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Darkfall: Rise of Agon Awarded Licensing for Development - MMORPG.com News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Darkfall: Rise of Agon Awarded Licensing for Development - MMORPG.com News
Big Picture Games has entered into an agreement with Aventurine Studios to continue development on its version of Darkfall: Rise of Agon. Alpha testing is expected to begin in Q1 2016.
Comments
So I guess we can expect payed alpha/beta, founder packs etc...the usual 2 bit scams.
Good luck with that.
they are relaunching the 2012 version of dfo.. which is a working version of dfo
They call it alpha because they wanne add content to the game ( the new content )
Secondly, this trend of charging for alpha testing is very new. For 15 years prior to that, MMOs were being developed without charging for alpha/beta. So tell me, what has magically happened since then that makes it mandatory now to charge for alpha/beta? Increased development costs? Investors only interested in WoW clones? Ok that might be true for games developed from scratch but again, not for Darkfall.
What's going on here IMO is these people are surfing the payed alpha wave in hopes that nobody will realize there's absolutely no justification for it in this particular case.
Welcome to mmorpg.com. were facts are really rare and speculation helds the upper hand
"Never leave money on the table"
Paid alpha and beta access exists for one good reason: people are obviously willing to pay for it. Why give something away for free if you could sell it and make money ?
However I suggest you are also wide of the mark for a couple of other reasons as well.
1. When Darkfall - the original - first launched one of the biggest technical issue it had was its payment system. Adventurine had contracted it out to third party "specialists" who had messed up resulting in "issues". Adventurine took over themselves, implemented a new system that worked etc. but it was an issue. Moral: companies need to be concerned about every aspect of their games.
2. When Darkfall - again the original - first launched the biggest problem they had was money; Adventurine didn't have any. They were a tiny, tiny company and they couldn't afford lots of servers. And in the run up to launch there were 250k or 500k people or whatever all wanting to log on and try the game.
One of the big issues at the time were games launching and people being in loggin queues: your estimated loggin time is 24 - and worse - messages. Funcom did a solid job with AoC arranging for additional capacity in advance - and warning investors that if they brought it on line and subsequently closed the servers they would take a $1.5M (or was it $5M) profit hit. They ended up taking the hit but people could log in. EA did an excellent job with SWTOR launching with 200 servers and quickly bringing on line an extra 40.
AS I said Adventurine were tiny. 18 people was it at the time was it; small anyway. With an unknown product - so no hope of a big bank loan! Not only that a full loot PvP niche mmo - which most people wouldn't play as soon as what that meant hit home. Interested - sure; but once the reality struck they would be gone.
They decided in the end they could afford 1 server - initial capacity 10k (subsequently increased) I think (although the loggin server wasn't able to handle that on day 1). As menetioned the norm at the time was to sell lots of copies and let people sit in queues. What Adventurine did was limit sales. So people who bought the game could play. Of course that meant that lots of people couldn't buy the game and duly posted that Adventurine sucked etc. That was better than the alternative though imo. And that philosophy has continued. Moral: one thing Adventurine havent't engaged in it is scams. (Which, coupled with their small size, has made it hard in so many ways over the years.)
The sad thing is that this is simply a "re-launch". Not a game that has been on the list for years and years. And it will benefit from some hype and publicity. We need solid games.
Anyways, I don't mean to troll this thread. If DF is getting some new life injected into it, it's a good thing, I liked that game.
I'm just saying that in most cases, there's absolutely no justification for asking for money before a game is released. Unless we're talking about an indie studio developing a game from scratch (ie Albion Online, Camelot Unchained etc...), then yes it does make sense and I gladly contribute if I'm interested in the game.
Nothing on the market is different but Darkfall.
Archage, Black Desert, Blade and Soul, Tera, Ect are just WoW with a altered targetting hub (Not really twitch) when you remove that "UI Effect/Graphic" you have just another WoW clone, Everything outside of that box are just direct WoW clones with no alteration.
Bottom line Id rather dump cash into a maybe seeing as its the only unique game on the market (in the near future) so id rather "waste" money on a product i will enjoy that is different and cutting edge, rather then shoveling more cash to these games that are just blatant copys of WoW with no backbone, longevity, Inspiration, or soul at all.
so no your not making any sense yet again..
Do some research first
Time to dust off and do a little maintenance on my old DF rig that hasn't even been booted up since I last logged off of the game. Can't fucking wait!
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Even the original by Aventurine was a near completed game,imo they likely did VERY little to the game after acquiring it because aside from a generated world i saw VERY little in the game as far as content and assets go.
Will have to wait and see what this new team will do with the game,i am guessing not much.Everyone sees an easy way into the gaming market by acquiring a game the way Aventurine did.Bandwidth costs are small,if team is small,overhead is small,similar to CU they need very few players to make a living off this.
Would be nice to see if it is much more than the original but i would not hold my breathe assuming so.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I sent one the more we request i guess the faster they will build it, Hopefully they attach a forum to it also.
But you're right, since most gamers are clueless apathetic tools that don't even realize they're getting shafted, why not take advantage of it?