Paragus Rants

MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog - I've seen it all. The good times and the bad. I am the stereotypical veteran, guild leader, and lover of MMOs. Join me in an objective discussion about what went right, what went wrong, and simply how it is.

Author: Paragus1

Review: Aion Beta Weekend

After my last entry about some of the upcoming MMOs, luck would have it that I was able to get a chance to play Aion during one of their recent beta preview weekend type events.  Today I am going to try to give you my impressions from playing during the recent weekend event that had a level limit of 10, but did allow players to make characters from both of the game's factions.  While I will be the first to admit that 10 levels is hardly enough to review much of anything, but I think I got a chance to sample the game and take a look at various aspects that were present.

Just to recap quickly here before I get started, I went into this with a few preconceptions about the game in terms of graphics, polish, and whether or not the game would be bringing anything new to table.  I have seen some pretty remarkable screenshots of the game, so graphically I set the bar pretty high.  The game has also been out in a foreign market for a while, so I expected a fair amount of polish.  In terms of innovations I approached Aion with fairly low expectations.  As soon as the log-in screen popped up as seen above, I felt somewhat reaffirmed that graphically I would not be disappointed. So with all that being said, let's get started!

Character Creation

Before we can do anything, we have to create a character.  The game is based around 2 main factions that are to be pitted against each other akin to what we have seen in Warhammer and World of Warcraft.  One of the main differences with Aion is that the game only features 2 races to chose from, the Elyos (Angels) and the Asmodian (Demons).  If your used to some of the other RvR MMOs out there where each team has several races to chose from, this might concern you as it did me.

As soon as I saw the actual character creator, my concerns about character customization for my appearance pretty much vanished.  I have to say in all honesty that Aion sports one of the most customizable character creators I have seen. Aion gives you infinitely more options than many of its competitors, and rivals and possibly exceeds Age of Conan.  For starters, the creator has a color palettes that enable you to make almost any part of your character into any color you can imagine.  This opens the door for some very creative and also very silly looking toons.  Hair, skin, and lip color can be anything from standard colors to wild shades of green and purple.

Sliders and more sliders.  This creator has sliders for everything you mind can think of, as well as stuff probably wouldn't have considered.  When you make your character, the 2 main aspects are designing your face and your body.  The body creator has 12 sliders alone, one of which includes a height slider that can make your character as small as a child or a tall as an ogre.  As if that wasn't quite enough, the face customizer has another 25 sliders!  It's very easy to lose yourself at this point, and if it wasn't a beta, I might have been there for quite some time trying to sculpt my guys face.  In conclusion here, there are enough options to make your character look unique despite the fact there are only 2 races to chose from.

The other decision you have to make is what archetype do you want your character to be, as well as the gender of your character (this is actually done before the customizing step).  This probably where my first beef comes into play.  I am the type of person who would rather pick a class right out of the gate, rather than an archetype.  My concern with this route is that you do not actually get to play the class you want until you have put in 9 levels into your guy.  While this is not really a large time investment by any means (took me 90 minutes my first time), I'd like to find out sooner rather than later if the class I am going to be is to my liking without having to invest the time to find out.  I don't want to put in the time and finally get to my class only to find out it's not a good fit for me, then have to reroll and repeat the early content again just to try again.

User Interface

The Aion User Interface is pretty much the cookie-cutter UI we have seen from most of the traditional style MMOs in recent memory.  If you spent any time at all playing WoW, EQ2, AoC, or WAR, you will pretty much feel right at home instantly.

You will find most of the standard UI elements here along with the ability to customize it a bit.  Aion gives you 3 rows of hotbars to be stacked on top of one another, but they remain completely invisible if there are no abilities dropped into them.  Aion also uses the same exact keyboard buttons assigned to some of the basic functions from previous MMOs as well.  Again if you have played a recent traditional MMO, you will find yourself open your inventory, character window, map, etc. without even having to look up the predefined assigned key.

The character window itself is broken into several different tabs of information.  The main screen features the standard equipment paperdoll which is accompanied by all of your characters primary stats, defensive skills, and resistances.  Below that you will find your backpack contents and gold totals.  One confusing things for me was the fact that instead of using the term backpack, Aion calls it the "Cube".  The cube initially only has a limited number of slots, but there is an NPC who will expand your cube for a fee.

Another interesting aspect is that much like Warhammer Online, Aion also features an unlockable title system. It seems that by completing certain quest or quest chains you can unlock new titles to be displayed next to your name.  What makes this system a bit different than WAR's title system is that the Aion titles actually have different bonuses associated to them.  I was able to unlock Tree-Hugger by completing one of the early quest chains that gave me an accuracy boost.  The list seems to have 50 hidden titles in total, so most likely there will be certain titles that end up being favored by certain classes in the game because of the bonuses they give.

Combat

Aion's combat style follows the traditional MMO style combat from games like WoW, EQ2, and WAR.  The game features the standard tab targeting system, and activated abilities that are on various different cooldowns.  The game's mini-map color codes aggressive monsters as red, and when you target them you even see their aggro radius as if it were a tiny radar.

The combat sounds and animations struck me as being pretty well done. While the combat seems to be in many ways the same recycled form of combat we have seen in the last few MMOs, it does feel responsive and look well.  The game's combat does feature positional attacks and a combo type system for chaining weapon attacks together.

They really seem to go out of their way to make the skill chains easy to learn compared to some other MMOs.  As an example, the character I picked was under scout archetype.  One of my stun attacks can only be performed directly after my character evades an incoming enemy attack.  In some previous games, it would be up to the player to watch the combat very closely for the evade message or animation. In Aion, when my character evades I get a visual flashing effect on the ability that pretty much screams "press me!", that get accompanied by another visual in plain view near the center of my screen.  This makes it fairly user-friendly for even new and inexperienced players to know when to seize the opportunity to use a situational skill.

One final quick note here.  This game also seems to feature items that can be socketed with other stat boosting items to give very specific effects much like the Warhammer talisman system.  The stones can be popped into both weapons and armor and seem to drop fairly regularly off of mobs I fought.  They effects I saw ranged from adding HP and MP, all the way to boosting crit chances and evade percentages.  This gives a little bit of room for the player to mess around with various set ups, and the stones can be removed from a special NPC in case you want to try a different stone.

Quests

Questing in Aion is pretty lame to be honest, there just isn't really any other way to say it.  You can tell as soon as you talk to your first NPC that your questing career in Aion will pretty much consist of the same drab recycled kill and collection quests that we have seen in WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR etc. Quest NPCs can be spotted by the usual floating icons over their heads to indicate quest offerings or turn-ins.

This is yet another game where the work of a hero is to collect flowers, kill animals, collect dingleberries, and do some part time work for Fed-Ex.  I won't harp on this too long as I have already ranted on this countless times in the past, but there really isn't much anyone can write at this point in a quest box to make collecting sacks of grain into something heroic.  I didn't really care for it in Warhammer, but at least Warhammer mixed things up with their public quest system, there just isn't anything along those lines here to help break up what will be a long chain of tedium.

The one thing Aion seems to do a little different in the quest department is their campaign quest system.  The quest journal is divided into normal quests and the campaign quests.  Each of Aion's major zones seems to feature a campaign series of quests.  These are pretty much a long series of quests that chain together that help walk you through the area and give you a little story at the same time.  The initial level 1-10 noobie area campaign seems to revolve around the fact that you have lost your memory and need to try to recall it.  The bad news is these quests pretty much are the same exact kill and collection quests you will find in the other part of your journal.  When the campaign starts, you will see all of the quests listed with the recommended character level for it, although at the start you can't see the specifics of the quests.  As you start to progress through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to see quests further down the list as well as their reward.

The one saving grace about the campaign system is that they do seem to go a little out of their way to help drive home the story element that comes along with some of them.  A lot of these quests will reward you with cutscenes at various stages to help give you an idea of what is going on.  Not all cutscenes seem to be created equally though.  In the quest to recover your lost memory, the final stages have some pretty impressive and entertaining ones (as seen above), but at the same time there are some that tell you a farm has been pillaged that seem unnecessary.  I'll take anything that helps break up the tedium though I guess.

The World

I wanted to devote a section here about some observations I made about the world and some features it has.

The first thing I want to touch on are the graphics and the games performance.  This game probably has the best graphics of all the traditional MMOs on the market with the exception of Age of Conan which I think has a completely different art style.  Performance wise, the game runs great on a wide variety of systems.  I also have to say the sound and music seemed pretty well done as well.  A lot of the musical scores I heard in some of the various areas seemed to be professionally composed and helped add to the immersion factor.

There are a lot of familiar features to Aion that seems to have been copied from other games.  I noticed right out of the gate that they have flight masters for flying you across a zone the same as found in WoW, EQ2, and Warhammer.  The only difference here is that instead of riding a flying animal, your character uses a special pair if wings to fly himself over to wherever he is going.  Aion also seems to have a working mail system and auction house system in place much like its competition.  One good feature that I think is new to this game is a fast way of selling vendor trash type loot at the merchants with a single button.  One thing that I did find somewhat annoying was the fact that binding to a new location costs money.

One of my biggest concerns regarding the world is the layout of it.  The world is divided into 3 parts, one of the Elyos, one for the Asmodians, and the Abyss PvP area in the center.  Each of the race's section of the world map seem to be divided into 5 main zones and a city.  After leveling from 1-10, I had completely exhausted the first zone, leaving 4 more to be explored.  Given the amount of areas remaining, and the number of levels I have yet to climb, I suspect that the game is extremely linear in terms of how you progress through the content and the map.  In a lot of other games, you are given choices on which zone you want to spend your time adventuring in at any given level.  Since other games have multiple races and multiple areas to go with them, in WoW for example if you tire of the human areas, you can head over to the elves for a change of scenery and content.  I fear that Aion will send you down a very narrow set of rails in order to reach the max level with little room for deviation.  This can be worse if you decide to level up an alt because you will be forced to do all of the exact same content you did the firs time around in all of the same places, including the campaign quests.

This leads to me another concern regarding how someone will experience PvP during the leveling process.  In Warhammer Online, each area you level up is connected to an area controlled by the enemy.  This means that if someone really wants to experience the games PvP at any stage, they only need to wander over towards the local hotspot.  While I haven't seen this during the preview weekend, I have heard there are portals that can open up randomly that send you to the enemy area for PvP.  Depending on how rare these occur, your exposure to the PvP side of the game could be very limited initially.  I like to have an opportunity to test my character in PvP even at the early stages so I can see how well the class I picked handles itself in a variety of situations.

Flight

No doubt one of the main selling points and innovations of Aion is the flight mechanic.  Initially you can't fly right out of the gate when you start, but once you reach level 9 and complete the campaign to get your class you will be able to glide and fly after a ceremony.

The flight system seems to work very well and I found the controls very easy to get a handle on.  In the bottom right part of user interface, there is a little flight indicator that tells you if you can fly in a certain area, and how much flight time you have left.  If you are in a flight-enabled area, you simply press the "Page Up" button for your character to sprout their wings and take off.  Once you are in the air, you can press "R" and "F" to fly up and down respectively, or you can hold your right mouse button down to tilt your altitude.  The meter will start to tick down and when its out your wings will vanish sending you plummeting.  You can manually land or turn off your wings by pressing the "Page Down" button. Sometimes I found the fastest way to get back to the ground safely from high up was do turn off my wings to fall, then turn them back on right before I hit the ground (use this method at your own risk). 

Having a third dimension to the game is definitely a very interesting feature, and flying was genuinely a fun experience. Having that third dimension made finding some quest locations tougher though, as on several occasions I reach the quest waypoint only to realize my real destination was actually high above me on some floating island.  My only beef is that the PvE areas I explored have certain parts you can fly, and others you can't, so you will find yourself hitting invisible walls that force you to land when transitioning to a no-fly area.  I would love to see more areas be flight enabled.

PvP

Unfortunately the limitations of the weekend didn't give me a chance to really be able to check out the PvP.  This is what will inevitably make or break the long term playability of this game.  While I was unable to participate in any PvP, I did notice a few features related to it.

For starters there seems to be a tab on your main character window dedicated to your PvP stats from the Abyss.  The window seems to keep track of your PvP rank, as well as your kills and points earned broken down into various time frames so you can monitor your progress.  Everyone seems to start out as a rank 9 Soldier, and by earning points you can advance through the ranks.  There is also a rank window that breaks down the point totals needed to reach certain ranks, as well as which players on each side are at the top of their game.  Points are earned by killing players in the Abyss, and unlike other MMOs, they are lost when you are killed.  This is one aspect that makes Aion stick out from its competition.  Warhammer and WoW were both notorious for treating people with kid gloves by rewarding them with points even for a loss, while Aion seems to have some sort of consequence for a loss.  This will undoubted stop competitive players from just rushing into fights without any fear of death, which is a good thing in my opinion.

The abyss seems to be the focal point of the Aion endgame and its PvP.  By looking at the map, we can see that it has 3 different layers, and assorted keeps to fight over in it.  I am not really sure how this endgame will stack up against what we saw in WAR, but this is going to be what makes or breaks this game.  The area looks to be a decent size by looking at the maps, and I hope that is the case. If all of the endgame PvP is going to be in this area, it will need to be very large to stop it from getting old.  Despite its flaws, Warhammer had a variety of areas and fronts for people to fight on to add a little variety to the PvP endgame, hopefully this area will offer enough to keep people entertained for a long time.

Conclusion

Aion is a graphically stunning game and has tons of polish.  The game has been out overseas for a little while now, and I think that ultimately that fact will be a large benefit to the North American fans.  Since the game has been out and patched for a while in other markets, NA players will be getting a game that is polished and feels complete.  There are not that many MMOs that have come out in the last few years that players have been able to say that about.  The game has a real focus on endgame PvP, and the patching the game has gone through already has no doubt made class balance less of an issue.  I am glad to see that there is a loss for death in PvP, as bind and zerg rushing seems to plague a lot of other traditional style MMOs that have tried for the same goal.

On the flip side, Aion strikes me as very linear game.  The way the overworld is layed out has me worried that in addition to being constricted, players will be forced to stomach through the same content over and over again every time they level up another character.  Aion also is not a game that is oozing with innovation.  Outside of the flight mechanic, I think a lot of people will legitimately be able to criticize this game for being somewhat of a clone in some aspects of some of the more recent traditional games.  The endgame PvP is going to be the real test of whether or not this game breaks through to people and distinguishes itself from the rest, or if it gets written off as another MMO using an already exhausted formula.  I think despite that, this game will appeal to a lot of people who might be current WoW and WAR subscribers.  The game already has a huge following overseas, so it should be interesting to see how it fairs in a completely different market.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

The Upcomming MMOs

With E3 wrapped up, there seems to be a lot of talk on the MMO community regarding some of the upcoming MMOs that we may have a chance at seeing over the next year.  My guild has been easing up on Darkfall waiting for the NA release so we can have our fresh start, so I figure I'd take a break writing about it for this entry to weigh in on 4 of these upcoming MMOs that have some of the members of my guild talking.

Mortal Online

This is one that seems to spur the most discussion for my guys at the moment, probably because it seems to be marketing itself as Darkfall's competition.  This game seems to be the fallback game for those people who have decided to opt out of Darkfall, although at present time, my guild still loves it.

The game sounds pretty decent on paper or powerpoint, and I sincerely hope it does well.  I am a big fan of anyone who tries to go the sandbox route and give players freedom and open worlds, which is one of the driving forces behind our interest in Darkfall.  So in this regard, I am happy to see some other companies trying to steer the genre in a direction that doesn't offer linear themepark gameplay.

At this stage, I think I have 2 major concerns regarding Mortal Online.

The first concern is whether or not the graphical engine will be able to handle a fair amount of people on the screen at once without bringing systems to their knees.  Darkfall takes a lot of flack from parts of the MMO community over the games graphics not being modern enough, but at the same time it has shown to handle more people fighting in close proximity better than many zoned and instance based games that are seen as being prettier.  Hopefully Mortal will not succumb to Age of Conan syndrome where good graphics become a detriment in certain aspects of the game.

The second concern I have at this stage is the recent announcement to start selling preorders for beta access even though the game will probably not see the light of day for another 6 months, or possibly more.  I don't mind preorders if they are within 4-6 weeks of release, but we are talking about a game that could be delayed until 2010 before all is said and done, and there is not enough footage (in my opinion) at this stage to justify jumping in this far out.  I wonder if the usual forum crusaders and armchair forum accountants will practice what they preached on previous titles or if they will give these guys a free pass on this.  I suppose if there is an option to cancel the preorder, then it might help a bit.  Still it looks like this is one to watch depending on your playstyle.

Aion

This is another game that seems to be talked about a lot lately with their recent North American beta.  I think the one obvious thing about this game that makes it jump out at people are the graphics.  Clearly from a graphic standpoint, Aion seems to be one of the more visually impressive MMOs to come around in a long time.  One of the other good things this one seems to have going for it is the fact that it has already been live overseas for quite some time, so one has to imagine that by the time it releases here that NA players will have the benefit of a game that has already undergone balancing and tweaking from patches.

My main concern with Aion is whether or not it brings anything really new to the table, or will it turn out to be nothing more than "WoW with wings".  The novelty of the graphics will diminish over time, and the game will need to have solid gameplay to back it up.  A lot of attention is given to the fact that you can fly in this game, but a lot of people who haven't been following it may not know that flight time is limited to very short spurts.  I am not sure if there is enough innovation here to peak my interest, but it no doubt might be a threat to WAR and AoC as they share the same target audience.

The other major problem that I think could derail this game's success in North America is the infestation of bots the game has seen overseas.  Much like Lineage 2, Aion seems to have a bot epidemic going on.  Depending on the severity of this, I am not sure if North American players will be as tolerant towards this in a new game.  Hopefully the people behind Aion will find a way to stomp this problem out before the game reaches North American shores, otherwise it may not see the same success it has enjoyed in their home market.

Final Fantasy XIV

I'll be the first to admit that I love FFXI.  This is one of those MMO's that a lot of my guild members have gone back to time and time again.  I think FFXI is probably the best PvE MMO on the market.  The game is relatively inexpensive and gives you an absolutely staggering amount of content for your buck.  Naturally when we heard about another online Final Fantasy game, some of my guildies ears perked up.

FFXI to us is like a spicy food that burns when you bite it, yet it's that burn that brings you back for more.  I think the game's challenge is one of the driving forces behind the game's success.  The sense of accomplishment for doing some of the hard content in this game does feel rewarding.  I think for a pure PvE game to succeed as long as FFXI has, it needs to be difficult to have longevity.

The possible kiss of death to me in the recent announcement was when I read in an interview with some Square-Enix people that FFXIV was going to be geared towards casuals.  To me, that translates into an easy game that will most likely have people breezing through content and possibly bored within 60 days (I hope I am wrong).  They have long stated that this next MMO would not be like FFXI, so I can't say I am surprised.  It also doesn't make sense for a company to release 2 MMOs that would compete against each other (see Mythic).  I just hope that they don't make this game cater to the lowest common denominator and end up giving us another WoW style theme park with Final Fantasy written on the box.  I'm sure the name alone will make it sell a lot, especially for some console players who are not used to MMOs.  Hopefully after all these years SE will come up with a better User Interface than FFXI's.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Everybody loves Star Wars, so it is no surprise that an MMO based on this universe is getting a lot of hype and attention from many corners of the MMO community.  If there is one franchise that deserves to have a good game made after it, this is it.  The current incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies seems to not be doing Star Wars any justice, and with a company with Bioware's track record behind it, it could have promise.  I'll give them credit for being smart enough to set the game in an era where Jedi are everywhere.  Let's be honest for a minute, when most people want to play a game in this universe, do you think they will chose to play a wookie like Chewbacca or a lightning shooting Sith Lord with a lightsaber?  Bioware seems to get it in this regard so despite the other classes, this game looks like it might be on a better track than SWG went down.

The concern I have with the game at this point is the hype.  I watched their trailer of a CGI cutscene of some massive Jedi brawl, but where is the gameplay footage?  They are starting this hype campaign a bit too early in my opinion and are going to end up with a customer base that has unrealistically high expectations.  FFXIV was guilty of this as well, showing no footage of the real gameplay.  Even the biggest steaming pile of crap can have a wicked CGI intro, but that doesn't tell you anything about the real game.  Show me something tangible to get excited about please because I want to be excited about a game like this.  I am buying a video game, not a movie, so show me the money!

They seem to have a strong story element going in this game which is a good sign.  There are not that many MMO's out there I have played outside of FFXI that really had a story with cutscenes, and not little kill quest journal crap not worth reading.  I'd like to hear about any PvP elements this game might have, I am assuming there must be one with all of the Sith and Jedi running around everywhere.  They are definitely running the risk of over-hyping this though given how far away the release date is if they continue to show more CGI cutscenes instead of real gameplay.

Conclusion

It looks like the over the next year or so, there will be a nice variety of MMOs coming out. No matter what game you are playing now, chances are there is one coming down the pipe in the next year that threatens to steal your interest from whatever you are playing now (if any). We also need to make sure to not over-hype these games based on power points or CGI presentations. Hopefully the companies behind these games will start to show us real and extensive gameplay footage so that we the MMO community can decide whether or not these games will actually stack up in reality like they do on paper.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: The Transfer Dilemma

It's been a few weeks since my last entry, but I wanted to talk a bit about the announcement regarding the upcoming North American server, and the character transfer dilemma.  Last week Aventurine confirmed the rumors that there is indeed a North American server coming in the near future, and that they plan to live up to their promise to allow transfers for characters currently playing on the European server.  The essential part of the update reads as follows:

"We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server,  there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet.  Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions."

Community Reaction

The initial reaction in regards to the delay of "months" triggered a collective groan from most of current NA players looking forward to moving. I think most players can understand the rationale behind a delay.  There seems to be a fair amount potential customers who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the NA server before trying the game.  To have such a large percentage of the population with no skills against another large percentage who are throwing around high level magic would definitely be detrimental to the new guys . The issue seems to be with how many months it will be until the wave of high-end characters enter the world.  Hopefully this delay will give new NA players a chance to narrow the skill gap before judgment day.

This also seems to have sparked a lot of debate within the community about whether or not players should opt to ride it out for an undisclosed amount of time on EU-1, or to jump onto NA right at the launch and start fresh.  I think there are definitely a few factors that need to be considered by a lot of the current NA players.

The first thing you need consider is the fun factor. Depending on how much of the current server decides to reroll immediately, and how many more EU players get the game, there is a chance that the current EU-1 server could see a noticeable decrease in population.  The thought of spending anywhere from 2-6 months in that environment grinding my skills doesn't really appeal to me.  On the flip side, everyone on the NA server will be on even ground for at least a little bit, so if the population is solid, there will definitely be some fun fights to be had.

The second thing you have to remember is that if you are currently playing and planning on transferring, you can't take it with you.  It seems pretty evident at this point that when the transfers do go through, you will be going naked.  If you are allowed one character per server, it means you could roll a character on NA at launch and start to accumulate some wealth for you other character when they arrive.  Again on the flip side of this, a lot of people have stockpiles of armor on their current characters, as well as real estate that a lot of people have been "nutcupping" in order to hold.  You can't take it with you, so you mind as well ratchet up the PvP and have some fun with it.  My guild has been going out almost nightly practicing our teamwork in PvP situations while we have the gear to blow.  This increase in our PvP has definitely led to some memorable hate tells, especially after baiting and egging them on in the midst of their rage (although some are definitely good sports).

The Inquisition Plan

So like many guilds out there right now, we had to sit down as a guild and decide what course of action we wanted to take in regards to transfer or rerolling.

When we put our heads together and thought about thing we would do differently given what we know now, the internal guild poll was pretty surprising to me.  Nearly 2/3 of my guild turned out to be in favor of a complete reroll and just walking away from our previous characters.  We like many other guilds, designed our guild around the racial alliances built into the game mechanics, but as we experienced more of the game we came to realize that our playstyle would probably do well under an ARAC (Any Race) clan.  Initially we started out interested in land ownership like many, but after selling our hamlet and going for more a merc style route, we found ourselves having a lot more fun.  From this experience, we now know to focus more on character development and less on getting our name on the political map for our playstyle.

Having played the game for over 3 months now, we have a much better understanding of the differences between the races and how that factors into the game in real terms.  Some of my members have expressed an interest in playing the Mirdain (Elf) on NA because of the innate bonus they have to DEX, which contributes to archery damage.  While we will still probably make fun of them and their manhood, we can't deny the fact that archery plays a large role in PvP and DEX is one of the harder stats to raise.  Some of my guys are looking at the humans which has some of the best base stats of all the races, some others are examining the Alfar because of the lack of PvP restrictions and small size (despite a lower base HP and being KOS to almost everyone).  We still have some people who will remain as Orks and Mahirim simply because they look badass and are familiar with the territory.

One good thing that a lot of my guys like about Darkfall is the fact the guy with higher skills is not always the last man standing.  This game seems to give a lot of room and reward players who can outsmart their opponents and outplay them.  Getting your opponent to over extend, stamina management, baiting, and setting traps are all viable plans that when executed with the proper teamwork can destroy opponents with higher skill points.  It is in this regard that we are not afraid of our fate in PvP by starting fresh, especially when everyone else around us will be as well.

I think the one obvious challenge will be the grind in certain aspects of the game, specifically magic.  Leveling magic up is not only a time consuming venture, but it can be costly in terms of the amount of spell components needed.  I have seen some top level magic first-hand and I can say there are some visually impressive spells that can do heavy wide-spread damage, so in that regards I can understand the need for it to be hard to get.  Hopefully Aventurine will continue to exam the grind in this area to make some of the weaker schools a bit more tolerable to push through.  Looking past this, we are definitely looking forward to having our pings cuts in half or more, and knowing that in our primetime the rest of the server is out and about instead of being asleep.

EDIT: Looks like the patch notes released right after I put this up claim to reduce the grind on magic.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Warhulks

Today I am going to finally be talking about one of the most requested topics from my readers, Warhulks.  Warhulks are the hover-tank looking siege weapons that many of us saw in the hype videos before the game went live.  It's been almost 3 months, but finally the first of these war machines have shown up on the battlefield, and I was fortunate enough to be there to see them in action.

Warhulks are basically heavy duty siege weapons that are land-based, and in many ways works how the ships do on the water.  There are 4 different types of warhulks that vary in size and cannon types.  The warhulk I was able to see in action is called a Vileforge, which seems to be viewed as the most powerful of the 4 types and the hardest to make in terms of skill and cost.  It has taken almost 3 months for the server to actually see anyone be able to build these machines, and I will try to explain a bit about why this has been the case.

To build a warhulk, you must first purchase the specific crafting skill which costs 15,000 gold, just like the shipbuilding and artillery (cannon) skills.  All 3 of those expensive crafting skills can all be bought from advance blacksmiths which can be found in many of the clan cities all over the world.  The main holdup was the fact that in the same way a warship has to be built in a shipyard, the warhulks require a special building of their own called a foundry.  Up until a day or two ago, nobody was able to find a city that had a foundry as a building option, and get together the 2,000 building modules needed to construct it in the city.  The Mercs, who some of you may remember from my warship writeup, recently took over a city that had the ability to build a foundry.  They constructed the foundry as quickly as possible and now have a new threat to unleash onto the battlefield.  Needless to say, many of their enemies are not happy with them having this capability.

So let's take a look at the layout of the Vileforge.  The main deck has 4 main weapons that can be controlled.  There are 2 normal cannons that act exactly like those found on warships.  The driver actually sits in a cannon chair that points directly ahead, and the other cannon is located in the opposite position facing directly in the rear.  The Vileforge also comes equipped with 2 flame cannons which mirror those found on some city towers.  The flame cannons are opposite of each other and located on the left and right sides in relation to the driver position.  While the front and rear cannons do similar damage to those found on ships, the flame cannons create a large fire which does around 20 damage a tick to anyone or anything caught in the fire that lingers after it shoots.  The range on the flame cannons is substantially less than the normal cannons, which means for the warhulk to really shine it needs to get relatively close to the structure.  The normal cannons which have decent range also are capable of damaging structures, it just takes a lot longer.

The main deck was a bit larger than I thought it would be as well.  At a glance I didn't think it would hold that many people, but once I climbed on board I was a little surprised.  There is probably enough room on there for 10 Mahirim if I had to guess, and I'm sure you could fit more at the cost of some breathing room.  Much like the warships, you have to climb up a ladder mechanism to get on board.  There were 2 ladders on the Vileforge that were located opposite of each other, but despite this, some naked Alfar managed to get on board somehow, making for a very tight and awkward fight for us as the largest race in the game. I am sure smaller races will be able to fit quite a bit more people onto one of these things than we were able to.

The Vileforge seemed to travel at a speed that was comparable to that of a sprinting player, but not as fast as a mount.  The main issue seemed to be with the steering and handling capabilities as the driver had a lot of difficulty getting a handle on maneuvering it around.  The turning speed in general seemed to be very slow, especially when the Vileforge was at a dead stop.  It seemed that once we started moving forward that turning became a bit easier.  The other major issue in this area is that even though the machine hovers off the ground a bit, it seems to have an issue with constantly hitting obstacles.  It seemed that when people were around the base that it would prevent the machine from moving in certain directions.  This can be especially annoying because in many situations this thing is going to be escorted and accompanied by ground support, and being obstructed by your own forces and escorts can lead to a frustrating situation.

This definitely marks a milestone in terms of warfare in Agon in general.  As time goes on and the server matures, I am sure more people will start to get foundry access and delve into warhulks adding yet another dynamic to the way sieges and wars will be fought.  I will be very interested in seeing the other 3 types in action and see how they differ from the Vileforge in terms of damage and size.

 EDIT: Video of this warhulk from this night can be found HERE.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
 

Darkfall: Post World War I Interviews

Over the last 2 months, Darkfall's political landscape has been dominated by a massive server-wide war.  In my article "Alliance Leader Interviews" one month ago, I tried to set the narrative for Agon's World War I against the Hyperion Alliance ruled by King Manus.  Now one month later, it looks like the sun might finally be setting on the Hyperion Kingdom.

The server wide war consumed the community and reached into almost every corner of Agon.  Originally, the perception was that this would be a cold war in which both sides were mustering up as many allies as possible in order to defeat the other.  Almost every weekend for the last month had multiple sieges going at the same time in a variety of locations, and at the start of every new week, players watched as the political and influence maps shifted around.  Almost every single alliance in the game over the last month has watched their territory and influence shift as war started to literally tear the server in half.

On May 12th, King Manus made a formal post on the Clan Discussion forums announcing that the remaining Hyperion would be surrendering to the Death Alliance. In his post, King Manus lays it all out as only he can do:

"It is for this reason that after a long and successful run, I now capitulate to the blue dots, and such leaders as Obidiah of LOD and Bone of Sinister, who are gentlemen I most enjoyed sharing the chessboard with, and whose tactic of lying low and making strategic use of the more vocal alliances bought them an excellent position. Much like a good billiards player doesn't think only about the ball he's currently trying to sink, but about how much force he needs to apply to set up the next shot, the Death Alliance, the blue dots, are the ones who played their hand most favorably, and of all my three antagonists are now poised with the most advantage on the world map.

Although Hyperion has been significantly reduced, under the terms of our capitulation to the Death Alliance, it will continue, and our final holdings will be preserved. The Death Alliance will receive what remuneration we can still provide as contribution toward their endeavors against whatever new enemy they choose to face."

Considering the amount of support and interest my articles have been receiving from the Darkfall community, I decided to track down some of the key players at the center of this recent turn of events.

King Manus - The Duchy of Wessex (Hyperion Kingdom)

1) The Hyperion Kingdom has been the primary focus of Darkfall's World War I, and clearly a lot of planning went into the creation and running of it. Tell us a bit about what it was like from your perspective at the top of Hyperion trying to manage such a massive collection of guilds and land (27 different clanstones).

At first, Hyperion's feudal structure made the management of the behemoth very easy. After all, the system we were using, feudalism, was used to manage hundreds of thousands of people. The different tiers of the feudal pyramid, along with the royal bureaucracy which was broken into departments handling such things as foreign diplomacy, interior communication, internal revenue, and organizing the military made everything work smoothly and efficiently. Being on top of such a structured machine was everything one would hope it could be. Enough of the cogs were working that I was able to enjoy the fruits of the accomplishment quite thoroughly for a time.

It was only after the departure due to dissatisfaction with the game of those several hand picked staff members who kept those departments running that it became rather a chore, as the workload per individual increased quite dramatically. This in turn encouraged more people to become burned out.

2) Did you ever foresee the possibility that literally half of the server would band together to try to defeat you, and tell us a bit about how you went about fighting against such a large group of players.

Yes, I knew it would certainly happen eventually. There's no way to hide that much territory and influence, and we had been the center of attention on the Darkfall forums for quite some time, even when people thought that the two original clans of Hyperion, Wessex and the Anvil Society, were rivals.

Our tactics against the large groups were much easier to implement in the beginning because of our increased involvement, and the fact that hand picked individuals occupied the leadership positions. This allowed us to execute an organization and field presence that outmaneuvered our foes. This was demonstrated early on, during the Yssam campaign, and even on into the times during the pilfering of Spear Waters from COTC. Having savvy battle commanders from top to bottom made it easy to work in tandem and divide the enemy troops into smaller units.

Toward the end, however, we suffered from the loss of players as everyone did, but we noticed it most significantly in the gaps in our structured command that developed. Other alliances who don't necessarily have that reliance on novel organization, which provides such an advantage if you can get it, don't suffer as much from the loss of certain figures. A bigger mob simply becomes a smaller mob, and works pretty much like it did before.

In the end, our last strategic masterstroke was sieging our own cities on a weekend when we knew a major server attack was coming because we knew we no longer had the playerbase. That kept us going for a couple more weeks.

3) What in your opinion was the most significant turning point in the conflict?

I would have to say it was the loss of Surly, Brando, Nira, and Dulath. Not
only did we lose the Anvil Society, who were sheer excellence in battle, easily worth 3 men for each one, but we lost entire interclan teams devoted to certain aspects of the running of Hyperion. This started to turn us from an organized kingdom into a "regular" mega-alliance, and that made us vulnerable.

4) If you could go back and do one thing different, what would it be?

I would have tried to have made stronger diplomatic ties with Death before COTC did, and when Surly left the game, I would have put more of my personal focus on propagandizing the DF forums, which ironically is the very tool I used to build Hyperion up.

5) During a lot of the major battles, Hyperion employed the use of mercenary guilds to help aid in the fight. What is your opinion on these guilds and the role they play in Darkfall in terms of their effectiveness and viability as a playstyle.

Well, there's no doubt that certain of the merc clans have players who have done nothing but develop their characters for combat, as opposed to the average player who develops a little crafting, harvest, etc here and there. Shuyin Hail and the gang, for example, almost unanimously have weaponmastery skills which double their melee damage, and were pushing the frontier on weapon enchantment R & D. In fact, my royal enchanter for all of Hyperion, who was funded by all the royal taxes from 27 clanstones, had to get new recipes from THEM! Other clans, like Covert Ops and Black Company made major differences in battle for us, and when Hyperion was losing troops to the grind of the game and only had money, their use was crucial to some of our final victories.

6) What does the future hold for King Manus?

Well, other than some real life projects upcoming, such as a martial arts movie called "Fierce Target" and an American martial arts television series, I plan to continue to play Darkfall, enjoying my modest corner of the map. I look forward to perhaps finally getting the chance to simply "play", casually and freely, without the heavy burden of the Crown "upon a troubled brow."

Gluttony SDS - Awful Company (Coalition of the Chillin)

1) Today we finally saw King Manus surrender to the Death Alliance. I think the first thing people want to know if whether or not you will make good on your word to break up the Coalition and restore balance to the server. When can we expect to see the coalition dismantled and what do the various pieces look like?

I saw the "surrender" as well... but if you "surrender" to one army (and when I say "surrender", I mean pay a couple hundred thousand gold for mercy.. remunerations, lol!) when multiple armies are at war with you, all you've done is waste money that could have been spent on preparing for the final fight that awaits them. My promise to break down the CC will be fulfilled when Hyperion is off the mainland and eradicated from Yssam -- this doesn't necessarily mean the Yssam Co. will be attacked but Tempest, you're fucked. Keep in mind it will be interesting to see what Death does when the CC shrinks... nothing against my brothers in Death(sup vehementi), but if you look at the map, there's more blue than purple

2) Tell us a bit about what it was like from a leadership point of view trying to organize and coordinate the a lot of the battles against Hyperion.

Imagine running a multinational corporation that makes you very wealthy and at the same time has you making important decisions that directly affect thousands of other successful and important people. It's a lot like that except replace multinational corporation with online MMO crew, replace making lots of money with neglecting your job/girlfriend(sup boo), and replace making important decisions with yelling at nerds of the internet.

Oh yea, don't forget getting less than 5 hours a sleep every weeknight and 0 hours of sleep on the weekend. War sucks, even in MMO's.

3) What do you think was the biggest turning point in the conflict?

When Hyperion failed to siege eXile's city at 4am on a random Thursday morning. The CC's anzac/euro squad pitched a perfect game during their defense of the city and fought off a Hyperion force 3x their size. This was the first battle that turned the "cold war" hot.

4) Your side has been notorious for the use of spies and propaganda to fight against Hyperion. Tell us a bit about the effectiveness these to get information and rally more people to join your side as the conflict progressed.

I'm not a propagandist... I just tell the truth. People claim I use charm or the "gift of gab" to garner popular support for my cause but the true reason people follow my lead is that they can sense that I'm being genuine about my desire for this game to become a viable place for smaller alliances/larger guilds to replace the 'must zerg' mentality that often plagues games with player run cities. If I was bullshitting this whole time, people would have seen through it and Id have ended up like King Manus -- with 100 Greater Magic and no guild to use it with.

As for the spies... section50 (along with the KGB intelligence guys) is responsible for 90% of our success. Think you can be the next James Bond Jr? Send an email to sectionfifty@gmail.com -- service gets you citizenship

5) What's your take on the other various alliances?

I think we're gonna raid each other for a while as I'm pretty sure everyone is a bit burned out from WWI(now I see why they originally dubbed it 'The War to End All Wars'). Anyone down for starting a League of Gaytions?

6) Where does Gluttony go from here?

Hopefully I can finally relax a little bit and play some DF -- my char's skills are way behind and I've got some tourneys to win. That being said, we have a war to finish... Longmarch won't fall easily -- it's the hardcore loyalists who always fight the most ardently.

Bone Dancer SiN - Sinister (Death Alliance)

I have a relatively unique perspective on Darkfall, you see, I was the "King Manus" of Shadowbane. In that game my actions and my alliances (The Rolling 30's) effectively snuffed out all competition on the server every cycle of beta through the first couple months of final. While I found my play time as a "King" gratifying to my ego, it got pretty boring pretty quick. It was reflection on those events that lead me to work against 'The King' and its reflection on those events that continue to lead me to push every political ally I have against letting CotC gobble up all of that conquered land and influence. Simply put A single consolidated world free of conflict, and inter-guild intrigue is a game I have no desire to play.

It's been a long while since my Darkfall Geopolitical reviews but if you look through them in order you can visualize the game unfolding. Hyperion, Savage Alliance, Stasis, and Dusk each grew to strong and dominant positions before being dismantled by the dogs of war and attrition. Hyperion was clearly the biggest of the pre-game alliances and their eventual fall was prolonged more due to good leadership and organization then any other fact. Most of today's guilds/alliances are shadows of their former selves with most suffering a deflation of sorts and only a select few growing or holding pat. I'm rather found of comparing real world history/politics to in game occurrences and the fall of 'Rome' analogy to Hyperion comes to mind. Hyperion's domination of much of the eastern hemisphere had to come to an end just as it is likely that a new power will fill the void. That said this area simply has to many borders and to many nation-states to ever stabilize for long.

I count my guild lucky to have been one of the few to grow during the Roman Empire's reign, expanding the Sinister holdings from a simple hamlet in the middle of the map to the luxurious Sunthrone, and finally to expanding into two neighboring hamlets. Along the way Sinister has fought with or against nearly everyone of the formerly mighty alliances. While I appreciate the King's nod in Obs and my direction, it really is rather misplaced as the players inside Sinister and the Death Alliance are the real strength. The absolute commitment to an organizations excellence depsite individual sacrifices is the halmark of any great team, or army and Death Alliance membership certainly fits that bill.

Finally, a word of optimism and some advice for the players. Missed in all the posts complaining about siege mechanics, 'the grind', the 'bad pve', has been the fact that the world was still new. Players and guilds alike have been busy trying to accomplish all progression paths at once, stretching nerves and tension to burnout enducing levels. Today however nearly completed towns litter the map, there are now numerous characters with capped magical, melee, or archery skills, and the real game of Darkfall is only beginning. More player time, resources, and effort will be put towards interguild conflict and alliances will form and fall quicker then ever. Those of you that look forward to PVP on a nightly basis can rest assured it is only just around the corner. If the Darkfall team and its community can keep infusions of players coming into the game of Darkfall, the chances of them 'sticking' with this game are only going to improve.

Commentary

To help illustrate what has transpired in the last month, I have both influence maps here dated.

We can see right away on the newer influence map that there are some drastic changes during World War I.  With the exception of the Death Alliance in the Northwest, and the Cairne Alliance in the Southeast, the rest of the map has had regional power shifts.  The DUSK alliance in the Southwest erupted into a civil war that had guilds breaking off from each other, pitting Alfar against Alfar across the desert.  In the Northeast, Stasis alliance has been driven out of Yssam and many of the Hyperion owned strongholds have tried to separate themselves from the Alliance.  The mainland of Agon shows that after a lengthy campaign, Hyperion's holdings have been reduced to only their core holdings around their capital of Long March.  The Coalition of the Chillin managed to substantially increase its numbers by getting more and more guilds to join their cause based on the premise that once Hyperion is defeated, that they would break the coalition up into smaller pieces to try to restore balance to the server.  I think a lot of people are keeping a close eye on them to see if they become the very thing they sought to destroy.

Just to touch on something Bone said about the siege mechanics, there is one particular loophole that I think needs to be addressed.  During this World War, we have seen guilds who are in the same alliance declare sieges against each other for the purpose of abusing an aspect of the mechanic that grants an immunity window.  After a city has been challenged, a siege mechanic grants an immunity window of at least 24 hours where no new challenges can be issued.  This means that guild A can front money to siege guild B, who are both in the same alliance.  Guild A then makes sure they lose the sieges, which gives the money to guild B, who now has an immunity window.  Guild B can then simply trade almost all of the money back to guild A.  This means if you catch wind of a possible attack, or want to make sure you survive the weekend, this can be abused to ensure your security.  In my opinion, you should not be able to challenge anyone who you were recently allied with in the last 24 hours or so.

It's hard to imagine for many playing the game that we have seen so much transpire in only 2 months, and for me and I'm sure many others, it seems like it has been so much longer.  I think much of the game's population is looking forward to turning the page on this chapter of Agon's history, and most people seem to be ready for the day where there are more smaller alliances instead of a few massive ones.  How it all plays out as time goes on is completely out of Aventurine's control and it will be up to the players to write Darkfall's storyline.  With as fast as the map changes, I have no doubt that we will look back at this in a month or so from now and it will feel like ancient history.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

60 Days of Darkfall

It's been about 60 days since Darkfall has gone live, and I figured that I would take some time to give an overall update to how the game is progressing.  There have been a lot of changes since I wrote my Beta Review, so hopefully this should give people a general idea of where the game has improved, and where improvements are still needed.  I write again from the perspective of a guild leader, and someone who has been fortunate enough to see more aspects of the game than perhaps the average player.  I am not going to review the basic game here or go over things I have already talked about in previous articles, instead I am going to focus on some of the changes that have occurred over the last 2 months.

Harvesting

This is one aspect of the game that has really undergone some a variety of changes over the last 2 months.  When the game first came out, a given harvesting node originally held a different amount of resources for each player.  As an example, originally a tree would hold X amount of wood for every player who harvested from it.  This meant that a group of people could all harvest the same node and each person could get 50 wood as a hypothetical number, so 5 people could gain 250 wood collectively from a single tree.  The nodes have since become universal like most games where they have a set number of resources, so that same tree would only yield 50 wood collectively no matter how many people are there.

One major gripe about harvesting originally was the general tedium of it.  Originally the player would have to click each time they wanted to harvest a node, thus a player harvesting that 50 wood would have to click a minimum of 50 times to get it.  This tedium drove some players to get an auto-clicker to take some of the strain off of them.  Fast forward to last week, Aventurine changed the harvesting mechanic so that one mouse click now makes your character auto harvest the node repeatedly until it is depleted.  This was a welcome to change to me personally because I do not macro, and this is one less reason for me to consider doing so.  It also allows me to Alt+Tab while harvesting so that I can take care of other things.

There are still 2 aspects of harvesting that annoy me.  The first is the fact that you do not know a particular resource node is tapped out until you go through the harvesting motion.  I would think that I would be able to tell for the most part if a tree had no more wood to offer before I started chopping, it's hardly a game breaker by any means, it is just an annoyance I would like to see addressed.  The second beef with harvesting relates to me as a guild leader who owns a hamlet with resources.  I can understand the fact that strangers should be able to sneak into enemy cities to harvest their resources, especially given how rare some of the high end ores can be to get.  What bothers me is the fact that I have a farm in my hamlet, and if I do catch someone harvesting from it that I do not like, attacking them results me in me going rogue if they are on my racial team.  I would like to see players outside my guild or alliance be flagged rouge for harvesting from my land without permission, so that I can stop them and protect my property without consequence.

The Trade Channel

In a recent patch, Aventurine added a trade channel as a new tab to the chat window.  While it may not seem like a big deal, I think this was one of the simplest and better improvements that has gone into the game.  Previously, a lot of the commerce in the chat was bunched up in the "Race" and "Race Alliance" chat tabs.  This made it very frustrating to hook up with buyers and sellers for the various goods players were peddling.  These chat channels consist of a cross between WoW Barrens chat and guild recruitment messages, so trying to use them as a platform to sell goods was often unsuccessful.

With the addition of the new "Trade" chat channel, players are given a means to browse the goods of other players as well as to unload some items they might want to convert to cash.  While anyone is free to type anything they want in the channel, I am surprised that most players seem to respect the channel and use it for what it was intended.  The channel broadcasts to all members of your racial alliance, so depending on what race you rolled, you often hit a pretty wide audience with your messages.  This has helped boost economic activity in the game a lot from my own personal experience, and it no doubt helped crafters find a marketplace to link up with buyers for their wares as well as vendors for crafting materials.

Colored Names

I originally brought this up as a personal issue I had with the game during the beta.  My issue stemmed from the fact that the game colored the names of all the people in the game as either blue or red.  This color coding system bothered me and other players because it colored names based on the alignment of the person you are targeting.  This meant that as a Mahirim player, if I spotted another player who was a human, his name would be blue to me despite the fact that he was a natural enemy to me.  This became somewhat confusing, especially for newer players, who would see a blue name coming at them not realizing the person was actually an enemy who intended to kill them.  I mentioned in my beta review that a player's color should be based on their relation to you, not their own race.

Apparently Aventurine listened, because in a recent patch they implemented an entirely new system of color coding that went way beyond what even I had wanted.  Instead of names being just blue and red, Aventurine added a few other colors to help identify people based on their race, guild, and political affiliation.  Players who are members of your guild show up as a bright green, while members of your political alliance show up as a dark green.  This is extremely helpful to me as a guild leader because new people to the guild and the game can quickly identify what other guilds are in our alliance without having to check a list, which in many situations there is simply no time to do.  Blue players now represent all players who are racial allies, and have positive alignment.  Red names are for people who are racial enemies, political enemies, and individuals who have negative alignment.

Alignment

This is another controversial part of the game that has changed a bit since my initial write-up.  The original game mechanics had alignment on a scale that went from positive 100 to negative 100, being on the upside made you blue, and being on the downside made you red. Killing a friendly player on your own racial alliance would cost you somewhere in neighborhood of 8-10 points, depending on whether or not you let the friendly bleed out or you finished him with a gank.  On the flip side, killing an enemy player and ganking him would usually result in a net gain of around 2-4 points.  This meant that under the old system, a player could farm up to 100 positive alignment and then kill upwards of 8-10 people on his own team before going into the red zone.  I used to joke about alignment with my guild as redeemable coupons to go kill friendlies once you hit positive 100 that you could turn into loot.

Well change came to this system, and the cap on the upper end of the scale was changed from positive 100, all the way down to only positive 10.  Suddenly killing someone on your own racial team got much more costly.  Under the new system, even at your maximum positive alignment you would only really be able to kill one friendly at best before going into the negative red zone.  The negative side of the scale remained the same, leaving quite a large hole that a player can dig themselves into if they didn't start respecting members of their own races.  At the same time to make things even stricter, the amount of alignment rewarded for killing enemies was reduced to only 2 points, making that deep hole even harder to climb out of for red players.

My main beef with the system now is that there are times where I do have a good reason for wanting to kill someone on my own team.  Again using the harvesting from my hamlet as an example, if I attack or kill someone from my race harvesting in my farm, I will be on the verge of going red for protecting my property.  This could of course be less of an issue if renegade harvesters were flagged rogue, but it can be an annoyance.  The other part of the system that bothers me personally is the lack of penalties against ARACs (all race clans).  There are a ton of them because of a lack of punishment for opting that route, and it seems a little inconsistent to make players respect the lore with a strict alignment system, but not in terms of ARACs.

Crafting

Crafting is another area of the game that has been somewhat enhanced a little since release.  In addition to some new recipes for various pieces of armor, Aventurine is actively trying to add incentives for people to craft, or seek out crafters to get their equipment from them.  In a recent patch, Aventurine decided to lower the durability on weapons and armor found off of mobs.  In the past, farming mobs for certain pieces of gear became an ideal or preferred over buying from crafters because it was a lot cheaper.  Why pay a crafter when you can farm the same exact item off a mob for free?  With the new durability changes, many of the armor found on mobs has significantly lower durability which means they will break a lot sooner.

One thing I would like to see added would be a "Create All" button for crafting.  There are certain crafting activities in the game that are done in bulk, and like harvesting, it would be nice to have an auto-craft feature that would make as many of a given item as possible without having to babysit and keep clicking every 20 seconds.  The above picture shows a hypothetical situation where I would be wanting to craft a bulk quantity of arrows, but could easily be applied to potions, cooking food, smelting, and woodcutting.  Crafting a stack of arrows takes 20 seconds, and uses a single wood plus a single ingot.  I could conceivably craft 149 stacks of arrows in this picture, but it would take me 149 x 20 seconds to do it, or 49 minutes roughly.  While this is a somewhat extreme case, it would be a godsend to be able to click one button and go do something else, or make the time to craft a bit lower. I think a combination of the 2 ideas would be good.

Performance

It is worth mentioning that the overall performance of the game has been increasing over the course of time since the game has come out.  A lot of my guildmates who have weaker systems have been noticing some frames-per-second increases overall and in some larger battles.  Aventurine seems to be in the habit of dropping one serious patch every week consistently since the game has come out.  Almost every one of the patch notes seems to make some mention of server increases and optimizations.

A real test of the server as a whole came a week or so ago.  One Saturday afternoon, the world erupted into a massive war in which sieges were declared at seven different locations all at the same time.  As more sieges started to get declared, more and more alliances tried to capitalize on the hysteria and declare their own hoping the enemy would be too distracted to defend as well.  Five of the seven sieges actually concluded without a server crash.  Eventually when it came down to the last two, a lot of the server population locked into war mode funneled into one of the sieges and eventually buckled the server.  While the crash is always sad, when you compare what happened that day to situations from a few weeks ago, it definitely looks like the server has skilled up a bit in its own right.

Political Tides

This brings me to state of the political situation in general.  While Aventurine really has no control over this part of the game, I wanted to touch on something I found to be interesting.  If you have read my previous articles about "Alliances and War" and "Alliance Leader Interviews", you might have some understanding about the various sides and why they are fighting.

While Darkfall has had a fair amount of content patched in terms of new quests, the player-driven side of the game seems to be where the bulk of the content comes from.  The above picture is a before and after comparison of one of the subcontinents.  The left is from an influence map I used in my interview article exactly one month ago, and the right is a political map from today.  In a few short weeks, one of the larger and securely situated alliances has been completely shattered.  I think a lot of people get caught up in the meta aspects of the game and don't step back and realize how much the landscape is always shifting and how literally overnight, the winds of change can blow through and completely reshape an area of the map.  We are only 2 months in, and when you step back and think of all the drama, backstabbing, wars, and deals; it has to make everyone wonder what the future holds in store for the players who are actively shaping Agon.

Community

There are scumbags in Darkfall.  The official forums are often used a reference to highlight the level of douchebaggery people expect to see in game.  I'll be the first to admit that I have seen more than my fair share of freaks walking the streets of Agon.  One thing I have not seen much of is hackers, something that I have to say has been overblown to a degree on various forums.  I think in the 60+ days I have been playing, I can honestly say I have seen maybe one or two people with my own eyes that I thought were cheating with 3rd party software.  After the wave of bannings that Tasos handed out a week or so ago, those people have not been seen again.

One thing I will say about the community is that there are a lot of players who contribute a lot of their time to provide the rest of us with tools to better understand the game.  Players have created interactive maps, influence maps, political maps, and alliance spreadsheets.  I hope that someday Aventurine will incorporate some of these into the games basic functionality, specifically the political and influence map which are among my personal favorites.  Another surprising part of the community in Darkfall is the lack of angry hate tells.  In Age of Conan, a game with literally zero penalty for PvP death, my guild would get flooded with all sort of raging freaks.  In Darkfall, a game with a significantly harsher penalty associated with defeat, the hate tells are pretty few and far between, and some of them are actually somewhat light-hearted.  Most of the people who play this game seem to be tempered to the environment, and don't let it get to them too much.

Conclusion

In my beta review, I recommended that most people should probably hold off before buying the game until they worked out some of the kinks.  Is now the time to jump in?  I can say it is a lot better now than it was in the beta, and the frequency and changes in the patches we have been getting makes me think that this game is going to be getting better on a weekly basis.  I'd recommend that if you are on the fence, that you should keep an eye on the weekly patch notes.  It is by no means as polished as some of the so called AAA MMO's in recent memory, but at 60 days in Warhammer, my guild had one foot out the door, and here it looks so far to be going pretty well.  The irony is that despite its flaws, Darkfall performs better than Warhammer Online did with massive amount of people on the screen engaged in PvP.  Other than that, I hope Aventurine will continue to add some more soloable PvE spawns and work out some of the issues with the siege mechanic loopholes.  I am also hoping I will also get a chance to write again about the War Hulks many of you have been asking about sometime in the foreseeable future.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Warships

After my last article about rafts and sailing, many of you mentioned that you wanted me to check back after I had found out more about some of the game's larger warships.  I spent the last week trying to find out who had the largest war ship I could find, and tried to see if they would let me take a look at it.  My journey led me to The Mercs and Rainbow Ninja clans, who live in the center of Agon dubbed "Afghanistan" by the community.  These clans recently crafted a Brigantine class warship, which is a quite a feat considering the costs involved, and the fact they don't have a city with the shipyard needed to build it.

Crafting of boats larger than a raft requires the Shipbuilding skill, which costs 15,000 gold just to purchase.  Much like cities, building of ships is done via modules that act as the primary building block unit to craft a ship.  The larger the ship, the more modules are required as a key ingredient to craft them.  Just to put things into perspective, the cost of a single shipbuilding module requires 200 wood, 40 iron ingots, 50 cloth, and 400 gold.  The brigantine class war ship build by The Mercs and Rainbow Ninja clans costs a staggering 30 ship modules, which translates out to 6000 wood, 1200 Iron ingots, 1500 cloth, and 12,000 gold!  Since these clans do not have access to their own shipyard, they were forced to raid another city that had one and craft the ship in the midst of the raid while being protected.

Despite being at war with my guild, The Mercs and Rainbow Ninja clans were nice enough to let me join them for a naval assault against a clan from the DUSK alliance.  Under their protection, I was escorted in their raid force of about 20-30 people down to the coasts of the desert island via mount.  Once we reached the destination for departure, they spawned the ship just off the coast where everyone began to climb aboard.  Unlike the rafts, the larger ships have their decks a bit higher off of the water, so the only way to climb on is by the use of netting hanging off each side that acts as a makeshift ladder. Unfortunately Rubaiyat is the home of some massive flying red dragon, which had aggroed us on our journey to the shoreline.  The crew manned the various cannons and opened fire on the dragon as they pulled far enough away to be left alone.

The ship itself is much larger than the raft.  The large raid force fit fairly comfortably on the ship, and if I had to guess, I'd estimate you could probably fit upwards of 40 people on the brigantine.  I was given a chance to take the wheel for a minute, and I have to say that this ship is much harder to handle than the raft.  It seemed to turn very sluggishly and sailed through the water maybe around half the speed as the small rafts do, but I suppose this makes sense due to the size of the ship.  This particular ship came equipped with 8 cannons in total that pointed in various directions.  I counted 4 cannons on one side of the boat, 3 cannons on the opposite side, and a final cannon at the rear of the ship pointing directly behind it.  The layout of the ship included a main deck area where most of the cannons and the steering wheel are located, an upper deck level in the back where the rear cannon was, and a small cabin room under the upper deck that made for a nice hiding spot to rest from incoming range attacks.

The cannons are where these larger ships really shine.  The cannons are capable of doing damage to structures in player cities the same way a siege hammer would, and also act as a decent weapon against other players.  A direct hit from a cannon on another player seems to inflict about 13 damage to someone who is naked, and around 7 damage to someone wearing some moderate armor.  While this may not seem like a lot of damage, the cannons are capable of firing in rapid succession rather quickly, with a cooldown in between shots somewhere in the neighborhood of only 2 seconds.  Against a player-made city structure, the damage of a single cannon ball shot is pretty much on par with the damage of a single hit from a siege hammer swung by a person.

The cannons offer 2 massive advantages over siege hammers.  The first is the obvious range difference.  When we arrived off the coast of the enemy guild city, The Mercs opened up with a barrage of cannon fire at the enemy city's cannon tower.  While all of the ships cannons were pounding away at the tower, the enemy tried to return fire at us only to find their shots falling short of reaching the beach, let alone our ship.  While I can't say exactly how far away that cannon tower was, I can say that it was just at the edge of being visible on my screen.  The other major advantage the cannons have is that they do not wear out and break.  Siege hammer are notorious for breaking from use long before they do their job, often requiring the attacker to bring dozens and dozens of them to destroy an enemy building.  The ship cannons can fire pretty much every 2 seconds, do the same damage, do it from very far away, and never break from overuse.

The Mercs guild leader, Osium, used a very clever tactic to ensure the cannons would be able to hit targets over a hill that was obstructing our view of the enemy city.  One of the groups that made up our raid force was sent into the enemy city to act as spotters for the gunners.  He had some of his men go into the city, and mark a waypoint on the party's mini-map where key buildings were located so that the ship gunners would be able to zero in on their location without being able to see it.  This reminded me of the ghosts from Starcraft who paint the target for the nuclear launches.  He also had one of his groups stations on the land near the beach to prevent the enemy from being able to get to close to ship.

Confident in the way the battle was playing out, an ultimatum was issued by Osium to the enemy forces.  The enemy didn't take too kindly to his offer, and some of them became determined to try and get onto the deck of the ship.  From my vantage point on the ship, the thought of anyone getting close to the boat, let alone getting onto the deck seemed like an impossibility.  Even with polearm players stationed at the nets, somehow a bunch of naked Alfars somehow managed to climb onto the deck to try and slay the captain.  A melee broke out on the deck and I was nailed a few times while parrying with my sword, but soon after the crazed Alfars were put down on the deck where they bled to death.

So what will sieging look like in Darkfall as ships and war hulks start to be used on a regular basis?  The use of naval ships and combat definitely looks to be a serious turning point in the way people will look at warfare in the game.  Clans who have their cities on coastal areas will definitely have a new vulnerability used against them by their enemy, and better start preparing for ways to counter these type of attacks.  While the use of ships is still new, I watch first-hand how a single ship could cause thousands of gold in damages in a very short amount of time.  I hope you found this article informative, and in case you are still looking for more, The Mercs have a few videos of this ship in action from the night before I got to ride it.  I urge you to go take a look at Part 1, Part 2, and a second video they have if you want to see it in action for yourself.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Rafts and Sailing

Boats are one of the parts of MMOs that have always fascinated me ever since I first rode the boat from Freeport to Kaladim in Everquest. Different games have a different take on sea travel, one of my personal favorites being Final Fantasy XI, where the boat gets regularly attacked.  I wanted to take some time today to talk a bit about Darkfall's approach to sailing . I typically don't write about the day to day activities of playing, but after Inquisition had our first "Raft Night", I had a chance to experience a variety of the basics of sailing.  Some of my guild members saw the prospect of sailing freely on a boat as one of the more interesting aspects of the game leading up to the game's launch.  After a month in, some of them were able to focus their efforts into finally making some rafts in order to go out exploring and cause some trouble.

Rafts are the most basic and fundamental vessel for sailing, and don't require you to purchase any special tradeskill.  All that is required is a skill level of 75 in wood cutting (which everyone has by default), and gathering the required materials to construct it.  As you can see, the rafts are somewhat expensive in terms of gold and the amount of wood needed to build one, this makes it especially costly when you lose one.  The 100 wood required is the refined wood, which is the biproduct of of the wood you get directly from chopping at trees.  This converts at a 5:2 ratio from wood cutting, so it takes 5 raw timber from a tree to make 2 refined wood, making it a total of 250 timber for the raft. Once you have crafted the raft, it will appear as a figurine in your backpack the same way a mount does.  When you want to drop it, you simply go to the water and use it, and you are good to go.

Once your raft is in the water, all you have to do is climb on board and press the "use" key on the steering wheel to gain control.  Much like riding mounts, being in the steering position on a raft pulls your camera out into a 3rd person view, where you are free to spin the camera around at will to maintain a constant awareness of your surroundings.  As far as movement speed over the water, the raft seems to move faster than a person can swim while holding sprint.  One difference between boats and mounts is that unlike riding a mount, sailing a raft burns no stamina at all.  This makes a boat an overall superior way to travel on water in every possible way.  Steering the raft is a bit different from the way mounts move as well.  While sailing a boat, you can't seem to stop and turn on a dime the same way you can while riding your mount.  There seems to be some physics to the steering in the water with the inertia of moving and turning, much like you would expect in real life.

Raft Night

Our guild scheduled raft night a few days in advance in the hopes that we would have as many as our guys who owned rafts on as possible.  Given the number of people who were interested in going, we wanted to have four rafts between us, but only three of our guys who actually had rafts were on, so we were going to have to make due.  There was no real purpose specific goal or purpose to the adventure, we just wanted to have some fun and sail around.  Since we expected to spend a lot of time at sea, we had everyone bring some fishing rods to help pass the time.  We all gathered up, dropped our rafts in the water, and shipped off to the Gilligan's Island theme song being played in vent for our own three hour tour.

We weren't at sea for three minutes when the song came to screeching halt, and an incoming raft full of elves was spotted headed towards our makeshift fleet.  The captain of my raft decided to plow us head-on into their raft while the rest of us starting spraying arrows at all of them, while others started to climb aboard the enemy raft with their weapons drawn.  One by one each of the enemy crew went down to our assault until finally the captain died bringing the enemy raft to a halt.  As vent filled with the sound of cheers, we dispatched all of the incapacitated elves, and seized control of what was now our fourth raft.  This was a big relief to us because rafts can get very crowded when you play as Mahirim, which are the largest race in the game.  Anything more than five or six of us on a boat and it started to get a bit cramped, but I think smaller races could probably fit a few more on and still be comfortable.

We continued our journey and made a point to make some stops at various remote islands just to see what what we could find in terms of PvE.  Our next stop was an island with a castle full of some sort of death mages.  We parked the boats off the coast of the castle and dropped our guys on the shore to fight some and check out what they dropped.  The loot was very good but these guys were very hard to kill, and we could barely handle the place with all the people we brought with us.  We decided to pack it up here and go check out another island.

After stopping at a few random islands, we finally spotted some sort of remote island city with a bindstone.  We decided to do a hit and run on anyone who might be inside.  We had the raft drivers drop us off at one end of the island that had good cover, and told them to meet us at the docks in about three minutes.  Keeping the rafts deployed with drivers seemed to work good for us so that we could make fast escapes, and to prevent someone with a raft from being killed and having it looted (which happened the previous night).  When we stormed into the town I was shocked at how many people were living on this place in the middle of nowhere.  We took out as many people as we could until our rafts could get to the extraction point, where we quickly boarded and got out of there.

All in all, it was a pretty fun experience and I think it gave us a chance to sample how the sailing aspect of the game held up in a variety of situations.  I originally wanted to wait until I had a chance to take a look at some of the larger ships and how they operate.  After my interview with the alliance leaders, I was unable to get anyone to admit to having a large boat, but they are definitely in the game.  I suspect that either they want it to be a secret or they simply don't have them due to how hard they are to create.  There is a special ship building skill that has to be purchased for 15,000 gold that is only sold at certain guild city vendors, not to mention the materials must be pretty serious.  It should be interesting to see how naval combat shapes up as the game matures, and whether or not clans are able to live the life of a pirate as a viable playstyle.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Alliance Leader Interviews

I often find myself trying to explain Darkfall to new arrivals in Agon, or people looking to buy it still, so that they have an understanding of what exactly the game is like.  The best analogy I can give to the new arrivals is that Darkfall in many ways reminds me of Sid Meier's game of Civilization 4, in which you play the role of a single axeman, maceman, swordsman, or archer.  Most people play as the single soldier, some of us play as generals being guild leaders, but there are other who sit higher up at the seat of leadership in the major alliances.  Here we are, a little over one month in, and the lines are becoming very defined in regards to who the big alliances are, and the territory they have control over.

The above map is called the Darkfall influence map (credit goes out to Cosy for trying to maintain it), and much like Civ 4, this map shows the territory that each of the major current alliances have control over.  Over the past few months, many of you have been reading about my take on various aspects of Darkfall, but today we are going to mix things up a bit.  I have spent the last week getting in contact which the leadership of the major Alliances so that you can hear from them directly and get their take on the game one month in, and to also let them speak about the current political landscape of Agon.  I feel that a basic understanding of these alliances is absolutely critical for anyone who is currently playing, or is looking to play Darkfall anytime soon.

I have gone through great lengths to contact each alliance and asked them to pick someone who could speak on their behalf.  I then sent the same six questions to all of the representatives in order to be as objective as possible.  None of the leaders who were interviewed have any idea how any of the others answered them until now.  The goal is to provide new players with a grasp of who the movers and shakers of Agon are, to give current players a bit of insight into each of the alliances, to give people considering playing Darkfall some opinions of people playing it, and finally a chance for these players to express their concerns to Aventurine (who expressed an interest in the article).  The geographical location of each alliance can referenced on the large influence map, and for the sake of space, I am only focusing on major alliances who have significant influence.  With that being said, let's get started!

King Manus (The Duchy of Wessex) - Hyperion Alliance

1) Tell me a little bit about your guild's gaming history.

The Kingdom of Hyperion is the territorial name for a clan known as "Lumen Solis Victrix".  While LSV began in Asheron's Call, its identity was largely formed in anticipation of the 2003 game, Shadowbane.  LSV began on the Death server and had the first city baned, which we defended by allying with LOD.  Later, LSV established the first "island" city when Surly discovered how to plant a Shadowbane Tree of Life seed on the ocean floor, which we named "Elba".

In the prerelease of Darkfall, during the years of waiting and anticipating in the constellated community that surrounded it known as "Forumfall", we planned to revisit LSV in a way that would save us from being buffeted by the powers that be on the future server, forcing us into unknown alliances, and would instead allow us to call the shots.  We resolved to split our inner council up, and to have them each found clans.  We had Surly begin the Anvil Society, Brando Medici begin the Silver Sun Republic, and me begin the Duchy of Wessex.

We purposefully chose divergent themes for these clans to attract different types of players, so that we would be able to garner the divergent talents of the MMO community - from pvp, to nose-in-the-dirt grinding, to forum charisma and leadership, all in one place.  Then, we played them against each other on Forumfall to create the drama that would draw the community's attention and generate recruitment and momentum.  We called our Hyperion plan "Voltron" during these 4 years of waiting for Darkfall, and took great satisfaction in the irony of our debates on the forums - arguing over things as trivial as "clan structure" and "ranking", when in actuality we were using the exact same model for all the clans.

2) Tell me a bit about the Hyperion Alliance, and the territory they currently have influence over.

Rather than being a simple conglomeration of clans with a pact to aid each other, Hyperion uses a feudal model, binding all clans together in what we call a "kingdom".  The feudal structure creates a tree of vassal relationships in which "every man has a lord", and thus, a leader.  Further, there is a sense of equivalency among the different "tiers" formed by this feudal pyramid, so that even leaders from different clans which are yet on the same tier are regarded as the same rank kingdomwide.  We use traditional feudal titles to identify these tiers, which adds a sense of authenticity and "nation" ambience to Hyperion, which we had always sought to capture.  This, to add more immersion to the very political and intriguing aspect of the game experience.

The Hyperion Kingdom currently stretches throughout the entirety of northeastern Agon.  We hold dominion over everything east of the dwarven starter cities, and everything north of the human starter cities.  We also hold southern Yssam after dividing it between ourselves and the Yssam Coalition.

3) What's your take on the political landscape right now, and which of the other alliances are you keeping an eye on?

I see that the map is rapidly deterioriating in a "ten little indians" fashion, with factions collapsing or dissolving into others.  That's really a shame, as the developers had always promised that the world would be much larger.

We have our eye on all of them, of course.  There aren't many left, after all.

4) Is your guild or alliance planning on moving to the North American server when it opens?

For the most part, we are planning on staying on the European server.

5) What is your favorite part of Darkfall so far?

I love the degree to which playing Darkfall politically approximates to the logistics of running a real war campaign, from the need to organize revenue collection, play intel and counter-intel against your enemies, maintain morale among your men, and execute tactics in engagement.  Then of course, I love that all that this is carried out with physical collision based combat, the need to organize the collection of resources from the land and the monsters for their application in war, rather than the two pursuits being unrelated.

6) What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?

The biggest issue of all is the lack of doors on city gates, and the poor design of cities generally - while the ubiquitous "launch" spell can be argued as an approximate substitute for the ease of making a ladder, the fact that by and large, an army can just run in a front gate, or jump from elevated terrain right over a poorly placed wall is putting a damper on the enjoyment of the siege and raid mechanics for many.  Considering the state of things, the investment of time, money and resources toward constructing a city has no value other than for aesthetics, and so many, knowing that a finished 250 module gatehouse will have just as big of a gap as the rubble there presently, are cutting costs and leaving their cities unfinished.  I know of several cities that have tunnels from the countryside going under the walls and coming up right in the town square. So much for the utility of walls, even if gates are added.

The way it is now, one doesn't erect cannons until the enemy is already obliterated and the city is occupied, rather than using the cannons to breach the defenses so that the occupation can follow.  They are little more than wrecking balls for an already secured demolition site, as opposed to being actual weapons of war.

Another issue is the interfacing of the clan tab-while functional, its load time makes dealing with clan matters in game a serious chore. It can take a half hour or more to properly page through all of one's members and assign proper ranks. It would also be nice to be able to assign and name ranks, rather than to use a default "military" system, as not every clan operates on this model.

I am not fond of how people can jump onto each other's heads. The collision detection is negated in a large degree by the ability of a player to jump and stand on another's head, and battle lines, shield walls, etc, which would be great fun to implement, instead degenerate into swirling moshpits.

The game also needs banners and clan tabards - considering that incentives to not be ARAC were removed, all warring clans cater to all races now. This makes it difficult to identify specific people, like allied clan members, in the metal-clad press of battle.  While a "hovering icon" solution was implemented, this is not really enough, and not desirable for immersion, either.  Further, in addition to colored tabards or uniforms, the ability for a single man to carry a banner so that the locations of squadrons could easily be tracked in battle would be a big aid.

If these things were implemented or adjusted, Darkfall would have a start on being the solid playing experience it was prophesized to be, and would fulfill its own potential as the sandbox everyone was waiting for.

Lord Gluttony SDS (Awful Company) - Coalition of the Chillin

1) Tell me a little bit about your guild's gaming history.

We started off doing mostly board games in the late 1980's and early 90's -- things like Crossfire, Stratego, Guess Who, and Risk (this was our biggest).  When these games moved off the boards and on the web, we start delving into other online games and eventually found UO. 13 years later and 3d UO (Darkfall) was released and we decided to make the move to 2002-era graphics.  I think some of us also played Summers EVE or something... I dunno, I usually just stick a bottle of balsamic up there when I'm feeling a lil unfresh.

2) Tell me a bit about the Coalition of the Chillin, and the territory they currently have influence over.

The Coalition is more about chillin and killin than gayin and roleplayin. We’re basically just a group of guilds who would rather deal with a retarded alliance name than be a sub guild to some guy who calls himself King ManAnus. Why would you call yourself that?  If I was gonna be called King, I’d wanna be called King BigVeinyDick – even if I am hung like an asian boy, being called King BigVeinyDick would let me live out my RL fantasies in an online world.  In conjunction with DUSK, we have a foothold against King ManAnus and his hypertron (good weed) forces across all of Agon and all of the islands.  We’ve proven what happens when you try to attack us; how many successful sieges has LoD repelled?  When will people learn to stop fucking with the Coalition…

3) What's your take on the political landscape right now, and which of the other alliances are you keeping an eye on?

The coalition has 1 goal: to ensure that Darkfall isn’t run by some 40 year old roleplayer who wears a cape he got at the renassaince fair and burger king crown while he gives commands to his sub guilds in olde (gotta have that extra ‘e’) english.
 

ManAnus’ Hyperion Alliance is 3x the size of the coalition and they grow each day. Apparently they roleplay every aspect of the game, forums, and even their vent. This shit disgusts me… DF is about PVP and shit talk, not about paying taxes to some 40 year old virgin who thinks he lives in a Shakespeare play. Once the coalition defeats Hyperion, we will send Agon back into chaos as the last thing we want is one alliance controlling all of Agon making Darkfall more stale than raping a chick who is already passed out.

4) Is your guild or alliance planning on moving to the North American server when it opens?

We’re mostly North American Scum… with a bit of euro trash thrown in.  We also have some members who prolly cried instead of laughed when Steve Irwin died.

5) What is your favorite part of Darkfall so far?

The loot… the warrant… the crook. Does anyone else remember the live action Carmen San Diego gameshow that was on public television back in the 90s?  But yea, it’s all about the loot and making roleplayers rage. Hopefully their rage carries over to the IRL and they got in trouble for yelling at their moms.  That and the loot...

6) What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?

The biggest issue with DF is that the people of Agon aren’t doing enough to try to stop the super zerg Hyperion from trying to take over every small guild they can.  Big Brother needs to be stopped… unless thou wishes to communicate with his majesty KingManAnus using only the finest Queens English.  Id rather own someone and call them a faggot scrub…. Wouldn’t you? Crashing also sucks…

Yomm Hakine (Sturmgrenadier) - DUSK Alliance

1) Tell me a little bit about your guild's gaming history.

Sturmgrenadier has been in operation since before World War II Online was brought out, but it was that game that solidified the core group that has expanded into many games today. We currently have over 500 members from around the world all adhering to an organizational Charter which keeps our goals aligned with the progress of this gaming syndicate.

2) Tell me a bit about DUSK, and the territory they currently have influence over.

We currently own Rubaiyat.  We are also finalizing, through conquest and diplomacy, the lands of Nagast (with the exception of our friends over at KGB) and Mirendil, although there are still a few concerns around there that we need to address.

3) What's your take on the political landscape right now, and which of the other alliances are you keeping an eye on?

I'd say everything is falling into place.  Players that are surprised that large Alliances are forming, simply haven't had the experience of previous games like DFO.  While the first phase of the game was a land grab for initial cities, I think you're seeing the second phase as an Alliance grab, or trying to position yourself to have security and options later in the game.  As one of the larger Alliances, I think it is fair to say that DUSK is watching everyone.

4) Is your guild or alliance planning on moving to the North American server when it opens?

Perhaps. I'll say this: I think opening any different server will promote the 'have nots' to migrate over and try to start again, while all the 'haves' will fight for what gets left behind. Could be interesting. Could also be fun to go and punch the 'have nots' in the mouth again on a different server.

5) What is your favorite part of Darkfall so far?

I'm one of those crazy players that really enjoys the meta aspect of the game.  The larger picture.  The dealings that go on within Teamspeak or Vent.  Then, to see those agreements in person on the ground as 100's of players form up together and battle...its quite a thrill.

6) What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?

Cheating and using exploits.  Its bad enough, that many players would rather find a place to hide and macro themselves to higher levels then to actually earn them in battle.  But, to allow players to even bypass that tedious task and build unfair advantages over other players just ruins the entire spirit of the game.

Throne Rage (Covenant of the Phoenix) - Stasis Alliance

1) Tell me a little bit about your guild's gaming history.

CotP has been involved in AC: Darktide, SWG: Bloodfin, CoV: Triumph, EQ: Venekor, VG: Sartok, LotRO: Ellindilmir, WAR: Volkmar, Guild Wars, WoW: Perenolde and now DFO. Other Stasis guilds have very similar multi-gaming backgrounds.

2) Tell me a bit about the Stasis Alliance, and the territory they currently have influence over.

We're an alliance currently residing in Yssam. Our general area of influence is via our current holdings in southern, central and northern Yssam.

3) What's your take on the political landscape right now, and which of the other alliances are you keeping an eye on?

Stasis isn't going to give an official opinion, but a decent description would be that the speed of DFO politics makes a NY minute seem like days.

We are keeping an eye on all other alliances.

4) Is your guild or alliance planning on moving to the North American server when it opens?

Our decision will be based upon the goals of each allied guild at a time that best suits our combined interests.

5) What is your favorite part of Darkfall so far?

The politics and massive siege warfare.

6) What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?

Lack of varied and meaningful ingame political options, a credible list of city siege features that actually mirror what happens ingame and lack of server optimization for massive siege warfare.

Gordric Hirsh (Virakar) - Yssam Alliance

1) Tell me a little bit about your guild's gaming history.

Virakar was founded in 2002 while playing Shadowbane (Irekei guild).  As the guild grew, so did our friendships and the desire to play together in future games.  Following Shadowbane, we have had a presence in World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, EVE Online, Warhammer Online, and Darkfall Online.

The other clans that currently make up the Yssam Alliance are DDi, Villagers of Eternity, Knights of the Blue Sky, Zipang, Order of the Blade, Dark Hand of Valor, The 10th, CORE, Crimson Serpents, Odin, and Addiction.

2) Tell me a bit about the Yssam Alliance, and the territory they currently have influence over.

The Yssam Alliance began as a grouping of four clans that played together on Yssam during beta (Virakar, Varangian Guard, The Seventh Circle, and DDi).  Soon after release, Villagers of Eternity was added.  From this point, one of our members (Priest) did a timetable of events.  It is a bit long, but should give an accurate account of the struggle on Yssam, to this point.

3) What's your take on the political landscape right now, and which of the other alliances are you keeping an eye on?

We are keeping an eye on all of the alliances at this time.  Unfortunately, current siege mechanics severely promotes large alliances, in order to keep control over cities.  Most of the advantages to sieging are in the hands of the attackers.  Cities and hamlets can be taken with much greater ease during the defenders off-hours (late at night or during their workday).  Protection for all times of the day/night are needed for your city.  The server is rapidly polarizing towards a two sided war.

Despite some game mechanics that need improving, Darkfall is an incredibly fun game.  It is the most fun I have had in an MMO in years.

4) Is your guild or alliance planning on moving to the North American server when it opens?

I believe some clans in The Yssam Alliance are considering a move. Virakar had always planned to move to the North American Servers, but that is something we will take a look at, when it becomes an option. We will more than likely move.

5) What is your favorite part of Darkfall so far?

There are probably too many features to just choose one. There are so many features that you cannot find in other, newer, MMOs today. Some of the more enjoyable features include:

- Full loot PvP
- Mounted Combat
- Skill Based Advancement
- No Name-tags Overhead
- Collision detection
- Aimed Archery and Spells
- City Building
- Need for Diplomacy

These are the features that stick out in my head as some of the more enjoyable features.  Some game mechanics still need some polish, but Darkfall is on the right path IMO.

6) What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?

- 6 hours for a siege, not including organizing and planning.  It does not seem to be a sustainable pace atm for even moderately busy people.  You could be at the end of a 4 hour playing session, when someone challenges your city, and you are sucked into another 6 hours of playing (if you want to keep your city that you have worked on for perhaps months).
- some grinding may need to be tweaked.
- exploits/hacks/cheats
- there are still quite a few advertised features, that are not in-game yet
- the ordering process has been terrible. Clans are split ATM, with many members still not able to order the game. This could cause additional problems down the road, concerning room on the current server.

Commentary

While one could certainly say Aventurine has not patched much in terms of content, but it looks as if Darkfall has become very player-driven in this regard.  It seems like there are always events happening on a daily basis that seem to shift the powers around.  A few days ago I was in an alliance meeting where guild leaders were discussing the future of their alliance.  Much like the Civ 4 analogy I keep using, some of the topics of discussion involved around the ability to control certain resources.  These resources ranged from access to certain types of ore to help build cannons, to monster camps that yield a necessary component to craft siege hammers.  Espionage also seems to be alive and well as there have been many instances of guilds placing characters in enemy alliance guilds to try and stay abreast on battle plans, as well as a few instances of guild's getting the banks looted by spies who had been given far too much access.  In a discussion with an Aventurine source on this topic, I was told pretty much said that this sort of behavior is fair and well within the bounds of the game.

The next day there was another meeting of sorts, an attempted "negotiation" in ventrilo between their alliance leader and a foreign one.  After this failed parlay, one of them made good on their promise and invaded the other's city.  After the loss of their city, the alliance degraded quickly as most of the guilds scattered into the wind.  Many guilds have gone off to either become a part of another alliance, help start a new one, or just go off on their own.  The influence map has undoubted already gone through significant changes over the course of the few days I have been putting this together, and it will definitely be a challenge keeping it somewhat updated.

Many of Agon's inhabitants seem to be concerned over whether or not a 2-sided war will be inevitable, and different alliances all seem to be taking a different approach to their conquest.  The Cairn alliance was offered a voice in this article, but declined because they seem to be playing along the lines of isolationists.  Hyperion seems to be central focus and concern of many of other alliances due to the huge amount of territory and large numbers they possess, and they do not have a shortage of guilds looking to join their cause.  The Coalition of the Chillin seems to be marketing themselves as the anti-Hyperion option making claim that their goal is not to conquer Agon, but to merely stop Hyperion from expanding.  This seems to lead to each side gathering bigger numbers in order to fight the other, possibly making a 2-sided server conflict into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Which side is in the right all seems to depend on your point of view.  Despite all this, there always seem to be new and smaller alliances forming on a daily basis, many who seem to have no part in the larger global conflict.

No matter what happens, it seems as if the current server is inching closer to the brink of a major blowout.  I keep thinking in the back of my head that we have yet to see anyone introduce war hulks are large ships into the equation, and how that will change the way the wars will be fought.  The interviews seem to show one sign of hope, as many of the guilds will be bound for a North American server when it comes down the line.  The possibility of a massive reset button and a fresh start sounds appealing to many, but only time will tell if the cycle destined to repeat itself when that day comes.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Darkfall: Alliances and War

Since the writing of my last entry, massive battles have broken out across Agon, and with these battles, the formation of alliances are starting to shape the political landscape.  In a previous entry, I mentioned the web of guild relations and the possibility of a political map to help everyone understand it.  Apparently the Darkfall community has decided to take matters into their own hands and we are starting to see the community try to understand where the lines are drawn.

When you look at the larger map (Special thanks to Venatar from Societas Daemonica) , you can see the workings of what appears to be geopolitical relationships in some areas of the world.  Specifically, the 4 sub-continents seems to have certain guilds who are working together in alliance to either fully control certain land masses, or who are bent on conquering them by driving off other guilds.

This very situation manifested itself over the weekend when one of the guilds on Nilfheim (Ice Island) became the target of a massive assault that brought hundreds of players to their city looking to retaliate against them for previous attacks.  While the attackers inflicted massive damage to all of the structures, without a formal challenge, the city's ownership remained intact.  The next day a formal challenge was issued, but this time the defenders were able to rally a coalition of their own and managed to hold off onto their city.  Needless to say, the server was pushed to the limits and in some cases beyond leading to some people in the 300 man battle to suffer random disconnects.

The Challenge

In order for a city or hamlet to change ownership, and challenge must be issued by one guild to another.  When the challenge is issued, it lasts for a period of 6 hours that is divided into 2 stages.  During the first stage (4 Hours), the guild that issued the challenge will have its own city or hamlet vulnerable and up for grabs.  This adds what can be a substantial risk to picking a fight with another guild as you can rest assured that that they will try to rally their allies to derail the attack at the issuer's city.  Once that stage expires, the challengers will then be able to commence their assault on their target (2 Hours).  If at any time during this entire challenge the guild leader who issues the challenge is killed or goes offline, it is considered a loss and the challenge ends.  There is also a monetary price that I will touch more on later, but guilds issuing challenges who do not own land will need to pony up a large amount of gold to compensate for the risk factor.  If they win they keep the gold, if they lose the enemy keeps it.

My Siege Story

I'll try to put some of this into context from my first siege experience which happened over the weekend.  One of our allies decided they wanted to target a specific enemy city on a nearby remote island because one of its resources was a harbor, and they belonged to another alliance of guilds that they have an unfavorable view towards.  The challenge was issued by our ally, and our first order of business was to assist in the defense of their city and protection of the guild leader until we could progress to the attack stage.
 

We all decided to saddle up and put on our Sunday's finest gear because after all, this is the type of situation we play for.  As a hamlet owner, we found the city to be awe striking in both size and complexity.  Upon arrival we saw the walls were lined with people on every side, and this particular city has large cannon towers on each side.  I was able to take control of the cannon for a short period of time just to see what it was like, and it reminded me much like sitting in a turret seat in an FPS game.  The guild leader who issued the challenge was held up in a very large keep, and the entrance leading into it was blocked by rows of people in the event someone breached the outer wall.

Since we showed up to the city in the tail end of the defense stage, we didn't really see any action as the enemy was making their own preparations for the likely assault we were getting ready to mount.  There were probably upwards of around 200 people on our side inside making preparations, and my PC handled it better than I thought, although there were many in my guild who experienced some crashes and had to turn down settings.  I found that I only had to turn down the number of sounds in the audio options, and I was surprised how well the client handled this number of people in such a small geographical area.

As the defense stage came to end, the challenge issuing guild began to hand out siege hammers at their bank to all who could take one.  This was one aspect of the monetary costs I mentioned earlier, as these are the main tool for destroying structures at this stage in the game's life.  Buildings in Darkfall can't be destroyed with normal weapons and magic, only by siege related equipment, so these hammers are the main tool being used since nobody is far enough along to roll out war hulks and large boats.

We soon traveled to the coast nearby and started making our way from island to island.  I have to say it was definitely a sight to remember seeing so many people at once moving together as a large mass and some people even brought rafts along to make the trip easier.  Unfortunately during this leg of the journey, some of the minor random disconnects that hit us earlier become a bit more frequent.  Some of the people who ended up being dropped while in the water logged back in to find themselves back at their bindstone miles away from the battle.

It was at this point that tragedy struck.  Among the large group of people who experienced a disconnect, was the challenge issuer.  The current rules state that if that person goes offline at any time during the challenge, it counts at a loss.  Needless to say there was a lot of anger and frustration on the part of the challenger.  The previous 4 hours defending, the organization getting the army together, and the extremely high monetary cost all were wasted.  A source from Aventurine tells me they are aware of the issue and looking at ways to make this aspect easier, so we can only hope that some changes to this part of the mechanic are considered to prevent future unintended forfeits.

Despite the upsetting setback, the remainder of us decided to keep going just to see what happens.  As I was marveling at the sheer number of people we had, I wondered if it was really going to be necessary.  When I finally arrived at the enemy city, I was in amazement at how many people were there waiting for us in a defensive position as the city was located atop a cliff (reports are upwards of 200).  We were greeted by the largest volley of magic that I had ever seen, it reminded me of a scene from Star Wars with all the energy flying through the air, no screenshot or words I can say will ever really do it justice.

The enemy alliance had one of its guilds try to attack from behind, but the accidentally tipped their hand too soon and were discovered.  With our numbers diminished from the disconnects and all the plasma flying at us from the well defended city, we decided to make the most of the situation and turn our focus to the guild trying to flank us.  This led to an initial melee that quickly had them retreating into a chase that went into the ocean and nearby islands.  The result was widespread fighting and chaos that left many of them dead, and quickly stripped naked of their belongings.

Apparently hell bent on getting every last one of these guys, someone on my side dropped a raft into the water where literally a dozen guys packed onto it, effectively chasing down and shooting at anyone who was still left alive.  After we finished them off, most of the force decided to recall home and reflect on the evenings events.  I have to say that despite how much it sucked to lose the challenge, many of us still had an experience that we will remember for a long time to come.  Hopefully Aventurine will continue to evaluate and make changes to help streamline the siege process to prevent future incidents from occurring.

Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com