Evil Bastages Limited Recruiting

Background:

Evil Bastages ("EB") originally formed in 1997 on the Atlantic Shard in Ultima Online. We started as a small group of player-killers (PKs) and grew into one of the most successful faction guilds on the Atlantic Shard. After the game went carebear, EB moved on to Shadowbane, starting out on Scorn to get our bearing, and moving to the new server Vengeance, which we dominated (anyone who played Vengeance can attest to this) and where we made quite a name for ourselves (Google Evil Bastages and SB and find plenty of links). The ability to burn down people's towns they spent months working on is a game dynamic we miss greatly.

EB had brief stints in some other games after SB, such as DAOC, but ended up in WOW for quite awhile. We spent some years in WOW on the Skullcrusher server (and still have some members active there with the new expansion), squeezing as much PVP as we could out of a game really designed for PVE. An elite Warsong Gulch or "WSG" group was developed that made a name for itself dominating the opposition in match after match. After TBC, the guild would go on to do very well in arena season after season, routinely fielding teams rating in the top 5%.

We tried Age of Conan for 3 months. Babu, Oak, and Crab did generally become some of the most hated people playing during those months. Yeah, um, moving on.

After AoC we tried Warhammer with high hopes, and started with a large base of players. Sadly, many of our players were not satisfied with various aspects of WH and moved on to other things for the time being, with some members back in WOW for the expansion, and many members just going inactive with no quality MMO's available.

We planted a small crew gathering intel in Darkfall Beta and on EU-1 (paid beta lol). Now the release of the NA-1 Server has brought everyone back into action, out of retirement and into a single game once more. With just our core of existing members and a solid plan, EB was the 4th guild created on the NA-1 server and the 5th to claim a city. This is only the beginning.

Recruiting Guidelines:

EB is conducting limited recruiting to pick up a few quality players. This is not something we do often. We are looking for individuals who fit our play style; who are loyal, persistent, tenacious and most importantly, fun to be around.

Potential Recruits will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Please register on our forums at www.evilbastages.com and send a PM to any of our three Supreme Generals: Havock, Oakbow or myself. After a brief series of questions if we feel you have potential you will be assigned a guild officer who will explain the details of our recruitment policy and act as your sponsor during the trial period.

Some Evil Bastages Facts:

- EB is primarily Mirdain, Human, Alfar but recruiting is currently open to all races;
- We are NOT looking for crafters, our guild crafter is in the top 3 on NA-1;
- If your name is retarded to type for /invite I will reject you;
- You need to own and know how to use a piss jar;
- Recruitment is available to both NA and EU players, we have several non-US core members

- Our website is not professional - 99% of its use is for the extremely active private forums;
- Evil Bastages chat is R-rated;
- Children should not be allowed into EB without a parent or guardian;
- Evil Bastages has the hottest IRL women of any guild in Darkfall;
- Ventrillo is MANDATORY
- We have great love for large breasts


This guild is no joke. Once you're in, you're in with a solid gaming crew & won't ever have to look for another guild again. It's very rare & odd to see us actually recruiting. It's something that happens maybe once every couple years for a short while. So if you're interested in becoming part of something you probably will never get from somewhere else, then now's the time.

Back to the killing,

Grimhawke

Official Recruitment Post: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=204650
Blog: evilbastages.blogspot.com
Website/Forums: www.evilbastages.com

Evil Bastages on NA-1

It's been a while since I posted, after the announcement of the NA server I took some time off from Darkfall to enjoy the nice early summer weather and get rested up for the NA-1 launch.

We had a very solid plan going in on Day 1 and executed it almost to perfection. There were a few hiccups (Mad Duke trying to bank 3k gold in Obad where there apparently is no bank, but some NPC mobs which killed him lol!) but we got the job done.

The Evil Bastages were the fourth guild created on NA-1 and the Fifth to claim a city. Most of our core membership has returned from inactivity since Warhammer and the game is a blast right now with everyone back.

Darkfall US Server to Launch July 7th!

Well no updates in a long time. I have still been playing Darkfall, just so busy at work that I haven't had any downtime to write any updates. Before I get to the news in the headline I'll summarize some of the events that have transpired for EB since my last post.

We captured a hamlet! For two days! Our friends from Lys Noir owned a hamlet in the Alfar lands but gave us the first chance to buy it as they had captured a city on the other side of the map and did not want to defend the hamlet so far away from their main force. They gave it to us cheap for 20k. So the total for us was 30k, which we split with our friends The Tenth. The Hamlet was Velmuna which is actually a very nice hamlet. It has a grove, 3 clan houses, a merchant and a lot of iron nodes in the area. No herbs though. There are some decent mob spawns nearby (Akathar, Earth Elementals, an undead mob Dungeon). There is also a wilderness bank with an Alfar Guard tower to the south, unfortunately we're all agro'd to the tower so we couldn't take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, the hamlet apparently was owned by the SB alliance who made up some bullshit excuses for sieging it from us after two days. They brought 40 to siege our defending force of about 20. The Mercs also showed up and threw a wrench in the whole defense plan. They claimed to have been coming to assist us but didn't communicate that intention clearly enough before hand. When they arrived, we assumed they were hostile and attacked them. They pushed some of our defenders off of some of the high ground we had staked out for defense. 10 minutes later the full SBA force rolled in and started hitting us hard while we were already in combat with the Mercs. Essentially getting hit from both sides and fighting 3x our number we held on as long as we could but were eventually pushed out by attrition. With only 10 bindspots on the stone, each time one of our defenders died, he was essentially out of the battle. The mercs abandoned their defensive position and regrouped outside the hamlet. They rolled through once and disrupted SBA's hammerers, but only for a minute. The clanstone went down about 40 minutes after it went vulnerable. I could speculate and play monday morning quarterback all day but I think we could have won the siege if a couple of things had gone the other way. For one if there hadn't been the miscommunication with the mercs we probably could have done it. Of course there is always the rumour that it was just an elaborate ploy by TM+SBA to make it seem like they were not aligned. There is no way to prove it though, so probably not worth debating. It's been beaten like a dead horse on the official forums already.

As far as my individual character goes, I finally got my elemental magic line. I chose fire as my primary for the DPS, as well as relatively cheap cost/ease of obtaining sulfur as it's main reagent. Right now the only spell I've been using is Firebolt and I already prefer it to archery (which I never got sharpshooter for so it isn't a fair comparison). Despite not having an AOE component, the speed at which the firebolt travels makes it effective in PvP. It travels almost as fast as an arrow but without the gravity effect. I hit people for 25 in the front and near 40 in the bank with a crappy staff and only 36 int.

Now on to the big news:

On the American server: The American server will launch on July 7th. Characters from the European server can be cloned and moved without their possessions 3 months after the American launch. Certain restrictions and charges will apply, to be announced at a later date. In the meanwhile if you want to play on the American server at launch you need to buy the American Darkfall client. More information on the American server will be available in a few days.

Darkfall will launch a massive free expansion update the first week of July, something that the Darkfall team has been working on for a while now. This expansion includes major new features and major content, PvE, and PvP updates.

In the last few patches we had implemented several major optimizations making it possible to support even larger battles and sieges and more concurrent users than ever before. As a result, massive battles now run smoother than ever. We’ve seen some of the largest and the highest frequency of massive battles this past month, which has helped us find even more ways to optimize the Darkfall experience.

As a result of these optimizations we’ve also been able to keep sales open most of the time. We’re still being careful because Darkfall resubscription rates remain very high even though this is a time for exams and/or vacations. It’s still difficult to buy Darkfall but we hope that after the US servers have launched it will be easier for new players to learn about and to buy Darkfall.

To that effect, a new site is coming, along with new forums for Darkfall players only. These forums will be readable by the public and only players with active accounts will be able to post in them. The current public forums will remain active for anyone to post in, but moderation will be stronger. This because we’re getting people from other communities with the sole intention of disrupting our forums. The Darkfall community has always been a source of good feedback, constructive criticism, and inspiration for the Darkfall developers and we'll keep it that way by doing away with the non-constructive elements.

Our next major patch will be included in the Darkfall expansion the first week of July.

Clarification: American players wanting to clone and transfer their characters do not have to buy another client. Everyone else needs to buy the American Darkfall client to play on the American server. The European rights and the American rights to Darkfall do not belong to the same company, therefore you cannot freely transfer between the two territories, as is the case with most MMORPGs. Our offer of character cloning / transfer to American players is because we had said that we would try to accommodate them should they want to start playing on the European server.

Personally, I plan on starting a character on NA-1 on July 7th to help EB hit the ground running. A lot of our core will be making an appearance now (Oakbow, Havock, Dragonfly, Fungus, Naswipp, Visual, Darkstar, etc) who were absent on EU-1. Some of them bought accounts in the last two weeks to check out the game once they made the announcement that the US server would open sometime in July. Looking back now its unfortunate that they'll have to pay $50 again to start day one on the new server. In hindsight they should have just used other accounts from guildmates who went inactive since they didn't want to grind a char on EU-1 just to migrate later.

There are about six of us with relatively well developed characters (Weapon Mastery, high defensive skills, stats in the 40-60 range, elemental magic) who will be staying on EU-1 part time, continuing to develop our characters until it is time to transfer. I am still not convinced there won't be any additional restrictions placed on the transfered characters (ie 25% skill loss, no transfer of the rigor skill) or that the introduction of a skill cap may make the advanced EU-1 chars obsolete once the three months are up.

BIG Darkfall Update 5/27 (NA Server, Exploits, Macroing, Sales, Coverage, Etc)

Tasos and adventuring aren't exactly known for having the best communication, so I was quite surprised to see the following posted to the News Section about 24 hours after the NA Server news release from GNi.

This is a great post by Tasos that answers a lot of questions. The route they're leaning towards with respect to NA Server Transfers (allowed but only after a certain and signifcant amount of time) is most likely the best compromise. People who started early just to work on their characters will be rewarded and those who didn't and want a clean start will have the opportunity to do so.

I'm a little perturbed about the changes to macroing. It's one of those things that is so widespread I am not sure how they'll police it. Autoswimming is another thing they should just leave in as well. These are things that people are going to do no matter what, and there will be some who will get away with it. IMO the best policy then is to just make it allowable in order to level the playing field. A similiar argument is laid out in a post on Mike Darga's Game Design Blog, though its reference is cheating - it is still relevant. Check it out. The purist in me wishes macroing didn't exist in DF, but the realist in me just sees it as a necessary evil. Exploiting and hacks on the other hand are things I'd like to see gone.

Other than that the general tone and information provided here is great. The only thing that really bugs me is he didn't link our blog! That bastard!

Here is his full post in it's entirety (links and everything!)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is mostly an information update on topics that the community may find useful. There will be more of these types of updates on a regular basis. Since we haven’t had one in a while, this one is quite long.


Policies
There seems to be some confusion about what’s allowed and what’s not in game. When in doubt, the EULA and the Terms of Service are displayed every single time you start the game.

The general rule is that any third party program that interfaces with the game or gives a player an unfair advantage is prohibited in Darkfall. The only types of programs allowed are chat communication programs and screenshot-video capture programs.

Use of third party programs that allow players to cheat in the game will result in accounts to be permanently banned without warning and without appeal. We detect all use of such third party programs and we’ve been banning people for their use every day. After a recent mass ban we’re happy to report that we've been detecting and banning fewer and fewer players.

Starting today, players exploiting the geometry will receive temporary bans which for repeat offenders will escalate to permanent bans. This means that when we detect players inside the terrain, rocks, trees, buildings, walls, towers etc. we will be taking action against them. This policy will be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Also, starting today we will detect and take action against any use of loot scripts. The action will be temporary bans which will escalate to permanent ones. This policy will also be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Unattended macroing and unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited. We have taken great measures to limit macroing, to reward the players who are actually playing the game and allow them to catch up easily. We will continue working on making macroing and its effects irrelevant in Darkfall.

North American Server
Many of you saw the announcement our server hosting partner GNI made about the signing of our cooperation in North America.
We had already explained that we would be launching in North America sometime during Q2 2009 and this information is also in the FAQ:

We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server, there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet. Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions. This concerns only the characters without any of their possessions. More on this at a later date.

There are several considerations to be taken into account including the fact that European rights and North American rights to Darkfall belong to different organizations.

More Servers
Plans for more servers are also underway. Announcements will be made as needed.

Account Management and Sales
https://accounts.eu.darkfallonline.com is the URL to Darkfall account management and sales.

We’ve performed a complete overhaul of the account management system and things are running much smoother than they used to. We have increased our capacity repeatedly and we’ve been trying to keep the Darkfall shop open as much as possible since last week. This has been increasingly difficult to maintain as demand remains high. This despite the fact that there is still no “Buy Darkfall” button anywhere and our release has been limited to the Darkfall community.

Our number one concern is the quality of the experience for our existing users. We don’t want to create any problems by allowing too many new users in. This is why we have no boxes in the market, why we haven’t been promoting the game, why our new site isn’t up yet, why we don’t offer a free trial, why we don’t offer more payment options etc.

We understand that Darkfall’s soft launch is unorthodox, but we are working hard to change all that while maintaining the best possible experience for our existing users.

Darkfall pricing on the European Server is as follows, as described in the Darkfall FAQ:

What does it cost to play Darkfall?
First you need to purchase the Darkfall game client download which includes one month of game time. This costs 42 Euro. Residents of the European Union are also charged 19% VAT so the client download costs 49.98 Euro. After the initial month of game time is over you need to pay a monthly subscription to continue. The cost for the monthly subscription is 11.77 Euro or 14.00 Euro for EU residents (+19% VAT)

Darkfall Support
http://support.darkfallonline.com is where you can find the Darkfall help desk. This is a ticketing system and you need to have a Darkfall account to open a new ticket.

The Darkfall help desk has been handling hundreds of requests a day on the following topics:

General Issues - Technical Support – Bugs – Feedback – Gameplay Issues – Accounts and Billing.

The Darkfall Help Desk will also be populated with many more knowledgebase articles shortly. We are compiling these based on the user feedback which is just now starting to mature enough to create a proper Knowledgebase.

Darkfall Help is there to help you get started with the game and can be found both in-game and outside of the game at this address:
http://www.eu1.darkfallonline.com/help/

Darkfall Help is currently receiving a major overhaul which will be evident within a few days.

In-game help: Players can call on a GM in game by typing /gm_help to get help or /GM_report to report player behavior. There is 24/7 GM coverage in Darkfall and all requests will be addressed, whether or not you receive an acknowledgment of your request.

Darkfall developers are kept informed on all support issues.

Darkfall Updates and Patches
We have been following what has been happening in the game very closely, and have been paying close attention to all feedback by our playerbase . We are involved in a constant effort to improve everything about the game. We have been fixing bugs as they come up, and our updates have all been very substantial in content and features. We have made huge improvements to the game already but the best is yet to come.

While the patch notes simply highlight some of the major changes to the game, there are always hundreds of changes, fixes, and tweaks in every patch which we don’t mention. We started posting patch notes on March 21st. Before that our patches contained mostly bug fixes and optimizations.

Here are the links to all our patch notes:


March 21st
March 27th
April 2nd
April 10th
April 15th
April 16th
April 24th
May 1st
May 15th
May 16th

Things to look forward to:
Our team is expanding and is fully committed to working on Darkfall. We are working on virtually every aspect of the game and our goal is to continuously improve the Darkfall experience.

Some of the things to look forward to in the near future include but are not limited to:

-Imminent massive optimizations to further improve gameplay, massive battles and sieges
-Improving the newbie experience, making the transition to Darkfall smoother and lowering the learning curve
-Continuously adding polish to the game
-Substantial improvements to the graphics
-Large content updates
-Massive feature updates
-Further improvements to the economy
-Massive improvements to the solo and the small group experience
-More PvP diversity and options
-Substantial improvements to PvE

Darkfall Media Coverage
Since our launch wasn’t heavily publicized, media coverage has been fairly light. Even so, there are Darkfall articles on many gaming websites, gaming blogs, and print media in many different languages.

Here is a sample of some English language Darkfall coverage links you may find useful:

IGN RPGVault Editorial, review, and first impressions

Darkfall: My first Breath in Agon – First Impressions of Aventurine’s Labor of Love
What the hell is Darkfall and Why Can’t I Play It?

Ten Ton Hammer’s First Impressions


MMORPG.com have a few correspondents and bloggers providing regular Darkfall coverage

Darkfall Features @ mmorpg.com

Darkfall – The Conversion of a Self Proclaimed Carebear
Darkfall Combat Guide, Part One
Darkfall – Skills in DFO
Darkfall Overview Part II, Looking at the Down Side
Darkfall-Survival Tips

Paragus Rants on MMORPG.com. Paragus has been putting out some of the most useful and informative articles about the Darkfall experience since the Darkfall beta.
Darkfall: Warhulks
Post World War I Interviews
60 Days of Darkfall
Warships
Rafts and Sailing
Alliance Leader Interviews
Alliances and War
City Building
Mounts and Politics
Guild Functionality
Darkfall Beta Review

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog has also been offering regular Darkfall coverage and commentary

Thank you for Reading,
The Darkfall Team
__________________

Finally, Adventurine to Launch NA Darkfall Server US1 by July 2009

The following press release showed up on Yahoo Finance yesterday. I missed it because I was busy enjoying Memorial Day with a backyard BBQ. Here's the full release, also available here and here:

Darkfall Comes to Light in North America on GNi's Game Optimized Hosting Platform
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aventurine SA, a computer games developer located in Athens, Greece has expanded its relationship with GNi to host their groundbreaking game, Darkfall Online, in North America with a launch scheduled for release later this summer.
“We’re very happy with our results in Europe with GNi and we continue to add content to the game and rapidly grow the community. GNi’s network has proven to be very fast and robust, allowing us to deliver Darkfall Online in the best possible way to our customers. It is for these reasons as well as GNi’s commitment and dedication to the Darkfall Online franchise, that Aventurine selected GNi as our dedicated hosting partner in North America. We are confident that GNi will continue to deliver the world-class service and unparalleled network performance in North America that we have experienced in Europe,” said Zad Mehdawi, President of Aventurine SA.

“Aventurine has seen great growth in Europe and we are excited to have Darkfall Online running on GNi’s platform in both Europe and North America. Darkfall appeals to the serious PVP gamer looking for large-scale combat and, in turn, has a devoted player base that few other games can boast. We are happy to be selected by Aventurine to provide a dedicated hosting solution for Darkfall Online in North America. We know that there is significant demand for the game and we are ready to deploy servers for the upcoming launch,” said Derek Wise, Founder and CTO of GNi, Inc.

Darkfall Online Offers Highly Immersive Experience
Darkfall Online is a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) fantasy role-playing game featuring a fun, fast-paced, real-time combat system, massive battles, clan warfare and empire building. Darkfall combines role-playing, action, and strategic gameplay. Darkfall has been designed to create intensely realistic and highly immersive combat and a challenging, realistic environment for a more immersive experience. With full collision detection, battle lines really matter and well-aimed spell blasts will send opponents flying. Darkfall’s goal is to provide players with a fun and challenging experience through a seamless and zoneless, non-instanced, “sandbox” game world.

Game to Be Launched by July in North America
The high demand for Darkfall has made a North American server a priority with Aventurine. The company expects the North American server, US1, to launch by July 2009.

About Aventurine and Darkfall:
Aventurine SA is an independent computer games developer located in Athens, Greece. Aventurine is fueled by passion for gaming and game technologies, which motivates and guides our activities. Aventurine’s main project is Darkfall Online, a groundbreaking MMORPG launched in February 2009. Development of the game, the technology platform, game engine, and tools began in 2003. The Darkfall team consists of thirty five veteran developers. Visit us at www.darkfallonline.com

About GNi
GNi is the leading dedicated hosting provider for online games, Software-as-a-Service, Web 2.0, and Online Digital Media. GNi’s infrastructure supports more than 12.8 million users, 425,000 concurrent connected users at peak capacity, and more than 27 titles. GNi delivers rapid scalability with uncompromised performance. GNi solutions thrive in the most demanding online environments and offer a variety of smart systems including rapid on-boarding and deployment. GNi is headquartered in San Jose, California with infrastructure facilities located across the globe. For more information please visit www.gni.com.

_____________________________

Still no word regarding character and item transfers. Personally I'm still on the fence, only because I've invested a fair amount of time into my character. Putting that aside, I have to admit that I agree a fresh server with no transfers is most likely the best route. Although I wouldn't mind taking my guy over to US1 and raping all the bastard bastages who refused to play until an NA server came out.

Darkfall Patch 5/15/2009 Highlights

Skill gain has increased significantly in all melee skills
Skill progression in archery has been increased significantly
You are now required to hit a valid target to gain skill in archery
Skilling up in magic has been increased significantly
Skill progression in spells requires the caster to hit a valid target

A few years ago I may not have liked these changes. Part of the reason MMO's are fun to play is the fact that they are persistent worlds where you gradually increase your avatar's power. I think it is definitely important to strike a good balance between character progression and grinding. As it stands, once the way to easy methods (hitting naked shielded afks with newbie weapons, shooting arrows into the air) were removed the grind in Darkfall was simply too time intensive. Not to mention, removing the previous unintended and easy methods for raising skills created a huge imbalance between those who took advantage and those who did not.

It really boils down to the subjective meaning of the words 'significantly increased.' Hopefully AV has made it so that leveling up skills by simply playing the game is now a viable endeavor.

Clan Mines/Quarries/Groves/etc now start out at 25% capacity and their regrowth rate has been increased

Great change. Camping server up so you can easily mine 1k resources is silly. By changing clan resource nodes to offer a steady stream of resources as opposed to a large chunk at server up with just a trickle throughout the day - AV has now created content that is worth fighting over throughout the day. Expect Hamlets to see a great increase in small scale PvP as raiding guilds try to control clan resources. This makes it much more viable for a non-asset holding guild to be able to farm the necessary rare ores for siege weaponry. As it stands now it is terribly difficult for an errant clan to gather the necessary mats for effective siege weaponry.

Player Journal and Clan pages now accessible trough external browsers. Go to http://web001.eu1.darkfallonline.com/darkfall and log in with your username and password

About time, now I don't have to waste my time in game managing this stuff!

Melee Range has increased: * Axes* Clubs* Greataxes* Greatclubs* Knives
Small adjustments made to melee reach depending on character race

Maybe Maharim/Orc have longer reach to make up for their larger hit box, and weapons other than polearms and swords will become more popular.

What are your thoughts?

First Real Siege Experience

On Monday we conducted our 'first' siege. I say first only because this was our first siege where there were no zergs involved and our first where we had an active role in the command of our forces. Our rag tag Yssam Rebel alliance (AKA the Vietcong) dropped a siege shard on the hamlet owned by DDi on the NW coast of Yssam. Once the siege had begun we quickly moved our shard holder back to Tolenque, the NPC city we call home and made our best attempt to defend it. Unfortunately, keeping a single player character (~250hp) alive in the middle of an NPC city is no easy task. There are multiple ways to enter Tolenque, a high ridge to the North of the city that can be used to lay down MM spam, and a multi-level layout that can be both a advantage and a disadvantage depending on the situation. All told I feel that we did a decent job for our first attempt, despite only managing to defend the shard carrier for a bit over an hour. We made a few tactical errors which when combined with enemy reinforcements led to our Shard holders death.

Our main error was attempting to dislodge the enemy from their position on the hill. In the process we ceded strategic positioning on the walls and were caught out of position by enemy reinforcements who quickly flanked us and established a foot hold on the north wall of the city. Under heavy fire the group tasked with defending the shardholder made a valiant effort but were unable to keep him alive.

I like to think had we kept our force in superior position the battle would have lasted much longer or even emerged victorious.

In either event, the siege was successful in the sense that I believe everyone involved had a ton of fun. I also learned a thing or two about siege tactics, I'm sure there will be opportunities in the future to apply the lessons learned.

In closing, many thanks the the Vietcong alliance:
Order of the Blade
The Tenth
The Shadow Legion
The Undead Army
The Select Few
Kaynes Embrace
Order of the Silver Star
Black Plague
and Solo Raiders (featuring Celiah Ailey - the 'Terror of Yssam'!)

Good Darkfall Review (from Owain of KGB)

This was originally posted as a comment on Broken Toys, (the blog of Lum the Mad of UO infamy).


Lum, you really need to camp the DarkFall online store, and try to snag a copy. A pain, I know, but I think you really would find it worth your while. [Ed. note - the store is not open 24/7 yet but when they do open it usually has copies available for multiple hours, and there is no need to spam F5, system is rather stable now] Roll an Alfar, and come to the KGB city, Khosgar, which lies on the south east coast of the main continent. Submit an application for citizenship on the KGB web site, oracle.the-kgb.com, and list Owain ab Arawn as your sponser. Shhhh. No else needs to know. This will be our secret. Except for everyone else who reads this.
I’ve been in the game a couple of weeks now, and what I’ve found that there is not the non-stop universal gankage everyone seems to think that Darkfall will inevitably fall into. Granted, if you wander solo into the world, you will find no shortage of opportunities to be ganked, but no one does that. Instead, Darkfall seems like a continent wide battleground, but without the stupid stuff you are complaining about with WoW battlegrounds.
Yesterday was very typical of this, from what I’ve seen so far. I checked in, got on the City Defense Ventrillo channel, and found that all was quiet on all fronts, so I went to the bank and got a few tools, and starting chopping wood and mining for stone, both to supply lumber and stone for the guild achitects for building supplies, and also to develop strength and other attributes.
After about 20 minutes of this, somebody comes into Vent and announces that infiltrators have gotten over the walls and are moving towards the city bank, where most folks hang out macroing skills, and dropping off harvested supplies. I stow my pickaxe and equip a bow, and join the hunt. Thanks to the quick warning we drop the ones inside the walls pretty quick, but there are more outside the walls, both to the north and to the south. I run to the north wall and man the siege cannon and start firing at troops in the open, scattering them quickly.
They move out of my visual range soon after I start firing, but we have spotters out in the field that direct my fire on their location, and soon they are in full retreat towards a local enemy hamlet. We armor up, mount up, and move out on a retaliatory strike.
They have no siege weapons, so we sweep through their village without much difficulty, and catch them in the open. We overpower those we find, and withdraw before they can mount a counter attack. Things quiet down after that, so we go back to foraging. I strip off my equipment and go for an ocean crossing swim to build other attributes, and carry a fishing pole with me as well. A lad has to eat, you know.
30 minutes later, the city is under attack again. I am half a continent away, fishing, so I do a bindstone recall, and reappear in the city in the middle of the attack, unarmored. I make it to the wall and start sniping with my bow. I get pretty well fried by their mages, but somehow manage not to die, and eventually we clean them out of the city, so it’s time to armor up again, and we have big fight south of the city. Neither side can make much headway, so both sides disengage and withdraw. Back to the city, where we defend against intermittent probing attacks and feints, but no large engagements for a while.
No where in this are points awarded to permit me to buy a pair of uber pants. There are no flags to cap, no achievements to unlock, no artificial carrots to entice players, no flying mounts, nor quest rails to follow. But also, no non-stop ganks or fighting just for the sake of fighting. We are harvesting resources and crafting supplies, and our enemies seek to disrupt our operations and claim our resources for their own, all the while we are training and develping our skills to better defend our expanding sphere of influence. Some days, we get no probing attacks at all, so we harvest mobs, and forage for resources. Other days, we face waves of attacks.
I’ve played battlegrounds on WoW and in Warhammer, but these feel more like sporting events than actual combat. There must be a strong attraction there for that kind of game play, because a LOT of people take part in it. Nothing ever changes in that setting though. Once you get through with the map, it starts again, and again, and again. The same fight over and over again. Groundhog Day, with swords.
In DarkFall, no two fights are ever the same. The areas change, the tactics change, the objectives change, and depending on your success or lack thereof on the battle field, your over all strategies change. One week, you may be triumphantly expanding, and the next week, you may be desperately defending your civilization. Either way, things are never boring. And no “purple pulsating flying manhood compensators.”
All in all, not bad for my first few weeks in a brand new game.

Optimal PC Setup for Darkfall Online

First, some important information regarding running Darkfall Online on your PC.

1) Darkfall does not support multiple cores. The speed of your processor, not the number of cores is what matters. This is why a dual core E8400 clocked at 3.0 ghz is better than a quad core Q6600 clocked at 2.4 ghz
2) The game uses 3d sounds which are very processor intensive if you don't have a dedicated 3d sound card like an X-Fi.


That said, I have been playing Darkfall recently on a computer I built in January 2007 (inspired by this guide from silentpcreview). The basic setup was a Gigabyte P5W DH Deluxe mobo with a intel dual core E6600 processor (stock) 2 GB of DDR2 Ram (stock) and an XFX GT7950 GT (512MB). My sound card was a M-Audio Revolution 5.1 (no hardware 3d FX processor). For comparison, this setup ran WoW flawlessly (most PC's will), HL and CS on high settings fine, but I had to tone things down for Warhammer and Darkfall during large scale combat.

If you've got a similiar PC you can probably squeeze some reasonable FPS out of the rig just by turning the settings down:

Turn Shadows completely off (this is the biggest drain to FPS)
Turn ambient sounds off and 3d sounds to 8 (I only do this during sieges)
Uncheck Object Clipping
Disable Post Screen Effects
In windows task manager, set the Darkfall.exe process to high priority

Doing this with the above rig was giving me around 70FPS outside combat. In small PvP encounters i stayed above 30, at large sieges the game started to get choppy.

Since large scale siege combat plays such a prominent role in Darkfall, I set out to see what I could do to make it work. Here's what I did:

The E6600 processor I have is great for overclocking. It runs stock at 2.4Ghz and with my aftermarket cooling (Scythe Ninja) it runs at 30 C idle and 40 under load.

Check out the overclocker.net forums and dig up some information for overclocking your system. Make sure you have adequate cooling though, or else your PC won't be stable. I went for a modest overclock bumping my CPU from 2.4GHZ to 3.0 GHZ. Just this one change alone bumped my FPS about 10-15 FPS outside sieges. I didn't get to try large scale PvP with just the OC'd processor. I used this beginners overclocking guide I came across with a google search. It was a lot easier than I thought, especially since I had never done it before. At 3.0 GHZ I ran a stress test for 12 hours without any errors. CPU temps were stable at around 55 C. More than enough room to operate at a safe temp. I tried to keep pushing it further but started getting logic errors around 3.2 Ghz. I'm a newb when it comes to overclocking so I just left it back at 3.0.

The next thing I did was order some new toys from newegg (where I buy all my components -the best service, fast shipping and great prices!)

The first thing I did was double up on my RAM from 2GB to 4GB. Pretty simple, cost me $30 I would've gone to 8GB but I don't feel like upgrading my 32 bit XP right now. Once Windows 7 comes out I'll probably make the switch. I loaded up Darkfall now with my OC'd processor and double RAM to see how it ran. I didn't notice as much of an FPS increase as the overclock. But for 30 bucks the marginal performance is worth it IMO.

Next, I picked up this Radeon HD 4850 1GB PCIe 2.0 graphics card. I really think my 7950 GT was a major bottle neck. Check out this graphics card ranking list to see if your GPU is holding you back. Two things to note here if you're paying attention. My motherboard doesn't actually have a PCIe 2.0 slot, but the interface is backwards compatible and there is marginal performance loss if any. It's a fanless 4850, but only because I built my PC to be as quiet as possible. The only fans are aftermarket 120mm low noise ccase fans and everything else just has huge heat sinks on it. It's all about proper airflow management. Despite not having a fan on it, this card runs great. Temperatures under load are under 50 C!

The last change I made was swapping out my non-3D accelerated sound card for a Auzentech X-Fi Forte. Using onboard sound is fine when you're just standing around or small scale PvP, but once you get into sieges with 100+ people, all the sound spam just eats up your processor. By installing a dedicated 3DFX sound card I freed up my processor to focus on the graphical elements of the game. Not only does the game no longer sound retarded from running only 8 sounds but I am also getting directional sound. I can hear exactly which direction that mounted guy is coming from or where that miner is hacking away at a metal node. I went with the Auzentech version of the X-Fi which is a little more expensive than some of the Creative branded ones, but comes without the bloated software.

So what is the end result? Just standing around town, doing PvE or other less intensive Darkfall tasks - I am now getting between 170-195 FPS! That's more than a 100% increase from earlier. And this is with the default settings, minus shadows (for whatever reason turning shadows on still drops my FPS dramatically, into the 40s - definitely playable but not worth it).

What about siege combat? Well last night I went to the ATS vs Mitsubishi siege on Yssam. There were a lot of people there. MY FPS did drop considerably, into the 30-50 range. This is still good considering there were multiple alliances present, and tons of combat going on. No choppiness or client side lag and with the X-Fi installed I could actually leave my sound settings at default and hear everything.

All said and done I'm pretty happy with the results. I took a two year old PC (which was built using mid-level components at the time) and squeezed a lot of performance out of it with a minimal investment. After rebates, the whole upgrade cost me $308 including shipping. My PC now has enough power to run perfect in small scale combat and even runs smoothly in chaotic large scale sieges. It's certainly more than good enough to tide me over until the intel i7 systems become a little more affordable.


What is your system setup and how is your Darkfall performance?

P.S.

Before you run out and by the 4850 or X-Fi I linked here, make sure there is enough room in your case. The 4850 I bought is HUGE. I had to rearrange a lot of cabling to get it to fit. It's also sitting lower in the main chamber than wood be optimal for cooling purposes, but it still works. The X-Fi Forte is low profile (narrow) but still very long as well.

Play to Crush, Lessons from Shadowbane for Darkfall Online

The announcement of Shadowbane closing its servers has set off a lot of discussions regarding SB's design. Many people believe that the game closing on May 1st somehow validates their ranting that open PvP and siege rulesets will kill any game. As a UO and SB veteran I am compelled provide a counterpoint to these carebear ways. I still remember well how UO was ruined by a vocal carebear community, and I think it is important that the PvP community makes it's voice clear, in a organized and thoughtful manner. A good example is the comments section on Lum's Broken Toy's blog in here, it's worth a quick read but I'll recap my thoughts here.

One commenter wrote:

"A PvP game is essentially a limiting design. PvE means everyone gets to win. PvP means many players have to play the role of the loser. A well-done PvP game can find an audience, but it will always be a small subset of the audience that a popular game like WoW can command."

I beg to differ. PvE is more limiting, players are limited by the length of the roller coaster ride that the dev’s build. Take World of Warcraft for example. People hit level 80 and 90% of the game is obsolete. Soon they clear all the current raid dungeons and there is nothing left to do until more content is released. WoW is popular because it is easy and accessible to casual players.

On the flip side, I don’t believe that true open PvP games are limiting to players at all. If properly designed, it is quite the opposite. The additional risk from a game centered around open PvP yields far greater rewards. It is important here to remember the rewards are not only purple l33t phat lootz, but also the gameplay experience itself. UO veterans will know exactly what I am talking about. There were no scripted raid encounters back then or instanced x versus x PvP. We had complete freedom to do what we wanted, whether it be going into a dungeon to kill such and such hard mob or going out and warring other guilds or even simply hanging out on the roof of deceit, dueling other players to see who is the 'best'.

It’s like playing no-limit hold’em (PvP) vs playing slot machines (PvE). The one takes skill and a willingness to take risks. The other is mindless, caters to those with an aversion to risk and just feeds money to the Casino in the long run. In poker, even if I lose a hand, I still enjoy the experience greatly. I replay it in my head afterwards and adjust my strategy so that the next time maybe I will come out on top. Slots, well, slots is just boring.

I think even the WoW carebears are starting to understand this. Check out this post on Tobolds MMORPG Blog and read the comments. People are complaining that WoW is getting too easy, catering to casual players by dumbing down content for the sake of popularity. It's sad that it is taking them until now to realize how boring it is. Even the PvP gets old, I must have run warsong gulch a thousand times grinding honor. I probably would have done the same with the arenas if I hadn't quit after season 1. It's the same thing again and again, grind BGs/Arenas, get gear. New season starts, new raid dungeon released, old gear is outdated. Grind BGs/Arenas, get gear. Rinse, wash, repeat, tear out eyeballs.

Back on Lum's blog, Mike Darga left a comment and wonders where all the ex-Shadowbane players will go... WAR or DF. As a former SB diehard, I believe we'll be seeing an influx of former SB players into Darkfall in the coming weeks as accounts are made available. Warhammer is a themepark game, and is closer to WoW than SB. Darkfall, with its FFA PvP, city ownership, siege combat, etc is the new SB. Immediately after the SB announcement our guild, Evil Bastages, started getting more traffic in our forums from former SB players from various sub-guilds of our EB nation that dominated Scorn, Vengeance, etc.

I’d say, barring the difficulty of obtaining a copy of the game, the DF release has been much better than Shadowbane’s. They had a few issues where certain methods of raising certain skills that should have been squelched in Beta were left in for a few weeks on the live EU-1 server. Short term, this gives the players who got accounts in the first few weeks an advantage, but long term things will even out. It is a MMO after all, there will always be players with older characters that are more advanced. The game is still in the early stages, high level magic users are still rare and we are only now starting to see naval combat. With a lot of these small issues fixed in recent patches, I do hope that the Adventurine dev team starts taking a closer look at siege mechanics. There were many lessons SB’s devs learned the hard way, and they implemented solutions to combat things like 3 AM sieges, etc. Still, technically the game is 10x better than SB at launch. I can count on one hand the number of times my client has crashed in the past month and a half.

One thing that Tasos and co. needs to do ASAP - is go ahead and open up NA-1… some bastages are still using it as an excuse for not playing!

Fixing the 'Ping Bug' in Darkfall + New Sales

I am pretty sure I have been experiencing the same issue that others are describing here. My connection has been pretty stable around a 110ms ping since launch but since build 14 or so I have been getting huge ping spikes intermittently. They generally occur whenever there is a lot of activity going on around my character in game. IE if I am just harvesting it is fine but once I run into some PvP involving more than 5 people it goes to shit. My ping jumps up into the 1000-4000ms range.

My first response was to check my router and DSL modem. After multiple restarts the problem continued to persist. It seemed strange to me that I was only having connection issues while playing Darkfall though, and my connection was acting normal otherwise. Since I felt like the problem only started after one of Adventurines recent patches I thought maybe reinstalling and repatching might solve the problem. On my way to uninstall I came across the following in the shortcut folder:


The 'Darkfall(Repair data)' shortcut simply launches the patcher and repairs and corrupt files. Since I ran it two days ago I haven't experienced any issues. I participated in a siege last night and didn't have any latency issues so I feel confident that this is a valid solution and sharing it here.

In other news, I just received a nice delivery from Newegg. I am upgrading my two year old PC to optimize it for Darkfall. I'll be OC'ing my dual core E6600 processor (maybe messing with my cooling setup), swapping out a 7950 GT for a HD 4850, doubling my RAM to 4GB (i'm still using 32 bit xp or else I'd do 8GB) and swapping out my M-Audio sound card for a Auzentech X-Fi. All in, these four upgrades are costing me around $300 USD but I feel pretty confident they'll make a huge difference in Darkfall. Check back here in the next couple of days for a recap and my thoughts on optimizing your PC for Darkfall Online.

In other news, more client downloads are being made available tomorrow:

Tomorrow April 23d we will open up the shop at 3pm GMT for those that want to
get the Darkfall Client. If you want to get the Darkfall Client, visit https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php and
create an account if you haven't done so already.

FYI, 3PM GMT is 11AM EST.

A moment of silence please... R.I.P. Shadowbane

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I am sorry to report that after six years Shadowbane will be shutting down it's servers for the final time on May 1st, 2009. Xanther has posted a regretful but proud farewell to the community on the Shadowbane Chronicle website.

I haven't played SB since quitting in 2005 to focus on real life but I still have ton of fun memories. I remember our early days under the Rolling 30's nation - the weeklong battle culminating in the fall of Compton versus what seemed at times like the entire server was epic. At the time I played a max CON dwarf priest and remember a particular battle where we were taking heavy casualties but somehow managed to pull of a chain of rezzes to turn the tide.

While the ashes of Compton were still burning, the Rolling 30's dispersed and fled to EVE, we took up the banner of war under our own symbol, the red noose. We made our intentions clear to the Scorn community, and followed through with our actions, razing city after city. I remember creating my Aracroix Scout around this time, and using him to tracking incoming enemy stacks to be routed before they could even see our city walls. On the offensive, seeking out enemy scouts to keep our movements hidden and turning the hunters into the hunted, killing enemy assassins looking to take out our healers and glass cannons.

With Scorn conquered we moved to Vengeance. Here the competition was even greater. We had generated large amounts of hate throughout our campaign on Scorn and many sought to take us down. We developed extremely focused high def spec groups that could stand against superior numbers and emerge victorious. More wars were waged and more cities were burned. Through it all EB main stood tall and imposing. Many enemies threw themselves against its walls only to die in a (metaphorical) fire.

Anyway, long story short, SB will be missed. SB's character building, along with it's siege system, city building, armor/weapon crafting & resource, and nation/guild systems were some of the best of any MMO. I fully believe had they not been plagued by such a bad launch and the ongoing SB.exe issue, many of their innovative design solutions would have been viewed in a more successful light - and we might actually have seen more of them implemented in todays' MMO market.

*Edit, EB main did burn once, at the end of Scorn, but only because the CSR's set it on fire:

Darkfall Patch Notes for 4/10/09

It's a pretty large patch, and taking a bit longer than expected. The servers should be up within an hour. Thank you for your patience.

Here are the patchnotes:

• gm_help has been updated to become a request

• gm_report has been added (Use it to report abuse or exploits to all online GMs)

• Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

• Attacking an invulnerable player will no longer skill up the skill you are using

• You will no longer skill up by using the conscript (starter) weapons

• Armor durability loss corrected

• The Teleport Anchor Skill can now be found at more vendors

• Placement of items in bags, banks, and clan vault will now be properly persisted in all cases

• Loot window will now stay in the same place between each looting session

• Supreme Generals can now kick players that are bound to a specific city/hamlet. Access this functionality through the Clan Window.

• The overview of a clan’s challenges is now publicly available to everyone. Access it through the Clan Window. You can browse the clans there to do so.

• Gates have been added to all Clan City entrances. To open or close a gate simply press the use button while aiming at the gate house. Note that you must be at least a Lieutenant to be able to open/close city gates.

• Miscelaneous client bugfixes

• Several sound updates


More quests have been added:

ALFAR FACTIONS

• THE HARN MANDEAN
• The Abandoned Stronghold
• Unwanted Neighbors
• Assistance from Shoal's Finest
• The Element of Fire
• Ninseri of Espenhal
• A Fair Trade
• More Clues of an Unknown Power
• TEMPLE OF THE GOD KING
• Nobody disobeys Shoal
• Shoal's Iron Fist
• Not Worthy
• A Mission Completed
• THE RADIANT CIRCLE
• The Demon Hand Legend
• The Windlords of Velmuna
• The Demon's Hand
• A Much Desired Artifact
• THE SHADOW SALIENT
• Grey Ork Hideout


HUMAN FACTIONS

• KNIGHTS OF MALREGARD
• A Trip to Sanguine
• Into the Twilight Kingdom
• WHITE ORDER
• Help for Silverley
• Assisting the enchanters of Silverley ***The Shadow of Highmoore
• SONS OF RIADA
• Secrets of the Nithron
• Heralds of Reconquest
• Chronicles of the Firstborn
• A Prophecy Come True

MAHIRIM FACTIONS

• THE WOLFMASKS
• The Cursed of Fang Lake
• A Marked Gravestone
• Honoring the Alliance
• THE CIRCLE OF NEITH
• These Mysterious Guardians
• Elusive Akathars
• Dim Stormrunes for Celetia
• THE LONGCLAW
• Proof of Existence
• A much awaited package
• Problems in Wolf Run
• The Centaurs of Wolf Run
• The Centaur Report
• ELDERS OF RED MOON
• Summoned by Red Moon
• The Lost Hero


New Weapons

• Orkish Strongbow
• Mirdain Seeker
• Mahirim Preyfinder
• Dwarven Warbow
• Alfar Deathsinger
• Mercian Composite Bow

Armor

• New Scale armor boots have been added
• New Scale armor gloves have been added

Magic

• Tornado in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Explosion in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Heal Other in Greater Magic has been fixed and no longer heals mounts
• Sacrifice in Spell Chanting has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore
• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore


Monsters

• Spellcasting monsters have been re-balanced
• Snow Clan Elder loot has been tweaked

The following skills have been re-ballanced:

• Greatclub Mastery
• Greataxe Mastery
• Greatsword Mastery
• Knife Mastery
• Polearm Mastery
• Sword Mastery
• Axes
• Clubs And Maces
• Greatclubs
• Greatsword Power Attack
• Sword Power Attack

Visual Updates:

• Jungle Vegetation
• Iklit Houses
• Human Houses
• Human NPCs
• Some human castle walls

Area/Worldbuilding updates in the Human area:

• Bloodscar
• Hawkmoore
• Highmore
• Bluefield
• Brockmoore
• Lainstone
• Broadherne
• Greendale
• Cranwyn Bay
• Somerstone
• Wetfang
• Outer Cranwyn Bay
• Bladethorpe
• Quattenhal
• Scarbourne
• Nekaria
• Sandstone
• Taleria
• Hammerdale
• Gulghat

All of the Ice Continent has been updated

New Update from Tasos on Availability, Cheating, and More

Another update from Tasos yesterday on the official forums, here's the interesting bits:

In 48 hours characters with names made in an effort to confuse GMs and other
players, for example adding a string of lower cap L’s and upper case I’s
(IlIlIIIl) in their names will start getting their host accounts permanently
banned. If you have a character like that, delete him and make a new one with a
proper name.

This is fitting. I was actually going to write a follow up post to my last one regarding cheating. Of course the day after I wrote that post I got attacked by a speed hacker whose name was something like IllIlISimpleIllI IlIIJacklII. I haven't reported anyone yet, but I reported him just because his name is so retarded. If thats not strong evidence that someone is using 3rd party programs I don't know what is. I could only describe his name to the GM but it looks like he's getting banned anyway. I hope he doesn't read the forums.

Which brings us to cheating: We hear complaints from some players and some clans that continue seeing cheating everywhere when in fact this isn’t the case. We
should know since we log everything. The exploiters we ban always deny they were using 3d party programs; they complain and ask for proof. There are also people who continue using 3d party programs to exploit, thinking that if they’re careful and not observed by GMs that they’ll go undetected. What all these people have in common is that they don’t understand that we log everything. Characters are flagged server-side and investigated in-game. Reports of cheating players are verified server-side. We have a combination of automatic and manual investigation. We use them both to be thorough, but we don’t rely on one or the other. We know someone’s cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if you’ve even done so once, you’re not safe. There’s no such thing as “clever use” when you own all the server logs. We’ll eventually get to you and ban you. If you’re currently using 3d party programs to exploit with, we suggest you uninstall these programs immediately and hope for the best.

Good to know. As I said before I really haven't had that many experiences where I suspected anyone of speed hacking. I think a lot of the complaining probably stems from newbs getting owned and whining about it afterwards.

Some players have been complaining about lowered performance during massive
battles. Now, let’s put things into perspective here: Small skirmishes in Darkfall are what other games call “massive battles”. We recently had approximately 2000 characters involved in battle in the same area. Battles with several hundred haracters are the norm and run very smoothly. Of course you’ll get progressive frame rate drops when you’re working your way up to thousands of players in the same scene. We’re seeing a lot more characters in Darkfall battles than you see maximum units in RTS games. One of our first priorities is to continuously optimize this experience. Massive battles in Darkfall will get larger and run smoother and smoother. Now we don’t mind if people keep bitching at us about getting this even better, we’re never satisfied ourselves, so please keep that in mind.

LOL now this is a bit ridiculous. Small skirmishes in DF are in the range of 10-40 people involved with no performance issues. Most other games are able to pull this off just fine. Once you get to siege oriented PvP with numbers in the hundreds, performance definitely becomes an issue. Granted, some people with top of the line PCs are reporting that the game is running fine for them. I have to at least give some credit where credit is due, they are managing to get the small/medium size fights to run smoothly but sieges still have a ways to go. All this exaggeration can't be good though. I think Tasos and Adventurine need to take some business courses on managing expectations...

Later today at 5pm GMT we're opening up the store. The last couple of
times we've offered a lot more copies than usual. We're working to keep
improving our capacity so we can eventually leave the shop open 24/7.

Tomorrow we patch and we’ll have patch notes right after

The store has been up longer than usual which is a good thing. It will be nice once it is available 24/7. Now we just need NA-1 to be announced!

Tasos on New Darkfall Sales and Cheating

There's a new update from Tasos today on the official forums. First some tidbits about new account sales and support requests.

The shop will be open today again for a limited number of copies. This will happen at 3PM GMT.

For the mentally challenged, 3PM GMT = 11AM EST.

Second, having to do with support requests: If you see your support request priority is low, it doesn't mean that we’ve classified as low, it actually means it was handled immediately. Requests are currently prioritized by order received. New requests have a lower priority than older ones.

OK. Here's the good bits about cheating and exploiting:

Concerning cheating and exploiting: We’re banning some people almost every day but the problem is minimal to say the least. We’ve also been working on addressing the issue at the source as time permits.

Most of the people getting banned are confused by claims they cannot be detected because we have a small team and won’t dedicate resources. Trolling posts on this and other forums and videos on Youtube attempt to create the false impression that cheating is rampant. The logic behind this is: everyone is doing it, and so should you. This couldn’t be further from the truth however.

Most of the people posting about cheating in Darkfall aren't even playing the game and are doing so to create an impression. The only way to really know what’s happening in the game is to ask a few players you know for a fact are playing how many times they’ve seen people using exploits since we started banning for it.

We also get reports by players in the game about other players exploiting. In most cases the players reported hadn't been exploiting, in others a lot of people are reporting the same one person, or repeating what others are saying.

The only reason we are addressing this matter is to protect Darkfall players from getting banned by using these programs. We permanently ban all accounts using exploits. It's sad to have to ban someone who just bought the game, but we don't warn, inform, hesitate, or explain. We do this to protect the game and the players. The fact is that if you're using third party programs to exploit, it’s just a matter of time before you’re banned.

Thanks for reading,
The Darkfall Team

This is the interesting part. Especially where he tries to understate the problem as mostly a lot of noise produced by forum trolls and youtube videos.

Personally I have to admit there were only two or three times I ever suspected someone of speedhacking. The first occassion was the day I started playing at the goblin spawn, and for all intesive purposes just could have been lag. The few other times have usually been fights with Alfar and may just be something strange with their sprint animations. It doesn't help that my PC specs aren't the best (E6600, 7950GT and only 2GB DDR2) - my FPS does stutter occasionally.

The only time I really felt someone was speedhacking was at a wilderness bank with a guildmate when I spotted some alfar coming towards us in the distance on foot. I was naked harvesting some steedgrass and my guildmate was geared so I said just run I'll keep them busy. I turned around to put my sickle and herbs in the bank and before I even finished putting 4 or 5 items in the bank they were already right on top of me! They killed me standing at the bank and immediately set off after my guildmate who had a head start on them and somehow managed to catch him as well.

There was one other occasion where I felt someone was using a map/radar hack. Three of us were at a Ciel Fey spawn. I don't remember the exact details but one of my guildmates hid in the nook of one of those big trees in the elf lands with the giant roots you can hide under. It was located on an island in the middle of a lake near the spawn we were at. He was on the island resting while we were on the mainland shore and spotted the enemy approaching. Two of us stood and fought on the mainland while he stayed hidden the entire time. After we were killed 2v6 they immediately went straight for him. We all thought it was fishy, especially when he showed me afterwards. If you were on the shore of the lake looking at the island and ran 360 degrees around it, the angle of view where you could have possibly spotted him was probably less than 20 degrees. Not to mention the fact that he is a Mirdain, sitting in the nook of a tree root in tall grass at a significant distance.

I have to admit that these occurances all occured prior to Tasos announcing their 1 strike and you're out policy with respect to illegal third party programs. Whatever that's worth, it does lend some validity to Tasos' statement.

On a broader level I wholly support their stance and hope that what they're doing to combat cheating is effective.

For the record, EB as a guild has not and does not use nor condone the use of third party cheats. There's no glory in victory if it was done with hacks. This mentality is a carry over from the our old UO days where even using pots in a duel was considered an admission of being a newb.

If you see us in Darkfall, you can rest assured of two things:

1) A fair fight, within the boundaries and ruleset of the game.
2) Dying.

Related Posts:
Mike Darga's Game Design Blog: Make Cheating a Part of Your Game

Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers' Applied to WoW in 1000 Words

Maybe if I was a freelance writer who happen to be an MMO gamer I could write original content like this. But I am not so for the few of you who happen to find your way here but don't happen to read some of these blogs you'll just have to settle for me linking to interesting original content...

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the 'WoW Tourist' effect on recent MMO launches such as AoC and WAR. As a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's work, I thought this analysis by Squin from the Dark Crag Dispatch was an interesting take on the subject:

Dark Crag Dispatch - The Matthew Effect: How WoW is Like Bill Gates

In a nutshell external factors outside of the 'quality' of WoW itself were largely responsible for it's success (measured in terms of subscribers). The leading MMO at the time EQ, essentially sent a message to its community that they were shutting down the game, and replacing it with EQ2 which turned out to be a steaming pile of crap (Disclaimer: I never played). WoW's release also coincided with a massive expansion of broadband connectivity in the US and the proliferation of internet cafes in Asia.

Long story short, there are a lot of important factors other than WoW's design features that led it to have the dominant 11mm subscriber userbase that they enjoy now.

What are the implications? Designers who presume that WoW's featureset (no looting, no speaking to opposing factions, etc) is largely responsible for the amount of subscribers they maintain may try to implement these in their own designs even if they don't fit. This will simply lead to poor gameplay and many potential subscribers will come and say, 'this reminds me of WoW but it isn't WoW' and cancel their subscription.

Related posts:

Tobolds MMORPG Blog - MMORPG Quality

Hardcore Casual - Guess what this post is about? (hint: tourists)

Subscription Renewal and Additional Darkfall Account Sales

Tasos just posted a new update:

If you've already purchased the Darkfall client and don't have an active recurring subscription yet, you can get one now. We've opened up the page in the account management under the "Products" tab where 1 month, 3 month (10% discount) and 6 month (15% discount) subscriptions are offered.

Your purchase will be queued and you will be billed when your free play period ends.

The account page is here:

https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php

Also, we'll offer more client sales starting on Monday 4PM GMT for a limited number of copies and possibly every day next week as we further upgrade server capacity at the end of this week.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

FYI for you newbs, currently 4PM GMT = Noon EST.

Still no word on a North American server but at least some more bastages will hopefully get their accounts this week.

Darkfall Online, We're Gonna Party Like its 1999!

The inspiration for this post is the comments section from a Broken Toy's post titled Darkfall Improving, Now In 1999 Instead of 1997. I've only been following Lum's blog for a few weeks now but I get the sense that he and many of his readers are of the mentality that games with full loot and limited in game systems to protect players (a la UO in 1999) are destined to fail because the PvPers will run everyone out of the game... This is an argument for another day but for now I just want to tie this into some of my current experiences with Darkfall.

To start, what's wrong with '99? I like playing Darkfall because it does remind me of UO pre-trammel. I quit playing WoW two years ago because it was so carebear (boring). I tried to get into WAR but its just one giant instanced battlefield in which there is no risk and no player investment. I canceled that account before my three months was even up.

Darkfall is an entirely different story. The game is fun even if it lacks a little polish and carebear content. Even mundane tasks can be entertaining and exciting because of the risk vs. reward aspect inherent in a full loot game with open PvP.

For example, the other day one of my guildmates decided to pick up armor smithing. Since the change to make nodes global instead of instanced it is no longer easy to farm crafting materials without leaving the safety of guard towers. Most of the nodes in town are always tapped out. A lot of carebears complained about this change but really it makes sense. A lot of people also complain about how long it takes to harvest a node, 10 seconds per attempt and each node contains around 40 resources. Factor in failed attempts and a single miner could easily take over 15-20 minutes to tap out a metal spawn. That is a lot of time to be standing out in the wilderness in an open PvP game. Add to that that you can't free look while in the middle of mining and you're very vulnerable.

From the perspective of a gamer who has only played single player games or an MMO like WoW which (outside of raiding) are designed to be easy for a solo, casual player, I can see how this seems like bad game design. The perspective of someone who played UO in '99 is very different. Back in those days you had to take your mining alt outside town guard protection with a pack mule. In other words, you had to take a risk (getting PK'd) in order to obtain a reward (ore). Risk vs. reward is essential to MMO games. If there is no risk to gathering crafting materials, then everyone will do it causing a massive imbalance on the supply side. Excess supply in turn depresses the final value of crafted goods. How can crafting be a viable objective for a player if the market is flooded with cheap goods and they can't get any return on their investment of time and materials? This is Macro Economics 101.

We've already seen the positive effects of the resource changes in Darkfall as iron and steedgrass prices have risen since the change to global resource nodes. Armorsmiths and tamers are already seeing higher prices for their finished goods. I'm only speculating but I imagine the net effect here is that crafters who know what they are doing will benefit in the long run from these design choices in Darkfall.

Back to my anecdote... so the three of us grabbed some pick axes and set out to gather some ore to help get our guildmate get started with armor smithing. By working together three of us were able to tap out each metal node we found in about 5 minutes and quickly move on. Staying mobile is a good way to survive in Darkfall. We were also able to position ourselves around each node so that we had complete 360 degree coverage keeping an eye out for hostiles. Just hearing footsteps or a spell going off in the distance kept us alert and raised the tension level. More tension = more fun, even if it is mostly false alarms, like someone running by naked on a mount, etc.

We were attacked once towards the end of our run though. At first we even spotted a lone Maharim trying to sneak up on us. We stopped mining and assessed the situation. Then more bogeys showed up behind a few trees in the distance. Playing it safe we sent our crafter running in the opposite direction with all of our ore. Two of us stayed behind to make sure he got away and before we knew it six Maharim we're charging our position. Six on two odds with just our newbie weapons, some crappy armor and no food, pots or regs against equipped players is a losing battle. Our main objective was to ensure our compatriot made off with the goods so we rush into the middle of their group to get their attention then went into parry mode forcing them to waste tons of stam to take us down. I finally ran out of stamina and died in a hail of arrows but it took them over a minute to kill me and our guildmate was already halfway to the closest bank with a backpack full of ore. Even though two of us died, getting our ore out safely made it feel like we had won in the greater scheme of things. Especially since they wasted a ton of arrows for a couple of pickaxes!

Too long, didn't read version: Risk vs. Reward is good, even crafting/gathering can be fun in open PvP games!

Related posts: Broken Toys - Darkfall Improving, Now in 1999 Instead of 1997

Thoughts on a Possible North American Darkfall Server

I don't have any official details yet, but Tasos' last update on March 21st does have some useful information:

Since Darkfall’s launch we have been dealing with issues round the clock, and we’ll continue to do so in order to improve your gameplay experience with every day that goes by. We read all the support requests and are aware of every issue that comes up and we want to thank you for your excellent feedback.

The queuing has been addressed and resolved. The lag and sync issues some players were experiencing have also been addressed and resolved. Random crashes have been all but eliminated. We will give all player accounts a total of 34 days free play included in their initial purchase to compensate for any inconveniences caused by downtime.

An issue we are facing now is with more Darkfall availability. The reason we had throttled the availability in the first place was to avoid queuing. At some point we hit the threshold where queuing began and we needed to increase capacity. Now that we know more, we’re working in advance so that queuing doesn’t become much of an issue again. We hope to be able to open up for more sales sometime this coming week; again it will have to be a limited amount of copies to allow a smooth integration of new players into the game. We will announce when this is ahead of time.

We are also working on opening up new servers to meet the demand. This is not as simple as some forum posts suggest. Darkfall has a huge and very complex infrastructure. There will be announcements when this is nearing completion.

I also came across the following in the comments section of Syncaine's blog Hardcore Casual:

syncaine: As for waiting, I think the best bet (if you are going to wait, honestly the game is more than error free right now to play) is to wait for the NA server to open. No date on when that will be, but it will open before EU-2 opens. They are most likely going to allow naked character transfers though.

I tried to get a source out of him and he only responded:

syncaine: Not public I don't, no. Should be 'soon' though.

Does anyone else have any inside information to share? We're currently debating it internally, but I still think it is too early to make a decision, especially since we don't even know how long it will take to get a North American Darkfall Online server going.

Either way if they do at least open up new sales this week I've been suggesting to some of the Bastages on the sidelines that they should think about getting in now so they don't get locked out later on due to another throttled release of accounts.

BLIZZ... UR DOIN IT WRONG

Another reason why I quit WoW two years ago:
If you are still playing WoW and have a Druid, Priest, Rogue or Warrior and have any desire to compete at the top level, you may as well quit too. Seven of the top 10 teams were DK/Paladin/Warlock.

I could go on a long rant as to why I think WoW sucks but I just don't have the time today. Feel free to leave a comment as to whether you think WoW sucks or if you want to defend this carebear game I am all ears as well.

1000 Unique Visitors and Darkfall Build 9 Community Generated Patch Notes

Evil Bastages Darkfall Blog hit 1000 unique visitors today. Averaging about 50 unique visitors per day. Not bad for being around three weeks. Just want to say Welcome to all the continuing new visitors and Thank You to everyone checking back in occasionally.

In other news, AV managed to finally get the fires under control and the servers up after 15 hours of downtime. They also snuck in a new patch, without releasing any patch notes (standard Adventurine Procedure it seems).

So a DF community member started the following thread, Build 9 Community Generated Patch Notes that compiles a list of suspected changes. PLEASE NOTE, these are not official patch notes, but a compilation of player submitted observations.

Some items of note in bold, my comments in italics:

- You now take more damage when naked (C)
OK I suppose but I question hypothesis, there are other factors that could be involved. If its true I guess it is a good change although I will miss killing people who try to gank me while I'm macroing or doing something naked.

- Blocking Improved (1H + Shield) Can now swing faster after blocking and block faster after swing (confirmed)
This is a good change and may make 1H+Shield more viable for PvP if it is substantiated. As it stands shields are VERY situational and parry with a 2H weapon is far an away more effective. I suppose I am indifferent to how they balance this.

- Guard towers may no longer be parried. (Confirmed)
Apparently the Carebear stare owned Tasos and co.! This is a dumb change, there should be no safe zones. Guards as it is were already a good deterent to PKing. You could chase a guy trying to kill him and if he made it to the towers they'd start zapping you. Pre-patch you could throw up parry and retreat, but now they will probably just kill you. This just makes killing a PK take no skill... Not to mention the fact that if you're fighting a warring clan in town and a blue jumps in front of you there is practically 0% chance for survival.

Guards should be balanced so that if an attacker is confronted by them they need to retreat but they should not be so powerful that the target basically gets free loot for kiting a PK or grey-flagging a warring clan member with a blue partner into them. These tactics were still in game before, but at least you could counter these cheap tactics by parrying and retreating outside the guard range.

If you agree this change is stupid let AV know on the official forums here.

- Nodes are now global, but if you get it solo, have more resources (Confirmed Expect higher prices for materials and final products. Expect fights over nodes. Expect city nodes to be constantly empty.)
Good. You won't be able to afk-macro resource gathering in town. Resources in general should become scarcer. I foresee harvesting harvesters to be the most efficient way of gathering resources. I hope the carebears don't throw too much of a fit.

- Queues are much improved (disputed)
Lies. The newbs who posted this did so during the time of day where the workday in EU overlaps with the workday in the US...

- Rigor no longer improves from Lava/Acid pools (confirmed)
OK. I guess I will have to spar for hours to catch up to all the people who abused the shallow dungeon pools. I'll admit I still managed to get mine to 50.7 running back and forth accross the edge of a regular overland acid pool. But it took me two days and I had to be at keys the whole time. I wish they had left this in as it still required being at keys and resting/healing since it was hard to do without damaging yourself. It also wasn't macroable like the dungeon spots were. This is in contrast to the shallow pools in the dungeon where you could just run back and forth without taking damage and receive 5-6 ticks of the acid damage modifier that raised your Rigor skill.

- Chests are now global (confirmed, were instanced before)
Also a good change. Scarcity of resources creates conflict. Conflict leads to PvP. PvP leads to dead bodies. Dead bodies = good.

- Mob loot no longer comes at full durability (C)
OK - I haven't had any issues with durability anyway, does any one know if items can be repaired?

- You cannot queue while playing anymore (C)
OK, as long as they increase server capacity... the whole point for doing this is to combat crashes and random disconnects locking you out of the game for hours.

- When Queued, once PLAY illuminates, you have limited time to click it before it resets (C)
OK - turn the queue music way up so you can hear it while you're AFK or use something like mymouse to click the play button for you every minute or two...