Darkfall

[Torga_DW]

Hi all, i did a search and didn't see any direct topics on it, so i thought i'd just add this here.

I play this little known mmorpg called darkfall. To briefly sum it up, its basically like the elder scrolls (about morrowind in graphics), only with other players involved. It can be a bit hit and miss at time, but when its good i really enjoy it.

Players form clans, claim ownership of cities, lay siege to enemy player cities. You can build ships, and have naval battles. There is pve, although they never really spent the resources needed to implement what they originally promised on that front, so the big draw is really pvp here.

There are developer issues, i'm not their biggest fan. They're apparently planning darkfall 2.0 at the moment, with some controversy over whether or not there'll be a character wipe to go with it. But thankfully they're very slow to do anything at the best of times, so that won't be an issue for a while.

In case anyone is interested in giving it a go, they have a 14 day free trial on their website. I'm not sure if these are unlimited, or have a fixed number of trials you can do per computer/isp/i don't know.

Links to their us website: http://www.us.darkfallonline.com/default.php

Oh yes, theres two servers: 1 european, 1 american. I play the american one, it seems to be the higher population and newer one (all things relative).

Finally, to give you an idea of what can happen at its best, heres a link to a player made video of one of their sieges: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCNZ1Mh7djQ

In my opinion, one of the best mmorpgs out there at the moment.

[Urgat]

I was interested in it, but I'm more of a PVE player, so I ignored it in the end.

[Torga_DW]

Its not bad for pve, its just not as good as it could be (or was promised), but thats relative to the game itself. I'm primarily a pve and pvn (player versus resource node) person, but i like that the pvp is done well and is available in a natural format.

For example, a starting player fighting goblin scouts plays out way differently to most other games. You don't just go up to one, hit tab to target, autoattack it twice and victory! You move into their location, a group will spawn (usually 4 for most spawns), and they'll all start moving around. As a newb, you'll be trying to 1v1 a goblin while watching out for his buddies. The goblins will do things like try to shoot you with their bows, charge in for melee, run away if they're getting low (and usually head to another goblin for help), evade ranged attacks. You have to keep them in your crosshairs and at the appropriate range while fighting them. Compared to most other games, pve combat is intense and dynamic. Its basically like playing a fantasy FPS, only you've got the standard rpg elements involved (like skills and stats). Then when you finally kill the mob, you loot and skin it.

The let-down for me is while its good, its not what they promised, or built to a level comparative to the pvp. They promised they were going to implement persistant spawns (so no having to go to a spawn location to make the mobs appear), mobs would level up (either on killing a player, or maybe over time idk), and when the spawn reached critical level they would head to a player city and attack it. Truly epic stuff if they had ever bothered to fulfil their promise.

Then there are some interesting pve encounters (although they tend to have long timers or special requirements). You can trade a pve random drop item (mysterious essence) to a GM, and schedule him to spawn and control a devil in one of your player cities. Which takes a group of players to kill, and hits pretty hard. Theres demons on the world map, and dragons (which iirc are usually always flying, even in combat), and at sea you can fight the krakens. They can only be damaged by ships cannons, and are fairly big (and tentacled).

While i'm talking the features, all equipment has a durability level when created, and can't be repaired. You can get skills to prolong the life of the equipment, and/or increase its base durability, but sooner or later everything needs to be replaced. This makes crafting actually valuable, as you can't just make a set of gear and wear it for the rest of the game. I think a full suit of armour / clothing is like about 9 or 10 pieces (like boots, legs, arms, shoulder pads, shin guards, etc etc). Theres a decent variety of different weapons and armour, what you can make depends on your particular crafting skill.

Characters aren't class and level based, they follow the elder scrolls system. So skills and stats start at 1 and generally max at 100. At different levels they may unlock further skills to purchase. There is no restriction on what skills you can learn or max out (although some skills like individual spells will cast at 100 for one shot, then reset back to 99 until it builds up again). Things like armour have a weight (for inventory purposes), and encumbrance value (for wearing purposes). The heavier the armour, such as metal armour, the more encumbrance it adds, which begins to affect your casting and archery abilities. You have innate skills that may partially mitigate this encumbrance, and you can add a feather enchantment (it doesn't stack) to further offset this. But at the end of the day, wearing full heavy suits will start to make a difference.

[Nkari]

Me and a buddy tried darkfail a few years back, for about 2 months, while it was okish, the pve was severly lacking back then, and "cheaters" ie ppl who lvleled up skills etc on bugs where not banned or atleast had the skill reset, it was things like that wich put us off the game alot, the full loot etc was no problem and quite fun actually.

oh, and the mass pvp was bit to laggy for my taste back then.

This is coming from someone who started playing MMO's back in Ultima Online's days.