Artari published this?  Ah, s***balls.  I am so not going to even touch this game until several months after release now.  I am so glad I was wise enough to purchase an in-store preorder from Gamestop, which I have no obligation to go pick up and pay for.

Very articulate and useful.  Thank you for taking the time to write this up, much appreciated.

I didn't actually read the post, but judging from the title I gather this user believes he is still fighting other players on the DFO forums.  Forumfall is over and a new era has begun young one...   follow us, and keep your F5 key readied!

It has finally happened...  the day we've all waited for...  prepare yourselves for the WoW-killer! 

DFO has actually managed to reduce the number of calories an MMO player burns while playing an online game from 15 to 12!  Also, they've added a new economy-based gameplay centered around emails and bank statements, as well as the unannounced feature of endurance refresh-fall!  And the juicy cherry on the top friends, is that if you act now to order DFO you may be randomly selected to be charged in ?'s instead of the standard €'s!

Voided orders are prohibited.

Don't worry gentlemen, once the dev guild playing the game has their second city site secured, I'm sure they'll get back to resyncing the game....   

You aren't playing a release copy of DFO, you're playing Alpha take 2, so stop whining.  Why, in beta we played desync fall and we loved it...

Originally posted by stayontarget

DF uses fogging correct ?

I am not sure what you are asking.  There are fog effects and had I taken that screenshot at a different time of day I might have been able to see further (I think it was dusk or dawn or something), but the light cycles take awhile to wait on and I had an Ork periodically attacking me while my game was minimized from the screenshot software.  As far as I know very few testers have ever seen weather effects aside from atmospheric fog (weather has primarily been turned off in beta).

Originally posted by star.buck

I hate to burst your bubble babe, but:

DF ain't got nothing on those games, and  there are a few/several more I could've nabbed screenshots from that have way longer draw distances than DF.

Yeah, except that none of those games has nearly the character/mob draw distance that DFO has.  Christ, AoC as impressive draw distance?  "Oh look, I can see those mountains that I'll never be able to cross because of small zones and artifical boundaries!"  The char draw distance was reasonable on AoC if you cranked it all  the way up, but still nowhere near as good as DFO's, and doing so destroyed your FPS in that piece of trash client.

In a rare charitable moment I decided to screenshot some images to showcase the draw distance in DFO. Some seem to believe the draw distance in DFO is quite poor, which completely baffles me. I believe these pictures should indicate otherwise.  Clearly the terrain draw distance is MMO-average, but the player/mob draw distance is far superior to most single-player games.  I simply do not know how it could be improved when I strain to see what appear to be anorexic ants on my 22", can tell if they are mounted, if they are fighting, casting spells, crouching, etc.  There is never any sudden appearance of  a player or a terrain feature (except grass) short of the typical draw distance as occassionally experiencd in many other MMOs.

These screenshots were captured with an EVGA 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 resolution. The in-game settings were all lowered as far as possible, with shadows turned off, AA turned off, and every texture set to low. This game looks much different (in my opinion far better) with shadows turned on. I reduced the file sizes to 7/10 .jpg in Photoshop so they would retain most of their clarity while still being a reasonable size to download.

Longest View (~100 meters). Note: If you look carefully you'll notice there are several players barely visible. I could have actually moved a bit further away and the players would have continued to show up, but the terrain prevented me from doing so.

Long View (~75 meters).

Medium View (~25 meters).

Short View (~10 meters).

Very Short View (0 meters).

Forest Island (high elevation).

Forest Island (low elevation).

Note: Unfortunately, it seems photo bucket has seen fit to resize all of these screenshots down to nearly half of their original size. As a result, most players are quite difficult to see, but if you zoom in you can still make them out just barely. The originals are in much higher resolution as well.

In a rare charitable moment I decided to screenshot some images to showcase the draw distance in DFO.  Some seem to believe the draw distance in DFO is quite poor, which completely baffles me.  I believe these pictures should indicate otherwise.  Please excuse the large file sizes, but I'm afraid that was the only way I could properly illustrate my point about the vastly superior draw distance in this game.

These screenshots were captured with an EVGA 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 resolution.  The in-game settings were all lowered as far as possible, with shadows turned off, AA turned off, and every texture set to low.  This game looks much different (in my opinion far better) with shadows turned on.  I reduced the file sizes to 7/10 .jpg in Photoshop so they would retain most of their clarity while still being a reasonable size to download.

Longest View (~100 meters).  Note: If you look carefully you'll notice there are several players barely visible. I could have actually moved a bit further away and the players would have continued to show up, but the terrain prevented me from doing so.

Long View (~75 meters).

Medium View (~25 meters).

Short View (~10 meters).

Very Short View (0 meters).

Forest Island (high elevation).

Forest Island (low elevation).

Note: Unfortunately, it seems photo bucket has seen fit to resize all of these screenshots down to nearly half of their original size.  As a result, most players are quite difficult to see, but if you zoom in you can still make them out just barely.  The originals are in much higher resolution as well.

Originally posted by demc

It does not matter to me who is trolling where as much as what if anything has this game to offer me besides FFA PvP with full looting?

Someone start trying to sell me on playing it  with some decent review or someone give some sensible information besides all the fucking babble please.
 

Kettle, you have a phone call from a Mr. Pot, something about black.

Originally posted by Gorilla

Yes I agree but there whre other biased points. To paraphrase the UI is so craptastic it can't be the one they are going to release with. Errrm OK. A reasonable review but I cant help feeling that you will be one of the ones that slips away when you recognse the warts for what they are......big ugly warts.
 

Uh, what?  If you had the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader you might have realized that I stated the UI we used in beta is clearly not identical to a release UI.  This is painfully obvious because when you re-bind your keys instead of reading descriptions of in-game functions like "Jump = Space", you get something more like "a_input_jump = space", etc.  Obviously they are very unlikely to release that version of the UI to the public.  However, as I also stated, core elements of the UI were quite poor, like the html-based and very slow loading journal or clan screens.  I cannot fairly review the "release" UI because I haven't used it yet, but I can confidently state that certain elements of the UI are very likely to be quite poor and cumbersome on release. 

Originally posted by Meridion

how far is the drawing distance? And no, I'm not talking about the "ISO 2 minutes to run to the horizon norm"; I'm talking about how many meters, or, if you like, feet.

So where does DFO hit the mark here. The screenshots I've seen suggest something around WoWs drawing distance but I couldn't really tell if the settings were on max and if you could see farther if weather/environment allowed it...

I am not really certain.  The impressive part of the draw distance is with the other players though, not the terrain features.  Generally speaking, most players had every extra feature turned off in beta and every slider turned all the way down.  This was necessary because of running the debugger in the background while using the client.  The character draw distance seemed to be locked in place, where as the terrain draw distance I believe was something we could toggle.  The character draw distance was =/a bit better than what you'd see in Fallout 3 with characters there.  The terrain wasn't near as good for me, but I had everything lowered because I was one of the few unfortunate souls who had some issue with abnormally low FPS (20-60).  This was a fluke some of us experienced.  I'll make some time to get back into the game tonight if I can and try to get you an estimate in meters (I assume the beta will be going down for good quite soon though, so I might not have the time).

Originally posted by hercules

reviewer claims to know 300 testers and asked each one if they are pre ordering in another thread. sorry that bull makes his review worthless to me.
 

I didn't claim to personally 'know' 300 testers, at least not in the sense that we hang out together in our free time or something.  I have been associated with that many in beta though, yes.  There are several large coalitions of guilds all allied together in beta.  The larger of these alliances usually has ~100 testers in it.  I am part of the largest alliance in beta with ~200 testers or so (this is hard to estimate because the clan screen counts alts with the total tally).  Before I joined my current clan, I was with another large alliance of guilds.  I used the "~" symbol to indicate that it was an estimate, not a precise number.  Since so few of the beta testers have been openly vocal about disliking the game and deciding not to pre-order, the list of those not pre-ordering was easy to estimate.  I can live with you not believing me.

Originally posted by Hairysun

I have read that the skill gain ranges from 1 to 100 for each and every skill.  However you only receive improvement in that skill at levels 25, 50, 75 and 100 ....... is this true?  If so does it apply to each and every skill?   Do the various skills benefit you in other ways to accommodate the 2-24, 26-49, 51-74 and 76-100?  It just doesn't make sense to me ...... so I assume I'm missing something.

I guess what I'm saying is that it just seems to me that they stretched out a skill gain that is actuall from 1-4 instead of 1-100.  

Yes, at every 25% mark you gain an unlock allowing you to access new skill tree branches and buy additional abilities.  This does not apply to every skill, but many.  Also, every point gained in a skill benefits you in some way, even if it's going from 15-16, or whatever.

Originally posted by thark

Hmm..Well I think that you really overreacted when you try to convince the readers of this forum that the terrain details is just as good as Age of Conan..

Please, the outdoor areas are nice and all, just as you described in your reply to my own review, but as good as Age of Conan :)

And AI is second to none ?

And draw distance is the best you have ever seen ?

Well I actually tested for AoC as well as DFO, plus I played AoC for ~2 months.  I built my entire old PC (my wife now uses it) for AoC gameplay, because the requirements were so intense.  So yes, I stand by my statement, and so does my wife.

How long have I been playing games?  Since about the time 16 colors were introduced and were a big deal.

Yes.

And yes.  If you dispute these points, please either bring a scientific arguement or move along.  You're wasting everyone's time.

Please, If you happen to know anyone that can give me some valid "end game" review of this game I would be happy to read it..

What do you want to know about endgame PvP?  I've done most of the sieging in this game to varying degrees, but as you should know this was all changed today and there hasn't been proper time to test the numerous new changes.

Originally posted by ImperiumRule

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

I don't see why the vaporware supposed trolls would have to appologize.

The game lacks more than half of the promised features, and is full of exploits.

 

Wrong.

The game has the vast majority of its promised features, although you can argue that some of them need balancing for sure.

Full of exploits?  hardly...you havent been in the beta.

And yes those who littered this forum in every thread saying "lol vaporwarez" should at least acknowledge that they were wrong about berating the fans of the game for following it simply because they "knew" the game was a scam and the fans were "idiots if they thought it would be released"

oh how quickly the trolls forget....

Don't hold your breath for those apologies.  They'd sooner loose their virginity than admit they were wrong.

Regarding his response to the graphics...  I challenge anyone to name an MMO with better graphics that has a single persistant world without instances.  I can think of 1-2 that might almost be equal, but I can think of none that are certainly better.  With the avatars, sure, some games look better (they are only average in DFO), but the world, forced on medium textures, is second-to-none in any MMO I've played, even with shadows turned off.

It's obvious he only played this game very briefly, because he didn't comment on any endgame content.  Had he even played for 3-4 days he'd have more to say about it.  Also, he clearly tried to play alone, which is not what this game is geared towards.  If you try to play this game alone, most will end up hating it for that.

I'm sorry you have no friends OP.

Originally posted by Xisko

Originally posted by antiherozero

Haha, do you realize that a lot of that stuff you posted has been out for over a year, right?  A lot won't make release but is being added shortly after release.  The rest is all there and working very well, minus one or two possible exceptions.

 

It seemed so politician... 3 lines and told nothing ( not a blame)

 

I'll start being specific when the OP stops trolling, makes specific statements himself, and finishes his GED.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by gFiz

they may have been working on "context"...but how much content have they actually "added"?  They are still missing a boatload a features still advertised to this day on their website.  It's not trolling if it's the truth. 

 

Uh, if you've been using their website for info about release details, then you've been horribly misinformed. 

 

Something deep inside of me just can't get past the irony of this statement. 

I never said I agreed with their outdated website, and thought it was good marketing.  I don't.  But it's funny that you low IQ trolls come here to complain about a site you know has been inaccurate for a very long time and then don't even get specific about what features the game fails to deliver.  You're all just making blanket statements about something everyone who has even partially followed this game has known for years.  The website is shit and out-of-date.  At least be honest and just say their website sucks, not that it's some elaborate effort to falsely advertise their product.

Any vids of these battles?

Nope.  I am way too lazy to worry about capturing video.  Besides, every other half-ass clan has already made a video, so go look at those.

-Every other beta tester has said the draw-distance is too short and takes away from the game.

I suppose I could screen capture something to prove my point about this, but that would require a lot of effort on my part.  A beta tester (or two, I don't remember) agreed with me about this in this very thread.  I can live with you not believing me.

- Most beta testers report that sound levels do not match with distance. AV even posted in a recent patch they have not changed them as they were still testing.

This has been true for most of beta, but lately it has improved.  There are still instances when the distance of sound distorts and seems far too loud for the distance it traveled from.  There is variations between clients on this experience, and they've been fixing it little-by-little I believe, which is why I didn't mention it.  That, and so many words...

- Everyone agrees they fail at communication, but those guard towers need to stay. I don't really know how players that have been in the game for 3 weeks ganking newbs is " in spirit " of the game. By that time a player should only head to starter areas for gaining easy alignment or recruiting new clan members.

Nobody is bitching (very hard) about the guard towers at starter cities.  There are guard towers out in the middle of nowhere near neutral banks where people can safely farm mobs and then run to a bank/tower to stash their loot without any risk of losing their gear.  These were never intended originally, and they do certainly create safe zones that have nothing to do with being new at the game and needing a safety net to learn to play.  You can't even approach these towers if you're the wrong racial alliance.

-Its broken and that is plain and simple. I still can't figure out how another player can loot your kill, but you can't kill him without going rogue.

They have actually just added a substantial patch that will lessen this exploitability greatly.

- Agreed most everyone says its pretty bad, but the controls do grow on you. However, there is no " Beta setup ". The beta phase is the final testing phase for the finished product, and what you see is what you will get unless they plan to release like AoC did.

You have no idea what you are talking about.  I'm not sure more needs to be said, but when the game releases come back to this thead and I'll explain that I told you so, and then say neener neener.

Well he said you can join in with friends but thats not entirly true since ur gimped like hell in both pve and pvp... But not the same way like other games. your contribution in the group will not do much impacts on either mobs or other players but you can be there...

Untrue.  The impact you can have with a party, especially if you took 10-mins to earn 20 gold and buy a 2-handed starter weapon, would be substantially more than any other game.  Friends give you some leather and a 2-handed weapon or whatever, you can still survive several hits and do noticeable damage to most mobs and every player.  If you don't think the contribution is that great as-is, go play any level-based MMO on the market and compare the difference.

There are plenty of positive reviews on the game, so stop being lazy and asking people to bring the info to you.  Infact, I wrote a reasonably positive review in this very forum on the front page, but I guess you "couldn't find it" with your exhaustive research.  If you haven't played AC or UO or Shadowbane, then no, we can't tell you if you'll like this game or not.  The old school PvPers are loving it, because, well, we hate instanced pseudo-PvP.