Combat will probably include the following:

1) Tab targeting (because people will bitch and moan without it, and probably needed in mass PvP battles)

2) Some kind of FPS targeting for ranged attacks (because MJ really doesn't want tab-targeting for archers, and probably will apply to some spells as well).

3) Reactionary styles and combos (because it emphasizes skill play) 

What I don't think we'll have is DCUO kind of gameplay, which is more arcade like combat.  

What I'd like to have is deathblow animations.  Getting a critical hit combined with a deathblow should result in a special deathblow animation, similar to how AoC did the decapitation, but apply it to both melee and spells.  Perhaps an archer deathblow animation is an arrow between the eyes or a special way they draw the bowstring.  A spell deathblow could just make the effect twice as bright or explode the head.  And melee deathblows are decapitation.  

Personally, I'd prefer something like every 2 weeks some type of update.  Every week is just too much because not that much can change in one week. 

I figure at this point they have to coordinate the data from KS for each person to their forum badge/etc. while also trying to hire some new employees with some of the money.

My guess is, about nothing has actually been created in the game other than just working on the foundation networking code and things like that.

Initial thoughts:

I see that you've been writing for MMORPG.com since 2012 and are a freelance writer.  Okay, so perhaps you're new to MMO games or nobody has ever tried to edit your work to make it better.  In my previous life I have written professionally and along the way took a lot of edits from folks (which i initially scorned but soon learned that it made me a far better writer).  What follows is a short list of things you really should think about when writing about MMO games and writing in general.  

Let's go over your review:

1) Aesthetics:   The definition of Aesthics is how it looks.  Yet the vast majority of your review (in terms of words spent on the subject) of this section is bad coding and crashing.  Did you deliberately put the game crashes in this section because you can't think of what to write about the graphics/images/looks of the game, or did you simply forget you have the Polish section (is the game finished/polished.   You did mention optimization again in the Polish section as an aside.  Why put it in both?  

Second, if you're going to compare graphics to TERA or GW2 and say they aren't as good, why not say which game you think the graphics in Darkfall are better?  I mean, if you give it a 7/10, surely there are other MMO games that have worse graphics.  Do you mean to imply that TERA and GW2 are the only 2 MMO games that have better graphics than Darkfall?  Hard to know since I'm only told what is better than Darkfall, but I don't know what Darkfall is better than so I can't figure out on my own how decent the graphics are.

2) Gameplay -- Okay, you give it a 9/10 after playing this game for several weeks (according to the intro on the top).  Then you add this fun gem: "Unfortunately I wasn’t able to experiences the full on sieges and organized clan wars. It is the most interesting aspect about the game, and makes for a hell of a lot of fun."  So, you played for a few weeks and didn't get to experience the best part of the game, yet felt compelled to write the review? Who writes a review of the game and admits they didn't do the best part? Furthermore, how do you know it's the best part of the game if you didn't experience it?  Is this from someone else's review of the game?  Is the 9/10 because you hear that part of the game is really good (and thus the score of the game you actually experienced is lower?), or is it 9/10 based upon the game you actually experienced and would be perhaps a 10/10 based upon getting to experience you have been told is even better?  

Did you compare other recent MMORPG.com reviews of games that got a 9/10 for gameplay to try to set as a comparison?  Did anyone at MMORPG.com help you in this regard?

You also mention that you have never played in an open world PvP sandbox game.  Really?  Ever hear of EVE?  It's a fairly popular game (often highlighted on this very website) that perhaps people at an MMORGP review site should be familiar with and have played.  Maybe get some experience playing other types of MMOs before reviewing MMO games, so as you can compare the gameplay with EVE. It clearly stands out as a big red warning sign for your review.

Innovation - 8/10?  You seem to give it a high-score simply because it is a sandbox MMO. While i agree sandbox games are not as common as themepark MMO games, I don't think it qualifies as innovative, just uncommon.  So, here's the definition of innovation from Merian-Webster: "The introduction of something new."  While sanbox games are uncommon, they are not NEW.  However, since you mentioned you haven't played that kind of game before, hence it falls into this section unfortunately.  

You do mention the leveling system which you believe is innovative. I would have focused more on this aspect since you said, "[it] is something which I haven’t seen outside a traditional leveling system."  

Social: 9/10 - You did say that you played with another MMORPG.com staff member and his guild.  Sort of creates a bias if you join people from work in the game. Still, I would agree that in a well-done sandbox PvP game, social tends to be a very important (and fun) part of the game and often leads to very high scores. 

Longevity - No comment, that's pure opinion.

Value - I have a comment.  You say "In addition to this, content is always being added." Interesting. It would be nice when you say stuff like that to give some facts. How often is "always"?  What content was added?  If it is on the expensive side, you'd have to compare how often it is added and the amount of content to another MMO game that isn't as expensive and also very popular (so it's easy to compare).  You provide no data and no comparison. 

Don't say stuff like "the developers are always striving to make their game better." Please tell me which developer of a MMO game isn't trying to make the game better?  Was this an attempt to make this section longer and ran out of things to say?  See my comment on data and comparisons for things to add to this section, rather than silly "they're working really hard" comments. 

End thought to the writer- 

Yeah, I'm a harsh critic of MMORPG.com reviews because long ago they were really all glowing with how wonderful everything was. Thankfully, people like Bill Murphy eventually stepped in and changed the review process to remove such bias.  While I think most of the reviews have been better since then, I would have to say this review certainly needed an editor.

To my friends at MMORPG.com staff (that are probably tired of me reviewing their reviews):

You should carefully screen people hired to write reviews to ensure that they have played a similar game and are very familiar with several MMO games and have someone provide helpful edits and suggestions to freelance writers.  When they give a 9/10 score on something, you have to compare that to other games that also got a similar score (8/10 - 10/10) and make sure that's consistent, especially when the writer comments that game "crashes were normal."  A game that crashes all the time just got a 9/10 gameplay score.  Is that the new standard?   Did anyone but me notice that?

Hey Bill, as a very vocal critic of the old-style MMORPG.com reviews, this review actually seems believable.  I'm not saying that just because of the 6.6 score; I'm saying it because you backed up why it was a 6.6 score. 

I do think a bit more highlight to the hacking issue, rather than just a brief comment and link, would be a bit more helpful and probably dropped the "polish" score down.  Putting that kind of information on the client is just NOOB coding and begging to be hacked, hence for me polish would have to take a big hit since any experienced programmer would never have done that. 

I also believe your innovation score of 7 seems rather high.  Just because there aren't too many MMO shooters doesn't make the game innovative, just makes it less common.  Innovation should be stuff we haven't seen before that is good for gaming (i.e., legacy system for your account in SWTOR was a good innovation).  If Defiance had maybe put daily/weekly events that tied into the TV show or something, maybe that would up the innovative factor, because you could watch the show for clues that would help you in your daily/weekly quest(s).  Stuff like that should bounce the innovation up. I guess you should figure out what amount of innovation would score a 3, a 5, a 7 and a 10.  It appears that you put modest innovation at 7, whereas I would put it a 3 or 4.

Anyways, congrats on a far better review.  Just rethink Innovation scoring.  Thanks.

Originally posted by Mortify
Playing DAoC, on Uthgard. 

Er, you can't mention the word that starts with Uth and rhymes with hard on this forum because it's a server that does not require payment and that's a no-no at MMORPG.com.   Nevermind that MMORPG.com ran an exclusive story on their experience at such a service a few months ago.

Congrats on funding.  I was very surprised by the surge in funding the last few days, but as others have said it seems rather common for KS for that to happen.

I'm in at $250.   Hope this game can be somewhat close to the hype.

Originally posted by Tierless

This just in, if we maintain our current pace we wont just fund, WE WILL FUND TODAY!

(Goes to oven, puts in several pies)

What are you talking about?  They have exactly 48 hours left, and over the past few days they have been raising about $70,000 a day.  So, that's $140,000 and they are currently @ $1.73 million, or with an additional $0.14m that's $1.87m by the end of the KS.  

Seriously, you guys need to learn math. 

Originally posted by Alienami

Age of Conan had siege warfare. So does Mortal Online and Darkfall Online. Siege warfare is the main goal, doesn't matter to me if its true RVR, I played DAoC on the Free For All server, Mordred.

 

Age of Conan had "who can bring more people to the seige location first and lockout the opposing force" warfare.   All you had to do was get enough people in the zone first and the other side couldn't get in to defend/attack.  Yeah, that was great warfare design.  Wish all PvP could be designed with this amazing system.

All this in 27 days: $1.6 million.   So, doesn't matter what the demo showed or anything.  If they don't raise roughly $400,000 in the next 3 days, it wont really matter what they have done in the past month on the FPS.

As a lot of people have said, much of this kind of stuff should have been done prior to the KS campaign.  It might have helped. 

I love how you guys claim something is going to be in the game when there isn't any demo of the game.  EVERYTHING he says is an idea that he thinks would be nice to have in the game.  EVERYTHING.   It doesn't mean it will be in the game at the end.  

Positionals and reactionary combos are pretty simple stuff, but stop saying "this and that is in the game" because there is no game.  Nothing is in the game until it ships.  Jeez.

All of this stuff he has said in the videos doesn't mean any of it will actually make it in the game.  All you can count on is that there are a variety of ideas on what could be in the game.  But, until you start coding it and testing it, nobody knows if it would work or should even be part of the game.

I understand why MJ is doing it, so he can try to get people off the fence and fund it.  But really, all of this is just him spouting off ideas of what he imagines could be in the game.   If you have followed MMO development, you know developers always want this and that in the game, but when it's shipped they always deliver a fraction of what they promissed when the game was about 6 months from going live.   Those are from companies with working alpha-stage games.   This game isn't even in development...so what percentage of stuff is actually going to be in the game live?  30%?  10%?  Who knows.  Heck, even AoC promissed DX10 support on the box, showed screenshot and videos of the game running on DX10 but the game only ran on DX9 when shipped, so don't tell me anything about promisses by developers of MMOs.  

About the only thing you can count on is that it will be 3-realm PvP game with crafting.  If you think that's your kind of game, fund it.  Don't fund it because you like the stealth idea or the changing landscape idea or player bounties, because all of those specifics will change and most probably wont be in the final game.

Are there really that many people who just don't know enough yet to decide?   Silly IMO.

The primary reason people who are on the fence is because they want to see a demo kind of version of the game first.   

I think the other related issue is that MMO players have been promissed a lot that this game was going to have this or that, and of course the actual game either doesn't have it or it's broken beyond all hope.   You could say AoC was extremely overhyped on what was to be expected versus what was in the game at release.  Heck, they even said it would have DirectX10 on the box and yet only did DirectX 9 when shipped.  When you lie on the box, you know you've broken all standards of decency. 

Or look at Star Wars, which was going to have large-scale PvP on the planet Ilum, only to realize when it went live that the game engine couldn't do it and the planet PvP was effectively shut down.

So many MMO games, so many broken promises.  What to believe anymore?   

And then comes a game that doesn't even have a demo.  It has promises and ideas.   And you wonder why people are on the fence?  

Personally, i've funded at the $250 level because I'm tired of PvE mmo themeparks.  But, I can totally understand why people are on the fence and answering questions from people isn't going to get them to fund in my opinion, but I suppose it's worth a shot with only a few days left and $500,000 more to go.

Anything that can levitate and go through walls is just begging to be a game breaking unbalanced class that finds way to abuse the system.  This is the kind of thing you dream up, you think it might be cool, and then you see imaginative players find ways to abuse it and then you realize how bad an idea it really was, but you can't change it now because it's such a huge nerf to the class.   Better to just stop it now.

It's also just too damn complex.  How about some of the ideas just simplified?   For example, to combat stealth gank groups, just do this:  If  (insert #) of stealth players of a given realm are within (insert AOE range), their stealth is reduced making them easier to detect, up to eventually no stealth at all, depending on the # of players.  You don't want to make the # of players too small since even stealth players like to be social, but you don't want it too big that they just can ambush a full group of visible players.  I'd suggest 2-3 no impact, 3-4 modest stealth reduction, and 6 stealthers basically makes them visible to just about anyone passing by them (only invisible to players at a distance). 

Or you want archers to be scouts?  Just do a combination of Shadowbane's "radar" function for archers and maybe DAOC's realm ability Master of Stealth which increases stealth detection for assassins.

Don't like stunlock?  Just don't make it available in the opening rotation of skills or make stealth stuns last half as long as stuns from other classes.

Don't like instant-on stealth?  Just make stealth require no-combat for 20 seconds AND X-radius away from any enemy player.  So, any enemy player chasing a stealther but can't get into combat can still keep the stealther from going invisible as long as they are reasonably close.  The 20 seconds is just enough time for the other realm to respond to the attack by a stealther, without making the re-stealth take excessivel long.

You don't want to nerf stealth to the point nobody wants to play it, and you want it so that a stealther who waits for the appropriate time to attack has the advantage, since they are using tactics.  You don't want a stealther who just willy-nilly attacks anyone anytime and still wins, especially if they win via stun-lock.  When I play my ranger on a not-to-be-named-free-DAOC-shard, I sit and wait for the right time to attack the enemy and waiting for the right enemy (no big shield, for example).  So, yes, my win-loss ratio is pretty good because I'm waiting and choosing the right target at the right time.  That should always be the case for giving a stealther an advantage.   

Now, if you want to take these simple ideas and weave them into the lore, feel free.  But as a PvP player with extensive Stealth and non-stealth experience, I'm happy to help MJ and the crew as CSE come up with "solutions" to a perceived "stealth problem".    But mentioning someone going through walls is just a no-go.  It is begging for someone to find a way to exploit it in ways the developers never anticipate.

I'd rather not have the game made if it's going to include PvE.    It will just ruin the balancing of the PvP, like it did in so many other games.  Remember, they had "enhanced class balance tools" and that still resulted in the creation of Bright Wizards because of PvE balance, even though playing a BW for about 10 minutes in PvP should have told you the class was completely unbalanced.

So, I'd rather not have to deal with the PvE that just ends up screwing up the PvP aspect of the game.

Hold on.   Failure of kickstarter to ruin MJ's reputation?   Are you kidding me? 

MJ, the man who brought us Trials of Atlantis.

MJ, the man who brought us the enhanced class balance tools that lead to Bright wizards on 90 Warhammer servers, no wait, 60 servers, no wait, 40 servers, no wait, 20 servers, no wait, 10 servers, no wait 4 servers.

Yah, as if a failed kickstarter campaign will be his biggest goof in the MMO land...... 

Laugh, the only thing missing from his resume is making SWG NGE.  Too bad someone else claimed the prize for worst expansion of all time.  Trials of Atantis was dethroned.

I don't think funding CU will change anything.   What has changed things has been the financial failure of many themepark MMO games.  They have been such huge financial failures that companies are not exploring alternatives.  How do you make an MMO game for under $10m?   Well, about the only way to do it is to basiclly gut the PvE content and/or rely on cash shops to fund the development.   CU is just the first of probably many developers to try to come out with a game that can be made for under $10m without a cash shop, so it has decided that PvE must be not just severely reduced, but essentially cut altogether.

I think what CU tells me is that an all PvP game is truly a niche market, as the # of backers seems rather low. However, those players are truly devoted players as seen by the average pledge amount.  

I have to agree with some aspect and disagree with others. 

First, is kickstarter cheap money?  To some extent, yes.  However, rather than earn a financial return on their investment, others are willing to earn a "fun" return on their investment.  The fun is that a game is made that they will enjoy.  In the world of economics, this is called "utility" and describes why people do what they do. Obviously, money has utility, but so do other things.  Hence, if it was only money, you couldn't ever figure out why people volunteer their time or donate to charities or purchase the $10,000 tier of the Kickstarter. 

Furthermore, many teirs of Kickstarter provide very good returns financially as well.  The $250 tier with the game plus life-time sub covers the cost of the game and about 1 year of a $15/month sub.  

If you took this to a traditional publisher, they would require that the game have a PvE element, because that's what other games have and that's what is successful in World of Warcraft.   Is there any doubt that over the last 5-10 years, we have seen enough WoW clones to know that they don't work, and yet we ponder why so many keep getting published?

Secondly, publishers have deals with various game distributors that they have to abide by.  So, let's say a publisher has an agreement with Gamestop.  Gamestop isn't interested in taking shelf space for a game that is truly a niche game.  They want more broad appeal in order to justify the shelf space. Hence, the publisher is going to pressure the game developer to do things that wont make it a niche game, so that they can get Gamestop to buy the game and put it on the shelf. 

The only way around it is to fund it yourself or with a few small investors, which brings you games like Darkfall, which took like 8 or 9 years to develop that by the time it was released it looked like it was 9 years old.  Or Shadowbane, which was plagued with technical problems and hacking. Or the game Dark & Light, which was a scam and the company that made it stole the game engine without paying for it.  Apparently, funding it yourself has massive problems as well. 

Which of course brings us to kickstarter.  Certainly one could complain about the process, but nobody is forcing anyone to buy it. 

I have proudly purchased the $250 Warrior Forever tier and really want the game to come about.  I have always been one of Marc Jacobs harshest critics for stupid stuff like ToA and some of the dumbest end-game mechanics ever conceived in Warhammer; and who could forget his dumbest claim that Warhammer would have advanced class-balancing tools when all it took was playing a Bright Wizard for a few minutes could have figured out it was unbalanced.    Maybe going throug those terrible decisions has allowed him to finally see the error of his ways and is bringing about a communication with seasoned PvP players like myself who certainly don't mind telling him when he's jumped the shark.  There has never been a harsher critic than myself, and there has never been someone so eager that he gets this game made.

$1,550,000

No way this game meets its target of $2m.  Oh well.

Imagine RvR whereby structures such as walls and seige equipment can only be built by crafters.  An RvR group would almost always want to bring along some crafters to build the seige equipment or defensive structures or defensive seige equipment to improve their odds in RvR.   

Thus, if you had crafters in your group, you could build a defensive tower in the middle of enemy territory, greatly enhancing your ability to survive attack.  The more crafters, the faster and larger that defensive tower could be, up to a full-blown defensive fort with multiple walls.    Conversely, attacking these defended positions would require groups to bring crafters along to build the seige weapons needed. 

In this regard, crafters become an essential support class for RvR. In addition to making swords, armors, etc. they can also be active in the RvR game.