Camelot: Arthurian Excitement

DAoC, has the levelling treadmill in there, but it isn't as painful as EQ. The quests system is very clever and keeps you busy. You can get "kill tasks" of any guards for experience and cash. Also, there is a bonus if you don't camp a mob. Rare items drop less and less the more you have been camping. It promotes moving on to kill rather than sitting in one spot and raping it.

You get to level 5 and then specialise. After that you are free to specialise in your trained disciplines. The game is geared towards making levelling a nice and fairly fast experience - they want you in the Realm vs Realm game. So you level up to 20+ in player vs environment (a la EQ) then you take an army of you into another realms frontier lands and try to kill them and/or take over their forts and keeps. You earn realm points for kills and victories. You can spend these later of special realm items. It takes what EQ started and makes it more enjoyable, nicer to look at, and adds the spice of not only gearing up to level up, but specialising your character to be successful in battle.

I play a cleric. Now in EQ clerics heal. Mainly. In Camelot, you specialise and you can be a healing cleric, or a smiting cleric (mainly direct damage spells and area mezmerise). You can balance your skills between the two, or go with one or the other. The classes are much more flexible and you can tweak them as you want. The Realm vs Realm stuff bristles with elements from Team Fortress Classic and other combat based games, advancing over EQ's player vs Player stuff. You are battling for land and territories and ancient artifacts that bestow statistical bonuses on all players in your realm. Top stuff. Very exciting. Lovely to look at. I can see me playing Camelot a lot longer than EQ or PSO ever held me, and thats saying something!!!