the risk.

I apologize if this changed an aspect of the game that you used to enjoy, but I’m a touch irked with some of your verbiage – ‘breaking a contract’ with you.

The constant patches to a MMORPG enforce change, and we’ve recently added an entire expansion (Catacombs) devoted to the casual playstyle you enjoy.

-Walt

Producer
Dark Age of Camelot