The MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot was released in Europe in 2002 and is still the online role-playing game with the best PvP for many veterans. MeinMMO author Schuhmann will look back on his time in DAOC in October 2023 and explain what today’s MMORPGs can learn from DAOC.
DAOC appeared in the early days of the Internet in Germany, and many people didn’t even have an Internet flat rate back then. There were already online games, but they were often shooters like Team Fortress or maybe something like Age of Empires.
Only very few of those who played Dark Age of Camelot back then had experience with MMORPGs like Everquest or Ultima Online – these were the veterans who had a bit of knowledge and were looked up to.
But for many who started with Dark Age of Camelot in Germany, it was the first MMORPG. At least that was it for me: I had only had experience with online games in Diablo 2, which had been released shortly before. I quickly ended up in a guild of people who had been playing DAOC on the US server for a while, but mostly knew each other from Team Fortress.
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The one guy in our guild who had a clue, a ranger named Lorin, had already had experience in Everquest and knew things that were completely foreign to the rest of us at the time: like the best way to play an archer in a fresh MMORPG full of noobs is because who can level and do PvP alone.
PvP was the big unifying element in Dark Age of Camelot anyway: The three empires of the MMORPG shared common borderlands with castles that could be conquered or defended. Back then, a ranger who knew what he was doing could hold a castle against 40, 60 or 80 unsuspecting newcomers who, for some reason, set out to conquer such a castle.
I have many fond memories of my early days in MMORPGs. DAOC had some special features that are no longer known today: Each empire had different versions of archetypes:
“Don’t sit down – Garf is nearby”
Back then, you could read in realm-wide chats when an enemy scout, a guy named Sam, was once again hanging around outside the borders of our realm and killing low-level players who wanted to unsuspectingly farm mobs in the borderlands.
But the kingdom of dwarves, trolls and evil Vikings, Midgard, had the coolest classes: their villain variant was called “Shadowblade” and could use two-handed weapons. One player in Midgard, a Norseman named Garf, quickly gained a reputation as a deadly assassin, sneaking through the ranks of enemies and killing mages sitting on the ground from behind the scenes.
Magicians, affectionately called “Stoffies” at the time, died with a single blow from their two-handed weapon: With “one-hits,” assassins remained more invisible and so panic quickly spread among the players, just not to sit down and regenerate mana, because it was safe “ Garf” somewhere – and whoever was sitting was hit critically by a blow. And with a second-hand weapon like this you could get really high values.
Players would then run through enemies and spam area-of-effect spells just to catch Garf, mostly in vain. Later, a small Lurikeen from our empire made a name for himself because he could reliably track down and eliminate the evil Garf.
Forums and mIRC were used to find out what was happening in the other realms
Normally in DAOC you only learned what was happening in your own empire: Because the defense of the empire against invading hordes was so important, you quickly learned who the “strong guilds” were that you could call to defend yourself in times of need could: It was clear which guild leader was good to get along with and which guild had a reputation for being unreliable because they did their own thing and didn’t coordinate with others.
You also quickly knew that it was better not to write to this one guild leader after 8 p.m. because he was usually sitting there and reacted moodily.
But even though you quickly knew the drinking habits of a stranger in your own realm down to the smallest detail, you knew almost nothing about your opponents: you could only read their name when one player had killed another. Since many people were completely clueless at the beginning, the few veterans who had already learned how to level and play correctly in other MMORPGs came to the fore.
At that time there was a group of players who seemed overpowering simply because they didn’t run individually, but played together in groups of three: There was a thane, a kind of “magical warrior” who – unfairly! – had a private healer with him and a dwarf with an ax that was way too big.
As a lone wolf you simply had no chance against them, because the fighters protected the healer and the healer kept filling up the warriors’ life points. Much later I found out that the three of them were private friends: a couple and a friend of the man – they had already played a few MMORPGs together.
In any case, you quickly got to know your opponents in forums and shared chats. In mIRC, a kind of Discord for Neanderthals, people talked to each other, teased each other and complained together about the balance because the other empire was always far too strong.
Things got particularly bad when add-ons came later and developer Mythic sold the expansions by basically making the new classes so strong that they stomped opponents into the ground and were mocked as the “Flavor of the Month” class.
Today I can no longer swear to whether objectively Mythic was really that calculating and whether every new class was fundamentally overpowered. After years as a gaming journalist, I’m skeptical when I read such theories from gamers. But at the time I thought it was outrageous of Mythic, outrageous and generally scandalous – and I felt good about seeing it that way.
We called players who moved from one realm to another “Winning Team Joiners” – which was almost as frowned upon as people who played “Flavor of the Month” classes.
Stories were heard of rich blacksmiths and powerful leaders
There was a story about a player in an empire who led a “Zerg”: everyone knew that this player could be followed in PvP and then move from gate to gate in the safety of the masses, steamrolling enemies.
Or you heard the story of a player who had become the most powerful blacksmith in his empire and who forged blades so good that everyone wanted one from him, because the blacksmith’s name adorned the blades in DAOC.
The gold that was given to him for a sword, it was rumored, could also be bought from him for real money.
In our empire, a bard who was a police officer in real life made a name for himself by being the first in the world to kill the dragon – but he wasn’t a particularly good player: he had simply chosen dragon hunting as an “event” and was at two hundred People had rolled through the zone and had “zeroed” the dragon to death in a huge lag. This was due to a game mechanic in DAOC in which enemies became easier to hit the more players attacked them.
Later came a class that could summon mushrooms, which then also counted as attackers: And a handful of mushroom types could kill the monsters for which you still needed a village back then.
When I wanted to become a raid leader, actually just to get a certain light sword that I really wanted, it went horribly wrong: Although the “through” through the Darkness Falls raid went without any problems: Before you do the PvE in the raid could do, first the opponents of the enemy empire were swept out of the raid. That wasn’t a problem and the boss “Legion” also died as planned.
Even the coveted sword dropped, but one guy simply pocketed it and refused to hand it out, even though according to the custom at the time, the raid leader was entitled to an item if he had announced it beforehand.
He wasn’t an idiot, the sword fetched so much money on eBay, he wrote, which caused quite a stir in the forum at the time, as “ninja looting” was frowned upon.
In the MMORPG DAOC you were still someone
The main difference to modern MMORPGs was that DAOC was a limited experience: an empire was limited to a few thousand players. We didn’t know anything like mega servers. Due to the common threat from foreign empires or common goals, such as the death of the dragon, community was important.
There was no anonymous raid finder, no sensible mechanics to distribute loot fairly, there were no battlegrounds or arenas in which structured PvP was possible. Ultimately, DAOC was an MMORPG in which you had to clarify a lot personally and in which contacts and reputation of a player were important.
What really made DAOC better than today’s online role-playing game was making players feel like they were someone in this world. What influencers like Asmongold are today on a large scale, back then there were a large number of players on a small scale: Of course, no one on the neighboring server knew who Garf was, the nasty Shadowblade about whom no one can sit down – but on our server for a certain time was he someone.
That was nice.
A successor in the spirit of DAOC has been planned for many years with “Camelot Unchained”, but some things don’t go according to plan:
MMOPRG Camelot Unchained has been in development for years – the mood is openly hostile