Darkfall Forum » General Discussion » Info on DF from someone who visited them in Aug 2006

Originally posted by Freemasons

She sent me a final email saying that she responded to a few of the people who wrote her to verify this.

So there you go.

But she wants her email removed because of spam so I edited out her email in my posts and will edit it out in the picture.

I suggest everyone else who quoted me with her email in it to edit it out.

I'd like to be the first to apologize, Freemason. I recieved a reply from her in regards to my e-mail inquiry substantiating your claims. It would not have been the first time someone tried to make up false info and e-mail correspondence to validate their claims, as I have dealt with just this sort of thing before with Mourning/Thrones of Chaos and Dark and Light. But in this instance it appears that I jumped the gun. I am sorry.

Well done, Zorvan.

Friction, I believe you are next.

Was following this earlier. Glad to see some of the rabid posts got removed. Including the one saying the OP was some fabled lunatic from the official boards. 

Also very glad to see that instead of continuously ripping someone who actually provided a way to prove their claims, one of the doubters actually took him up on his claims and fired off the email that verified it. And even was man enough to apologize.

Freemasons, thank you for researching the August 2006 visit and for reporting it back to us.  That extra step has helped shed more light on Darkfall.

Zorvan, your frank apology helped restore my faith in the human condition.

Now the next step is to bring this post back on track and on topic...

The interesting revelations. Not vaporware but self funded (back in 2006) and the fact that the engine looks the same now as it did back then. Combat seems to have been working back then so could it be possible that they have spent the last couple of years working on the features they tout?

This is yet more substantiation to support all or most of my claims.

I don't think anyone should be waiting around for this game to come out. The odds that anyone can build a MMORPG like Darkfall with self funding is nearly impossible.

I also firmly believe that this Tasos person is a very good manipulator and that he regularly tells half-truths and possibly even whole lies to safe guard Darkfalls image.

It's also safe to assume at this point that they do not have any real talent working on Darkfall. It is probably just up and coming programmers looking for work and willing to take pay cuts just work on a game or get experience.

They also do not have professional testers as someone else showed in another thread here. They are just regular people off the street or from local places.

Since 2006, when this visit took place, there has been a 23m loan issued to Aventurine, most likely for development of the game. So what probably started as a self-funded (and state-sponsored, not to forget this) project, now has significant funds to help in development.

Originally posted by Galadourn

Since 2006, when this visit took place, there has been a 23m loan issued to Aventurine, most likely for development of the game. So what probably started as a self-funded (and state-sponsored, not to forget this) project, now has significant funds to help in development.

You are mistaken, you misunderstood. They did not get a loan, Aventurine issued a convertible bond. There's a big difference and it has been explained in depth in the past, I wonder why people still believe otherwise.

Anyway, a  hardcore community of any kind, PvE or PvP or whatever, is never, ever, a good thing for a commercial game, especially prerelease. Case in point, Vanguard.

PS. Anyone reckon there's any chance of Friction2u or Aragon100 apologizing for calling the OP a liar and discounting everything he said as fake without any confirmation while being completely wrong and offbase themselves?

Self Edit: OK, after reading my post again, it was thinly veiled flamebait.  Meh.

Umm, is it just my imagination (or lack of sanity) or are posts that are/were on topic being constantly deleted from this thread?

Edit: Well the board must be pretty funky because posts are randomly disappearing and reappearing for me.

Originally posted by Polarization

This is yet more substantiation to support all or most of my claims.

This was exactly the sort of thing I expected happened during her visit when I commented on it when her article was posted here previously, I wish I could find the thread.

This is a company and project that is self owned by and self invested in by the core developers and producers themselves, they are dedicated and hopefully motivated to finishing this project, but they are amateur’s and have been far to ambitious and ostentatious about what they say they can achieve and have never been truthful about there constant failures to do so, so far.

The majority of the people who cant accept this are the clique of guild members and PvP fanatics that have been seduced and cynically manipulated for years by the developers with whom they think they have a “special relationship” with “because there PvP gamers like us, and there just making the game they want, just like we want etc.”

These are the majority of the people who attack anyone who asks legitimate questions about this project, and these are the people who have helped tarnish this game and its company’s reputation and credibility, and these are the people who seem most likely to get invited to visit there offices, and these are the people I presume who will be invited to “beta test” this game first, like the previous guild beta that never happened.

I am sure, by what she says, that see was only shown the same stand alone technical demonstration briefly, that Asp was shown during his visit last year, the very same tech demo they have been showing to publishers since 2006, which so far non have been interested it.

I hope they now have something alot more substantial then this Tech demo to show to prospective publisher and distributors, or to launch with in under 6 months.

i just don't think you have much of a clue as to the amount involved in making an MMO, an ambitious MMO at that. they're clearly not amateurs, amateurs don't make an MMO full-time for 7 years.

i think the only 'sure' thing about darkfall is that there's a legion of uninformed teenagers who haven't the faintest idea about software development other than the hype-hype-release strategy employed by the big companies.

i think the biggest mistake the DF devs have made is to be too honest with their development process -- they've given their fans too much intellectual credit to be honest, and it's people like this guy that demonstrate over and over that keeping players in the dark is ultimately a better way to go a lot of the time.

AoC has really been a recent case in point - lots of video/screenshot releases, lots of hype, but the released game is terrible, horribly incomplete, buggy, and missing a slew of features that were hyped and even some that are printing on the box the game is sold in.

the bottom line is: 90% of players of games are just morons, and should be treated as such. i wish this weren't the case but there will always be more of this kind of poster than informed posters who understand that a MMO is a huge software development project that takes a long time to get right.

especially
when you expand the scope of your game a couple of times as the DF people clearly have.

I declare that screen shot as a fake, cause on that shot we see that OP used IE, and no sane person today uses IE so it's gotta be fake!

Originally posted by dirtknap69

they're clearly not amateurs

Even though I'd hope so, it is not clear to me, especially given the lack of evidence of previous industry experience across the board. Can you substantiate this claim to remove all doubts and speculations to the contrary? Conversely, professionals don't make a MMO full time for 7 years either. It's unprecedented anyway.

The rest of your post seem to be attacks on people or games you do not agree with, wishful thinking, or wild claims (my doubts are derived from the fact I am intimately familiar with software development  strategies, especially the "release strategy", which I hear has been employed by every successful software product in the past, perhaps Aventurine should look into it), which are your right to express but will be dismissed as such.

Originally posted by Silvarch

Originally posted by Galadourn

Since 2006, when this visit took place, there has been a 23m loan issued to Aventurine, most likely for development of the game. So what probably started as a self-funded (and state-sponsored, not to forget this) project, now has significant funds to help in development.

You are mistaken, you misunderstood. They did not get a loan, Aventurine issued a convertible bond. There's a big difference and it has been explained in depth in the past, I wonder why people still believe otherwise.

Anyway, a  hardcore community of any kind, PvE or PvP or whatever, is never, ever, a good thing for a commercial game, especially prerelease. Case in point, Vanguard.

PS. Anyone reckon there's any chance of Friction2u or Aragon100 apologizing for calling the OP a liar and discounting everything he said as fake without any confirmation while being completely wrong and offbase themselves?

Depending on the type of convertible bond thay got though really depends on what it actually turns into.  A convertible bond in some cases can work very much like a loan. 

Anyways, I think great things can come from small developers.  The more threads there are like this the less and less I'm starting to really care about all this "new information"   none of it proves anything.

Originally posted by maskedweasel

Originally posted by Silvarch

Originally posted by Galadourn

Since 2006, when this visit took place, there has been a 23m loan issued to Aventurine, most likely for development of the game. So what probably started as a self-funded (and state-sponsored, not to forget this) project, now has significant funds to help in development.

You are mistaken, you misunderstood. They did not get a loan, Aventurine issued a convertible bond. There's a big difference and it has been explained in depth in the past, I wonder why people still believe otherwise.

Anyway, a  hardcore community of any kind, PvE or PvP or whatever, is never, ever, a good thing for a commercial game, especially prerelease. Case in point, Vanguard.

PS. Anyone reckon there's any chance of Friction2u or Aragon100 apologizing for calling the OP a liar and discounting everything he said as fake without any confirmation while being completely wrong and offbase themselves?

 

Depending on the type of convertible bond thay got though really depends on what it actually turns into.  A convertible bond in some cases can work very much like a loan. 

Anyways, I think great things can come from small developers.  The more threads there are like this the less and less I'm starting to really care about all this "new information"   none of it proves anything.

Loan as in you are in debt? Yes, all the time, it's an investment, not charity. Loan as in you get money upfront to pay back later plus the interest rate? No, never, in any case. All variations of convertible bonds involve putting up bonds for sale for interested parties, it does not mean you implicitly get any money by issuing one. What changes is how how the bond holder can later redeem or convert the bonds and into what.

Originally posted by maskedweasel

Anyways, I think great things can come from small developers. 

That's your prerogative, but by no means fact. I too think great things can come from self-funded inexperienced small developers, like innovative casual games or creative niche games with low production value but a lot of bang for the buck, just no revolutionary MMO of scopes so vast that they've have never been succesfully attempted before, that touts better features than all commercial MMO to date and more of them to boot as well as AAA quality polish and technological breakthroughs (200 characters on screen and 30 FPS on average hardware with the graphics shown on the latest screenshots) unattainable by other much more experienced studios with far more employees and resources. But that's merely my opinion, derived from my personal experience and the past, and if it's proven wrong I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Originally posted by Aragon100

{ Mod Edit }

 

OP have some serious problems. Why go through all this trouble making fake e-mails just to bash some coming MMORPG?

If this really is Polarization (teedle), i think you haters should really take a deeper look on what kind of work he is "capable" of  going through just to bash Darkfall and Aventurine.

I just noticed that I was accused of making this thread and that apparently I am something called “teedle”.

If there’s any more apologizes coming ill take one and can someone explain who or what “teedle” is, if that’s not an accusation that I would find flattering ill take another apology if there’s any left.

Please notice the other baseless accusations that the OP is lying or making stuff up and the noticeable lack of apologies for, well, making baseless accusations, after proven wrong. I'm afraid you won't get any Polarization, because it's easier to unfoundedly insult, discredit and undermine someone that has a different view from you than it is to man up and apologize for it once the facts are out.  The former only requires you to believe (or disbelieve) in something strongly enough, while the latter requires you to be rational and civil.

Originally posted by Polarization

Originally posted by Aragon100

{ Mod Edit }

 

OP have some serious problems. Why go through all this trouble making fake e-mails just to bash some coming MMORPG?

If this really is Polarization (teedle), i think you haters should really take a deeper look on what kind of work he is "capable" of  going through just to bash Darkfall and Aventurine.

 

 

 

I just noticed that I was accused of making this thread and that apparently I am something called “teedle”.

If there’s any more apologizes coming ill take one and can someone explain who or what “teedle” is, if that’s not an accusation that I would find flattering ill take another apology if there’s any left.

Teedle is a (now banned) vapor troll in the DF section on warcry.com. Why people would think that he is you... well, it's a mystery, isn't it?

As for the meaning of the word try http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teedle

Originally posted by dirtknap69

especially
when you expand the scope of your game a couple of times as the DF people clearly have.

It's actually pretty easy to figure out what it takes.

All you have to do is look at a game like World of Warcraft and what it took to make.  It took 100 professional developers about 4-6 years and like 40 million bucks.

Now just ask yourself how Aventurine plan to do the same with self funding from a few developers because while Darkfall might not be the same as WoW in gameplay , it is the same in terms of the amount of features and work that would need to go in to make Darkfall what they say it is.

---

Originally posted by Freemasons

It's actually pretty easy to figure out what it takes.
All you have to do is look at a game like World of Warcraft and what it took to make.  It took 100 professional developers about 4-6 years and like 40 million bucks.
Now just ask yourself how Aventurine plan to do the same with self funding from a few developers because while Darkfall might not be the same as WoW in gameplay , it is the same in terms of the amount of features and work that would need to go in to make Darkfall what they say it is.

---

Oh I see. So I guess Blizzard just spent 40 million on development of WoW when they really didn't need to?

sucks for them I guess.

Originally posted by Freemasons

Oh I see. So I guess Blizzard just spent 40 million on development of WoW when they really didn't need to?

sucks for them

 

I guess reading comprehension is not your strong side?

<Mod edit>
DAOC did not have the feature set DF wants to have. It was a very very simple game at launch with barely any content (one of the reasons why it succeeded).    It was even called Dark Age of Content because it had so little. But yet it still took them millions of dollars and years to make.
EVE is a much simpler style of game to develop because its all free space based...  Are there hundreds of dungeons in eve??? no  Monster AI pathfinding?? no.. the list can go on..
If you're going to compare a game like DF or more importantly it's intended features to something than it should be compared to WoW because based on DF's features the work load and man power needed to pull it off right would be very similar to what was needed to make WoW.
DF (on paper) looks even more feature rich than WoW.
So please do enlighten me -- how does a group of self funded devs with no experience in building MMORPG's create a MMORPG that is more feature rich than World of Warcraft?  And make it all run just as good.
Don't you get it by now?   It's not going to happen.

Originally posted by Freemasons

EVE is a much simpler style of game to develop because its all free space based...  Are there hundreds of dungeons in eve??? no  Monster AI pathfinding?? no.. the list can go on.. 

No, EVE is not a "much simpler game". You have no clue about it apparently. It has the most expensive server cluster in private sector, and server code that dwarfs that of other games. Yes it does have hundreds of dungeons (deadspace), economy and crafting systems that makes WoW's look like kindergarden simulation etc.

WoW has tons of quality PvE content which EVE doesn't have, and DFO isn't supposed to have either. That's not complexity, though.

Yes, it's about logic and common sense. Games have different budgets, just like movies. If for you a game needs $40 million bugdet to be good, then go play World of Warcraft / Vanguard / Age of Conan and stop wasting my time. I'll continue playing games that are good instead.

did you know Razorwax filed for Bankruptcy in 2006? lol