THis happend last week as well..it is likely just maintenance as it was last week.  Dont get your hopes up.

Originally posted by ianubisi

I believe Darkfall is in serious trouble. I think there is a strong possibility that the game may be released, but I also have a strong suspicion that if it is it will be revealed as the Emperor with No Clothes. There are a number of reasons I've come to this conclusion. Here is how I have interpreted today's announcement on top of the scan clues that have been provided over the past few weeks.

* Within the last few months they shifted from the Blizzard-like "when it's ready" stance to a finite date. This usually is a precursor to running out of financing.

* One of the most prominent public appearances of the game in recent weeks has been at a fundraising effort, expressing the game's merits to investors, apparently who likely have very little experience in the gaming industry. It's almost desperate, but I wouldn't fault anyone for finding funding if they can find it.

* Little information at all has been available within the last few weeks about the state of the game, other than some very controlled experiences released by exceptionally biased and friendly people. Classic damage control and spin.

* Tasos has clearly laid out that "Darkfall’s partners (distribution, billing, account management, support, etc.) entered into the game at a late date and we needed more time than expected to integrate properly." Billing, account management, and support are enterin late? Billing? My god...this has to be one of the most important aspects of running a business as can be imagined...how can this be listed as a late entry to a successful business model?

* A shift from the "no pre-orders" stance to "A pre-order will be made available mid-February" with the incentive of "pre-orders will also get priority for the game launch if we have to go to a staged release." An extremely clear sign that they are running out of money and need funding...this time, from prospective customers rather than outside investors. Investors eventually start demanding revenue be a portion of the operating expense...and that has clearly begun to happen.

* An apparent acknowledgement that they are not prepared to handle with their infrastructure the apparently demand for their service, which is confirmed by: "Demand for Darkfall at launch could be much higher than expected. If this is the case, we need a different process to better handle the demand." This is extremely alarming, since Tasos has touted the 200,000+ gamers that have registered for the game. It cannot possibly be a surprise that a fair portion of those 200,000+ gamers might actually want to play it...causing infastructure demand. But they clearly cannot handle the load....this is a dillema.

* A total lack of stress testing is absurdly alarming, and should have anyone who is a devotee of this game crying foul. In Tasos' own words: "We want as many players as possible in the game before the launch and we haven’t had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet.". Let me reiterate: "we haven't had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet." Even if you extend their deadline to the end of February, that's a frightening statement.

I firmly believe they have a good multiplayer game, based on the reports from the extremely select group of playtesters that have been allowed to talk about it. But a good multipler game is definitely not a MMOG, and a MMOG is exponentially more complicated and expensive to run than a multiplayer game.

It appears to me that Aventurine is running out of money and running out of time. I speculate that the game isn't capable of handling 10's of thousands of users, and even if the game was capable of it they don't have the clerical and bureaucratic infrastructure to handle it. All of it promises, even with the very best of intentions, an absolute mess.

I've said it before, and I'll repeat it again:

I want Darkfall to succeed.

Every success in the MMOG industry continues to perpetuate the entertainment of the future. It is an inevitable future, and the more diverse it is the better. I want them to succeed, but I also am tired of stomaching the ecstatic delusions of devotees who refuse to learn from the painful lessons of previous experience.

All this being said...let's see how this all turns out. No doubt this post will be sliced and diced by the partisans...have fun with it.

Another DF will fail thread... you are original good sir.

Originally posted by Heltern

Vanguard was voted one of the top six WORST MMORPGs of all time http://news.mmosite.com/content/2008-05-19/20080519050010790,2.shtml

No wonder there was 38 players online....it makes you wonder about this website, who are the fools who hype this piece of trash?

EQ > Warhammer or WoW.  WoW is an item epeen fest and Warhammer is just plain bad. 

Originally posted by smitty0356

BW's were one of the most popular order classes at launch, and it was mainly due to a few skills being unintentionally OP, but for the most part, I didn't feel as though they needed the combustion nerf in addition to the over-arching skill nerfs.

My gripe is that they threw sorcs in the mix with the BW's and I always thought they were a little gimp anyway.  It shines light on the fact that boiling blood was the problem and not the combustion mechanic.  Also, since they increased EVERY OTHER class, it is bs that they gave an additional nerf to all sorc/bw dots by NOT increasing them as well.

At this juncture, sorcs and bw's cannot kill at a fair rate, this meaning that any class can kill a bw or sorc much faster than the sorc/bw can kill them.  The lack of defense is as true as ever, and the lack of crowd control is still the same, but now instead of hitting for 800-1200 a shot, we hit for 300-500.  When players have 8000+ hp end game, you can see how this leaves a player feeling a little limp.

Also, has anyone seen high level squig herders or Shadow warriors?!?!  They are insane since their damage scales with stats, gear and weapons!!  I got doinked for 1800 damage by a shadow warrior's standard attack (crit).  I haven't done that much damage in one attack.....  EVER!  and I have backlash.

I frequently hit for over 2k on my sorc... hell I frequently kill people in 3 spells... its you spec.  Also the combustion / dark magic nerf is hardly a nerf...you can still preload it and just hit your instaaoe to keep it up..its not hard...

THeres lore in this game?  I was no aware... I just kill things. Mostly good things like elves and the goonies.

Mech Warrior, EQ1, Dunegeon Keeper, Lords of the Realm... those are the truly great games of the past and I was a bit younger (now 26) than the guy who started this but I started gaming at a much earlier age than the norm was...

I played EQ1 from release day till WoW came out and have been dissapointed in every single game I have played since then.  The people drive me nuts and no one cares about anything but their phat lewtz and it drives me batty. 

In EQ1 it was all about taking the next mob down or getting into a good grind group or sitting on a list to even level since when you were 40+ at the start of the game you had like 2 decent places to level and both you had ot get on every list and make friends with everyone and their mom so you could get in eventually... that is the stuff I miss about this easy access, make little kids epeen larger type of games they have out today. 

That is the difference.. the people in the games have changed so much (because of accessablity) that it is all about ME ME ME and that is why the MMO world is screwed.. as with everything it seems.. the more people interested.. the worse it gets.

Originally posted by Azrile

open beta was only up to the first 20 levels and the NDA was not lifted for the people in the closed beta who could access city seiges.  Exactly the same way AOC launched.

Why do you think we've seen 3 city seiges and all of them have been broken and exploited beyond belief

IT is not exactly the same by any means... in Warhammer you got to see 1/2 the content .. not 1/4... try understanding the concepts before you post ffs.

Originally posted by Ephimero

Id rate it with a 6, and that's pretty nice coming from me, Im having fun, can't see it lasting forever, but It's good enough to keep me entertained until my guild's main project.

You play Hello Kitty online...your opinion does not matter.

Yep all websites are slow when people using them...I mean look at Ebay or google...slow as all hell. 

Originally posted by sabutai22

Wait till

A. people with lives get home from work and find out they can create their accts

B. once OB dates are announced

C. both A and B

 

A lot of us with "lives" that have "jobs" can sign up for things like this... I would say there are more white collar type workers that play these games than wal mart employees that have no computer access at work.

I quit AoC after being 80 for 3 weeks and bored so now its TF2 CSS and Madden 09.

Considering I bought a new rig for AoC... this thing smashes this game lol.

5.  XP in PvE being to fast where one can reach max PvE levekl in 3-5 days played like other super fast leveling games like Vanguard and WoW.  Or even worse the easiest PvE game of them all AoC where people can reach max level in 1 day played

Did you even play Vanguard lawl ... game did not level fast at all.. AoC on the other hand was very quick.

Define shot... some combos hit 10+ times... so that would be 10 shots?  Or do you mean 10 combos... I would love to see a level 80 hit 6 combos in a reasonable amount of time.. that fight would take 10 years to finish. 

Hello and thank you in advance for your responses.  I am a verteren of mmos and have been playing MMOS since the release day of EQ1 and before that I dabbled in MUDS.    I have read many reviews on this game and it appears that I am going to purchase it.  I am going to be acquiring a laptop to play this on because now that I am not a teen ager able to sit around at home playing all day I want to bring this game with me on my business trips.  I have been trying to figure out what is the most important hardware for this game would be.  I was looking a DELL XPS in this configuration

This is going to be my first "gaming" laptop and I am curious if this game in particular would function better with the upgraded graphics card to a NVIDIA SLI Dual GeForce 8800MGTX with 1 gig of memory and downgrading to a slower processor that would still be over 2.4 with at least 6M of cache to make up for some of the difference in price... the price difference is 700 bucks on the graphics card ... the question is ... is upgrading to that card going to be worth 700 bucks?

Thanks.

Originally posted by smg77
Sometime in the next six months Sigil will announce they are selling the game to SOE.

Sometime in the six months after that SOE announces the Vanguard NGE.

For all you people enjoying the game--make the most of it now because you will get shafted.

Originally posted by parrotpholk
good for  you that you only use three. still doesnt answer my question but thanks for noticing that i troll here.

Originally posted by Vegetto

I stated that they were MY impressions from BETA's. No mention of the games current state other than a personal ranking below.

People do take what WoW has for granted. It's one of the few games that i capped a char in and i think everyone else has too. Question is, if it was so bad, why did everyone and their mother level char after char in it and play it for several months (i don't think many quit before 60, except those who didn't like the style). It has raised the bar in terms of artistic style, imaginative content and world design. It's popularity has NOTHING to do with Blizzard's past releases.

More people use Windows than any other OS because of ease of use, availability and application support. Linux may be better, but hey, wtf runs on it?

Has everyone on these goddamn forums played WoW? most for at least a few months? i think so.

People will say Vanguard is a better game because it's more hardcore and has more cool status, as it is now, as a WORKING,FULL GAME TITLE, it's not, i promise you.

I will play vanguard at release because i enjoy it, but don't fabricate information based on flavour of the month.