After much thought and research, I'm going to wait it out.

Personally, I like the idea and appearance of the game...

...but, I'm not sure if it's going to stay a float or sink.

So I'll give it until like march or so, if it's still around and kicking, I'll give it a try.

If you don't mind, i am interested in the research part of  yours. I mean do you contacted stock or share holders ? visited someone with a crystal ball ? interviews with member of the board ? interviews with clans with presence in DF ?

Tell something about you sources...just for insight no critics to your decision.

edit: To avoid mindless thirdparty wtf 'ers i highlight the "after much thought and research" part i am refering to in OP.

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Originally posted by DarthRaiden
If you don't mind, i am interested in the research part of  yours. I mean do you contacted stock or share holders ? visited someone with a crystal ball ? interviews with member of the board ?
Tell something about you sources...just for insight no critics to your decision.

---

WTF are you talking about? The guy simply stated he's going to wait and see if DF is still around in March before taking the plunge. He's not doom and glooming it.

From what I've seen (here and on the DF forums), DF is having a harder time keeping new players around. There's a lot resting on this next patch from AV. If it fails to live up to expectations, it's going to make an already shaky community even more shaky which will threaten the longevity of DF.

Since there's no free trial, it's hard for people to just plunk $50 down (like myself). Especially when you see asshats galore on the DF forums, people complaining about hacking with video proof to back it up, missing launch features, and so on.

I'm really interested in DF. The concept sounds amazing. I just don't want to plunk $50 on it atm. Like the OP, I'm also waiting to see how things pan out.

Fair enough.

I play the game, and I'm not sure it will survive. I guess this next patch will determine DF future.

Originally posted by Nizur

 

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Originally posted by DarthRaiden
If you don't mind, i am interested in the research part of  yours. I mean do you contacted stock or share holders ? visited someone with a crystal ball ? interviews with member of the board ?
Tell something about you sources...just for insight no critics to your decision.

---

 

WTF are you talking about? The guy simply stated he's going to wait and see if DF is still around in March before taking the plunge. He's not doom and glooming it.

From what I've seen (here and on the DF forums), DF is having a harder time keeping new players around. There's a lot resting on this next patch from AV. If it fails to live up to expectations, it's going to make an already shaky community even more shaky which will threaten the longevity of DF.

Since there's no free trial, it's hard for people to just plunk $50 down (like myself). Especially when you see asshats galore on the DF forums, people complaining about hacking with video proof to back it up, missing launch features, and so on.

I'm really interested in DF. The concept sounds amazing. I just don't want to plunk $50 on it atm. Like the OP, I'm also waiting to see how things pan out.

 I am not interested in discuss anything with you if you keep that attitude and i just reply to make that clear for you.

Looking at the current game you play in your sig i wonder how you come to question legitimacy of my questions to OP and how you don't question you own opinion about survivability regarding Darkfall.

Originally posted by Ibluerate

After much thought and research, I'm going to wait it out.

Personally, I like the idea and appearance of the game...

...but, I'm not sure if it's going to stay a float or sink.

So I'll give it until like march or so, if it's still around and kicking, I'll give it a try.

Ahh, can't say I blame you.

Seeing as how bad all the lovers of the mmo world have been burned lately, this is probably the wisest decision.

Hope to see you on the other side Ibluerate, with some good times in Darkfall.

Hope you find some entertainment in the meantime.

Originally posted by Nizur

 

From what I've seen (here and on the DF forums), DF is having a harder time keeping new players around. There's a lot resting on this next patch from AV. If it fails to live up to expectations, it's going to make an already shaky community even more shaky which will threaten the longevity of DF.

There's actually a new guild that was created recently called NEW which works in a very similar way as a guild in EVE (forgot the name). Basically all guilds and alliances  are friendly toward this guild and will protect it's members. The guild is composed by new players who may stay in the guild for 30 days after which they are asked to leave. During those 30 days, they can ask for help, info, etc and are less likely to be attacked by random PKers (though I believe 1 guild declared war to NEW recently but it shouldn't last that long)

This is the community's solution in order to keep the new players around.

Originally posted by MadnessRealm

 

There's actually a new guild that was created recently called NEW which works in a very similar way as a guild in EVE (forgot the name). Basically all guilds and alliances  are friendly toward this guild and will protect it's members. The guild is composed by new players who may stay in the guild for 30 days after which they are asked to leave. During those 30 days, they can ask for help, info, etc and are less likely to be attacked by random PKers (though I believe 1 guild declared war to NEW recently but it shouldn't last that long)

This is the community's solution in order to keep the new players around.

NEW is one among several player created ideas that have been forming up in game recently. Specifically on NA-1.
 

Very inspiring stuff that lets the players open up the sandbox. Even if some of the tools are still absent.

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

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Originally posted by DarthRaiden

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Originally posted by Nizur

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Originally posted by DarthRaiden
If you don't mind, i am interested in the research part of  yours. I mean do you contacted stock or share holders ? visited someone with a crystal ball ? interviews with member of the board ?
Tell something about you sources...just for insight no critics to your decision.

---

 
WTF are you talking about? The guy simply stated he's going to wait and see if DF is still around in March before taking the plunge. He's not doom and glooming it.
From what I've seen (here and on the DF forums), DF is having a harder time keeping new players around. There's a lot resting on this next patch from AV. If it fails to live up to expectations, it's going to make an already shaky community even more shaky which will threaten the longevity of DF.
Since there's no free trial, it's hard for people to just plunk $50 down (like myself). Especially when you see asshats galore on the DF forums, people complaining about hacking with video proof to back it up, missing launch features, and so on.
I'm really interested in DF. The concept sounds amazing. I just don't want to plunk $50 on it atm. Like the OP, I'm also waiting to see how things pan out.

---

I am not interested in discuss anything with you if you keep that attitude and i just reply to make that clear for you.
Looking at the current game you play in your sig i wonder how you come to question legitimacy of my questions to OP and how you don't question you own opinion about survivability regarding Darkfall.

---

I'm the one with the attitude? Look at your questions to the OP. All I did was respond in disbelief at your over-the-top questions.

Yep, Ryzom has a very small population, but it has a very strong, supportive (of the game and each other) community. Plus, Ryzom does have a free trial, 3 weeks long. And it doesn't cost $50 up front.

Look, I'm not here to knock DF. Like I mentioned, I really am intrigued by the game. As you can tell, small communities don't hinder me from enjoying and playing a game. I just thought your response was uncalled for considering what the OP had posted.

---

Originally posted by MadnessRealm
There's actually a new guild that was created recently called NEW which works in a very similar way as a guild in EVE (forgot the name). Basically all guilds and alliances are friendly toward this guild and will protect it's members. The guild is composed by new players who may stay in the guild for 30 days after which they are asked to leave. During those 30 days, they can ask for help, info, etc and are less likely to be attacked by random PKers (though I believe 1 guild declared war to NEW recently but it shouldn't last that long)

This is the community's solution in order to keep the new players around.

---

I was reading about that earlier tonight on the DF forums. This is an excellent idea and I really hope the DF community supports it for a long time. I think it would go a long way in helping more new players stick with the game.

Originally posted by xpiher

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

UO had EA backing it...lots of money.

SB had ubisoft backing it ...lots of money

Funcom had a good cash flow from prior game releases.

EvE almost went bankrupt... but has shown steady increase in subscriptions.

Darkfall... doesnt have the benefit of any of the above.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by xpiher

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

 

UO had EA backing it...lots of money.

SB had ubisoft backing it ...lots of money

Funcom had a good cash flow from prior game releases.

EvE almost went bankrupt... but has shown steady increase in subscriptions.

Darkfall... doesnt have the benefit of any of the above.

Look at EvE 6-9 months into game being released and darkfall current state. They are almost mirroed. Not only that, DFO is slowly getting more players.  AO was FC's first game afaik .... no, nvm it was there second or 3rd but they sold one of them to recoup some of the losses from that title, basically breaking even. UO was published by EA yes, but I pointed that out because its a game that got a lot of heat for a huge change. I guess I should of pointed out SWG which is on "life support" or VG. Both games are making profit.

Just to be clear: DFO has allowed AV to hire full time community staff, pay for a professional website for both their company and the game, have hired new developers, and the game is getting regular updates. When updates become spares, and almost non-existent, then you can say the game is shutting down.

Originally posted by xpiher

 

Look at EvE 6-9 months into game being released and darkfall current state. They are almost mirroed. Not only that, DFO is slowly getting more players. 

Oh, Av finally gave out some numbers on the current Darkfall population? I must ' ve missed that one.........

Can i has a linky? 

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by xpiher

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

 

UO had EA backing it...lots of money.

SB had ubisoft backing it ...lots of money

Funcom had a good cash flow from prior game releases.

EvE almost went bankrupt... but has shown steady increase in subscriptions.

Darkfall... doesnt have the benefit of any of the above.

SB was free for two years. Not free with a cash shop but completely free with no income at all. Aside from testing a few ads that were universally ignored the game had no business model at all. Ubisoft put almost no money into it after the Throne of Oblivion expansion flopped. I can't even imagine what would prompt them to have kept the servers up. Don't use it as an example it was truly an anomoly in the gaming world.

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by xpiher

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

 

UO had EA backing it...lots of money.

SB had ubisoft backing it ...lots of money

Funcom had a good cash flow from prior game releases.

EvE almost went bankrupt... but has shown steady increase in subscriptions.

Darkfall... doesnt have the benefit of any of the above.

 

Look at EvE 6-9 months into game being released and darkfall current state. They are almost mirroed. Not only that, DFO is slowly getting more players.  AO was FC's first game afaik .... no, nvm it was there second or 3rd but they sold one of them to recoup some of the losses from that title, basically breaking even. UO was published by EA yes, but I pointed that out because its a game that got a lot of heat for a huge change. I guess I should of pointed out SWG which is on "life support" or VG. Both games are making profit.

Just to be clear: DFO has allowed AV to hire full time community staff, pay for a professional website for both their company and the game, have hired new developers, and the game is getting regular updates. When updates become spares, and almost non-existent, then you can say the game is shutting down.

Thats exactly what im talking about! people dont give games enough time to really get themselves on their own 2 feet before they start to count them out. i mean, how can you expect the game to really grow if every other person is willing to count them out before they have really had a chance to find their stride. if we would have done this we wouldnt have any mmo's in the genre! eve would be a figment of all of our imaginations and we would be left playing pac-man... not that thats a bad thing.

Originally posted by xpiher

 

DFO is slowly getting more players. 

That is a blatant lie. Their x-fire ranking keeps getting lower and lower. That shows that the population keeps dropping.

Not to be argumentative, but there are a few things that differ between eve and AV.

AV doesnt communicate well with its players.

CCP always has, even back then they were in IRC answering questions and listening to players and interacting with them...

AV did a limited release

CCP didnt, I dont know exact numbers of subscribers, but last video I watched showed them having of 30,000 subscribers in their first year.... this is more than AV has.

AV doesnt release sub numbers

CCP did and does

CCP is open about how many people are on and playing

AV removed this functionality when it showed numbers were only 6,000 at release after a few weeks.

Now... I completely agree that AV could pull a CCP and turn DF around into a great game. However, for them to do that they have to stop acting like a bunch of arrogant school yard bullys and start actually communicating with their player base. Sure they toss out some tid bits here and there, but the MAJOR game altering information (like transfers) that needs to be given to players is often sat on for long periods of time.

Questionable business practices such as charging NA players twice after leading them to believe they wouldnt have to buy a second copy (at release not talking transfers now). Out right lying to customers (they said a different company owned NA release, when in fact its a subsidiary of their main company) etc.

AV has a great game, with great potential, and the only one standing in their way keeping them from becoming the next big indy game like EvE  is themselves. So Here is hoping they stop being their own worst enemy.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by xpiher

There is no point in "waiting it out" since the game is progressing and the company is growing. Games only get shut down under extreme or ridiculous circumstances. It took 5 years for SB to shut down, UO is still going strong, AO is still going, EvE came back from the brink, etc.

 

UO had EA backing it...lots of money.

SB had ubisoft backing it ...lots of money

Funcom had a good cash flow from prior game releases.

EvE almost went bankrupt... but has shown steady increase in subscriptions.

Darkfall... doesnt have the benefit of any of the above.

 

SB was free for two years. Not free with a cash shop but completely free with no income at all. Aside from testing a few ads that were universally ignored the game had no business model at all. Ubisoft put almost no money into it after the Throne of Oblivion expansion flopped. I can't even imagine what would prompt them to have kept the servers up. Don't use it as an example it was truly an anomoly in the gaming world.

I didnt mention SB to say that UBI soft poured money into it to develop the game, but UBI Soft definitely kept the lights on and paid for the servers. Wolfpack went under, ubisoft created a new company and put them in charge of maintaining the game... so Im not sure where the unfair comparison is?

UBI soft paid the bills for years at a loss to keep the game functioning... no idea why, probably something going on behind the scenes either an attempt to sell the game, the IP, or simply giving Stray bullet time to move closer on a project.

Regardless we should all be able to agree that with out UBI soft keeping the lights running that SB would have been gone a lot sooner than its final demise.

[quote][i]Originally posted by Navydt[/i] Thats exactly what im talking about! people dont give games enough time to really get themselves on their own 2 feet before they start to count them out. i mean, how can you expect the game to really grow if every other person is willing to count them out before they have really had a chance to find their stride. if we would have done this we wouldnt have any mmo's in the genre! eve would be a figment of all of our imaginations and we would be left playing pac-man... not that thats a bad thing. [/quote]

I agree, you do need to give development companies time sometimes to get things going. I know everyone of my friends that is / was interested in darkfall that has turned south on the game, isnt because of the game but because of the developers.

For folks to be patient with a game it takes a steady stream of information and communication from the developers to the players.

I remember back near release the game was down for over 8 hours on a crash before we even got word from AV that they were aware of the problem. Glaring issues that were never addressed publicly...were they fixed? Yeah. However, it took a few months and no one from AV took the time to step in and say hey, we know this is an issue, we are working on it, please be patient while we hammer this out.

There are good ways and wrong ways in business in a service industry to handle your players during a transition. AV is pretty awful at that. I dont know if they simply dont think its a priority, dont care, or if its sadly just incompetence, but if Darkfall fails, it wont be the game's fault, the blame will rest solely on AV.

Originally posted by ghoul31

Originally posted by xpiher

 

DFO is slowly getting more players. 

 

That is a blatant lie. Their x-fire ranking keeps getting lower and lower. That shows that the population keeps dropping.

 

Xfire can show trends. I.E. what the player population is doing, growing, shrinking, or stagnating. Xfire can show success of advertising campaigns and expansion releases etc. However, most games have a large xfire base (1,000+ players) Darkfall has less than 100, which is an extremely small sample size... meaning its rather hard to draw a statistical comparison off of just 70 some odd people.

However, I would agree that Darkfall is probably loosing more players than its gaining.

I expect transfers and the expansion to bring a lot of people back though. AV may or may not be able to keep them.