Darkfall "Released"

[K9]

 

[LC]

The only change I believe in is the kind that jingles in my pocket.

[Mrbloodworth]

Darkfall, Ready to go in December

Catching you up with our activities to date - in this post a brief recap of our activities surrounding the first official presentation for Darkfall during the Athens Digital Week.

The Darkfall information we’ve been giving out lately has been targeting civilians. While there have been a few interviews, on a variety of local (Greek) and fewer international media, there is really nothing new. We’ve shown about 10 different version of the Darkfall trailer, we’ve given a few presentations about the game, there are some Darkfall ads out there, and more waiting to be deployed, a couple of local television presentations etc. but it’s the general information that people need to be introduced to the game.

You probably already saw Shaar’s update on the Athens Digital Week activities. He did a good job giving the information about what all happened there, but here’s the official take on things:

The presentation didn’t contain much new information. It was meant for a general audience. The video shown was a shorter version of the Darkfall trailer. We played the game live on the stage during the presentation for about 20 minutes and we stopped when the internet went out.

The announcement during ADW was that the open beta phase is scheduled to end early in December. More importantly this means that the game will be ready to release at that point. Marketing consideration kept us from just announcing a release date. The game will be ready for release, and the launch may follow directly, or shortly after, depending on the marketing landscape at the time. Obviously the earlier the better for us, but there are a lot of things needing coordination for the launch, internal and external. So our side of things (meaning the development end) will be ready.

Some general information on the Athens Digital Week activities because a lot of people were asking: We organized the entire gaming section, mainly to support publicity for Darkfall’s first official presentation. There was an international Quake 3 and Warcraft 3 event, the ESWC Masters of Athens, where the best professional players in the world competed for the top spots. It was nice to know that most of them knew about Darkfall and a few were waiting for it to come out. Then we held the World Cyber Games national finals, there was a large LAN set up for the public, and a bunch of game consoles with the latest Xbox 360 games. There was a concert with the symphonic orchestra of the city of Athens playing videogame themes. Last but not least we had a small game developer’s conference for game developers in Greece.

We were happy with the attendance of the event, a lot of international journalists covered ESWC Master’s of Athens and had a lot of question to ask about Darkfall, and we met a lot of fans during the Darkfall presentation, but mainly in the days following it. I was very surprised at how many people were asking about the game, and about when we would have another presentation. We didn’t know we had such a strong following in Greece. Unfortunately our time slot for the Darkfall presentation was during normal business hours and many people couldn't attend.

I’ve posted some pictures from the event in the gallery.

We’ll follow this up with a Darkfall status report within a couple of hours from this posting.

Link

[Signe]

Huh?  They went to a show and didn't do or say anything new.  They will end the beta that hasn't started yet at the start of next month?  I would be confused if I thought this was even going to happen. 

[mutantmagnet]

Marketing consideration kept us from just announcing a release date.

The way they handle things I'm guessing this means they are now hiring people to handle marketing tasks.

[Azaroth]

Huh?  They went to a show and didn't do or say anything new.  They will end the beta that hasn't started yet at the start of next month?  I would be confused if I thought this was even going to happen. 

You've been proven wrong ALREADY by the announcement of a beta at all, Signe.

[Hawkbit]

[Signe]

Huh?  They went to a show and didn't do or say anything new.  They will end the beta that hasn't started yet at the start of next month?  I would be confused if I thought this was even going to happen. 

You've been proven wrong ALREADY by the announcement of a beta at all, Signe.

Uh oh.  I feel confusion lurking!

[Azaroth]

So. Want to retract that statement before playtesting begins?

[K9]

I've never heard of Athens Digital Week. Also, to what extent are Q3 and WC3 seriously competitive? I thought both of those died off years ago for competitive multiplayer?

Anyhow, failwreck ahoy!

[Signe]

So. Want to retract that statement before playtesting begins?

Not until the Easter Bunny slides down my chimney and leaves me a pot of gold!

[Nonentity]

So. Want to retract that statement before playtesting begins?

Not until the Easter Bunny slides down my chimney and leaves me a pot of gold!

Signe! Come PVP with me when Darkfall comes out.

We'll kill rabbits.

[Signe]

oooo.  Wabbits!

                   

[mutantmagnet]

Some beta reports are coming in through official channels.

[tmp]

The first mobs I found in dwarf area were hitting from extreme range and then did special attacks that were stamina draining. It was rather brutal for a starting area and I died several times to repeat the 5 minute run.

So awesome.

[Arthur_Parker]

Heavily censored fanboy report from testing starts with the phrase.

Oh well, on a lighter note...

[mutantmagnet]

If the reports were only coming from fanboys it wouldn't be censorship...come on you can do better than that.

[Signe]

Where else are they coming from?  Tasos?  He is his own fanboi and he tells porkie pies, no?  There isn't anyone in this beta.  There is a cramped, smelly room somewhere with a bunch of fat stoners eating feta cheese and Lutefisk and seeing who they can fool into giving them some developer money so they buy the latest Gogoroth album.

[Triforcer]

The first mobs I found in dwarf area were hitting from extreme range and then did special attacks that were stamina draining. It was rather brutal for a starting area and I died several times to repeat the 5 minute run.

So awesome.

Careful.  You're already showing you aren't hardcore enough to deserve the privilege of buying Darkfall.  I wish the Devs were going to personally interview and sign off on every potential customer before that customer could play.  You know, to ensure that everyone is totally hardcore.

[mutantmagnet]

The devs want carebears in the game as well. They are hoping that the the variety of gaming options draws them in while the alignment system adds to the societal building elements of open ffa servers to the point they aren't discouraged by the bullies.

After what I saw with Eve's factional warfare I think what the devs should do next if their initial plans flop is to make a mechanism that makes grouping a natural process from the beginning sort of like public quests or facebook.


Signe - If the devs were interested in scamming us they wouldn't put up an advisory not to buy beta accounts.

[K9]

Some beta reports are coming in through official channels.

wat?

This is wierd.

[Signe]

The devs want carebears in the game as well. They are hoping that the the variety of gaming options draws them in while the alignment system adds to the societal building elements of open ffa servers to the point they aren't discouraged by the bullies.

After what I saw with Eve's factional warfare I think what the devs should do next if their initial plans flop is to make a mechanism that makes grouping a natural process from the beginning sort of like public quests or facebook.


Signe - If the devs were interested in scamming us they wouldn't put up an advisory not to buy beta accounts.

Yes!  It's brilliant!   

[Nonentity]

Signe! Our dream of rabbit hunting will soon be a reality!

I am excited. I will even stop playing WoW for a few hours to play this if I get a beta at some point!

[Zzulo]

Ok so I just watched the most recent 17 minute long video of the game

It looks...well, it looks like they chose quantity over quality. Everything looks incredibly bad, like, visually, but at the same time they have a lot of features available (supposedly! don't know how good they work yet or at all).

It really does look bad though. Animations, graphics, visual style and character models. It all looks like swamp poop.

[Nonentity]

“The AI on the goblins in the newbie areas definitely needs to be toned down. I would even send out patrols of one or two goblins farther away from the spawn area with the great A.I. But having 2-3 linked and calling in even more so quickly as it is now makes soloing virtually impossible. Unless you're really really good which new players aren't. In other words, the AI in the newbie areas is TOO good. I know it is good training, but I've been getting my butt handed to me all day and as a new player it would be very frustrating.”

I really can't tell if they posted that to try and sound more 'real' in people's impression of the game, or they posted that to brag how hardcore the game is.

[mutantmagnet]

“The AI on the goblins in the newbie areas definitely needs to be toned down. I would even send out patrols of one or two goblins farther away from the spawn area with the great A.I. But having 2-3 linked and calling in even more so quickly as it is now makes soloing virtually impossible. Unless you're really really good which new players aren't. In other words, the AI in the newbie areas is TOO good. I know it is good training, but I've been getting my butt handed to me all day and as a new player it would be very frustrating.”

I really can't tell if they posted that to try and sound more 'real' in people's impression of the game, or they posted that to brag how hardcore the game is.

After being in a different beta where a division occurred between testers because the starting area mobs were too hard I believe this statement is real.

MMO players who don't play FPS games really have a difficult time getting used to mobs actually trying to fight as if they were PvPers.

I'm actually scared of Darkfall's mobs. I was pretty good in Quake 3 but my limits was reached when trying to practice against nightmare bots. All I asked for in MMO is for mobs to be as remotely challenging as Quake bots and the devs over did it here. 

[Venkman]

Man, I got nothing. So much snark, so little bandwidth...

[Arthur_Parker]

If the reports were only coming from fanboys it wouldn't be censorship...come on you can do better than that.

Anybody who signed up for the beta on a game that's probably never going to see the light of day is a fanboy.  Are you saying there isn't a NDA, I'd normally check that out before asking, but, Darkfall.  When's it being released again?

[schild]

Why are we still following or talking about this again? I'm confused.

[Venkman]

Because mutantmagnet has emerged the Gutboy of DF and I think we all long for the inevitable crash 

[Arthur_Parker]

The only thing funnier than DArkfall never being released, would be watching the reaction from the faithful if it ever managed to limp out the gate.

[schild]

mutantmagnet is clearly a delusional weirdo.

I meant the rest of you.

[mutantmagnet]

mutantmagnet is clearly a delusional weirdo.

Hmm aside from Signe I never did anything to anyone here to warrant this type of attack. If you are going to be a douche I hope you're as much of one IRL as you are online because it's pathetic if you have to puff yourself up over the internet.


I only talk about Darkfalll because it is something in development and looks it is worth keeping tabs on and your (yes you schild as welll as a few others) criticisms can be insightful when they aren't weighed down by a bloated obnoxious ego.

[schild]

[Signe]

mutantmagnet is clearly a delusional weirdo.

Hmm aside from Signe I never did anything to anyone here to warrant this type of attack. If you are going to be a douche I hope you're as much of one IRL as you are online because it's pathetic if you have to puff yourself up over the internet.


I only talk about Darkfalll because it is something in development and looks it is worth keeping tabs on and your (yes you schild as welll as a few others) criticisms can be insightful when they aren't weighed down by a bloated obnoxious ego.

You didn't do any thing to me.  I didn't take anything you said to me as mean spirited or personal.  I'm good that way.