While there aren't experience levels, there are still skill levels. As such, there can be massive disparities  in damage output and mitigation.  A brand new player, even one experienced in PvP, will not be the same as a veteran, just like in any other game. So, while it's cool that you worked together, you're pretty much at the same disadvantage as characters in other games who group outside their level range with clan mates.  You'll have a harder time hitting veteran players and you'll take more damage.  Your own personal skill will definitely come into play, though, which is a good thing, IMO.

Personally, I don't think the issue is that players "can't" group with lower level clan mates in other games so much as they "won't" unless it's to PL you.  There's no incentive for them to do so, because they won't get experience or loot at your level and you can't contribute at theirs.  In Darkfall, your ability to contribute is greater, albeit still hampered, but there aren't any loot/experience handcuffs.  Rampant skill leveling did happen for a long time, but that seems not to be the case anymore, unless I'm mistaken.

To the best of my knowledge, there's nothing you can buy in the shop that gives you an advantage.  There are definitely collectors items (holiday gear) and mounts, but neither are necessary for you to play the game, to unlock content, etc...

So, if you're a subscriber, what's the problem?  Nobody's forcing you to buy that cool Halloween mask. If you absolutely have to have it, fine.  Pay for it, but it's not required for to play the game.  That's why it's such a good RMT item - you don't need it, but you want it.  The way I see it is this:   you pay to play the game and that's what you get.  If you want extra goodies, you need to pay for them, too.  It's like buying a car.  You can purchase the base model, but if you want extras then you need to pay more.

~Ripper

Originally posted by xpiher

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by Blindchance

It is hard to say how accurate those numbers are, as long I remember df.urme.com/index.php website was created months after DF launch. Despite that still somebody put clans like Murder Herd on the list MONTHS aftet they left. You can relay on data which have no real confirmation. Said that I personally think that DF's population on both servers is not higher then few thousands and definitly smaller then 10 000.

 

As has been confirmed by a number of active subscribers...

 

The numbers listed at these sites:

EU: df.urme.com/index.php

NA: darkfallinfo.com/pmap/index.php

 

Are the same numbers that a subscriber would see if they open up their clan journal.

 

IF that is not the case, then please let us know.

As I said, the numbers have been confirmed by a number of active subscribers on the official boards (and at least 1 here) as being the same numbers seen in-game.

 

It's not the job of the web-sites above to determine the accuracy or timeliness of the numbers as reported by DarkFall's own tools for retrieving said information.  As long as they match what is available in-game it's worth compiling... at least for me. 

It is the case. The df.urme.com site uses a bot that signs into these links with an active sub, and clicks on every clan avaible.

EU: http://app001.eu1.darkfallonline.com

NA: http://app001.na1.darkfallonline.com

The problem is EU's population and NA's population are actually about the same and EU's clan population is higher than it should be. The reason for this is because of the fact that the only way for clan rosters to get cleared is by player manually clearing them, AV does not do it automatically. This is why clans like Murder Herd still show as having 113 members when the clan is officially dead, or deviance having 25 when only two people haven't transfered yet.

I remember arguing on the official boards that Aventurine didn't purge players from the clan counts, but that it was done manually.  Several other players confirmed what I was saying back then.  It's apparently still true today.  Still, since DF is so clan-centric, it's the best way we have of gauging the overall population.

~Ripper

Where is it documented how those numbers are compiled?  I remember the EU1 page being posted in one of my clan count threads and it was markedly different.  I also remember one of the fans stating that he was responsible for manually populating the political map, but that it wasn't a complete clan listing (at that point in time).

~Ripper

Originally posted by Polarisation

Originally posted by Agricola1

I haven't seen any speed hacking or macros so far, very different from what was written about at launch. It seems Aventurine cracked down on it and banned many players.

To be honest, it never was that bad. Since launch I have seen 2 definite hackers. Since launch. And I haven't seen those guys since. So I think you got trolled on that point. Most people who try Darkfall think it's a lot better than the forum trolls make it out to be, in my experience being pleasantly surprised is a common reaction.

Hacking and exploits were very bad, but Aventurine seems to have been very good about trying to take care of them

"I think they are now, especially after having put a better community liaison in place, but there definitely weren't before.  You're seeing the benefits of almost a year of work post launch.  The game has changed (for the better) and Aventurine seems to have, too."

On a side note, I think it's interesting that there's a new Polarisation account who's obviously a fan of the game vs. the old Polarization who was one of it's biggest skeptics.

~Ripper

Reposted from the official boards:

I've now played several characters through Corsica and Earthrise, trying to take in as much as possible and I've gotten a few characters to Anglorum and even to Camelot. Here's are my further thoughts:

Skill system

• No skill trees - yay!!!!
• Free respecs, at will (that I've seen so far - please correct me if I'm wrong) - yay!!!
• Multiple tiers of skills, unlocked at specific levels - pretty standard
• Multiple levels of skills, unlocked at specific levels - fairly common (think adding points to a skill to increase it's effectiveness, a la Runes of Magic)
• Skills specific to and usable only by their core classes - pretty standard
• Skills specific to classes, but usable by all.  Want to be a  knight who casts a druid spell to pull? Knock yourself out!  I'm very interested to see how this works out.  Theoretically, this will allow for interesting hybrid builds, but how effective will the hybrids truly be due to stat system limitations?
• "classless" healing spells - woohoo!  Anybody can heal
• "classless" travel spells - yippeee!
• weapon specialization - a nice touch for a little extra bonus to damage
• "classless" buff/debuff spells - very nice!
• Reagents - some spells require them (buffs, debuffs and transportation spells), others don't.  I think this is ok, but I worry about players charging others for buffs and ports

I'm pretty impressed with the skills system.  Overall, I think it's one of the best features of the game!  It's deep, allows for tremendous customization and, while I think there will still be "cookie cutter" builds for damage, I think there will still be variety in the builds.

Credit shop

• Credits - 100 credits/$1 USD with bonus credits for buying in bulk.  Credits are sold in blocks for $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 and $250.  Alternately, you can earn credits by completing various requirements from advertisers (buying something, renting dvds, etc...).  I don't mind paying for credits and I'd love to see EE game cards at 7-11 and other merchants, but I despise the idea of earning credits, especially since the primary player base seems to be teens who might not fully grasp all of the issues surrounding the marketing offers, privacy concerns, spam, etc..
• Credit exchange - players are allowed to buy credits from other players with in game gold.  This feature can be very cool, but is also fraught with peril, as evidenced by the struggles Frogster has had with something similar in Runes of Magic.  Frogster has experienced massive fraud and chargebacks related to diamond (their credit currency) purchases and the in game economy suffered greatly due to most items in the auction house being offered for diamonds only.  As a result, Frogster had to change it's policies to allow diamonds to be traded for gold only and diamond purchases are subject to a 30 day wait before you can use them for non-credit shop purchases (in other words, buy them and use them in the credit shop, but wait 30 days if you want to use them in the auction house).  If Sparkplay isn't careful, they'll suffer something similar.
• Variety - six types of items can be purchased in the credit shop: Consumables (potions and tomes),  Charms (increase stats, can equip up to six at a time), Armor (looks only - you have to use an armor refashioner in game to slot stats from one piece onto the piece you purchased), Bags (so far only one, but it has 24 slots), Miscellaneous (Reagent regenerators, Grinders and Transmuters - basically convenience items) and a Last Name Change.  I like the variety, but I have concerns about they types of items and how they'll affect PvP (should it ever be introduced).  Will PvP simply become a matter of who's willing to pay more?  Personally, I can't stand that.  I'm ok with buying stat buffs in a non-competitive environment, but as soon as competition is involved the game changes, as far as I'm concerned.
• Price - prices start off reasonable, but can get pretty pricey. The range from as little as 30 credits to 6000.  To put it into perspective, the cheapest item can be bought 3 for $1 USD, the most expensive is $60.  Please note, the cheapest items generally have very short durations (as little as 2 hours to 24 hours - all hours are real time from the moment of purchase, not elapsed play time).  What do I consider reasonable?  A 2 hour 30% boost to all earned XP when killing enemies for 50¢.  Spend 1/2 dollar and grind a way for a couple of hours.  Doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me.  What do I consider pricey?  A charm that increased two base stats by 15%, but costs $15 for 30 days of calendar time.   Subscription games that have substantially more depth only cost $15/month.  You have to be pretty committed to EE to spend that much on a single credit shop item that only lasts one month.  A permanent charm costs $60 USD, but you'd need to play at least 5 months in order to justify it's cost over the 30 day charms.  Keep in mind, that's the price for a single credit shop item.  If the more expensive items cost were halved, I think they were more reasonable, but I personally couldn't ever justify spending that much (even $15) on a single cash shop item that isn't permanent.  Bottom line - items in the credit shop are much too expensive, IMO,  especially since the game hasn't even launched yet  (yes, it's a major peeve of mine)!

Overall, I have very mixed feelings regarding the credit shop.  On one hand, I don't mind microstransaction systems.  I think they're the way of the future as a revenue model for MMOs.  My major concerns are:

1. F2P - to me, a true F2P is one you can play from start to finish, all skills, levels, quests, gear, etc... (in other words, "content") without having to purchase anything.  Does that mean I'm cheap or don't believe in paying?  No.  As I said above, I'm ok with credit shops.  That being said, I personally believe that items offered in the credit shop should not give advantages in competitive play, otherwise true competition is cast aside in favor of who can afford to pay more.   I like convenience items, aesthetic items, etc..  In my mind, you should want to purchase credit shop items (they should just be that cool), but never feel you have to.
2. Earning Credits - I absolutely loathe this.  I hate those "get a free ipod" offers where you have to pimp out your friends email addresses and subject them to spam, where you get a software upgrade by participating in an offer from a marketing partner, etc.. Hate it, hate it, hate it.  Also, as mentioned above, I have concerns about how safe this is with a young player base.
3. Price - yes, I know cash shops/credit shops/item malls, etc.. are cash cows.  I'm ok with it, but the transactions aren't all that "micro" for some of the items.  I'd prefer to see the more expensive item prices slashed.  No, they're not necessary (so far as we know), but they are darn expensive. If they become necessary in order to compete, I'd be very unhappy.
4. In game credit exchange - as noted above, this is a very slippery slope, fraught with problems, including massive fraud.  Following is a quote from Icarii, a Runes of Magic GM on their official boards:

Quote

OK, I will explain the 30 day "hold"...

 

Diamonds being allowed in the AH is something the players wanted but with that came many problems.

1. Diamond/gold sellers: They used this system to their advantage. Sure we are able to track everything but the damage they did on their own was staggering.

-Sellers would use stolen PayPal accounts (and credit cards, thats why the new CC option has a 30 day hold as well) and buy thousands of dollars in diamonds and then unload them to players. Some players knew what was going on and others were clueless.

PayPal would notify us of the "unauthorized" payments and then we would track everything linked to the illegal account. We banned everyone who got these diamonds or items from the sellers accounts. Since we couldn't just remove the "bad" items we were left with no choice but to ban.

2. Player charge backs:

Many players would do charge backs (kinda like the sellers lol) after they got their diamonds and use, gifted and unloaded every last one of them.
We would have to act the same way as we did with the diamond sellers.

Then there is those who play the game for 4 or 5 months and then quit, re roll, or w/e and they do a charge back.

All of this starts to hurt, not only our bank account but the players as well.

It is not our intention to "punish" legit players. It is nothing like that in the least. The current system gives us time to fix these issues and that is our GOAL.

This is no minor issue in our book . We are working on this and Runewaker is working on this.

   5.  PvP - as indicated above, will success in PvP be directly influenced by how much one spends in the credit shop? If so, I think it's a travesty.

To quote Matt Mihaly (Aurelius on the boards - CEO of Sparkplay) from his interview at TenTonHammer:

Quote

Ten Ton Hammer: Earth Eternal is billed as a free-to-play MMO with paid-for benefits. Typically among F2Ps, these benefits are consumables (potions, etc.) and cosmetic items - things that don’t affect gameplay. Are you sticking pretty close to these guidelines, or will players be able to buy more with their Earth Eternal buck?

 

 

Mihaly: I don’t agree with the premise of the question, but don’t want to appear to get in an argument or disagreement with you. Most F2P games do allow for things that affect gameplay, from health potions to +xp potions to stat-altering potions, etc.

Happy to answer some variation on this question that doesn’t presume the above though. Here’s an explanation of what we sell:

“We sell a combination of cosmetic and functional items. Players can buy armor appearances which can be transferred onto any item, giving players the ability to really customize what they look like without sacrificing the stats they want.

We also sell some functional items. For instance, larger backpacks than you can buy with gold in order to expand your inventory space or speed potions that increase your running speed. “

I don't really care for the way Matt answered the question, because I thought he sounded defensive and argumentative.  I don't think the premise was necessarily wrong, so much as the context.  Yes, most F2P games do offer items that affect gameplay.  The real question is "do they affect gameplay and fairness in a competitive environment?"  In a purely PvE game, does it really matter if you can buy a "+googleplex sword of uber pwnz joo"?  No.  If your game offers PvP and one player has purchased the best healing potions, buff potions and charms and fights somebody who hasn't, is that really fair?  Will the richer player always have a significant advantage?  Assuming PvP is implemented in EE, the real question I want an answer to is "Will players be able to use credit shop buffs in PvP, thereby giving them a distinct advantage over those who don't?". I'm hoping the answer is no, they won't be able to use them (or, in the case of permanent charms, they'll be disabled) in PvP.  If that's the case, I think it's fair and am perfectly happy.  Otherwise, not so much...

In summary, my further impressions are:

• Skill system - yay!!!
• Credit shop - hrrrmmmm, some good, some bad. Would like further clarification from the Grand High Poobah.

~Ripper

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by Cecropia

Cool, thanks for the post xzyax.

As others have said it may not be exact, but at least this gives us a reasonable idea as to what the population looks like on both servers. It also allows us to better gauge the condition of the game in the coming months.

 

Thanks.

 

And I agree.  We should see an increase over the next couple months with the release of the upcoming "expansion". 

A month or two after the expansion is released should show what kind of retention that DarkFall has once the subscriptions from those that joined for the "expansion" need to be renewed.

 

So, I'd say the next true test for DarkFall will be what the counts show in mid-January.  I'll continue to update the counts until at least that time-period.

 

If the counts are up then DarkFall would seem to be indeed growing it's population.

If the counts are down then DarkFall's population would seem to be indeed shrinking.

I hope we see an increase after the new expansion.  I've seen posts stating there should be increases after NA launched, after the 1st expansion (when many players felt the game was truly out of "paid beta") and after the summer holidays.  Months later and it appears there are still fewer players on NA (per the clan count) than there ever were on EU. 

I've been critical of Darkfall and Aventurine, but never maliciously.  There have been significant problems both pre and post launch, but it truly seems like Aventurine is committed to addressing player concerns and making their game better.  It appears they have enough revenue from other streams (defense contracts and investors, for example) that Darkfall isn't going to go away, but I really do want to see it be good enough to attract a larger number of players and succeed, not just survive.

~Ripper

Originally posted by lisubab

Originally posted by Cecropia

Originally posted by ghoul31

Originally posted by Cecropia

xfire is still all you're going to bring to the table?

Don't wanna listen to anyone currently playing?

Everyone one of us are just out to lie and promote (in my case) some random foreign mmo. Ya that's my agenda.

Hasn't "fail" been old since..... since far too long. Get some new material man.

 

I provide facts. You provide nothing. At least provide screenshots of these tons of people. The only thing you ever provide are personal insults.

 

I did say in my post "Hardly concrete evidence, but for the curious that is my experience."

So I'm obviously not proving anything. I'm only letting people know who are checking the game out (which is a lot atm) how things are shaping up. Guy you need to realize most of us don't use xfire, or any other program that tells you your play time in any given game. How is a program like that supposed to give an accurate reading for any kind of trend with a game like DF?

 

You have one thing very correct in your reasoning, the game is nothing except the part you feel.  1090000 online won't cut it unless you enjoy their presence, actually they might contribute to lags and channel spams ---> Dalarn of WoW.  50 online is good enough if the game is fun with these people.  You do not need to prove to anyone that DF provides enough good people to make it a game fun and lively for you.  That is your game your sub.

Ghoul is looking at it from the point of an observer.  That is where statistics comes in, where generalisation, comments, views are formed.  You opinion counts as 1 person, and that will be weighed against those of others.  It appears that statistics and cold hard facts weigh against you passion.  Population in DF, interest in DF and everything about DF is falling, despite the fanatic (apparent or sincere, god knows) of AV to pop things up.  This seems to be opinioin shared by quite a lot of people.

Now does it matter to your game play?  No.  Can ghoul take a different perspective and mingle your unique view with other evidence or views?  Sure.  No conflict there.

For a non-competitive game, i might agree with you, but Darkfall was allegedly designed to hold up to 10k players at a time, was allegedly designed for epic, massive battles and was designed with a huge, non-instanced world that could hold all those players and battles.  Unfortunately, the actual population is very small, so there aren't any huge, epic battles, nor are there bustling cities, massive raids, large scale political plots, etc...  There are hubs of activities with concentrated populations of players and relatively small marauding parties, but nothing to the scale the game was made for.  As such, play--as a whole--does suffer due to the population.  Yes, of course people have fun, but the game is a shadow of what it could be.  I'd love to see what kind of mayhem could be wrought on a highly populated server!

~Ripper

None of the cash shop items I've seen for it, thus far, seem to be the sort that will force you to purchase  in order to advance. You can advance more quickly with them, however.  As to PvP, it doesn't yet exist in game, although it certainly seems like potions and charms could definitely give a player a competitive advantage.  I do know one can buy potions with gold, but I don't know whether or not they're the same as the ones that can be purchased from the cash shop.   It seems to me that in order to be truly fair, cash shop buffs would have to be disabled in PvP, otherwise PvP will turn into a  case of who's willing to spend the most...  At this point, it's all conjecture.

Based on what, Sarbocabras?

~Ripper

Kudos on the quick response to this post, KingsIsle.  Obviously, I don't know what happened with the OPs original support requests, but that you handled this immediately upon reading it is impressive.

~Ripper

So, Sparkplay Media has basically "called out" Runescape with runescapekiller.com and Earth Eternal (I'm surprised Sparkplay didn't have a disclaimer on the bottom of their site indicating Jagex owns the rights to Runescape, since it's an advertising site, not a parody or forum).  Have any of you Runescape players tried it.  If so, how would you compare the two (keeping in mind that Earth Eternal is still in open beta)?  What does Runescape do better and what does Earth Eternal do better?  I haven't played Runescape personally, so I can't comment objectively. I'll load it up here this week (work and family permitting) to try to compare the two myself.

~Ripper

Originally posted by Ruyn

Originally posted by rhinok

Originally posted by Ruyn

Originally posted by WSIMike

Well, when some MMO's sub numbers fall to a level that's no longer flattering, the developers will start using "unique character numbers" instead. I guess in Darth's case, when your game isn't doing very well, you focus instead on forum statistics. 

I guess what others have said before could be true... playing the DF Forum game is more fun than playing DF the MMO.

Kinda sad.

 

I don't know what you are hearing but their is people everywhere in game.  Can't speak for EU-1 after the transfers but NA-1 population is brimming with people.

Do a clan count and provide some numbers other than "brimming with people".  I'm curious what the numbers will be.

~Ripper

 

I guess brimming is the wrong word.  With Darkfall so large, the population is nicely spread out.  I just know the pvp is drawing hundreds at a time.  You coming back ripper?

I was contemplating it.  I actually do like Darkfall, I just don't have time to commit to it.  FYI - I'm not the "ripper" you actually know from in game and clans, I just have the same gamer tag. 

Regarding the numbers, I'm genuinely curious as to the total population. 

~Ripper

runescapekiller.com, by the Earth Eternal team.  Valid?  Has the potential to be, but needs some work.  I can definitely see the game appealing to the runescape crowd, but the system requirements for it to look it's best (one of the selling points) mean you'll have to have a pretty decent, modern machine (no integrated chipsets).

~Ripper

Originally posted by Ruyn

Originally posted by WSIMike

Well, when some MMO's sub numbers fall to a level that's no longer flattering, the developers will start using "unique character numbers" instead. I guess in Darth's case, when your game isn't doing very well, you focus instead on forum statistics. 

I guess what others have said before could be true... playing the DF Forum game is more fun than playing DF the MMO.

Kinda sad.

 

I don't know what you are hearing but their is people everywhere in game.  Can't speak for EU-1 after the transfers but NA-1 population is brimming with people.

Do a clan count and provide some numbers other than "brimming with people".  I'm curious what the numbers will be.

~Ripper

Originally posted by Horusra

It is a game aimed at children....are you a child?

The fact that it's aimed at children is irrelevant.  There should be standards by which one grades an MMO, even appropriate to the audience. Other children's MMOs are far superior in every aspect (Wizard101, for example) and are appealing to both children and adults.

If you look at my post history, you'll see that I tend to be very analytic when it comes to games and my feedback.  I provide a lot of detail and reasoning in my posts (see my recent feedback posts on Earth Eternal, for example) This is the only game on this site that I've played that I'll just sum up with "it's crap".  That's saying a lot.  If you want to see my detailed responses to the review and a rebuttal of the "it's a kids game" excuse click here.

~Ripper

Originally posted by skeaser

Originally posted by rhinok

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by knapu

Epic fail and /facepalm 4 u all

Diablo is and was rpg and its not said if its gonna be mmo or not it has some mmo elements so its more obvious you should inform youreself before u say something lol

 

 

Please, is a talent tree enough to call a game RPG? Is tropico RPG because you actually choose your talents. Is The Sims an RPG because you choose your skills? It is a mindless hack n slash with a multiplayer mode.

RPG  = Role Playing Game.  It simply means that you're playing the role of a character in the game, not that you say "aye" instead of yes or pretend to be a dwarf.  Legend of Zelda is a RPG - you play the part of Link.  You become the hero.  As such, regardless of the combat mechanics, D3 is a RPG game.  If you argue against D3 being RPG, you might as well argue against WoW being an RPG.  Semantically, they're the same.  You play a character that interacts with the world, fights monsters, chats, etc...  What percent of the total WoW population are "true RPers"?  Probably a very small percent.

~Ripper

By your logic every game is and always has been an RPG.

CoD, playing the role of a soldier. Madden, role of a football player. Etc.

At the highest level, that's true, although "RPG", to many people, is generally reserved for games that involve some sort of adventuring/questing, rather than platform games, sports games, FPS games, etc...

~Ripper

Originally posted by Agricola1

Well I suppose I'm an ex flamer, branded a vapourware troll no doubt. I really thought this was vapourware and the community (not AV) had over hyped this game so much that even when it was released DFO, AV and Tasos took a hell of alot of flak. After release I ignored it somewhat and wrote it off as a certain failure. Come November DFO is still around against the odds in my opinion and AV have actually got their shit together, there's nothing else to try so I give it a whirl.

DFO had alot of bad word of mouth after release, and it kept many away. However under close scrutiny I couldn't find any solid reasons myself as to why the game is total shit, so decided to give it a try. So far I'm enjoying my experience, maybe it's the lack of anything new coming out (now that Aion has been released) that has caused people to take a hard look at DFO?

If you read the patch notes/expansion notes between launch and now, you'll see that many aspects of the game have improved dramatically and that also seems to be the case with the impending second expansion.  As such, a new player's first impressions today may be wildly different than they would have been at launch.   It's a  much time to take a first look at Darkfall, or a second look for those who were disenchanted from their first experience.

~Ripper

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by knapu

Epic fail and /facepalm 4 u all

Diablo is and was rpg and its not said if its gonna be mmo or not it has some mmo elements so its more obvious you should inform youreself before u say something lol

 

 

Please, is a talent tree enough to call a game RPG? Is tropico RPG because you actually choose your talents. Is The Sims an RPG because you choose your skills? It is a mindless hack n slash with a multiplayer mode.

RPG  = Role Playing Game.  It simply means that you're playing the role of a character in the game, not that you say "aye" instead of yes or pretend to be a dwarf.  Legend of Zelda is a RPG - you play the part of Link.  You become the hero.  As such, regardless of the combat mechanics, D3 is a RPG game.  If you argue against D3 being RPG, you might as well argue against WoW being an RPG.  Semantically, they're the same.  You play a character that interacts with the world, fights monsters, chats, etc...  What percent of the total WoW population are "true RPers"?  Probably a very small percent.

~Ripper

An interesting sidebar to this conversation is that many of those banned Xboxes will end up being traded in and resold.  Buyer beware, since there's really no way to check if a box has been banned without actually attempting to connect to Xbox Live.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/cheap-to-good-home-used-360-pirated-games-slightly-banned.ars

~Ripper

Further feedback:

My son's impression- Created brand new character and played with my son tonight (he's 10).   When asked what he liked about the game, he said "because you can play as animals with other animals".  When asked what he didn't like, he said he didn't understand the loot rules.  I'll get to those in a minute, but IMO, that's just a learning curve.  When we played he had fun, but mostly because it was dad/son time.

Child safety, from a parent's perspective:

• Chat - there's a chat censor feature you can turn on.  Please note, however, that the filter is dictionary based and there are a lot of words that get through ("gay", for example).  Unlike a true kids game like Wizard101, which uses a list of allowable words, vs a list of prohibited words, chat in Earth Eternal is just like it is in most other adult games - filtered, but easy to get around (and people definitely try to do so).  The good news is you can turn off chat channels.  So, even though my 10 year old son only gets to play and group with me, I can turn off the regional and local chat so he doesn't see the idiocy.  He gets to play and have fun and I don't need to worry about "barrens chat".
• Quests - the quests are relatively easy for a child to follow, but I'm not a big fan of the "kill x mobs" quests.  Once again, this is a teen+ game, so it's "kill" vs. "capture" or "knock out".  Same thing mechanically, different semantically, especially for kids.
• Blood - there isn't any, which is nice for kids.  Attacks/hits  have various "energy" particle animations.  When you loot a mob, it turns into a cartoony gravestone.
• Graphics - definitely cute and cartoony and colorful.  Very appealing to kids.
• General impression - not a kids game, but can be fun for kids. Be a good parent and play with your kids.  Teach them the fun parts of playing this game and limit their exposure to the seedier aspects of world chat.

Shards - in open beta, there's only 1 server.  In order to handle the load, the server is broken up into shards.  These are basically instances of the same region (zone).  When you look at your minimap, it will tell you which region and shard number you're in ("Corsica 7", for example).  Regardless of the shard, you can still see all chat in the /region chat channel.  That's really useful.  To change shards, simply click the region name in the minimap to pull up a list of all available shards and pick the one you want.  Please note, however, that you  must be near a sanctuary (located in camps, cities, etc...) in order to change shards.

Targeting - targeting is tab-base\d.  Just hit Tab and you'll target the nearest mob.  The downside is the nearest mob might be off your screen to the left or right.  In other words, the cone of vision for the tab-based targeting is too wide.  It needs to be narrowed to the field of vision for the player, IMO.

Group mechanics:

• Invites - in order to invite another player, you need to right-click them. You can't invite them via command interface.  There appears to be a command to allow you to do so (/party invite, but it doesn't seem to work).
• Group control - the leader can invite, kick players and change loot settings.
• Loot rules - there are two types of looting allowed: Free for all (everybody can attempt to loot the mob) and Round Robin (the game will let on player loot, per mob killed and then move to the next player when the next mob is killed).  Regardless of which of these two options are selected (FFA is default), there are two optional settings: Need for Greed (forces a random roll for loot if players select Need or Greed on non-mundane items) and "Include mundane items", which forces rolls on basically every item in the game.
  • Bug - the loot rules seem to default to the standard settings when you change zones.  We tested this going in and out of Corsica and the LIghthouse (an instance).  That's bad.
• Main assist - doesn't exist.  Would be great, since I had a hard time explaining to my son which mob to attack together.  Main assist would be great. Per official forum member Raymond, main assist does exist. In order to use it, a group member would need to target the main player by clicking on them. All attacks would then attack the main character's target. That's very useful, but mouse-based party member targeting might get messy in a large battle with a full group. As such, I think this mechanic could be improved.
• Voice chat - none built in.  I hate voice chat personally, since listening to some squeaker (WARNING: NSFW comic due to language) complaining about how gay a drop is tends to break immersion, IMO. Not being a big raider, I don't miss it.
• Text chat - the /party chat channel is fine.
• Combat - it sucks when you're in front of the person pulling and the mob runs behind you, forcing the dreaded "must be facing the target" message.  Once again, it would be great if your character just spun around, especially since the attacks don't seem to be position based.
• Experience - XP is split equally amongst all party members and the distance between party members can be pretty large.  I'd recommend that the XP radius be lowered significantly in order to mitigate rampant powerleveling.
• Disconnected characters - This is handled very well, IMO. Tthey remain in the group. My son completely logged out, yet was still in the group.  That's good for linkdeaths/accidental disconnects. Furthermore, the XP isn't split to the disconnected character.  If the loot rules stipulate Need/Greed rolls, the Need/Greed window still pops up, but the active players don't have to wait for the disconnected player.  Looting is immediate.
• Group member targeting - you have to click a group member in order to target them - no hot keys like F1, F2, etc.. - wow - that needs to change, IMO.

Trade - attempted to give some items away yesterday.  Was a real pain due to the lack of item linking, as mentioned before and also due to the fact that I had to run to a sanctuary to change to the same shard as the person I was trying to give the items to and then still have to meet up at the same spot within the region.  I'd LOVE a game that let me trade across the region via command line instead of having to physically be next to the other player.  Seriously - originally, that was the plan when Dungeon Runners first introduced it's trade window, but they removed that aspect of it for some reason.  If EE or other games had this feature, it'd be the win.

In-game help - doesn't exist.  You can't even see a list of emotes or the key mapping.  If you click the help button, it simply launches the EE website and a very small list of articles, none of which pertain to actual play.  They're all technical or legal articles (EULA and ToU, for example).  In order to see the list of emotes and the key mapping, I had to read a post in the forums.  Lame.

Summary - still testing it, still think it's fun and shows promise.  The types of things I mention above (main assist, item linking, auto turning to attack, etc...) would help polish the game, IMO.

~Ripper