Shrouded Isles - DAoC Expansion Pack

[El_Phantasmo]

Just found this article about Shrouded Isles based on some information they got from talking to Lum the Mad at E3: http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2002/1516.html

Brief summary:
One new large area for each realm. (I read somewhere else that it should be about 75% the size of the current home realms).
One capital city for each new area.
One new race for each realm.
Two new classes for each realm, with starting points in the new city.
NO NEW LEVEL CAP.
Graphics engine upgrade (which will cause the system requirements to jump up to a 1GHz machine with a GF3)

The article also briefly mentions that spellcrafting is the next big priority item and should be in soon.
The player copy function (for copying chars. to Pendragon) should also be done soon.

Did I mention they aren't raising the level cap? You gotta wonder what they're going to do to keep the game interesting for the level 50s.

[A. Blinken]

I guess they have to work on getting the first 50 levels working right, sheesh.

Then again, you'd think the same about adding new classes. :rolleyes:

Wonder if they even have ideas yet of what to do with 50+, if anything. Maybe port them to a whole new realm where they have to climb up the totem pole again? Otherwise I think Emain might become even more hostile when you have level 60s ganking entire legions of 40s. ;) Guess it's pointless to speculate.

Tangent and misgivings aside, I can't help but be curious what the races/classes/graphics/shinybrandnewstuff will look like. Just hope my 'puter doesn't choke on it.

[Rooster]

So you're saying your gerbil wheel isn't big enough?

It's not about the leveling.

Why do you think UO was (and still is) so popular. You could hit max in a month easy (after many patches, it took me 3 months to get Grandmaster Swords(woman).

[El_Phantasmo]

Why do you think UO was (and still is) so popular. You could hit max in a month easy (after many patches, it took me 3 months to get Grandmaster Swords(woman).

I don't know, I'd never played an MMORPG before DAoC, so I don't know what any of the other ones are like. What was there to do in UO once you hit the level cap? In DAoC it doesn't seem like there's anything to do other than help other people level, or go RvR.

Actually I guess the addition of DF gave all the high levels something new to play with, plus some new items to collect. I'm sure the new expansion pack will have some nice areas for high level characters to explore, and more new uber items to get. Is that how UO has kept it's playerbase? How often did (do) they add new content.

[Rooster]

We played for about 2 years with no extra content.

I think the biggest reasons were:


PvP anywhere outside towns. (also a huge gripe for many folks)
No IRC type interface.
Real estate, you could own a little 1 room house, to a huge castle.
You could own pets & horses.
Equipment wore out pretty rapidly.
Vendors: you could sell stuff off a vendor, setting your price, then coming to collect the gold later.
non-combat skills: baking, fishing, cooking. People bought food because it was needed. People liked fancy food due to the rarity of it. (Ask Canidae, she played for 3 years, never hurting a thing).
Player communities in game. People of like mind (evil or good) would build real communties with real structures.
The ability to leave a permanent mark on the world. I've done so once, and been a part of another instance. (I was part of a GM run quest and had an "NPC"s items enshrined so that others would remember his sacrifice.)
High-end magic gear never "spawned" on creatures. It was fairly random (ala, liches almost always dropped a wand, but it could be anything). Powerful items were truly valuable.
When you died, you generally lost all your things unless you had powerful friends to guard your body or collect your things for you. This, coupled with real-estate (and the regular bank box) prompted people (like me) to have multiple suits of armor ready to wear and backup weapons. This may sound like a minus instead of a plus, but it makes the economy work... which is something EQ, DAoC, or any other mmorpg fail to do.


I think that covers it.

[Aasimon]

the system specs if what i read above is correct for the new engine is far overpowered for my machine.

I run a P3 733 256 megs
and a Voodoo 5, so i guess i am screwed.

Time to find another game, but i am pretty sure I'm busted with this video card and my processor speed.

Oh well, back to windows Pinball.

[Lothar]

I dont see this game surviving to expansion release. If they truly are not going to raise the level caps, then what's the point? I think the majority of the current players are just sitting and waiting, for something else to play. They're holding spellcrafting in front of our noses, like it's going to be gods gift to role playing. They did this same thing in Diablo, with the runewords. Held the possibility of new runewords in front of you, to make you think you werent wasting your time.

we'll have to wait and see i guess

[Rooster]

Aasimon, if you can play Morrowind, you'll be okay with the DAoC expansion. Same engine.

Morrowind is harsh on a video/CPU though.

I get max 20fps in a city (50-100 inside). Sometimes as low as 10fps.

AMD XP2000+
GeForce3 @ 230/520
512MB DDR
Windows XP Pro

You'd think it'd be faster...

[MoBAcE]

Is morrowind not video card intensive? I am running an XP1600+, 1gig of ddr ram, a ge2 TI200 and Win XP Home and seeing about the same thing as Rooster. Maybe its due to Ge3 card enabled eye candy that pulls it back down?

[Rooster]

I do have the pixel shading turned on (water looks f'ing incredible), but when I turn it off, it doesn't help much at all.

I did change the External Cell Buffer to 10 instead of 32 and that seemed to get me up to 24fps in town --- but it's still harsh when it rains.. drops back to 12-16fps.

Since there's no benchmark using it yet, it's hard to gauge... but when I o/c my system to 1738 (vs 1667) it didn't make any difference. And I couldn't tell any noticeable difference when I o/c my video card (I tried it at stock).

I think the engine just isn't that great for outside.