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One Shots: You should drop better stuff
For those who were looking for a much more hardcore experience including pretty tough mobs and free-roaming PvP, Darkfall has quickly become a favorite. While the players will tell you straight off that the game isn't for everyone - and they're quite glad of that - we are lucky in that they've been so kind as to send in some screenshots from this relatively new title for us to enjoy. Today's One Shots sent in to us by Garett shows off a recent battle, which he expounds on: Here's a pic from a night of fighting Black Knights deep in the heart of a dungeon in Darkfall. These things hit pretty hard, but a skilled group of players can take them down pretty quickly if they know what they're doing. Its just too bad they never have leather armour on.Screenshots from all games from small to large, and MMOs of all genres are welcome! Just email those in to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game it's from, and a quick note about what we're seeing. We'll post it here and give you the credit for sending it in.%Gallery-9798%
Darkfall's March 21 update addresses lag, macroing and game availability
Tasos, Darkfall's community guy, posted an update on the official boards on Saturday addressing a litany of concerns that have been plaguing the user base since the game's launch.While he did include patch notes in the update, the majority of his message dealt with issues beyond the game's live design. Tasos claims server queuing has been resolved, as have lag and random crash issues that have been popping up since release. He also says Aventurine, Darkfall's developer, will credit players with 34 days of free play time to compensate for the problems they've been experiencing. Since Aventurine only made the game available to a limited number of subscribers, North American fans of the game haven't yet been able to actually buy the game. The company is hoping to make the game available for sale again "sometime this coming week; again it will have to be a limited amount of copies to allow a smooth integration of new players into the game." But no news on which regions will have access to Darkfall yet. In addition to availability issues, Tasos specifically mentioned unattended macroing as a problem Aventurine wants to address. The practice of using third-party programs to improve a character while the player doesn't monitor the character's progress is as old as MMOGs; it was particularly popular in another skill-based game, Ultima Online. The company as yet doesn't have a hard-coded solution to deal with macroers, but Tasos included this note in the update: "we will appeal to players not actually playing the game to log off rather than leaving their character in-game. This will allow more people to be able to enjoy Darkfall instead of unmanned characters taking up server space. If you're skilling up by not playing the game as it was intended, you will be kicked and repeated offenses will result in a ban."
Darkfall delivers on player expectations?
When you go into a movie, sporting event, or new MMORPG with very high expectations, you're likely to be disappointed. In the case of pre-release Darkfall Online, player expectations were all over the map from dismissive naysayers, to undecided fence-sitters, to drooling fanboys. Actually, it's like that for most MMOs, isn't it?Based on information he read on forums, fansites, and gleaned from videos, Keen established his own set of expectations for the various features advertised for Darkfall (he wasn't in beta). Now that he's been playing a while, he decided to rate his initial expectations versus his early impressions. The list includes items like the skill, magic, and crafting systems, graphics, PvP gameplay, and many more.Keen rates 12 parts of Darkfall in total on a highly scientific scale of Fantastic to Total Crap and gives his overall impressions so far. For instance, he expected the combat to be Decent but finds it to be Great, the magic system to be Good but finds it to be Mediocre, and server stability + communication from Adventurine to be Bad but finds it to be Total Crap. It's an interesting way to rate a new MMO, so check out his blog for the full details.
One Shots: One reader's love of Darkfall
Normally we get cursory notes to tell us about the different screenshots that are sent in to us for inclusion on One Shots. A line here, once in a while a paragraph there. Today, however, we have a bit of a lengthy love note from one of our readers who is really, really enjoying playing Darkfall. Today's One Shots features Vodnik Thunderhawk, posing on his mount, and telling us why he's enjoying the game so much. As it's fairly long, I'm only including the first paragraph before the break. Those curious will want to pop past the jump and check out the rest of his note. Of course, if you'd like to wax poetic about your favorite MMO, feel free to send in your screenshots and notes to oneshots AT massively DOT com too! For now, on with Vodnik's tale.... I was heading south from my guild city towards the Alfar starting area to sell a batch of Steedgrass (the herb you craft mounts from) that I had collected, when I suddenly came across what looked like a beautiful little NPC village. I couldn't stop myself from walking into the village to explore and see what it had to offer. There are a lot of treasure chests hidden across the world, so sometimes exploring the world can actually even be profitable.%Gallery-9798%
Darkfall impressions on mounts and guild politics
Paragus is back with another mini Darkfall review over at MMORPG.com. This time he's talking about mounts and politics.Mounts in Darkfall are quite a bit different than you'll find in other MMORPGs. The biggest difference is that you don't purchase them from vendors; they come from crafters who learn the "taming" skill. Mounts aren't just vehicles to get you from point A to B either; they can swim and attack (kicking and biting). They can also be stolen by other players, killed, and healed. The controls for mounts are excellent and you can actually attack other players with a one-handed weapon from the saddle.Darkfall's unrestrictive PvP also supports an interesting political system. Guilds can be neutral, allied, or at war with each other. You can even be at war with a guild of your own race. Guards won't intervene when you're fighting a guild you're at war with in a city either. This obviously leads to some complex relationships when you become allied with other guilds because you must factor all the guilds they're at war with.Anyone interested in Darkfall should also take a look at Keen's blog because he has been keeping a very detailed journal of his experiences.
One Shots: The darkness of Darkfall
While getting a hold of this game has really proved to be a pain in the butt, quite a number of people who have managed to get through have been pretty happy with the world they've found there. Today's Darkfall One Shots is the first reader-submitted screen we've gotten from this world, but we're looking forward to more as more people are able to get in and check it out. This one comes to us from Mark M, who writes: I just got into Darkfall today, and I dare say Aventurine has one of the most beautiful game worlds I have ever seen. The screenshot depicts my Mirdain elf homeland. I took this just before he set out into the harsh, blood thirsty world of Agon. The screenshot does not do the beauty of this game justice. This game world is definitely a labor of love!If you're one of the handful of people who have managed to get into Darkfall and really dig the game, we'd love to see some screenshots and hear about your experiences. Just email them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game, and a brief description of what we're seeing. We'll post them here and you'll get your chance to tell everyone just why you think the game is awesome. %Gallery-9798%
Will 2009 be the best year ever for MMOs?
Tipa is wondering if the upcoming 2009 MMO titles will make this year the best yet for MMOs. EVE Online will be receiving its highly anticipated Apocrypha expansion pleasing the "impact PvP" crowd. Free Realms will soon launch to the delight of families around the world, providing another option in the "kid friendly" category. Champions Online will be zipping up its latex suit to compete in the superhero sub-genre. Cryptic has another potential hit on their hands with Star Trek Online, which may ride the hype wave generated by the blockbuster film coming out this summer.And those are just the big titles we're pretty certain are releasing in 2009. There could be even more (Darkfall Online is already out and doing fairly well)! Many people thought 2008 would be the best year for MMOs but the new titles fell somewhat short of expectations. Pirates of the Burning Sea never really left port and while Warhammer Online and Age of Conan sold nearly 1M copies each, their subscription retention rate was quite dismal. It seems expansions were the biggest winners last year with Wrath of the Lich King for WoW and the Mines of Moria for LotRO.
A copy of Darkfall: More evasive than a cheetah on speed
Darkfall may have launched, but that doesn't mean you're going to be able to get your hands on it. The team at Aventurine is still holding a tight grip over the game's population and the sale of the game through the online store.Each day, the store is opening at an unannounced time to offer a limited number of copies of Darkfall to the players. Once their goal for the day is met, the store shuts down immediately and the prospective buyers with empty hands have to go home pouting until the next day. This has lead to some players becoming demoralized while others use their expertise to suggest solutions to Aventurine. It is an odd time on the forums indeed.Now, we here at Massively understand that finding the Darkfall shop is like finding a unicorn. If you're having trouble finding where the button to go to the shop is even located, it's on the account page after you sign in. After that, however, you're on your own. Good luck though!
Darkfall lays out a strict anti-macroing policy
There are no levels in Darkfall Online. Instead, they use a skill-based progression system. For example: the more you cast magic missile, the better your magic missiles become. Once your magic missile becomes good enough, you will be able to learn a more powerful spell. Obviously a system like this can be easily exploited by macro or bot programs, so it isn't surprising that Adventurine is taking a strict stance against any such exploitation. Of course, there are also the reports of speedhacking where players can run as fast or faster than sprint without losing stamina.Tasos does not define the term "macro" in the policy, so one must assume its definition is broad. A macro could be assigning several actions to a single hotkey (e.g., a combination of attacks in a particular sequence). A macro could also be a reactionary action (e.g., whenever you are cursed, auto-cast your "remove curse" spell). Anyone caught macroing or spamming spells in the safety of a city or tower area will be warned once, kicked, and potentially banned for repeat attempts. It doesn't seem like they'll punish macro-users in the riskier open-world unless the macros are unattended (generally called bots). Finally, anyone caught using third-party cheating, hacking, modding, or botting programs will be perma-banned no matter where they are.[Via MMORPG.com]
Darkfall prepares for launch, renewed sales of games
Today's the big day, Darkfall fans! The 25th of February has arrived and Darkfall should be fully online sometime this afternoon/evening as Aventurine flips the switch on their servers!This launch hasn't passed without problems though. First came the online pre-order page becoming swamped with traffic, leading to multiple credit card charges, people who never received their activation codes, and people who got codes but weren't even charged for the game. If you have had a problem with your pre-order, and wish to check the status of your account, you can always do so on the account management page. Be warned -- account management is under extreme stress from all the traffic and has been mostly down.Today, the heavily burdened website's forums have been up and down, with timeouts occurring as players pile in to see what the news is on the servers. Currently, as of the writing of this post, the servers are still down and unresponsive.Sales of Darkfall will also resume today, as Aventurine plans to start selling the game early in the evening, around the time the servers go live. No exact time has been given yet, but we'll keep our eye on the forums for any specifics given by the development team.
Beware third party downloads for Darkfall
Brannoc, the community manager for Darkfall, has released an announcement today regarding downloading the Darkfall client from any group other than Aventurine. In a nutshell, he says don't do it. Aventurine cannot guarantee the quality of those downloads or what may be hidden inside of them. If you wish to download the Darkfall client, do so from Aventurine's official torrent.Brannoc's official announcement states, "Many people have begun to host the client we made available by torrent on other websites for direct download. Aventurine cannot guarantee the efficacy of these clients and make no guarantees as to their security or freedom of malware. For that reason we recommend only utilizing official download sources for the Darkfall client. Aventurine also does not support any 3rd party applications or programs for use with the Darkfall client. Anytime you utilize non-official resources you run a security risk for your system and for that reason we recommend you keep an up to date antivirus program and firewall software up and running. "
Anti-Aliased special edition: Hands-on with Darkfall pt. 2
The goblins now haunt me in my sleep This was the point in my adventure when I was really fed up with goblins. Yet, apparently I still had to kill more goblins because even after those quests, I was sent to run 15 minutes away from the city with bad directions to this man who was surrounded by zombies and still wanted me to kill more goblins. What about the zombies? Is there no love for killing zombies? This was the point where I internally screamed and decided to go do whatever I wanted to do. That's what this game is about, right? This turned into a very short list which included exploring dangerous territory and/or killing whatever I found in said dangerous territory with my really weak sword. So I decided to do the smart thing and sit in town, casting magic missile over and over again just to level up my magic abilities without putting myself in danger. Going outside was just too much of a risk because I had no incentive to leave my main city and I could easily level my magic inside the city walls. The final verdictSo what's the word on Darkfall? Simply put, savior of MMOs this game is not. While combat is pretty nifty and lag free, the monster AI is pretty awesome, and the exploration factor is phenominal, this game has huge incentive problems. I wouldn't be so hard on the game if it wasn't in development for seven years. All resource nodes give the same stuff, so starting cities have the same nodes as hidden cities, and staying in a starter city to do your crafting is probably smarter. Quest givers have no indication that they give quests until you talk to them, there's only one quest line for each starting city (see "Killing Goblins" above, as it's the same quest chain for every race), and finding new weapons and armor is a giant pain when you have to run 6-10 minutes to find anything. Plus, if you die, you lose everything and get sent back to the last stone you bound to. Now you get to have the "joy" of running 6-10 minutes again, naked, and with a really bad sword if you were unfortunate enough not to stock things up in your bank. "I wouldn't be so hard on the game if it wasn't in development for seven years." Even owning a city as a guild gives little more than a new spawn point and the ability to kill people in your own city without penalty. Oh, and you can be sieged now, if you count that as a benefit. For every step forward it takes in regards to interesting sandbox play, it takes four steps backwards and impales itself, especially when you compare the game to EVE Online. You can do much of the same stuff in EVE that you can in Darkfall. My recommendation is that if you're a fan of a really punishing experience and are really into PvP combat, try it. The combat is well done, the monsters are fun, and the exploration is top notch. If you like quests and directed gameplay, this is not the game for you. This game isn't completely up the creek, however. As I said before, the exploration is wonderful and the vistas are great. If the game could approach sandbox gameplay like the Elder Scrolls series of games, players would be able to fall over interesting quest opportunities that get them to explore the game. That is exactly the approach this game should take to get the player population out into the wilderness and away from the safety of the cities. It's not a horrible game, it's just, at this moment in time, not worth seven years of development and all of the hype surrounding it. A few patches, a little grease to the wheels, and you might be looking at a very interesting sandbox game.If you have any questions about Darkfall and its gameplay, feel free to put them down in the comments and I'll try to get back to you with answers as soon as possible. I tried to cover as much as possible here in the article, but it's not always so easy to pack everything in. Or, feel free to e-mail me directly if you don't wish to comment. My e-mail can be found in the little blurb below. << Back to part 1 Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who is finally done with killing goblins. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane friends. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com.
Anti-Aliased special edition: Hands-on with Darkfall
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Massively_com_gets_to_preview_the_PvP_action_MMO_Darkfall'; Aventurine was really kind enough to let us here at Massively have some play time on their game, Darkfall, and really get our hands dirty with it. Of course, I jumped to be first in line to get my account activated for beta and rush right into the world with my sword drawn.So far, I've played for the entire weekend, and all the time I can spare during the week except when I'm writing here for Massively, of course. I've made three characters to play around with the different races, been trying out all the different weapons and spells, did some investigations into guilds and crafting, and toured the countryside. So, as a warning, these are preliminary investigations of all of the things I could do at the beginning of the game, sans guild. Just like a true newbie to the world of Darkfall.So what's the final word? Well I guess you're just going to have to click the link below and find out.
The Daily Grind: Are you going to purchase Darkfall?
The most highly anticipated game right now is Darkfall Online, the infamous PvP loot fest that's been in development for over seven years. Love it or hate it, it's making news pages sizzle with all of the hype surrounding it, as well as the question of if the game can live up to all of said hype.But today, we want to know if you're going to be grabbing the game or not. The world of Agon is going to need warm bodies in it to make the gameplay sell, just like EVE Online needs pilots in space to make everything work properly. Are you pre-ordering it maybe? Or are you adopting a " wait and see" attitude when it comes to putting money down on a brand new game. Or, are you just going to hope that they have a copy for you when the game comes out?Put your thoughts into the comment box below and the post button will chew up your words and spit them out onto our page for all of the world to view. Afterwards, we urge you to celebrate by chopping off a few ork heads and invading elven territory.
Darkfall's NDA has been lifted, system requirements given
Earlier this afternoon, the Non Disclosure Agreement for Darkfall Online has been lifted, in preparation for next's week's highly-anticipated launch. With this NDA lift comes complete information on the game's pricing, availability and system requirements.According to the announcement by Tasos, the European launch is still on track to happen next Wednesday, February 25th. North Americans are welcome to participate in the European launch, with North American servers coming soon. They say the option will come to migrate servers later. Continue reading below the cut for the complete announcement, and look for our own post-NDA coverage of Darkfall's beta coming soon from Massively.
Anti-Aliased: The Darkfall prophecies
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Anti_Aliased_The_Darkfall_prophecies'; Darkfall. Everyone talks about it. Our mailboxes get flooded with requests about it. Comments regarding the game are both frothingly energetic and intensely angry. Just writing a piece about it can get a writer wacked.So, let me paint a giant target on my back, cover myself in delicious meat, and walk right into the lion's den of MMOs. This column is dedicated to Darkfall's gameplay mechanics; presenting an analysis of what we know so far from released beta tester announcements and gameplay footage. This is, by no means, a comprehensive analysis of everything Darkfall has to offer. This is just one man's opinion column at work, looking at the ups and downs of what Darkfall might bring to the table.I'm doing all of this to answer one eerily simple yet dastardly complex question: Can Darkfall live up to the hype around it?
Darkfall's release date announced (for real this time)
After an initial release date announced last month as January 22nd, the Darkfall Online team has clarified their plans a bit and re-assigned a new launch date of February 25th, 2009. Of course the date of January 22nd won't be completely trashed, as they plan to begin a trial on that date, allowing thousands of people to stress test the servers and test the game's features before launch.A pre-order will be made available in mid February which will give those players priority for early access to the game, including the possibility of a staged launch, due to the overwhelming interest in the game so far. They plan to release more information on this pre-order, North American player access and system specs very soon. Stay tuned![Thanks Jacob!]
Analyzing Darkfall's pre-launch trends
In anticipation of Darkfall's upcoming release, one of their popular European fansites has conducted a poll of over 1600 people asking their plans and views for when the game goes live. The poll's results might not really surprise you (such as the fact that 98% of those polled are male), but many of the stats could help determine how you yourself may enter the game on launch.For instance, it seems most players are looking forward to rolling an Alfar character, which is the only race that is not officially aligned with another. It is said to be the most "hardcore" path in the game, and the majority of players are up to that challenge. Check out the rest of these stats, including some surprising numbers on how players view killing one of their own in the game.
What features are you anticipating most in Darkfall Online?
With a game like the upcoming Darkfall Online, the opinions can become quite polarized. It is already labeled "The Fantasy EVE", in regards to its hardcore nature, and I think most people understand that it will be a niche game without wide appeal. But is that such a bad thing?Over that Keen and Graev's blog, they've compiled a detailed list of the Darkfall features that they're looking forward to the most. This includes everything from the hardcore PvP to the degradable loot to the fact that the game has no levels. Don't forget about the crafting system! Personally, while I'll miss leveling a tiny bit, every aspect of this game excites me to no end. I'm looking forward to setting up shop as an expert crafter, and even throwing out a little security money to the local roughneck guild that will protect my shop from ruffians. So check out their list and let us know your own in the comments below.
Will Darkfall be important to the genre?
"Darkfall deserves your best wishes, even if you don't plan on buying it."This seems to be the sentiment of most Darkfall enthusiasts, as the reality of the game's announced launch date has set in. It's no secret that the wild success of World of Warcraft has changed how studios develop games for the last 3-4 years, but is it about time that we went back to how MMOs were originally created? Darkfall boasts a sandbox-type freedom and the return of the once-hated ganking and player killing found in earlier MMOs. It boasts innovation (then again, who doesn't) and a death penalty that makes you actually fearful of dying. These factors, and many more, are what drive the game's loyal fanbase for over seven years.So to answer the question posed in the title, yes Darkfall will be important to the genre. If this niche game succeeds, it will show that innovation is not dead and we're collectively ready for a change. If it fails, it means that we're not really as ready for something different as we all claim.[Via WorldIV]
