Winding Down

[Etaew]

Hello folks,

As you may or may not (from lack of seeing me) have noticed, I am starting to wind down my involvement with DOL. The web updates are getting less frequent and I no longer see much return in investment for my time spent developing the web aspect of things.

I'm about to head into my final year of uni, and have been lured away by other projects, playing Warhammer Online, preparing for The Old Republic and my work on the DAoC Wiki. I am finding the work on the wiki quite rewarding, as I have good assistance from media assets within BioWare Mythic, the correspondence with their staff member in charge of it and the community which is also working with me.

I've been associated with DoL since 2003, that's pretty long, and I've worked on various aspects of the project, starting off as a minor developer, full developer, database developer, web developer, project manager and community manager. These have been some eye opening positions, and some have certainly been a challenge.

DoL has always held a special place in my heart, it allowed me to play the game when I wasn't in a financial situation to do so, it allowed me to learn various development aspects such as C#, php and thus launch my career and also my creative side, with the flexibility of the DoL code. Also I have met a number of very talented individuals and had some interesting discussions.

DAoC as it stands is a very dated game and I have always wished for engine and UI especially upgrades but this won't really happen, BioWare's main resources are dedicated to The Old Republic, and even Warhammer suffers from infrequent updates. In a recent Warhammer interview BioWare discusses a little about the resources they have available. That future patches are minor fixes and re-using old or lesser used game world assets.

I gave DAoC another go recently and jumped on another trial, I get to the same point in the trial every time and stop, just after I reach the second village in the tutorial, the game just doesn't grip me anymore and the UI just makes the game feel poor.

I am happily in my second month of Warhammer Online, last week my main character reached level 40 and has started to hit up Tier 4 RvR, but I'm an altoholic at heart and have started to work on other characters. I've done the PvE content in Empire and will now be working on High Elves and Dwarves. I find it very difficult to play as Destruction as I am an Order guy at heart, the quest lines are too evil for my liking. I much prefer the WAR UI and RvR engine (collision) and so I'll probably stay there until The Old Republic hits.

If I could narrow down some easily reachable objectives for DAoC to grab my interest again, it would be.
* Endless Free Trial, not 14 days (even Blizzard are doing this now)
* Allow RvR leveling all the way, with missions and access in the earliest battlegrounds to encourage players (currently only later ones)
* Re-done UI with tooltips and unit frames.

I've still been trying to update facebook when I can with DAoC related information and media, and I am looking to hand over some responsibility for the DOL related website aspects and also for facebook posting. I am also looking for someone to take responsibility for DAoC Portal application and web services, Merec has expressed some interest in this but I'm not sure about his time limitations right now.

As it stands the DOL website, code, and DAOC Portal are in a pretty stable state, but I could do with some responsibility lifting. Let me know if you are interested in any of my previous tasks above as I know we have many passionate DAoC and DOL fans in the community who have been around for as long as, if not longer than me.

Etaew

[Graveen]

Warhammer is so good ?!

[Etaew]

Warhammer is so good ?!

More so than DAoC at the moment yeah

[geshi]

Live is great at the moment if you like zerg v zerg

[Kakuri]

Warhammer is so good ?!

I think if there was a Warhammer equivalent of DOL I'd be running a server and working on the code. From a PvE standpoint, I think Warhammer is superior to DAOC in almost every way.

[rdsandersjr]

Good luck on your adventures Tom! Personally, I have ran into some personal issues that have drawn me away as well.

By the way, with SWG going away; everyone should bookmark http://www.swgemu.com They have made some amazing progress over the past year on pre-CU/NGE SWG !

[Etaew]

Just to say that the DOL Facebook page has been handed over to Graveen and the website to viper1805. I will probably abandon the DOL Blog and concentrate on my own Personal Blog. Tickle wave.

[Hiatus]

I have a sense we won't be hearing that much of you soon Etaew ;d :/

[Etaew]

I have a sense we won't be hearing that much of you soon Etaew ;d :/

You don't hear from me much atm anyway. Make sure you add me on MSN / follow me on twitter etc, then you can. xD

[Hiatus]

Ah, can you PM me your MSN ?