by Jeff Woleslagle on May 26, 2009
Welcome to the 1,086th Edition of Loading...
Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
We took advantage of the holiday to load up Darkfall, the curious PvP sandbox that's garnered plenty of attention in the past few months. Is the game as good as the most hardcore players say it is, or as horrifyingly bad as reviewers like Eurogamer describe it as? We'll offer the initial Ten Ton Hammer take on the game, plus offer links to STO's Craig Zinkievich discussing the Star Trek movie and the takeaway value for the upcoming MMO, a new giveaway, and several new guides in today's Loading... Darkfall First Impressions .
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The Pulse
You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?).
Here's today's top 5 Pulse results for today:
World of Warcraft Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (UP 1) EverQuest 2 (down 1) Lord of the Rings Online (UP 2) Warhammer Online (down 1)Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today:
Star Trek Online (UP 15 to #12) Free Realms (UP 8 to #16) Atlantica Online (down 3 to #14) Recent MMO Releases 5/11 - Chronicles of Spellborn 1.0.4 - "Scrolls of Keys and Courage" (patch) 5/15 - EVE Online Apocrypha 1.2 (patch) 5/19 - Warrior Epic (launch date) 5/19 - Vanguard "Halls of Pantheon" (content patch) 5/22 - Dragonica (CBT key giveaway) Upcoming Releases 8/25 - CrimeCraft (release date) 9/1 - Champions Online (release date) Late 2009? - Jumpgate Evolution (release date) Important Dates 5/30 - Final block of BlizzCon 2009 tickets on sale. 6/2 - 6/4 - E3 2009Loading... Daily
Here's hoping you had your fill of random picnic food yesterday as the US welcomed the summer, as is our yearly custom, by saluting our veterans. Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays, and it wasn't just the war movie marathons, the positive conditioning from realizing school is about to let out for the summer, or the good food and low-pressure family holiday. Like Thanksgiving, it's a time to reflect on how good you have it because of the selflessness of others, and maybe make sure you're paying that forward in whatever ways you can.
And after your through reflecting, maybe you go play Darkfall for the first time and promptly lose all faith in humanity, as I did last evening. I've had a morbid curiosity for this game for some time now, and someone pointed out last Friday that copies were now available in the Darkfall Online store 24/7 (imagine that, an online store staying open all the time). After purchasing the game at the premium price of $55.84 (or something like that - you have to enter your CC info to see the price - which makes me nervous enough to avoid doing it again) and using three days of my 31-day free trial period to torrent and patch the game, I played for about 2 hours last night. That that's the amount of time that the now infamous Eurogamer reviewer played the game is no coincidence - I wanted to see what I could see in just about the same amount of time.
If you listen to the players - not necessarily the reviewers -the most commonly said thing about Darkfall is that if you survive the first hour or so, you'll probably grow to like the game or at least appreciate its charm. The same could be said for just about all intensely PvP games where dying as a newb isn't the worst thing, it's the only thing. DF puts a fine point on this fact by making you stare down at your writhing soon-to-be corpse as you bleed out over the course of a minute or so. This is in addition to losing all your stuff - weapons, armor, quest items, gold, everything - you had when you died, that is, unless by some miracle you can beat another player back to your gravestone.
When you return to the living, you'll be mother-naked with a fairly weak starting weapon, so (another mantra) bank early, bank often. I soon realized that the leafblade I started with is easily as awful as its sounds and swapped it out for a polearm as soon as I had 20 gold pieces to rub together. I'm told 2H swords and polearms have the largest hit radius and are good choices for new players, and that proved to be a good piece of advice - the kills came much more swiftly despite my unpracticed movements.
When I'd killed enough goblins to get two sets of (weak) head, chest, and leg armor, I equipped one set and banked the other, out of paranoia more than any real strategy since, unlike EQ, you don't need a bank set for a corpse run - your corpse has likely been picked clean two seconds after your death rattle. My chances of dying before I could run away dropped significantly. That is, my chances of dying from mobs dropped, not from the red riding hoods mercilessly swarming the PvE spawns. I soon found that I was actually starting to enjoy the game. I knocked out the first few quests by chosing my battles carefully. Your stamina allows you to sprint longer than in other MMOs, and it's key for positioning and evasion. Also slightly different: in DF you hit your hotbar keys to "prime" your attacks, then left click to execute.
Good AI is a costly feature (in terms of server side performance) for any game. Darkfall enemy AI is very good, and as a result the PvE spawns in Darkfall are fairly sparse. Many of the things you try to do to mobs - debuff, kite, gang up - they'll try to do with you. When they run away, they seem to run at full speed (remember to sprint) toward other mobs, and the aggro radius is extremely large.
Looting and items have a whole new significance too. You're incredibly vulnerable as you loot since you're 1) probably below optimum health and 2) have your back to any opposing players (they'll do bonus damage if they attack you from behind, and you'll probably take two devastating hits before you can react). You risk it because you desperately want that valuable loot (all loot is highly valuable, especially to newbies, in this game, but only if you can turn it to gold and / or get it in your bank) before someone else can get it. It's a slow process too; you sheathe your weapon, go into "interface mode" (no movement or mouselook - scary), and drag the items into your backpack. I left more gravestones behind than I care to remember, only to save my skin (NPCs leave gravestones behind, probably a measure to save the performance cost of drawing individual corpses).
The quests are unapologetically mundane - this is a PvP sandbox game and, as with EVE, the storyline is largely shaped by the players. But early gathering and crafting is surprisingly enjoyable - you're less likely to get ganked out in the forest gathering timber and stone than you are at a PvE spawn, and gathering builds stats like strength and vitality also used in combat. Crafting is fun because items - any items - are valuable for gold or for use, and the skill to craft yourself even a modest set of armor increases your survivability drastically. While DF players have skills to increase through action and repetition, there's no overall "level" or level cap that you'll aspire to. This was a refreshing change for me; I'm not deluded into thinking that DF is truly a level-less game, but the pressure to get "just one more level" was gone.
Also on the plus side, Darkfall also has a fairly innovative "auto-optimization" feature which turns off graphics features when FPS drops below 30. While a number of online games probably have something like this, DF marks the first time I've seen a checkbox for it. As a result, client-side lag wasn't an issue for me, nor was my ping (despite playing on a European server), or overall game stability. That's a very good thing, since any interruption to this game could be particularly disastrous.
While Aventurine's latest patch removed many of the worst exploits and bugs from the game, the game is by no means polished or bug- free, and worse, most say that players that used past exploits to push their skills and equipment to the limit are still very much in the game. A beta wipe would have cured much of this, but so would a new server where players would develop without the exploits that have already been fixed. Here's hoping that happens soon. I won't repeat everyone else's assessment and note that Darkfall has "potential" - it's a solid, enjoyable game if you give it half a chance and play it on its own terms. I haven't played nearly long enough to give DF any kind of objective score, but sorry Eurogamer, this isn't a 4 / 10 game.
Last minute breaking news: Jumpgate Evolution team confirms delay with no new release date set. Film at 11.
Tried Darkfall? If you have, are my initial impressions on target? And if you haven't given it a shot, what are your reservations? All things Darkfall today in the Loading... forum, or as usual, feel free to email me.
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day
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Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread
"I
am glad to hear the game is doing well. Funcom has really taken a
beating on this and while they may have set their sights a little too
high I think they have finally gotten the game to the point it needs to
be to be what it was advertised as."
- Miralyn
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Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!
6 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 79 in May! 605 in 2009!
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]
Star Trek Online: Exclusive Interview with Craig ZinkievichReal World News
Dead woman graduates from Taylor University in IndianaThanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
-Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team