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.

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.

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.

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.