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Darkfall Beta Leaker.
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Well, the last week or so has brought about some massive changes. Mostly cosmetic and balancing but the results are impressive nonetheless.
I swear the graphics have improved dramatically, but some friends who were a bit more optimistic about it all to begin with say it has always looked like it does now. At the very least though, the lighting and ambient artwork have been bumped up several notches and gives everything a very pronounced and dramatic look to it. It is of course possible it's just my brain getting used to the appearance of everything but the fact is; it looks alot better now than it did in the begining, for whatever reason.
The UI has been polished up a bit and there is now a tool-tip when you log in for the first time (or until you turn it off) which runs you through the basics. Honestly, this makes a world of difference as I had a pretty good idea of what to expect when I first started and even I was confused with some elements for a while.
Staves and weapons seem to have been finally sorted out: there was no staff in the game greater than rank 0 which was giving terrible results to peoples tests of magical damage. As it stands now, magic is a very formidable weapon even from the start and gets better very quick. The scope of the magic system is immense and I think it's safe to say that no player will be able to completely avoid it regardless of their play-style.
That said, melee is still pretty awful, at least by comparison. It has had some tweaks, but at the moment there are only 4 active skills for each weapon type and as far as I know they are unlocked at 25/50/75/100 skill respectively. Considering the skill-up system is expected to scale exponentially, it could be a few days of played time before people start to see decent results. Even then, the results are significantly less interesting than what is available with magic.
Archery definitely appeals to me, however, although there are some nice overlaps between magic and archery the fact remains that the actual archery skill system is fairly limited too. Most of the unlockable skills and upgrades provide increased damage per shot and increased fire rate. Again with very little in the way of "shot-skills". Still, there is nothing quite as satisfying as chasing down someone as they weave away from you, running from cover to cover; only to land the final killing blow from a crazy long shot from miles behind
A guildie managed to get a mount today and was showing it off to me. I must admit they are fantastic fun. They look quite well drawn and while the human horse is apparently missing some animations it doesnt really affect the joy of galloping around in your pimp armour
Only one-handed weapons are usuable while mounted and only from the right-hand side (as thats the side the weapon is wielded in). There are some exceptions to this, including a frontal kick from the mount when it's stationary and a rear one too. They seem to die really fast and it's impossible to see the health of the rider while he's mounted but you can damage and even kill him while he is riding about the place. There is meant to be more armoured and faster mounts, but I've yet to see them.
They are a precious commodity though, not because they are rare (although they are at the moment) or expensive, I figure a newbie player could have a mount in a few hours if he was so inclined. But the fact is, everyone wants one. If you die with it in your bag, it's going to be looted. If it's killed while you gallop away, you need another one. Hell, if you dismount near other players, someone can just jump on it without any formal training and ride off with your investment
Which brings me to my first PvP story
My guildies and I foolishly bound to a wilderness bind stone half-way between the orc and human area. Simply to make ganking easier. Well, some of the others had been fully looted later that night so when I got back on the next day half the guild were miles south trying to find some Alfar to kill and loot.
Me and another decided we'd head down to them but with no bank nearby to lodge our decent gear, I was a little wary (read: jumpy). Well, litteraly 5 minutes from the bind stone in the newbie city the other guy heard the sound of combat coming from a known NPC spawn near the town. The guy was red from some human ganking the night before and decided he'd go have a look (I know, crazy right?) We get there and find another one of our guildies and cackled evilly and decided to go scare the shít out of him. So my red guildy runs right into the spawn and the blue guildy, naturally, turns tail and runs his tiny little legs off. Then I come running over the hill and I know he's getting freaked out as he turns and runs from me (even though I'm blue). Me and the red guy are on vent, laughing our asses off.
My blue guildy and I face off to one another and I'm wondering how long it'll take to click with him, when I hear combat behind and turn around to find my red friend being ganked by 3 others.
Mousing over them I see them as blue, so figure they are humans and start dancing around them as a subtle warning to stop messing with my guild-mate or I'd fúck their shít up
But they keep attacking and then started hitting me. I'm trying to avoid and am totally confused by why they havent gone grey to me :S I ask on vent if we are at war with them and my red guildie yells "They're orcs!". I can only presume he took his finger off the transmit key before he finished with some obscenities.
I finally realise I'm actually in danger of dying here so turn tail to run to the guard towers. I'm weaving left and right so much that I swear I left a basket or two on the trail behind me, although maybe that was my lunch
The orc chasing me finally finishes me just as I get in range of the guard tower. My blue friend finally joins vent and starts asking "WTF was going on". My red guildie died too and both of us release... miles back at the bindstone.
My blue friend looted us both and there was no real harm of it all, really exciting and perhaps a little frustrating due to the UI not making racial enemies red but the race is shown in another box, it's just not immediately obvious.
My red friend and I decided to head back down again and try once more, ganking a random naked orc along the way and we get to just before the newbie town once more. Lo and behold, my red guildie hears some more fighting and wants to head over to investigate. I'm pretty pissed about walking the same trek twice but I'm even more pissed about dying and not even fighting back. Plus I'm naked, so whats the harm
We headed towards the sounds of fighting and find some boring blue humans fighting some goblin npcs. Only, they arent NPCs but a band of 4 orcs and an alfar and they spotted us!
My red guildie who was mostly focusing on casting was in his element, naked but with a newb staff and spells can still do decent damage when they skill up a bit, so he happily jumped into the fight.
I whipped out my newb polearm and followed some other humans around that were chasing an orc. We managed to kill him and I stopped and looted almost everything he had, getting myself fairly well geared in the process. When I looked up however, it was to the faces of 3 unhappy orcs but they werent attacking me. Two were attacking another orc and in fact were gone grey
Once the lone orc mounted though, the reasons became immediately clear. The poor guy got about 5 steps though before he was knocked off the mount; incapacitated. The other too ganked him quickly. I contemplated running over and trying to ninja the mount or some other goodies, but figured once the orcs noticed me I wouldnt have much chance of getting away.
It was shortly after that that some other guildies appeared and we had some interesting fights. Including me running around a tree for about 5 minutes with about 5% hp screaming my head off in vent that I was about to die and to get ready to loot me!
Eventually I did die and had to make the stupidly long walk, alone, for the 3rd time. But I tell you, it was all a helluva lot of fun and I'm really not doing it justice. We spent the 10 minutes it took me to get back to the fight, laughing and talking about the whole experience.
I'm still not sure what happened with the orcs. It's possible they came hunting together until 2 of them realised that the other 1 had a mount and decided to gank him for it or if it was just different groups crossing paths but it was amusing to watch all the same Orks coming into the human area to kill one another over a mount is certainly near the top of the list for "Most Ironic in-game moment of 2009".
And today, a guildie and myself logged on to find that we were surrounded by 7 guild-members of some random guild called Aesir that we were apparently at war with. This means that any guildmember can attack a member of the opposing guild, anywhere without repurcussions. Guard towers do not attack, there is no rogue status and there is no racial penalty. Personally I thought it was only useful for ganking crafters/traders in town so that you can loot their stuff without penalty, until this whole affair
We quickly ran to the bank to deposit as much of our gear as we could before we got horribly raped by a bunch of rabid noobs with weapons you wouldnt even hit your kids with.
We managed to bank some of the gear and died horribly. After some naked fighting and what I like to call "grey chicken" (basically attacking someone and then dancing among innocent bystanders in the hopes of making the other guy go rogue and die horribly to the guards) they ran off and we decided to go farm some reagents for leveling our magic skills.
About 3 minutes out of the newbie town, I decided that the default ctrl key for transmit on vent was awful and needed to be changed, as it is the in-game walk key and makes for some difficult moments when trying to communicate in PvP while simultaneously trying not to be smacked in the face by the aforementioned rabid noobs.
So I alt-tabbed out to change the key; only to hear over vent that there was a group heading towards us. I tabbed back and interestingly enough, our rabid noob fan-club had followed us or coincidentally went the same way. A group of six form and we two hid behind a tree. When it looked like they might not want to fight, we fired some mana missiles at them from cover and they proceed to approach, eyes flaming with equal parts noobness and vengeance.
What proceeded was what I can only describe as a clash of titanic magnitude. Myself and my guildie were dancing (I dont literally mean dancing, I mean it as a euphemism for avoiding blows from noobs while simultaneously hitting them, repeatedly, hard, with our massive e-peens; just in case that wasnt immediately obvious) around the Aesir guild and teaching them the usuage and difference between, the horizontal and vertical attacks. When they used horizontal swings, we would run around their guildmates causing them to hit one another. When they would switch to vertical, we would just dodge their blows and use a horizontal attack.
In the end, we two died although mostly because two more Aesir guildmembers appeared over the horizon and began shooting arrows into our back and mana missiles. They began reviving their fallen who would jump up with ~3% health only to be cut back down.
In the end, we had a collective total of 8 kills to their 2. A testament to the dangers of rabid noobism more than our skill, but I was still pretty satisfied with the result, nonetheless.
Finally, one more PvP tale; if you can call it that
Our guildmaster logged on shortly after the Aesir incident and asked if we wanted to join him in searching for some "Black Knight" NPCs, which were rumoured to drop plate armour.
After about 15 minutes travel time, including the discovery of what I can only describe as an "automated ferry", we came across a dwarf and a human from a guild called Hyperion. I'd heard of them from the forums and believed them to be decent guys albeit with a large guildmember list behind them.
We felt a bit lost so our GM asked for directions and the human offered to lead us to them, though he confessed to being drunk.
We laughed on vent about how funny it would be if when we got there his guildies appeared and they ganked us but when we found the Black Knights that fear vanished.
We said our thanks and proceeded to engage the black knights with one of us "tanking" by using the parry skill to reduce all incoming damage. Unfortunately this drains stamina quite quickly so when 3 of our human guide's guildmates appeared over the horizon and proceeded to steam-roll us, our "tank" was the first and only casuality.
Anyways, again. I'd say the game is looking more and more ready for launch. If I had my way, I'd wait another month - maybe two. But by the speed at which the content patches are coming out, I'd almost go so far as to believe when they say that all of the content is finished, it's just waiting to be implemented for testing.0 -
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NDA was lifted today. Pre-orders to start in a few days. It's definitely happening this timeShadowHearth wrote: »Ivan, if you are not bullsh*ting i will be the moust happiest person in the world.
Btw your own opinion, will it hit stores this month? or beta still not finished?
Not my video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRBX7WnHprc
Give you a decent idea.
Graphics are turned down dramatically to increase FPS, I can only assume... they are kinda noobs too, so not a fair indication but will give you a decent idea until I post my videos tomorrow 0 -
NDA was lifted today. Pre-orders to start in a few days. It's definitely happening this time
Not my video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRBX7WnHprc
Give you a decent idea.
Graphics are turned down dramatically to increase FPS, I can only assume... they are kinda noobs too, so not a fair indication but will give you a decent idea until I post my videos tomorrow
Lifted? HOLY CRAP! Btw do they really have only one server at launch? btw can you buy pay and download a client? not pre order in shop? I guess Gamestop wount have it...0 -
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Yeah, they said they will most likely only have 1 server at launch and a reasonably small maximum amount of copies available for pre-order. When they are gone they'll sell more on launch day and every few days after that as they upgrade their capacity.
It's not available in stores afaik, certainly at least not Irish ones. But their pre-order system will be a digital download service so it shouldnt be an issue.
I think it will most likely only be available to pre-order directly from Aventurine. Keep an eye on their site; www.darkfallonline.com and check out the forums and news section regularly if you are really hoping to get in for launch 0 -
Preliminary Pre-Order is up:
https://www.darkfallonline.com/accounts/f/default.php
You need to create an account first an wait for an activation code but after that you should be able to pre-order. Good luck 0 -
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ShadowHearth wrote: »Ivan, if you are not bullsh*ting i will be the moust happiest person in the world.
Btw your own opinion, will it hit stores this month? or beta still not finished?
IMO, it aint done yet but it IS playable.
Sounds are ****.
Graphicy errors happen often... I mean like glitchy sprites and stuff.
A.I. will call for help and dodge your shots etc etc but it can still be trapped and read like a book
I've personally discovered a few exploits I'd consider to be major. I've reported them a while ago and they still havent been fixed.
Its lacking a lot of "fluff" too. Thats just fluff though so I couldnt be bothered atm.
Overall though, its very stable and amazing fun.
Reminds me so much of my early UO days.
Some ****ing ******s in a guild called Tempest something or whatever somehow bugged me aand a guildmate out. I couldnt move because it was as if my char was stuck in crouch, I had to mash the movement keys in order to keep moving rather than hold the keys to move a few steps and stop.
Then one of them was walking backwards at sprint speed shooting arrows...
I dont feel the game is really ready for release but the chances of the release hurting or helping the game seem to be 50/50.0 -
I've come across that error too, has nothing to do with anybody else it just seems to happen. No idea what causes it though. And yeah, Tempest are a bunch of bitches
Whats your name btw, I've probably crossed your path at some stage.0 -
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