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[Review] Darkfall: Unholy Wars: A Tough But Rewarding Nut to Crack
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
For the past several weeks, we've been delving into Darkfall: Unholy Wars, and after along week spent experiencing the clan warfare, and more "hardcore" aspects of DFUW, we're ready to put a final stamp on our critique. Read on to see what conclusion we've come to in our official review.
Read the rest of our official Darkfall: Unholy Wars Review.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
Good review from a player who obviously likes this genre
Would of been interested to know if you ever played DF1 and the feeling you got when you rode into war with your clan. One of the main attractions in the game is definitely the feeling of PvP and how it makes your blood race like no other.
Immortals [EU] - Darkfall Clan: http://immortals-online.eu/
Read my "funny" DF1 blog: http://casualdarkfall.blogspot.com
Great review. Agree with all the pros and cons. Only thing I am not sure about is longevity... as the game just released that is kind of hard to judge.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
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OK I know this website is a joke but you are giving DF gameplay a 9/10? Insane. The gameplay is garbage, even worse than the original. The melee combat is clunky, archery is worse, spellcasting is dumbed down. The game is flat out unacceptable. It may be fast and chaotic, but it's sloppy and unrefined: somehow it's even Worse than DF1.
The progression is simply a dumbed down version of the same thing from DF1 with less options presented. Same thing goes for crafting.
The gameplay deserves a 6/10 at the most. Overall the game is a 5 or a 6.
totally agree!
It's a perfectly fair review written from the perspective of a player new to the game. From the looks of things, the posters above are likely people not happy with the change of direction from the first game, or people who just never got into the game properly (didn't join a clan or not the right clan for them).
I believe the review is accurate on the listed rating categories. There are some performance issues and the graphics can be dated in some parts of the game, but this game is all about gameplay and the social aspect that connects to it. It's not just the meaningless gankfest people think it is, and outside of some trolls which all games have, the playerbase is more mature than in most games, but this is something an outsider to the game will never understand.
Firstly, DF is good at one thing; proving that full open-pvp MMOs always fail. The numbers speak for themselves. If DF didn't fail, the truth is AV wouldn't have rebuilt the game and tried for a new relaunch.
Secondly, I lost any possible interest in DF when they changed the Maharim, along with all the other races, to be strictly humanoid built with nothing different between any of them except a different skin. Lame
Lastly, the animations are still horrible in DF and players should really stop paying for mediocre games imo.
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com
And overall bitter old man.
Pretty spot on review. I personally disagree with two things. First the "great communication" with the community. AV speaks when they have something to gain on it mostly. Like the weeks before launch, they were rly on top of things. Launch came, and it was back to some "We are working on making the game more stable etc" threads. Then now when first free month was over they provided us with the "Scheduled Content Updates" that lies ahead. But then, they day after going back on their own word from the week before when Tasos said "The ETA for starting to add the finished Dungeons is late next week; we’re just sorting out some final issues and testing". No patch today, and with AVs track record, there won't be one this weekend either. So even if they've gotten better, the communication is nowhere near "great" or worthy of a pro.
The other thing I don't agree upon is the value score. It's way to costly to sub to the game, and also if you didn't get the discount price as a old DF player, it's quite expensive to buy as well, considering the state of the game as of now, with all the missing content. And then to not have the option to get a discount if you sub for more then 1 month is pretty damn weird. Are they already looking for it to go f2p or what?
I agree to the rest. And if they ever fix their engine, that is pretty damn far from OK as of now. Peeps are losing stuff due to constant crashes, and rollbacks, and the ping issue is still alive and kicking etc. But if they do fix the performance issues, and get content into the game, and live up to what they are saying, the game could be rly good, and prolly worthy of a higher score down the road. But there road there will be bumpy if I know my AV...
Edit. Well considering he had the engine as a con, but still give polish 7/10 makes me wonder how that one could be a con then. I think the polish is 2/10 right now with all the crashes, rollbacks and ping spikes. Pretty weird score to give after having the engine issues as a con...
it would be nice to have actual editors that are testing games.. instead of people that write some acticle who dont even play videogames but just collect money from writing this..
A: this game is not even a game.. its a beta version of something what is coming.. you pay over 50 dollars with a sub to play this so called game.. and its not even @ 10% working or finished..
- content is lacking
- rolls are not even complete
- no siege equipements/boats etc.. etc..
B: this company is the worst of all companies ever
C: forum is being heavily cencored currently by mods... from people making critisme about above..
Ill bet you 2 my accounts of darkfall that this game will not be finished or @ least in a decent state in the end of 2013
True follower of the old version for 7 years
Initial thoughts:
I see that you've been writing for MMORPG.com since 2012 and are a freelance writer. Okay, so perhaps you're new to MMO games or nobody has ever tried to edit your work to make it better. In my previous life I have written professionally and along the way took a lot of edits from folks (which i initially scorned but soon learned that it made me a far better writer). What follows is a short list of things you really should think about when writing about MMO games and writing in general.
Let's go over your review:
1) Aesthetics: The definition of Aesthics is how it looks. Yet the vast majority of your review (in terms of words spent on the subject) of this section is bad coding and crashing. Did you deliberately put the game crashes in this section because you can't think of what to write about the graphics/images/looks of the game, or did you simply forget you have the Polish section (is the game finished/polished. You did mention optimization again in the Polish section as an aside. Why put it in both?
Second, if you're going to compare graphics to TERA or GW2 and say they aren't as good, why not say which game you think the graphics in Darkfall are better? I mean, if you give it a 7/10, surely there are other MMO games that have worse graphics. Do you mean to imply that TERA and GW2 are the only 2 MMO games that have better graphics than Darkfall? Hard to know since I'm only told what is better than Darkfall, but I don't know what Darkfall is better than so I can't figure out on my own how decent the graphics are.
2) Gameplay -- Okay, you give it a 9/10 after playing this game for several weeks (according to the intro on the top). Then you add this fun gem: "Unfortunately I wasn’t able to experiences the full on sieges and organized clan wars. It is the most interesting aspect about the game, and makes for a hell of a lot of fun." So, you played for a few weeks and didn't get to experience the best part of the game, yet felt compelled to write the review? Who writes a review of the game and admits they didn't do the best part? Furthermore, how do you know it's the best part of the game if you didn't experience it? Is this from someone else's review of the game? Is the 9/10 because you hear that part of the game is really good (and thus the score of the game you actually experienced is lower?), or is it 9/10 based upon the game you actually experienced and would be perhaps a 10/10 based upon getting to experience you have been told is even better?
Did you compare other recent MMORPG.com reviews of games that got a 9/10 for gameplay to try to set as a comparison? Did anyone at MMORPG.com help you in this regard?
You also mention that you have never played in an open world PvP sandbox game. Really? Ever hear of EVE? It's a fairly popular game (often highlighted on this very website) that perhaps people at an MMORGP review site should be familiar with and have played. Maybe get some experience playing other types of MMOs before reviewing MMO games, so as you can compare the gameplay with EVE. It clearly stands out as a big red warning sign for your review.
Innovation - 8/10? You seem to give it a high-score simply because it is a sandbox MMO. While i agree sandbox games are not as common as themepark MMO games, I don't think it qualifies as innovative, just uncommon. So, here's the definition of innovation from Merian-Webster: "The introduction of something new." While sanbox games are uncommon, they are not NEW. However, since you mentioned you haven't played that kind of game before, hence it falls into this section unfortunately.
You do mention the leveling system which you believe is innovative. I would have focused more on this aspect since you said, "[it] is something which I haven’t seen outside a traditional leveling system."
Social: 9/10 - You did say that you played with another MMORPG.com staff member and his guild. Sort of creates a bias if you join people from work in the game. Still, I would agree that in a well-done sandbox PvP game, social tends to be a very important (and fun) part of the game and often leads to very high scores.
Longevity - No comment, that's pure opinion.
Value - I have a comment. You say "In addition to this, content is always being added." Interesting. It would be nice when you say stuff like that to give some facts. How often is "always"? What content was added? If it is on the expensive side, you'd have to compare how often it is added and the amount of content to another MMO game that isn't as expensive and also very popular (so it's easy to compare). You provide no data and no comparison.
Don't say stuff like "the developers are always striving to make their game better." Please tell me which developer of a MMO game isn't trying to make the game better? Was this an attempt to make this section longer and ran out of things to say? See my comment on data and comparisons for things to add to this section, rather than silly "they're working really hard" comments.
End thought to the writer-
Yeah, I'm a harsh critic of MMORPG.com reviews because long ago they were really all glowing with how wonderful everything was. Thankfully, people like Bill Murphy eventually stepped in and changed the review process to remove such bias. While I think most of the reviews have been better since then, I would have to say this review certainly needed an editor.
To my friends at MMORPG.com staff (that are probably tired of me reviewing their reviews):
You should carefully screen people hired to write reviews to ensure that they have played a similar game and are very familiar with several MMO games and have someone provide helpful edits and suggestions to freelance writers. When they give a 9/10 score on something, you have to compare that to other games that also got a similar score (8/10 - 10/10) and make sure that's consistent, especially when the writer comments that game "crashes were normal." A game that crashes all the time just got a 9/10 gameplay score. Is that the new standard? Did anyone but me notice that?
Legit review.
Had me worried with week 2 review-in-progress George, but this write-up captures the essence of what DFUW offers.
Aesthetics - 7/10, maybe, just maybe
Gameplay - 9/10, worst UI ever and horrible control, seriously a 9????
Innovation - 8/10 , you're right, it is
Polish - 7/10, more server downtime and rollbacks then any other MMO in history
Social - 9/10, did you even try the chat channel? if you had it you'd rate it 0
Longevity - 8/10, not even close, it'll be dead by the end of the year
Value - 7/10, watching paint dry is more buck for your money
Did they pay you to write this, or are you a fan boy? This game won't last very long, maybe the end of the year. AV is crap and they won't even post there mistakes on there official website but they post it on Facebook,......
How can you give this game any credit for innovation or gameplay when it is simply doing UO circa 1999, but a whole lot worse?
Perhaps this review is another sign of how desperate the sandbox-loving crowd is for a game that they'll try and put so much makeup and a dress on turds like this?
Man oh man do I hope games like AA and EQNext and maybe something like Black Desert work out well for ya'll, this is just sad.
"People either love it or absolutely hate it"
yep look at these comments, some people are so dedicated to smearing this game on these forums its like a full time job for them.
My blog:
While I do agree to most of the review, it sure leaves one wondering how much he was affected by playing with RipperX, that promotes DFUW more then any1 else all over the internet. Bill Murphy even answered a fanboi that wondered why he didn't let RipperX review the game? Bill said that he hired this guy to get a more objective view of the game, since RipperX were very biased towards the game himself. Then he ended up playing with him. Hmm...
SBE1 spotted alot of flaws with this review that I missed myself when I read it.
You know you can PM the writer with your suggestions? That might have been the better route to take than posting that wall of text.