Dark Age of Camelot: Shrouded Isles

When Dark Age of Camelot was released, it triggered a flood of players to jump ship from Everquest in search of the perfect' MMORPG. The flood became a trickle and then, like an orgasm in reverse, everyone went back. Weil, nearly everyone.

For some, DAOC's lure of better graphics, some great player vs player (PvP) combat, nice quests and abundant though repetitive dungeonbased combat was a winner. But 18 months on and things started to get stale. Enter Mythic's new add-on pack, Shrouded Isle.

The most obvious change is the graphics. They've been given a serious going over, although they're still not up to Asheron's Call 2's standards. Other options, such as mip-mapping, - making both the terrain appear less artificial and upping the frame rate - have also been tweaked. Although the visual improvements are nice, it's the frame rate that makes a real difference - some large scale PvP raids got so bad in terms of graphical lag, that players would log off in disgust.

Also added are a new race and two new classes (a warrior and a pet-handling class) and the new dungeon areas make high-level raids enjoyable again.

So for current DAOC players, this $17 add-on is almost verging on the essential. But for the rest of you, is it really worth $30 (for the original and this) with $6 every month on top for the full thing? Well, possibly not as there's much better out there.

Graphically DAOC's outclassed by Asheron's Call 2, community-wise EverQuest is still the daddy, and once Star Wars: Galaxies goes live, you can kiss every other MMORPG goodbye. Stiff competition.