While I had only recently found out about DF within the last six months or so, I was very excited about it....at first. I have been turning down that excitement based upon what I would have to say are "questionable" practices by those putting DF out. The fact that they have made statements which then turn out to be changed without explanation is one of my biggest concerns. This recent change from "allowing everyone to try the game free before they buy" to "limited to a thousand" is just one example. I have already stated that I WILL NOT purchase this game unless I can try it first for free. I will not be burned by yet another MMO that makes promises and then fails to deliver.

Originally posted by miagisan

Originally posted by OddW0rlds

Originally posted by MrBoots

I'm surprised that you forgot to quote mmorpg.com's interview with Tasos mr Wood.

 

MMORPG.com:

Can you tell us, as of the answering of this Q&A exactly where Darkfall stands in terms of nearness to being a launch-ready title?

Tasos Flambouras:

Darkfall could launch today. It's more ready for launch than most, if not all of the MMORPG titles at the same stage that I've personally sampled and it has been for quite some time. Everything has been tested internally and since November 10th we've been using an ever-growing number of external testers.

 

Let's not forget the "We'll never do a preorder" by Tasos

 

People/companies change their mind all the time, this is no different.

"Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it."

Originally posted by qbangy32

Originally posted by chryses

I say good on Adventurine for doing this. 

Vanguard

AoC

WAR

list goes on. 

All games that could have done with 1-3 additional months which would have saved them a lot of grief at the start.  Adventurine were probably expecting the game to be niche and it has generated a lot more interest than expected.   A good thing but I can't blame them for freaking a little and taking additional time to polish and fix.  Even if they delayed 6 months I wouldn't care.  As long as its a good game.

 

I would disagree with you on mentioning WAR needing more time, I found more bugs in WoW when it was released than I have done in the first few months of playing WAR, infact you will still see old bugs like displaced NPC's in WoW that have not been fixed for years, however spot on with Vandoomed and AoCock-up, I use the discs to those 2 games as coasters now.

 

 

Its not about bugs, its about Open RvR bringing servers to their knees and them putting all the xp into scenarios basically turning the game into WOWhammer, but the BG grind starts at lvl1.

Now i could understand Aventurine going safe on this to prevent this sort of debacle because of the unexpected big turnout the buzz has generated.

The Saga of Darkfall and Light continues

people passing out all around me.....good thing i wasnt holding my breath...

first thing i have to say is, wow that's alot of comments so quickly

second is that a months delay isn't much of a surprise in order to get a smother launch

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Gyrus

So (if you want to maintain credibility?) you will ask those questions.

If Closed Beta is in progress then you should be able to secure a spot for an MMORPG.com Staffer?

Be up front with Aventurine: Something like this
"We want to see that Darkfall is genuine.  We owe it to our members / readers.
If we don't see something we will de-list your game until we see something solid."

Seriously Stradden, this site will be left with no credibility if this turns out to be a massive fraud.
CYA.  (Cover Your Arse)

And FYI - I hope Darkfall IS genuine and delivers on its promises.  But I would hate to see players get scammed (again?).  Many MMORPGers are still just kids.
Come on MMORPG.com - for the kids?

Really? Is that what I should do? Golly gee whiz  mister, thanks. I certainly wouldn't have thought of that on my own for I just fell off of the turnoip truck and inot a job running this website.

Seriously, I've asked. I was told that we would be invited when the time comes.

Also: Why would this site lose any credibility at all in either case on this one? We're covering the news, to the best of our knowledge, as it develops. In the scenario you named, would I be pissed off? of course. Would I feel like I was somehow responsible? No. Of course not.

Unless of course I missed soemthing where I said "I guarantee that this will be the outcome on the Darkfall issue", because I'm pretty sure that hasn't happened.

Thanks though for that refresher on the basics of my job.

Well then - Golly Gee Whiz.  Since you choose to be so flippant then right back at ya.
 

What is this site for?

MMORPG games.  Do you have any actual proof this is a working game?

You seriously don't see that this site might lose some credibility if it turns out after all this time that Darkfall is a fraud?

After your members have specifically asked you to check?
Really?

Since you liked my refresher on the basics of your job how about some more?
 

Yeah, you are reporting the news.  But what sort of news reporter are you?

A Walter Cronkite type - who checks his facts and is trusted by his audience?

One who actually gives a shit?

Or are you the type who produces papers like "The Sun".  Happy to print any garbage?  "Alien stole my MMORPG!"?
 

If so, can we have "page 3 girls"?

Can you provide any proof what-so-ever that this game exists? That it is even close to being ready?

Does it even comply with the MMORPG.com rules listed here.
Can you confirm even this: "3. The game should have the capability to support at least 500 congruent users on a single server. This is not a reflection of the game's current subscriber count, but rather reflects the capabilities of a game's technology."?

Doesn't it worry you that a week away from the 22nd release (originally proposed) date no-one can prove this game exists in a playable state?

Everything we know about this game comes from the Developer and a few people known to the developer and vetted by the developer like this
"- I've been a good friend of Claus and Tasos for many years and we've often played MMOs together in the past.

- They've hosted The Noob since 2005, which is great or I'd have to sell my furniture to pay for bandwidth. I've reciprocated the favour by asking them "wtf, when's beta starting?" no more than twice a week for the last nine years. "

And throughout those reviews we get little gems about wipes happening often and "How ready is it? I don't know!"
 

Now normally I would give the Developer and the Author of those articles credit but as you say:

"I think that it is important at this stage to point out that a delayed launch, even after a specific date was set, is not an unusual process for an MMORPG. We’ve seen it many times before with a wide variety of games. The announcement alone does not signify any wrongdoing on Aventurine’s part and should be treated in the same way as other MMO delays."

Yes... but A WEEK before the announced release date?
When there is still no proof this game is even real?

You go on to say:

"While disappointment levels might be running a little bit high for players who were looking forward to Darkfall’s launch, and some who might like to see the game fizzle in flames may point to the delay as “proof” that the game is some kind of “scam”, I think that cooler heads should prevail on the subject. Is the delay a perfect scenario? No. Should we see this and assume that there’s something fishy in the works? Probably not. Should we look at the information presented and perhaps be a little more wary? Maybe. Should it make us ask more questions? Definitely, but that’s almost always a good idea anyway."

I think...
Probably...
Maybe...
Should it make us ask more questions?...

This is NOT the language of Investigative journalism. 
It's the sort of thing I would accept on a blog or as Parachute Journalism but not from an Editor on MMORPG.com
 

If the question going through your mind was "Should it make us ask more questions?" then the answer is YES

And you should have got those answers or stated why you couldn't.

We are looking to YOU at MMORPG.com to bring us the news here.  News we can trust.
YOU have the power to make that happen.
YOU have the contacts.  (Can you produce ANYONE outside Tasos' friends who can verify this game is real?)

If I want conjecture I can read the forums.

Did you consider that while you were falling off the turnip truck?

This site still has Dark and Light listed here with boards and the game is totally dead...  you can't play it.. it's totally offline and has been for MONTHS and will stay that way forever.

But just because it has a website and some screens it gets listed? LoL

DnL basically stole thousands of peoples money and this site STILL lists it and would even be sending it MORE orders if it was still taking orders..

Well, as I said in the other thread <linky>

Based on this, and a few other recent "MMORPG" games it might be time to review these rules.

Games are slipping through that perhaps shouldn't?

MMORPGs are 'evolving' and perhaps the rules should too.

As I said in The Agency forum, does a game with a "graphical lobby" count as a MMORPG?
That's just one problem with these rules.

There are browser based MMORPGs which deserve to be here more than some recent titles. :-(

Maybe he spoke too soon about 'no pre-order' and 'release date will be final'.  Maybe he turned an ear to marketing people( they are mahirim i believe) at the last minute.  Maybe the publisher slammed its big corporate fist on the table and made shit hard for Tasos.

Lies do in fact suck though.

They didn't advertise their game much, and this company formed to create solely Darkfall(so far anyways) out of a country that has never produced an MMO.  It's pretty easy to forgive them already, to be honest.

Lol...

Stradden trying to talk sense to an angry, bloodthristy lynchmob.

Just throw them red meat, and get the hell out of the cage.

Originally posted by popinjay

Lol...

Stradden trying to talk sense to an angry, bloodthristy lynchmob.

Just throw them red meat, and get the hell out of the cage.

Actually, ask yourself what our goal is here?
 

People just want to see proof that this IS NOT a fraud.

That should be easy - right?
 

lol #265 on the comment lsit,that's a lot  :D

There is ONLY one thing i could gather from all of this that makes any sense to me.The one thing is that i truly believe the PRE ORDERS are more of a case to pay for the so called FREE testing.I believe these guys are so tight for money they are having to scramble bigtime to make this work.

Somehow i get the feeling of a Vanguard all over again.A product that will probably turn out to be quite decent but,there lack of funds will fail the game somewhere for sure.I do not know where it will fail,perhaps something as simple as low bandwidth therefore players cannot login or are booted out of the server steadily,i can see that sort of problem causing an uproar.

This is why when i read between the lines ,they keep eluding to how they NEED to know how many players will be in the game come launch.By taking pre orders they can perhaps go OVER budget a tad and provide a little more space for players to login.Aventurine sounds like they cannot afford to put out more servers or bandwidth than they need,it would crush their profit margin.

This just shows why you need the BIG guy running these games,no matter how good or how smart the little guy is,he just doesn't have the funds to produce a first class act.Just like Vanguard,these guys are so tight in funds,they cannot take on any other partners,they are trying to do as much themselves as possible,IMO they can't handle it.If anyone remembers Final Fantasy almost went bankrupt,they decided to take SOE on as a partner and develop their game exclusively for the PS,it paid off for them in the end,it saved the franchise.

Vanguard was a TREMENDOUS effort,the effort put into the game blows the doors off even the largest subbed game WOW,i mean it is not even close,but their lack of funds put them where?I feel we are going to see a repeat here with DF..too bad really,the little guys can not compete with the big guys.I wish the best for DF and Aventurine,we need the little guys :D

After 8 years of waiting for nothing, I'd like to simply re-iterate the fact that this entire project is VAPORWARE.

---

Originally posted by Gyrus

---

Originally posted by popinjay

Lol...
Stradden trying to talk sense to an angry, bloodthristy lynchmob.
Just throw them red meat, and get the hell out of the cage.

---

 
Actually, ask yourself what our goal is here?
 
People just want to see proof that this IS NOT a fraud.
That should be easy - right?
 

---

From the majority of the threads, it appears the goal is pretty much "I told you so, ha ha ha." No?

Oh, another MMO launch delay.

Interesting all those 'I told you so' responses and others trying to defend this company. Who cares, just check the game if it gets launched. Untill then all is just speculation.

And dont preorder if you havent participated in any beta program for a MMO. Unless you like to gamble of course

One thing that struck me in their responses is that they didnt want to build a hype. Nothing seems to work anymore with MMO marketing strategies lol. Every approach seems to backfire somehow. Very entertaining though 

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by qbangy32

Originally posted by chryses

I say good on Adventurine for doing this. 

Vanguard

AoC

WAR

list goes on. 

All games that could have done with 1-3 additional months which would have saved them a lot of grief at the start.  Adventurine were probably expecting the game to be niche and it has generated a lot more interest than expected.   A good thing but I can't blame them for freaking a little and taking additional time to polish and fix.  Even if they delayed 6 months I wouldn't care.  As long as its a good game.

 

I would disagree with you on mentioning WAR needing more time, I found more bugs in WoW when it was released than I have done in the first few months of playing WAR, infact you will still see old bugs like displaced NPC's in WoW that have not been fixed for years, however spot on with Vandoomed and AoCock-up, I use the discs to those 2 games as coasters now.

 

Warhammer Online deserves to be on that list.

I won't go into it anymore as of why. As I have spend countless post on what is severely wrong with that game.

Hence why more and more people quit each day.

Cheers

That would be a good point if only their subscriptions were somehow low. Perhaps my data is wrong, but at around 3 million subscriptions and holding, that is equal to a wow launch. I believe you get the same information where people are saying that everyone is leaving wow, yet their subscriptions are going up, even in areas were everyone claims they are leaving. Like the US, they recently peeked with wotlk but even after "everyone left" there are still more subscribers than there was 1 year ago in the US.

Also, like the person you quoted, i do tend to hear more and more about war. Even some of my wow players play both games because they like war better but all the friends are still not wanting to change yet.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Maybe people should check out a game that has come out for the EU and will be out for the US soon. spellborn, it is also on the hot list. The difference is that game looks good, and plays amazing. I'll give darkfall a chance as it takes care of my hardcore pvp side (that is if it comes out), but until then spellborn will hold me over, and it will hold me over very well. Free trail if you are in the EU for the first 7 levels.

Originally posted by bluefooted

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by qbangy32

Originally posted by chryses

I say good on Adventurine for doing this. 

Vanguard

AoC

WAR

list goes on. 

All games that could have done with 1-3 additional months which would have saved them a lot of grief at the start.  Adventurine were probably expecting the game to be niche and it has generated a lot more interest than expected.   A good thing but I can't blame them for freaking a little and taking additional time to polish and fix.  Even if they delayed 6 months I wouldn't care.  As long as its a good game.

 

I would disagree with you on mentioning WAR needing more time, I found more bugs in WoW when it was released than I have done in the first few months of playing WAR, infact you will still see old bugs like displaced NPC's in WoW that have not been fixed for years, however spot on with Vandoomed and AoCock-up, I use the discs to those 2 games as coasters now.

 

Warhammer Online deserves to be on that list.

I won't go into it anymore as of why. As I have spend countless post on what is severely wrong with that game.

Hence why more and more people quit each day.

Cheers

 

That would be a good point if only their subscriptions were somehow low. Perhaps my data is wrong, but at around 3 million subscriptions and holding, that is equal to a wow launch. I believe you get the same information where people are saying that everyone is leaving wow, yet their subscriptions are going up, even in areas were everyone claims they are leaving. Like the US, they recently peeked with wotlk but even after "everyone left" there are still more subscribers than there was 1 year ago in the US.

 

Also, like the person you quoted, i do tend to hear more and more about war. Even some of my wow players play both games because they like war better but all the friends are still not wanting to change yet.

 

IN OTHER NEWS:

Maybe people should check out a game that has come out for the EU and will be out for the US soon. spellborn, it is also on the hot list. The difference is that game looks good, and plays amazing. I'll give darkfall a chance as it takes care of my hardcore pvp side (that is if it comes out), but until then spellborn will hold me over, and it will hold me over very well. Free trail if you are in the EU for the first 7 levels.

WAR seems to be going well in US, but not so good in the EU. GOA was very good to get a bad reputation since launch.

And TCoS might follow a similar route in the EU, with their incredibly retarded release  (lets put up some modern version of the Iron curtain,yay! ). It seems that at Acclaim there are some people who watched the Sopranos series for inspiration for the negotiations with the Spellborn devs.

But TCoS might still do well in the US if the reactions are any indication. Their concern is mainly about the delay (oh a MMO launch delay? Oo lol) from Acclaims part. Ive only seen a few supporting reactions from US players about that crap EU launch, the rest were basically 'get over it' / 'not our problem' kind of reactions.

---

Originally posted by bluefooted

That would be a good point if only their subscriptions were somehow low. Perhaps my data is wrong, but at around 3 million subscriptions and holding, that is equal to a wow launch.

---

Yes friend, if you are somehow suggesting Warhammer had 3 million subscriptions at launch, or NOW have 3 million subscriptions at present.... you are not just reading wrong data. Those data sources? Put those down. They are really called "comic books." And the little numbers in them are called "pages."

They probably have anywhere from 250k-300k current subscribers. There was no massive push in box sales to indicate any higher since Mythic's huge player base merges. Eve Online probably has more subs than Warhammer does at the moment, and they could be around 300kish by now. (they were about 220k in May 2008)

I'm guessing you were making a /sarcastic post?

To keep it breif, I don't mind a delayed launch. As long as the game (and everything around it) works somewhat properly another month ain't much of a wait.

Originally posted by cosimusta

Maybe he spoke too soon about 'no pre-order' and 'release date will be final'.

Or maybe he intended it all along. I have a feeling there's a reason some online shops in Greece and Sweden have had Darkfall listed for pre-order in the last few months.

 Maybe he turned an ear to marketing people( they are mahirim i believe) at the last minute.

Exactly how does he do that when Tasos hasmade it very clear they won't spend money for marketing. I doubt they have a marketing team that works for free. Oh, wait. They have the fanbots, I forgot.

 Maybe the publisher slammed its big corporate fist on the table and made shit hard for Tasos.

The publisher is an little known cd/dvd distributor with no experience in mmorpg distributing. Some corporate giant.

Lies do in fact suck though.

Yep, they do.

They didn't advertise their game much, and this company formed to create solely Darkfall(so far anyways) out of a country that has never produced an MMO.

Confidence inspiring.

 It's pretty easy to forgive them already, to be honest.

No, it's not. But I'm sure Tasos thanks you for being so gulli...er, understanding.

Let them delay it as long as necessary, that's fine: The last thing they need is a Hellgate: London style launch.

Originally posted by OddW0rlds

 

lol

ths is funny... that guy was just a hired game designer.. the mis information on the internets is amazing.

anyway, if you've never seen mourning b4.. you can actually D/L a part of the game world here..

http://abyssalengine.com/download.html

it' was actually quite good looking..  another prime example though.. of a start-up company that bit off way more than they could chew..  ala DF...

 

You can sit with a straight face and type that's the only thing that was wrong with Mourningand the assholes behind it? Whatever, dude.

Originally posted by Crelm

Let them delay it as long as necessary, that's fine: The last thing they need is a Hellgate: London style launch.

And we all know that time fixes all things.

"after much delay DF launches and it reminds people of the Hellgate launch"

Originally posted by stayontarget

Originally posted by Crelm

Let them delay it as long as necessary, that's fine: The last thing they need is a Hellgate: London style launch.

And we all know that time fixes all things.

"after much delay DF launches and it reminds people of the Hellgate launch"

Tasos makes that bungler Bill Roper look like a Grade AAA professional.