[MMORPG] Darkfall

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First wave of Invites - Thursday January 22 2009
Posted by Darkfall News on January 22, 2009 20:36


This is an update about what is happening today:

We have sent out the first wave of invites to clans and individual testers. We will send more waves of invites within a few hours. Invited players will be able to download the Darkfall installer.

We are applying the latest patch, and players will be able to start patching soon, and entering the game.

We are spacing out the invites in order to facilitate the download of the client and patching. We will continue sending out more invites every day until we reach our capacity.

Since this first phase has to do with stress testing the servers, and doing final testing on features, we are not lifting the NDA until this testing is concluded.

We apologize for the problems with the forums and the website today, we have been experiencing denial of service attacks, and we are working to resolve them.

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For all those of you who have concerns about Darkfall's world feeling small, here's something that should cheer you up. According to the latest beta leak, it takes about 35 minutes to run from one capital city to the next. Based on this information, some kind soul has made a comparison of the size of Kalimdor (WoW) to the main continent of Agon. Check it out:

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Op zondag 25 januari 2009 20:29 schreef Motorhoofd het volgende:
Is er al iets bekend over de systeemeisen? Je moet er zeker weer zo'n supercomputer voor hebben

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I was able to play the game for a few hours after I downloaded that patch in the screen shot.

Please refer to me as "WeEzy"

My impressions of the game are as follows:

When I first started the game, I decided to start off with the polearm starter weapon being that MMO's these days don't even have a polearm as an option. I noticed the huge advantage of the length of the polearm as soon as I started meleeing goblins. Definitley something a lot of MMO's today are missing. Leveling up melee skills isn't nearly as a long process as magic is. Magic skills level up at a slower pace than every other skill in the game. The new UI is much more professional and clean than the previous build.

I'm in the US (east coast) and I was getting 90ping, which is pretty fantastic. The game client is very stable. I was getting around 100 FPS. If you have a computer that you bought in the past 4-5 years, you should be able to get at least 50FPS. The character customization is pretty well done, however, I don't think that skin tones are in yet. The current build is much higher than the most recent patch notes you guys recieved, however the newer ones aren't avaible to us yet.

I noticed a huge increase in the amount of NPC spawns throught-out the world, so the worry of the world being empty could be put to rest. It's 3AM here, and I'm very tired. I'll post some more info on a daily basis as long as the servers are up.

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New leaker here, sorta. I originally released the high def map and other tester comments to faithkiller.

First thing: as it stands, it looks like I will be buying DF.

Now... the character creator. Its a very polished looking character Creator. Better looking then WoW's for sure, and it has more customization options then WoW. It has two slider options for hair color and skin color, but atm they seem to be disabled. Other options include different faces, nose rig, earrings, lip rings, facial hair and other miscellaneous forehead ornaments. Each has around 5 to 17 different options. But don't expect a SWG-level character creator.

One cool look with Alfars are these rows of piercings that look like short fat nails that either stick out above or below the lips. Having both gives a visual affect of a mouth wide open with jagged teeth sticking out. Looks cool. Dumbest thing I saw is facial hair for Mahirim, but some of the beards look alright.

The world itself is very organic. You feel like you are in a huge world, and not a enclosed play pen. Night and day cycles, weather cycles and realistic moving moons and sun gives the world a grandiose feeling. Sun sets looks ridiculously cool. Night time in some of the Ork starter cities is creepy. Especially with the background music that sounds like it came out of silent hill.
My main gripe with look of the world is that from far away buildings and characters tend to have this cell shaded look to them. Im srue you've noticed it in the screenshots.

The ork areas are mostly empty with players. We really need more ork players. But the Human and Alfar areas are full of people. I haven't tried the other areas yet.

As for Pve, Ive only fought goblins..lots and lots of goblins. They are annoying little fuckers, that won't sit there and let you wail on them. Im sure you've heard all this before. They run away, call for back up, kite you, ect...And yes, if they are wearing it, you can loot it. Goblings usually carry a crappy bow and axe, 3-4 arrows and 5 gold. But some come with shields, some cheapy armor, a better bow or some food. And you can see the weapons and armor on them.


PVP> With full loot, FFA pvp you really can't go wrong. But I have some issues with it. Keep in mind that Im using mostly the basic stuff you come with and all of it at low skill level. I might see a little over critical, but its really not that bad.
I have played Savage 1 and 2, Jedi Academy Age of Chivlary ... pretty much any FPS game with a melee system, and in comparison DF right now is very basic. Biggest problem with it is the current 3 minute sprint and inefficient block. You've probably read what they are saying about sprint, and I agree its currently a little bit broken. But they are looking into it, and there have been many great ideas brought up by some of the testers.
But as it stands, due to the spring lasting so long, people sprint in melee constantly, so it turns into a chaotic random circling jousting match. What I have tried to do is to let them use up all their stamina running around everywhere, and then just finish them up. Melee fights are won and lost in stamina management. But what people do is run right into you full speed and swing then run another direction ( like jousting). This gives them the initiative and ping/lag advantage, which forces you to do the same. I also tried to use block/parry when they are charging with their jousting tactics, but block uses up so much stamina that i end up losing out in the stamina management department. If they just simply switched sprint and block's stamina consumption, it would go along way to improve melee fights, imo.

Archery and spells fell better. Though with the constant sprint, players can get hard to hit sometimes. With archery you can actually get quite good at hitting targets at range...but it takes practice.
A lot of people bitch about spells being way too hard to land a hit. But most players don't know how some of the spells properly. Anyone who has played tribes will know exactly what im about to describe. A Player and I got together and started ganking players in the goblin area....using the basic mana missiles at range, and then finishing them up once they closed in...or they would simply run away (again --->3 min sprint). It has significant splash. You don't try to hit the players but the ground around the players. You try to anticipate where the player is moving and hit the ground there. Again, If you have played tribes you'll be right at home.

I would write more, but my class starts in 10 minutes. I hope this was informative.