Breaking News! Darkfall Launch Still FUBAR: 'Keep Calm and Carry On'

Exactly 60 years ago, in the spring of 1939 the country of Great Britain found itself on the brink of war against the burgeoning superpower of Germany. In an effort to reassure the citizens of the crown that all necessary measures and precautions were being taken, the British Government's Ministry of Information commissioned a number of propaganda posters to be displayed throughout the country upon the outbreak of war. The posters were simple with clean white text and a stark red background bearing such slogans as 'Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring Us Victory.' The only graphic utilized was the silhouetted crown of George VI. One particular poster was kept in reserve, to be distributed only in times of crisis or invasion. Since the UK was never directly invaded these posters laid undiscovered in government offices and archives until a copy turned up half a century later in a box of dusty old books bought at auction:


The original, unkown artist deserves great credit for creating such a timeless piece. Even long after the war was won, people are still able to find a reassurance in the simple and level headed message.

Having been through a number of MMO launches, I think that people experiencing this weeks Darkfall Online should try to take this same message to heart. If my guild can be used as any example, over 75% of the population that wants to get an account open is unable to do so (even some people who got through the pre-order). On top of that of the few that did make it in, the servers are down right now, and have been down for significant amounts of time. There are tons of people on various DF forums complaining, whining and throwing fits. In my own humble opinion, they are wasting bandwith. It is not something worth stressing out over.

During the first week of the Shadowbane launch, the servers were up less than 50% of the time.
For perspective, when SB launched we went through the same crap. Servers were getting hammered for the first week, the game was basically unplayable. Big Beta guilds like the Rolling 30's got a big head start but we know what happened to them (does anyone have a copy of the original herald posts from the sb front page?) ... This is when EB rose out of the ashes of Compton to dominate the Scorn and Vengeance servers (without exploiting).

I remember way back when, when I was still playing UO, shortly after the introduction of Trammel there was a huge land rush. Everyone was going crazy staking out spots for placing castles, keeps and towers. I saved up a ton of gold and bought a castle deed I was going to try and place on Ice Island. I remember being up at some ungodly hour waiting for the server to come up, trying again and again to login the very second they did. They finally came up, and crashed almost immediately. A little while later they came up again and stayed up long enough for me to place a castle… but not long enough for the data to stick. Crash. The servers came up a third time that morning and I logged in horrified to see that they had reset. Long story short I ended up having to settle for a Large Tower. When I quit I sold it for $250 USD so there is a bright side to everything.


So I guess the moral of the story is, Keep Calm and Carry On. Things will work out. Adventurine will (eventually) get their shit together and EB will be there to kill you and burn your city down. Slow and steady wins the race.

What stories and anecdotes do you have about terrible MMO launches in the past? Feel free to leave a comment.

GAME ON: Darkfall Online is Finally Online, EU1 Server is Live!

UPDATE 12:25 PM: Reports are that the lone Darkfall Online server has been up and steady but there is significant lag. The closest goblin camps are crowded (20+ players), though some of them further from the starter towns are less crowded. One bastage is reporting the lag is only allowing 1 in 10 swings to register as hits. Fortunately he was able to get his newbie staff and and upgrade to the polearm by looting 120 gold from a dead player. Woot!

Also there are reports that despite the increased price of clan stones, some clans are already established and declaring war against each other!

Also confirmed that Darkfall Online only allows 1 character slot per account unlike our Beta accounts. Looks like if you want separate characters for PvP and crafting you'll need two subscriptions. In any case it is probably best to use the same character for both anyway as crafting skills such as lumberjacking will increase your STR. It is yet to be determined what total skill caps are set to.

Still no word as to when the rest of us will be able to open new accounts. There are even some players who report having successfully pre-ordered, received charges and are getting a invalid account message upon login...

_________________________________________

Well of course these guys got the server up 30 minutes after I wrote my previous post and hit the sack last night. Here is the official message from the Darkfall Team:

Servers are finally opening up after a 12 hour delay. Processing the pre-orders took much longer than the original estimate we were given, and we caught a bug at the last minute that we didn’t want to launch with. We apologize for the long delay and we hope you enjoy your first day in Darkfall.

For the players that are getting lobby errors, check your version and if you don’t have build 1.0.35, get it from http://www.eu1.darkfallonline.com/dl/Darkfall.exe

We have extended the free month of play to 33 days to thank you for your patience and to try to begin making up for the inconvenience.

We’ll process the problematic pre-orders that were not charged, and have 0 balance later today. If you pre-ordered successfully but weren’t charged, or haven’t received your final notice for the remaining successful charge, you’ll need to be patient a few hours longer. We’ll also look at opening up more sales by tomorrow. We are a little behind schedule but we're catching up.

Forums have been down due to large volume, almost double our highest traffic to date, people weren’t able to access them. We brought them down in order to be able to post communications so you would know what was going on. MMORPG.com was kind enough to post our first announcement but we need to be able to communicate through the official Darkfall community. Darkfall IRC was causing the Stratics network problems with its volume and it was also temporarily shut down at Stratics request. The forum will be back as soon as possible, and we hope we can keep it up.

We’ll do our best to keep you updated.

Thank you

The Darkfall Team

If you want to be technical I think the just managed to squeeze in on the 25th inside the PST time zone. Some Bastages reported that the servers were only up for a short period before going down again. It appears they're back up again early this AM (EST) according to first hand accounts. You can also check the server status page to see whether it is up:

At press time there was only one EU server up. I'm waiting for additional reports on server stability, etc. Still no word on new accounts availability.

One interesting piece of information: the price of Clanstones on live servers has increased to 10k.

It's currently February 26th pretty much everywhere...

around the world except the west coast.

The following update was made at approximately 4AM GMT (11 AM EST):

A bug was discovered during final testing, and we need to resolve it before we can open up the servers. We didn’t want to launch to just say we launched. We can’t apologize enough for the long delay. The current ETA is two hours but it could be longer. We will launch as soon as possible and we will keep you updated.

We have extended the free month to 33 days to compensate for the inconvenience. Problems will occur from time to time but we need you to know that we’re committed to supporting this game to the best of our ability. It’s unfortunate that we are facing these issues at launch, and we’ll do everything we can to make this up to you.

The Darkfall Team

I wish they had just pushed back the official EU release one last time so they could have run this launch a little better. At least I could have been playing the Beta server all this time!

Still no new update on when account management will be available for new accounts or anything about the NA launch.

In other news I just patched my client to version 1.035.

Zergfail Online: Darkfall EU Launch Update

From #Darkfall on irc.stratics.com, Brannoc has been repeating the follow message since around 7PM EST:

<@Brannoc> At this time there is no set ETA for the servers to come up, and account management is a top priority.
<@Brannoc> The forums will remain locked for the next few hours while we work on getting it all settled.
<@Brannoc> For anyone who missed the update, game time will be added to all accounts to compensate for the inconvenience.
<@Brannoc> We're going to lock the channel for now folks, I will post updates here as I receive them.
<@Brannoc> We are currently processing all pre-orders and when that phase is complete the game servers will be available for play. The forums are offline temporarily while we make adjustments. The IRC channel will remain locked during this time.

It looks like they're still trying to process all the pre-orders. The servers are still not up but I was able to patch my Beta client to version 1.034.

Still no word yet as to when the Darkfall Online account management will be turned back on so those of us who were unable to pre-order can register an account and billing info.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

"ALL YOUR SERVER ARE BELONG TO US"

While I am glad that Darkfall is not vaporware and that it is finally being released, I wish that the DF team and Adventurine had got their shit more together for a smoother launch. Right now the masses trying to get in for launch are hammering what little server capacity they have.

Initially the Beta testers were supposed to be given a head start on pre-orders, but of course the link to the pre-order sign up was leaked. The available pre-order slots ended up selling out in hours. While a few bastages did manage to get in, the majority of us did not. I never got past entering my credit info after hearing of reports that some players were receiving multiple charges due to time-outs and other issues. Better safe than sorry I say.

Subsequently, Tasos announced that additional slots would be made available on the 25th in the evening, euro local time. Well it is currently February 25th, 6:36 PM Greece Time everything is still a clusterfuck.

Darkfall forums are too busy to process requests:


The account management website is getting hammered and not available at all:

The EU1 server is still offline. This was the Beta server and I imagine it will just be wiped and used as one of the servers for launch.

An EB member who successfully pre-ordered is even reporting that he is experiencing problems as well:

But my beta login is no longer valid, and I now get a "account not active" error
when I try to log in using the username/password I setup for pre-order.

In the end I'm not surprised at all. After seven years in development another couple of days shouldn't be a big deal. At least one good aspect to limiting pre-orders and launch orders is that hopefully the initial servers won't get swamped and crash 24/7. Even still I'm not expecting things to go smoothly. The Beta servers were actually very good, but the population was pretty small. There's no telling how the launch servers will fare with this new deluge of players. Pretty much ever launch I've been through has been a big mess. Shadowbane servers were down 50% of the time for the first week or so. Even WoW had high pop servers that were down for up to 24 hours during the initial launch. Not to mention extremely long queue times for many players. I think the only smooth launch was Warhammer online, but I didn't participate directly. From what I heard it went well.

Lets see what happens next with Darkfall.

Darkfall Surival Guide

I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, so head over to Stubb's Darkfall Survival Guide: 'How to get through your first few days with a minimum of dirtnaps.' It contains a lot of great information and Pro Tips to help you get started and out pking people as soon as possible. Definitely a must read especially if you haven't played the Beta.

"I will give them something they have never seen before"

Welcome to Evil Bastages - Chronicles of an Veteran MMORPG Guild in Darkfall Online.

In the epic film Gladiator, as Maximus prepares to fight in the collosseum he declares to Proximo, "I will give them something they have never seen before." Today, on the eve of the European launch of Darkfall Online I am establishing this blog to give you something you have never seen before. An in depth look into the world of Darkfall Online through the eyes of a successful online PvP guild, the Evil Bastages.

1) Who am I?
In the MMO world the handle I go by is Grimhawke. I started using the name in the AOL days playing DragonRealms online, a text-based MUD. Yes - I am a closet nerd. Surprisingly enough, the game still exists. Eventually one of my best friends introduced me to Ultima Online around 1997. At the start the two of us were complete newbs just trying to train our characters skills and kill some lich lords or something. His first character was WaRGoD, a dexer while I started Grimhawke a tamer mage. Gradually we got our skills GM'd, I started running around with a pair of Dragons named Hoi and Chubes and we got into the PvP scene on the UO Atlantic Server. The first real guild we joined was an Anti-PK guild called Lords of Krynn (LOK). It was a heavy RP "goodie" guild and that really didn't match my play style. As it turns out, the original founders of the Evil Bastages, Oakbow, Grey and Kaz were all former members of LOK who wanted to take advantage of the freedom UO allowed by PKing everyone. Around the time the faction system was released in 1998 I turned to my true colors and defected as well. So that was how I became a member of the Evil Bastages. And now here we are. It's been a decade and we're still going strong. The history of EB in itself deserves its own post, so keep an eye out for that one.

2) Why am I blogging?
Previous attempts at a real website for the guild have never been long lived. It's not that we can't do it (some of us do it for a living, myself not included) but generally we're just to busy killing in whatever game we're playing to do it. We've at least maintained very active guild forums since the guild was formed. Still, I've always wanted something more official than just forums to represent the face of the guild. Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that I started out majoring in CompSci in college, I ended up in Economics and Mathematics so I'm a very amateur web designer. With the proliferation of blogging, and Darkfall's EU launch right around the corner - I figure now is as good a time as any to bring EB into the Web 2.0. Plus the Darkfall Beta servers have barely been available the past few days.

3) What can you expect from this blog?
Disclaimer: I am not a blogger. This is my first blog. Results may vary. I don't even have that much time to play Darkfall so we'll see how much content I am able to produce here. This will definitely be a work in progress.

I do hope to post a history of the guild for the benefit of the community and our own members at some point. I will try share anecdotes and stories from our experiences in Darkfall Online, as well as make an effort to disseminate and comment on new info, patches, etc. I strongly dislike narcissism and idiocy so I will try to carry out the above as objectively, accurately and in as good taste as possible.

From time to time other Evil Bastages may make guest appearances as well. The other members of the guild are all experienced MMO vets and can offer some different perspectives. We'll have to break that in slowly though as some of them are real bastards! (e.g. killing each other) If it works out, it could become a regular thing.

4) How can you participate?
Feel free to leave comments, email me suggestions. I'll make an effort to leave things as raw and un-moderated as possible but I know how the internet can be. We'll just have to see how things play out.

You can always stop by our boards to say hello or rant about get killed.

Lastly, If you're playing Darkfall, please carry around lots of loot. We will be coming around to collect it shortly. Let's all hope that Darkfall Online is a success.