Dark Fall is Coming! DEC Release has beeen annouced!

Camthylion

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?p=1883115#post1883115

Catching you up with our activities to date - in this post a brief recap of our activities surrounding the first official presentation for Darkfall during the Athens Digital Week.

The Darkfall information we’ve been giving out lately has been targeting civilians. While there have been a few interviews, on a variety of local (Greek) and fewer international media, there is really nothing new. We’ve shown about 10 different version of the Darkfall trailer, we’ve given a few presentations about the game, there are some Darkfall ads out there, and more waiting to be deployed, a couple of local television presentations etc. but it’s the general information that people need to be introduced to the game.

You probably already saw Shaar’s update on the Athens Digital Week activities. He did a good job giving the information about what all happened there, but here’s the official take on things:

The presentation didn’t contain much new information. It was meant for a general audience. The video shown was a shorter version of the Darkfall trailer. We played the game live on the stage during the presentation for about 20 minutes and we stopped when the internet went out.

The announcement during ADW was that the open beta phase is scheduled to end early in December. More importantly this means that the game will be ready to release at that point. Marketing consideration kept us from just announcing a release date. The game will be ready for release, and the launch may follow directly, or shortly after, depending on the marketing landscape at the time. Obviously the earlier the better for us, but there are a lot of things needing coordination for the launch, internal and external. So our side of things (meaning the development end) will be ready.

Some general information on the Athens Digital Week activities because a lot of people were asking: We organized the entire gaming section, mainly to support publicity for Darkfall’s first official presentation. There was an international Quake 3 and Warcraft 3 event, the ESWC Masters of Athens, where the best professional players in the world competed for the top spots. It was nice to know that most of them knew about Darkfall and a few were waiting for it to come out. Then we held the World Cyber Games national finals, there was a large LAN set up for the public, and a bunch of game consoles with the latest Xbox 360 games. There was a concert with the symphonic orchestra of the city of Athens playing videogame themes. Last but not least we had a small game developer’s conference for game developers in Greece.

We were happy with the attendance of the event, a lot of international journalists covered ESWC Master’s of Athens and had a lot of question to ask about Darkfall, and we met a lot of fans during the Darkfall presentation, but mainly in the days following it. I was very surprised at how many people were asking about the game, and about when we would have another presentation. We didn’t know we had such a strong following in Greece. Unfortunately our time slot for the Darkfall presentation was during normal business hours and many people couldn't attend.

I’ve posted some pictures from the event in the gallery.

We’ll follow this up with a Darkfall status report within a couple of hours from this posting.

 

Camthylion

BETA!!! NOV 10TH!

Ok now for the Darkfall community update:

As you know we’ve been conducting the first phases of the Darkfall beta, specifically the hardware configuration testing. This is where we test that Darkfall runs on most hardware configurations without problems, and we also test the absolute basics. We’ve been putting the testers through the motions: they download the client, log in, patch, create a character, enter the game and run around long enough to make sure that they’re not experiencing any weirdness and that everything is running smoothly. All this needs to be done so that in the next phases of testing a greater number of testers won’t experience any problems with the basics and so they can focus on other important testing. These have turned out to be very productive and useful testing phases. During this time we’ve addressed various hardware compatibility problems, compatibility issues with programs running simultaneously with Darkfall, we identified and corrected some patcher issues, some login server problems, and various small issues around the game world. At the same time, it’s business as usual with our internal testing.

Let me give you an idea of what’s been happening during these first testing phases: Right now, the entire Darkfall world is up on its servers. It’s being kept up most of the time. We’ve been running a methodical and functional testing environment. We started the hardware testing with the minimum of options enabled. Since then we’ve been enabling and disabling features needed to be tested. This is done so that we have the minimum noise in case something happens on the server side and we need to isolate it. We’ve been wiping characters as often as once a day, usually within 2-3 days. This is because we’re not testing character development yet, and we’ve been making some optimizations in the way that things are stored. We’ve been enabling features gradually and we’re to the point where most are enabled. Some of the things we still have deactivated are mobs outside the starting areas, most of the dungeons, most of the clan city building locations. Another thing worth mentioning is that during testing, testers have options and tools available to them that they won’t have during the retail stage of Darkfall.

Our goal during this testing phase is that the important things work perfectly as we move all the way down to the polish during the subsequent testing phases. The game had always been in a state to be run in its entirety, but this would have been a huge waste of resources and would have hindered this early testing. This is where Darkfall differs from other MMOs. We could have easilly had it running full featured if this was a railroad game, but it’s not. Darkfall is a sandbox game and there are infinite paths that players can follow. This is not some quest driven game where you could go through the motions quest after quest until you’re ready to actually play a few months down the road. You actually play Darkfall from day one. So as you understand, there’s no single path of testing. Player behavior in Darkfall varies wildly and we need to try and predict all eventualities.

This is what has been happening until today. The reason we’re mentioning all this is to familiarize those of you who aren’t in the beta already with our testing philosophy, and to catch the community up with what’s been going on.

Moving along, and we’re about two weeks behind schedule announcing this, but we’re going to start opening up the beta to more and more testers on or around November 10th to coincide with the next phases of our server deployment. We will be enabling a lot of the features we currently have disabled – as needed and dictated by our testing needs. Again I must stress that this beta period’s purpose is for us to get Darkfall ready for release so we’ve been operating under strict directives. Having said that, I can’t help mentioning, that even in this current stage of testing, the game is a lot of fun and we hope to see all of you enjoying it while helping us test during these next phases.

Thanks for reading

 

Camthylion

What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

Kordesh

Originally posted by Camthylion


What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

I say whippity do, Horizons all over again. If I wanted to play a game developed in the early 90s I could go play Shadowbane RIGHT NOW. Even if it does come out, theres still no guarentee the promises have been met, and one has to question if the cult of darkfall has enough members to keep them financially afloat for longer than a few weeks after release....

Kyleran

Originally posted by Camthylion


What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

"The game will be ready for release, and the launch may follow directly, or shortly after, depending on the marketing landscape at the time."

This.  Sets the stage for pushing the release back until sometime in 2009.

PatchDay

I'm a fan of darkfall but come on why is this post here in general. Make posts in DF forum part of this site. You know the guys in general are sick of hearing bout DFO

 

Im not going to get my hopes up til the day they let me on the server. They've been in development for forever_++++++++++ their street cred is bad with me.

Elikal

I am granting myself the luxury of having absolutely no opinion about this game. Everything I hear is so... alien, I dont know what to think.

Roin

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Camthylion


What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

"The game will be ready for release, and the launch may follow directly, or shortly after, depending on the marketing landscape at the time."

This.  Sets the stage for pushing the release back until sometime in 2009.

 

Isn't the first rule of developing a game, always leave yourself a way out?

 

Edit: Jasz would you like to back up your claim? Can you even really prove how much DF cost to make?  Probably not.

toddze

Originally posted by Jasz

Originally posted by Gameloading


{ Mod Delete }

{ Mod Delete }

 

As for DF I really hope it works as the devs say for one reason. That reason  being, the niche of players that its targeting is a rotten group of players. Anyone can see the attitude of the DF cult members on the forums. Get that group of players in their own little game and the rest of the MMO'ers can enjoy their new MMO release without hearing about how carebare this is blah blah blah........... how bad the PvP is etc. I am all for DF. I just hope the DF cult members dont make it self implode with all this hype.

{ Mod Edit }

TheHoweller

Honestly, this post scares me...

I was really hoping they'd take the release in strides...Taking time to make the game flawless at release.  i really don't see that happening though.  From this post, all I can read is overconfidence and a short-sighted release date.

Really...Just fucking put it in beta testing, and set no release date other than, "When we're ready to release a "game".  I really don't want this to flop, but I don't know. 

From how it appears, beta is going to be very exclusive, something that I really don't want.  But whatever, it's not my game, only idiots will pre-order...And I've Fallout 3 and Fable until the whining begins.

Galadourn

DF cannot release 'too early' anymore...that would have been 4 years ago...

SignusM

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Camthylion


What say ye haters of the great darkfall now   ?

"The game will be ready for release, and the launch may follow directly, or shortly after, depending on the marketing landscape at the time."

This.  Sets the stage for pushing the release back until sometime in 2009.

 

Normally I'd agree with you. But consider this. They've said it'll be out by Christmas.

Beta ends December 1-4. Now they have gone gold, game is ready to go out to stores/digital distribution. Now they may wait a little bit to iron out any final bugs or wait for the best market opportunity. Even if this takes 2 weeks, they are still launching before Christmas. Nowhere does it say 2009

Mahlo

Originally posted by Galadourn


DF cannot release 'too early' anymore...that would have been 4 years ago...

 

True, but the beta can be too short. Not that I expect to see DF released  this year.

TenSpotting

Let them release the game this year so it dies in less than a year from lack of interest, poor support, poor marketing,  lack of features and updates and bugs.

Want to know the major reason why this game will fail? 

Because it will NEVER EVER live up to the hype that was created for it by the fanatics that follow it as well as the developers themselves. And when it DOESN"T you'll see so many people bashing it and it's Devs all over the net that no one will want to touch it.

They've created their own monster. The hype monster of doom will eat this up and spit it out overnight.

With all the bullshit hype they've built up for this nonsense over the years they've given themselves absolutely no room for any mistakes.

I don't understand WHY developers have to even announce a game 7 fucken years in advance of it's launch anyway. Why can't they just build the damn game behind closed doors and get to a playable beta stage and THEN announce it and all of it's working features.

Is that so fucken hard to do?

ste2000

Originally posted by TenSpotting


Let them release the game this year so it dies in less than a year from lack of interest, poor support, poor marketing,  lack of features and updates and bugs.
Want to know the major reason why this game will fail? 
Because it will NEVER EVER live up to the hype that was created for it by the fanatics that follow it as well as the developers themselves. And when it DOESN"T you'll see so many people bashing it and it's Devs all over the net that no one will want to touch it.
They've created their iwn monster. The hype monster of doom will eat this up and spit it out overnight.
 

You mean like WAR, AoC, PoTBS, LOTRO, DDO and Tabula Rasa?

You are stating the obvious, as lately all MMORPGs didn't live up with the hype.

The only difference is that DF will have less people to disappoint, since it is a niche.

So if it does fail, it will do less damage than other mainstream crap.



We are all aware that making a sandbox is much more difficult than making linear games, so there are more chances it might fail.

But we can live with it, thanks.

So spare us your pointless patronising.

Loke666

Hmm, I never thought that we would see both Darkfall and Chinese democracy (a 14 year late Gn'R CD) this year.

None of them are out yet off course so nothing is 100% but it sure looks like I was wrong.

Anyways, gratz DF fans, hope you like the game

TenSpotting

Another point to make --

They have literally allowed their horrible fanbase to run their marketing campaign for them all of these years. Seriously that's EXACTLY what they've done.

I even remember very clearly one of the devs, I think it was Tasos, actually TELLING the fans to "spread the word" about the game.

Mark my words. This game will be a clown circus soon along the lines of DnL.

 

DarthRaiden

Comin out of nowhere

Drivin like rain

DarkFall dance

On the thunder again

Dark cloud gathering

Breaking the day

No point running

cause its coming your way

Letsinod

I love how people always talk about hype.  Everything is hyped nowdays and not just MMOs.  Also, Darkfall has NOT been hyped except on a few forums by DF fanboys.  Very few people know about a game called Darkfall.

DuraheLL

OP:

Why the hell did you say "release date has been announced" when we clearly read that it MAY be finished in December??? Confusing very much!

daylight01

Originally posted by Letsinod


I love how people always talk about hype.  Everything is hyped nowdays and not just MMOs.  Also, Darkfall has NOT been hyped except on a few forums by DF fanboys.  Very few people know about a game called Darkfall.

 

It's not that many people dont know about it,it is most gave up caring about it maybe 3 years ago.

If this game is ready to release then good for them but with very little footage being shown,not showing up at many gamming event's,no pc magazine's are reporting on the game anymore I find it all very hard to believe.

All in all after over 8 years in the making and the very little footage I have seen I dont see this game being the smash we all thought it would be all them year's ago,the only plus side when it releases and burns is that I wont have to read anymore posts in the next 8 years about how darkfall will be releasing .

originalegg

Sigh.

Dec. releases has NOT been announced.

Thats all i really have to say about that...stop posting false info.

And to everyone saying "oh it is too late it wont do good".....if you heard DF was amazing and was getting 10/10 reviews...you would not just sit there and be like "nope i wont play it no matter how good it is, i would have played it 3 years ago but nope not now".

cya in game

TheHoweller

Originally posted by TenSpotting


Another point to make --
They have literally allowed their horrible fanbase to run their marketing campaign for them all of these years. Seriously that's EXACTLY what they've done.
I even remember very clearly one of the devs, I think it was Tasos, actually TELLING the fans to "spread the word" about the game.
Mark my words. This game will be a clown circus soon along the lines of DnL.

 

Your posts are getting ridiculous.  Please at least attempt to contribute instead of insult...

For one, having fans of something spread the word about something they're interested in, is one of the better ways to advertise.  You don't get the shitty lies that surround most MMOs, just a plain, "Hey, this'll be out soon, it looks sweet, try it out!".    What in the hell is wrong with that?

I really don't understand the wrank hatred you throw towards this game, there's absolutely no reason. 

Try being a little subjective.    You've to admit, even if Darkfall does flop, coming from a small company what they've made so far looks rather decent.

TenSpotting

Originally posted by TheHoweller

Originally posted by TenSpotting


Another point to make --
They have literally allowed their horrible fanbase to run their marketing campaign for them all of these years. Seriously that's EXACTLY what they've done.
I even remember very clearly one of the devs, I think it was Tasos, actually TELLING the fans to "spread the word" about the game.
Mark my words. This game will be a clown circus soon along the lines of DnL.

 

Your posts are getting ridiculous.  Please at least attempt to contribute instead of insult...

For one, having fans of something spread the word about something they're interested in, is one of the better ways to advertise.  You don't get the shitty lies that surround most MMOs, just a plain, "Hey, this'll be out soon, it looks sweet, try it out!".    What in the hell is wrong with that?

This is fucken classic considering 90% of the Darkfall fanatics I see posting on places like youtube have built this thing up to be the next coming of Christ and totally blowing out of proportion all of it's intended features while in the same breath degrading anything that ISN'T Darkfall. Or doesn't have "FOOL LOOTZ"

TheHoweller

I promised I wouldn't reply.......Someone please punch this kid, please....Right in the throat would be best.

Changing subjects, anyone know of a damned good game without the typical grind of an MMO?  Other than Darkfall, of course.

toddze

Originally posted by TheHoweller


I promised I wouldn't reply.......Someone please punch this kid, please....Right in the throat would be best.
Changing subjects, anyone know of a damned good game without the typical grind of an MMO?  Other than Darkfall, of course.

 

Lol, in DF your going to be grinding ALL major skill ups like mad for endless hours. Just look at all those weapons that your going to have to endlesly grind skill points on to be able to use. DF is going to be a major grind fest just like all other MMO's past, present and future. You need to change your last sentance to read, " anyone know of a dammed good game with a grind that i can find tolarable in an MMO."