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.