As a Beta tester, I give the game a *Potential* rating of Six out of Ten. There are way too many Fanboi's in this game to give an accurate reading of the quality of the game by browsing forums.

This game as it is now is not near a release candidate. Saying that, I really love the idea of Darkfall. I have been following this game since it's design conception. I have played most every main MMORPG that has release since EQ1 in 1999. I have Beta tested most of them. I have only played on PvP servers or PvP versions of the games.

On to the good points:

The FPS style combat is unique and interesting, especially ranged weapons
The graphics are better then I originally expected
The game performance is not bad considering the level of the graphics
The ability to sneak around is a great implementation
The world is huge

On to the bad points:

Melee combat is very boring and monotonous, you select a weapon, strafe around your opponent for a few minutes clicking your left mouse button to swing and thats about it...
The User Interface is very basic and not very polished
The Chat Interface is pre-EQ1 in design
The world is very "sterile" feeling, it has very few NPC's and the cities feel empty. I could run for half an hour and not see an NPC or another player
Having FPS style combat means lag is much more important/detrimental then normal MMORPG's. If someone has a much lower ping time then you, they WILL have an advantage.
You have to pretty much group up to do anything in the game, sorry solo'ers.
A lot of the original game features are not being released

I give Darkfall a Six out of Ten in potential success a few months after release if they fix A LOT of things. It is a niche game and will never have a huge following. If quite a few things aren't fixed in the first few month's of release I believe the game will fail. If you are a North American player I would hold off until the North American servers come online. This will also give you a chance to see how the game pans out after a few months. After playing the Beta, I will not initially be purchasing the game. I am also an Eve player and it is too hard to go from something so incredibly polished to something that should still be in Beta.

I wish the Darkfall team the best of luck, I think they will be needing it. Please let me know if you have any questions.
 

Good review and I think this is how the "normal" MMO player will see the game. I'm talking about people who have never tried a sandbox, either because they played a themepark MMO or they're new to the genre. There's some good but there's also bad. People on this site are really enjoying it but it's just the feeling of nostalgia because most of them are vets. They're happy to be playing a sandbox, not Darkfall per say.

We'll see when other sandboxes get released. That's when DF will have to prove its worth, and I have serious doubts that it will be able to.

The mob issue is more of an "realistic" setting. You need to really search for them. Today i was out looking, didnt se anything for 45 minutes, sat down to rest and got killed by a cave bear.

Good review, though I disagree with most of it, in particular the bit about melee.

I agree, melee is boring and monotonous in PvE, where you don't stand a chance of actively dodging a mobs melee attack.

In PvP, it is amazing.  Dancing in and out of range, taking your opponents weapon into consideration, swinging at the right time, timing your specials correctly, aiming in general... all this culminates in my favorite melee pvp to date.  I'm a 2h-sword guy, btw.  Taking down 2 or 3 people on my own has been incredibly rewarding, haha.  Just yesterday, I fought two people in banded armor, who were using potions, and I came out on top.  I was wearing a mish-mash of ultra cheap cloth and leather armor and had no potions (though I did have a few apples on me, admittedly), and I took home 2 sets of banded armor, some potions, and some weapons... it was badass.  Skill matters, nuff said.

 I will say, however, that I believe that each weapon skill should get its own 10 or so unique specials.  For example, maybe daggers gets 'backstab', which does 3x damage when you actually hit your opponent in the back, and is on a 15 sec cooldown.  Or 2h-clubs getting an ability called 'kneecap', which snares your target for 3-5 seconds, and is on a 20 second cooldown.

A lot of folk love the premise of this game.  The implementation of these ideas is quite a different entity altogether.

All I see here, is 'cheap'.

Almost everything about this game seems stuck in a time warp, from the UI to the fact that every race will look exactly the same as one another.

It has taken 8yrs to produce this title, and it doesn't half show.  One server will be enough to suit this community.

Will I be fronting money to play it?  Don't be stupid..

I agree this game need at least 2 more months of beta its just not finished 70% of world is empty.

Its all very basic now and crafting is so simple its click click click click:P

PvP is fun but also simple.

Alignment system sucks MAJOR its terible system for hardcore its just crap.

Newbees and noobs will whine alot becouse of rogue system.

Its also very exploitable game easy to exploit mobs and MACRO HEAVEN.

This game should have not been released yet.

No weather no enviroment sounds like birds insects, only some boring ambiant sound.

Also the sounds for combat and footsteps is awefull you just dont know where they are its like if they comming from  all directions.

Its btw one of the most stable betas sind 99 ive played, i had no lag at all and very good ping.

But with even a good pc its still bit awekward how grafhics works on max even top rigs have low fps.

AA still not working max grafhics performance also not working yet.

For many starting areas will be nightmare game is totally focussed and favorite for Pk.

My advice when you solo stay for short while in starter area and then go chaostown centre agon kill enemy race take there loot you have no towers and alignment is not importend.

I am going to give credit to Beliathon over on the Darkfall forums for his review which I think takes my views of the game into much more detail. It is a great review and worth the time to read.

Originally Posted by Beliathon
Disclaimer:
Most of this is cold, hard fact, but some of it is also my opinion. I've done my best to be objective and honest here but you may find people who disagree with some of this. I welcome any opposing viewpoints for debate, all I ask is that we keep it constructive.

The Good:
-Darkfall is by far the most beautiful, well-crafted, masterfully laid-out world I have had the pleasure of exploring. It is the first MMORPG I've ever played that truly and totally immerses me into "another world". I have been mezmerized again and again by the awe-inspiring sights and sheer grandeur of Agon. You can tell a ton of work went into molding the landscape. Exploring is one of the main things that keep me wanting to play every day.

-There is a huge variety of loot even in beta - much greater than Age of Conan had at release. In my own month of beta experience I've encountered dozens and dozens of different weapon and armor varieties.

-In Darkfall, there is the constant feeling of danger - you never know who to trust. Actions have consequences and that adds an enormous amount of fun factor.

-The framerate in Darkfall is generally GREAT, I see consistently 60-70 FPS, sometimes over 100. I have a GeForce 8800 GTX.

-From East Coast USA, my ping is consistently 100-120. Almost never higher.

-Monster AI is everything they say it is - although there are a few exploits and pathing issues that need to be fixed. The PvE in Darkfall is very, very challenging.

-Darkfall is the first MMO I've played where night actually FEELS like night - it's dark - it's scary. You see less, you feel a greater sense of danger. I actually heard a clanmate once say, "phew, the suns coming up" - that about sums it up and I absolutely love it. I've been wanting this from an MMO FOREVER. Of course, you can always pump up the gamma.

-The server has been stable when they are not doing work on it. This week it's uptime has met my expectations for a finished game.

The Bad
-At current, it is 100% impossible to accomplish ANYTHING solo. Even duoing it is next to imposible to kill any but the very basic starter mobs. Perhaps its intended that you should grind the same starter mobs for weeks before you can progress to anything tougher - but that seems a shitty feature to me. This seems to be a design decision, not a mistake, but I thought you ought to know before you lay down your 50 euros (19% tax included).

-Any time the server or client crashes - or you simply log out - you are warped back to the starting city (upon logging back in). I assume this is just part of debug mode, but there's no way to know for sure. Since Aventurine has decided NOT to let players "try before they buy", I'm just telling it like it is.

The following is from the beta forums, but I've read it and agree with everything said:

- Magic is slow/expensive/horrible grind. A lot of people seem to like it this way as they believe proper mages should be rare. I disagree. Mages aren't jedi - magic should be hard to master, but not painfully grindy and unrewarding.

- Empty world. I sincerely hope that the world will get filled for release. I doubt they would create huge cities, complexes etc just to leave them empty. The mob population has improved in strides since I joined beta, but it still feels somewhat lacking when you can run for 20-30 minutes and not encounter a single mob. Many of the early mob spawns are competitive locations because only certain mobs drop decent loot - and this is in a beta with only 1/4th or 1/5th a release population.

- Crafting as a system. Unless you own a clan city, crafting is an expensive, and slow process. An amateur blacksmith, for example, needs to pay 40-200 gold (depending on what item you're attempting to craft) for EACH attempt to craft an item. There is a 25% failure chance. I've heard complaints that with the costs set this high, it's impossible to make a profit on the items they've crafted. Many people complain that they can't make money/sell their wares. This will likely be remedied, at least somewhat, by a fully populated server.

- Sound. Obnoxious placeholder sound-effects aside, the sound is not positionally accurate. I have $200 surround headphones and if I hear combat I can't tell if it's 10 feet or 100 feet from me, or in what direction. This needs work.

- Graphics and animations. Personally, I'm happy with the graphics that Darkfall delivers.

Melee fighting is boring/repetitive/simple/lacks variation/etc.
Suggestions
- Make blocking/parrying useful (lowering stamina cost drastically in some way), this will change the make the melee less about all out offense and add some more incentive for timing and thinking ahead.
- Stop the "headless chicken + whack-a-mole" fights by changing the way stamina/sprint works. For example adding a separate sprint timer which lasts for a short while.
- Make it possible to dodge/roll/move away from attacks in a more responsive/effective way. This, especially coupled with the blocking, will stop people from just spamming LMB and actually time their attacks (thereby saving more stamina for blocks and so on).
- Increase damage across the board. This, coupled with the blocking, will make timing blows a lot more important, and dodging them even more so. This should also serve to reduce the fact that due to the current stamina requirements of fighting, you usually have a K ratio of 1:1 even when you get a short break between fights. You should be a threat to people even if you've lost a little hp and stamina. At the moment I feel like anyone just coming out of a fight is a free-kill that I don't have to worry the slightest bit about.
- Make melee swings work like magic/ranged in that you "charge" your strike and let it go at a certain point (full charge time depending on weapon speed).
-Put a sensible timer on potions, so people aren't spamming them.

Gathering is a tedious and mostly pointless grind (only a slight increase in yield)-
Introduce certain resources that can only be found with a high skill, or at least increase the specific yield of these and not just overall yield.
- Change it so that gathering only requires stamina and doesn't have a timer. Stamina requirement go down with skill increase.
- Introduce resources nodes that you need to find (i.e. rare bushes, rare types of wood and so on). This would serve to make exploration a lot more interesting for gatherers/crafters, as would gathering expeditions to rare locations and so on. Would also reduce the benefits of afk gathering with macros as you'll easily be ganked if you're afk'ing outside of the starter zones.
- Make macroing resources harder. This would make dedicated, "true" gatherers a lot more valuable. See the above point for one suggestion. Other suggestions are randomly spawned popups that need to be clicked if you do the same chore for an extended amount of time, or adding some sort of (relatively simple) mini-game.
- Make gathering resources more rewarding and fun overall. Most of the above points apply to this.

======================================== =====

GAME BREAKER ~ current siege mechanics
As is, the current siege mechanics will ruin the game. Being able to declare a siege for the measly cost of 1K gold and then being able to attack the city a mere 2 hours later is going to ruin this game. The grinding necessary to form a clan, claim a city and add improvements is huge. The ability to lose all that without warning while you work/sleep is unacceptable. To give the defenders a chance to protect themselves you need a few things to happen:

First there needs to be an appropriate time to respond. If the siege is declared at 4 in the morning who's even going to know it? I think a 12 hour waiting period at a minimum to get ahold of your clan members and coordinate is appropriate. During that 12 hours you should have the ability to decide what's the best time for you to defend since your the one with 99% of the risk.

Second there should be some flexibility given to the defender about when it starts. They are after all the ones risking their city and countless hours of grinding, harvesting and farming against the attackers 1K shard. Even with both sides becoming vulnerable it should be in the attackers mind they don't get to pick the final time so middle of the night tactics aren't necessarily a good idea. The defender then should have at least 12 hour or so period to set the siege time in.

1. Siege declared

2. In the next twelve hours the defenders can set the siege live time from anywhere from 12 to 24 hours after siege was declared.

3. If not set it defaults to 24 hours after siege declared.

4. Siege live. It is now 12 to 24 hours after siege declared at the time of defenders choosing.

The Ugly:
The chat and interface is lacking in usability and need reworking
-The in-game map is useless at current because you can't zoom in on it, so everything in the tribelands is condensed into one tiny area roughly the size of a box of matches on your screen.

-The journal (includes quests, clan info, and other vital things) is an unholy beast that loads from HTML for some unknown reason, and it loads SSSSLLOOWWWWLYYY, like a web page in 1994. Some claim this is because the beta is still in debug mode - I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true.

- Currently, we're still stuck with alpha slash-commands for things like inviting people to party and sharing quests.
Examples:
To invite, you must type /party_invite_player Firstname Lastname
To share quests, you must type /party_share_all_quests

It's ridiculous and completely unacceptable for a finished game.

- (Toggable) chat bubbles would make it easier to use local chat and actually get noticed

======================================== =====

In my experience, dev communication with the beta testers has been severely lacking. We want to know whether or not the devs read the forums and are aware of the points the players raise- A "known bugs" or "systems we are reworking" or "we are aware that you think this" thread
- A post by a dev saying that they have noted this issue being raised by many players
- ANYTHING that makes the testers know that their opinions matter except waiting for a patch that might never come

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

All in all I feel that Darkfall has a TON of potential, but on the whole I don't feel it meets my expectations. Combat is by far the biggest issue for me. Tasos claimed the combat was like Mount & Blade - it's not. Combat requires very little individual skill, outside of aiming your spell/arrow. Melee combat is severely lacking. In my opinion, Darkfall is close, but it's just not there yet. I think with another 3-6 months of development, it would be.

Originally posted by Spaceweed10

A lot of folk love the premise of this game.  The implementation of these ideas is quite a different entity altogether.

All I see here, is 'cheap'.

Almost everything about this game seems stuck in a time warp, from the UI to the fact that every race will look exactly the same as one another.

It has taken 8yrs to produce this title, and it doesn't half show.  One server will be enough to suit this community.

Will I be fronting money to play it?  Don't be stupid..

I respect your opinion.

But what do you think about a game as WoW for example? Because there you have something that i think is "cheap".

Though I don't think you should be able to decide when they attackers attack, 2h to set up a siege is ridiculous. Do they have to knock a door down or something? or just once the machiens are ready you get in?

Originally posted by daarco

Originally posted by Spaceweed10

A lot of folk love the premise of this game.  The implementation of these ideas is quite a different entity altogether.

All I see here, is 'cheap'.

Almost everything about this game seems stuck in a time warp, from the UI to the fact that every race will look exactly the same as one another.

It has taken 8yrs to produce this title, and it doesn't half show.  One server will be enough to suit this community.

Will I be fronting money to play it?  Don't be stupid..

 

I respect your opinion.

But what do you think about a game as WoW for example? Because there you have something that i think is "cheap".

Although I think WoW is garbage, it was way more "finished" software when it was released then Darkfall is.

Originally posted by CallsignVega

Originally posted by daarco

Originally posted by Spaceweed10

A lot of folk love the premise of this game.  The implementation of these ideas is quite a different entity altogether.

All I see here, is 'cheap'.

Almost everything about this game seems stuck in a time warp, from the UI to the fact that every race will look exactly the same as one another.

It has taken 8yrs to produce this title, and it doesn't half show.  One server will be enough to suit this community.

Will I be fronting money to play it?  Don't be stupid..

 

I respect your opinion.

But what do you think about a game as WoW for example? Because there you have something that i think is "cheap".

 

Although I think WoW is garbage, it was way more "finished" software when it was released then Darkfall is.

Now that's your opinion, sure it was way more "finished" in terms of PvE combat, but the PvP in initial WoW blew donkey nuts. I'd rather have interesting PvP at launch then interesting PvE at launch (preferably both obviously).

But to each his own.

 I like what I see here.

All that I was hoping to be good seems to be good by all accounts.

And the issues people have I dont really have a problem with.

Like the game being anti solo, thats a good thing in my book, this is an MMO after all.

Or the whole Magic is SOO boring/expensive/repetitive to skill up. Another Good thing, magic is not for everyone and achieveing the higher lvl spells should mean something.

Or people complaining about the blue grey red system, thats also fine in my book, there seems to be one BIG issue with it, that someone else can jump into ur slash and make u go grey.

Well I dont see a way around that, and besides as long as I play with my friends and guildies and dont really see it as an issue.

The rest seems to be mostly stuff that has already been fixed like:

"-Any time the server or client crashes - or you simply log out - you are warped back to the starting city"

or

"- Empty world. I sincerely hope that the world will get filled for release. I doubt they would create huge cities, complexes etc just to leave them empty. The mob population has improved in strides since I joined beta, but it still feels somewhat lacking when you can run for 20-30 minutes and not encounter a single mob. Many of the early mob spawns are competitive locations because only certain mobs drop decent loot - and this is in a beta with only 1/4th or 1/5th a release population."

or stuff thats about to be fixed like the siege system.

-Darkstar

I have to admit, I'm fairly happy with the review and the comments. Over the last few days, I was getting a little upset with the comments from Tasos, and the lack of knowledge on the game.

Fundamentally and Primarily, I'm getting the impression that this is a hard game. I like it. I want a hard game.

Secondly, the "cons" expressed seemed to be easily fixed. It appears that the game mechanics are very strong, though.

I guess we'll know more soon enough.