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Madness or Curiosity?
Madness or Curiosity?
WARNING ~ LONG READ, for some.
Darkfell eh? Yeah, I’ve seen the name since I first joined this community in 2004, even then it didn’t interest me in any way. But I am a somewhat fan of mmorpgs..... Ziiiip..... 2009.
Darkfall gets an official launch date, then a push back, then a release, of sorts and the forums light up. I managed to get days of enjoyment of keeping an eye on the darkfall forum here by witnessing the rage, debate, trolling and flaming that occurred at a frantic pace.
I even joined in with some tongue in cheek pokes at darkfall, infact I also branded the boys and girls at Adventurine “retarded, seriously” for their dreadful launch planning and handling of it. I recall posting that the sound effects sounded “home made by Tasos jumping and grunting into a microphone”. At no stage however, do I recall wanting them to fail, but I did say they would only have themselves to blame.
Tuesday 3rd March 2009, for some reason I decided I would witness the frenzied purchasing of the second batch of Darkfall, having seen a post stating the shop would open for a limited number of sales that evening.
As evening drew I found myself adding credit card information to my account and refreshing the page every so often, I’m not sure why, but that’s what I did. At around 20:35 I saw a post here saying that the store had been up, then sold out in some 45 sec “wow” I thought, I didn’t even see the shop go up, then came news that it was a glitch and it would be up again soon, and it was.
I decided, fr some reason, to try and buy a copy and was amazed when I got through to the CVV verification stage but was confronted with a timeout, meh, so I hit refresh, nope more nothingness. At 21:30 I got the first of 3 emails:
Oder Successful
Purchase Created
Transaction failed
Hmmmm I thought, have I really bought this? Did it not work? Was the fail due to the refresh during verification saving me from a double purchase? I had no idea. The account page related no info in regard to this, I didn’t have the client installed to check for login and my online cc statements had no “realtime” info.Bugger! So I downloaded the game, pando torrent is awful, 10-20kbps! So I used utorrent and left it overnight. Before I went I saw a picture of the Adevnturine team in Cosy’s gallery and at that moment I actually felt admiration for them in some way, after all making any game is an undertaking, but an MMO? Maybe I was just tired?
Installation didn’t go well, infact I got an error 2738 right off the bat! Joy, off to forumfall for info and found this worked.
CMD > cd %windir%system32 > regsvr32 vbscript.dll
Yay, install worked. Managed to login, “but have I bought this game or what?”, I thought to myself. Well I got the game updated and found I could indeed login, so I did and got booted by another error this time it was 14001.
Vcredist_x86.exe needed to be run and installed, this done the trick. So I made a character and logged in.......boom.... another error, already logged in or something! So I tried again, success!
Comments & Suggestions
Adventurine really need to add some sort of information to your account page that tells you if your have purchased the account / have an ACTIVE account. ~ I was in the dark all night, no pun intended, about my purchase simply due to server load.
They need to introduce a transaction number to each purchase or attempted purchase and have this information noted in the email they send you to confirm the account purchase. Or perhaps inform you of the number of authorization attempts.
There needs to be either a sticky on the forum or a readme.txt containing some of the fixes I had to perform to install and play the game, until they fix the issues.
The Game
So far, I have to say the world REALLY does look better in game than it appears to from other sources.It is impressive to think a handfull of people made all this and the shadowing is really nice. Interface is actually not bad, from a functionality point of view, but it is quite different – unless you have played neocron which had a similar “utility mode” & “action mode”.
The sounds do not sound as bad as I thought they did, again due to other sources. Combat is simplistic, but quite enjoyable. Perhaps due to the fatigue I have from all the hotbar button games. Directional sound is good and working. View distance IS better than alot of screenshots did show during closed beta.
I have, as yet not had a great deal of time in game but first impression ~ for me ~ is quite good. I can’t put my finger on it, but hey, it’s my money.
Comments
Ohh man!
I was sitting ready all afternoon, and my gf begun to watch X-men evolution for 20 minutes..and i missed it
!
Gratz!
I think you forgot this.
I will vote both.
So what this thread is telling me is that personal experience trumps outside sources. Not that this is much of a surprise because that is pretty much true everywhere but its good to know that a lot of the feedback we've been hearing from those that aren't playing could very well be false and just a lot of hot air.
Seems like the game is worth trying out and judging on its own merits, rather than making a decision based on unsubstantiated criticisms. I'll keep trying, if they ever open subs up during a period of time im not at work.
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
daarco - goodluck, keep trying
Yes i did consider a poll, but din't add it in the end, btw I voted for madness.
Grunties, you are correct. I have always said that people should judge a game for themselves, and I do the same. The most common problem for a new game is potential expectation, as in, it's way to easy to let your mind run amok with all sorts of ideas about what a game MIGHT be like, and the crazy things you plan to do.
Perhaps 1 good thing about alot of the DF 'trolling' ( not all of it is ) is the fact that for alot of people their expectations will be reduced to zero!
You forgot to add "SPARTAAAAA" after Madness
More evidence that AV communication skills have not improved one bit since launch. The most hardcore bit of this game is getting an account and executing the damn program it seems. Not impressed still for a game wich the OP describes as having "simplistic" combat. To jump these kind of hoops ... I want fantastic.
Heh I like the, "LONG READ, for some."
Gratz on getting in. I know I try most of the new mmo's that come out, but I have never had so much trouble getting into one before. So for me at this point I think its curiosity that is making me want to get the game. My brain is telling me that I will be board within a week of playing.....but I cannot stay away from the forums.
My opinion matters to everyone...
Well, when I say simplistic I mean that swinging a melee weapon is pretty basic, click click etc. Keeping the enemy within hitting range/arc, not hitting friendlies, stamina/mana controling, weapon hot-swapping all require concentration and are reactionary. Range weaponary requires player skill to be effective at anything but point blank. Spells cause splash damge, so you have to think before you shoot if other players are near a npc mob for example.
The player runs? Do you chase and hack, or arm the bow and shoot? Do you try to cast self heal mid fight, run away, chug potions? You have to weigh up each fight before, during and even after. You also have to consider returning to a bank/trader npc to save/sell any loot, or carry on and hope you don't die or get "ganked". Do you loot everything or loot the good stuff quickly leaving the rubbish so you can be ready to deal with more enimies?