Dark and Light - Settlers of Ganareth Nov. 2005

[Xanthippe]

http://www.darkandlight.net/sog/indexEN.html

Interesting.  The Settlers of Ganareth is a beta prequel.

[Signe]

The last time I checked, right after that email was sent out, everyone was confused.  No one seemed sure if they would have to pre-order and pay to get in the beta and the staff was doing nothing to clear up the confusion.  They seem a bit cagey about it all.  I had Mourning deja vu all over the place. 

[SuperPopTart]

On their forums, if you can manage to get the webmaster to send you your old user name and password, I've been hearing you do NOT have to purchase the game to play in the beta.

But either way I'm eager to see this game. Looks somewhat decent.


If you have a username and password:

http://www.darkandlight.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24699


And make sure you update your allignment in your profile, not your beta profile but your forum profile because that is how they are supposedly choosing people to play.

[Signe]

Oh good... I haven't been back since that day but it's nice they've cleared up the confusion.  I still think it's a French thing. 

[Akkori]

Getting email-verified is still borked. But all i all the game seems to be progressing nicely.

[schild]

Signe and I talked about this once back in 2003 I think.

[Signe]

Yes, I've known Schild since he was a wee hairless sprog.

[schild]

Yes, I've known Schild since he was a wee hairless sprog.

Awwww, don't make me go all wet behind the ears.

[Akkori]

Its shaping up for DnL to replace SWG. If their crafting is as good as they are hinting at, it will be a no-brainer. With a map nearly the size of S. Carolina, there will be LOTS of room to explore. The crafitng seems to be a bit of WoW (looting some resources and components), ATitD (geographical and astrological effects on crafting) and some new things (to me) concerning making top-end items.

All in all, I am excited by what I have seen so far. Too back crafting isn't going to be in SoG. But I will gladly wait for it if its all its suppossed to be.

[schild]

If the map were as big as Rhode Island, there might be a chance enough content would exist to fill it. Seriously, big sucks.

[Soln]

If the map were as big as Rhode Island, there might be a chance enough content would exist to fill it. Seriously, big sucks.

"cozy worlds" is the catch phrase du jour.

Big sucks only if big==empty.  Otherwise, exploration can be fun, so long as the results are meaningful.  Suppose I just stated the obvious, again. Ding.

I got the DnL offer, but there is no crafting in the preview.  Otherwise I'm looking forward to it, if hype matches deployed design.

[Signe]

Although I've been interested in DnL for ages, it makes me nervous that they are charging $60 for a pre-order.  I remember when they said, (it might still be in their FAQ or on their board someplace) that they were planning a free digital download, no box, and a montly fee.  I can only assume they have run out of money and are looking to us suckers to fund what ever content is needed to turn this "prelude" into a full-fledged MMO by April.

[HaemishM]

I worry that this game will have snowboarding lizards.

[SuperPopTart]

My cheaply arse is not paying 60$ for a pre-order anything anymore. I don't care what it gets you: i.e. slave, chocolate, mounts, whatever.

I just don't know if I'll like the game that much though I actually did contemplate it. I would however pay $60. for a tube of lipstick. Because that's important. Also..right now..there are a ton of other games out there I'd rather pay for than this. I may have even at one time paid for a beta account from Vanguard. But not anymore.

GL to DnL and I hope it is what people seem to adore claiming it is.

[Signe]

I'll give the prelude thingy a go... that's free.  I might have even paid for the game when it's released if the price is reasonable.  Since it was intended to be a free digital download w/monthly fee, I can only assume something is wrong.  Maybe they're expecting to be sued by the guy who made the terrain engine they stole or sommat... err... I'm not quite sure of my facts here as I don't rightly remember the whole story.  Anyway, games like Horizons and Mourning probably taught a lot of people a lesson.  I pre-ordered Hz, thinking they would fix the game and add the promised features and was pretty pissed off when none of it happened.  (shuddup, schild! I know you warned me! :grumble:)  As for Mourning... wtf? 

They raped me of my gaming innocence... thank god, I still have my virginity.

[Hoax]

So when does the actually free part happen?

[Signe]

December 8th 2005, 18h00 GMT.

[Draive]

Hopefully, anyone seriously considering pre-ordering this game read (and actually paid attention to) one of the many, many NDA breaches. Hell, even the (at the time) Stratics DnL admin finally gave up and quit over the state of the game.

[Signe]

I read on some site on one of the intarwebs that there is only 3 working buttons in DnL.  Attack, Magic Attack and Heal.  I have no idea if it's true, I'm not in the beta.  Still... some of the pictures are purdy and they have shiny, shiny weather.

[sarius]

Hopefully, anyone seriously considering pre-ordering this game read (and actually paid attention to) one of the many, many NDA breaches. Hell, even the (at the time) Stratics DnL admin finally gave up and quit over the state of the game.

Care to point out any (breaches), please?

[Nija]

Care to point out any (breaches), please?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=search

[Akkori]

I liked how they are already palnnign solutions tot he credit farming assholes. They are settig up a second shard just for the Asia, and filtering IP's. This way the Eastern farmers can ruin their own shard and leave us the hell alone.

[Nija]

Yeah that'll help tons, considering proxies are hard to setup and free ones are hard to find!

[Righ]

Yeah that'll help tons, considering proxies are hard to setup and free ones are hard to find!

Presactly, and no commercial gold farmers in a country like China where it's de rigeur to use proxies for 90% of your Internet abuse would have any experience of setting up or finding them at all. Nooo. Hell, if I were considering the game, I might go to the 'Asian' shard, since although there may be a lot of upstanding Asian gamers there, most of them won't be commercial gold farmers.

In case nobody had worked it out, its the wealthy western gamers that buy gold that create the market. Limit by IP address, and you'll probably create a very nice Asian shard.

[Signe]

Everyone in China who is exposed to a computer uses proxies and spoof IPs to get where they want to go without the government finding out.  Even wee Chinese babies in diapers know more about TCP/IP than most western network professionals.  They are clever.  And possiibly stackable.  I keep some in the cupboard.

[Signe]

Fresh news, everyone :

Massive network attacks on SoG

During the last few days, we faced violent network attacks on our servers, thus greatly decreasing the game stability. People with bad intentions found how to exploit some properties of the network protocol, and managed to shut the front servers down (the only cluster servers that are directly connected to the Internet) almost instantly when the cluster is restarted.

These malevolent and pointless actions prevent all players from accessing the free service at their disposal.

These attacks are being analyzed, and we are regularly testing and implementing a series of fixes. We are investigating everything from the network protocol to the game engine. Our goal is to offer you a stable cluster, allowing reasonable sessions of gameplay time. The DnL system teams, our developers and the Microforte team wish to solve this problem as soon as possible.

But these fixes require a major part of our team, and it is slowing down the game tuning process. In order to make these tests a priority, prevent more attacks, and to bring SoG back online as soon as possible, we have decided to shut the servers down until Thursday, December 29th.

We apologise for this temporary shutdown, but this decision will help us to defend better against future hackers who prevent our members from enjoying SoG.

NPCube.