Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
ToA KO'd DAoC, January 12, 2004
As a Commerce student in the last year of my B. Comm. degree, watching a company do something like this to themselves really makes my head hurt. The first, most basic, fundamental lesson they teach us in second-year Marketing is: Understand what your customers want. I have been playing DAoC since its release years ago, and ToA is what drove me to quitting for good.Mythic either did not understand what their customers wanted, or decided to deliver something that they knew they did not want anyways. In either case, the result was an unmitigated (and in my eyes, unsalvageable) failure. Customers WANT to have enjoyable fights against other players in this game; what ToA gave them is a truckload of barriers to that enjoyment that only people with an obscene amount of time to devote to a computer game can possibly hope to accomplish. The main appeal to DAoC was it's RvR (team-based player vs. player) fighting. However, to get to the point where you were good enough to be relatively successful required fighting monsters from levels 1 through 50. This was rather time-consuming, and by the time people finished, the last thing they wanted to do was to "level" their character more. Mythic did implement more powerful rewards, but they tied the rewards to PvP fighting, so the method to get the rewards was palatable to the customers, even if the many rewards themselves were horrible unbalancing. With ToA, what Mythic has done is to force players who want to be competitive in RvR to endure a HORRIBLY time-consuming process of getting 'master levels' and insanely powerful artifacts that unbalance the game even more. It's Everquest tedium all over again to get the latest, greatest ML or item, with the exception that the PvE fighting is much, much worse. Now DAoC consists of a crazy arms race with two categories of people: Powergamers in large/elite powerguilds who can devote hundreds of hours a month on a computer game, and casual players who play when classes/jobs/social life allows. Casual players are leaving the game en masse. Playing DAoC now necessitates a huge time commitment to PvE in order to enjoy the RvR element which is what most customers enjoyed. DAoC has an environment now where the uber players rule and casual players drool. Elite powergamers will stick to the party line of "Oh you don't NEED to do MLs and artifacts to compete", because they like having people around to slaughter like cattle. Unfortunately, this situation isn't much fun for the cow. The new timesinks involve camping the same monsters for hundreds of hours to "level up" items, waiting for hours hoping a certain monster spawns, and hoping you can get into trips with the power guilds for hours at a time to complete stages of quests. Did I mention that ToA has more bugs than most beta tests? Practically daily, Mythic publishes patches to problems in ToA rather than making fundamental game changes that customers really want. Mythic really slit their own throats with this one. Save your money for a computer game that can be enjoyable, rather than a second job that you have to pay for.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
gotta love nerfs, December 22, 2003
Mythic really messed up a fun game with all of the timesinks they introduced with this expansion. I won't reiterate the comments below, but I wanted to post this caveat ---Some of the new artifacts in this expansion are quite overpowered. When players complained about how overpowered one of these artifacts in particular was, Mythic reduced its power. However, they reduced its power so as to make it useless. So if you're considering buying this expansion, and are willing to spend the hours finding your dream artifact, and the hours sitting around waiting to find the scrolls that activate your artifact, and the hours levelling up your artifact, beware --- it may very well be that Mythic will decide, after you spend all that time, to make your artifact useless.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dark Age Indeed..., December 13, 2003
By A Customer
DAoC Classic and Shrouded Isles was an excellent combination, where DAoC Classic still had some great exp sites, SI added new PvE content and Items. PvE was well balanced with RvR, in the sense that players could exp for a while and then go to RvR without much trouble. The Items from SI had little effect on RvR.ToA ruined this perfectly balanced relationship of PvE with RvR. ToA turned the game for the casual gamer into a game that is going to be won by the powergamer, for the following reasons: Artifacts: First of all, Artifacts take a LONG time to activate, and i'm talking from personal experience here.
Do the encounter, get the item, farm for scrolls, and hope that your activation is not bugged. (Did i mention this game has so many bugs that it seems it hasn't been beta tested?) Once you have the item activated, enjoy 4 days of non stop farming a certain mob to level it to 10, where you unleash its full power. Many artifacts are extremely powerful at level 10, and a power-gamer that wears a full suit of Artifact Armor and Items is most definitly going to be VERY successfull in RvR compared to the casual gamer who does not have that. Trials: The Trials *CAN* be fun, however, expect to do some long hours of waiting before you get a chance to finally get it done. Once again, as stated before, you *WILL* need large groups and a LOT of time to do all Trials. Does the Casual gamer have the capability of this? Nope. Once again, the Power Gamer is the one who benefits. Overall: Mythic made a *HORRIBLE* expansion that i would DEFINITLY NOT recommend if you are a casual gamer. Paying $30 for a graphics upgrade is not worth it in my opinion. With Trials of Atlantis, Mythic made a bold statement that they prefer the Power Gamer over the Casual Gamer, and not only that, but they lowered their own image among other Gaming Companies by releasing such a bugged game that they have to make patches to fix errors daily. Patching Daily is what Alpha and Beta Tests are for, and DAoC would have been better off had ToA been delayed and tested more. Buy it if you are looking for a Timesink a la "leveling to 50 all over again", and want some pretty graphics. Don't touch if your a casual gamer, you will only get frustrated with the game.
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