Dark Age of Camelot

I chose Albion to start with and started four characters. One fighter (Paladin knight), two mages (Wizard, Cabalist) and an archer (scout). My favourite is the Wizard who does an awesome amount of damage. Although, I would advise anyone to carefully read up about the different characters and which ones to choose. As some are better than others in PvP (Player Vs Player).

DOAC recently introduced three Battle Grounds (BG). These provide lower level players with a chance to gain experience with PvP. Although in my experience only the first BG was played by enough people to make it worthwhile.

The main game is basically a vehicle for getting your characters to a high enough level so you can go and battle other realms (PvP). There are 50 levels. This involves killing the hundreds of types of monsters which inhabit your particular realm. At lower levels it does not take many kills to level up. Also when monsters are killed they sometimes leave behind ‘drops’ such as weapons, gems or gold. You can either sell these or use them depending on your characters skills. When you level you get skill points to spend with trainers located at various points within your realm. These points can be spent on several different skill types depending on your character. For instance a Wizard could choose between Fire, Ice or Earth. Spending skill points on a certain skill then gives you further spells or fighting styles and increases the damage you do with that skill type. Again, spend points wisely and read up on the web which, are the best skills for your character. At higher levels particularly 40 + it gets very tedious. Gold can be used to buy items such as new weapons, armour or dyes.

Another way to get items, gold and experience is to do Quests and Tasks. Quests are mostly set by your trainer. Who will ask you to complete a set of instructions in order to receive a reward. Tasks are set by specific inhabitants of your realm and usually involve killing something or other.

The best thing about DOAC is the grouping. Fed up with soloing 100 monsters to get to next level. Then try grouping with other people (8 max) of similar levels and try harder targets. Grouping allows you to do things kill faster and kill higher levels. Each monster in the realm is a certain level 0 to 65 +. When you select a monster, at distance, it cons a certain colour as follows;
Green -2, Blue -1, Yellow Same, Orange +1, Red + 2 and Purple which is 3 levels or more higher.

In each Realm there are Guilds who have there own Coat of Arms and usually some sort of colour code. Yes, you can dye all your armour and robes. You can join a guild or create one yourself with the aid of some friends and lots of gold. The idea behind Guilds is that you group together to form raiding parties and also help lower level members out.

DOAC is a very friendly game and you will find yourself grouping with the same people time and time again. The chat that goes on in groups and on your guilds channel is often funny. Mages remember it is not a dress but instead a manly robe. Be prepared to have the mickey taken out of you if you mess up. It will happen.

Weapons you pick up not good enough, then make them yourself. Any character can try a trade skill. This works much the same was a skill levels. Make something like a leather glove and receive points in leatherwork. There are several types of trade skill from tailoring to weapon crafting. You can even build siege weapons like rams and balistas for attacking enemy keeps and castles. Money can me made by trading items you make. Some guilds often pay the material costs so guild members take up crafting.

It really is a great game with so many things to keep it interesting. Regular updates and add-ons help keep the game fresh even for level 50 characters. I can’t wait for the Shrouded Isle game add on coming soon. Hopefully my Wizard will be an awesome level 50 by then.

There are a lot of guides on the web with a wealth of hard earned knowledge read them before embarking on you DOAC journey.

I play DOAC on DSL but many people I know play on 56 K modems with no trouble at all.

The setting should be familiar to most. King Arthur has been slain and his successor, King Constantine, is the new protector of Albion. Enemy realms seeing the confusion after Arthurs' death mass at the borders of the realm...

The players get to play in any one of the three realms as a variety of genre characters; Fighter, Mage, Healer and Thief.
For the first few levels you are limited to fighting against the monsters that inhabit your realm but later, if you want, you can choose to go into Realm versus Realm combat. Or you can even avoid combat altogether and become a tradesman creating armour and weapons for your realm-mates to use.

That's probably the best thing about the game. You're not limited to spending all your time hitting things with big swords so you can go and hit harder things with bigger swords (although you can do that if it appeals to you).

The 'Player versus Environment' and 'Player versus Player' has, for the most part, been well thought out, although a fair bit of character tweaking is still going on by the developers, and no class is substantially better than another (no cookie cutter classes here).

The graphics are probably the best of the current crop of MMORPGS although that does bump up the minimum spec (IMO - P3 450, 256Mb RAM, 16Mb 3D Graphics Card, 56k Connection).

Remember though, subscription required (10 per month) and you can't play it as a single player game...

I loaded it up, chose my character type and as soon as i turned it on i was blown away. The graphics are superb, the sound effects not only atmospheric but informative, and the character models give you enugh choice to be unique.

I was blown away as i played, EQ became a distant memory, as i watched spell effects from other players, wondered how higher levels charactes did those cool moves with their weapons, and was really happy that after a few hrs played i had made level 10.

The game is well set out, easy to use and intuitive. The weapon and spells system is easy to use and finding a group is easy via the "grouping sysytem". Jjust flag yourself lookng for group and somone will /send you if they need you, but the difference from EQ is that nearly all classes can solo and still do pretty well on the XP.

This is great for someone that wants to turn on to play for an hour or so because u dont have to spend 45mins of that travelling and looking for a group to do anything.

Lower levels fly by, and there are lots of quest and crafts for you to do, some are mandatory if you want the better items at later levels, some are not. but.....

At the moment as you approach the higher levels content disapppears. XP really slows down, you get a lot of places where no loot drops except coin, and as the higher level crafting system is yet to be implemented ther is nothing to spend your money on. XP becomes a real grind to be honest and lots of people shelve their characters to start new and different classes to try and extend the enjoyment, or they go RvR.

RvR= Realm versus Realm battle.

There are 3 realms in DAoC. Hibernia(elves and fairy folk), Midgard (Trolls, Dwarves and darker sides of folklore types) ad Albion (human races based around Camelot and Arthurian times).

The idea simplified is that you chooose a type of character in one of the 3 realms, mage, theif, figher or healer type. Level up through killing monsters then go out and fight for your realm aganst other PCs. you have keeps to defend and each realm has 2 special "relics" which u must strive to defend and take from each other to gain bonuses in battles.

The idea to be honest is great, at the moment tho certain classe and realms are dominating, but the game is very young and software like this evolves quickly so watch this space..