Valid opinion, but I really like the crafting so far. It has a nice Ultima Online feel to it. I believe the crafting is what's going to keep me subbed for some time. 

 With the alignment change today killing all the loot ninjas will turn me red nearly instantly. So like I figured, just have to ignore them the best I can and move on.

I've been playing Darkfall for a bit now, and while it has it's ups and downs it generally does what it is advertised to do. My graphics card isn't great so sometimes it looks cell shaded, but that's neither here nor there. The gameplay is solid, the PvP is great, the crafting is surprisingly developed. Losing all of your loot in one fell swoop adds a challenge I haven't had to deal with since Ultima Online and I must say that I enjoy it. After all the things you own end up owning you. I get it.

But one thing really, really bothers me. If I kill something, even if it was a real struggle to kill it completely on my own anyone can come up and loot it. Sure I end up getting about half, but it just irks me that some people just hang at the periphery waiting to take the fruits of my labor. It's not a deal breaker and I'm sure I'll get over it soon, but it's offputting. 

 So I heard you can have ships in game. Is this true? Ships were my favorite part of UO back in the day.

The red circles on the map that show nearly exactly where I should go and what I should do for a quest is a great thing, but it is making me lazy. I started playing MMOs with EQ back in 2001 when getting and actually finishing a quest required more luck and advise from other people than anything else. Back then if you wanted a map you either bought the incredibly inaccurate EQ Atlas or looked it up online.

Do you think this is a sign of things to come for MMOs? I don't think that WoW has added anything like this in yet or if they are planning on it, but because I've gotten so dependent on it I think I really will miss this feature on new games that don't have it.

The good thing about the markers is that because zones in most every game are in the 5 to 10 level range we're going to see the same scenery a lot. It's really not a question if we are going to explore a zone, we'll pretty much go everywhere in it during those times. Having to guess or search online for the location of an NPC or mob doesn't really add anything except for a very small inconvenience for the most part.

The bad thing about it is that if for some reason this was someone's first MMO they aren't really going to be able to transfer much of the quest experience in this game to any other they move on to. A very valuable skill of actually having to explore or search for answers just isn't necessary here.

So in closing...I don't have much of a point. It's a very interesting feature and one that I really enjoy, even though I know it's not the best for me.

 Hi,

 Thanks for the great responses! I was half expecting flames, so thanks for actually taking the time to write real reasons. 

 If you don't mind, I'd like to turn it around then...since MNK/THF is basically out, would THF/MNK make any sense? I know sometimes these things work that way, like how WHM/RDM wouldn't be great but RDM/WHM is pretty nice.

Trine on Asura

I got RDM up to 19 and finished the subjob quest along the way. So I went back to Windurst and played around with some of the other jobs. BLM was fun, sure kills things a heck of a lot faster than RDM.

Then I tried MNK. My God, why didn't I see this before? It's almost scary how much fun that job is. Too bad RDM is basically a useless subjob from what I can tell for a MNK so I may have wasted a lot of time with it, but at least I know where to go to get MNK up there.

My question for you fine folks would be then since I really can't stand playing a WAR, will I be gimping myself if I use THF as a subjob? 

 They took the Aussie server. That killed it for me. Everything else had a workaround.

 Tier 2 high elf has spooky forests filled with skeletons, will that work for you?

 Most the changes they put in I found ways to work around. What finally did it for me was the archery changes. They struck me as needlessly arbitrary and WoWesque. 

If they bring back archery the way it used to be I'll most certainly be back.

Will they be bringing the archers back the way they were? I just can't play my Ranger until they do.

I know some people love the archery changes but it feels inproper.

I'm on the Australian server. The mergers don't mean stuff all to me, we only have the one at the moment.

Telstra is putting the DVDs in all it's shops so hopefully the word will get out soon.

Right up the street from me. I wonder if daily starbucks deliveries would earn me a spot on the beta ;)

I like the power of the new Archer, but I miss the realism and customization of the old archer. All in all, I prefer the old method.

Originally posted by Netspook

That really depends on what kind of game they would make. Dune and Dune 2 were two completely different games. Dune 2 was really just Warcraft 2 with different graphic, and Dune 2000 wasn't much of an improvement.

The final result would decide if I was gonna play it. OP, you only said "MMO" - if the rest of the word was RPG, it would catch my attention, but if it was RTS, then probably not.

Dune 2 came out in 1992 by Westwood Studios, Warcraft 1 was released in 1994 by Blizzard. Warcraft 2 was released in 1995. Westwood later went on to make Command & Conquer, then selling out to EA.

So really saying that Dune 2 was just Warcraft 2 with different graphics is hugely unfair to the creative minds at Westwood.

Originally posted by nomadian

 

---

I had lots of fun while playing for the first month after release. I will be there to check out Auto Assault for 10 days. If I like what I see, I may even re-activate, but I am still unhappy with NCSoft's refusal to introduce some sort of bundle subscription options to their games. That's really what keeps me from playing City of Villains and Auto Assault.

---

 

 

---

BIZ: Along those same lines, with NCsoft coming out with such a diverse line of games, will the company be exploring options for multi-title access subscriptions?

 

RG: Absolutely. We're hoping to have that up in a couple months. I'm not sure exactly what we're going to call it, but we're leaning towards "NC All." We have some debate on that, but basically it'll be an account where, for one price, you can play absolutely everything that NCsoft has to offer. We're trying to integrate all of our products through a launcher system, which says if you install one of our products, the NCsoft launcher will keep that product updated all the time in the background. It will allow you to see and load all of our products automatically if you want that to be done. It will allow you to pay for any products you've decided to buy, even all the products through NC All at one time and then surf through the whole thing at your leisure. So we're trying to integrate all of our products in a very positive way that provides more content to customers that do want that.

---