Monday 17 December 2001

Pic of the day: Count those polygons, baby! Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot. (I can't believe I actually wrote "Camelon" first.) Yes, the graphics are that good and better. And yes, the girls wear kilts.

Celts in kilts

Today I have migrated further over on my new machine, and am writing my journal here (without spell checker, yet). And as is good and proper with a new game, I have continued to play Dark Age of Camelot - though today only after work.

Having gotten a certain impression of the Nordic realm of Midgard, I chose another server and selected there Albion as my home realm. I then proceeded to create a Highlander character. From what I hear, there can only be one Highlander. But that certainly doesn't seem to apply here. The largest and strongest race in Albion, the Highlanders have far to go to match Trolls in sheer brute strength. They are human, but still fairly strong, fully a match for a Viking.

I made an Acolyte (healer type) female. Females are more decorative, you know, and they also tend to get more positive reactions from the player characters. Vaguely stereotyping the Scots, I settled for bright red hair. The clothes were generated automatically, and of course I ended up in a generic kilt. Both males and females wear those, but you can still tell the rest of the person apart.

Well, in a matter of minutes I met two female twins of mine, and one male. Well, almost twins. Same hair color, similar facial features (somewhat less similar on the male) and same clothes. I found it amusing that everyone seems to believe that Scots should have bright red hair. If I had known, I would have chosen something slightly more subtle. Reddish brown, probably, like I have myself.

***

The realms are subtly different. The people, as I mentioned, are of other races. The terrain looks different. Not just because the mountains are not covered with snow: They are also rounder, the valleys more U-shaped. There is no forgetting that you live in a different realm now. Mythic have clearly poured development time into creating atmosphere. I appreciate that. Some monsters were the same (or very similar) but some I had never seen before. Some of the familiar ones were also missing. The architecture is different, and even the colors of the horses, unless I am mistaken. The ones I saw up north were gray, these looked brownish yellow?

The small towns were organized slightly different. In Albion, there was an easy to find town crier in the town center, helping out with finding quests. I never saw any of those in Midgard. An unfair advantage, if you ask me. Quests offer special opportunities, varying from learning experiences early on to powerful artifacts later.

But what really interested me was the people. Would this realm attract another type of player? After all, Vikings have a reputation as slightly barbaric and bloodthirsty folks. The Arthurian legends show people with more courtesy and restraint. Well, most of them.

It is hard to say for sure, but I did indeed spend most of my time in groups. On the other hand, each group was only two people (including me) and the other was generally more clueless than I. So it is a bit early to say for sure. Also I only met other Highlanders as Player Characters. I don't know if this is because I started in a Highlander town, or if most players gravitate to that race because of their strength and constitution. Actually the town was close to the capital, so I would expect it to not be purely Highlander. The non player characters seemed to be largely Britons.

I find it slightly ironic that the Highlanders seem so dominant. After all, the third realm - Hibernia - is supposed to be the Celtic one, based on Ireland and Irish mythology. Perhaps being British simply isn't seen as very exciting. ^_^

***

Anyway, the game subtly encourages people to group together, but a game can only go so far. There may be quite a wait unless you overcome your shyness and reach out to other players yourself, and this does not come easily to all. Luckily, DAoC has tools to help. You can flag yourself as looking for a group, though this has never actually helped me. It seems most people don't know this, and either group with real-life friends or with people they randomly meet.

Actually you can specify what character classes you look for in a group. You can also use a /WHO tool to search for people of a special level, or a special location. The command will tell you their names, class and general colation. You can then seek them out and speak to them in person, generally more efficiant than just flagging yourself as looking for group. For instance, the command "/who 3" will list all level 3 characters, and you can see at a glance if anyone is in your area and what class they have. It is preferable to combine arms with a different class. Even if you don't find a "tank" (fighter) you can still exchange favors. For instance clerics and wizards have different types of shield spells, and can cast these on each other as well as themselves.

(Sorry, fell asleep while writing this. I guess this is not my most fascinating entry ever, then ... I'll try to do better.)