Not to turn this into a MMORPG vs MMORPG thread, but while Dark Ages of Camelot looks good, it's somewhat of a different kind of game. (this is from someone who plays both)
EverQuest's world is rich with atmosphere and creativity. Designers had ideas behind unrest, mistmoore, guk, everfrost, etc. There's lots of world to explore.
Dark Age of Camelot's world seems to be mostly autogenerated hills/plains/forests. There's some design put into it, the locations of cities and a little background story, but not nearly as much as in EQ. If you thought there wasn't much in EQ, it'll seem like there's nothing in DAoC.
The spell lines are extremely limited. You don't have lots of cool utility spells or choices, you get certain lines of spells. Your set of four or eight or whatever, and you just keep getting more powerful versions of them. You never get a misc utility spell.
Many of the players seem to have Realm vs Realm play as their goal, their reason for 'playing through' all the player vs world stuff. The non-pvp is just tedium for them until they can get to RvR. These people often aren't very good to group with since they're concentrating on what will help them kill other players best at high levels, rather than being good groupmates.
I haven't done RvR yet, and it seems like it'll be somewhat fun, but if I really just wanted to kill other people, I'd play Ghost Recon or Counter-Strike. That said, Camelot is still fairly enjoyable, but for a person looking for a fantasy world to 'come alive' and explore, I'd tell them to go to EverQuest.
I think what keeps me with DAoC instead of EQ is that in DAoC, you never have to camp for mobs. You never have to argue over who gets to kill what. There's rarely any killstealing as there's plentiful mobs everywhere. Quests that involve named characters, the named chars almost always showup within a few minutes. They're not "rare", and other people can come kill them 5 minutes later. Lots of the best equipment is gotten through quests, so each person can get one (but only one, though they can sell/trade it), rather than having to camp for it. What's more, in DAoC there's hardly any downtime. Rest between fights takes 15-30 seconds usually. That's good and bad.. less boring when you're focused on the game, but it makes it harder to do other activities while playing, such as hold down a full time job.
I want to go back to EQ for the richer world (especially since I haven't played since they added any of the expansions), though I've explored most all of the original continents, but I can't imagine dealing with KS'ing, camping, rares, the general tedium..
Uh, so take that as a quick comparison/review for those who wonder what DOaC is like..
Threaded Mode
