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...

Theory on Darkfall Server Downtime

Hello,

During a server restart we experienced a hardware failure we're currently dealing with. We're informed that it shouldn't take longer than 1 hour to fix.

We appreciate your patience and apologize for the delay it getting the game back up.

The Darkfall Team

Here is what is really going on at Adventurine HQ:


Seriously I really hope I am wrong!

Make your own video at:
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php?lang=uk

or leave a comment!

Last if it makes you feel any better you can contact GNi directly here, they're the company responsible for hosting the Darkfall game servers.

Other DF Server Downtime Comedy:

Tasos PMed me..wtf? (from Centurion)
We now take you behind the scenes (from Atropa)
Tsatziki in the Raid arrays (from Zealot-EX)
Screenshot of current DF Build (from Drahx)

BREAKING UPDATE! Tasos just got out of the pool and made the following post:

Downtime update 4.20 AM GMT:

We're afraid that the effects of the failure experienced during a routine server restart have proven considerably more time-consuming to address than originally estimated. We keep getting persistent errors that need to be corrected before the game is back up. The sources of these errors have finally been identified and now it's a matter of time before they are corrected.

We expect the servers to be up by 12pm noon GMT today(Tuesday) but we're doing everything we can to minimize this estimated downtime. During this timeframe we'll also apply a scheduled update patch meant to address some of the issues players have been experiencing the past few days.

We have been working non-stop on getting the game back up. We truly regret the downtime but we must be able to focus on the job at hand and we appreciate your patience and support. We will keep you updated on all developments.

There will be ample compensation for any missed game-time.

With our apologies,
The Darkfall Team

Looks like the ETA for servers coming back up is around 7AM EST on Tuesday morning.

Warhammer is Boring: Mythic To Close 63 Servers

Warhammer was released on September 18th, 2008. It's six month anniversary is coming up next week and they just announced the closure of 40 servers. The populations from those have been spread out across the sixteen that remain (FYI these are US numbers, the Euro side is closing 20 with 23 remaining).

When Warhammer launched (smoothly I am told) the group of us who hit 40 first almost all stopped playing and went back to WoW. I joined after this in early December and caught up to the slower leveling bastages and eventually most of us were hitting 40 in late January. This is right around when Darkfall Beta opened and everybody jumped ship to try out the game we've been years and years for. I canceled my subscription last week before the 3-month period was up. Out of all of us I think there are only one or two bastages still hanging on to their subscriptions.

I wanted to like this game, and at times I had a lot of fun, especially early on. The T2 scenario (forget the name), and Tor Anroc were fun and didn't get old since you quickly out leveled them. The lava could be a bitch but you have to admit it was funny watching people get owned by it. The only really memorable RvR fight I had was also in T3 going after the keep in Saphery. A group of about 6 or 7 of us and a bunch of order fodder busted through the outer gate. There was a good number of T3 Destro and a couple of Destro in the mid-30s so we were having trouble getting through the second gate. I think we had three warrior priests and a rune priest all specced salv plus two or three bright wizards and maybe someone was there on their melee. Our squad sat in the middle of the courtyard killing Destro and trying to nuke down the door. We held our ground well but the fodder just kept dying around us. Before we knew it the gates had closed behind us and more of the fodder that died were getting stuck outside the walls. Even past that point I think we held our ground until we were the last men standing and eventually got zerged out.

After T3 the game went downhill. I really didn't care for any of the scenarios, most of them were rehashed versions of Arathi Basin from WoW. Add that to the fact that for most of the time I was playing I had to fight level 40s. I feel that RvR through the 'dominion system' was flawed as well. When given a choice, most players will take the path of least resistance. This means while Order was capturing keeps in Praag, Destruction was capturing keeps in Caledor. No one really defended since the incentives for taking a keep (phat lootz) greatly outweighed the incentives for defending (rep/influence... QQ). In the end this basically boiled down to two sides zerging essentially defenseless keeps in a race to cap two zones in order to access the fortresses and eventually the capital cities.


The few fortress fights I did were pretty boring as well. I only did one at 40 and even then I didn't have enough wards to really do much. I just followed the zerg and /random'd for some loot.

The Capital City was even worse. I was never on for a defense of Altdorf. I did siege the Inevitable City twice. What this essentially amounted to was joining a public quest instance that was heavily lopsided and ended quickly. Then not being able to get into one at all. They also had an instanced battle ground was essentially what you would get if you took Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, made them have a baby and beat it with a fugly stick. Not to mention the queue times were also terrabad.

How does this relate to Darkfall Online? You can almost view DF and WAR as mirror opposites. Smooth Launch vs. FUBAR Launch. Multiple servers with excess capacity vs Single Server with insufficient capacity. Zero risk (no loot / losing keeps is laughable) vs High Risk (Full loot / Player Cities can be captured). Class/Level based vs Skill based.

It remains to be seen how Darkfall will play out. I hope that six months from now I am not writing a similiar post about it...

If you do feel like playing a boring game again, Mythic is sending out messages to canceled subscribers offering 10 days free if you sign up again.

Related Posts:
Gamasutra: Mythic to Close 63 Warhammer Online Servers
Tobold's MMORPG Blog: WAR server shrinkage
Broken Toys: Because I'm Leet Like Karl Franz

Darkfall Online: City Building Review

I haven't written a post all week since I finally got my Darkfall account, but I did come across the following article today that is worth sharing and discussing. Paragus of Inquisition posted the following review of Darkfall's City Building systems on mmorpg.com. In it he lays out the initial process, costs and personal thoughts on the system. His overall review is positive:

The good thing about the entire concept of city building in this game comparedto other MMOs is that there is a real sense of satisfaction when you start putting up structures because it is not instanced. Everyone in the world who comes by your spot will be able to see the work you have done, unlike in AOC where everything was instanced. They definitely have a solid and interesting foundation for their city building system, despite the fact that I think some tweaks would go a long ways. This aspect of the game really adds another layer to the game play, and reinforces what I originally said about being in a guild to fully experience all that Darkfall has to offer.

There are some good bits in there, such as the fact that there are approximately 97 claimable plots on the map. He also mentions, which supports other accounts I have read, that city layouts are largely predetermined. Having played Shadowbane, I wish that this was different. I really enjoyed the city architect role of that game in building cities on Scorn and Vengeance. There were some really terrible layouts and some strategic, well thought out ones. It added another layer of skill to the game.
Another city design, or essentially siege element that differs greatly from Shadowbane is that it appears gates don't have doors. At first, my initial impression is that this is a design flaw. But this is not Shadowbane circa 2004. Your city's clanstone does not need to be defended 24/7. Combat in DF is much more balanced between melee and ranged. Stacking a group of high def casters on one spot is not a viable tactic in Darkfall.

I think the standoff between defenders on a wall and attackers on the ground worked well in Shadowbane due to the game mechanics and combat systems heavily skewed toward magic users and ranged combat. DF combat mechanics are closer to Warhammer Online in that there is collision detection and much more melee oriented combat. If you added closed, locked doors to walls in DF you'd end up with something similiar to a (boring) keep siege in WH:

1. Defenders on the wall dump oil on attackers bashing door. Casters cast AOE on the bashers. Healers stand around. Melee stand around.
2. Melee bash door. Healers heal bashers. Ranged shoot door or try to pick off oil/defenders.
3. Door goes down. Attackers rush in and either zerg the keep lord or get stuck at the choke point at the top of the stairs and die. Usually the former as unless there are not really any significant incentives to defend a keep successfully.

I can't say definitively yet as I have yet to lay siege to a city but I think the lack of doors will allow for the use of more complicated tactics other than numerical superiority in a ranged standoff.

It also allows you to raid clans cities for the sake of PvP without actually having to siege them. More PvP = more deaths = good.

Read the full article here, or leave a comment below.

Daylight Savings and American Ethnocentrism 4tw

Did you remember to set your clocks ahead an hour this weekend? If so it means you are most likely living in the continental US. It is also safe to assume that the majority of you assume that just because we set our clocks forward an hour this weekend that the rest of the world did as well.

Fortuntately for me this is not the case. While some countries do practice 'summer time' they have their own dates for when they make the change. What does this have to do with Darkfall? I like to believe all of the people who incorrectly calculated 7PM GMT as 2PM EST today and had given up by 3PM EST gave the servers enough breathing room to process my account activation on the first try. Either that or Tasos and company actually did something to increase the server capacity for their account management system. I like to think the reason lies with the fact that most Americans are self centered when it comes to world views.

Either way, I got my account activated today:

If you were unsuccessful today, try again tomorrow at 3PM EST. Suckers.

They're Not Making it Easy, 27 New Accounts Created today and Darkfall Speed Hacks

I tried again to get an account for Darkfall. I must have hit F5 about 100 times over the course of 30 minutes around 7PM GMT when the account management site was open for new subscriptions. I got as far as clicking on the continue to your order button but never any further.

It is hard to tell what the long term implications from this horrible launch will be. Looking at the past, I think it is safe to say that Age of Conan shot itself in the foot because of all the problems it had at launch. The Darkfall devs are essentially staggering in their new players in order to stress test the server. This may allow them to optimize server populations in the future. The problem is they're pissing off a lot of people in the process. I hope that this doesn't end up alienating so many potential players that the game doesn't last.

I really hope that they succeed. But their certainly not making it easy. There are also reports of players using third party programs to speed hack. I was skeptical at first until I came across this YouTube video:


This needs to be addressed immediately. It is one thing to exploit crappy AI or bugs in game but an entirely different ballgame to use third party programs to defeat other players in PvP. There is no point in fighting honorably and fairly if your opponent will simply cheat to defeat you. In my opinion there is nothing more pathetic. An example, last night I was playing Counterstrike: Source (since I still can't play Darkfall...) and some guy joined the server and promptly got owned a few times. He apparently rhee'd in real life and told everyone to F**k off n*****s. Naturally I laughed out loud at his reaction. A few seconds later he was somehow crashing the server. It was funny and pathetic to me at the same time. I took it with a grain of salt since it was just a counterstrike game, but when similiar game breaking hacks are applied to an persistant MMO world then we have a problem Houston...

I hope that the Darkfall development teams is able to resolve these issues quickly. If left unchecked they could end up being the nails in the coffin for Darkfall Online. I have had enough of Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard producing carebear, no consequences, zero risk, mega grind MMO's. I came across an interesting blog post today from Scott Jennings, AKA Lum the Mad from the old UO days. I would venture to say that he is a bit of a carebear himself, but at least he is rooting for us bad guys:

http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/03/02/punching-babies-why-darkfall-can-should-and-must-succeed/

Leave a comment if you believe in Darkfall Online!

Breaking News: Darkfall Online NEW SALES OPEN

UPDATE (5:16 PM EST): Shop is now closed again for the day:

We processed as many orders as we could take in today, we'll open up tomorrow around the same time. We'll try to do this every day until things slow down and we can leave sales up.

Those very few of you that show you have pre-ordered rather than ordered will be processed normally and enabled.

Well that was pretty pathetic. I'd estimate the ordering system was open twice for about two minutes each time. I actually managed to hit the order button once only to get the 'Service is unavailable message.' At least Tasos admits how few people are getting in. At least they'll be doing it every day from here out. Still no word on additional servers and it remains to be seen whether the staggered release will yield any positive benefits to long term server health.



UPDATE (4:06 PM EST): Account management server is still down...

From Tasos:

Until sold out which shouldn't take too long by the traffic we're seeing.

Again, please don't abuse the system with multiple tabs and windows open,
or spam the refresh. We had to add a security measure in place that will give
you a 10 minute block if you do. If used properly, the system should work better
for everyone.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

Update: Had to bring it down for a few minutes, be back up shortly

I guess I'll be checking every 10-15 minutes or so. These will probably sell out quick!

How to Order Darkfall

Credit to Babu for this handy how-to guide for getting your hands on a Darkfall account.

Go to: https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php?pname=Homepage

Create an account, fill up everything on the first page, including ur billing info, and confirm the information by putting in your password again and checking the confirmation box.Click "Update profile and billing info".

Click on the "Backorder" tab on top, leading you to: https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php?pname=Products

Stay on that page and refresh it later this evening to put your order in. We can post a message in this thread once you should refresh, so keep track of the board/IRC.

Remember not to spam F5 or open multiple tabs/windows!

Good luck! Leave a comment if you're successful!

Darkfall Online: New Accounts Available This Week / I am good at what I do

Directly from Tasos about an hour ago on the official DF forums:

We’ll open up sales of a limited number of copies of Darkfall tonight European time Tuesday March 3d. We will try to repeat this every weekday until the extreme demand slows down and we’re able to leave the shop open 24/7. To answer the questions of how you can sell out a digital download, we’re throttling the number of new players in the world to limit queue times and protect the user experience. Server optimizations first and adding new servers in time are the steps we are taking to improve this experience.

From our launch experience, the extreme demand caused the account management infrastructure to lag and often time out. The hammering of the system by the users made things worse. Repeated attempts by users led to charge failures because of bank security rules. Incorrect billing information also led to failed transactions.

We expect the account management system to face extreme demand today as well. In order to try to avoid the issues we describe above, users who refresh before timing out, open multiple windows or tabs, and hammer the system will be temporarily blocked. Please do not refresh unless you have timed out or you will lose your place in the queue.

We'll post when sales open. If the copies we have available for today sell out, we will repeat this process again tomorrow.

Also I would like to point out that I am good at what I do... quoting myself from my Weekend Update:

I suppose I will take the optimists point of view in that the DF team has been working hard troubleshooting problems (i.e. sync issues) and managed to get those under control relatively quickly. The four bastages who managed to get accounts report that the servers have been up and stable all weekend. Hopefully we'll see additional servers and accounts made available this coming week.

Get your F5 keys ready... but don't hit it until you've timed out according to Tasos message above. I guess what this really means is you've got to ask yourself one question:

Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Leave a comment if you heard it here first!

Unofficial Darkfall FAQ

This is taken from the official Darkfall forums, from a post by Sarg01. It is pretty good so credit where credit is due.

Q: When is Darkfall going to be released?
A: Darkfall is currently in pre-order release and several thousand people are playing the game. While there is no official word from Aventurine on when the full "hear about the game today, buy today, play tonight" release is coming, it's a fair bet it is at least a few weeks away.

Q: I applied for beta, when do I get in?
A: You don't. Beta has been replaced with the pre-order release.

Q: So, is it too late to pre-order and get in the pre-order release?
A: It is expected that within the next several days, additional pre-orders will be made available and be able to play the game shortly after ordering. My best guess would be 24 hours after pre-ordering.

Q: Does that mean the servers can't handle the load?
A: The servers seem to be performing just fine. There was a much-publicized 24+ hour outage to fix a major bug immediately after release. Three days later that issue appears to have been resolved.

Q: What does pre-order cost?
A: The total price is 42 euro. Technically, only 2.52 of this is charged at pre-order, but the rest is charged as soon as your account is activated ... which should be within 24 hours of you ordering it. The first month is free.

Q: And after the first month?
A: The monthly subscription is 11.77 euro. A 10% 3-month purchase discount and 15% 6-month discount have been announced.

Q: What's that in real money?
A: As of today, March 2nd, the cost for Darkfall in United States dollars is $53.11. The subscription price is $14.89/month. When the dollar rises against the euro, the USD price will fall and vice-versa. You have to check the exchange rate at the time of your purchase, though it's likely any change would be small. Look at it this way, at least you don't have to pay the 19% "value added" tax they get in the EU.

Q: How many servers can I play on?
A: At the moment, there is one and only one Darkfall server, EU1. It is located in Germany. It is expected that additional servers will be released, but there is no timeframe available at this time.

Q: So how many characters can I have?
A: One per server. Which means just one per account at the moment.

Q: What are my chances of getting a pre-order?
A: Realistically, expect all slots to be gone within 8 hours of Aventurine opening sales, and quite possibly much sooner. The opening of sales will probably align with European prime-time and thus will likely be in the middle of work/school day for the US. Also, it is likely the web servers will be severely disrupted by the traffic of people trying to pre-order, so expect to have to try for at least an hour.

Weekend Update, Thoughts on Server Wipes

Well the EU1 server was up for most of the weekend. Communication from the dev team was pretty slim until earlier today when Tasos posted the following. Two highlights:

To address an issue reported by players: We generally frown on unattended macroing and if you use macros you do so at your own risk, but it should be mentioned that spamming spells and any macroing WITHIN the protective radius of the guard towers in the starting areas will result in a kick, and repeated offenses could result in a ban.

This is a fair solution. This allows us to Macro outside of the protection of town guards, but leaves us vulnerable to being PK'd. I agree with this. It just makes you put a little more effort into finding good spots to do it for long overnight mana missile sessions. And it makes it pretty OK to leave a macro hitting your left mouse button every 11 seconds for 20 minutes while you deplete a resource node.

About Darkfall availability, we will give advanced notice for when more copies will be available. We need to run a few tests first to make sure things have improved and we will let you know when we officially make more copies of the game available. Availability is throttled because we need to make sure that the server population is having as good an experience as possible before we introduce more people and more servers. We hoped to be further along but have been held back by the account management system. We’ve made several optimizations since, and we’re working on a permanent solution as soon as possible.

Well this is rather vague. There is no indication of a ETA or timeline for when new accounts will be available. I suppose I will take the optimists point of view in that the DF team has been working hard troubleshooting problems (i.e. sync issues) and managed to get those under control relatively quickly. The four bastages who managed to get accounts report that the servers have been up and stable all weekend. Hopefully we'll see additional servers and accounts made available this coming week.

This leads me directly into my next topic, which has been causing a lot of noise on the MMORPG Darkfall forums about a server wipe. There is even a poll on the subject on the official forums. I'm glad to see that more than a third of the (potential) playerbase is not retarded. I generally don't expect much from the denizens of the interweb. Here are some of the reasons the 62.79% of the population who is retarded are throwing around as justification for a wipe:

-the poor handling of the preorders meant that not everyone got to start at the launch of the game

-clans that exploited the broken AI got enough gold for cities hours after the servers opened

-people who didn't get to preorder can't play yet and probably won't be able to any time soon

-there are still lots of people who preordered but their account is still not working

This superstar basically repeated one of his arguments three times. Even repeating it three times doesn't make it less stupid. Yes, 90% of the playerbase probably didn't get an account. Do you really think that the 10% who got it are going to dominate the server long term? This isn't like the UO housing rushes where servers were wiped numerous times. In that case, when you placed a house it was permanent. No one could take it from you. The only way they could change hands was through a sale, or someone letting their house decay (rare). Fortunately, Darkfall player created structures are in the same style as Shadowbane. Walls and buildings can (and will) be razed. Cities will change hands. Nothing is permanent. The players will determine the shape of the world. In fact I am looking forward to capturing some of the cities that have already been placed.

The other argument you see a lot is that the clans who placed cities exploited sync/AI issues and other bugs to quickly get enough gold to form a guild and place a city stone. LOD is taking a lot of heat for this as they were the first to create a guild and place a city. Grats to them but people are acting like this is GG already. As I said above, cities will change hands. If they fixed the issues and wiped the servers again I'm pretty sure most of the same guilds would end up placing cities first again, simply due to the amount of players they managed to get into the game. As of earlier this weekend there were 41 players on LOD's roster. I can't check the numbers easily but I'm sure the other guilds who placed early are also rather large (SUN, Drunken Beggars, Winterblades, Redemption, Societas Demonica).

Lastly, if you really have a problem with it, there will more likely than not be additional servers opened when new accounts are made available. Just start on the fresh one. Server pop of the EU1 server is already over 5k. I have to admit I am actually curious to see if EU1 will remain the most competive server of the bunch.

Feel free to comment.