Dark Age of Camelot (with Strategy Guide)

Basically you pick one out of 3 worlds, and then you choose the race you want your character to be. Then you pick up a "profession". I started playing as an Armsman and on the very first day was already playing with new friends I met online. A few days later I decided to try a Sorcerer: just fabulous!

Not only you end up playing with people from all over Europe, but you have a huge world (well, actually 3) to explore. You can play just for the killing part, you can play for the challange, you can play for the online-chat... basically you can play the way it is more fun to you.

The only drawback is that you will have to pay 10 Euros/month after the first 30 days, which are free.

Anyway, I think the game is worth the money. Regarding the book included in the Amazon.co.uk bundle, it has extensive information on most items, but maps are really bad. You can get much better maps on the internet.

I recomend this game to everyone and hope you have as much fun as I am having.

Mainly, as the first reviewer said, the people who hate this game, just couldn't crack it, the monster killing can easily be passed by, i myself have 2 maximum level chars (level 50) and on reflection i enjoyed meeting the people, and i enjoyt the struggle and challenge to reach 50, and the rewards it brings, such as free levels on other characters, and access to the elitist RvR zones/grps without discrimination because your not 50 :)

I could go on about how involved people get with this game, its captivating to see people talk about the perfect group setup for RvR, which classes should be incorperated, and the groups style, be it a caster frenzy or a tank wall (AKA PBAOE Box or MA group :P) or even a group full of stealthers. I could also talk about the way different classes get different amounts of specialization points when they level up, and how it effects the gameplay, theres alsorts, if you don't like some aspect of this game, there must be something wrong with you.

There seem to be two types of DAoC players, those who love it, and those who hate it. There are equal numbers of both, and I am grouped with the latter.

Much like other online RPGs, this game is purely combat central. It's this fact that takes away most of the fun. What you must do to be good in battle, is "level up", the process of gathering experience points to improve your avatar in this virtual world. However, an awful lot of experience points are needed to get anywhere. This requires you to kill endless waves of similar monsters, over and over and over again. You begin to realise that this is really very dull indeed. It's just so boring.

To improve the situation a little, you can go monster hunting in groups of up to 8 other players, sharing the experience points equally between you. However, if one or more of the characters in the group are a number of levels above you, you get nothing. This prevents gaining rediculous amounts of experience, granted, but the fact is that there aren't a huge amount of players at your level at the same time, so grouping is difficult to accomplish.

The game's big selling point is "Realm vs. Realm" combat. It is indeed fun to "kill" the avatars of other people, but the trouble is, it slows your computer down a lot, you need a monster machine to play this well.

There are a few extras added in like blacksmithing your own armour and weapons, but to get money to fund these trades, you need to kill monsters. Everything in this game revolves around the stupidly repetitive task of killing creatures again and again. If you ask me, it isn't worth it, when you realise that the game you're playing is actually WORK.

Quests are on offer from numerous non-player characters, and these quests can generally be interesting, but they are few and far between, and generally the rewards are not worth the effort or time expended on them.

If you don't have a lot of time to spend playing games, or you bore easily, I warn you, this game is not for you.