Originally posted by Synika

Originally posted by Terranah

The numbers are respectable but unimpressive.  Most of the decent mmo's have been out for years now and people are bored with them or feeling somewhat stagnated and want a new experience.  The recent round of alledged triple A mmo's failed to meet expectations leaving the mmo community dissatisfied and anticipating the next round of mmo releases in 2009.

 

Most mmo players are ready for the next big thing, whatever that may be.  It's a prime opportunity for a solid mmo to have a beta, capture an audience early and publish strong.   The question becomes, what will be a solid mmo in 2009.  Darkfall?  Aion? Chronicles of Spellborn?  All three have their hurdles.  Small development teams with limited funding, poor to nonexistent to downright incompetent marketing, and pvp focus which remains to be seen whether or not  such an mmo can succeed in todays market, WOW excluded.

 

AION and Spellborn both would have very high beta interest if they were to have NA betas.

 

Lmao the numbers are great! Blows SWG at release out of the water and since its indeed a 'niche' sandbox game what were you expecting? Its not as if they even have an ad campaign lol!1!1!1! Since they are running on player driven hype you have to at least acknowledge that its impressive.

Btw personally I couldn't care less if Darkfall has a beta or not, aslong as its here and ready by the 22nd and the lewt exchange via bloodletting can begin - I'll die or win a happy pker.

Stop approaching this with your linear mentality.

For a game that has been around for so long and information has been readily available for so long, the numbers are decent. Period. Again, come back when you have the number of active users who have signed-up or posted in the last 3 months. Then we will talk. I bet many of the registered users gave up on the game a long time ago and could care less now.

You can refresh the screen and watch it going up every few seconds, thats crazy considering they have not advertised.

Templarga: You are aware of the fact that most people only sign up to a games forums when the Developers give a concrete release date.

I think I signed up for the Beta about 3 times over the past few years lol.

I almost signed up for a 4th time but it actually remembered my details. So at least I know I've been signed up for quite some time. xD

Anyways yes this game will get a tonne of beta testers. Dont expect that to translate into subs though.

As someone said. See age of conan.

Originally posted by Razephon

I think I signed up for the Beta about 3 times over the past few years lol.

I almost signed up for a 4th time but it actually remembered my details. So at least I know I've been signed up for quite some time. xD

Anyways yes this game will get a tonne of beta testers. Dont expect that to translate into subs though.

As someone said. See age of conan.

 

Heh  happened 4 or 5 times to me. If they would delete multiple account i think it would get down to 20k...

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

They recently got awarded with

"Game of the Year 2008"

over at mmosite too ..

 

Umm... no they didn't

They will be in the next round of voting for the top 20.

per...

Preliminary: from Jan. 8-21, 2009, readers vote to produce the top 20 games for each award .
Final: from Jan. 22 to Feb. 10, 2009, readers vote to produce the final three games for each award.

contest.mmosite.com/gameprize/

So congrats for DarkFall... they made it to the next round of voting. 

Ok I almost never, never use this term.  But please let's not be a fanboi over this.  Fact is it's free and you get to play for free.  People love free stuff and the mmo audience continues to grow.  Ofcourse they will have people signing up for beta.

They have also learned that the less you say the more excited that desperate gamers become.  I hope this game meets their expectations.  Darkfall is like a hot girl that agrees to go out on a date with you, but every time you go to pick her up she doesn't answer the door or has some lame excuse why she can't go out.

I say,  go into launches with a level head.  Listen to what they say and what they DON't say.  Look at past behavior to gauge future behavior, and then you have a more realistic expectation of what is to come.  And ofcourse, the same advice goes for that hot girl too :)

Originally posted by javac

...and this is with $0 marketing spent. prior to the October 2008 beta announcement, this number was ~70K, so that's roughly 230K new subs in under months, or ~2K new subs per week.

 

WAR, which spent roughly 50% of its development budget on marketing, had 700K beta applicants.

 

this is amazing. i frequently communicate with an old friend of mine who's worked in marketing for over a decade and his jaw dropped when i told him. Darkfall appears to be the most successful example of grassroots viral marketing applied to a software product ever.

WAR ended with around 900k applicant, AoC also had a ton ( was it 700k or was it 500k closed beta applicants? ). While WAR had spent a lot on marketing, the game was only in development for a total a three years as opposed to how long has DarkFall been talked about? 2001 ish so that is 8 years of built up viral marketing. All this shows is that with the help of real marketing and more communication to the public you can amass hundreds of thousands of more people interested in your product.

Originally posted by Terranah

Ok I almost never, never use this term.  But please let's not be a fanboi over this.  Fact is it's free and you get to play for free.  People love free stuff and the mmo audience continues to grow.  Ofcourse they will have people signing up for beta.

 

They have also learned that the less you say the more excited that desperate gamers become.  I hope this game meets their expectations.  Darkfall is like a hot girl that agrees to go out on a date with you, but every time you go to pick her up she doesn't answer the door or has some lame excuse why she can't go out.

 

I say,  go into launches with a level head.  Listen to what they say and what they DON't say.  Look at past behavior to gauge future behavior, and then you have a more realistic expectation of what is to come.  And ofcourse, the same advice goes for that hot girl too :)

 

Uh no just rumored to be a free test, never confirmed and when is that going to happen in the next 9 days?

No again, after trying to take her our for 7 years I give up on the bitch and let her get the dregs that are left over slobbering at her feet like sophmoric sycophants that think she will give them a BJ.

DArkfall will not fail at launch they are preparing and making sure this does not happen. i can name so many games that have Failed people just need 2 accept that darkfall will own other mmo's out there. Get over it !! :D

Originally posted by usrbinperl1

WOW, they are almost at 310K now, that's 10K new signups in 48 hours.

Lol if this is true it just goes to show how many fabois are making alt accounts to increase there chances of getting a beta slot

thats pretty sad to the people who waste there time and do that but anyways numbers are way higher than that just think about the peolpe who arent really signed up for the forum but want 2 at least play it and give it a try u see about 500 people logged on the forum and about 500 guests so the numebr is going to we way higher. and to think they dont even advertise !!!

Originally posted by HYPERI0N

Originally posted by usrbinperl1

WOW, they are almost at 310K now, that's 10K new signups in 48 hours.

Lol if this is true it just goes to show how many fabois are making alt accounts to increase there chances of getting a beta slot

Why should someone want to get a DarkFall beta slot ..MMORPG.com user here say the game is fail, vapor and whatnot...i don't understand

And yet they were "surprised" by the number of people wanting in, so they had to delay.

Amateurs, bullshitters, or both?

I pick both.

Personnally I dislike playing betas as it spoils my explorer pleasure, I prefer to discover a game when it releases.

I'm also just a lurker on official forums if I see the developpers of a game interesting me have their own Vision(tm) and aren't asking for ideas from their community. I can't understand how people can spend 5+ years on forums of non-released games just repeating the same threads when devs don't seem interested.

So I was following Darfall since several years without being registered on forumfall.

I anyway have created an account the 16/1 and even sent a candidature for beta, for one reason : Tasos has said they base their number of servers previsions on the number of registered beta candidates, so I think it helps them if anyone interested by this game register now (especially the ones who will play if the game looks good, but don't have a blind confidence to the point of preordering something without previews by serious sites / hundred of leaks by different sources)

To resume my account creation means "if your game is not a scam/vaporware/new DnL I'll buy it and hope to be able to play at release".

Heh six of those accounts are mine. People are making accounts like crazy just in case the selection for this closed beta extension is random. No idea how many real people are there but I don't think many have only one. Judging from the forum activity its far less than WoW or AoC near release.

Originally posted by javac

...and this is with $0 marketing spent. prior to the October 2008 beta announcement, this number was ~70K, so that's roughly 230K new subs in under months, or ~2K new subs per week.

 

WAR, which spent roughly 50% of its development budget on marketing, had 700K beta applicants.

 

this is amazing. i frequently communicate with an old friend of mine who's worked in marketing for over a decade and his jaw dropped when i told him. Darkfall appears to be the most successful example of grassroots viral marketing applied to a software product ever.

Yah... to bad hype alone isn't enough to make a good game.... because that's all there is to this one.  I personally can't wait for this turd to launch you all you deluded fanboys cab just shut about it.   Once it comes out, it will just be another game that didn't live up to the ridiculous expectations of the "next big thing" set that is so vocal on these forums.

p.s.  WAR is a great game, so is LOTRO, AOC is even half decent.  Why don't you guys just play games that are already out, like the rest of us?

Originally posted by Terranah

Darkfall?  Aion? Chronicles of Spellborn?  All three have their hurdles.  Small development teams with limited funding, poor to nonexistent to downright incompetent marketing, and pvp focus which remains to be seen whether or not  such an mmo can succeed in todays market, WOW excluded.

 

AION and Spellborn both would have very high beta interest if they were to have NA betas.

Aion and Spellborn suck balls.  People will find out soon enough.
 

Originally posted by Zorvan

And yet they were "surprised" by the number of people wanting in, so they had to delay.

Amateurs, bullshitters, or both?

I pick both.

Did you miss the part about Aventurine beeing a small indie developer? That actually mean they are small and almost amateurs. Shouldent come as a surprise really, its been around for many years . )

Originally posted by Trinitarian

300k forum subs? Yeah, that's plausible; you can build a large community when it's had about eight years to grow. Furthermore, I wonder what percentage of that number are no longer active contributing members to the Darkfall Online forums.

Beta sign-ups? I wonder how many of those are actually IN beta. It's like the lottery: you can have one million people buy a ticket, but there may only be a dozen or so winners.

The bottom line: all this means little. What will matter is sales and active concurrent game subscriptions. Time will tell.

8 years to grow? Its size more than tripled in a few months time sooooo.............
 

And yes considering the lack of marketing, the hype surrounding Darkfall is insane.