Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[General Article] Darkfall: Unholy Wars: Review In Progress #1
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Darkfall: Unholy Wars launched last week after several additional months of development. Promising to be hardcore and a true sandbox, players have been flocking to the title. Today we begin our review in progress series leading up to our final review in a few weeks. See what we discovered in our first few hours in the game before heading to the comments to tell us about yours.
Let’s start with the part that has been on my mind the most. Launch day. The game was scheduled to launch on 16th April. Indeed it did launch, a few setbacks were noted by Aventurine and communication was good between them and us: the community. Darkfall launched a few hours behind its original schedule, but what I was met with was persistent performance issues, crashes, incredibly slow download speeds and server closures. With that said, it wasn’t a good launch. I don’t think I’ve seen an MMO which has had a worse one, but when I was finally able to spend a good few hours with the game, I was pleasantly surprised.
Read more of George Dimmock's Darkfall: Unholy Wars - Review In Progress #1.
Comments
Great game I love it.
But every oe needs to remember they are a small dev team managing a very ambitious game design.Other than that for the seize of the dev team they are doing a great job.
"You are all going to poop yourselves." BillMurphy
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
a hardcore pvp sandbox with safe zones. is that a joke. also what are the hardcore pvpers doing hanging out in safe zones to gather crafting materials since they are so hardcore pvp. sounds to me like people dont truly want pvp at all times, just when it is convenient. come on adventurine remove the safe zones,
good article though, fair review I think listing the good with the bad but that part above just kind of stuck out to me. (no I dont play darkfall and not bashing the game, hope it succeeds and all that, but hardcore pvp game doesnt need safe zones imo)
Shadowbane and Ultima Online both had safezones, and were considered to be two of the most hardcore MMORPGs ever released.
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com
And overall bitter old man.
@George Dimmock: How does picking what feat/quest to do while walking around the gameworld makes it a sandbox?
Attempting to say the old game was better is a stretch. They got rid of it for a host of good reasons. The new game is so much better in so many areas, I cannot think of one thing I liked better in the old game.
Oh and for those who want the safe zones removed, are you going to triple or quadriple your subscription costs? That is what would be needed to keep the game solvent.
My impressions after a week of play
game is full of multiboxers for shared crafting accounts and p2win rmt traders otherwise i loved the crafting/gathering
if you were not multiboxing gatheres to supplement your characters equipment you were at a extreme disadvantage i expect this will kill the population to nothing but multiboxers over the first few weeks of the game as some will go and go and go gear poofing(death and durability loss) not very costly due to their boxed gatherers/crafters others will come to a realization of this like me and get turned me off the game.
pvp feels clunky and the skill invovles is just making the clunkiness and lag work for you better than the other guy to avoid/land more hits but im sure i would have grown to like it more had i been motivated to play more
when you get attacked in pvp its ususally by more peopel than you have when you pvp its with more people ganking xpers. Therefore you end up running almost every fight you are attacked and not getting challenged almsot every fight you enage really silly. again if i had found a rvr guild maybe this would have turned into more balanced enjoyable fights but i did not feel motivated to do so by the overall gameplay and experience it was hard to even communicate in the game with annoying ui elements like the chat system
another issue i had with pvp is half of my deaths ended up being from my game crashing and me comming back to a bindstone naked character nothing more frustrating than playing a full loot game that takes the control out of the players hands like this im confident i could hvae gotten away 90% of these deaths being a crafty scirmisher
The pve was basically just grind this wtih right spell or weapon type for this much time and move on to next. Grouping was only encouraged through small prowesse gains and only at certain player #s most spawns seemed to work best with 2 real players and 1 boxed player that would just sit int he camp to makes spawns faster which is even more p2win bullcrap. The feat system which was the easy way to get prowesse early on(while they are available as they are non-repeatable kill/gather quests for the most part) would only update on your killshots so you had to lose efficiency organizing killshots with teamates or just take seperate monsters alltogether.
However i only worked through to 16-17k prowese. Basicaly the entire time i thought why am i even required to do this? why can i just go fight players?
The treasure maps were awesome tho i loved doing those maybe my favorite part of the game you would fish these up double click them and work on making the green light blink faster until it became solid then you dug up your reward with a shovel.
overall my impression of the game from a new player to the darkfall series was a generally poor experience i was expecting better things from a pvp sandbox mmo.
Hang in there. Try and get in some sieges later, but use this time now to build your character. The game really shines when you are in vent with guildies, all grouped up and working towards a common goal.
Like EVE, Darkfall is a lonely game if your trying to make it on your own.
You are right about the treasure hunting being fun though. Last night, I went to a hag spawn to work on some feats, but the three people occupying the spawn killed me. When I respawned, a chaos chest was right beside the bindstone and when I looted it, there was a small treasure map inside. So while I was waiting for the hag spawn to be clear, I started fishing and got a medium treasure map. Anyways, got tired of waiting and guildies summoned me up to some grungocs and started working on those.
No other game is as exciting as Darkfall.
Fast paced twitch combat, completely player driven crafting, evolving economies, political intrigue, challenging PvE, interesting character development, and a beautiful world.
There is no other game like Darkfall.(Uzik ibnYaraq in game. Always willing to help.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/UzikAlJhamin
i did join a guild i wont say which one cause there were some cool people in it i dont want to shine a bad light on but thats where i witnissed and learneda bout much of the multiboxing/account sharing that goes on in the game also about every random perosn i grouped with at monster spawns would offer to bring their tgathering bot to increase spawn rate. really discusting
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
@Badaboom, Greymoor and Uzik:
As the most vocal fans of this game - how many accounts do you own or have access to in game?
Do you think having multiple accounts make the game more fun and makes it worth it?
I dont think you could call DF:UW a full on sandbox..
They put in safe zones to help appeal to a larger audience.
I have one account. I'm in a clan that has a dedicated crafter account. So most of the mats we get are all fed to that account. So I just have to go in to the bank and take the gear and weapon that I want, which is nice.
Multiple accounts could be beneficial if you are looking for more of a solo experience without the help of a guild so that you can be somewhat self sufficient. AV just announced today that the Market will be implemented very soon, so take their word for what it is worth. The market should connect crafters and buyers though, so that should be good.
If you have anyother questions, feel free to PM me.
arbacus,
most people use their ALTERNATE accounts, not bots, to make the game more enjoyable for them. I personally have two accounts because I DO NOT enjoy harvesting. I don't want to watch my character swing at a bush, rock, tree, or water all day long just so I can have gear. I would rather play 2 accounts and once and enjoy the combat of the game rather than spend 3 nights a week harvesting and watching movies. That's not fun for me. This is the reason most people use alternate accounts to gather with while playing their main account.
I don't understand how anyone could enjoy harvesting... it's so boring.
I doubt it was a bot, it was probably just an extra account they left on gathering whatever type of material they needed. Any game that has crafting or any sort of advantage to having two accounts people will do it. I remember playing Lineage 2 and grouping with people that would run 5 or 6 accounts at once to get every buff in the game that would benefit their class, if it's possible it will happen. It isn't just in Darkfall.
I really enjoy the idea of the game. I am completely willing to go the risks of full loot open world pvp , no hand holding mostly etc.
Even after all these years my favorite kind of gameplay is original EQ/harsh death penalties/danger/repurcussion etc type things.
Just makes games more fun for me.
My issue is this , with my more limited game time , I am still more than willing and prefer to have games take longer to level/craft/explore and so on , in fact I also prefer this.
But no longer have the time nor patience to fight bugs/gameplay issues/UI with less options than in 1999.
Many try and say the audience has moved on for these types of games , but my issue is I loved the concept and actual gamplay (when it worked ok) for the few days I played last week.
But I cannot give a pass on the fact that EQ at launch in 99 let me modify my chat more than this game (for one example.) And for another example (and well documented one) , when you create your character you might actually have to try 2 or 20 times to actually be able to type in the character name field.
It just had too many little and not so little bugs that added up to make it not worth my time.
I can handle the danger of being jumped , group battles , pve mixed with open world danger from PVP most all the time and so on , as said I prefer it.
I don't expect an mmorpg to be "bug free" , but this game currently just has too many issues.
I don't want to "fight the game" to play it in other words.
most guilds seem to be against botting but who needs to bot you just run the char up to a node and hit left click for the next 10 min then you look over sit him for 30 seconds move on to next node repeat and having "ALTERNATE" accounts is pay to win you are buying an advantage in a game where gathering is so imporant and simply done.
Also people would share their account info around so people would box them and gather with them while they were not playing equally rediculous.
pay2win? Lol dude...
So you are mad with the game couze someone can buy 2 acounts? ROFL
Say that the game is "just grind" and "p2w" is just lie... You dont know the mean of the word... Try hard dude.