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Darkfall Set For Launch
Darkfall, a PvP-oriented MMORPG that was first announced in 2001, is finally in the process of going live. After dealing with some launch-day bugs, the Darkfall team reports that servers are going up, and they're processing pre-orders to get players in the game. MMOCrunch has an in-depth write-up from the end of the beta, saying that the game is still "rough around the edges," but also that the team has created a "solid framework of an MMO that offers a unique experience that the genre has not seen in quite some time." Ten Ton Hammer had a similar reaction, tempering criticism with praise for the lack of hand-holding.
Sorry for the off-topic post, but this has been getting on my nerves. For the past few days, the title of the /. homepage has been "Slashdot - News for nerds, stuff that matters (30)". This is with Firefox 3.
30? 30 what? Am I seeing things?
First thing that caught my eye was the "Framerates should improve for everyone." next to the graphic.
Second was "I'm sorry folks, but 9GB for a modern day MMO is not that big" then "After sitting in a queue for awhile I finally got in and created my first character."
I'm afraid to read more.
Well
Fuck you and your faggot website.
It really sucks that they didn't hire anyone specifically to focus on Account Management (or so it appears).
I was in beta, was charged for my pre-order, and my account is still not listed as active when I try to log in...and the account management page is currently down. :-( ...and there's no one I can call to verify that I got my pre-order.
Plus the servers are down again...
First Spore, then Wine 1.0, and now likely Darkfall? Next we'll have pigs flying, hell rising, and finally Duke Nuke'm Forever.
According to the Ten Ton Hammer preview, this game features rampant kill stealing and quite possibly the worst community of any MMO, ever.
That's a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one. Hooray for yet another niche PvP game.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Since leaving WoW quite a bit ago for numerous reasons, most of which they have fixed (still haven't gone back or played the new expansion) I've played nearly every MMO beta/pre-beta/alpha there is out there.
Nearly all of them.
I'm not sure what brought on this bit of self torture as there are more out their then most would think. How many in the last year? Five? Ten? Twenty? Nope. At last count I've played about *forty* different ones in the past year+. While their have been a couple of standouts all of them are going to fail for one reason or the other... which brings us to DarkFall.
Most important reason for failure: Community. You've never, and may probably never ever, have encountered such a bunch of sycophantic whiney idiots this side of an AOL USENET Lover's support group. They can see no wrong in their golden messiah of an MMO. Even worse the mere mention of another game will bring their misguided wrath upon you with more 3 letter acronyms and twelve year old new speak than one may believe possible. While this is a bit funny for a while, it quickly becomes more a cause for murder or suicide, much like realizing you are trapped in an elevator with Carrot Top, while on acid.
Secondly: Graphics. Well okay I get it, some people don't need any sort of graphics to enjoy a game. This too is easy to understand, I've ascended a few characters in NetHack. However the level of graphics must fit the current baseline or at least try to master the best in the genre. DarkFall has terrible graphics for an MMO released in 1995. The world is barren. Character movements are stilted. The art style is like a tribute to the Quake 1 engine. Spell effects are personally quite a stand out to me as they instantly remind one of the beautiful effects from PS1 games. Ahhhh nostalgia in an MMO!
Third: The company creating the game has no idea how manage a community. For all of their ills at least Blizzard somewhat gets it now. I'm sure many will say differently... but if you had played all the swill I've encountered while subjecting myself to this MMO horror fest you would find yourself amazed at just how effing brilliant Blizzard is compared to the others. Most of these companies treat their community like the enemy, have no concept of communication and try to invent new ways to drive players away. DarkFall is no different here, except they get bonuses for trying to mask their failings with "spooky mysterious secrecy".
Fourth: Awww. Fuck it. This is a terrible game, but it does represent a step up for Runescape players
Not that anyone asked but the only game I've played that deserved to be played for the actual story/game/world was Spellborn. But both the developers and their idiotic publishers have doomed this to fail before most people will ever even play it... and Atlantica is a solid game if you can get past their incessant pushing for making you play nearly every day.
That said, a number of the upcoming Chinese MMOs aren't really that bad. Unlike the Korean ones they don't shove the item mall down your throat. Most of them are lacking somewhat in proper stories, translations, lore, but there is some okay gameplay out there. See Perfect World for where the better Chinese MMOs are headed for the English speaking world.
--- I do not moderate.
I got into Beta over a month ago.
.so who knows what will happen at release. My guild however is one of the most fun I have been in.
The good:
I like the fact that one can start a fresh character, jump into the game and immediately start to contribute to the cause. Sure, if you are a noob, you will suck, but that is only because you suck, and not just because your character is worthless gimped.
I like the combat. It is shallow, at least to start, but it is FPS based instead of target-based. I found myself in WoW staring at my bars waiting for CDs to expire. In DF, I have to focus on the screen and lead my target with my spells and archery. I couldn't play a caster or ranged DPS character in any MMO before because of the targeting system made it boring. But DFO makes ranged DPS very entertaining. Melee isn't much more than a knife fight in an FPS, but, honestly, I kind of like that.
Full loot. Some might not like it and I thought I wouldn't, but the rush I get from pretty much every PvP encounter in this game is unlike any I have experienced before.
The Bad.
Forum community is terrible and childish. But, honestly, I find that to be true with EVERY forum of an MMO. I haven't had much of a problem with griefing in the game itself, but it was only beta. .
Combat lack of depth. I can see this being a deal breaker for a lot of people. It doesn't bother me at all, but it could have a bit more going on.
Crafting/Harvesting is boring and just terrible in general. Harvesting literally is just sitting there clicking every ten seconds. Or, having a macro do it will you go walk the dog, get something to eat, take a dump, molest the girlfriend, masturbate to gay pr0n.
Company inexperience. Everything has been botched for the past few months from a company perspective. Pre-orders pretty much blew up. They have little communication with the community as to what is happening. They announced a release date, didn't say anything for a month, until the week before release they said it would be delayed. It was supposed to launch around noon EST yesterday, didn't launch until 2 in the morning and the servers went up and down all night.
Graphics are "eh" at best.
All that being said, when the pre-orders went up, I spent 3 hours refreshing the page waiting for it to work so I could get in on this game on the ground floor. To me it like an entirely fresh genre and I have enjoyed my time playing the game. It has some SERIOUS problems right now, but I think that if and when they are able to sort them out, this will be a great game. I wish I were at home playing right now instead of at work. . . but I guess that ain't saying much.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I have put together a guide for new players.
Here: Darkfall Survival Guide
Uploading my first video to Youtube atm. Will link from the site soon.
so all the WoW haters are praising it.
Any site that's not known for slamming WoW got a review?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The game is pretty useless.
The big draw of the game for me (and lots of others) was that PvP would take individual skill and take a lot of factors of your person into account. Some intelligence, some coordination, and mostly the ability to skillfully defeat an opponent.
The game has NONE of that -- it's "click click click" your left mouse button in the hopes that the server syncing will let you land a shot on the other guy. The depth of the game is zero, and "skill" is almost entirely based in the coordination of groups. If you're a solo player, you can't play the game.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
This game has suckage written all over it!
Age of Conan was the last extremely over-hyped game to crash and burn. It was so bad it almost crashed the whole company with it. The release date was May 20, 2008. Here is the stock chart http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FUNCOM.OL#chart1:symbol=funcom.ol;range=1y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
Darkfall has ALL the makings of a repeat suckfest. Even their community is horrible on an epic scale (not their own fault).
You have never seen so many kids trying to overcompensate at one time in one place.
Grab some popcorn, this is going to be a great show.
Is here: http://www.gameolosophy.com/Games/Online/Darkfall-Online-Beta.541609
Enjoy folks, that is the best post on the game I have found yet.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
No. This isn't flamebait. I think I'm on relatively safe ground here, raising an issue that is not one man's subjective analysis -- but a conclusion that almost any MMORPG'er would come to:
This game has graphics that aren't up to Quake 1.0 standards. The game world looks absolutely devoid of detail, and the interface looks like an entry from an indie-games contest.
With the massive number of MMORPG's being released (many free to play), why is this release even getting attention?
If the answer is that its gameplay is so vastly superior to other offerings, that it's dated, uninspired graphics do not matter -- then that I suppose is a valid reason. But *is* that the reason?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
About a dozen friends of mine and I had been awaiting Darkfall Online for quite some time. Many of us lurked in the forums for years. The listed features on their extremely limited webpage were enticing, and this from an old Ultima Online player. I missed the days of Pre-Trammel. From what they were saying, the Devs of DFO did too.
Since shortly before release, I have been watching developments very closely, getting information from MANY sources, but primarily from beta tester leaks and forum posts.
Here is what I can gather.
They did NOT recreate Pre-Trammel UO. They recreated the PvP aspect of it, and NOTHING MORE. In contrast, the crafting is not even comparable, there is no player housing(just placeholder buildings in a clan city, no real purpose but to increase the number total of people that can "bind" to the city--think limited recall runes, based on the number of houses built), etc, etc.
Fully half of the claimed features(the ones that have been claimed on their website for YEARS) are missing from the game. Including mobs. There is the bare minimum of mobs, just enough to farm anew set of gear, and some non-soloable mobs for group PvE. Essentially, PvE is NOT a viable playstyle in DFO. Period. Neither is soloing.
To make matters worse in this regard, during beta, when all the testers asked "Where are all the features and mobs?", the reply was "The server is in debug mode, all that will be turned on later, as we don't want to clog the logs with information not useful to our present testing needs.". OK, we can handle that, say the testers, but once the server goes live, IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS BETA. It was blatent misinformation to hide the fact that all the features and mobs were actually not in the game. In essence, they lied.
That in itself was enough to entirely turn me off of the game. But it doesn't end there.
The graphics, while pretty slick, in some ways, require too high-end of a machine to play in any stable fashion. The shadow system has been lauded by many, but it seems about half the players in posts have to turn it off to get a decent framerate.
And here is the big one for me. They TOTALLY ignored the worst developer pitfall of the very game they intended to emulate. They put FAR too much of the game CLIENT-side. Exactly like UO did. The problem with this is that there is no means for them to stop Bots, 3rd party apps, and every other cheat, speedhack, etc. that anyone cares to throw at it. One notable 3rd party app group managed to get into Beta and had their app all ready for release. There have been many posts regarding Teleport/Speed hacks already in use in the game, as well as they fact that Botters will be the death of any real economy even before it has a chance to BE. There is no way to fix all of this clientside stuff, short of a complete game overhaul. The game is basically as hackable as UO remains to this day.
A forum full of rude kids, a totally botched release, no customer support to speak of, a billing partner that STILL doesn't have things working properly, etc, etc are among the MANY reasons I will not be playing.
I had high hopes, but they have been dashed to pieces.
All that being said, I reactivated my EQ2 account. Its a nice mix of WoW, Everquest with additional systems in place, such as player housing. The game looks nice, runs superb, and, to be honest, has the most mature player base I have encountered in 10 years of MMOing. As someone said in a previous post, all the whining little kids got bored and went to WoW.
Fine by me!
I also noticed nobody mentioned this before, DFO released in a limited fashion. Only sold 10K accounts, maybe even less. They also only have ONE server up at the time of this writing(which does NOT include a login server....*sigh*) and I have seen no mention of any being specifically set to be opened anytime soon.