Dark Age of Camelot: Darkness Rising review

Dark Age of Camelot has been around for about five years now, It has a large, loyal following and has gained enough money to keep its servers running for a long time to come. DAOC's expansions are always met with large amounts of success and there have been a total of six expansions in its existence, (3 free and 3 for retail) and the latest is Darkness Rising. For those a little rusty in their MMORPG knowledge DAOC contains three main realms Arthurian, Celtic and Norse. The story in Darkness Rising is that the King has called together some of his strongest warriors to discover who has thrown their realm in to turmoil, from the perspective of whatever realm that player is in.

This expansion runs on the same client as Catacombs and as such you are required to have the Catacombs expansion to run Darkness Rising. So what does Darkness Rising offer you in terms of new features? The truth is, not a lot, you get a shiny new Champion weapon specific to your class, an horse to allow you to cross the realm at greater speeds than of those possible on foot, Champion Levels (These allow players to go beyond level 50, with five new champion levels) and subclassing (this allows champion to gain additional abilities from other classes).

New Spit & Polish

If you were thinking of entering Dark Age of Camelot and playing through Darkness Rising from the word go, then you will be surprised, this expansion offers little to lower level players and you really have to be around level 40 to experience the benefits the expansion provides, such as horses which can only be acquired at level 45.

The graphics continue to improve after their revamp in Catacombs. Many of the major cities have been amended, to keep this old game on par with newer on-line games, such as World Of Warcraft; the game currently dominating the on-line scene. Some of the character models still appear a little rough, but the landscapes have been revamped to perfection and looking at the city landscape gives you the same giddy sensation as seeing your ship set off in KOTOR for the first time. Many of the graphical changes are small and you would have to look hard to find them, but they do add an extra amount of detail to the game.

Mounting Up

While the extra levels are good for the veteran striving to be the best, they offer little for the casual player, who is unlikely to be of a high enough level anyway. The subclasses add a whole new depth to the game allowing players to venture out and gain additional abilities from different classes; even if you can only gain their lower abilities it still adds an extra serving of enjoyment to the game.

The fully customizable horses are a welcome addition to the game, RPGs nowadays require a great deal of walking around to get to places, especially if you happen to be lost and it is much better to travel sitting down. There is also a great variety in the horses on offer, you can customize your horse's saddle, barding and armour. A nice touch is that it is even possible to have your Guild's insignia on your horse's barding. When fully garbed, most of the horses look a lot better than the warriors riding them. The mounts are not just limited to horses, higher level players have access to creatures such as unicorns.

Quo Vadis?

There are a few annoyances present in the game one being unclear character directions, it was annoying enough having to type /where (character name) whenever you wanted to find someone, but having the guards make a quick gesture to their general location is much worse. Most of the time you completely miss which direction they point in, not to mention that most of them do not know where that person is anyway. Another annoying thing is that many quests have to be completed in a team, this puts off a lot of players especially the ones who are not as heavily into the game.

The music is largely the same, atmospheric tunes which fit the fantasy and adventurous theme of the game well, the sound effects are also very crisp and realistic, although some of the monster noises are a little off they never get annoying. The spells sound as good as ever, each one adds to the ambience of the game well.

Overall Darkness Rising brings a lot of new features to a great MMORPG. The expansion holds little appeal for lower levelled players, but for the seasoned veteran Darkness Rising extends the life of the game greatly by adding to the storyline and providing players with features which make them want to play on, such as the Champion levels and sub classing. Darkness rising also continues to build upon the graphical enhancements started in Catacombs.