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For all the non believers I say go to their website...
Ok I have to say that I am hoping like a lot of people that this game get released sooner rather than later. However yesterday I scanned their website and besides seeing plenty of developer threads and recent at that , the screen shots on the site actually looked quite slick. Ok you may not like this game or take the piss out of it taking so long (or not compared to other MMO's) but seriously if Darkfall doesn't come out then it will be the biggest con of all time.
As for the open beta test, I don't blame them not having one so early since every other MMO that has gone down that route end up getting bashed and spawning 1000's of trolls shouting how crap their game is. When will people understand that BETA = testing, not final product!
Comments
I dont think anyone is complaining that open beta has not started. They are concerned that there is no closed beta consisting of players outside the employ of Aventurine. Companies dont invite people into closed beta because they are being cool - they are doing it because it is necessary for the best possible product.
I dont think anyone is complaining that open beta has not started. They are concerned that there is no closed beta consisting of players outside the employ of Aventurine. Companies dont invite people into closed beta because they are being cool - they are doing it because it is necessary for the best possible product.
But closed beta test can be done by professional beta testers as well. Necessary is too much for a word used here. Let the developers decide whats necessary for THEIR game.
Well here are two threads written by a developer on May the 9th and Tasos wrote another update on the 23rd. Ok the last one was 2 weeks ago. I say thats pretty recent.
Darkfall Dev Journal #26: Questions Answered
May 23rd Update
This is not an update as much as it is checking in with the community. Just to inform you about the sparse updates: they’re due to an urgent health problem that landed me in the hospital for a week and I’m still trying to catch up with work.
Our main contact has left Warcry so we’ll see what we’ll be doing with the Journal there. We will be giving out a few interviews to various mainstream media and we will try to keep some specialized updates for the core Darkfall community. We’re looking at releasing a comprehensive video sometime in the next few weeks. We’re doing this ourselves and our first priority is working on the game, so we can’t just slap something together in a couple of days. We also won’t hire a production company to make a Darkfall-inspired cartoon for us, so we’ll be using actual Darkfall gameplay footage like we always do.
I don’t have the time to continue last week’s Q&A but I’ll address some specific concerns stemming from it:
I dont think anyone is complaining that open beta has not started. They are concerned that there is no closed beta consisting of players outside the employ of Aventurine. Companies dont invite people into closed beta because they are being cool - they are doing it because it is necessary for the best possible product.
But closed beta test can be done by professional beta testers as well. Necessary is too much for a word used here. Let the developers decide whats necessary for THEIR game.
You say it can. I say it cant. nuff said.
Chryses - oh, thanks, but I thought you meant interaction with the community. The devlogs are old news to anyone here.
I dont think anyone is complaining that open beta has not started. They are concerned that there is no closed beta consisting of players outside the employ of Aventurine. Companies dont invite people into closed beta because they are being cool - they are doing it because it is necessary for the best possible product.
But closed beta test can be done by professional beta testers as well. Necessary is too much for a word used here. Let the developers decide whats necessary for THEIR game.
You say it can. I say it cant. nuff said.
Chryses - oh, thanks, but I thought you meant interaction with the community. The devlogs are old news to anyone here.
Ah ok...
Well I would be more concerned if I didn't see anything come out of the website etc. The game will launch and who knows if it will be any good or not. I think it has a crucial place in the marketplace but lets see. The only reasons this game won't launch are
1: its a hox and there is no game (highly unlikely)
2: Investors pull out and they can't get funding to finish it (in this case they may launch to try and gain funds with a bad product....Vanguard all over again)
Other than those 2 reasons I ask the question what else would stop this game being launched like they say it will. They even have stated that they will not give a hard date because they do not want to push back the date like their competitors. They want to state a date and go with it, which I prefer. Still miffed about WAR being pushed back to the end of the year and I even understand the reasons for it.
promises dont pay the bills.
believe what you want... personally i think they are throwing everything they have into the development up until they announce beta, at which point they will invest in the usual amount of website overhaul and PR.
what's the point of hyping your game before it's ready? what's the point of spending time making videos and generating hype and disclosing your good ideas before you're ready?
they clearly have a strategy, just that people who like to be handheld and fed with hype (lies) can't handle it.
Here is the life cycle for Darkfall Online in the near future IF they what they say is true.
The fanbois screams, "It's beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's open beta, but it is still beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's just launched, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It's only a month old, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It has potential!"
Saying that, it is the same with every game that launches.
But OP, you are wrong. After SEVEN years of development, the "BETA" excuse is old and doesn't fly. They have AI bots doing their beta testing for them. Tasos said, they don't need us to test the game.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
I am hoping this game comes out as well I would love to try it when it does, and if it doesnt hit shelves oh well im not bothered either way, but looking at all the idiots ranting incessintly for the good and for the worst has given this game more spotlight than any other pr coul;dve, good job haters and fanbois you are doing exactly what they want, as for me , yeah it woul;d be nice to see this game come into reality as I would try it, but if it doesnt no big deal.
playing eq2 and two worlds
I think at this point it's pretty simple.
IF the game doesn't launch this year or very early next year then it isn't going to. I've drawn my line in the sand in that I expect to be able to log on and play this game by January of 2009. If not, I will simply not bother following it anymore.
Besides, Fallen Earth (which has weekly updates and gameplay videos) will launch in the relatively near future with FPS combat, skill-based, and sandbox world.
I would love to believe that avos, but if and when darkfall comes out its gonna eat at you and stare at you like a toy you never opened until you just cant help but to at least try it, im just saying that from my personal experience lol, it happens to me all the time only downfall to what it was happening with landed me in rehab and N/A and i am now 2 years straight, i am addicted to mmo's now and when i see one i havent at least tried it rolls around in my head, i himmm and hawww about it till i snap and try it lol.
playing eq2 and two worlds
Here is the life cycle for Darkfall Online in the near future IF they what they say is true.
The fanbois screams, "It's beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's open beta, but it is still beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's just launched, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It's only a month old, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It has potential!"
Fantasy story.
Saying that, it is the same with every game that launches.
But OP, you are wrong. After SEVEN years of development, the "BETA" excuse is old and doesn't fly.
Calendar years irrelevant for game development the unit is man hours invested.It is your point what "doesn't fly".
Thanks to Isane, Galadourn posting and pointing these out on another thread here.
They have AI bots doing their beta testing for them + professional beta testers . Tasos said, they don't need us to test the game.
Bare lie , Tasos never said that or link please.
Unfortunately one of the many reasons why some of us are non believers is precisely because we are going to their website, and have been doing so for many years.
Because what we see in are opinion does not exactly assure us that the company behind such a website will definitely successfully launch the most complex, largest, and revolutionary MMO with the biggest features list ever in under 6 months time.
I personally agree that especially the most recent screenshots show a significant amount of aesthetic improvement over previous ones, but what they still in my opinion fail to show is very little of anything significant or of substance.
The majority of them are still the empty terrain or characters standing in empty terrain types despite there obvious graphical improvements, until we start getting screenshots clearly demonstrating the major features of the game I will remain skeptical.
You might not personally blame them for not having a beta early, but the people like myself who have signed up for 2 of the betas that they canceled or have got sick of them dangling the beta soon carrot in-front of the community every year certainly feel justified attributing blame.
What you class as 1000’s of trolls shouting how crap a game is, could also be interpreted as 1000’s of testers providing critical feedback about a game.
And many of us are perfectly well aware of the beta process and how crucial it is to adequately testing a game before launch, that again is precisely one of the many reasons that we are skeptical that this game has enough time to be adequately tested before a successful launch this year.
Here is the life cycle for Darkfall Online in the near future IF they what they say is true.
The fanbois screams, "It's beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's open beta, but it is still beta!"
The fanbois screams, "It's just launched, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It's only a month old, give it time!"
The fanbois screams, "It has potential!"
Fantasy story.
Oh, I think Shannia was pretty close to reality there, more so than yourself.
Saying that, it is the same with every game that launches.
But OP, you are wrong. After SEVEN years of development, the "BETA" excuse is old and doesn't fly.
Calendar years irrelevant for game development the unit is man hours invested.It is your point what "doesn't fly".
Do you have a written record of the "man hours" invested in this game for us all to see? No? Didn't think so. So calendar years are not only relevant, but they are the only standard of measurement your precious Tasos has allowed.
Thanks to Isane, Galadourn posting and pointing these out on another thread here.
They have AI bots doing their beta testing for them + professional beta testers . Tasos said, they don't need us to test the game.
Bare lie , Tasos never said that or link please.
It's been linked a hundred times. Go sniff it out yourself.
3: They have built a game, but it is incomplete, and buggy as hell. Even more time and money will only add polish to a turd.
That is one reason you missed, and the more likely, IMO.
3: They have built a game, but it is incomplete, and buggy as hell. Even more time and money will only add polish to a turd.
That is one reason you missed, and the more likely, IMO.
Are you describing SWG?
3: They have built a game, but it is incomplete, and buggy as hell. Even more time and money will only add polish to a turd.
That is one reason you missed, and the more likely, IMO.
speculation, could be, could not be, you don't know.
word of developers:
"Darkfall is feature complete".
3: They have built a game, but it is incomplete, and buggy as hell. Even more time and money will only add polish to a turd.
That is one reason you missed, and the more likely, IMO.
Are you describing SWG?
hehe to name a serious developer you can fully trust LOL because he is BIG LOL and has a HISTORY of publishes that received a LOT of beta testing with HUMANS LOL before the ROARING SUCCESS LOL.
9/30/03, Tasos sez:
Overall we're very happy with the progress, we don't have any serious problems, and we believe that we'll be able to deliver an advanced beta build for playtesting before long.
What you can look forward to in the immediate future as we move forward with our closed beta, is the beta registration process for individual players and for guilds to open up, a new Darkfall website, screenshots from our current build, in-game movies, and of course our regular content updates.
Yeah, we can believe these guys. It would be CRAZY to doubt them!
9/30/03, Tasos sez:
Overall we're very happy with the progress, we don't have any serious problems, and we believe that we'll be able to deliver an advanced beta build for playtesting before long.
What you can look forward to in the immediate future as we move forward with our closed beta, is the beta registration process for individual players and for guilds to open up, a new Darkfall website, screenshots from our current build, in-game movies, and of course our regular content updates.
Yeah, we can believe these guys. It would be CRAZY to doubt them!
I see NO "feature complete" 2003 .
But as i said in answer to your OP 2003 they were to optimistic and maybe not experienced enough and talking about beta /release too early.
No, you didnt see "feature complete", because that was not the point. The point was they talk shit. They spin. They say stuff that isnt true and that pattern repeats itself up to the present time! Apparently, they dont learn from experience.
Maybe you can help me out. Can you point out a few of these recent dev threads?I dont think anyone is complaining that open beta has not started. They are concerned that there is no closed beta consisting of players outside the employ of Aventurine. Companies dont invite people into closed beta because they are being cool - they are doing it because it is necessary for the best possible product.
But closed beta test can be done by professional beta testers as well. Necessary is too much for a word used here. Let the developers decide whats necessary for THEIR game.
I will try once more.
Beta Testing requires customers to be in it. The client is the one testing (no, not client as the client program but as the customer).
This is common knowledge in IT but lets try to prove it to you.
Lets start with an easy definition (in what is LOL):
http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci211654,00.html
Now, everyone loves wikipedia... no idea why cuz its produced by us and not really anyone controling it but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
When it says "users" it means clients/customers... not paid testers.
And I think whoever compose this was very correct when he/she said "A beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software"
So paid internal testers are NOT beta.
You dont like my definition, whatis definition or wiki's... ok... here are more:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/beta-test.html
In this case the person defniting adds soemthign interests: "it is released to selected customers for testing under normal, everyday conditions of use to spot the remaining flaws."
This is reflecting the fact that a close beta can be one where NOT everyone can get in. But still it refers to people outside the company. Internal testar are NOT beta. The company can decide to whcih customers it gives the beta. Not all the customers will get in beta.
You still dont like all that definitions that adds customers in the test... ok... here are more definitions:
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=beta+test&i=38566,00.asp
"A test of new or revised hardware or software that is performed by users at their facilities under normal operating conditions" Again the user here is our customer.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/beta_test.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/beta-test-site?cat=technology
In this last definition the "organization or company" is the customer who reports results to the vendor, which is Aventurine in this case.
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=betatest
I could keep just pasting links.
I tried to explain all this in other post. I was difining it based on more than a decade as project manager and my studies... so I was defining it based on just my experience. Now I just added a lot of stupids links to show how other people define it. Which doesn't really proves anything except that many people thinks beta must have the customer/client/user in it.
Imho, DFO is not in beta. If Tasos didnt lie, it's in alpha.
As Theodgrim said lets agree that for some of us a beta test (open, close, internal, external, whatever) must contain final users (people outside the company). For us, anything tested wiht just employees are just internal test (integrity test, alpha test, whatever). And lets agree that for you that is not the case and that you think employees testing a system, without any final user testing it, is a beta test.
We can agree that we dont agree in the definition, cant we?
PS: sorry for my english. It was already proved in other post that soemtimes I express really incorrectly in english making myself hard to understa. Apologizes in advance for that.
Different sources different strategies on Beta Test
here is DarkFall developer strategy on Beta Test
"Darkfall is feature complete and we're doing beta testing using professional testers as we've said before. Our policy on testing has always been that it's to aid the developers in making Darkfall as stable as possible, and not to aid some artificial goal like investor relations, or public relations. We don't care about that and the effectiveness of testing based on these goals is very questionable judging by the beta leaks everyone is accustomed to and which have been hurting the games in question. It's also not good for the players because they usually don't enjoy the experience. We don't expect playtesting to sort out major problems, other than getting reports on hardware configurations and further testing out some gameplay features."
I won't even dive into my normal "this game is a sharade" speech I usually do, because there are technical matters to be discussed. I like technical matters, because they can be researched and understood. They exist in a world of facts. My personal opinions about DF being real or not rely more on common sense, and regardless of how NICE common sense is...it is NOT centered in absolutes.
First, I'm going to approach this whole "beta" thing. Lets get this out of the way...there is no bot program testing a game. Just the ideal of such a thing is stupid...and technology has already proven to be unable to deal with such a thing. Don't believe me? I'll use a tame example. During the AoC beta they ran a simple debugger at all times. Just this one program (which, mind you, performed mere menial tasks) diced player performance to its very bone. Trying to run all of these bot programs (which would need to be terribly complex...far more so than any mere debugger) locally WHILE keeping the game running optimally to ensure the bots tested properly would be impossible. The BEST likely result would be watching their entire server system erupt in flames as the computers themselves rose up to slay their slave driving, merciless masters. In not-make-believe-terms that would essentially be me saying, shit would crash, the game would be unplayable from lag, and someone would likely need a nitrogen cooling system to prevent the bloody office from catching aflame.
The second issue, and the one MOST relevant to the matter of using ACTUAL players en masse in a beta, is the matter of optimizing system code. Without an actual beta, using actual player...and MANY of them, you cannot possibly optimize your code properly. You see, there is virtually no other way to test multiple configurations. So, unless you want us to believe that Aventurine has enough money to build every possible configuration available to their required specs...the ideal that they CAN test well enough without real players is bullshot. Just look over at AoC and its own issues, many PC's running with its recommended requirements cannot even play the game. That's because some interesting configurations managed to slip though their ignorantly short and controlled beta process. For a polished game that is playable to as many people in your chosen demographic as possible...you MUST employ a beta open to the public in order to catch those issues before the game hits live. Free trial or not, a person will often never return to a game once experiencing those kinds of problems on a live server.
Now, if any of you would like to discuss anything I've said here...feel free. But, I'm going to tell you straight out that I'm not even going to bother replying to a post if I notice even a glimpse of blind faith involved when technology is concerned.
<modedit>
Lol, keep dreaming.
Do you know for certain?