Even if the game launches and it's half decent it will still fail because of it's design and lack of player base and i'am sure lack of content.

For a game like Darkfall you need TONS of players online all the time otherwise you're just running around searching for people to kill and it becomes pretty pointless. If the game doesn't have a massive subscriber base there will be literally nothing to do other than basic PvE crap which can be found done 300% better in games like WoW.

Hell WoW's PvP expansion coming out this year is probably 100 x better then the entire Darkfall game is which is another reason this game will fail.

Of course the Fanbois will chime in now saying it doesn't have FULL LOOTING so it sucks. LOL

Like that's supposed to actually be a selling point to get subscribers or something.

I won't even bring up Warhammer which it would have to compete against among everythning else.

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers and holding them for a few months until Warhammer and Lich King are out and becoming a forgotten nich game where there's maybe a few hundred people online at any given time.

My words are good.

Originally posted by Antikythera

Even if the game launches and it's half decent it will still fail because of it's design and lack of player base and i'am sure lack of content.

For a game like Darkfall you need TONS of players online all the time otherwise you're just running around searching for people to kill and it becomes pretty pointless. If the game doesn't have a massive subscriber base there will be literally nothing to do other than basic PvE crap which can be found done 300% better in games like WoW.

Hell WoW's PvP expansion coming out this year is probably 100 x better then the entire Darkfall game is which is another reason this game will fail.

Of course the Fanbois will chime in now saying it doesn't have FULL LOOTING so it sucks. LOL

Like that's supposed to actually be a selling point to get subscribers or something.

I won't even bring up Warhammer which it would have to compete against among everythning else.

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers and holding them for a few months until Warhammer and Lich King are out and becoming a forgotten nich game where there's maybe a few hundred people online at any given time.

My words are good.

Then I guess you'll be enjoying yourself over in WOW while a few people will be playing the game they chose to enjoy.

Seriously, what was point of your OP?  Just to stir up trouble?  Not like your comments/questions have never been addressed by other trolls in this forum.

How about trying to come up with some new material?

It's not my fault they chose to create a game that will inevitably fail.

Failure to launch or failure after launch. Pick your choice.

Hell I can go play Archlord right now for free and get a solid PvP game with up to date graphics. Think about that for a second. The game had to go FREE to play because no one wanted to play it. 

You really think people are going to come in droves to play some unheard of PvP game made by unknown devs simply because it's some kind of sandbox?

What's my motivation to play Darkfall?

FULL LOOTZ?? old graphics??  terrible animations??   What???

I'am a potential subscriber. Why should I play Darkfall?  Multiply me by 1 million and you have everybody else asking the same question and Aventurine asking why nobody is playing their game.

I'll tell ya why no one is going to play this Aventurine.  It's because you developed for far too long. You have no existing subscriber base to sell to.  The engine is terribly outdated. The content I'am sure is completely lacking in todays standards for a MMORPG.  You have far too much competition with deep pockets and huge teams to keep things up to date who will steal away 90% of your players without even knowing they did it.

Sure Darkfall might have some initial buzz going and some decent activity for awhile but at the end of the day when it's all died down , there will be nothing left but another empty game world and another failed attempt at greatness by an inexperienced team who's eyes are bigger than their skills and who got chewed up and spit out by the veteran companies in this industry.

Darkfall is the last in the line of failed MMORPG's that started back around 2000. It simply hasn't come full circle yet and launch and fail like all the others. 

My words are good. Watch and see.

Originally posted by Antikythera

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane. So if it actually has most of the features they claim, it will have a lot more than 20k subscribers.

People are desperate for a good sandbox game  at this point, so this game could easily get 200k subscribers. 

Originally posted by ghoul31

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane

Ahhh my naive optimistic little friend.

First of all Aventurine is not UbiSoft. And never will have the marketing power of a company like that.

Secondly , you ASSUME people are dying for a sandox game but if you look at the market it clearly shows that they are not.

If that was the case than there would a plethora of Sanbox games being built and already out.

Originally posted by Antikythera

Even if the game launches and it's half decent it will still fail because of it's design and lack of player base and i'am sure lack of content.

For a game like Darkfall you need TONS of players online all the time otherwise you're just running around searching for people to kill and it becomes pretty pointless. If the game doesn't have a massive subscriber base there will be literally nothing to do other than basic PvE crap which can be found done 300% better in games like WoW.

Hell WoW's PvP expansion coming out this year is probably 100 x better then the entire Darkfall game is which is another reason this game will fail.

Of course the Fanbois will chime in now saying it doesn't have FULL LOOTING so it sucks. LOL

Like that's supposed to actually be a selling point to get subscribers or something.

I won't even bring up Warhammer which it would have to compete against among everythning else.

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers and holding them for a few months until Warhammer and Lich King are out and becoming a forgotten nich game where there's maybe a few hundred people online at any given time.

My words are good.

Oh go away. I honestly couldn't care if its released or not but you trolls are starting to make me sick.

If you don't care about the game, don't come here and speak about it! Get on with WoW or wtf you may be playing.

Originally posted by Antikythera

 

Ahhh my naive optimistic little friend.

First of all Aventurine is not UbiSoft. And never will have the marketing power of a company like that.

Secondly , you ASSUME people are dying for a sandox game but if you look at the market it clearly shows that they are not.

Ever hear of EVE? Its a sandbox game and has over 200k subscribers. Ever hear of SWG? Its was very popular when its was a sandbox game. Then they changed it and people got very upset.

I see posts in the general forum every day about the need for more sandbox games.

So there is definately a market for sandbox games. How can you not see that?

Originally posted by Antikythera

Originally posted by ghoul31

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane

 

Ahhh my naive optimistic little friend.

First of all Aventurine is not UbiSoft. And never will have the marketing power of a company like that.

Secondly , you ASSUME people are dying for a sandox game but if you look at the market it clearly shows that they are not.

If that was the case than there would a plethora of Sanbox games being built and already out.

Can you please provide these facts that people are not looking for a sandbox game? I mean such a bold statement like that has to have facts behind it.

Just to go a little further, look at EVE. they have 20-40,000 people on at a time on a single cluster. Most of the other mmo's have a limit of about 5k of people on a single server. It doesn't take WoW numbers to equal a very successful game. Heck EQ1 still has like 100+k subscribers and its been going on for around 10 years+. So please, provide me with the statistics that a sandbox game is going to fail.

Clearly the market for hardcore sandbox games is not that large.  EvE is a good example of what might be expected YEARS after a very successful release.  If Darkfall sells 20-40K boxes on release, and kept over half of those as subscribers after the free month, I would call that a big success.  I feel confident Aventurine would feel the same.  Afterall, they are launching with one server that is only expected to handle 10K simultaneous connections. 

If the game is really good and they continue to refine and enhance, it could see EvE numbers one day.  But the top end potential is far more limited than a game like WoW.  Most gamers just dont like serious consequences.  But those that do are pretty passionate about it!

Fallen Earth is a mostly sandbox game that will be coming to market late this year or early next year. They are feature complete, and there are rumors that the incremental closed beta has already started. We will see how this game does....

It isn't that there haven't been any successful sandbox games, it is that there have been almost no well-made, polished sandbox games. EvE has built itself up by becoming that. SWG, although not very polished or complete at launch, had enough sandbox elements and stuff in there to reach an estimated "high water mark" of 350k subs and ended up selling over 1 million retail units. For any game that is not WoW, that is pretty good. SWg went in the tank when the devs took away many of the sandbox elements (among many other bad management and design decisions) and were rightly punished by the marketplace for putting out an inferior product.

As for Darkfall, I hope it works out. I , like many people, followed this game for years and was invited into the "guild beta" some years back, that never happened. This game has had so many false starts, that I would only possibly try it after it has been out a while.

If this game turns out to be good, great. If it never sees the light of day, doesn't bother me a bit....

Originally posted by ghoul31

Originally posted by Antikythera

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers

 

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane. So if it actually has most of the features they claim, it will have a lot more than 20k subscribers.

People are desperate for a good sandbox game  at this point, so this game could easily get 200k subscribers. 

 

 

Shadowbane was launched before World of Warcraft or Lineage 2 or Age of Conan or Warhammer. The analogy isn't that valid because we're not talking about the same market conditions. We can see Ultima Online peaked higher than Shadowbane. If anything the UO->Shadowbane->Darkfall subscriber progression could be expected to be linear, with a negative slope.

I want a sandbox game, you want a sandbox game, most people do not want a sandbox game, most people do not want full loot, and even people that do want a sandbox game do not necessarily want full loot either (eg. SWG. For instance I played a Droid Engineer back at launch and it was one the the funnest experiences I've had with MMOGs, but I may not have enjoyed it as much if anyone could kill me and completely loot my body). Enough people to make it succesful? Probably, if EVE (though it does not have full loot, but just full drop/destroy) is any indication. But the reality is that if there were that big of a demand for the style, it would not be a such big risk to try to capitalize on it and development studios with credentials would have already.

That said, if they ship the game with most or all features they claim it has, it will probably have a lot more than 20k subscribers, but it won't be a chart topper (and no one is expecting it to be, except for the few deluded supporters who believe it will somehow kill WoW).

Originally posted by Antikythera

Secondly , you ASSUME people are dying for a sandox game but if you look at the market it clearly shows that they are not.

If you are looking for a MMORPG game, and you don't want it to be sandbox, you are thoroughly confused and can't be trusted to even know what you yourself want.

Some of the biggest mistakes being made in development of modern MMO's are related to the lack of understanding that imaginative gameplay trumps graphics, trumps interface, trumps "PvP balance," trumps niche focusing, and most definitely trumps loot.  I have seen what happens to a niche game... you get a small amount of unimaginative players who don't like to play with each other because everything is ultra competitive.  It creates a game where there is no fodder for either the metagamers or imaginative players, and the subscriber turnover rate goes through the roof.

RPG means sandbox.  Anything else that's worth playing doesn't need to be a massively multiplayer game.

I disagree with the above poster that someone looking for a MMORPG that is not a sandbox is, well whatever he said they were.

MMORPG does not necessarily have to be a sandbox. MMO simply means that it's massively multiplayer (more than a few dozen people sharing the world with you) and it's online. RPG does not mean sandbox, at least not in video games, it just means roleplaying game. Infact, the majority of games labeled RPG are not sandboxes, and arguably the most sandboxy game series out there is not a RPG (GTA). Some of my favorite RPGs are sandboxes (The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, etc), some are not (Anything by Bioware, some japanese RPGs). Sandbox is just a different way of doing things, not the inherently "right" or "correct" way to like/play/make an RPG or MMORPG.

Originally posted by Silvarch

RPG does not mean sandbox, at least not in video games, it just means roleplaying game.

These types of statements reflect the confusion that is rampant in the industry.

What does "roleplaying" mean?  It means imagining you were someone with a particular purpose (or role), and making the decisions necessary to successfully maneuver that someone through a challenging or interesting scenario.  You can't do that very well if the options available to you are much more limited than your imagination.  If options become limited, the game stops being a real RPG - and just because a game labels itself "RPG" does not make it so.

The bottom line is if its an MMO that tries to be a RPG, it needs to be sandbox.  If it's not trying to be a RPG, it may not need to be sandbox, but more than likely it doesn't need to be massively multiplayer either.

Originally posted by Silvarch

Originally posted by ghoul31

Originally posted by Antikythera

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers

 

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane. So if it actually has most of the features they claim, it will have a lot more than 20k subscribers.

People are desperate for a good sandbox game  at this point, so this game could easily get 200k subscribers. 

 

 

Shadowbane was launched before World of Warcraft or Lineage 2 or Age of Conan or Warhammer. The analogy isn't that valid because we're not talking about the same market conditions. We can see Ultima Online peaked higher than Shadowbane. If anything the UO->Shadowbane->Darkfall subscriber progression could be expected to be linear, with a negative slope.

This isn't math dude, it's common sense. Ultima sold more units because ultima was a better game. It had nothing to do with the market, hell the market hardly even existed before ultima. IF anything, sandbox games are in a better position than they were before Warcraft, because the market has been so hugely expanded that there are sure to be many new players who would be interested in a sandbox game.

I think a really well done sandbox game that's well polished, has interesting features and a decent setting could sell in excess of 500,000 copies easily. I think thats a very conservative estimate. Even though WoW and most of the rest of the industry is going on their own direction with their millions of users, that doesn't mean the same thing couldn't happen for a really well done sandbox game. There hasn't been one recently. I think we may perhaps see Fallout Online be the next big one.

I don't think Darkfall will be a huge seller, like many other people have said, but it doesn't need to be. I think it could be quite comfortable and I think its quite possible it could see something around the 100-200k mark. If it's well done, we'll see.

I disagree, there's no confusion. As long as you're playing a video game, no matter what it touts, you will be much more limited than your imagination.  Constraints are always there, so where do we draw the line regarding when a game is a real a RPG or not? It's subjective to each person. Under your rather strict standard, no video game is a RPG because your option are always limited, and the only thing that can hold up to the label is your own imagination.

I disagree that if a game does not try to be an RPG (as described by the industry) then it likely doesn't need to be a MMO. Need is a strong word though, nothing really needs to be MMO, but I'll take it you mean something like "gains from being one". MMO is a design decision regardless of genre. If you believe gameplay will be enhanced by your game being massively multiplayer and online then it warrants it (eg. Test Drive Unlimited).

By the way, roleplaying means, quite literally, playing a role. Whether you're playing the role verbatim to the script, fully improvised, or anywhere in between, which is basically the difference between sandbox and the alternative, you're still playing a role.

Originally posted by Antikythera

Hell WoW's PvP expansion coming out this year is probably 100 x better then the entire Darkfall game is which is another reason this game will fail.

LOL. WoW is bigest crap released as MMO genre ever. Only pure single player game can be worst...

Originally posted by Gerec

Originally posted by Silvarch

Originally posted by ghoul31

Originally posted by Antikythera

(If) Darkfall launches and is even half playable I see it getting no more than around maybe 10-20k subscribers

 

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane. So if it actually has most of the features they claim, it will have a lot more than 20k subscribers.

People are desperate for a good sandbox game  at this point, so this game could easily get 200k subscribers. 

 

 

Shadowbane was launched before World of Warcraft or Lineage 2 or Age of Conan or Warhammer. The analogy isn't that valid because we're not talking about the same market conditions. We can see Ultima Online peaked higher than Shadowbane. If anything the UO->Shadowbane->Darkfall subscriber progression could be expected to be linear, with a negative slope.

 

This isn't math dude, it's common sense. Ultima sold more units because ultima was a better game. It had nothing to do with the market, hell the market hardly even existed before ultima. IF anything, sandbox games are in a better position than they were before Warcraft, because the market has been so hugely expanded that there are sure to be many new players who would be interested in a sandbox game.

Then common sense should tip you off that if there was no market before Ultima Online then its success does not necessarily have to be attributed to its superior quality.  When Ultima Online was released, the market wasn't there, so they were the only commercial (high, M59 notwithstanding) quality graphical MMO, they had virtually no competition. When EQ was released, UO started losing subscriptions to it en masse. The performance of a product, as well as its apparently quality, is always relative to its market. I agree that UO was superior in quality to SB, but that's not the main reason why it performed better (or as good as it did). I agree that the market is much bigger now, but now there are also far more choices. Don't forget which type of game brought this influx of new players into it.

500,000 subscribers is hoping for far too many, but that is just my opinion

Originally posted by Antikythera

Originally posted by ghoul31

Shadowbane had 100k subscribers at launch. And this game is supposed to be a better version of Shadowbane

 

Ahhh my naive optimistic little friend.

First of all Aventurine is not UbiSoft. And never will have the marketing power of a company like that.

Secondly , you ASSUME people are dying for a sandox game but if you look at the market it clearly shows that they are not.

If that was the case than there would a plethora of Sanbox games being built and already out.

Ubisoft bought shadowbane after launch so this arguement dosent make sence..
 

also.. this arguement is crazy to me.. it is fair to argue that darkfall isnt happening.. but to say if it is released it is feature complete it will only get 20k subscribers is insane.. i agree it wont get millions... but there is a huge niche of people begging for this exact game.. all over wow and many other forums..

Pointless discussion. In music commercial products like pop music have bigger sales but lower value than most valuable styles that are not for everyone. The same is in games... Just stop to compare the commercial WoW crap with every game...