Darkfall "Released"

[Mrbloodworth]

5 days.

[ashrik]

9 days, it's due on the 25th.

Anyways- I'm not sure if you guys have heard the news. Aventurine will be selling a very limited amount of pre-orders and another limited amount of accounts or boxed copies.

Unorthodox, of course, but it rings with a bit of sense to me. They have limited funds and limited servers. If they had expanded enough to allow everyone who wanted a go to have one: pissing everyone off when they try to log in, but can't, and then again when half the servers are empty in 3 months would have done them no good unless their goal was to sell a bunch of boxes and nothing else.

Anyways, since it's not likely I'll get a copy unless I preorder or become willing to stab my f5 key on their opening date in Greektime, I don't think I'll be playing anytime soon.

[Lum]

5 days.

What does that even mean?

[WayAbvPar]

We have learned not to ask those kinds of questions of Mr. B.

[schild]

That's the best drawing of EA Mythic that will probably ever exist.

[Nebu]

That picture makes me want a WAR comic from Samprimary!  Badly!

[Salamok]

Aventurine will be selling a very limited amount of pre-orders and another limited amount of accounts or boxed copies.

Pretty sure we are all clued in to this "news", i'd even guess that most of us realized this before Aventurine did.

[Delmania]

Is anyone here taking DFO seriously?  Or have the previews killed it off?

[Venkman]

No. And that had nothing to do with the paid reviews lovefest previews.

[Azaroth]

A lot of people are taking it very seriously.

9 days until release, and there's been absolutely no update from the team for a month.

...

That update was a forum post.

So, the group of people taking this seriously doesn't seem to include the development team. To be fair, they figured out that Darkfall was vaporware ages ago.


I've figured this out though.

On the forum, everyone's join date is displayed proudly. It would seem as though everyone posting currently has either joined in '08 or '09, with the odd '07er chastising them for being stupid and still posting on the forum.

I found that amusing.

[Tale]

Still makes me think of the German word durchfall.

[Delmania]

I was curious because supposedly they are releasing on the 25th, and sites like Keen and Graaev are generating some hype through it, so I was curious if this thing was for real (this time).

[Malakili]

I was curious because supposedly they are releasing on the 25th, and sites like Keen and Graaev are generating some hype through it, so I was curious if this thing was for real (this time).

Keen just got on this game like a month ago and hadn't even heard about it before, or so he says.  I wouldn't take the fact that hes blogging about it and made a forum to mean this game is going to do anything.  I mean, the game might actually launch next week, but even if it does, I'm expecting a subpar, poorly made MMO that isn't going to be anything special.  The problem is that the Darkfall fanboys are treating a game with almost solid information as if its the second coming.

[Vanifae]

I was curious because supposedly they are releasing on the 25th, and sites like Keen and Graaev are generating some hype through it, so I was curious if this thing was for real (this time).

Keen just got on this game like a month ago and hadn't even heard about it before, or so he says.  I wouldn't take the fact that hes blogging about it and made a forum to mean this game is going to do anything.  I mean, the game might actually launch next week, but even if it does, I'm expecting a subpar, poorly made MMO that isn't going to be anything special.  The problem is that the Darkfall fanboys are treating a game with almost solid information as if its the second coming.

Seems to me that Keen is just another bandwagon player looking for the next best thing and being repeatedly disappointed.

I doubt the stint with Darkfall will be any different.

[LC]

I've been in beta for a few weeks now. The graphics are just as bad as the screenshots depicted, but the core gameplay seems to be solid. It's in much better condition than SB was at launch. I will probably pre-order this one.

I will answer any questions you have.

I'm logging in to kill a few macros with my knockback first though.

[Arthur_Parker]

Are you insane?

j/k

Can the server handle a hundred players?

[LC]

Are you insane?

j/k

Can the server handle a hundred players?

I think it can hold at least 2000 players. That's just a guess based on the number of people I've seen around in the game. I don't think they have done a true stress test yet.

[Arthur_Parker]

Well I'd have lots of questions but with the whole nda thing and the influx of fanbois the answers would generate, I'll let someone else ask.

[LC]

Well I'd have lots of questions but with the whole nda thing and the influx of fanbois the answers would generate, I'll let someone else ask.

The NDA is lifted, and the fanbois are probably spamming the official forums.

[Xurtan]

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?p=2720030#post2720030

As of the time of this posting the NDA is officially lifted. In the next couple of days the Darfkall pre-orders will open up and stay up until right before Darkfall’s launch on February 25th or until they are sold out.

And yeah, the forums are going nuts.

[Arthur_Parker]

Heh.  Is it true they are backing away from the whole ffa nature of the game with guard towers outside the starter areas?  How long to hit maximum level from pve?  Roughly how many valid pvp templates are there, it's skill based right?  I'm kinda in the dark with the little I know about this, always assumed it would never make release.  They have BOP, it's full loot right?

[Arthur_Parker]

As of the time of this posting the NDA is officially lifted. In the next couple of days the Darfkall pre-orders will open up and stay up until right before Darkfall’s launch on February 25th or until they are sold out.

Clever, nothing like thinking you might miss out, Mark Jacobs is going to shit a brick.

Hey LC, maybe start a new thread.

[LC]

Heh.  Is it true they are backing away from the whole ffa nature of the game with guard towers outside the starter areas?

They put the guard towers in the wilderness banks that are right around the starting areas. I have wandered all over the map, and have only seen them within 2 blocks of the starting areas. There are plenty of lawless cities around the map where reds can bank and shop.

 How long to hit maximum level from pve?

There are no levels, but it would probably take months to hit 100 in skills from normal gameplay.

 Roughly how many valid pvp templates are there, it's skill based right?

Each type of weapon has it's on set of skills. They can be mixed with archery and magic. There are several schools of magic with different types of spells. I have no idea how many of these you can max out though. I've been doing Great Axes and Lesser magic. I dont think my magic skills are high enough to open any of the other schools up yet.

 I'm kinda in the dark with the little I know about this, always assumed it would never make release.  They have BOP, it's full loot right?

The only soulbound/bop/nodrop type items are the newbie weapons you start with. Everything else will drop when you die.

[Arthur_Parker]

What's the story on crafting?  Any housing or city building involved, if yes are there siege weapons?  Is it a standard guild type thing with a chat channel or have they done anything interesting to support clan warfare?

[Nija]

I've been in the beta for a few weeks now as well, playing the game off and on with LC. I don't think I'll be buying at retail, contrary to what I have posted previously. There are a lot of funny comments that you can see virtually all over the place now. I think this one sums up the current state of the game at release, in regards to buggyness and the thought put into balancing items, skills, and playstyles.

Here's my write up: This is probably the worst MMOG I've ever played. A complete black hole of fun. The game world possesses almost zero content, and the little there is requires a grind that would make the hardest of the hardcore Korean MMOGs look tame by comparison. 5 of us chased one guy for about 30 minutes last night all the way across the map and he trashed all his good gear before we could kill him. When we finally did, he had jack on him. The kill was satisfying but everything else about it sucked. He kept his stamina up by casting Mana > Stam, eating food, and drinking potions.

I agree that the core functions of the game are impressively sound. However I do not think they have the talent or the means to actually build a good game around these core systems and functions. They are in a much better position than Shadowbane was at any point. The client is stable and works as intended. It's just missing so much, or so much is just not balanced/thought out quite yet.

[LC]

What's the story on crafting?  Any housing or city building involved, if yes are there siege weapons?  Is it a standard guild type thing with a chat channel or have they done anything interesting to support clan warfare?

The crafting system is probably the worst thing about the game. You have to spend hours chopping wood, or gathering herbs to make something. In that same period of time you could have farmed enough money to buy those same items twice from the npcs. It still needs a lot of tweaking to be worthwhile at this point.


There's not much to cities. From what I have heard there are 44 cities, and 56 hamlets on the map that can be captured by player clans. Once they are captured you have to dump resources into them to repair the buildings and walls. There's no customization of cities at all. Building and wall locations are predetermined.

[Mrbloodworth]

oh god... Read this, then see the first reply.

[Arthur_Parker]

Clearly we need a Darkfall forum.

 

[Nebu]

Clearly we need a Darkfall forum.

Carebear!

[Nija]

Carebear!

That's essentially their private forums too. There are a bunch of posts that basically say, "The GUI is dogshit. Why didn't you do x,y,z,a,b,c things which are proven to work in (games released in the last 10 years, when DF was born)?" The response is always something along the lines of, "THIS ISN'T WOW-STYLE EASYMODE!" or "L2P" or that kind of thing.

They have been surrounded with who knows how many blind fanboys for who knows how long, telling them that everything is fantastic and if you don't agree you're not hardcore enough.

The default action of the right mouse button is to open up your GUI, for instance. You can't right click any items. The game is like a Macintosh before they had 2 button mice.

[veredus]

oh god... Read this, then see the first reply.

"dude its Beta, its not made to be fun its made to test things, hopefully alot of stuff in your list is already in the game and just "turned off" but nobody will know until a few more days"   

[Hoth]

Clearly we need a Darkfall forum.

 

Try this.
Looks pretty unused.

[Nebu]

That's going to fan some flames.

[UnSub]

oh god... Read this, then see the first reply.

"dude its Beta, its not made to be fun its made to test things, hopefully alot of stuff in your list is already in the game and just "turned off" but nobody will know until a few more days"   

Yeah, that was a great quote.

"It's still beta" only applies up until a month before launch.

[Delmania]

Carebear!

That's essentially their private forums too. There are a bunch of posts that basically say, "The GUI is dogshit. Why didn't you do x,y,z,a,b,c things which are proven to work in (games released in the last 10 years, when DF was born)?" The response is always something along the lines of, "THIS ISN'T WOW-STYLE EASYMODE!" or "L2P" or that kind of thing.

They have been surrounded with who knows how many blind fanboys for who knows how long, telling them that everything is fantastic and if you don't agree you're not hardcore enough.

The default action of the right mouse button is to open up your GUI, for instance. You can't right click any items. The game is like a Macintosh before they had 2 button mice.

So the rumor that the Advertine took anything at all from recent MMOs and disregarded it in favor or creating an old-style "hardcore" MMO are true?  Epic!  I think we should create a DFO forums and move it right to the graveyard.