Interface and Gameplay

Clickety-click

Upon playing DAoC, gamers will be struck by two things: its similarities to EverQuest, and its simplicity. Dark Age is remarkably intuitive and includes a completely customizable and very informative interface. If one chooses, he can even modify the transparency of windows on the screen. Want the player stats window up but don't want it to block the main view? Right-click to bring up the transparency window and set it to around 50 to make it translucent.

Questing time

Buff it up

Ugh, the sounds...

How hard is the monster over yonder? If its name is gray (that means it is 3 levels or lower than your character), don't waste your time - it's too easy and won't give loot or experience. Greens (2 levels lower) give some experience and loot, blues tend to be the best value of reward vs. risk as they are a level below, and creatures with their names in yellow are right about your level - a risky fight but great reward. Anything above that - orange (1 level-), red (2 levels-) or purple (3 or more levels higher!) is suicide, unless you are part of a very powerful party. Even with a strong party, a purple critter is a very risky proposition since it's impossible to tell its exact level.

Conversations with NPCs have been made even easier. They keywords are not only highlighted, but clickable. Instead of having to type out a keyword to get a response, just click on the highlighted word and keep the conversation flowing.

Heal me

Straight out of 13th warrior?

Primitive, but imposing

PC to PC

Player to player conversations are handled quite well. The bottom text bar is split into two parts - the conversation area and the action area. All talking falls into the conversation area, and there are tabs for guild talk, group talk, a chat channel and zone chat. This is supposed to make conversations easier to keep track of, and it does… but there is a slight problem. Aside from cities and towns, there is nowhere that the character can shout out so that everyone in the zone can hear him. This makes socialization somewhat difficult, but was probably done to keep spamming to a minimum, especially with hundreds or thousands of players populating a given server.

Finding friends and group members is also done through the interface. The player marks himself as available for grouping if he wishes to, and can search through the available groups listing. If a group is advertising a spot for another player, you will see its leader (complete with class and level) in the window. While this is convenient, we found it too artificial and static a method of group-finding compared to the regular shout out into the wilds.