Keep in mind here, I cheated yes, I only played one month.  I have cancelled my subscription.  I doubt I will come back, even if a NA server comes up. I have never cheated in anyway on another MMO.  You can belive it or not, I never had a reason to cheat in other MMOs. 

By the looks of their patches, they seem to be improving the game, but they need a way to curb the cheating and whipe the servers.   At first I was reluctant to cheat, but when new friends out gain you in skills 10x, you find yourself alone in the game.  If you want to participate in the fun stuff, you gotta have some decent skill levels, otherwise you lose armor, mounts, weapons...  And guildies get tired of helping out when you aren't on the "treadmill" to advance quickly when those options are readily available, and zero punishment for doing it.   There are so many 3rd party programs and exploits.  I swear they even encourage macroing.  Most guilds make their own 3rd party programs, the game is so poor on security and easy to manipulate on the client side.  And everyone I know that got banned, it was only a few days max, usually hours.  There is no way this small company will turn away money, cheat or no cheat.  

So what did I get out of one month's worth of play?  I learned how to use 3rd party programs to cheat.  I learned many tricks to exploit the game.  I found out that the game can actually play for you while you sleep.  I have played just about any significant MMO out there (and a few insignificant ones).  But this is the first game that I hacked, macroed and exploited.  Why you ask, cause if you don't you will only tread water.

This is really a wonderfully developed game, but the devs just simply underestimated the time people sink into this games and drive to "win" at any cost.  The developers didn't fail this game, the community did. 

Game canceled - 6/1/2009.

You know, its not the loot I lost.  It was all crap, stuff from the Goblins.  What I don't like is wasting several hours with zero accomplishment.  I am tired of thesestarter areas, I wan't to play the bigger part of the game that everyone talks about.  But I haven't found that yet.  Maybe i will just be Cain and walk the earth in search of inner meaning (in game of course).

After five days, i feel really feel like I have a grasp on the controls and my character movement and combat styld.  I put in some good skill points into two handed sword, bow and lesser magic.  I had a quest to kill Trolls and get their blood using skinning.  I made several attempts to complete this quest and I almost got close, I had two troll bloods at one time.  But as of late, the ganking has increased.  I died several times at the hand of a superior opponent.  I fought hard but to no avail.   Soon after several attempts to complete this quest, I was left with nothing but my starter staff from all the ganking and looting. Sure, I could go finish the quest naked, but I don't get any skill gains naked with my magic,melee or bow.  I logged off for a few hours to see if the maybe it was a timing thing.  I absolutely could not get anything done today from the ganking.  

I logged back in later and tried again.   This time I went back to the Goblins to get some gold and loot and replenish what I had lost.  I also did some resource gathering to sell for gold as well.    This was not successful, the ganking was still going  on and I lost about 200 mining resources.  I found myself bored of this repittion in dying so I turned to the new guild I had joined.  After all they sounded like on vent they were having fun.  They weren't very hepful and I couldn't figure out where they were in the world or how to get there.  So I decided to just do some explorying.  Darkfall afterall looks huge.   I wondered around the lands and was impressed with the strange castles and ruins.  I wondered what all the scattered stuff was, but there is no lore to be found. I found a few creatures, some I could kill, some I could not.  There seemed to be no way of knowing which ones were weaker and stronger.  I found a nice isolated stream and started doing some fishing.  I noticed accross the stream, a fellow alliance player was chopping wood.  Soon I heard the sound of battle and the guy accross the stream was dying to 3 players on mount.  I moved into a bush on the ground and the riders didn't spot me.   I was impressed of this newly discoverd hiding ability.  I survived.  I had loads of fish on me.  I started back towards town, but this time the riders saw me and mowed me down.  It was a quick way back to town.  I logged off after this.  I wasn't a pleasent session at all.  I don't think I accomplished anything.  Well maybe a point or so in defense skills from the ganking I was taking.  I problably won't log in tomorrow night.  Right now I don't feel like playing for a while.  I kinda wasted an evening.  So will see.  I am sure I will play again, but not for a while.  I do like the hardcore of the game, but I would also like a fighting chance.  I am going to leave my guild and see if I can find a more helpful guild.  I probably won't post anymore impressions, unless something more positive occurs.

So day three in the game.  I really played alot tonight, maybe 5 hours.  I learned several new things today.  I found out that when you die, you lose everything, except your "noob" weapon.  I had a crap knife.  And also you don't get skill points for using the noob weapon.  So really, its a last ditch item incase you lose everything and at least you can kill a goblin and get some gold to get out of the homeless shelter.   It happened to me.   I wanted to try out some magic, so I discovered (from asking in chat) that I need a staff to perform magic.  I went to the Walmart greeter guy when you pop in the world and he was able to swap the noob knife for a noob staff for a friendly tip of 20 gold.  Pretty nice, cause I get a free self heal spell that came in handy.  Gold really piles up quick and I had enough to buy whatever was at the vendors.   The vendors sell you usual stuff.  All weapon types, potions, crafting materials and so on.    I did all the chain quests at the starter city, and that was pretty much giving you the tour of crafting, which was interesting, and alot of Goblin killing.   You can gather or craft whatever.  Crafting is your usual MMO stuff, as well as material gathering.  Nothing new here, but it seems to have alot of depth to it.  I got a quest to fish and cook a salmon.  Well I couldn't find a lake to fish in, but after running for about 15 minutes, i did find a river that had lots of fish in it.  I caught at least 5 different fish in about 15 minutes.  Which in turn I made into nice tasty snacks at the local city oven.  I don't know what effect you get from eating food, but you can do it. 

Pretty soon I was handling the goblins pretty well, 2 or 3 at a time.  Its amazing how fast the skills level up and make you stronger.   Just yesterday they were really beating me down.    I like the levelling system, it makes sense if you just play the game.  Unfortunately, there were many, and I mean many, players just macroing Bow and magic to  power level their characters.  Bow and lesser magic, you just have to use it, you can use it on a wall and get skill points.  I am not sure what the cap is, but thre were alot of "afkers".  Once again I didn't get ganked at all.  I did join a guild and talked with them in Vent a bit.  I was advised to level up at the starter city before venturing out to our guild city.  Sounded like they were having fun, PVP and ganking.  I can't wait to get some skills and meet up wtih them.  I don't know how many skills I need to leave the starter city.  I will ask next game session.  I am still having fun and I look forward to the next session.  My last quest takes me to know kill Trolls, which I am told are far more nastier than goblins. 

On a side note.  I did get too cocky on the Goblins, and about 4 of them took me down.  I was really rushing back to my gravestone, because I had a lot of loot on my corpse.  Way more than I should be carrying around.  Well when I got back, this nasty orc character was looting my gravestone.   I got there in time to salvage a few items ike my skinning knife.   I wanted to call him an ass, but I can't figure out how the chat works for just a local conversation.  Maybe next time I will just kill him for his lowly deed.

So I finally got an account.  Actually I got it the first time I tried.  I bought the game on my cell phone during a meeting at work Monday.  Really I feel like I donated 50 bucks for a good cause.

So here are my impressions after two days.   It pretty much starts out with a  bit a confusion.  There isn't really anything to tell you what to do, but that is part of the mystery insn't it?  After about an hour of just messing around with the controls to get them where I want  them, I start wondering around and pick up a quest.  I thought I picked up 3 quests, but 2 of them I either completed or they disappeared, not sure.   I got a quest to kill some Goblins, so I thought, here we go, go kill x amount of this stuff.  Well the goblins were kinda pissed when I went over there and they killed me.  I thought I was fighting one goblin, but it turned out he had friends.  I thought I died, but really, I was just laying on the ground moaning for about 30 seconds or so.  I wasn't sure what to do.  So I waited.  Sure enough,  I eventually spawned where I started the game.  I ran back to the goblins to try to get a kill.

Finally I took a goblin down.  Now this isn't WOW or anything.  I had to really try to kill the goblin, it wasn't easy.  When he died, I got some good loot, an axe and a bow and some gold.  All you do is really click the mouse button trying to aim the attack of the weapon.  Sounds easy, but not so when the Goblin is running and zigging all over the place.  Not to mention the goblin gets a nice "ghost" attack on ya. all time (did I see him swing?).  All during the battle, I was getting skill points in different things, like running, defense, melee skills, lots of skill levelling.   So feeling good, I equipped my new axe (really a stone tied to a poor stick) and went back to battle.  Well I died again.  And again I lay on the ground moaning for some time before I spawn back at the starting point.   I ran back to the battle only to realize, my new found axe and everything else was gone.  I managed to kill a few and complete a few quests.  I got some gold and did some mining.  I also found a bank (a big safe in the city) where I learned to put everything in there.  Only reason I found hte bank was because I was following another player to see where they were going.

After two days, its too early to judge the game.  I didn't get ganked.  I am not sure you can in the starter city or not.  I don't know.  I do know that I will back again.  I really like the skill based system and the combat is so much better than the target turn based attack systems of all the other clone MMOs.  It is a challenging game so far.   I just joined a clan, so that will be interesting.

Oh yea, there are no slots in the bags, you just kinda dump your crap in the bag and dig around for stuff.  I like it.

Wow hdnine, that sucks.  I guess I got lucky with Vista 64. (even though I have built 6 more machines with 64 for friends and famliy with zero issues).   With the flash thing , you have two IE browsers, one is 32 bit and one 64 bit.  Pathetic Flash doesn't have a 64 bit download, so make sure you are running the 32 bit browser.

Yes, step #1 with Vista is to disable the "user account control".  All that is, is Microsoft's "cover my butt" solution.  Now they are now longer responsible for security problems, cause you turned it off.

I have Vista-64, I have zero problems.  I had zero problems when I built the compter and loaded it.  I have no problems running any games, and I run alot of games.  I got a reply a few months ago from a Funcom rep stating that 64 bit exe files will come with your pre-order or game purchase.  To those who buy into the Apple commercials, thats a load of suck. 

If you play this, please end it all and get rid of those shoes, you know they are worn out!