Anti-Aliased: The Daze of Darkfall
I'm still not exactly sure what I've done. I remember pressing a few buttons on the Darkfall website, a really long download, and then a very large splash screen appearing on my desktop with the Darkfall logo emblazoned across it.
I think I downloaded and installed Darkfall. The North American version, in fact. I thought it was just going to be a one night stand between the two of us, but I guess I was wrong. Looks like I'm back in with the game and I'm going in-depth. This time around though, I'm going to do some things differently. There's going to be no reviewing and less critiquing. It's just going to be a straight up re-telling of my experience in the "PvP experience of a lifetime" with a little snark added in, of course. You guys be the judges of Darkfall this time.
This week's events include jumping in with a brand new clan, getting the newbie experience all over again, and the capturing of a city. Exciting stuff, right? Come with me, I'll tell ya all about it.
So here we are, North American server one, the land of the free, home of the... jerks...
My purple-haired, eye patch sporting human female rides again! Sephy took a brand new breath of Agon's air and soon found herself back at what everyone in Agon does best, killing goblins! It was only 3 hours after the server launched the other day, so yeah, everyone was in the newbie towns. Well, more precisely, everyone was in the goblin spawn camps.
So, like everyone else in the server, I sat in the goblin camp and waited for the goblins to spawn. Before long, it was just me and one other guy waiting for goblins. Goblins started to crop up all around their little mudhovel of a village when all of a sudden I got a mana missile in the back. I look behind me and find the other guy taking potshots at the goblin I'm killing, so I temporarily forgive him. Maybe he just has bad aim.
The second mana missile wacked me directly in the side of the head when I wasn't moving. No one's that bad of a shot. Two minutes and a PvP battle later, I find myself laying on the ground coughing up blood while the jerk sits next to me, waiting for me to die.
"Good fight," I tell him. I had dropped him down to a sliver of his health with only my leafblade and no armor. He had a "real weapon" and a full suit of padded leather. I felt pretty good after that.
"dumb cu-*derogatory name for women inserted in here*," he so elegantly responded. Well, at least the Darkfall community hasn't lost their wonderful charm and witty tact! Also, if anyone sees a human named Lord Squid, make sure to give him a good punting and remind him of me before he dies.
On the bright side
Shortly thereafter I found myself in an actual upstanding guild! Well, clan, as Darkfall likes to call them. I soon was fighting in a remote goblin camp alongside my guild mates, and, I have to admit, I was finally having fun with the game. Grinding goblins is much better with others around, hands down.
Through all of this, I stumbled across some of the game's new enhancements and I was pleasantly surprised. The map can now be zoomed in and out so you can actually read things on it, the questing interface provided by NPCs is greatly improved, and skills seem to level up much faster than before.
On the down side, the darn quest interface in the journal button is still a web browser booted inside of the game. Every time you want to look in your quests, you have to slowly load the journal, then click on a link to open the quest log, then click on the faction you have quests for, then slowly.... You get the point. It's not a snappy interface and it's still a bad design decision.
Good and bad design decisions aside, my group leader rounded us together after killing a bunch of goblins and getting lots of stuff. It was time to go meet up with the guild and claim ourselves a city.
