Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Asp visits Darkfall and writes a review!!!!
So last week the devs had a guy from the clan LoD come out and play/talk about the game. He just wrote the article and its up on his clans site!!! Its really good and has made me even more excited about this game(if thats possible). I do feel sorry for the vaporware trolls as thier vaporware ammo dwindles.
http://www.lordsofdeath.com/www/
Hey guys,
Don’t have much time to write right now because I am in some internet cafe in Athens. Here’s a few words though.
The Darkfall guys were very cool. They were not at all what I expected. Most of them were big tall guys from Norway, and a lot of them do different martial arts. The offices are nice, and they have about 20 to 30 people developing. I got a glimpse of different things people were doing while going around the desks: coding, landscape design of what seemed to be human style cities, and other stuff. The game is very real, and developers are lead by awesome people.
I wish I was a little better prepared, so some of my questions must have seemed a little stupid. First we spoke about the early days of UO and a lot of the inspiration comes from there. We spoke about all major games since then and what I liked and didn’t like about them. It was great to realize that these guys think exactly like me! Finally someone is making a game after my own heart! I am just going to mention some features everyone probably knows already, but they were kind of new to me. First of all, you can kill anyone you want (or can). Every kill gets recorded along with some details about it. You can loot everything, and you can loot any corpse. Unlimited people can be looting the same corpse simultaneously. I think its worth saying again: You can PK anyone!. You can kill their mount while they are on it. You have freedom to pretty much do anything you want and if you are skilled enough get away with it. The justice (or retribution) is in the hands of the players.
There is a lot we talked about. Like for example small guilds vs, a zerg. The way combat works in this game, I truely believe skill would be the key and 20 well coordinated capable people can take on a hundred noobs. Casual players won’t be at much of a disadvantage if they have better skills. By skills, I mean knowing how to use the terrain, your weapons, in-game objects, etc. to your advantage. With no skill, someone can have the best developed character in the game and someone with better knowledge and ability can smoke them. You won’t be able to build cities anywhere but just at key locations, which means more conflict for the limited number of city spots. This will also mean less clutter of cities like we’ve seen in other games. A band of lawless thugs and PKers can live outside with no problem. Its a completely viable way of playing. Trading will be simple. You carry your stuff on you, but if you don’t have any protection you may end up a dead trader with a lot of loot for someone. We talked about a lot more stuff too which I will write about later. (EDIT: WTF are you Asp! We want more!!!)
I played the game (a stable version they had from about a year ago). I played an Orc (of course); The best made Orc I have played… ever. The inventory screen is exactly like UO. It brought back fond memories. You know how back then you would kill someone you loot all kinds of bags? (i.e. Some neatly arranged ones or just messy thrown together ones). It certainly adds more pleasure to the kill when you get to see the time and care someone put in arranging their stuff while you’re looting it. It definitely makes the kill a more personal thing.
So first, I ran around a bit near a town on the shores to get a feel for the controls. It was pretty easy. Then I tried out equipped different armor and weapons. The Orc looked friggin’ bad ass and battle ready! The armor and weapons looked kick ass on him. I tried putting on a longer ranged weapon- I think it was a halberd. Length matters! (EDIT: “That’s what she said!”… I had to do it for ‘The Office’ fans). You could reach farther, BUT, when you swing around you can hit your own people if you’re not careful. There is friendly collision so sometimes long weapons are good, or in other situations you might want to go with shields and short sword. There will definitely be work for battle leaders; it will be crucial to organize into squads or units, choose the weapons, locations and what to do. It is very realistic. It’ll be possible to do battles like in the movie “300″, and have small number of organized people kick ass and slaughter a large number of swarming noobs. As I mentioned, the game has friendly fire, so if uncoordinated groups will end up hitting their own guildmates or possibly even healing you.
Next they showed me some sweet magic effects (from year ago mind you, which they claim is even several times better now). The effects alone make the friggin’ spell feel like a powerful thing. The eye candy was great… The ground shakes, you burn! It’s just really impressive the way they have done it. It’s very real feeling so you feel you really want to get out of the way of a fireball or the burning ground around you.
So next, we tried out the horses, and they were easy to handle. The difference from any other game I’ve played is though that you can actually fight from them! You can do some tricks specialized for just horse fighting when attacking or defending which I won’t go into details (EDIT: Damn you Asp, we want details!). But get this, you can kill the mount while the guy is on it!.!.! which I did, and it felt good, Muahaha.
Then we went to business: straight one on one fighting. An Orc with a mace and shield vs. another race spell caster. Starting close to him I had the advantage. He couldn’t get off his spells on time with me getting him from the back and the side. It was a lot of fun because it was real time collision fighting. I was very impressed, and the way the controls are, fighting felt easy and intuitive. After a few hits with my mace he was dead… And I had all his stuff! My first kill in DF.
Next we tried fighting from a ship. The ships are incredible, especially if you are into the whole pirate thing. We were on a smaller eight-gun ship, but they said the largest is huge with 50-guns! You can shoot from each canon. Here’s what’s great… The canon can be destroyed, the ship can be sunk, you can board the ship and kill, or you can just make your way to the captain who steers it and turn the guns away from your ship. You can bombard buildings or even people on the shore from the ship. It felt like I could do anything I wanted to do… in very nice looking graphics. Try to imagine large ship sinking, and everyone is scrambling from the lower levels trying to get up onto the upper decks through the small doorways or stairs to avoid drowning with the ship! This is going to be fun guys.
We talked about the economy. The best items will be crafted by people, and items can wear out or be looted. Player economy looks like is going to work pretty much like real economy with supply and demand but I won’t go into details (Edit: !!!).
I have to go, but just to finish up quickly… The game is awesome. I was pessimistic but to be honest no matter how much anyone complains about release date they will buy this game as soon as it comes out and will be the best game ever released. I do believe the release will be sometime next year. I spoke with them about beta phases and schedule, but I promised not to reveal information about dates, but I will say beta shouldn’t be too long. Anyways, thanks guys for helping set this up. I got a couple Darkfall t-shirts I will ship to you that helped. It’s a great game coming not too long from now, and now I know for sure that it is going to be completely awesome.
Asparouh
Comments
me lol ill delete it
i'll start beleiving it when they start releasing videos of substance
Haha some people. And when they release a video let me guess it will "not be of substance". And when beta comes out the argument is going to be "the game wont have the features promised", and when it releases im not sure what the trolls will say...............
yea really what are you thinking man
Currently playing: Planetside, Americas Army.
Praying to Zeus for: Darkfall.
That write up looks fantastic. I really like what he had to say about the ships and the hint that they will have a full deck layout. Oh and don't mind the trolls because they just took a serious kick to the gonads with this review so they're apt to be a little cranky. Their main complaint till now is no one outside the devs has seen the game and that just got violently ripped out from under them. Don't hate the trolls, pity them for the harsh blow they've just endured to their fuzzy warbles.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
great review from that guy there, i really enjoyed reading up on that.
and thats not even the full review XD that was the quick one he did for LOD they decided to hand this one out until asp gets back he missing in action LOL
Darkfall is my true love.
Well i would love to see what else he will wright when he gets the time.
If he means Athens Georgia, I probably could have found him at that cafe this morning. Theres only so many internet cafes here.
na athens, greece XD
But these comments here conflict a bit with what the published info is on the DF website, where they say,
So while ASP states you can kill anyone you want to, and live lawless outside the cites, the Dev's seem to think that the alignment system is going to help reign in some of that.... along with player needs to trade in the cities and what not.
We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out once the game goes beta and the NDA is lifted...
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I noticed that they do conflict ewith each other but perhaps it will become much harder for criminals once more people will join the game because no one wants trade production to be halted because of a band of rouges.
the just dont want other games taking there ideas and how they do them basicly aoc already took a few ideas but i bet Df does it better
The game has come too far along to become vaporware. Sure the graphics are remedial compared to most games on the market but I know they could sell more than enough copies if they ever release the game. I have to admit the weak point is the graphics but even if they are using a quake 2 engine of some sorts (don't quote me on that) they should be able to punch out better looking scenery. Then again, the maps are all hand-crafted and that's a major plus. The colors just don't look right for some reason...
I think it's the lack of polygons and detail that I don't like.
However, it does look like a huge multiplayer version of Morrowind. Once I got absorbed into Morrowind, the graphics didn't phase me as much.
But these comments here conflict a bit with what the published info is on the DF website, where they say,
So while ASP states you can kill anyone you want to, and live lawless outside the cites, the Dev's seem to think that the alignment system is going to help reign in some of that.... along with player needs to trade in the cities and what not.
We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out once the game goes beta and the NDA is lifted...
Not conflicting at all. They both state that you can be an outlaw and kill anyone you want. The devs just say its going to be hard. But hard or not its still a "viable way of playing" as asp says. Anyways like you said we wont know for sure when it comes out, but in Darkfall you can do whatever you want, hard though it may be.
Haha some people. And when they release a video let me guess it will "not be of substance". And when beta comes out the argument is going to be "the game wont have the features promised", and when it releases im not sure what the trolls will say...............
Simple. They'll say, "Game is going to die in a month because the game... because....
because...
Ah! Because it doesn't have levels! ... wait a minute I hate level-based combat/play... It will fail because there are too many people on the servers!"
This was not the real reveiw. Asp just sended a e-mail to his clan from Europe. And his fellow friends couldent wait for the full version, so they made this one of the e-mail.
Still, i like it. Nothing new, just confirmed a lot of information.
I cant wait for the real one.
oh nice this is incredible news. okay on my way to the DF forums to discuss lol
yea we got a few non believers over there but what doy ou expect some have become very bitter