I recently canvassed the opinions of a long-term MMO gamer who quit Darkfall in disgust not long ago. I have taken her thoughts and put them into the following editorial-style narrative rather than a straight Q&A. I hope you enjoy reading this, especially if it saves you from playing this game because I genuinely trust this woman’s opinion and if she says it’s this bad… then it’s bad!
Darkfall represents yet another great concept with bad implementation in the MMO space. It could have really worked had the cheating, hacking, and mass alliances not gotten together and decided it should be a numbers game instead of a skill game. Basically, it’s grindy as hell if you’re not in a massive guild with a massive city where you can macro your skills up to the top in no time flat without actually playing.
If you want to play legit, meanwhile, all your PVP encounters will be against macroers because, hey, the grindiness is just too insane to not take a shortcut around for most people. You will die every time you leave town to harvest, even by your own race (and if you’re Mahirim, ESPECIALLY by your own race). You’ll only be safe near the Ork cities on the other side of the map (because, oddly, the Orks seem to be the most honourable players), but once you leave the NPC cities you’re screwed because Hyperion alliance owns everything and they do roam their territory. Last I checked, Hyperion owned the whole eastern half of the map (they believe in quantity over quality, and while you may have five way more skilled players than any in their 500+ army, you will die instantly when they lag the map your on with their obscenely unskilled army).
And guess what? Those guys promote themselves as being a Human-Mirdain-Dwarf alliance but they have Orks and Mahirim in their ranks too, so even in town you are not safe because they do the whole mass-army, easy-mode, All Race All Class (ARAC) thing that the game totally allows. There’s really no point to there being races or factions in Darkfall at all. You will get killed by your own race — a lot — and their friends who are supposed to be their enemies. How is that meant to be any fun for anyone?
On travelling, while it’s nice to have a huge world to explore, you can spend an hour trying to go from Mahirim towns to Ork towns only to be killed halfway and lose an hour of gameplay. Now, I used to be against insta-travel, and I think boats help a little with getting around (though the world doesn’t wrap around so you will hit an invinsible wall in the ocean), but it’s ridiculous that it takes about an hour of travelling alone to get to an enemy territory (unless you’re in Ork lands, just walk outside town and you’ll have a bunch of humans just waiting to gobble you up as if it’s their land already).
I didn’t mind the grindiness of skills until I hit about 50 points in any one thing (lesser magic, archery, crafting, etc), and it SHARPLY became more difficult to raise the skill. Nobody will buy products from you if you aren’t making skill level 75+ gear, so you’re constantly losing money and spending five hours a day trying to find resources (and trying not to die to the horde of ARAC clans at the same time).
Basically, the game is completely un-fun until your skills are maxed and even with macroing that takes ages. The devs had led us to believe it was so skilled-based, that like in Guild Wars, a lower level player who knew how to use his skills better than a higher level player (there are no levels in DF, just using this as example) that the playing field would be balanced. However, this is not the case at all, a great-magic fire attack only achievable in two months by macroing the skill 24/7, is going to totally kick your mana missile skill, any day of the week. Non-cheaters get the short end of the stick on a regular basis and while the devs were making it easier to report players, many of those players had cheats that allowed them to have names that are unreportable or were able to teleport before anyone could tell they were there cheating. The most skilled players, are ironically, the hackers, and it’s their game now. I would hate to be starting the game as a new player right now becaused you’d be griefed to no end by ARAC clans with hackers that just prey on the goody-two-shoe players.
Darkfall could have been a great game, but never have I seen so much exploiting and cheating in an MMO from day one onwards, not even in most Korean games has it ever been on this scale. If you like cheating, then you’ll love Darkfall, the code is so weak in it that it practically begs for it to be a hacker’s paradise. A shame too, the ideas behind the game were brilliant, but the players have turned it to a pile of crap, really fast.
The game was supposed to have way more depth then that but this is what happens when you put a bunch of people in a game that have never played UO or any other non-easy-mode game. This isn’t UO-esque at all, like it was marketed to be.
These were my worst fears when I heard about the game. When they could not even support the sale of the game, I knew there would be problems. It was touted as a combination of my 2 faveriote MMO’s: UO and Shadowbane.I love world PvP. I love being able to attack ANYBODY, for any reason. Not because I will, but because I can. But this is what happens when there is no counter to being evil.
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Whats worse is that DF will be held high as a reason why PvP and classless MMO’s will not work. Nevermind EVE or any other game that proves these ideas wrong. This will setback open PvP/classless games very far.
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Here is to more overly easy, simple, grind-tastic WoW clones.
Glad I quit playing after only a few days
Hyperion was destroyed a while ago.
CotC who destroyed Hyperion appears to have been destroyed by a group effort of smaller alliances.
Darkfall’s fail seems to be the communities mentality and you can see this if you read their forums and notice how so many people complain about things they’ve never experienced or because they don’t want to switch up their tactics (they effectively say having to switch tactics removes all player skill). Just today I read a thread complaining about how a newbie with a newbie shield can block almost all the damage from a maxed out character (Plenty of ways to hurt a blocking person). This coming from people who complain on a daily basis about how the newbies are majorly screwed over. My conclusion based off of Darkfall is that if there is a game and everyone who plays the game cheats and tries to find new ways cheat and become over powered on a daily basis while spreading lies about how they want to make it better, it would be a crappy game too.
I’m guessing this is a few months old, as Hyperion is long gone and many of the issues raised (character names with I and 1 to confuse reporting) have already been addressed. Given that Hyperion was on the downfall just after the first month of the game being live, one would have to question exactly how deep whoever did the report got with the game. I’m guessing they quit more than ‘not long ago’.
I’m surprised to hear about the hacking. It’s an unfortunate side effect of any indie MMO. Someone, somehow is going to be able to hack code and if you don’t have the support to stop it, then the game is screwed.
A large amount of the negativity about Darkfall comes from misinformation and lack of knowledge or experience. Darkfall is a very challenging game, especially for the solo player. In the harsh world of Agon, you must have alliances to conquer and maintain cities. The solo player will almost certainly hold less influence over the land, which is working as intended. Community is more important in Darkfall than in other mmorpgs, because of the inherently risky nature of gameplay: you are never completely safe, so friends and protection are helpful in every endeavor. This visceral ability to affect others builds alliances and deepens rifts between enemies. As a Darkfall player since beta, I am having a blast every day for the past five months.
Biggest problem with the game as I see it… You MUST macro to be competitive. Every night, without fail.
Darkfall was touted all through its development as “a game where player skill matters” and this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is entirely “he who macro’s most wins”.
If you plan on playing this game, then plan on devoting a computer to this game 24×7… not for playing, but to macro with to remain competitive.
It reminds me of another sandbox game experience : SWG.
Remember when holocrons were added and it turned the game into a world filled with afk macroers desperately macroing through professions in order to unlock their FS slot? Well this is the Darkfall experience… from day one.In SWG, you at least had the brass ring which was the FS slot… In this game, the brass ring is non-existent.
The open world is huge and empty,(riding 30 mns between fights is boring) and 75% of the people who are online at any given time are either macroing, or they are hiding away in player cities under guard towers, beating on afk people in order to skill up their weapons/magic etc.
Those players used to go out into the open world and pve, which in the beginning made for some decent open-world PvP. Adventurine , in their infinite wisdom, decided to nerf all of the mob-dropped loot which made people quit going out to PvE. The result is the empty world completely devoid of PvP targets that we see today.
The crafting is quite possibly the worst crafting system ever implemented in any so-called sandbox game, the community is horrible, and the devs do not communicate with their customers/playerbase.
The ONLY thing Darkfail has going for it, is that it’s a consequence-based PvP system system (full loot) for which there is no modern equivalent.
Any other game that comes along that is even halfway decent, and that offers full loot will drag a huge chunk of their playerbase away… well a huge chunk of what’s left.
The game has quite a ways to go before I would recommend it to anyone. Right now, I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy.
Good call, Let Down.
And to the guys commenting earlier, yes, my correspondent quit Darkfall about a month ago but… so what? Whether the specific guild she mentioned still exists or not is irrelevant as there are others like it, and the game world is still the same.
And Tasos… wow. Maybe you should read the post before banging out such nonsense. The post isn’t even about trying to solo Darkfall… so why’s your answer all about soloing? Are you just cut and pasting a response from around the Web and hoping it fits? It looks like it.
Why do ribs have to be crucial to pretty much all movement. If ribs were somewhere less crucial, it wouldn’t matter when you crack them.
I tried and found this to be exactly the case. The community blows incredibly large chunks. Very disappointing as based on the concept DF could have been a great game. This MMO however proves that concept is not enough and execution is everything.
I played the game. From launch day to end-game alliance wide wars. I fought against newbies in the goblin fields, and I fought against the might of Hyperion, CotC, Death, and Cairn.
I ground my skills up to respectable levels early, without macroing. I did it by clicking over and over and over and over and over while watching movies. (Thanks aXXo for making it a bit more enjoyable).
I PvE’d solo, duo, and in groups. I PvP’d solo, duo, and in groups.
At first, I really liked it. I wanted to love the game. Then a friend quit… followed shortly after by his whole guild. Then another left, then another. All of the good players were dropping like flies.
The exploiters remained. The game went spiralling downhill, and I’m glad I was talked into leaving it finally, after I held on in hopes it would improve.
Its a game for hackers and cheaters now.
I hope they enjoy the muck left behind from all the good players leaving.
I beta tested the game and from day one I said it lacked some serious casual player content.
If you’ve played enough MMOs, you’d know that casuals make up the back-bone of an MMO world. Without them, the ‘hardcore’ PvP players have to harvest/craft for themselves.
IMO the game lacks the simple UO ability to walk off into the woods, kills some basic neutral wildlife (pigs, sheep, ect.), bring the mats back to town, and start a profitable profession to build on.
The world is void of life minus overcrowded and typically player camped NPC spawns.
There’s no room for a new player entering the game to develop a character to a point where they have even the slightest attachment to it before they’re cut down by either a massive group of NPCs or roaming griefers.
Would it be impossible to add deer, moose, or wildlife in general?
As it stands, the game has an accelerated aging population with no new blood.
If they don’t do something to bring in new players, the game will stagnate and die.
Darkfall is potentially a good game, unfortunately it’s development team, led by compulsive liar Tasos do not have the potential to follow it through.
Darkfall is sadly never going to be the game we expected it to be and Tasos is never going to stop lying about it.
This reads more like a “GG I quit!” thread on the Darkfall forums then anything else.
Anyone complaining about getting killed by their own race needs to stop looking at the race thing. The racial stuff is put into the game to make it “interesting” and nothing more. Factions are not like WoW in this game and you are going to get PK’d by a PKer in a OPEN PVP GAME.
I started to read the post and then noticed that most of the anger stems from being killed by their own race or ARAC clans. I am sorry to say people will get killed in a PVP game it’s just the way things work. However getting killed in this game is not as bad as this post says it is.
I will end it at that as I do believe the game is broken and needs a lot of fixes.
“Basically, the game is completely un-fun until your skills are maxed and even with macroing that takes ages.”
That part of that paragraph explains is the very core of the problem of the game and sadly i don’t see it being fixed anytime soon because long skill grind AND weak coding of the client are both part of the game core .
I had to come to grips with the fact that this game didn’t seem to capture that “gotta” play feeling.
I participated in Beta and strung along as best as I could till the end of June.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the stupidity you felt in crafting.
I mean the crafting really was made for the slow kids.
A waste of time IMHO.
Perhaps someday the golden age will return to the MMO but after experiencing this mess I feel that I might have to take a step back and wait till something deserves my entertainment dollar.
This article makes me lawl. Hard. And not in a good way. The only two points I want to make are 1: This girl who was complaining sounds like a horde player in wow, unable to accept their defeat by saying they were outnumbered by unskilled players, and 2: You bitch and moan about ARAC and then claim to come from UO? What the heck?!
What a lot of QQ from that girl about Hyperion. Go check out the forums people were crying that they wanted them back not so long ago. At least they added some style to an otherwise semi-literate pack of feral teenagers.
I will agree though DF was far to grindy and PvP sucks until you reach high skill levels. Players skill does not make up for Weapon Master at 75. At least they have eased that somewhat, but the game is missing 80% of its sandbox content. It is focused on PvP and Conquest to the exclusion of all else – and I don’t mean moronic WoW quests or supposed “solo content”. You need sandbox tools to build stuff, personalised tabards, proper clan management tools, property ownership in cities, local banking, caravans/wagons, region specific resources etc. And for the love of all that is holy Magic needs to be toned down. It should be an exception not the rule. Melee and archery are far more fun.
Some people will always find things to whine about with any MMORPG. Others kick ass and make videos like the ones here – http://darkfallvideos.com
Watch a couple of those and tell me Darkfall is full of fail.
it, seems like you got pwn a lot and whine after macroers.
Darkfall is prolly the worst game i played in the last few years.
Its so unpolished, unprofessional and badly planned in any of its aspects that i really cant understand how ppl can play such a crap in year 2010
I have never ever played darkfall and if i play it remind me not to cuz this sucks worst game eva