Remember when Darkfall was nearing release, and everyone was saying Darkfall is vaporware or a scam? This was when The Order of the White Border was on the rise.

The Order of the White Border was a joke about how the Darkfall website hadn't been updated for a very long time. The only thing that had been updated was a thick white border added to the content of the site. It was actually quite funny at the time.

But now look at Darkfall, at how far along it's come. Aventurine has proven to be a very competent company. A small company with a huge dream.

Darkfall truly is a good game when you come to appreciate it for what it offers. Nice to see a small company succeed in this market.

Yeah, I thought it was vapourware once. now I reckon darkfall is the best mmo I ever played ;)

haha, yea  these fanatics drinking the vaporware cool aid. Pity those lunatics 'of the white border' and their cult of the brainless stoped visiting these part of the forums nowadays and after their vaporware fiasco.  Good laughs we got outa them, haha.

btw OP, i don't think it was meant as a joke by the founder of the cult and Darkfall hater, backfired pretty soon after. Haha

Whats even more amazing is the haters can no longer say Darkfall is a sinking ship as the game is paid for now (the developers are making money).  Not much left for haters to chew on with this very unique game.

Not saying DF is a bad game, but I wouldn't call it a win or a victory.   DF didn't exactly change their website to reflect the game until 3-4 months after release (which was rocky at best), and it still hasn't implemented the original list of game mechanics.  

Never played Darkfall, probably never will not my cup of tea.

But three cheers for Aventurine for succeeding, the more companies succeed at trying something different (Big or small) the better the genre as a whole evolves for us all.

Originally posted by Kothoses

Never played Darkfall, probably never will not my cup of tea.

 

But three cheers for Aventurine for succeeding, the more companies succeed at trying something different (Big or small) the better the genre as a whole evolves for us all.

Honestly if you are an avid gamer, Darkfall is a great game to try now (particularly the free trial bit).  Why?  In an MMO market dominated by WoW clones and bland rehashed versions of the same game, Darkfall has a really strong vision that the Devs have never wavered from.  There are things in Darkfall which are wonderfully Greek, and for people jaded by years of boring expansions it is a real breath of fresh air.

Originally posted by thinktank001

Not saying DF is a bad game, but I wouldn't call it a win or a victory.   DF didn't exactly change their website to reflect the game until 3-4 months after release (which was rocky at best), and it still hasn't implemented the original list of game mechanics.  

It's a win, mainly because they have not only survived a massive economic recession, they have listened to their customers and implemented (and continume to implement) meaningful changes and improvements to the game.

I had high hopes, and deep concernes about DF.  I am glad to say the game is good, just a HUGE time sink.

I have not played in a while so it may have changed but ALMOST every one was macroing or swimming/running into walls to try and get some stats up to have a chance.

but i will say this, if you have the time you won't find many games that offer the same experience as DF. 

Originally posted by korr

...

I have not played in a while so it may have changed ...

They have added 'meditation', a limited offline skilling system (very reminiscent of EVE's), and have been slowly expanding and balancing that.  They also upped skill gains, so by my count you are now 12 times more likely to get a skill gain using offensive magic on a monster than you were at release.

Combined with diminishing returns formula for health (yes it was always meant to be, but now it actually is!), people are pvp capable much MUCH sooner than they were before.  This has quite understandably been very warmly greeted by players who loved the game, but simply didn't have the time to commit to grinding up.

The future looks good for Darkfall.

I do not think many in the "Order" were as concerned with the game being vaporware as it was crammed down our throats as being the next greatest game ever that would totally re-write the history of MMO's and that Aventurine could do no wrong and was a perfect company. At that time, it was hard to accept.

But, now, many months removed from that time, it is good to see a small indie company doing well and making the game they want to make. I wish nothing but the best for Darkfall and if, one day, they release a server/ruleset with less hardcore PVP emphasdis, I might actually try the game. I do not expect them too but it would be nice (I am just not a serious hardcore player).

The whole "Darkfall is Vaporware" debate taught me never to take the experts too seriously.  Anyone recall this thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/29767/page/1

(Please don't necro the thread, just quoted for reference)

All I will say is that those "vaporware" people sounded like they really knew what they were talking about.  People were trying to name facts to counter their arguments, but they were continually shot down.

Well, you couldn't really blame people for calling DarkFall vaporware at the time. Everything pointed to it dying a slow and painful death (and, to be honest, although I am adamant of DarkFall, it is still not exactly the most stable of MMOs or at least does not come across as such). Regardless of how well an MMO is doing and regardless of why, not updating the game's website for such a prolonged period of time really does say a lot about the competencies of the developers. To my knowledge, most if not all of those developers are still on the project, which begs the questIon:

Have all those developers suddenly become competent? If so, how come? If not, who is to say DarkFall still is not vaporware?

haha, they compete in making MMORPG not websites, lol. How cute, there is still  vaporware claims to read. After so much time the game is live, 2 years now.   Amusing and entertaining.  Also now its not vaporware means the product is not available. Vaporware means if developers are competent, lol. Stretching meanings of terms, stating wrongs about facts has always distinguish the style of these order of the white border.

Yea, 'with a bit of a mind flip', Darkfall is vapor, sure thing, lol.

Other than a few issues I think, from what I've seen, Darkfall is a great game.

For me it's a game that would require more time than I have in order to play the way I want. But it has a lot going for it.

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

haha, they compete in making MMORPG not websites, lol. How cute, there is still  vaporware claims to read. After so much time the game is live, 2 years now.   Amusing and entertaining.  Also now its not vaporware means the product is not available. Vaporware means if developers are competent, lol. Stretching meanings of terms, stating wrongs about facts has always distinguish the style of these order of the white border.

 

Yea, 'with a bit of a mind flip', Darkfall is vapor, sure thing, lol.

 

• I never claimed DarkFall was vaporware. I just said that I am not convinced it is not. In my opinion, anything that has so far cost more money than it has brought in and offers no significant certainty it will eventually bring in more money than it has cost is vaporware. This is because no company will invest a large amount of future time and dedication into a project that is not likely to be profitable but has been set up as a 'bad call'. For instance, I do not think anybody would like to argue Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is definitely not vaporware, even though it has its servers up and running as we speak, simply because SOE has dropped any and all support for the game from a financial viewpoint. Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa have kept their servers up for quite some time, but at some point, financial (and, by extent, developmental) support was quite suddenly dropped for those titles. Obviously, if you have a finished game lying around and the income of its subscriptions is higher than the cost of keeping the servers up, it is always better to keep the servers up. However, the game might die out before you have reached the break-even point of your investment. Therefore, the fact that servers are up does not automatically mean a game is not vaporware as per the above definition. It could simply be a means of minimising the financial damages. The facts that DarkFall's game updates are only rolled out at a comparatively slow rate, that a lot of them focus on fixing systems in the game (think offline skilling and the upcoming alignment changes), and that the website is still not the pinnacle of up-to-date-ness only strengthen this possibility; if your game is currently not slated to return its investment in the long run, you need more subscribers and you draw more subscribers by changing things they might not like about the game, but you're not going to put much more money into development and into support departments like your website team. 

• If your business does not have somebody who is competent at designing and maintaining websites, you are not a competent business, because businesses thrive on PR. Websites are an essential part of running a business and, in that, are in the same line as management, finances, HR, and customer services departments; you need them to run a sizeable business appropriately. This also pertains to the PR debacle Tasos has been in the past; you may get on the good side of a small amount of people if you behave obnoxiously and shout a lot, but it is not something that sits well with the general public and doing so will therefore alienate the better part of your upcoming customer base from your product. I know it prevented me from jumping right in when the game launched, because I did not feel a game with such an unprofessional CM could possibly be a good investment of my money. That realisation only came much later than it could have.

• I think DarkFall is an awesome game with a huge potential. I also think it has a completely incompetent management behind it that fails to coordinate efforts between keeping the PR in good shape, keeping the gameplay intuitive and fun, and keeping the world from getting stale. They do a marvelous job at the latter, which is why I am playing DarkFall, but you hardly hear anything on DarkFall in the MMO press these days and the UI looks like it was put together by a fifteen-year-old dabbling in C++. Hands for who thinks a chat system that does not allow you to modify the content of your chat tabs in any way and that forces you to switch chat tabs whenever you want to IM with somebody, watch the local chat, or read /say is a sign of good coding. Despite all this, the game is a rough gem and truly one of a kind with some of the most immersive locales and combat I have ever seen. What is "amusing and entertaining", then, is that you feel the need to go on the defensive as if I were attacking DarkFall, when all I am really doing is subjectively stating why I am still not convinced it is set to live a long and happy life.

After i am playing Darkfall for almost 2 years now i am certainly sure you don't know what the term vaporware means. For what you imply 'vaporware' means we use other terms. For example something is 'not profitable'. If a business has been also closed down being running prior we also use other term then 'vaporware' to describe it.

About the website, well they obvioulsy not needed a better one. It didn't hindered them to successfully sell about 100k of copies and be succesfully on thier scale.

Your entitled to your own opinions and prioritys but i don't share them. I hope you find your MMO who offers you good chat boxes so you can chat your litle heart out all you want. 

Of course i will defend Darkfall if someone continue to stretch meanings of vaporware and try to use not appropiate terms which describe the state of Darkfall wrong. It was wrong to call Darkfall vaporware back prior release and it is ridiculous to call it vaporware now with all proof we have.      

ofcourse , 'with a bit of mind flip' ...everyone can call it whatever he wants ..in private not public situations.

Originally posted by thinktank001

Not saying DF is a bad game, but I wouldn't call it a win or a victory.   DF didn't exactly change their website to reflect the game until 3-4 months after release (which was rocky at best), and it still hasn't implemented the original list of game mechanics.  

Umm? It hasn't? The only thing I can think of that didn't make it into the final game was the skill cap, which wasn't really a "we can't do it" thing, more of "we decided not to do it" thing. And a few other abilities that were cut for balance reasons (4 legged run).

Anyone with half a brain was fully aware that Darkfall wasn't vaporware back in the day. WoW had an equal development time. 5 years. Darkfall, 2003-2008, that's vaporware?

And oh man the conspiracy theories. People one day looked up the address to the AV offices in Athens, then posted threads upon threads about how the offices "didn't exist". Turns out they had just spelled the name wrong in Greek.

Or the previews and the alpha footage that got leaked out, or the people that went to Athens and did an article about the game. They were all considered "scams" and "fake" or planted by Aventurine. It was really pathetic. Funniest bit? Someone on the AoC dev team got caught creating various forum accounts and spreading the vaporware label around. He had to make an apology when he got caught on the official forums and had his IP traced  Funny thing is... I found out about Darkfall from that AoC dev.

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by thinktank001

Not saying DF is a bad game, but I wouldn't call it a win or a victory.   DF didn't exactly change their website to reflect the game until 3-4 months after release (which was rocky at best), and it still hasn't implemented the original list of game mechanics.  

Umm? It hasn't? The only thing I can think of that didn't make it into the final game was the skill cap, which wasn't really a "we can't do it" thing, more of "we decided not to do it" thing. And a few other abilities that were cut for balance reasons (4 legged run).

 Companions and Prestige classes? Pet classes? Those were originally on the menu.