I am going to try to make this short and sweet. I beta tested for ~3 weeks, knew a great deal about DFO prior to testing it, and am a UO veteran. Furthermore, I had the luxury of playing with a large and very well-organized guild that usually won fights.

 

Description
Take out some of the sandbox and you've got Oblivion in MMO format. Add full-loot to Savage 2 (I have not played this, but everyone who has agrees strongly with this statement) and you have the combat system of DFO.
 

The Best
I have not seen an MMO parallel to DFO with the graphics optimization (100+ FPS for many testers who had old GPUs), or network optimization (50+ players in the same fight with virtually no performance drop, playing halfway around the world with FPS-game-mechanics).  In my 3 weeks of nearly constant playing, I only had ~3 client crashes, and most of my clanmates experienced similiar stability.  This game has very impressive terrain details (in beta everything was locked to medium textures and the terrain is as good as AoC's was on higher settings, according to my wife and myself), and the map is huge (45-mins to run from 1 capital city to it's neighbor capital city). The best part though is that every inch of the world is hand-crafted, so about every hour of running from point A-B I'd see ~3 locations that were visually impressive as all hell, and made me think, "when I get some time I'm coming back here to explore that." You can literally go anywhere on the map, and I have never had so much fun exploring. This game has A TON of hidden or discrete locations. You can swim to numerous islands with castles or caves or whatever and find spawns there where nobody ever goes, even during peak hours where the cities would all have 40+ at them. The AI is second-to-none, albeit buggy at times, but every patch (which were very frequent) they cranked out a massive # of fixes to solve mob exploits. You have to play this game smart and cautious or you will die to both players and mobs alike. It is not perfect, but I've never had more fun with an MMO's combat in my life. The combat is very interactive and player skill-based. The draw-distance is simply the best I've ever seen, even when considering offline games. Think Fallout 3 draw distance + a bit. You can literally see someone on your screen when they're like 1/4th of an inch small and it takes you 2-mins of sprinting to reach them. Also, sounds carry (battle, spells, etc.) about the same distance, so you can hear people from very far away and go investigate.
 

The Good
Aventurine listened to us testers. It's not a perfect product, but the core of this game and the reliability is far superior to most MMO launches. Aventurine cranked out a massive number of updates every couple of days with an insane amount of fixes. These guys are the most efficient team I've ever had the privilege to test for. Most of the beta testers are preordering this game. Of the ~300 testers I know, less than 20 are not planning to preorder this game. Yes, most of us still want some things resolved, but we've seen these devs at work and know they are passionate and hardworking at making a solid product. Most of us believe there is a very good chance that this game will quickly and steadily improve and continue to be a lot of fun, so we're willing to take the limited risk by playing the launch. The crafting system is the most robust I've ever seen in an MMO since UO. In fact, the crafting system is essentially the same as it was in UO (from what I remember, which was very long ago). There are a few exceptions, like the lack of dyes currently, but I strongly believe these will be added and the devs just ran out of time to finish it.
 

The Bad
The sound effects are quite poor, but usually not so obnoxious that you need to turn sounds off. Also, the character models and animations are not horrible, but just average. This is in contrast to the amazing visuals of the terrain, but hopefully this is smoothed out when the high textures are added for the release client. Towers were added to wilderness banks making them remote "safe zones", which most testers have complained about. There are still plenty of places to kill players, and still plenty of loot to be gained from plunder, but it distracts from the spirit of the game. Some testers speculate that these will later be removed and are simply a way to ease the public into this full loot game. We don't know though, because like on other subjects, Aventurine does a terrible job communicating with the public. The harvesting is repetitious and feels like a grind at times. Many people in beta macro harvesting to get by at it, and I fully expect them to do the same come release. We've pleaded with the devs to create a more interesting gathering system (mini-games, randomness, etc.), and there is a reasonable chance they'll add these when they have the time, but I'm sure it's low priority for them right now. They do listen to us quite a bit, and do a great job with fast updates, so there is hope it'll become more exciting in the future. Also, the alignment system is exploitable, so players will jump in front of your swing trying to get you to hit them while you fight mobs, hoping you turn grey so they can kill you and take your loot without suffering an alignment penalty.
 

This next section I feel warrants its own paragraph. The current game lacks diversity in character builds. Most players use 2-handed weapons and the same few magic spells. However, with several recent balances added to magic (I have not tested these yet), I am told magic is now much more diverse, useful, and interesting. Sadly, in terms of melee, most players use the same weapons and similar fighting styles. This does not mean it's not fun, because it is a blast, just not diverse enough as would be ideal. Still, some players will virtually never use magic, some will rely on it heavily, all of them will use melee, some will/won't use archery, and some will/won't craft (most will harvest though).
 

Don't expect this game to be solo-friendly. You 'can' survive alone, but it requires being very careful and only fighting about 1 of 4 of the easier mobs. To adventure safely (and ideally) in anything but remote locations, you will need 4 players to fight each mob (4-1; anything more and you'll hit your allies too much), with another ground patrolling for both adds (mobs add/aggro from very far away in this game) and PvP. It's a very popular tactic to go kill players busy/injured from mobs and take all the gear and gold they've harvested off them. That said, it is also very reliable to play with only 2 players, depending on what you are fighting. Fighting alone, even without PKs and with easy mobs is still risky, because with the mobs aggroing/adding from so far away, and most having devastating ranged attacked, you will quickly become overwhelmed. Fighting alone means you have nobody to help revive you (you become incapacitated for a brief period when you reach 0 hit points), and nobody to pick up your gear and save it for you if you should die.

As most of you have heard by now, the UI sucks in this game.  I cannot really properly review the UI though, because most of it is set-up for beta testers and is clearly not the commercial variety the public will experience (there are obscure codes for descriptions on many things).  A few portions of the interface are very slow to load (like the journal, where your quests are stored, or the clan screen) because the client searches for html pages when accessing them.  This is problematic, but I'm confident it's at the top of their "to do" list.
 

A great review, hits all of the good and bad points exactly. No doubt you'll be labelled a fanboi.

 good review  about what i feel with the game 2 but i feel theyw ill improve the game since the basses is there but im just happy the game works

Thanks for this interesting review.

edit: after reading javac's comment..., for him to be labelled as a fanboi he should have written things like:

"if you don't like this game you don't know what you are talking about"

"go back to wow"

"this game will make carebears cry lol"

"I want to see the faces of the trolls when this game succeeds"

and so on. He didn't. We need more threads like this one and less posts like.. yours.

Originally posted by antiherozero

This next section I feel warrants its own paragraph. The current game lacks diversity in character builds. Most players use 2-handed weapons and the same few magic spells. However, with several recent balances added to magic (I have not tested these yet), I am told magic is now much more diverse, useful, and interesting. Sadly, in terms of melee, most players use the same weapons and similar fighting styles. This does not mean it's not fun, because it is a blast, just not diverse enough as would be ideal. Still, some players will virtually never use magic, some will rely on it heavily, all of them will use melee, some will/won't use archery, and some will/won't craft (most will harvest though). 

That's to be expected in a game that decides to not do classes/levels.

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

That's to be expected in a game that decides to not do classes/levels.

I'd personally like to see different fighting styles associated with different weapons, and more of a hinderance for choosing heavy armor types.  I believe these things are on their way to the game, but I just wanted to give people an idea of the current beta builds strong and weak points.  Also, I want there to be about three different paths to magic mastery that players are sort of forced to choose to specialize in if they want to master something in magic and still be versatile in other areas.

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

That's to be expected in a game that decides to not do classes/levels.

 

I'd personally like to see different fighting styles associated with different weapons, and more of a hinderance for choosing heavy armor types.  I believe these things are on their way to the game, but I just wanted to give people an idea of the current beta builds strong and weak points.  Also, I want there to be about three different paths to magic mastery that players are sort of forced to choose to specialize in if they want to master something in magic and still be versatile in other areas.

Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

Thanks for writing this up mate :D

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

That's to be expected in a game that decides to not do classes/levels.

 

I'd personally like to see different fighting styles associated with different weapons, and more of a hinderance for choosing heavy armor types.  I believe these things are on their way to the game, but I just wanted to give people an idea of the current beta builds strong and weak points.  Also, I want there to be about three different paths to magic mastery that players are sort of forced to choose to specialize in if they want to master something in magic and still be versatile in other areas.

 

Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

Well, I cant speak for DFO as I have not played.

But skill systems as opposed to class systems DO give alot of diversity if implemented correctly.

You are basically making your own class when its done right. Instead of choosing a Tank-class who has high defense and uses an axe, you can choose the melee defense skills, armor skills, and axe skills, to make the same class.

Furthermore, you got MANY other options. Want to use something other then axes? Go for it. Want to cast damage spells? Go for it. You wont see melee's tossing magic nukes in non-skill based games.

Combined with gear, this gives a huge amount of options. Do you want to use lighter armor that boosts your spell damage and bust out the axe when their close to surprise em? Go for it. Want to wear melee gear and sacrifice a little spell dps for more survivability? Go for it.

Long story short, dont hate on skill systems in favor of class systems. I dont know if DFO did it right, but in games that do, they are MUCH better then class systems (usually).

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

 Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

Not having classes is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.  If you're some hardcore Dungeons and Dragons guy who needs classes to feel defined and unique, yeah, you'll be missing that in DFO.  Everyone in DFO is a hybrid.  However, there is a lot of variation between characters and builds, and a lot more intended to be added later (and this is the rare sort of company I expect to deliver on many of those expectations).  The more they update this game, the more viable variations become when playing it.  It's changing very fast and they obviously ran out of $ before they could make it as individualized as they'd have prefered (I'm confident anyway).  They'll get there.

One thing I neglected to mention in my review is that this game is 100% playable from day 1 when you log-in with your friends who might have played for months without you, every single day, all day.  They can just donate a bit of gear to you and you'll be off fighting the same fights they are, and actually contributing.  Name one class-based game that can say that.

Oh, I should point out that they will eventually add prestige classes to this game, which will have prerequirements before you can take them and offer unique skills/spells/etc.  This should satisfy both parties nicely, but I'd give it 6 months + before I'd expect to see it.

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

 Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

 

Not having classes is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.  If you're some hardcore Dungeons and Dragons guy who needs classes to feel defined and unique, yeah, you'll be missing that in DFO.  Everyone in DFO is a hybrid.  However, there is a lot of variation between characters and builds, and a lot more intended to be added later (and this is the rare sort of company I expect to deliver on many of those expectations).  The more they update this game, the more viable variations become when playing it.  It's changing very fast and they obviously ran out of $ before they could make it as individualized as they'd have prefered (I'm confident anyway).  They'll get there.

 

One thing I neglected to mention in my review is that this game is 100% playable from day 1 when you log-in with your friends who might have played for months without you, every single day, all day.  They can just donate a bit of gear to you and you'll be off fighting the same fights they are, and actually contributing.  Name one class-based game that can say that.

 

Oh, I should point out that they will eventually add prestige classes to this game, which will have prerequirements before you can take them and offer unique skills/spells/etc.  This should satisfy both parties nicely, but I'd give it 6 months + before I'd expect to see it.

Guess I am a bit pessimistic about a company who has taken 6+ years to get a game out to actually manage to do updates often enough and well enough. The part you mention about anyone being able to go in and do something once they just are given some gear just doesn't sound very fun to me. It almost feels like the direction WoW is going with the whole 'everyone can do anything and it won't require any effort on your part'. I don't expect a game where you need to spend 15+ hours a week to accomplish anything but there should at least be some effort needed (thought admitingly I am not sure how the skill system exactly works and how much that will play into what you can do).

At release the game won't have much to interest me but I guess if they do manage to update the game within reasonable time frames and the game doesn't completley flop then I may end up trying it out since WoW's current direction is pushing me away from it quite a bit now.

I didn't say you'd be just as useful as anyone else immediately.  Quite the contrary.  It would probably take you ~2 months of playing to be on relatively even ground with every other player in terms of PvP-related skills, and then it will come down to pure group strategy.  Yes there is the whole gear/skill grind if that is the way you choose to play this game, and you will always need more gear because of losing it through PvP and because it degrades and cannot be repaired, so you'll need stockpiles.  Nobody is just going to keep giving you gear to lose, because it's too time-consuming to farm enough gear to have spare sets for everyone if you're going to give it away to players who aren't skilled up enough to hold onto that gear most of the time when they aren't in large groups.

This game is all about large scale cooperation (or more accurately small groups skirmishing while simultaneously coordinating with their collective friendly groups) and communication.  If you don't like a game that will always challenge a large group of players to communicate, coordinate, and use good decisions in an often chaotic and seemingly similiar mass of battles then you're not going to enjoy this game.  It's an FPS meets an MMO meets medieval weapons in terms of the combat.

Anyway, DFO won't be for everyone.  Some people get very angry about losing their gear, others feel it gets boring and repeditive too quickly, etc.  Most testers are buying it, so most like it, but the longevity of this game rides on how quickly and in what ways they update it.  I personally trust this dev team because they've done an excellent job in beta.

Originally posted by antiherozero

I didn't say you'd be just as useful as anyone else immediately.  Quite the contrary.  It would probably take you ~2 months of playing to be on relatively even ground with every other player in terms of PvP-related skills, and then it will come down to pure group strategy.  Yes there is the whole gear/skill grind if that is the way you choose to play this game, and you will always need more gear because of losing it through PvP and because it degrades and cannot be repaired, so you'll need stockpiles.  Nobody is just going to keep giving you gear to lose, because it's too time-consuming to farm enough gear to have spare sets for everyone if you're going to give it away to players who aren't skilled up enough to hold onto that gear most of the time when they aren't in large groups.

 

This game is all about large scale cooperation (or more accurately small groups skirmishing while simultaneously coordinating with their collective friendly groups) and communication.  If you don't like a game that will always challenge a large group of players to communicate, coordinate, and use good decisions in an often chaotic and seemingly similiar mass of battles then you're not going to enjoy this game.  It's an FPS meets an MMO meets medieval weapons in terms of the combat.

 

Anyway, DFO won't be for everyone.  Some people get very angry about losing their gear, others feel it gets boring and repeditive too quickly, etc.  Most testers are buying it, so most like it, but the longevity of this game rides on how quickly and in what ways they update it.  I personally trust this dev team because they've done an excellent job in beta.

All I know is that if they delay the game again then they really have dropped the ball :p

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

 Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

 

Not having classes is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.  If you're some hardcore Dungeons and Dragons guy who needs classes to feel defined and unique, yeah, you'll be missing that in DFO.  Everyone in DFO is a hybrid.  However, there is a lot of variation between characters and builds, and a lot more intended to be added later (and this is the rare sort of company I expect to deliver on many of those expectations).  The more they update this game, the more viable variations become when playing it.  It's changing very fast and they obviously ran out of $ before they could make it as individualized as they'd have prefered (I'm confident anyway).  They'll get there.

 

One thing I neglected to mention in my review is that this game is 100% playable from day 1 when you log-in with your friends who might have played for months without you, every single day, all day.  They can just donate a bit of gear to you and you'll be off fighting the same fights they are, and actually contributing.  Name one class-based game that can say that.

 

Oh, I should point out that they will eventually add prestige classes to this game, which will have prerequirements before you can take them and offer unique skills/spells/etc.  This should satisfy both parties nicely, but I'd give it 6 months + before I'd expect to see it.

 

Guess I am a bit pessimistic about a company who has taken 6+ years to get a game out to actually manage to do updates often enough and well enough. The part you mention about anyone being able to go in and do something once they just are given some gear just doesn't sound very fun to me. It almost feels like the direction WoW is going with the whole 'everyone can do anything and it won't require any effort on your part'. I don't expect a game where you need to spend 15+ hours a week to accomplish anything but there should at least be some effort needed (thought admitingly I am not sure how the skill system exactly works and how much that will play into what you can do).

At release the game won't have much to interest me but I guess if they do manage to update the game within reasonable time frames and the game doesn't completley flop then I may end up trying it out since WoW's current direction is pushing me away from it quite a bit now.

Well he said you can join in with friends but thats not entirly true since ur gimped like hell in both pve and pvp... But not the same way like other games. your contribution in the group will not do much impacts on either mobs or other players but you can be there...

Originally posted by antiherozero

I am going to try to make this short and sweet. I beta tested for ~3 weeks, knew a great deal about DFO prior to testing it, and am a UO veteran. Furthermore, I had the luxury of playing with a large and very well-organized guild that usually won fights.

 

Description
Take out some of the sandbox and you've got Oblivion in MMO format. Add full-loot to Savage 2 (I have not played this, but everyone who has agrees strongly with this statement) and you have the combat system of DFO.
 

The Best
I have not seen an MMO parallel to DFO with the graphics optimization (100+ FPS for many testers who had old GPUs), or network optimization (50+ players in the same fight with virtually no performance drop, playing halfway around the world with FPS-game-mechanics). 

Any vids of these battles?

The AI is second-to-none, albeit buggy at times, but every patch (which were very frequent) they cranked out a massive # of fixes to solve mob exploits. You have to play this game smart and cautious or you will die to both players and mobs alike.

This is what has been reported by leakers and is still in the game:

- When low on health all mobs run for help.

- Mobs do not have an aggro system in place, and attack the first person they see until that player dies or the mob dies

- Mobs still attack players in gank mode and the gravestone left behind making easy kills for other players

It is not perfect, but I've never had more fun with an MMO's combat in my life. The combat is very interactive and player skill-based. The draw-distance is simply the best I've ever seen, even when considering offline games. Think Fallout 3 draw distance + a bit. You can literally see someone on your screen when they're like 1/4th of an inch small and it takes you 2-mins of sprinting to reach them.

-Every other beta tester has said the draw-distance is too short and takes away from the game.

Also, sounds carry (battle, spells, etc.) about the same distance, so you can hear people from very far away and go investigate. 
 

- Most beta testers report that sound levels do not match with distance.  AV even posted in a recent patch they have not changed them as they were still testing.

The Bad
The sound effects are quite poor, but usually not so obnoxious that you need to turn sounds off. Also, the character models and animations are not horrible, but just average. This is in contrast to the amazing visuals of the terrain, but hopefully this is smoothed out when the high textures are added for the release client.

-Agreed

Towers were added to wilderness banks making them remote "safe zones", which most testers have complained about. There are still plenty of places to kill players, and still plenty of loot to be gained from plunder, but it distracts from the spirit of the game.Some testers speculate that these will later be removed and are simply a way to ease the public into this full loot game. We don't know though, because like on other subjects, Aventurine does a terrible job communicating with the public.

- Everyone agrees they fail at communication, but those guard towers need to stay.   I don't really know how players that have been in the game for 3 weeks ganking newbs is " in spirit " of the game.  By that time a player should only head to starter areas for gaining easy alignment or recruiting new clan members. 

Also, the alignment system is exploitable, so players will jump in front of your swing trying to get you to hit them while you fight mobs, hoping you turn grey so they can kill you and take your loot without suffering an alignment penalty.
 

-Its broken and that is plain and simple.  I still can't figure out how another player can loot your kill, but you can't kill him without going rogue.

As most of you have heard by now, the UI sucks in this game.  I cannot really properly review the UI though, because most of it is set-up for beta testers and is clearly not the commercial variety the public will experience (there are obscure codes for descriptions on many things).  A few portions of the interface are very slow to load (like the journal, where your quests are stored, or the clan screen) because the client searches for html pages when accessing them.  This is problematic, but I'm confident it's at the top of their "to do" list.

- Agreed most everyone says its pretty bad, but the controls do grow on you.  However, there is no " Beta setup ".  The beta phase is the final testing phase for the finished product, and what you see is what you will get unless they plan to release like AoC did.

i hated the UI for the first couple of hours, but now, after a few weeks i love it.

like any game, there is a learning process. DF's UI works for the game, not many can deny that.

Any vids of these battles?

Nope.  I am way too lazy to worry about capturing video.  Besides, every other half-ass clan has already made a video, so go look at those.

-Every other beta tester has said the draw-distance is too short and takes away from the game.

I suppose I could screen capture something to prove my point about this, but that would require a lot of effort on my part.  A beta tester (or two, I don't remember) agreed with me about this in this very thread.  I can live with you not believing me.

- Most beta testers report that sound levels do not match with distance. AV even posted in a recent patch they have not changed them as they were still testing.

This has been true for most of beta, but lately it has improved.  There are still instances when the distance of sound distorts and seems far too loud for the distance it traveled from.  There is variations between clients on this experience, and they've been fixing it little-by-little I believe, which is why I didn't mention it.  That, and so many words...

- Everyone agrees they fail at communication, but those guard towers need to stay. I don't really know how players that have been in the game for 3 weeks ganking newbs is " in spirit " of the game. By that time a player should only head to starter areas for gaining easy alignment or recruiting new clan members.

Nobody is bitching (very hard) about the guard towers at starter cities.  There are guard towers out in the middle of nowhere near neutral banks where people can safely farm mobs and then run to a bank/tower to stash their loot without any risk of losing their gear.  These were never intended originally, and they do certainly create safe zones that have nothing to do with being new at the game and needing a safety net to learn to play.  You can't even approach these towers if you're the wrong racial alliance.

-Its broken and that is plain and simple. I still can't figure out how another player can loot your kill, but you can't kill him without going rogue.

They have actually just added a substantial patch that will lessen this exploitability greatly.

- Agreed most everyone says its pretty bad, but the controls do grow on you. However, there is no " Beta setup ". The beta phase is the final testing phase for the finished product, and what you see is what you will get unless they plan to release like AoC did.

You have no idea what you are talking about.  I'm not sure more needs to be said, but when the game releases come back to this thead and I'll explain that I told you so, and then say neener neener.

Well he said you can join in with friends but thats not entirly true since ur gimped like hell in both pve and pvp... But not the same way like other games. your contribution in the group will not do much impacts on either mobs or other players but you can be there...

Untrue.  The impact you can have with a party, especially if you took 10-mins to earn 20 gold and buy a 2-handed starter weapon, would be substantially more than any other game.  Friends give you some leather and a 2-handed weapon or whatever, you can still survive several hits and do noticeable damage to most mobs and every player.  If you don't think the contribution is that great as-is, go play any level-based MMO on the market and compare the difference.

Good review.

Good review :)

We need more DF gamers like you here to give us skeptics something other than hate. See javaks posts for example.

Thank you. I have some UO vs DF questions if you don't mind.

What about the skill system? Is it like Old (1997) UO ruleset where you could just use plate mail and magery without consequences?

Does any skill path (Warrior mage etc) need special combination of skills (i mean satellite skills like anatomy to healing for example) to be mastered?

Can you parry spells and arrows with a shield or the shield just reduces damage or is it just useless?

Is healing in all of its forms an important skill? Can you make potions using alchemy?

Can you loot other players' kills, if yes are you flagged?