Darkfall Online Updates and YOU!!!!

[Nighthawk]

Originally Posted by EnV

unfortunately this game will not be the savior of MMOs as most people had hoped.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

The sad truth is... MMOs as we love them are dead.

[Cyle]

I was fortunate enough to have been one of the Beta invitees.

So at that, I will add my remarks with as much objectivity as I can muster.

OVERVIEW
First, the beta was ran very methodically, with many many features either not included or gradually introduced. From my prior beta experience (UO, PS, SB, WOW, WAR to name a few) the gradual introduction of features has always seemed the norm. Aventurine conducted their beta a bit more cautiously, however.

Many of the features newly introduced into Beta had problems. Many exploits were found and addressed, but in a certain order of precedence that left many bugs and fixes in the periphery. Overall, Beta was buggy and unstable, but no more or less than any other beta MMO I've participated in.

WORLD & ENVIRONMENT
To say I was impressed by the sheer size and creativity of the World of Agon would be a vast understatement. You can quite literally get lost, as I did on numerous occassions, and using the world map if your only outlet. The texture and feel of the world in respective settings makes the game enjoyable because you can actually use the terrain to your advantage in all combat situations. This I enjoyed very much.

The main cities weren't cookie-cutter, which I enjoyed. Each city had its own design but it wasn't too cumbersome, as vendors and banks were relatively easy to locate. Unfortunately a full city was not witnessed in Beta as only the banks and a very few essential vendors were even available.

The landscape was aesthetically pleasing as it was practically usefull. I would often find spots of rocks or dense trees to stage my attack on monster spawns. I would use the areas as a sort of "objective rally point" if you're military like me and understand my terminology. Due to my good graphics card, I was able to play on relatively high video settings and I must say the graphics are pretty good. READ: Not eye candy, but it gets the job done

[Cyle]

FEATURES
COMBAT
Fighting, the essential feature in Darkfall. Your first quest involves using your newbie weapon to show some goblins that they are inferior to even the noobiest toon. Don't worry, the game is NOT linear (more on that later), but most/all new characters in DFO will start by bashing in some goblin brains.
(Hey, who didn't have this moment in UO with Mongbats? I rest my case)
Combat and fighting in Darkfall is Difficult to master at first, but once you get down the idea of switchign weapons, skills, and expediently using the sheathe button (R) you can take down just about anything that your stats, skills, or items give you an opportunity to pose a threat. The best way to quickly master the combat system of Darkfall, in my honest opinion, is to go it solo until you achieve higher skills (50s and above) and start fighting mobs which require aid. Being that many mobs and spawns were not opened in beta, I never faced a mob that I couldn't take down alone but I heard of some epic fights in other lands from clan members.

Combat was simple to understand, hard to apply. Stamina is ESSENTIAL to combat. If you run out, you can't swing your sword nor sprint, or even cast a spell. You're a dead duck without stanima, so potions and stanima conservation is important. There is not "Combat Mode" such as we saw in UO, but in order you use a weapon you had to first equip it. To do so, you had to select the weapon via hotkey bar (1 through 0) and then unsheathe it (R). Then, you can either swing your sword, shoot your arrows, or if you equipped a staff, select a spell. You select a spell by using the hotkey bars again, then you can use said spell. To cast, swing yrou sword, or draw back your bow, you must use yoru left mouse button. If you hold down the mouse button you will hold your arrows or spell before release. Unfortunately for us old UOers, no precasting exists (as conventionally understood). To switch from your bow to your sword or staff, you need only hit the weapons hotkey, and it will auto switch for you as long as your are unsheathed in the weapon you are holding. This is the basics for combat, but I will break down them more individually, however I can only talk about the three types of combat I had personal experience with.

Melee - Greatswords
I chose using 2-handed swords (Greatswords) due to the range and damage-per-swing. Melee combat in Darkfall uses a FPS-type system of controls, with a very small universal cross hair representing your aim. In melee combat, you are moved to a semi-third person view (Think Gears of War) with the cross hairs visible. You aim, you swing. To avoid hitting a person next to you, you can hit the switch attack angle button (T) to stop swinging from side to side and begin swinging your weapon from overhead. The damage from the swings are the same, but the angle are simply different.

As soon as you unsheathe your melee weapon (R), you can begin hacking away. If you buy an ability from the trainer, you must select the ability (hotkey bar 1-0) after unsheathing your weapon and then use it with your mouse attack button. If the ability has a cool down, it will revert to the standard melee attack after the ability has been used. At which case, to use again, you will have to select it again.

Ranged - Archery & Spellcasting
Ranged combat is more than support in Darkfall. The FPS view of ranged combat may make you want to brush up your FPS skills. While in groups ranged combat is hard to utilize, its usefulness to the solo combatant is unparalleled. I would run an entire mob spawn by myself using nothing but my bow and my staff, only unsheathing my Greatsword for the occasional finishing blow on a close encounter.

Using Archery is very, very, very simple. You select your bow via hotkey bar, then unsheathe it (R). Then begin firing using the mouse attack button. If you hold the button down, you will remain drawn back, only releasing the arrow when you release the button. You can draw your bow while running, sprinting, or strafing.

Archery damage is considerably efficient. Arrows are cheap and usually found on mob corpses, and after some skill you can drop most mobs before they even reach you (if you can aim, that is). The arro has a natural arch to it, meaning that long distance shots are harder, but not impossible, you can also manage to shoot over a wall to hit people behind, although this is only useful if there is a considerable crowd in close proximity to hit (think ducks in a barrel).

personally, I'm playing Darkfall just for the archery aspect. I originally was excited about magic combat, but as are about to read, I became less enthused with it.

I was excited when I first picked up a staff and purchased my first spells. Heal Self (a auto self-targeting heal over time) and mana missle where the first spells I recieved. Neither of them cost reagents, so I would cast ferociously everywhere I went to raise my skill. My mana pool would often dissipate quickly. Mana Missle was relatively weak but it has an explosive-contact feature that made it easy to hit targets running away (it would explode on contact with anything causing damage, so I would aim for the ground at the targets feet). Heal self was useful in health regain but too weak to be any useful in active combat situations.

You select spells before you can use them, just like melee abilities. Different spells cost different reagents of course. In typical FPS-style action, you shoot your spell towards your cross hair. Certain spells (heals/buffs) are auto-self-targeting. There are buffs/debuffs that require a target as well. I never got enough into magic to move into Greater Magic, but I'm sure if you want more information you can find it on the forums.

CRAFTING & GATHERING
I did not go into crafting, and thus I cannot provide you with sufficient information. On the other hand, gathering is very useful in making money and finding reagents for spells.
Geathering works very much like it did in UO, you have the right tool, the right spot, and you use the tool (like a weapon) to gather. Pretty simple.

I won't bore you with the intricacies in gather because it's very easy, all I will say is that it is highly advised if you want to make money early. It is also good for stat gain, much like UO.

MOUNTS & TRANSPORTATION
While I admit I preferred the recall/moongate system of transportation in UO, Darkfall sets it up so that the world is out there to explore. You will find quickly, as I did, that walking/sprinting around Agon is a lost cause. A mount is truly needed to traverse the land by foot. Mounts offer protection, speed, and even have a charge attack which can be deadly. But unlike UO, you cannot shoot arrows or cast spells from atop a mount.

The bindstone/recall feature is very useful, and every time you log out you log back in at your bindpoint. (I do not know if this feature will stay or go). You can use the recall command to recall to your bindstone, but as far as the requirements of frequencies of this after release, I do not know.

USER INTERFACE
This is probably where I find most complaints in the beta forums. Other than the very poor sound, and questionably retro animations, the User Interface makes Darkfall unenjoyable at times, to say the least.

If you right-click, you bring up the user interface. You cannot control your character while in the UI mode and you have a moving cursor with a menu for windowsa to bring up. You can bring up everything from options to your inventory and paperdoll. This is where you organize your inventory and do administrative stuff.

To react with an NPC or item such as a Mob's Corpse (or gravestone, I HATE that DFO doesn't have corpses) you use the "Use" button while having no item/weapon unsheathed. By hitting (F) you open up a gravestone to loot or you react with a vendor and bring up their menu. This makes quick looting difficult in combat situations. Moving items uses the "Click-and-Drag" method that UO had. You cannot put items on the ground and to destroy them you drag them to the lower right corner of the screen where a burning trash can will happily consume said unwanted item.

Using the interface is the first aspect of Darkfall that makes it challenging, but once you get it down you can enjoy the game - trust me. With so many features not even in the game, I had a blast getting my archery up because I could understand the interface and use it to my advantage. The game has a TON of HELP from the version we were given in Beta, but if all the features that are to be included in the Release version actually work, I can see Darkfall exceeding even my own expectations.

But as far as the game was witnessed by me, I remain skeptical but I will play and enjoy it the best I can. Good luck Aventurine, I believe in what you are doing.

[Judas Deceit]

vBulletin Message

We’ve been waiting for the pre-orders to process through billing and it has been moving along but not fast enough. We’re almost done with this. Many of you will be getting notifications of this during this process. As soon as this is concluded we’ll process the accounts and open up the servers for the pre-orders. This will be done tonight; the game has been ready and waiting.

Unfortunately we’re running behind schedule as far as opening up the extra sales which we hoped to do tonight as well. We’ll do this tomorrow as early as possible, likely sometime around noon GMT time, around the time of our first scheduled maintenance. At this time we will also process the problematic accounts which had 0 euro problems, no charges, no balance, but received a successful pre-order message. We are also looking into the few cases that have pre-ordered but have not received a confirmation email and we will resolve all these issues. Most of these problems were due to a combination of lag, multiple sessions, and multiple charge attempts.

We want to thank you for your patience again, and we would like to let you know that we’re adding a couple more days to the free month of play making them 33 for everyone that pre-ordered and that will buy the game tomorrow. This is to make up for any bad experience with the account management, the lag and the delays you’ve had to face with purchasing.

The traffic volume we’ve been experiencing has been unbelievably high because of the initial rush and was compounded by users hammering the system with multiple sessions. You should also know that we have been doing everything necessary to resolve all these issues as soon as possible.

We’ll post again as soon as the server is open.

The forums will return shortly as well.

-The Darkfall Team

lol seriously how many mmo's do you have to watch go through this shit to get it right? Fail...


another thing that bothers me: Why the fuck is darkfall's main page so fucking like last 5 months ago? Old information, screenshots, beta signup, beta impressions seriously kiss my dick Aventurine.

[Epsilon]

Originally Posted by Judas Deceit

vBulletin Message


lol seriously how many mmo's do you have to watch go through this shit to get it right? Fail...


another thing that bothers me: Why the fuck is darkfall's main page so fucking like last 5 months ago? Old information, screenshots, beta signup, beta impressions seriously kiss my dick Aventurine.

I said this about 2-3 months ago and got attacked by fanbois. These DarkFall devs are amateur. I went on the site and read old old updates and it was supposed to be near release with no information about pre-orders and I had to rely on posts from forum whores to even find info about the game. I said these guys are horrible at marketing. Horrible! the game has relied soley on hype generated by fans who got excited over a FAQ and little more. The guys who followed this game for nearly a decade waiting and promoting the idea and Darkfall game I think will be jaded after release.

But I dunno, I am not a DF fan and haven't heard anything else about the game except all the forum posters. I researched the official site and it only confused the hell out of me.

[Hytek]

The DF official site has always been crap and with no up to date info whatsoever and broken links to old features and interviews. Instead they've gone down the road of primarily using the forums as source of communication - tho this has been neglected as well.

Warhammer in Europe did the complete opposite by only writing stuff in their news section and not having an official forum AT ALL. Fuck - what kind of broken shit is that? Freaking french hosts

All in all I'm not surprised at what the launch has developed in to. It's a complete and epic fail+drama; forums were taken down due to traffic, their mIRC channel was taken down by request from Stratics due to INSANE load (1100+ people in channel last night spamming HARDCORE), preorder site never came back up as promised, first patch was broken for people who tested beta and was taken down shorlty after it was released, a second patch came up and now they're alrdy on a 3rd(!!) patch as the servers have come live and I can only guess what playing must be like as I'm currently at work. I'll know in 5 hours

[Cyle]

Well I logged in!

That's about all I can say.

This is like a ruined Christmas.

[Exerias]

So I was out of town for the last two days, and this morning I was curious to see some of the first impressions of DF not running in "debug mode" *bullshit cough cough*

Anyway, I went to look at the forums and they were gone... This is there instead.

Originally Posted by DarkFail

We didn’t manage to completely eliminate the sync issue affecting players in the game earlier today. Our real-time monitor alerted us of this as soon as we brought up the server and players started entering the game. We need to take more time to address this. There is no ETA as of yet. We’ll keep you posted on any developments.

Wtfman is this? They dfailed so bad at launch that they had to pull the forums?

[Epsilon]

Originally Posted by Exerias

So I was out of town for the last two days, and this morning I was curious to see some of the first impressions of DF not running in "debug mode" *bullshit cough cough*

Anyway, I went to look at the forums and they were gone... This is there instead.



Wtfman is this? They dfailed so bad at launch that they had to pull the forums?

Damage Control.

I couldn't have imagined anything more, when 2 months ago when I saw their official site for the first time. I would even call bluff on the size of their reported staff and devs.

[Judas Deceit]

Default Darkfall information update May 27th
This is mostly an information update on topics that the community may find useful. There will be more of these types of updates on a regular basis. Since we haven’t had one in a while, this one is quite long.


Policies
There seems to be some confusion about what’s allowed and what’s not in game. When in doubt, the EULA and the Terms of Service are displayed every single time you start the game.

The general rule is that any third party program that interfaces with the game or gives a player an unfair advantage is prohibited in Darkfall. The only types of programs allowed are chat communication programs and screenshot-video capture programs.

Use of third party programs that allow players to cheat in the game will result in accounts to be permanently banned without warning and without appeal. We detect all use of such third party programs and we’ve been banning people for their use every day. After a recent mass ban we’re happy to report that we've been detecting and banning fewer and fewer players.

Starting today, players exploiting the geometry will receive temporary bans which for repeat offenders will escalate to permanent bans. This means that when we detect players inside the terrain, rocks, trees, buildings, walls, towers etc. we will be taking action against them. This policy will be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Also, starting today we will detect and take action against any use of loot scripts. The action will be temporary bans which will escalate to permanent ones. This policy will also be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Unattended macroing and unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited. We have taken great measures to limit macroing, to reward the players who are actually playing the game and allow them to catch up easily. We will continue working on making macroing and its effects irrelevant in Darkfall.

North American Server
Many of you saw the announcement our server hosting partner GNI made about the signing of our cooperation in North America.

We had already explained that we would be launching in North America sometime during Q2 2009 and this information is also in the FAQ:

We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server, there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet. Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions. This concerns only the characters without any of their possessions. More on this at a later date.

There are several considerations to be taken into account including the fact that European rights and North American rights to Darkfall belong to different organizations.

More Servers
Plans for more servers are also underway. Announcements will be made as needed.

Account Management and Sales
https://accounts.eu.darkfallonline.com is the URL to Darkfall account management and sales.

We’ve performed a complete overhaul of the account management system and things are running much smoother than they used to. We have increased our capacity repeatedly and we’ve been trying to keep the Darkfall shop open as much as possible since last week. This has been increasingly difficult to maintain as demand remains high. This despite the fact that there is still no “Buy Darkfall” button anywhere and our release has been limited to the Darkfall community.

Our number one concern is the quality of the experience for our existing users. We don’t want to create any problems by allowing too many new users in. This is why we have no boxes in the market, why we haven’t been promoting the game, why our new site isn’t up yet, why we don’t offer a free trial, why we don’t offer more payment options etc.

We understand that Darkfall’s soft launch is unorthodox, but we are working hard to change all that while maintaining the best possible experience for our existing users.

Darkfall pricing on the European Server is as follows, as described in the Darkfall FAQ :

What does it cost to play Darkfall?
First you need to purchase the Darkfall game client download which includes one month of game time. This costs 42 Euro. Residents of the European Union are also charged 19% VAT so the client download costs 49.98 Euro. After the initial month of game time is over you need to pay a monthly subscription to continue. The cost for the monthly subscription is 11.77 Euro or 14.00 Euro for EU residents (+19% VAT)

Darkfall Support
http://support.darkfallonline.com is where you can find the Darkfall help desk. This is a ticketing system and you need to have a Darkfall account to open a new ticket.

The Darkfall help desk has been handling hundreds of requests a day on the following topics:

General Issues - Technical Support – Bugs – Feedback – Gameplay Issues – Accounts and Billing.

The Darkfall Help Desk will also be populated with many more knowledgebase articles shortly. We are compiling these based on the user feedback which is just now starting to mature enough to create a proper Knowledgebase.

Darkfall Help is there to help you get started with the game and can be found both in-game and outside of the game at this address:
http://www.eu1.darkfallonline.com/help/
Darkfall Help is currently receiving a major overhaul which will be evident within a few days.

In-game help: Players can call on a GM in game by typing /gm_help to get help or /GM_report to report player behavior. There is 24/7 GM coverage in Darkfall and all requests will be addressed, whether or not you receive an acknowledgment of your request.

Darkfall developers are kept informed on all support issues.

Darkfall Updates and patches
We have been following what has been happening in the game very closely, and have been paying close attention to all feedback by our playerbase . We are involved in a constant effort to improve everything about the game. We have been fixing bugs as they come up, and our updates have all been very substantial in content and features. We have made huge improvements to the game already but the best is yet to come.

While the patch notes simply highlight some of the major changes to the game, there are always hundreds of changes, fixes, and tweaks in every patch which we don’t mention. We started posting patch notes on March 21st. Before that our patches contained mostly bug fixes and optimizations.

Here are the links to all our patch notes:

* March 21st
* March 27th
* April 2nd
* April 10th
* April 15th
* April 16th
* April 24th
* May 1st
* May 15th
* May 16th


Things to look forward to:
Our team is expanding and is fully committed to working on Darkfall. We are working on virtually every aspect of the game and our goal is to continuously improve the Darkfall experience.

Some of the things to look forward to in the near future include but are not limited to:

* Imminent massive optimizations to further improve gameplay, massive battles and sieges
* Improving the newbie experience, making the transition to Darkfall smoother and lowering the learning curve
* Continuously adding polish to the game
* Substantial improvements to the graphics
* Large content updates
* Massive feature updates
* Further improvements to the economy
* Massive improvements to the solo and the small group experience
* More PvP diversity and options
* Substantial improvements to PvE

Darkfall Media Coverage
Since our launch wasn’t heavily publicized, media coverage has been fairly light. Even so, there are Darkfall articles on many gaming websites, gaming blogs, and print media in many different languages.

Here is a sample of some English language Darkfall coverage links you may find useful:

IGN RPGVault Editorial, review, and first impressions

* Darkfall: My first Breath in Agon – First Impressions of Aventurine’s Labor of Love
* What the hell is Darkfall and Why Can’t I Play It?


Ten Ton Hammer’s First Impressions


MMORPG.com have a few correspondents and bloggers providing regular Darkfall coverage

Darkfall Features @ mmorpg.com

* Darkfall – The Conversion of a Self Proclaimed Carebear
* Darkfall Combat Guide, Part One
* Darkfall – Skills in DFO
* Darkfall Overview Part II, Looking at the Down Side
* Darkfall-Survival Tips

Paragus Rants on MMORPG.com. Paragus has been putting out some of the most useful and informative articles about the Darkfall experience since the Darkfall beta.

* Darkfall: Warhulks
* Post World War I Interviews
* 60 Days of Darkfall
* Warships
* Rafts and Sailing
* Alliance Leader Interviews
* Alliances and War
* City Building
* Mounts and Politics
* Guild Functionality
* Darkfall Beta Review


Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog has also been offering regular Darkfall coverage and commentary


Thank you for Reading,
The Darkfall Team
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