Baalur

I don't think it's half as ridiculous as the author. Why should the underwear be any less stupid than, say, a pet following you around?

I think having roles encourages teamwork, which is one of the things that make MMO's what they are. I think WoW probably had a good balance in this area, where you could do stuff on your own, but it would always pay off in the end to have a balanced group.

Wether it's the "holy trinity" or other kinds of roles, I don't really care about though, but they're a natural way of doing things when you have a combat system based on taking and receiving damage.

If you were going for, say, a system where you could kill people with a headshot, or cripple them with a shot in the arm (and not have a healthbar or anything like that), you would perhaps need other kinds of roles. I think this could be an interesting way to go in the future, because it's something we're not used to- but I also think there's a fairly good reason why the trend is damage/hitpoints/etc, and has been that for a long time.. it simply plays better, or is at least much easier to get right

Most looking forward to the trade part, even if I haven't heard much about it yet, and understand it won't be fully implemented in beta.

It'll be fun getting my hands on a city builder again though, it's only really been Sim City, and the level of innovation has been low for many years

Brings a tear to my eye to read that there are others out there that miss this aspect of DAoC :)

Like the writer, I ran guild groups (and pick up groups) for several years, and it's by far the most fun I've ever had in a game. And like many others, I was extremely disappointed to find that WAR was not DAoC 2, but a game that combines some of the things that I found frustrating in DAoC, with a lot of elements from WoW (mostly good ones, luckily).

I don't think WAR will ever be a game that caters to people like us. DAoC was never designed to be a game for group vs group combat, but as it evolved, and the player culture was established, it became just about the only MMO out there that offered this (in a non-instanced environment). The world was big, and only certain classes had the highest level of speed, so well composed groups could roam freely without being too afraid of getting caught by the zerg. Crowd control was also very powerful, especially in the hands of skilled players, and a group could kill pretty much any amount of people, if they were stupid enough.

When WAR was designed, Mark Jacobs made it clear that he wanted almost no crowd control in the game, and that one of his biggest regrets with DAoC was just this. WAR was also designed with the same "everyone should be able to solo"-idea that WoW employs, thus homogenizing all the classes, making roles in PvP less defined. The final nail in the coffin for group vs group action, is that you pretty much HAVE to zerg to get anything of importance done in the game. You can't take a keep with a group, you can't win a scenario with a group, you most certainly can't attack a city with a group.. and there are few ways of finding fights outside of sieges..

All of these things make grouping very little feasible. The lack of crowd control means numbers will always matter, as you can't simply lock down a portion of the crowd while concentrating on another. The lack of roles makes finding the right group composition fairly meaningless. All you need is x healers, and fill the rest with dps. Of course, good groups will try to make use of different classes' abilities, but the variety of these is nothing compared to DAoC. Lastly, as the game is so heavily designed for zerg combat, there's no real culture for group vs group fights, and no real reason for it to develop, as the reward for such is pretty much non-existant.

So that's my rant.. I fully respect people not liking the group vs group culture, but I really wish there was a game that focused on this. Guild Wars is the only game I can think of, but the complete lack of immersion due to character development and heavy instancing makes this more of a normal multiplayer game, and less of a MMORPG for me.

Here's to hoping for a new game that makes group vs group possible and fun!