Originally posted by NightBandit

... if you really believed this small company would produce a game of magic from their budget then you are expecting far too much... (excerpted) 

Bandit.

Why do people keep saying this, like AV  was some fly by night  company working out of a garage? They had several rounds of funding that most MMO startups can only dream about. Just a couple months ago they managed to procure a 20 MILLION EURO convertible bond.

No... AV was not some broke company that couldn't afford a CSR or reasonable forum bandwidth. What they actually did with their cash is now in question, considering what a craptastic state the game appears to be in.

Originally posted by defariak

I have never in my life played an mmo where they are so full of shit when it comes to eta and time lines as dfo is, and have never played an mmo where they keep people in the dark as much as they do here!

This is just rediculious.  This is why companies hire public relations people to deal with their communities instead of letting the computer nerds who never leave their house and have no people skill interact with their public.

Never have I seen such incompatence when it comes to communication and misinformation.

Give us a damn update other than that no eta bullshit. this 3-4 hour patch has turned into 10 hours now! with no explinations or updates! fuck aventurine needs to get their shit together already, this is just rediculious

I love how everyone is saying "you must be new to MMOs" to you. LOL Like this level of incompetence is normal. It's not, AV has taken incompetence and botched releases to new and unimagined heights. 

Originally posted by maddog2000

Doesn't look like a patch is coming soon :(

 

These guys had such a great concept and it is so close to being great, but with what resources they have it looks like it is being run out of a garage:(

 

Wish some huge company would come in, give them full development control, money, tech support, forums, csr support and just take a nice chunk of the profts.

 

This game could easily, easily overcome wow if it was polished. 

 

Had many more servers, CSR, Quests, CSR etc:(

But it looks like it may be going in the toilet if things dont change and change fast. 

This is the type of game that needs population to make it exponentialy better, POPULATION is 80% of it's content and they are going to loose it fast :(

The problem is they already had, and spent, tens of millions of dollars they raised over the years. Darkfall was never some poorly funded affair, despite popular belief. It is likely that nobody would trust them today with a large capital infusion again if they were obviously such poor stewards of their previous capitalization.

Regardless whether TOR ends up being a good game or not, we can 100% expect:

A certain subset of players to hate on it because it is not SWG (IE sandbox, etc).

A certain subset of players to hate on it because it does not involve the original trilogy.

A certain subset of players to hate on it because it emphasises a Jedi-rich timeline.

A certain subset of players to hate on it because they disagree with the fundamental art direction.

So already there are four groups of players identified, and probably more to come, that will hate TOR and will troll it endlessly. So just expect it, and ignore it, because it won't go away.

While I tend to agree with you on principle, I have to say that on the specifics of AV in particular they have done a lot over the years to shoot themselves in the foot. There is a fundamental difference between say, Taleworlds (creators of Mount & Blade that share many similarities... indy, startup, first/only game, etc) and AV in behavior and accountability, and that is why I think a lot of players are not all that unhappy to tell AV where to stick it. AV as a company is pretty fail, and that has been clear to anyone that has been even remotely following this soap opera the past couple years.

But... generally speaking... yes I agree that startups and first releases do deserve a bit of leniency as they get their &%$# straight.

Originally posted by junzo316

Originally posted by Katrar

Failed game? Not yet.

Failed launch? I'm not sure that Darkfall has actually met any requirements to be called a launch, let alone a failed launch.

 

I think when they released the game for official download and had people pay to enter their world, its "launched".  Just my opinion, though.

Well... when I think of an MMO launch I think of a jet catapulting off a carrier deck. Some fly higher, faster. But they all get off the deck.

Then there are games like Darkfall. Darkfall is more like the helicopter shoved off the carrier's deck to make room for refugees fleeing Saigon. Sure, it got off the deck. But it, uh, wasn't really under its own power. 

Failed game? Not yet.

Failed launch? I'm not sure that Darkfall has actually met any requirements to be called a launch, let alone a failed launch.

All I can say is DF is giving out the best MMO drama in a long, long time, and it's FREE!!! 

I've been following the DF soap opera too, and I find it almost laughable that they have pulled their forums. Which is pretty much what happened, as it seems pretty well observed that the "bandwidth issues" were a bandaid excuse.

So yeah, good on mmorpg for pretty much being the official Darkfall forums now. 

The RP debate will amost always find opinions divided between two groups of players:

Group A has extensive "old school" RP experience through either tabletop gaming or text based MU* gaming.

Group B only knows the new reality of MMO RP servers.

Group A, which is in the extreme minority, will always feel that group B trashes their gaming experience. Group B, who really don't know any better, think group A are a bunch of  RP geeks.

It comes down to personal history, and perspective, and I don't think the two groups will ever find common ground. Individuals from group B might migrate to group A, but the two sub-cultures will always be miles apart.

As for graphical MMO's not lending themselves well to RP, I agree. The medium is somewhat hostile to anything more than superficial RP. It can be done, but as has been mentioned in earlier posts, it takes a seriously enforcement policy and a whole lot of TLC to keep RP alive and kicking on an MMO.

Text based gaming is perfect for RP, but we all know how likely that is to make a big comeback. So really... rock and a hard place for RP these days. 

There's a minefield of reasons why you probably feel this way. And they are probably similar to the reasons why I also feel my "old school" gaming experiences have not been, and won't be matched by anything coming out in 2009.

First there's simply the different lens we looked at games through when we were younger. When I think back to my "high water mark" as a gaming geek I think back to the crazy fun I had in the mid-late 80s playing such games as Ultima IV, Wasteland, various Sierra adventure games, etc. I simply had more fun then. It can't be explained by the games themselves, because lets be honest, today's AAA games are vastly superior in almost every regard to anything made then. It is our frame of reference that cries out at the injustice of such a statement, not logic.

Then there's the medium of your GS3 gaming. Text allows certain things to be undertaken in a gaming environment that pixels simply can't match. Anyone who has ever played a multiplayer text based game will know instantly what I am talking about, I don't even have to elaborate. Those that have never played a text based online game can understand the concepts of freedom, imagination, etc but seriously I have never met a MU* virgin that "got it" without having played a while themselves. So, I'd say that your memories of the fun of GS3 are memories of a style of gaming that has been removed from the modern MMO equation.

I enjoy modern graphical MMOs. But I agree it is really unfortunate that text based gaming was mauled so badly by their rise. They still exist, but the genre seems to be on permanent life support, and there has been little innovation or community development over the last 10+ years. 

So basically, I think that we all have that double whammy of a combo: things were just generally more fun in our youth, and the things that we found fun back then are in short supply now anyway. It's kind of a one-two knockout as far as recreating that feeling is concerned.

If you are looking specifically for roleplay you may want to look past MUDs in general and look instead at MUSHes and MUXes. They are MUD derivatives that have evolved into pretty much the RP half of the telnet gaming world. There are cool RP enforced MUDs out there I am sure, but you will have an easier time finding RP on a MUSH or MUX I can almost guarantee.

If, however, you are looking for a combat centric game that also has RP, then yes maybe stick with a MUD. MUDs have (generally speaking) far more advanced hardcoded combat/leveling etc than most MUSHes, which are generally story driven RP fests.

Anyhow either way hope you find something fun. Text based gaming has taken many hits thanks to the rise of the MMO, but there are still many good games to play out there. I'd recommend a few but I have not been MU* active in years and am probably well out of the loop by now.

And as mentioned earlier in the thread, www.mudconnect.com is the best resource for finding sites. And you can see games by codebase as well (MUD, MUSH, etc).

 I totally agree on the single card solution for now. I've done a couple of SLI setups (8800 GTS SLI and 8800 GT SLI) and the performance benefits in some games were in my opinion vastly overshadowed by the general stability hit and strange problems in other games/apps.

A single high end card will probably always drive games pretty much just as well at normal gaming resolutions, and the benefits of a stable system really are priceless. 

So +100 for the single card solution. At least until SLI+ finally gets taken seriously and becomes stable.

 It looks pretty good, that would be a solid and reasonably priced gaming rig. The only two suggestions I would add:

1) Consider a good well ventilated aluminum case instead of that massive plastic monster, which can be found at your price point. There are usually sales on the simpler Lian Li cases for about $99 or so and often they are just missing extra factory fans at those lower prices, which can simply be added later.

2) Consider a slight bump up in your PSU. 550w would be ok with what you have, but I fear it doesn't give you much "wiggle room" for future upgrades, and keep in mind that a good SLI setup (if you ever decide to do that in the future) may take your 550w to the limit. I mention the SLI limitation because you have selected an SLI capable motherboard.

Other than those things, looks great. That AM3 mobo gives you the ability to upgrade for the next couple years.

Originally posted by hvc801

 If you have on board sound, ora  sound card that uses different sound drivers / applications you should try to configure the microphone through there.  

 

What he said. I had mic problems with a mic/headset combo as well (mine was the Razer HP-1 headset) and I got it working by setting up the microphone through Vista's control panel > sound if I remember correctly.

You will almost certainly get more bang for the buck with a PC laptop over a Macbook at your price level, so that's one thing to consider. There are a lot of laptops with pretty decent features (Acceptable CPU, 4GB, nice sized HDDs, etc) around $700-800, and there really just isn't anything worth noting in that range for an Apple unless its old and/or used.

You mention that you don't plan on playing many games with it, so it seems that a good graphics chip may not be all that important (you will do your gaming on a desktop I assume?). If that's the case and its really intended to be a computer for school then you can probably get away with any old integrated graphics solution. However, if you do intend to game on it and would be disappointed by crappy gameplay you need to (a) find out what models you are looking at and then (b) research their graphics chips.

So the long and short, and this is just one opinion but at your price I would definitely go for a PC laptop. You'll get more computer for your money, hands down. Macs can be fun but unless you have twice as much money to spend I wouldn't really go down that road.

 I'm sure when Darkfall releases for real in 2012 everything will be fine.