The latest update form Tasos Flambouras on the Darkfall forums warns players with improper names to create new characters within 48 hours or have their account banned, explains performance issues during massive battles, offers no short term help for players who lost items during crashes but says they're working on a more permanent solution, and offers another stern warning to cheaters, saying it's not a matter of if you'll get caught, it's a matter of when.

Yesterday there were player disconnects from server errors. We discovered that it was an issue with a router at Telia France which impacted several ISPs including Virgin Media. This caused players in the UK, France and other areas to get disconnected from the server. As far as we know this issue has been fixed.

In 48 hours characters with names made in an effort to confuse GMs and other players, for example adding a string of lower cap L’s and upper case I’s (IlIlIIIl) in their names will start getting their host accounts permanently banned. If you have a character like that, delete him and make a new one with a proper name.

Which brings us to cheating: We hear complaints from some players and some clans that continue seeing cheating everywhere when in fact this isn’t the case. We should know since we log everything. The exploiters we ban always deny they were using 3d party programs; they complain and ask for proof. There are also people who continue using 3d party programs to exploit, thinking that if they’re careful and not observed by GMs that they’ll go undetected. What all these people have in common is that they don’t understand that we log everything. Characters are flagged server-side and investigated in-game. Reports of cheating players are verified server-side. We have a combination of automatic and manual investigation. We use them both to be thorough, but we don’t rely on one or the other. We know someone’s cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if you’ve even done so once, you’re not safe. There’s no such thing as “clever use” when you own all the server logs. We’ll eventually get to you and ban you. If you’re currently using 3d party programs to exploit with, we suggest you uninstall these programs immediately and hope for the best.

Read more here.

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We cannot refund game items under no circumstances, this is Darkfall policy. We are working on making it so that you don’t lose any if we need to bring down the server and you’re still in-game.

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Faulty logic is faulty.

This is a full blown Pay to Alpha test.

Originally posted by Szark

The latest update form Tasos Flambouras on the Darkfall forums warns players with improper names to create new characters within 48 hours or have their account banned, explains performance issues during massive battles, offers no short term help for players who lost items during crashes but says they're working on a more permanent solution, and offers another stern warning to cheaters, saying it's not a matter of if you'll get caught, it's a matter of when.

Talking out of turn… that's a paddlin’
Looking out the window... that's a paddlin’
Staring at my sandals... that's a paddlin’
Paddlin’ the school canoe… oh, you better believe that's a paddlin’

Read more here.

I couldn't help it... the Darkfall post completely reminds me of this Simpsons quote.

I feel bad for Darkfall players. The post basically says "we're right, you're wrong, and oh by the way here are new naming rules, and we won't give back anything that you lost because even though we have logs of everything, we don't have logs of what was lost."

So they ban a lot of people who bought the game and claim they know they are using 3rd party programs all nazi style?

What keeps them from banning lots of regular players in this fascist form just to open more room for other people to buy their game, til they milked enough money to disappear?

I wonder if anyone was banned without reason and will try to sue them.

I was seriously considering buying darkfall because I honestly like the idea of the game, but these authoritative posts just keep me from doing it. Maybe I will give free trial a chance if there's ever any.

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Originally posted by soulwynd
I was seriously considering buying darkfall because I honestly like the idea of the game, but these authoritative posts just keep me from doing it. Maybe I will give free trial a chance if there's ever any.

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I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

And what happened to the completely ready, no problems here, most amazing game in the world that Tasos and his fanbois hawked over and over again? Pay to Alpha test? No thanks. Sounds like between the inability to even purchase the game, the bugs and exploits all over the place, this game isn't even CLOSE to ready for market.

Damn shame.

Jesus wept do AV have any clue what they're doing? Do any of them have any idea how to manage a product or a business? If this was a shitty Hollywood movie then AV would have been the geeky underdogs we all loved. They would have overcome insurmountable odds and then revolutionsed the MMO genre, toppling WoW, making billions, and spitting in the jocks faces while top models smoked their poles.

However in the real world we see a bunch of lackwits floundering in a sea of their own incompetence and complete lack of any business acumen. I might holiday in Greece later this summer, I imagine Tasos and crew might be serving me my food or carrying my cases to my room by then.

 People still play this game?

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

 

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We cannot refund game items under no circumstances, this is Darkfall policy. We are working on making it so that you don’t lose any if we need to bring down the server and you’re still in-game.

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Faulty logic is faulty.

This is a full blown Pay to Alpha test.

I thought that I was extremely lucky to get into the game to play. But now having actually played it, I won't be continuing my subscription, it just is not worth paying for yet.

Hopefully they'll get things straighten out in a few months, but with the company's attitude, I'm not hopeful.

I cannot believe how full of crap these people are. This "take it or gtfo" approach is all fine and dandy until your loyal fans become paying customers, who should be treated with a little more respect.

This was a European release, and because of that it should be quite obvious that 7pm-12am gmt is when most people are logged in. Not for Aventurine, apparently, since we had to beg them and create a ton of threads asking to move the scheduled maintenance to a more suitable time of the day than 21pm gmt. Yes, they actually chose to patch the game in the evening. This often resulted in the server crashing 10 minutes after the patching was done, which meant another 1-2h of waiting. This is just an example of their complete incompetence.

Now there's the name thing... I'm not going to be affected by this in any way, but still it kind of sucks to see them do that to a lot of people, who should have their names changed to something else instead of having their accounts banned.

The whole paragraph about cheating is the biggest pile of lies that ever left Tasos' mouth, and, well, that's saying something. The cheaters themselves have stated on numerous occasions that since so much of the stuff is done client-side, there's no way for Aventurine to tell whether a given individual is cheating or not unless they actually witness him cheating. Now, that might very well be a lie since the people who said that are cheaters and shouldn't be trusted, but I reported a few people who I saw moving at insane speeds (I'm talking 2-3x horse speed on foot etc.), as well as a naked elf with a newbie staff who flew out of a dungeon wall to loot his kill (a huge monster that hits like a truck), just to get back inside it just a few seconds later, before I could even get to him. And guess what, all of these people are still playing.

We had a GM follow us once because someone reported my friend for speedhacking (his movement is a bit jittery when sprinting since he's playing from the west coast). Funny thing is, the GM who followed us wanted to stay unnoticed, so he tried to hide behind rocks and trees with his huge, shiny floating GM sign right above his head... Had we been cheating, we could've simply turned our speedhack down until he left or something. Also, if they log everything and can easily detect cheaters by going through the server logs, then why the need to follow us?

Way to go, Aventurine. Keep lying your way to bancrupcy. It will be amusing to see you fall.

Why would anyone want to give a company like this their money?   

Though this really shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has actually been following the game during development.  This is the way Aventurine has always behaved toward the community.   I always wondered if they'd change toward their paying customers.   Now we know. 

Tasos must know by now that he is the biggest joke in the gaming industry.

what a joke...and yet...mmorpg continues to put his posts on the front page....umm...why?

Originally posted by miagisan

what a joke...and yet...mmorpg continues to put his posts on the front page....umm...why?

Because every time Darkfall makes it in to news, it makes 200 new posts in their forums

Kind of funny how they say no cheating is going on, yet this is the 2nd thread discussing it.  Even more amusing is the mention of them logging everything yet not being able to return things lost from the server crashes.

Aventurine is a bunch of very lost kids attempting to run a game where the players are more sophisticated than their staff.  They seem to be spending far too much time putting out fires instead of fixing game problems which are still numerous.

Originally posted by khaelf

I cannot believe how full of crap these people are. This "take it or gtfo" approach is all fine and dandy until your loyal fans become paying customers, who should be treated with a little more respect.

This was a European release, and because of that it should be quite obvious that 7pm-12am gmt is when most people are logged in. Not for Aventurine, apparently, since we had to beg them and create a ton of threads asking to move the scheduled maintenance to a more suitable time of the day than 21pm gmt. Yes, they actually chose to patch the game in the evening. This often resulted in the server crashing 10 minutes after the patching was done, which meant another 1-2h of waiting. This is just an example of their complete incompetence.

Now there's the name thing... I'm not going to be affected by this in any way, but still it kind of sucks to see them do that to a lot of people, who should have their names changed to something else instead of having their accounts banned.

The whole paragraph about cheating is the biggest pile of lies that ever left Tasos' mouth, and, well, that's saying something. The cheaters themselves have stated on numerous occasions that since so much of the stuff is done client-side, there's no way for Aventurine to tell whether a given individual is cheating or not unless they actually witness him cheating. Now, that might very well be a lie since the people who said that are cheaters and shouldn't be trusted, but I reported a few people who I saw moving at insane speeds (I'm talking 2-3x horse speed on foot etc.), as well as a naked elf with a newbie staff who flew out of a dungeon wall to loot his kill (a huge monster that hits like a truck), just to get back inside it just a few seconds later, before I could even get to him. And guess what, all of these people are still playing.

We had a GM follow us once because someone reported my friend for speedhacking (his movement is a bit jittery when sprinting since he's playing from the west coast). Funny thing is, the GM who followed us wanted to stay unnoticed, so he tried to hide behind rocks and trees with his huge, shiny floating GM sign right above his head... Had we been cheating, we could've simply turned our speedhack down until he left or something. Also, if they log everything and can easily detect cheaters by going through the server logs, then why the need to follow us?

Way to go, Aventurine. Keep lying your way to bancrupcy. It will be amusing to see you fall.

That was pretty funny... or sad... ok its funny, sad AND scary. Thought they had invisibility and stuff like that when they followed anyone around.

If they really only try to sneak around behind rocks and trees, then they obviously dont have the leet anti-hack tools that they want everyone to believe, probably not any sophisticated server logs either. Now thats scary...