MMORPG.com Darkfall Correspondent Andy Cormier takes a look at some of the current issues that are present in Aventurine's sandbox MMORPG, Darkfall.

In my initial overview of Darkfall, I went over the game in very broad strokes. Now I'm going to kick off this overview a bit differently than most. Instead of peppering in the good with the bad like most other articles, we are going to delve exclusively into the negative. I wanted to do things this way since there is such an over abundance of misinformation floating around, leaving many undecided people that have no idea if many of the alleged problems in Darkfall actually exist, or not.

Read Overview Part II, Looking at the Down Side

I thought the alignment system was -100 to +10 now or did I miss a patch note? :)

1 same race kill+gank now turns you red. Alignment can't be gained from party members, clan or alliance, and you can't bind at a clan stones unless you're in an alliance from what I remember.

ie. they're making it hard to farm alignment but alignment doesn't mean anything if you're in an established clan/alliance any way as you never need to go to an NPC town.

so in other words... there is nothing wrong with the game. All bad reviews and negative aspects signaled by others are just non issues and overstatements.

I see. Have you recently been fired from Eurogamer?

Originally posted by Demonized

so in other words... there is nothing wrong with the game. All bad reviews and negative aspects signaled by others are just non issues and overstatements.

I see. Have you recently been fired from Eurogamer?

Lmao /salute

Someone must be scared of getting the same treatment as eurogamer.....

I'm sure we will be seeing touted by Tasos on the Darkfall forums going "SEE! They get it!".

Nice article.  Too bad you are so misunformed about the cheating angle.  There are some really good mages out there today and they did not get that way by playing fair.  Easy to do, teleport to a high level area, use broken game mechanics to kill and loot, sell and then macro all night with the purchased reagents.  Cash is never a problem.  There are how to lists on several websites detailing such. 

As to the claims by Aventurine that they log everything, it is obvious that their logs are so primitive they only catch the really obvious cheaters.

But, the game is still in beta essentially and they are constantly improving it.  Just that there will be no character wipe when they do get most of the bugs out and you will still be dealing with these overly powerful characters obtained by illicit means.

You also did not mention how neglected the crafting is.  Until they institute a market, auction house or some form of NPC market it will be very marginal.

You also did not address how much a grind this game is for the legitimate players.  I used to think the Last Chaos was the worst grind in the industry.  Darkfall does it one better.  It is currently the number one grinder in the genre.

Hopefully they will delay more servers starts until they get these issues sorted out.

Huis review was about the bad things friend. Grind is not one of the downfalls of DF is just a feature.

For myself being an old EQ vet ( i mean old EQ btw ) grinding was what made the game good. So yes DF is the biggest grind i have came across yet, and hopefully it stays that way as it's what keeps me playing it :)

On a side note i have only been playing twoo weeks so maybe all the cheating has stopped, but i have not come across anything yet. then again i havent been looking so unless it's obvious i wouldnt have noticed.

Hope this is a joke. So basically the game is 100% perfect minus 3 things.

Originally posted by alkemist

Hope this is a joke. So basically the game is 100% perfect minus 3 things.

Lol cant anyone even say bad things about DF without someone complaining that theres not enough bad things now? he didnt say the rest is perfect anywhere i read! if he diod i will gladly apologise, if not then come on all get a grip. he was just following up another review adding a few things he thinks are downsides to the game.

To me there are more downsides to the game. But for christs sake if i were to try to make a review mentioning every single fault and every single good point in the game i would have to write a novel lol.

Look forward to the link where he says that the rest of the game is 100% perfect.

Originally posted by BaronJuJu

I'm sure we will be seeing touted by Tasos on the Darkfall forums going "SEE! They get it!".

Yes but we know that the reviewers/overviewers or whatever they are called at anyh given time are friendly towards DFO, so those of us looking for an unbiased report on DFO will not find one on MMORPG.com, then again I really haven't seen any unbiased reviews/overviews from any other source, but nor have I seen any other site than this give DFO as much coverage or leniency in that coverage.

Are you serious? this is it?

So Darkfall's most important and glaring issues in a nutshell (in order of importance):

1-buying the game.

2-cheating.

3-macroing.

4-The notorious Alignment System!

"To be honest, the rest of the "problems" you will see discussed on the message forums are non issues."

In other words, the other issues are not important enough to be mentioned, such as the extreme lack of content (closer to non existent actually), extreme lack of polish, broken combat to say the least, prehistoric UI, and I'm not even mentioning the 1998 graphics, the fact that there's NO lore, the awful control system etc.

So the best games on the market have more issues than DF I guess. Totally blinkered 'overview'.

'Yay I can kill anyone and take his loot!'

Seriously.. some people are incredibly easy to please.

Originally posted by qbangy32

Originally posted by BaronJuJu

I'm sure we will be seeing touted by Tasos on the Darkfall forums going "SEE! They get it!".

 

Yes but we know that the reviewers/overviewers or whatever they are called at anyh given time are friendly towards DFO, so those of us looking for an unbiased report on DFO will not find one on MMORPG.com, then again I really haven't seen any unbiased reviews/overviews from any other source, but nor have I seen any other site than this give DFO as much coverage or leniency in that coverage.

If you don't like the Correspondent program, wherein people who play and enjoy their games write about the games, then I would simply suggest that you don't read the Correspondent articles (which are clearly labelled as such) and wait for the site's official review.

As to the frequency of Darkfall coverage... Darkfall articles consistently perform well in terms of traffic. This idicates to me that there are people who want to read about the game. As such, we will provide articles. It just makes sense.

Originally posted by Electriceye

Are you serious? this is it?

So Darkfall's most important and glaring issues in a nutshell (in order of importance):

1-buying the game.

2-cheating.

3-macroing.

4-The notorious Alignment System!

 

"To be honest, the rest of the "problems" you will see discussed on the message forums are non issues."

In other words, the other issues are not important enough to be mentioned, such as the extreme lack of content (closer to non existent actually), extreme lack of polish, broken combat to say the least, prehistoric UI, and I'm not even mentioning the 1998 graphics, the fact that there's NO lore, the awful control system etc.

 

So the best games on the market have more issues than DF I guess. Totally blinkered 'overview'.

'Yay I can kill anyone and take his loot!'

Seriously.. some people are incredibly easy to please.

Sorry i dont get it.
 

whats broke about the combat?

Non existent content? how come i havent gone a day yet when i havent been raided by enemies? and i havent left the newbie area yet and surrounding Leafhelm there are 3 goblin camps i have found and a Large Skeleton/zombie area. and i'm too scared to go far lol! oh ye and the crafting i started last night is going to keep me busy it seems.

Control system is different from what were used to, but it works and is actually more fun that most mmo's

Graphics are not as good as Aoc/Vanguard maybe but i would call them average if i am honest.

Polish i agree with, theres non. But i dont think there ever will be much. It's not a bells and whistles game is it?

Prehistoric UI...hmm ye your close there. seems to be workable but could be so much better.

But come on mate his review was at least honest, your statments are misleading.

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by qbangy32

Originally posted by BaronJuJu

I'm sure we will be seeing touted by Tasos on the Darkfall forums going "SEE! They get it!".

 

Yes but we know that the reviewers/overviewers or whatever they are called at anyh given time are friendly towards DFO, so those of us looking for an unbiased report on DFO will not find one on MMORPG.com, then again I really haven't seen any unbiased reviews/overviews from any other source, but nor have I seen any other site than this give DFO as much coverage or leniency in that coverage.

 

If you don't like the Correspondent program, wherein people who play and enjoy their games write about the games, then I would simply suggest that you don't read the Correspondent articles (which are clearly labelled as such) and wait for the site's official review.

As to the frequency of Darkfall coverage... Darkfall articles consistently perform well in terms of traffic. This idicates to me that there are people who want to read about the game. As such, we will provide articles. It just makes sense.

I mean this in the most respectful way. but ever since 2003, this site has gone downhill, and i suspect this is why, and why the tone here changed. On the forums, and in its daily content.

You are intentionally fanning the flames on your own site by posting intentionally baited material. I understand the need to create traffic.... but yeah... I understand capitalizing on controversy. Your presentation of the articles are misleading to your player base. You know this, OR you would NOT have to keep coming into threads defending them, or dismissing the comments made on the with "This is an overview/opinion piece". This goes for any game.

Can we go back to creating traffic buy posting things of value? I highly enjoy the new columnists, as well as reviews from your PAID professional staff. This correspondent program is little more than your addition of player blogs. Please separate the two (News and opinion).

This is also, again, listed under news.

Guys,

I need to post some corrections. Articles get submitted often times weeks prior to actually getting them posted. At the extremely fast pace that Aventurine has been patching, several things are now changed:

- Cheating has dropped off dramatically after the nice big ban of over 200 cheaters. Yes it still exists, but I see complaints of cheating far far less now

- The alignment system has changed (twice) now. First they dropped the maximum alignment of +100 to +10. So 1 kill and 1 gank will turn you red. Then, in the most recent patch, they changed the alignment gain from killing enemies from +2 for kill and +2 for gank to +1 for a kill and +1 for a gank.

I must commend Aventurine on keeping to their promise of weekly patches. I actually find myself getting excited to read the patch notes each Friday. If you read the official message boards its often comical because you will see players upset about one facet or another, and multiple threads on the same subject will consume the first page of the forums. It seems the more people scream the more likely they are to put that issue at the forefront and fix it (or modify it) via patch. Then after the patch you don't see another word about it and someone else takes hold. For a small company they are damned good at correclty problems on the fly and making huge changes to the game mechanics quickly (weekly!). This game is progressively getting better and better. And each weeks its actually a noticable difference.

-Andy Cormier

You can honestly say that you think that was a fair assessent of DarkFall's negatives?

This statement from the second article pretty much sums it:

"So macroers seem to do nothing more than fill the pockets of those that hunt them, and play little to no significance in the game whatsoever."

Seriously? Umm... really? You honestly believe that statement?

I won't be viewing or reading the rest of the 8 "Overview" articles... they seem to be based in reality about as much as DarkFall's web-site. 

You know the one that even after they've "gone through it" still says they have Weather effects, Trade Boards for crafters both in and out of game, etc.

Not too surprised I was correct in how objective this article would be... but I was still hoping for something a bit closer to reality... oh well. 

Thankfully there are a few blog sites out there that are a bit more reality-based.  (Keen & Graev's comes to mind).

No game is perfect, but I wanted to tackle the primary negatives you see floating around about the game. Interestingly enough all of the mains ones have been fixed already via patches. Are there still issues? Sure. But at the rate they are patching this game there won't be for long.

In the most recent patch they even addresses an annoyance of mine (although not many bitching about it) which was the difficulty of solo players to hunt, and find uncamped hunting spots. So they made some out of the way locations with newb spawns to let the solo players have a better go at things. Most of the spawns were too far off to be of use, but it was there first attempt at the change and I expect more to come this Friday. If you currently play Darkfall its very hard to fault Aventurine for not listening to players and fixing this quickly.

-Andy Cormier