Dark Age Of Camelot has been around quite a few years, and spawned a few free, and a few paying expansion packs.

Looked after by Mythic / GOA (depending on if you play on the UK or American servers) it suffers the same lack of support / general CSR presence of just about every MMORPG, but let's just ignore that for now.

The original Dark Age of Camelot has modest system requirements - the graphics are better than those of most MMORPGs of it's time, and in my opinion it has the best interface and the most comfortable camera angles.

Once you are proficient in it's use, you can easily play using only the keyboard - the only time you would ever need to reach for the mouse is to target a specific monster in a large group - other than that, walking, targeting and using your skills can be done purely with the keyboard.

The expansion packs add more races, classes, new areas and content, as well as graphic updates, but the original is still more than playable and OK to look at even by todays standards.

==========First Experience=============

When you first start playing Camelot you are given a chance to choose a realm - there are three realms, each with their own distinctive look and feel, and slightly different character classes.

Albion is dominated by the physical classes - Armsmen, Paladins, etc - this realm has the most familar feel for Europeans, being full of Arthurian legends.

Hibernia is a really strange realm - full of magic users. It has a bright, colourful, almost disney look - a bit over the top for my tastes.

Midgard is a depressing, dark realm full of Trolls, Shamen and earth magic users. It has overtones of Norse mythology.

Once you have chosen your realm you can choose a starting class and stats. The starting classes narrow down what your end class can be - fighters go on to be armsmen, paladins or mercenaries, while acolytes go on to be friars or clerics.

Your starting stats are important for influencing your ability early in life. If you make a mistake it can be annoying, but as you get bigger you will find that with magic items and buffs any mistakes you made can be minimised or corrected.

Thankfully this game has a nice way of guiding you. When you enter the world you are placed right next to a profession tutor, who will equip you and give you quests throughout your first five levels.

These quests are like a little tutorial and teach you about the guild you are about to join.

Once you hit level 5 you have to travel a bit futher to join your final guild - every few levels after that you get other quests from this tutor.

For the first 20 levels of your life you can pick up 'kill tasks' from guards - these will give you a direction to go hunting in, and will send you to blue con (easy) monsters. These quests give reasonable experience and a little coin, and are good to hold new players hands in terms of where to hunt.

========Higher Levels=========

After level 20 you can take part in Real vs Realm combat (consensual PVP in a specific area) this combat involves miniature versions in 'Battlegrounds' - before the New Frontiers expansion there were only battlegrounds for level 20-24, 25-29, and 30-35 - the expansion created battlegrounds for all levels, even those below level 5!

The battlegrounds give you medals which can be redeemed for experience, but the REAL combat is for the level 50s - they fight to take keeps, whichever realm controls the most keeps gets access to a special dungeon called Darkness Falls.

Darkness Falls is a huge dungeon for high teens up to level 50 characters. It's a PVP dungeon, so if someone from one realm was in when the dungeon got handed over to another realm, they risk getting killed.

It's the best paying dungeon in the land, and great for XP, so ownership of it is hotly contested.

Other than PVP, there are quests for higher level characters to do, and some huge 'Epic Mobs' and 'Epic Dungeons' such as Caer Sidi (OK, that's a Shrouded Isle expansion dungeon but I thought I'd mention it), which are huge, elaborate plot related dungeons that require specific classes to complete - they also often require over a hundred people present.

That's probably my main gripe with Camelot actually - some classes, such as the Necromancer, a correctly specced Friar, or a Paladin can solo up to level 50. Other classes, such as most other magic users, and healing specced Clerics, HAVE to group.

To experience a lot of the higher level content you HAVE to group too. The 'Epic' that you have to do to get your level 50 quest armour is incredibly difficult to do solo.

I'm not against grouping, but I am against being forced to do it, especially with my playing times.

PVP is a group activity unless you are a stealth class - a clever stealther can do extremely well solo.

I play a staff / rejuve specced Friar (anyone playing this game has permission to laugh now) and grouping in RVR I found that most people playing in Albion have no concept of how to do anything other than zerg (charge the enemy in huge numbers and hope) - by comparison Midgard are exceedingly well organised, and Hibernias presence is non existent.

There are class balance issues, and even some realm balance issues in terms of which realm gets which skills, but these aren't as bad as in some games.

============Crafting============

Player crafted armour and weapons are essential at the top levels in this game. Potions and good spellcrafting are needed too.

The player crafting system is fairly well done - your class determines what kind of tradeskill you can pick up - a mage can't make platemail for example.

Once you take your tradeskill you can to crafting tasks so that you get paid for what you make. This can be done up to about 750 skill in your crafting, leaving you a few hundred points to get yourself by spending lots of money.

Some skills, like Fletching and Tailoring, are fairly cheap - other skills, such as Armourcrafting and Alchemy are incredibly expensive.

Trinketing (salvageing drops, making little trinkets, and selling them on) is one way some people earn money for tradeskills - Darkness Falls is a popular place to hunt for 'seals' which can then be spent on goods from the merchants there to convert into materials - hence why Darkness Falls is popular.

It takes a LOT of /played time to become a top level crafter, but it is worth it in the end for the ability to make and repair stuff.

The player crafting in the game has actually fostered a sense of community - people gather near crafting tools, trainers and merchants and actually TALK - something rare in a lot of other games.

========Housing========

I won't discuss the paid expansions, however housing is an expansion we have now, which is free to download.

Houses are in a special zone, and can have crafting equipment, vendors, portal merchants, bindstones and lots of other goodies.

You can make your house look very nice, and I was proud of mine,

Unfortunately you can only pay 1 months maintainance on your house and it is very expensive to maintain - I lost mine when I went dormant for a while.

There are a limited number of lots available, so house prices can be quite expensive.

=======Which Server==========

There are EU and US versions of this game.

I play on the EU servers - we have less English language servers than the Americans - if you want to experience all three realms you either have to delete your characters on one server or be willing to play in another language.

We also only have one pure PVP server and no co-op (PVE only) server.

The Americans, by comparison have home invasion servers, PVP servers, Co-op servers, and multiple other normal servers.

They also get all the patches and expansions MONTHs ahead of us.

The US servers are very quiet at peak times for UK players, however, so if you want to play to socialise then American servers may not be the best for you. Lag is sometimes and issue but on a fast connection you should see no more lag on an American server than you would on a UK one.

===========Conclusion========

I won't list subscription fees as they keep changing them, but it is fairly cheap for an MMORPG and the continuing addition of new content is good.

I will write a separate, much shorter review on Shrouded Isles, highlighting a few problems with THAT expansion, but there are ways around that problem.

If you are looking for a game that is fun to play at the lower - medium levels then this is a great game. If you want to be in top form at the highest level you need to invest a LOT of time, but there are lots of people who just keep re-creating lower level characters and going to the battlegrounds.

There is a nice feature called /level which allows anyone with a level 50 character to create their own level 20 (or in some realms on some servers level 30) character. This allows you to have fun in the battlegrounds too.

I would recommend this game highly to anyone who likes fantasy MMORPGs. The bashing can get repetetive sometimes, but there's other stuff to do to have fun, and it has a great sense of community compared to most games.