Darkfall "Released"

[Grimwell]

On the topic of a successful hardcore PvP game and the odds of making one...

Success = profit. Failure = no profit and closed studio. That's my measure and I want it on the table early so I'm clear.

That noted, Falconeer's 100K Hardcore PvP audience could be quite a successful MMO provided that someone built it with 100K players in mind and only spent $$ based on that expected return. The problem with most titanic failures in the MMO world is that the people behind them pulled in fewer customers than they needed to pay the bills. Pure and simple.

Launching a shit game will definitely hurt those odds, but even a good one that spends more cash getting out the door than it can ever return will fail. Period. It's simple business math.

I think that a hardcore PvP game could easily pull 100K subscribers. A million? I'm not going to call that even for a PvE game. I know millions of people are possible for any game, but I don't think it's so easy to plan and project that million. 100K though? I think that's bankable for just about any game... so were I given funds to build a game, I'd target 100K subscribers as the expected initial baseline and then budget accordingly to ensure profit. If that means cutting graphics or a titanic feature list of doom... that's the price of smart business. Launch smart and patch in more fun if you profit.

So I think hardcore pvp could be a rousing success, even financially. :) Now someone find me some VC.

Darkfall... I'm not calling it until I play it. I loved AC Darktide and those guys are influenced by it, that's a good start. The timeline to delivery... not as strong.

[UnSub]

To be completely honest, I think your hardcore PvP MMO needs to be profitable at around 50k players. The reason is that I'm sure as much as people clamour for such a thing, half (or more) are going to find that it isn't what they wanted and quit.

Also, I've thought that with the number of MMOs dying off this year, now would be a great time to swoop in for a fire sale, get some of these assets cheap and build a title that would be a bit different to what is currently on the market. Any secret F13 billionaires out there who want to flip me US $30 million so I can try out a theory? 

[Falconeer]

Grimwell, I totally agree with your point.

100k could be a total success. I AM one of them, the 100k, the hardcore PvP audience and I hoped to get a game like Darkfall for ages.
Sadly, I see the problem with it: it's just too ambitious. It tries to get it all, all the things the original UO left behind, and the AC parts too, very complex systems and subsystems which don't blend very well with "low budget" and "lack of experience". Dammit, it's 2008 and we still get dikus with huge budgets and autoattack combat being so buggy you would want to puke on the coders, and you want me to believe you can craft a working mmorpg with full loot and dynamic combat with a low budget? Money don't necessarily give you better coders, but they sure buy you some error-margin while crafting your extremely complex mmorpg. Raph told us so many times how Trammel saved Ultima (money-wise) as people used to quit & cancel after some assets-devastating ganks.
That's what happens with hardcore PvP games: gank me one time too much, steal my stuff one time too much, make me do all the walk back one time too much, and I'll stop giving you my money, I'll leave.
So, everything has to work PERFECTLY. Doesn't matter how hardcore your player is, if he has a feeling he lost his stuff because of a bug, a glitch, a cheat, a cheap mechanic, unbalanced classes/skills, unfair lag, whatever! ...he'll stop paying.
Can they face this? Can they guarantee a safe and stable environment for such a passive-aggressive, fragile and delicate bunch of playstyle?

I'll repeat myself but while I totally support projects like this, which I dare to say sprung things of beauty such EVE, I think they are losing bets with an existing but very slim chance of hitting jackpot.
What Darkfall lacks is simplicity, which is a great thing on paper! But leaves you to face complexity, which needs shitloads of money or huge amounts of talent to be dealt with. I'd be glad to realize all the talent in the world sits at Aventurine. So far, I missed it.

Again, I agree with everything you said Grimwell. And yes, I said it already and I'll repeat it here: there is definitely room for a new UO, a new EVE, a new hardcore PvP game. 100k is (for now) that room and it's a quite comfortable one.
But it has to build slowly, solidly, it has to get the players' trust working on basic hardcore pvp features and proving everyone it will work and it is fun. THEN, only after that, you can work on wishlists and dream features. It's pointless to just aim to include everything the players always asked for only to have it all messy and buggy. I think the mistake the Darkfall fanbois are clearly doing here is underestimating the power of The Bug and overestimating that of The Feature List.

Hell, I am the one here cutting slack to poor Darkfall graphics and animations. I wanted it to succeed so bad. And I wanted all the features too.
But there's a point you realize all the promises and the aspirations are backfiring, you've seen happening so many times before, and the reason Darkfall will probably fail is because it tried to keep all the promises made 7 years ago without realizing what changed in these 7 years and why they won't be able to keep it.

Finally, about "success = profit and failure = closed studio" lemme say there's a difference between success as in "Game is still running hence profitable yowza!" and "Game is ok enough that people who is not stuck with it because of a curse can play without considering it torture". Horizons and Dark and Light belongs to the first category and some diehard crazies are still contributing to their "success", but I don't think that's the kind of "success" we were discussing here, as those are the closest thing to unplayable I can think of. I am sure Aventurine's logic works like that: as long as we are alive we are winning, but players want it to be good, not "successful" (even if in an accountant book the two words are synonyms).

Ironically, I foresee Darkfall going exactly the Dark 'n Light way.

[Ghambit]

PvPers wont mind getting 1-shotted in the skullbox if there's a logical way to make up for the immense travel distances.  In games like WW2O you basically had firebases, medics, squad leaders, and different modes of xportation like aircraft, tanks, trucks, etc.  If you didnt HAVE an effective mode of reinforcing yourself upon beginning an attack... you just didnt do it - because the 2 hours you spent getting prepped would be a waste.  So basically, what I'm saying is there should be a mechanism to negate the travel distances, but players should have to tactically earn it... or be in danger of losing it.  They (DF) have mounts that can be stolen, so that's 1 thing... but beyond that what mechanics are there?  Is there earnable territory you can spawn from?  Do any classes have a portal ability?  Can you purchase a portal or perhaps a fast mode of transport?  (a ride on a dragon perhaps).

[Iniquity]

PvPers wont mind getting 1-shotted in the skullbox if there's a logical way to make up for the immense travel distances.  In games like WW2O you basically had firebases, medics, squad leaders, and different modes of xportation like aircraft, tanks, trucks, etc.  If you didnt HAVE an effective mode of reinforcing yourself upon beginning an attack... you just didnt do it - because the 2 hours you spent getting prepped would be a waste.  So basically, what I'm saying is there should be a mechanism to negate the travel distances, but players should have to tactically earn it... or be in danger of losing it.  They (DF) have mounts that can be stolen, so that's 1 thing... but beyond that what mechanics are there?  Is there earnable territory you can spawn from?  Do any classes have a portal ability?  Can you purchase a portal or perhaps a fast mode of transport?  (a ride on a dragon perhaps).

This is generally true -- though at the same time, the ability to get lost in an obscure corner of the world if you so desire is also important to have.

I like how AC1 did it, prior to the "portal to anywhere you damn well please" changes -- a portal network for 'well traveled' areas, with some areas being hidden or off the beaten path, nooks and crannies not everyone knew about because the world was so damn big.  You could be on or off everyone's radar roughly as you wished, and if your group made a name for yourself, people would come gunning for you, trying to figure out where you were based.

About the longest it took to get anywhere useful back then was 20 minutes to somewhere you weren't tied to, and that was at the extremes.

The key is localization; you want people to feel like a certain part of the world is their 'home', and traveling 'far from home' should feel like a fairly epic (or at least meaningful) journey.  Contrast that with a game like WoW, where nobody really feels a specific city as 'theirs'.

One key to this is not dividing up your game-world into tightly level-restrictive zones.  This is one more area where AoC falls down.  Being a high level shouldn't mean you're 'based' in a certain area.

[tmp]

New preview released today:

http://beta.thenoobcomic.com/df_preview/intro.html

A fair question could be "So why aren't you looking behind your back when you're fighting, newb? Can't you just mouselook?" Nope! But I'll elaborate on this topic in another update. For the moment let's leave my looted, half naked ork as she looks at the rising sun, hoping that the future will bring more loot, or at least a shirt...Tomorrow is another day!

She's elaborated on that in part 2:

Well, forget mouselook. The only time that you can mouselook around you is when you sit down to rest. At any other time, the only way to check if anyone is sneaking up on you is to turn and look. Now, if you are fighting a monster in melee, you also have to be aiming at your opponent to hit, because there’s no such thing as autotarget like in other MMOs. This means that if you are in melee and you want to look behind you, you have to either circle around the mob while still fighting or stop aiming at it and turn around.

Don't know about computer game orcs and hardcore PVPers, but if i want to look behind me there's this thing called neck that allows me to look over my shoulder...

[Falconeer]

The key is localization; you want people to feel like a certain part of the world is their 'home', and traveling 'far from home' should feel like a fairly epic (or at least meaningful) journey.
[...]
This is one more area where AoC falls down.  Being a high level shouldn't mean you're 'based' in a certain area.

I agree about the "feeling home" thing but it can't be easily solved in a free and hardcore PvP environment.
You are still thinking in rose-colured pre-Trammel terms. Ultima Online didn't have levels and, most important, worked (for some time, before it started bleeding subs because of all the ganking and corpse looting) BECAUSE it was the only thing of its kind available.

More on it, it didn't had quests, it didn't had any content, so players weren't actually let free to go wherever they wanted, they were kinda forced to go randomly around (having houses in weird places didn't help and choosing a place wasn't always up to you), they didn't had an option save for the few dungeons, infamously known game-breakers.

A step further, next hardcore PVP game, enters EVE online. Again, it's an open world basically contentless. You don't *HAVE TO* go anywhere unless you want to, and no one can make your progression impossible just by camping popular content spots.

About size, and "hideability". That works in EVE because of the setting. The universe is supposed to be big, huge looking all the same. Motivations for traveling are different in EVE and lots of things are doable "by proxy" anyway. Do you seriously think a huge, wide, mostly empty non-space world would work in 2008? Exploring virtual worlds in 1999 was really something, even barren ugly looking ones. Do you think a world like AC1 one would work today, just because of its hide-potential factor? You may not like Vanguard, but go there asking how the people received the HUGE world. Just about the world: barren and boring were the two most used words, and arts and visuals weren't bad either.

Finally, I know you are just flamebaiting about Conan, cause it isn't and wasn't ever supposed to be a hardcore pvp game so your point is moot (FFA yes, and it delivers - hardcore no), but let's move beyond it and have an exercise at game designing:

Problem: as a game designer, in a tiered virtual world how would you prevent higher levels/skills players from gathering in areas challenging enough to let them keep advancing their level/skills? How would you push them in lower level tiers if there's nothing they can get out of it?

Tierless? ok then.

Problem 2: as a game designer, in a tierless virtual world how would you prevent lower levels/skills players from quitting in frustrations and canceling their subs by being constantly killed and spoiled of all their belongings by both higher level players and higher level mobs which by design hang in all areas without distinction?

Solution? Just size? Just make it big so I can be off everyone's radar?
I am interested. Not in a hostile way. Really curious. Please answer me.

On a side note, the gathering areas of Conan are the most recent examples of tight areas where everyone has to go (and PVP) regardless the levels. No need to say it's bloody chaos, but it's manageable. It works and it's kinda cool. You know why? Cause death means nothing. Respawn, short walk, nothing ever happened.
If it had consequences, no one would ever gather resources there until they are max level.

[Signe]

Geez, you guys say a lot of words!

Anyway, Chinese Democracy is out.  Where's Darkfall?

[Falconeer]

Oh don't worry.
It's ready. They are just adding polish 

[Signe]

Oh don't worry.
It's ready. They are just adding polish 

Where's your proof???

Here's mine: 

[Falconeer]

Oh don't worry.
It's ready. They are just adding polish 

Where's your proof???

Here's mine: 

At the risk of breaking NDA, here it is:

[mutantmagnet]

What does she look? There are/were a few pics of her around but who cares? Don't be a pig! Do you ever wonder wtf do I look like? 

I wondered what everyone in here looked like, for a while. But I got better.

The only one who I wondered about was Signe because his/her avatars are just demented and attract my curiosity.

Sadly, I see the problem with it: it's just too ambitious. It tries to get it all, all the things the original UO left behind, and the AC parts too, very complex systems and subsystems which don't blend very well with "low budget" and "lack of experience".

Inexperienced? Yes. Low Budget? No, so that should comfort you a bit.

[gryeyes]

And what was the development budget for Darkfall?

[Falconeer]

Low Budget?

Yeah, this is intriguing.
What's the budget and what's your source?

[Signe]

I look like all my avatars!  We're not demented, we're INTERESTING!

[Grimwell]

Also, I've thought that with the number of MMOs dying off this year, now would be a great time to swoop in for a fire sale, get some of these assets cheap and build a title that would be a bit different to what is currently on the market.

This is actually a common and mistaken concept. Sure, you can buy assets in a fire sale cheap... but making them work in a different system? Good luck there.

By the time your art team is done combing through them to figure out how it was done and what they can do to use them and make them fit this new world you are building... they could just do their own from scratch and possibly save money.

Consider Gods & Heroes. They showed some great and distinct art and (to my knowledge) they didn't sell it off afterwards. Roman art would be useful in most generic fantasy settings... so why didn't someone go after it? Because it's never as easy as "buy art and attach to game engine at the proper hooks and voila! GAME ON"

Plus, if someone has a budget of $30 million, I can build them a dozen cheap games and still have room for a nice car and some drugs. You are too expensive. 

[mutantmagnet]

They've spent almost 10 million Euros since October.

You only need to translate the first paragraph.

They seem to be fiscally responsible if reports about them actually having 20 million in loans is true.

[Falconeer]

From mutantmagnet's link:

With the latest news to be uncovered, it appears Aventurine has procured a 20 million Euro convertible bond ($27.5m USD) loan with Marfin Bank[27] at the behest of Proton Investment Bank of Greece[28]. Now I'm not expert in MMORPG development and distribution, and I wouldn't pretend to be, but when last ditch desperation investments from big name has-beens like Interplay, throwing every shred of their capability into one Last Hurrah that is Fallout Online, confidently dedicate what is assumed to be an overkill amount of $75m USD to the pre-production, development, and publishing of a software[29] I can't help but think that no more than $25m of that would be dedicated to initial server hosting and publishing. Without much enthusiasm or presumption, I would submit that the wait for Darkfall is over. $27.5m loans tend to be a bitch to pay off interest on, especially when sitting squarely on your laurels. The clamps are most certainly down, and Aventurine is financially committed to the launch of Darkfall whether they like it or not. Whether that's a good thing or not is also yet to be seen, because for the first time in its long development Darkfall Online is subject to the most dreaded of all development problems: time constraints.

Given Aventurine's recent admission that they will not even be capable of entertaining their scheduled WarCry update by writing it ahead of time on or around the 15th of August[30], I think it's a safe assumption that mid-August will see Darkfall's public servers online, and functional. Recent business trips which left Tasos outside of the country[31] would even indicate that they wouldn't necessarily be located in Greece. As I stated in a previous article, public beta by October, or I'll club a baby seal.

And if that article is from July... 2007. 

[gryeyes]

They've spent almost 10 million Euros since October.

You only need to translate the first paragraph.

They seem to be fiscally responsible if reports about them actually having 20 million in loans is true.

So lets see you provide one link thats not in english telling us to translate it. For some reason i take the time to translate it and find out it reveals absolutely fuckall about Darkfalls budget. And another that is an opinion piece with all sorts of dubious fact checking culminating in the opinion that darkfall is obviously about to be released.

The only problem being its almost 2 years old. 

[sidereal]

Total thread polyglot victory

[mutantmagnet]

So lets see you provide one link thats not in english telling us to translate it. For some reason i take the time to translate it and find out it reveals absolutely fuckall about Darkfalls budget. And another that is an opinion piece with all sorts of dubious fact checking culminating in the opinion that darkfall is obviously about to be released.

The only problem being its almost 2 years old. 

That's my fault. I was looking at two different pages and copied the wrong link.

This is the correct one.


I didn't bother posting the translation because you should be able to take my word for it.

The bigger Greek MMORPG is found in final stage of growth and Tassos [Flampoyras] reveals all that it should we know. Read the interview…


For many years we hear and read a lot of and various for the first big Greek network game of roles, Darkfall Online. In the 1st Pan-Hellenic Meeting of Greek Game Developers, we met Tassos [Flampoyra] and we learned a lot of and interesting information on the big bet of our country in it turns for first time her looks world gaming above. Tassos [Flampoyras] works from 1984 in the sector of Computer Engineering. Up to today it has worked for the MSN Gaming Zone, Age of Empires and Asheron's Call of Microsoft, Messiah of Interplay and many still games. The company Aventurine was founded in 2002, when a company of Norwegian programmers joined itself with Greek programmer, which found the ideal occasion after so much years in the abroad to return in Greece.


The Norwegians had in their hands the game of roles “Neocron”, which was shaped by the zero, in order that today we have Darkfall in his final stage of production. The possible community of game via www.darkfallonline.com (3.000.000 users, 52.000 from them active in the forum of web page) is sure a reason [parapano] in order to invest the big companies in the particular work.

Who is [mpatzet] that has until now been spent for the game? Many millions of Euros, at approach something least from 10.

As for the second one I never claimed it was definite proof of anything. I just added it as additional food for thought.

[gryeyes]

I didn't bother posting the translation because you should be able to take my word for it.

Why would we request a source if we were willing to take your word for it?

We just wanted substantiation on your claims of its budget. You haven't provided them! And made me translate a heathen tongue to reveal your lies! 

[Falconeer]

Who is [mpatzet] that has until now been spent for the game? Many millions of Euros, at approach something least from 10.

 

Does this mean they are keeping the other 10 millions from the 2007 20M loan for Grimwell's nice car and drugs?

[Xuri]

I look like all my avatars!  We're not demented, we're INTERESTING!

Cool! I look like my avatar as well.

[UnSub]

Also, I've thought that with the number of MMOs dying off this year, now would be a great time to swoop in for a fire sale, get some of these assets cheap and build a title that would be a bit different to what is currently on the market.

This is actually a common and mistaken concept. Sure, you can buy assets in a fire sale cheap... but making them work in a different system? Good luck there.

By the time your art team is done combing through them to figure out how it was done and what they can do to use them and make them fit this new world you are building... they could just do their own from scratch and possibly save money.

Consider Gods & Heroes. They showed some great and distinct art and (to my knowledge) they didn't sell it off afterwards. Roman art would be useful in most generic fantasy settings... so why didn't someone go after it? Because it's never as easy as "buy art and attach to game engine at the proper hooks and voila! GAME ON"

Plus, if someone has a budget of $30 million, I can build them a dozen cheap games and still have room for a nice car and some drugs. You are too expensive. 

I know it isn't just that easy, but buying an existing title cheap and then working within its existing framework to build something different is likely to be cheaper than starting that development from scratch. Especially for a MMO, where a lot of the cost comes from continually building systems that already exist a dozen times over in different games. It wouldn't be just tearing out art and putting them in a new game; it would be about working out what worked and what didn't with the title you bought (having carefully selected it from the growing list of dead MMOs), building on the strengths, adding more interesting bits and removing focus from the weaker aspects of the title.

For Gods and Heroes, that would be adding in PvP, upping the involvement of gods, improving how pets behaved and speeding up the lvl curve so that PvE was trivial. Other non-combat would be scrapped. (If I bought G&H - which was feature and content complete, just needed bug fixing at time of "hiatus" - I would want the whole thing, not just the art.) The core of G&H would be that "you are your own phalanx" and then making situations where player phalanx vs player phalanx was enjoyable and rewarding.

And I said $30 million because otherwise that mystery F13 billionaire will think I'm being too cheap! 

[Grimwell]

Ahh, see now I thought you were talking about trying to use those old assets inside a different game/engine/structure.

Buying the game wholesale and then standing it up and trying to make it to something else/more?

Possibly less expensive. That depends entirely on how well the game itself is documented and how fast you can get a team to learn how it's supposed to be working and then how to insert code into it without explosions. If you are lucky you might get a few people from the original team, but they had to fail to get the product to a point that you could buy it... so they may not be all that uber. The entire production would be a pain to get going but not impossible.

More difficult though would be rebranding it. You are essentially going to have to say "Whamdoodles Online, now with less Shittastic!" and then jaded folks in places like f13 are going to do what they do best: Point out how utterly hopeless the situation is and do so in a grand fashion. You are working uphill on a steep slope in the realms of perception all to make your used game go cheaply.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do what you suggest, but on the business side I'd rather buy some clean and off the shelf MMO tools and build something "new" that does not have perception issues. While it would be risky, it wouldn't be as risky.

[Iniquity]

I agree about the "feeling home" thing but it can't be easily solved in a free and hardcore PvP environment.
You are still thinking in rose-colured pre-Trammel terms. Ultima Online didn't have levels and, most important, worked (for some time, before it started bleeding subs because of all the ganking and corpse looting) BECAUSE it was the only thing of its kind available.

I... never really played UO much at all?  I was actually thinking more in terms of Darktide.  Where, during the time-period we're talking about, if I understand correctly the world was *much* bigger than UO, it wasn't the only server available (not by a long shot, AC populations were actually pretty healthy back then), it had levels (though they weren't terribly influential at the time, and still aren't anywhere near as important as both games), and most importantly you had a lot of options for escaping from combat -- fight-or-flight really meant flight-or-fight, not just fight-or-be-cut-down-as-you-try-to-run-away.

Do you think a world like AC1 one would work today, just because of its hide-potential factor? You may not like Vanguard, but go there asking how the people received the HUGE world. Just about the world: barren and boring were the two most used words, and arts and visuals weren't bad either.

Yes, I do think it would work, because the audience it's targeting is completely different than the audience Vanguard targets.

Vanguard's world seemed barren because they had a playerbase that wanted lots of PvE *stuff*.

By contrast, a huge divide regarding the monthly content patches opened up in the AC1 community.  The PvE servers eagerly anticipated the monthly patches, because it meant new content, quests, items, additions to the story.  Darktide *hated* the patches -- not just the occasional instability and bugginess, but the very idea of progressing the game monthly -- because in their view it meant the devs were needlessly messing with a good thing.  They didn't want new quest content, they didn't want new items or this or that, they wanted to keep on playing the same game they've been playing.

Vanguard attracts the type of players who seek to *consume* content that the devs have created.  A barren landscape is like a blank canvas for them.  Darktide, and a future world-PvP MMO, attracts the type of players who want to *be* the content, and want the devs to get out of the way as much as possible.  A barren landscape is like being a kid in a sand-lot for them -- they fill it with their own adventures.

Also, let's look at the antecedents; AC1 didn't launch in a vacuum, it launched when EQ had already been established for a few months (This, along with its hideous orange-brown box art sitting next to EQ's Elf Tits on the store shelf, are probably the biggest factors why AC1 ended up 3rd out of 3 among the original round of mainstream MMOs.), and EQ was much more content-driven in the vein of WoW.  Things nonetheless worked out alright.

Problem 2: as a game designer, in a tierless virtual world how would you prevent lower levels/skills players from quitting in frustrations and canceling their subs by being constantly killed and spoiled of all their belongings by both higher level players and higher level mobs which by design hang in all areas without distinction?

Darktide addressed both of these, with its original mechanics -- the mob spawns were the right density so that with careful determination, you could make sure to weave between spawns and get to your destination without triggering something that'd eat you.  There were also spawn points (called lifestones, equivalent to bind-stones in other games) at various points through the wilderness, where you'd quickly learn to set up shop.  Wandering shopkeepers in the wilderness, out-of-the-way little huts with vendors that weren't on anyone's radar... you could have your own little shadow economy going.  Also, my point above about escape options applied to PvE as well -- running away worked pretty well.  Spacing your way through the spawns was helped by having a radar with a decent radius, something I still wish other MMOs had.

Side note on the whole 'running away being effective' thing -- magic and missile attacks in AC1 can literally be physically dodged by running out of their path.  If someone shot an arrow at you, and you moved out of the way fast enough, there was no dice-roll, the arrow simply stuck into the ground (at which point, if you're a low-level and poor like I was, you could run back, pick it up, and eventually sell 'em to a vendor later for tiny bits o' cash).

So if you accidentally triggered aggro from a group of 3 monsters, 2 melee and 1 ranged, let's say -- you would start sprinting away, making sure to sidestep like mad as you ran to dodge the oncoming arrows, and the melee monster only gets one or two hits on you before you're out of range.  Heal up before you start running again, and voila! You've got mechanics where you'd sometimes see level 5 players who'd make their way deep into the No Man's Land area of the game ('the direlands') by painstakingly weaving through the spawns and running like hell when possible, simply for the sheer fun of it.

AC1's guild system ("allegiances") was also absolutely crucial, as it proved hugely successful in getting new players integrated into the server's politics.  If you've played AC1, you know just what I'm talking about, but if not let me know and I can give you a rundown.  It's the best guild system ever implemented into a MMO, bar none, and radically different from the norm.  Nothing else even comes close.  Oftentimes, the high level who just killed you would become your new protector and sugar daddy, and the game gave him an incentive to do so.

In most PvP MMOs, the guild system leads to a lot of "kill everyone who's not us".  In AC1, the incentive structure led to a whole lot of "join or die", with territorial control being at issue.  (More about this if you'd like, it was really remarkable in a lot of ways)

So that level 5 with the chutzpah to try crossing the direlands that I mentioned above?  If a high level ran across him, saw that the guy was resourceful and had a decent head on his shoulders... he'd be recruited in no time.

Very low-level players could also be decisive in fights between much higher levels, by staying on the fringes of the action in a hard-to-get-to spot, and tossing heals to your favored combatant.  The way health and mana scaled -- a curve that flattened out quickly, you didn't end up with 5 bazillion HP - was very conducive to this.  This helped you 'get in good' with a higher level who'd then be happy to take you under his wing, in the allegiance system mentioned above.  Non-mages could still whip out a wand and do the same thing, thanks to the way the open-ended skill system worked.  (Virtually none of these systems were designed with PvP in mind, but the way they worked together was absolute magic.)

As for being killed and spoiled of their belongings -- the lower level you were, the less you dropped in terms of loot, the more easily replaceable your loot was, and the less loot impacted your performance.  Also, the 5 minute non-PK timer after you died gave you ample time to get out of dodge (Fast runspeeds helped here.  For those who've never played it, AC1's runspeeds are close to what you'd imagine speedhacking is like in other MMOs.  And if you were starting on the PK server, you could balance your template to start with a higher run-speed.)

I am interested. Not in a hostile way. Really curious. Please answer me.

Will do.  Sorry if the giant wall of text is a bit much, but it's a multi-faceted question so I tried to cover everything that popped to mind.

On a side note, the gathering areas of Conan are the most recent examples of tight areas where everyone has to go (and PVP) regardless the levels. No need to say it's bloody chaos, but it's manageable. It works and it's kinda cool. You know why? Cause death means nothing. Respawn, short walk, nothing ever happened.
If it had consequences, no one would ever gather resources there until they are max level.

A few problems here, as I see them -- escaping from combat is too hard, and levels mean too much in Conan.  Also, it depends what the consequences are.  One of the things Conan really did *right* was making loot not have a gigantic influence on your stats (Or at least, dropping down to a lower tier, more easily obtainable tier of loot doesn't dramatically lower your effectiveness).  You don't have to be able to loot everything from the guy, just a bit.

[UnsGub]

Ahh, see now I thought you were talking about trying to use those old assets inside a different game/engine/structure.

Buying the game wholesale and then standing it up and trying to make it to something else/more?

When is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix coming to games?

[mutantmagnet]

When is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix coming to games?

Sorry but I would rather pass on seeing someone like this guy entering the MMO scene.



Also in spite of their inexperience the DF devs seem to be holding their own.

From an addendum to part 2 of Noobs preview

2. Stability and state of the game. Relax! It's not been wiped at all since last week, and even if at some point it's going t o be wiped twice a day it's because they are testing things according to their test plans, not because something's gone horribly wrong and they have to shut down everything. The game is stable. I crashed once to desktop, which is a lot less of how much I crash to desktop in the released MMO that I've played most recently. How ready is it? I don't know! From what I can observe, assuming that it would play the same with thousands of people instead of hundreds, it's less buggy in beta of some games a month into release, but this is just an observation of what I can see, I have no idea if they are opening black holes and rips through time and space by mistake in their server room even if we don't notice.

[Iniquity]

Jesus H. Christ, that webcomic is awful.  Though their parody of democratic whining in anti guilds is spot on.  (Are there any MMOs that feature anti guilds, anymore?  Does Shadowbane have any?  EVE?)

[Von Douchemore]

I kinda like the "the noob" webcomic, but take that from a guy who dozes off with PvP/Kurtz and hates the guts of the dude that makes GUComics.

Last time i played Shadowbane there was a pretty big guild  (had like 5-10 cities in their nation) called Dragonscale, it was a mix of strong ANTI and roleplay.

I dare you not to giggle, i present you , Sir Steven's signature, ruler of the Dragonscale Kingdom.



Also: The Dragonscale Anthem and their latest video production.

And of course there's are a lot of old school and new anti guilds in activity, you'd be surprised.

[Falconeer]

Iniquity, you are a disaster. The Noob is awesome. Period.

Back to hardcore PvP.
Then you didn't play UO and all your experience is based on Asheron's Call Darktide. Fine.
But we weren't looking for cool games here, or just following personal tastes. I for example was perfectly fine with pre-Trammel UO and I still think it's the best PvP ever, and I'd be playing Siege Perilous right now if it wasn't for the skill gain artificial cockblock and the item-tastic new deal which stormed Sosaria. We were looking for a possible solution for a succesful if not popular hardcore PvP game.

What was the most player Darktide ever had? 5k? 10k?

Then It DIDN'T work! The fact that it worked for you and your 4999 friends, 7 or so years ago, doesn't mean it's a viable way to craft a hardcore PvP game in 2008. Unless, of course, you are aiming to 5k players.

While I have to concede on the Vanguard example, which wasn't fitting for the reasons you finely expressed, it doesn't mean your idea of hardcore PvP players has any resemblance with the infamous 100k that would eventually pay for our dream game.

By contrast, a huge divide regarding the monthly content patches opened up in the AC1 community.  The PvE servers eagerly anticipated the monthly patches, because it meant new content, quests, items, additions to the story.  Darktide *hated* the patches -- not just the occasional instability and bugginess, but the very idea of progressing the game monthly -- because in their view it meant the devs were needlessly messing with a good thing.  They didn't want new quest content, they didn't want new items or this or that, they wanted to keep on playing the same game they've been playing.

See? In an already tiny demographic an even tinier one was in disagreement. That's not the kind of numbers you build a game on.
I'd say that you solved the problem I presented you with a 5k customers solution. Not really a solution.

Like it or not the gamers changed. When you have a small bunch of players you can't aim to the core of the core of the core of those small bunch based on another core and pretty limited previous experience. While I am sure some would just be happy with a new evil PvP toy, there are more than enough that loved UO, loved DT, but learned to love the passing of time too, learned to love eyecandy, content and oh god even WoW, and couldn't really get back to long traveling times, barren worlds, absence of quests and "can't even turn your neck to look around cause you know it has to be realz the Darkfail way!  "

I am not bashing Darktide. It was great as was pre-Trammel UO for those who liked it that way. I am one of those. I'd welcome a new old-school UO, a new AC Darktide, a new Shadowbane. I am up for ALL the things we talked about, and I am, on paper, even up for Darkfall. The thing is took me some time to accept it but now I know why they had to change UO, why they had to drop the equip loot (not just backpack) thing from Shadowbane, and why no one can produce a game along those lines anymore. Doesn't matter how much we liked, we are not enough to justify the investment without an actualization of the product. You can't only aim to the old geezers who had plenty of time in 2001 in high school and now have families, sons and jobs that allow for a completely different playstyle. Those are most likely pvping on browser games anyway right now, a different kind of old school and a dfferent kind of huge featureless worlds, and are even having lots of fun with it. They wouldn't come back for Darktide reborn, they don't have the time for it anymore. You have to look for some new blood then. And the new, younger blood, would probably hate your old school huge and questless featurless world.
Add to it that "we" aren't even always in agreement about the kind of hardcore pvp we want (there are many subtle differences). So it's not like the first developer who can craft a new hardcore pvp game will get all the 100k. They know it, and they don't really know how to cater all those rabid sociopaths together on a single game.

Closest thing to what we want? Eve online.
First one who can make a believable and stylish medieval EVE wins.

Now, Darkfall is trying to do a kickass old-school-but-new hardcore PvP game. I bashed it enough so I'll just say it's definitely not EVE enough, but still "let's hope for the best". Too bad hoping is even less influential than farting.

[tmp]

Jesus H. Christ, that webcomic is awful.  Though their parody of democratic whining in anti guilds is spot on.

It gets most of things spot on. If that makes it awful... perhaps it's the genre that's to blame, not the messenger. Perosnally, i love it.

[tolakram]

I don't understand how anyone can think a hardcore pvp game can obtain, maintain, or grow a player base when the game mechanics allow the few to decide who survives (read: have fun).

[IainC]

Because being self referential is the new cool here's some stuff I wrote on that a while back.