Darkfall "Released"

[DraconianOne]

Interview with Tasos over at TenTonHammer today.  Apparently directional swining is out because it's

"a feature we’ve done a lot of testing on and we’ve found that it’s tricky to get right and make fair due to internet latency."

Duh!

[Nebu]

Funny that they couldn't figure that one out in the first 8 years of development. 

Darkfall should really just give up on release and go the way of the Phantom console. 

[kildorn]

It worked great when the server had 10 users all with gig eth connections to it!

When you add that whole Internet variable in the last month of testing, however...

[sidereal]

Har har!

They also removed the special move that requires 11 simultaneous keypresses because "We did some testing and found out people only have 10 fingers"

[Zzulo]

We know that the community has been speculating and wondering about the Darkfall release for some time. We haven’t replied until now because there were several complex issues to plan and work out. We also needed to get authorization before we could proceed with this official announcement:

Starting on January 22nd there will be a Darkfall trial with the distribution of the release candidate client allowing thousands of players to sample the game for free, help us stress test our servers and test the final features of the game.

It’s important to understand that there are well over 200 thousand applications by players wanting to get into Darkfall. This number makes it unrealistic to distribute the client and to open up our servers to everyone. We’ll try to accommodate as many players as are possible for us to manage at this stage. Even so, the demand exceeds our current capacity. Interest in Darkfall has surpassed all our expectations to the point that we may need to manage our release differently.

The date of the Darkfall European commercial release has been pushed back to February 25th, 2009. A pre-order will be made available mid-February. The pre-orders will get priority for early access to the game. The pre-orders will also get priority for the game launch if we have to go to a staged release. We’ll go to a staged release only in the case we have more demand than we can handle properly, and until we can upgrade our capacity. The pre-orders are necessary so that we can have some measure of the demand.

The reasons for the new release date follow:

At this stage, everything is connected: Hundreds of elements need to come together. When one thing falls behind, everything else tends to follow.
Demand for Darkfall at launch could be much higher than expected. If this is the case, we need a different process to better handle the demand.
Darkfall’s partners (distribution, billing, account management, support, etc.) entered into the game at a late date and we needed more time than expected to integrate properly.
We fell behind on a couple of weeks of beta testing progress and we need to make this time up. We need more playtesting data on several features we haven’t had much chance to test externally.
We’ll use this extra time to implement updates based on tester feedback and also make some enhancements we were saving for after release.
We want as many players as possible in the game before the launch and we haven’t had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet.
We underestimated the effect the holidays would have on our preparations. While we worked through them, the world around us seemed to stop.
We don’t want to rush things more than needed. An extra month may not seem like a lot of time, but it’s enough to allow us to take care of any compounded delays.

Our hope for Darkfall is to have a good game with a tight player base that we can nurture and steadily build up. Hype surrounding Darkfall is huge right now, despite our best efforts. We’re not sure how this will translate on launch day but we have to make allowances for the possibility that demand could be more than we anticipate.

Announcements will follow with more information on Darkfall pricing, pre-ordering information, North American player access, and system specifications.


The Darkfall Team

[patience]

Hype surrounding Darkfall is huge right now, despite our best efforts.

Tasos is now officially the best pr manager in human history.

[tmp]

It’s important to understand that there are well over 200 thousand applications by players wanting to get into Darkfall. This number makes it unrealistic to distribute the client and to open up our servers to everyone. We’ll try to accommodate as many players as are possible for us to manage at this stage. Even so, the demand exceeds our current capacity.

Well, it's good to see at least they were keeping their expectations in check and didn't plan for having anywhere near 200k subscribers.

someone might want to tell them about that modern peer-to-peer file sharing concept though, could alleviate their client distribution issues.

[Goreschach]

Hype surrounding Darkfall is huge right now, despite our best efforts.

Tasos is now officially the best pr manager in human history.

All the emoticons on the internet could not describe how awesome that is.

[kildorn]

"Demand for Darkfall at launch could be much higher than expected. If this is the case, we need a different process to better handle the demand."

read: Our process totally doesn't scale.

note for future PR statements: "we may need additional hardware" makes people think you have a viable solution, just a limited amount of gear behind it. "we need a different process" means your entire solution doesn't scale at all no matter how much hardware you throw at it.

[Delmania]

Shocking, really!   

On a serious note, all those things that mentioned say to me "we didn't plan ahead", which is status quo for that team, it seems.

[Nebu]

So Del, do you see anyone else with a large, god-awful signature file here? 

Take a good look and let me know.

[K9]

Where do these guys keep coming from?

[Delmania]

So Del, do you see anyone else with a large, god-awful signature file here? 

Take a good look and let me know.

Nope, however, this was my first attempt to put the Xfire thingie in my signature. 

[Signe]

I don't see any sig.  I guess he ditched it.  Ages ago there was a discussion about having sigs with pics and stuff so I got myself a bright sparkly flashing one and Schildy smacked me around and took it away.  Really.  He slapped me through the internet.  owowow.  Anyway,  Delmania seems to have been here as long as I have.  Which is very nearly almost forever! 

[LC]

I think I saw this thread linked over on mmorpg.com's forums. That might explain where most of the visitors are coming from.

Just for laughs: I heard a rumor that people making negative comments about Darkfail are being kicked out of the beta. They are also blacklisting people who make negative comments, and not allowing them to enter the beta.

[Delmania]

My sig was nuked.  Lesson learned.  However, on a more serious note, stuff like makes me wonder if the people who are "building" Darkfall have had their heads in the sand for the 7 odd years since the game was announced, because it sounds like a lot "we didn't think" or "we didn't plan".  Having a great concept for a game is one thing.  Actually building, deploying, and maintaining the game is another.

[Nonentity]

Well, I guess you guys got your wish. We can get a front row to watch the world burn for free on January 22nd, instead of having to pay for it.

Hooray!

[kildorn]

I think I saw this thread linked over on mmorpg.com's forums. That might explain where most of the visitors are coming from.

Just for laughs: I heard a rumor that people making negative comments about Darkfail are being kicked out of the beta. They are also blacklisting people who make negative comments, and not allowing them to enter the beta.

Darkfall fucking sucks.

There, I'm SAFE.

[Delmania]

I think I saw this thread linked over on mmorpg.com's forums. That might explain where most of the visitors are coming from.

Just for laughs: I heard a rumor that people making negative comments about Darkfail are being kicked out of the beta. They are also blacklisting people who make negative comments, and not allowing them to enter the beta.

Is Darkfall being co-built by Mythic?

[ashrik]

My sig was nuked.  Lesson learned.  However, on a more serious note, stuff like makes me wonder if the people who are "building" Darkfall have had their heads in the sand for the 7 odd years since the game was announced, because it sounds like a lot "we didn't think" or "we didn't plan".  Having a great concept for a game is one thing.  Actually building, deploying, and maintaining the game is another.

When you pretend that every advancement or feature that MMOs have made over the past decade are a mistake, it's probably pretty easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Salamok]

I think I saw this thread linked over on mmorpg.com's forums. That might explain where most of the visitors are coming from.

Just for laughs: I heard a rumor that people making negative comments about Darkfail are being kicked out of the beta. They are also blacklisting people who make negative comments, and not allowing them to enter the beta.

Is Darkfall being co-built by Mythic?

no just partnered with Bernard Madoff

[Mrbloodworth]

My sig was nuked.  Lesson learned.  However, on a more serious note, stuff like makes me wonder if the people who are "building" Darkfall have had their heads in the sand for the 7 odd years since the game was announced, because it sounds like a lot "we didn't think" or "we didn't plan".  Having a great concept for a game is one thing.  Actually building, deploying, and maintaining the game is another.

Its more of a case of an Indi company attempting to take on the big boys (AKA: Talk smack about the most successful games in the market they are entering, for years.), and creating fanaticism by their words by lack of professional manner or means ("We don't want WoW players" or "Our game is for the hardcore mmo players that have been ignored!" or "is this game like Wow?" = BANSTICK.

When you pretend that every advancement or feature that MMOs have made over the past decade are a mistake, it's probably pretty easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That too.

Also, if your guys think the 22 will be open beta,...uh, the cluster can support a max of 10k players, pre-orders have priority on the 22nd. You won't get to play, unless you pre-order (gong by the facts, and i am quite confident there are 10k suckas out there). (Don't pre-order, unless you just don't care).

[patience]

Also, if your guys think the 22 will be open beta,...uh, the cluster can support a max of 10k players, pre-orders have priority on the 22nd. You won't get to play, unless you pre-order (gong by the facts, and i am quite confident there are 10k suckas out there). (Don't pre-order, unless you just don't care).

That's a mistake on your part. Preorders are for the February 25th release.

[ashrik]

pre-order will be made available mid-February. The pre-orders will get priority for early access to the game.

Starting on January 22nd there will be a Darkfall trial

allowing THOUSANDS of players to sample the game for free

(Emphasis mine)

Thousands! Woot! Time to rock!

[Hawkbit]

This whole thing reeks of the dark and light debacle. 

[Signe]

I have to admit, though, that it was a clever distraction to move to a warm, Mediterranean climate BEFORE you get the pre-order money!

[tmp]

Official forums are highly entertaining at the moment.

edit: mods are fast with their 'kill it with fire' button, though

[ashrik]

What I find funny is because of all the hubbub surrounding Aventurine's pre-release dickery, they're likely going to be thrown into the same subscriber-and-server problem that Mythic and AoC got. In which the initial ignorant interest far outstrips the actual knowledgeable interest. Not to say that either group is smarter or dumber than the other, but just about every post-WoW release has shown twice as much (or more) people are willing to jump ship at the mere suggestion of greener pastures than are actually willing to stay for the start-up shit pains that every MMO seems to go through. It sucks for a companies like Funcom or Mythic, what chance does the Little Guy With Big Dreams have to survive a massive downswing like that?

Like 4 months ago, didn't they only have about 50k registered named on their forum? Assuming everything else is on the up and up (suspend that disbelief, fellas!) I see a big screwball coming hard and coming fast to Tasos way in the coming months. I won't claim to know what the hell I'm talking about, but wouldn't it be better for them to do smaller, staggered releases until which point they've determined that the in-and-then-outflow of people won't destroy them?

[Azaroth]

Wait, what?

I thought the release was on the 22nd?

Now they're starting pre-release orders in mid February (maybe)?

[Azaroth]

We underestimated the effect the holidays would have on our preparations. While we worked through them, the world around us seemed to stop.

Anticipating that the holidays would come this year: Difficult.

Anticipating every possible complication in an open PvP world full of bugs, PKs, and awful, awful design (wait, there's none of that): Easy.

This is why success is guaranteed.

[Xurtan]

Wait, what?

I thought the release was on the 22nd?

Now they're starting pre-release orders in mid February (maybe)?

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=106082

The date of the Darkfall European commercial release has been pushed back to February 25th, 2009. A pre-order will be made available mid-February. The pre-orders will get priority for early access to the game. The pre-orders will also get priority for the game launch if we have to go to a staged release. We’ll go to a staged release only in the case we have more demand than we can handle properly, and until we can upgrade our capacity. The pre-orders are necessary so that we can have some measure of the demand.

[Lantyssa]

Clever.  Get people desperate.  Have them send pre-order money because They Might Not Get In.  Then keep pushing back the launch.

[Senses]

You have to admit though, Darkfall, through almost incessant delay, has garnered more attention and interest than AoC or Warhammer got by releasing a game that clearly could have used more time.  Granted it will all dissapear the second they actually release the game if it sucks, but perhaps the rest of the industry will take heed, that they can delay a game at least until its ready, and still somehow generate interest.  The lesson seems to be, no matter how many years it takes, put out a good game and people will probably still be around to give it a try.  If it sucks, then it doesn't really matter anyways.

[Triforcer]

I maintain my position that they are planning their Paraguayan getaway.  They probably had an "oh shit" moment in the last month or two where they realized "Jesus, our servers can't handle more than 500 people!"

[IainC]

You have to admit though, Darkfall, through almost incessant delay, has garnered more attention and interest than AoC or Warhammer got ...

This is not true and won't be true no matter how many times it's repeated.