Wednesday, May 27, 2009

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
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

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.

Friday, May 15, 2009

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?

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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'!)

Monday, May 4, 2009

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.