Darkfall Release Information.

Darkfall Release Information (pricing, dates, pre-order, etc.)

Posts from Darkfall Closed Beta - Post 2

Are you having fun?

SentrySteve
Yeah, Darkfall is great fun if you play it in the right mindset. Set out in a small group with the intent of finding PvP and you'll probably have a blast. Do anything else, and the game is pretty shallow.

Ezion
Overall, I have to give this a QFT.

Some aspects of Darkfall are a blast, some are ok, and some are boring/downright frustrating.

Darkfall, as with any MMO, is a work in progress. It'll only get better, and it's got the basic technological setup to do it.

(If Darkfall becomes Trammel and you quote me on this, I'm going to have to kill you.)

emasame
he's right.
solo'ing is pretty boring and frustrating. if you go hunting with some buds it would be great fun though. i imagine it would be a little more difficult soloing once so many more people start playing come release.


Lachrymose
i agree 100%. going out with a group and doing pvp was the only time i really enjoyed myself. just the fact that you're doing largescale pvp is exciting. other than that though.. yeah, pretty shallow.

And to sum up.

Stigma
I'd have to say yes - I am having fun with Darkfall, but as it stands now I am very much doubting that it will be able to keep my interrest. Having actual FPS combat is such a huge lift to the game, but apart from that bit its just unfinished in so many areas.

The basic PvP is fun, even if its far from perfect, but to keep me playing its going to need to have way more than just one thing it does well - and right now I can't really see what that is.

The crafting is pretty bad. in complexity its about as simple as you can get it (lets be honest folks, it pales in comparison to any game with half decent crafting like EQ2) and is also grindy non-creative and non-interactive. Sorry, but clicking the "craft" button over and over dosnt count as interactivity... or fun. The economy that goes with it is also pretty much dead atm because of the above, and because there is no way to sell and buy properly. NPC merchants + maybye an ingame forum board for wanted ads would have solved this, but we currently have neither. Selling and buying is spamming racial chat and then hopefully getting a reply by someone who isnt halfway across the world. Finally the harvesting .... is fail. Sorry, but its probably the poorest, most unimmaginitive and grindy harvesting implementation Ive ever seen. its like they made this as a placeholder the first week and said "we'll replace that later with the good system" , but they never got around to rewamping it. Apart from the fact that you can harvest from allmost every normal tree and rock that is also the topography (wich does have a sort of "wow cool" factor to it) there is nothing good with harvesting.

The PvE is ... ok I guess? Way too many mobs have ten times the hitpoints they should have, and make my clicky finger fall off trying to kill them, and only 1% of Agon seems to be populated by anything. Apart from that the actual fighting of the mobs isn't bad. That part of it is actually more fun than pretty much any other MMORPG, but its not enough if thats all it can do well.

As for the rest that might give lasting appeal ... we ust dont know. None can comment on city building and sieging since noone has even come close to building a city up above and beyond a handful of basic buildings. I havent even seen walls in any city yet. The only thing I really can commend about regarding this is - Are they REALLY going to release the game with several of its core gameplay features like these totally untested except for possibly a handful of in-house people? That alone worries me.

Now, ALL of this I've taken in stride. I recognize a diamond in the rough when I see it. I said to myself - heck, even just a few more months would help this game a ton. Preferably more, but even just a few months would be great. Yet, just now we have had confirmed that 25'th feb is in fact the release date and it wont get pushed back. I have to say this news really really dropped me from the heights of optimism for this game to the abyss of depression. I just don't see how it can survive a launch at this stage. I was even so convinced they would never release it in this state that I was actually shocked and surprised when I heard the announcement about NDA drop and release info.

They will have a choice now:
- Keep the many broken and downright bad systems that make up the core of the game.
or
- Make, and keep making radical and totally game altering changes to the core game systems for months and probably even years after release, upsetting the majority of the players over and over in the process because the game rules keep changing.

Both are bad ideas and will leave many disillusioned. Most likely it will be a mix of the two, wich isn't any more satisfactory either.

Sorry, I'l go off into the corner to be depressed now...

-Stigma

Posts from Darkfall Closed Beta - Post 1

Disclaimer: I did not make this post and I have not tested the claims.

Posted by Homebrew:
Arrow Crafting UNPRACTICAL - Detailed Explanation

Since, I've always enjoyed archery, I decided to look into bowyer because it is quite needed to really level up archery high. I found bowyer to be faulty when it comes to crafting arrows and the economy (and since crafting arrows is half of the skill, that's a big deal). Right now it is not practical to make arrows. The output of arrows is nowhere near worth the input of time and resources. I did a timed test in order to figure out how bad it really is.

Before I start explaining I'll just list all of my current skills related to this test.

Sprint: 63.3
Rest: 67.2
Logging: 62.7
Mining: 65.6
Smelting: 42.0
Woodcutting: 42.6
Bowyer: 26.3 (this is strictly from making arrows only, have not begun to craft bows, this is from making over 2,000 arrows)


So my test is broken up into two intervals: gathering and crafting. There are many faults when it comes to gathering as well as crafting.

I had all required tools on me before I started this test. I went as quickly as possible, by sprinting when I changed location and only resting once between mining and logging.

1. Mining: I Mined one full node of metal at a success rate of 57.3%. 51 out of 89 attempts I received a resource. Now out of the 51 resources I got from the node only 38 of them were Iron ore. It took 89 casts in order to deplete the node. This took about 16 minutes.

It took one full stamina bar to empty the node, I then rested in order to gain back stamina so that I could then start getting the timber I needed. I then sprinted to the closest tree.

2. Logging: I mined one full node of timber at 77.27% success rate. Like the iron ore, I received 38 timber and 13 resin. It took 66 casts in order to deplete the node. This took about 12 minutes.

This left me with 35 timber and 35 iron ore to work with. It requires 5 timber to make 2 wood. It requires 5 iron ore to make 2 iron ingot. So, I was left with 3 extra materials of each for a later time.

After logging, I sprinted to the smelter which took a couple minutes, to turn the iron ore into ingots. This is a fairly quick task. It requires 5 iron ore to make two ingots. This took about one minute.

I then sprinted to the workbench to turn the timber into wood. This is like smelting and only took a little over a minute.

After I had 7 iron ingots and 7 wood I was finally ready to craft the arrows. I was already at the workbench where you use the Bowyer skill. It takes 1 wood, 1 iron ingot to create 10 arrows. Now, for every skill up to this one it is a 10 second cast (excluding gathering mastery skills). The arrows skill to cast takes 20 seconds. So this took over two minutes to turn the manufactured materials into arrows.

The end result: 130 arrows. (One failed)
The Duration to make: 43 minutes 12 seconds.


Now there are many factors as to why this is ridiculous. For starters, the cost of arrows to buy from npcs is 2gp per arrow. I could have spent 260gp and bought 130 arrows instead of spending 43 minutes to make them.

Also, players are frequently selling arrows 1:1. So technically, I could buy 130 arrows for 130gp instead of spending 43 minutes making them.

Another option would to be farm the arrows. In 43 minutes time I could easily get 130 arrows from farming goblins or gnolls. With this farming, I would make ample money off of weapons and coin drops as well, which could then go towards buying more arrows if I wanted to, thus making crafting arrows obsolete.

I could even just farm any mobs that don't drop arrows and still make more than enough money to buy 130 arrows.

Even pking is a more viable way to get arrows. The money income from pking is pretty high right now and will escalate greatly come release when the world is more full. It's be easier to go out and pk someone for their arrows and gear and sell it, then buy arrows from the npc.

So in conclusion, it is not viable to spent time and resources making arrows. It is better to put the time and materials into a different skill like weaponsmithing. It does not benefit the person whether they are crafting the arrows to use them or to sell them.

Also a note, making arrows to level up the Bowyer skill in order to make better bows is a completely different story. In that case, crafting arrows would serve the purpose of leveling up the skill as well to make bows. This thread is just explaining the practicality of crafting arrows in order to use or sell them.

Some of my personal thoughts on what needs to be changed to fix the problem.

First I think arrows don't cost enough from the npcs. I think their price should be raised to 3 or 4gp each. If players could trade arrows for more than 1gp each it would be more practical to spend time making them. It would also create a better economy, because players would rather buy cheaper arrows from crafters than pay 3-4gp from the vendor.

Also, the time it takes for the entire process is too long. This game has been attempting to not be a grindfest. But when in 43 minutes time you can only create 130 arrows? I don't think anyone will really disagree that this is too much of a grind. Many other crafting skills are in the same boat, this is just the one I decided to go ahead and test. I think at the very least the cast time for arrows should be reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. Another thing that could be done is instead of making 10 arrows at a time using 1 resource, maybe 20 arrows could be made at once.


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A side note on gathering: I haven't figured out what the success rate has in relation to gathering. As you know I have 62.7 logging and 65.6 mining. What you don't know is I also have 100 herb gathering and 85 mastery herb gathering. I haven't noticed a single change in the success rate from lvl 1 herb gathering to lvl 100. So my question is, what is the point of a higher herb gathering level? Also, it seems some skills have better success rates than others. Now I know one node from my test isn't enough testing to determine the success rates of gathering, but still 77% in logging and 57% in mining? The skills are both at about the same level.

Build 119 Notes

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New Patch

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A new patch has been released.

Fixes and updates in this patch includes:

• The bug that would freeze the GUI have been fixed
• Bug where text on the HUD would be clipped (like player names) after a resolution change has been fixed
• The bug where the chat box would get focus after pressing a hotkey for a window (e.g. the map) has been fixed
• Fix for a bug where you would get extra speed if you swam along the bottom
• Swim skill will now skill up again.
• Some bugged quests have been fixed
• Bug where you would lose footstep sounds after a respawn has been fixed
• Timed quests will now display their countdown timer
• Small graphics update to crafting window
• Sync issues have been worked through and fixed. The problem of players jumping around on your screen should be severely reduced. We need your help to verify this.
• More fixes has been done to the Clan and Journal window. If you still can't see them, please send us a bugreport with logs. (Also give it some time, since we are running in debug mode).
• Holes and inconsistencies in the world have been fixed
• Monster spawn rate has been increased and number of monsters in spawns has been increased.
• A.I. has been tweaked
• Changes to the chat system:
  • /tell has been enabled as an alias for /msg
  • /clan has been enabled as an alias for /say_clan
  • /officers has been enabled as an alias for /say_clan_officers
  • /party has been enabled as an alias for /say_party
  • Global chat has been disabled for players
  • /race has been enabled. This will send a chat message to all members of your race
  • /alliance has been enabled. This will send a chat message to all members of your racial alliance. (e.g. a human using it will send a message to Humans, Dwarves and Mirdains. An Ork using it will send a message to Orks and Mahirims. )
  • /calliance has been enabled. This will send a chat message to all Clans where both your clan and the other clan has declared each other as Allies.
• Changes to damage, consumption of reagents and more has occured in these spells:
• Blast in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Eldritch Sphere in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Heal Self in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Health to Mana in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Mana Missile in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Mana to Stamina in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Stamina to Health in Lesser Magic has been tweaked
• Flesh Curse in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Frailty in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Heal Other in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Infliction Shield in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Infliction Ward in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Missile Fury in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Rend in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Shrapnel in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Venom in Greater Magic has been tweaked
• Firebolt in Fire Magic has been tweaked
• Dragon Breath in Fire Magic has been tweaked
• Fireball in Fire Magic has been tweaked
• Inferno in Fire Magic has been tweaked
• Ball Lightning in Air Magic has been tweaked
• Acid Arrow in Earth Magic has been tweaked
• Icicle in Water Magic has been tweaked
• Disease in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Exhaust in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Insect Swarm in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Palsy in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Pestilence in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Sluggish in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Stupidity in Witchcraft Magic has been tweaked
• Some magic schools has had their charging effect tweaked.
• Updates to the world (Worldbuilding)
• Several fixes to rare client crashes.
• We turned off more heavy logging and verification on the client side. Do, however, bear in mind that we are still running servers + clients in debug mode.

Darkfall Report, Part 2

I have been in the Darkfall beta for a while now. Over a month, less than a year.
During that time I have put roughly 50 hours of game play time over various characters and I have decided that I won't be playing the game on release. This is just my personal feeling and the following is my opinion on the game and why I won't be playing it. I will try to leave out any critiques on things that I know are bugs or are planning on changing (such as multi-hits to turn rogue).


Things that I like about Darkfall:

• Huge world, I haven't explored even close to all of the areas of the game yet. (Maybe 30%) Some of the areas I have seen are just amazing.
  
• Graphics are ok, they aren't great, but you get used to them. Not as bad as some people would make them out to be.
• Crafting is a substantial part of the game and seems almost necessary.
• Combat feels like Oblivion or some other FPS fantasy game.
• Open PvP. No hand holding and no safe areas (kind of) is how it should be. Danger around every corner.
• Huge amount of skills and spells.
• You get a feeling that you are in a virtual world, not just a game.

Things that I dislike about Darkfall:

• It almost feels like real-time when you are playing. Nothing is sped up, everything you do takes a very long amount of time. This was fine back in the days of EQ when I had countless hours to play a video game, but today I have a family and a career.
  The free time that I do have I don't want to spend doing tedious, repetitive tasks like fishing or mining. The combat is also very slow paced. It is much better when in a group, but it's so easy to hit other people on accident a lot of more experienced players refuse to join PUGs.
  Joining a guild and adventuring with those people is your best way to go when the game is released.
• Server sync problems. Maybe it's just because there is no NA server and this problem will fix itself when there is one, but playing from Seattle I have a lot of issues where even if I am swinging through someone I will miss them, or I will watch my arrow go through someone. Then other times I will be facing the opposite direction and hit someone or my arrow won't be even close to someone running around and it will hit them.
  This can be very frustrating when I know I should have won a fight.
• Monsters spawn very slowly. This seems to have been sped up last patch but I haven't had a chance to do any thorough testing yet. Before the last patch though monster spawns were ridiculously slow.
• Not enough content. The game is really about PvP and GvG warfare. The content that I have experienced is sparse and pretty boring (read: NPC interactions).
• The game does not know what it wants to be when it comes to grouping. The mechanics of the game are very solo friendly. Skill based, non-targeted attacks, sparse loot, hard to target heal spells. All of these would lean toward a solo friendly game. Unfortunately when you actually are in the game it is much better to group, even though it can be very frustrating at times, because this way you have people to watch your back and you can grind mobs without worrying about getting an add and dying. If the game wants to be solo based they need to make monsters easier, if they want it to be group based they need to change it so you can't attack your group members and increase the loot drops.
  Right now the game just doesn't fit anywhere. Maybe that's their idea? If it is, good luck to Aventurine.

There you have it, a quick look at some of the likes and dislikes I have for Darkfall. This is in no way a complete or specific list, I was just thinking off the top of my head.

Darkfall Beta Leak, Videos

I have posted three videos on YouTube today. You can view the first one here.

A Beginner Guide for Testers

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Starting out in Darkfall

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A beginner’s guide for testers

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When you enter Darkfall for the first time, you will spawn in the starting village you selected in the character creator. All races have three starting villages each.

You spawn next to a guard tower, so you are reasonably safe here. The guard towers will fire at anyone entering its range with an evil or rogue alignment. Currently the damage of the guard towers are a little low, and it will be increased slightly over the next few weeks.

The interface

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The first thing you want to do is to arrange the interface to your liking, and maybe try out different video settings.

You bring up the GUI-mode by RIGHT-CLICKING your mouse. You close it again with another RIGHT-CLICK.

In your backpack you will have three different starting weapons – a club, a sword and an axe. You equip one of them by either double clicking it or dragging it to the weapon slot of your paperdoll. You will always respawn with these three weapons. They can not be sold, destroyed or lost.

Everything else on your character will be left on your grave when you die, and can be looted by anyone.

Always make sure to keep your bank vault well stocked with equipment or gold. You will never lose items in your bank vault.

To perform any attacks, you need to unsheathe your weapon. This is done by pressing R. Pressing R again will sheathe your weapon.

When your weapon is sheathed, you are in 1st person view. When your weapon is unsheathed (i.e. when you are in combat mode), your view changes to 3rd person view if you are holding a melee weapon, and stays in 1st person (but with hands and weapon visible) if you are using a ranged weapon, such as a bow or a magic staff to cast spells.

To cast a spell you need a staff. You can either find a staff on a monster, or buy it from an NPC vendor.

Most active skills in Darkfall follow the load and fire principle. You select the skill of spell you want to perform (drag the ones you use more often to the hotbar for convenience), then press the LEFT mouse-button to perform the action.

Getting quests

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Next to the bindstone where you spawn for the first time, is an NPC Councelor.

You interact with all NPCs, bank vaults, mail boxes, gravestones, ships, mounts, cannons etc. by pressing the F (use) button.

Remember to sheathe your weapon (press R) before you interact.

When you talk to the Councelor, he will have tabs for buying, selling and quests. Pick the quest tab and accept all quests he is offering.

Once you have gotten the quest to kill goblins, an indicator on your minimap will show where some of the closest goblin camps are.

Monsters

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Monsters in Darkfall are tough. Try to fight one monster at a time if possible, and always watch your stamina and hitpoints. If you are in trouble, RUN.

Sprinting

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You can run faster by pressing LEFT SHIFT to sprint. Sprinting will drain your stamina, so keep an eye on your stamina bar. Getting attacked by a monster or player with almost no stamina is not good.

Going Rogue

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When you target/look at another player, if his name is in blue, he has a positive alignment to you. Attacking him will make you a Rogue. When you are in Rogue-mode, your name will appear in brown to other players, and they can kill you with no penalties. If you kill a blue player, your alignment will drop, and if it drops enough you will turn red to other players, and they will be rewarded with positive alignment for killing you.

Red players will be auto-attacked by guard towers.

Looting a grave

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To loot a grave, sheathe your weapon (press R), target the grave and press use (F) to open it. Items can now be dragged from the grave to your backpack.

Resting

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To rest, sheathe your weapon (press R), then use the Rest skill (which you can drag to the hotbar from the skills list). This does NOT make you rest yet, it simply loads the skill. Left click to start resting. A ‘zzz’ icon will appear at the top of the screen and you will see your character in 3rd person view, sitting down. You can mouselook and arrange your bags etc. without breaking out of rest.
To stop resting, use the Jump key (space by default).

If you have any food, eating before you rest will increase the recovery rate.

Chatting

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/say (default) - talk to people in your immediate vicinity
/say_global - talk to everyone on the server. This is a temporary chat command that will be removed before release
/msg firstname lastname - sends a private message to another player. The message will show up in its own tab, and by switching to this tab you open a private conversation with each other.

If you are a veteran gamer you should now be ready to start, otherwise keep reading!

FIRST STEPS IN DARKFALL – A WALKTHROUGH

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Does it sound all a bit too much to learn? It’s actually quite easy once you get used to it. Let’s bring all this information together with a short walkthrough.

Step 1 – Initial preparations
You have just created your character, and have appeared just outside the gate of the village that you chose as starter location. You will see a clanstone (i.e. bindpoint) and the NPC that gives the starter quests.

Under the System messagebox there is a ‘Chat’ button. Click on it to open the public chat bar. If you want to type a message to all, type /say_global then your message. If you want to start a private conversation, type /msg then the player’s name and last name followed by your message

You don’t see your character yet (since you aren’t in combat mode). Right click. This brings up the utility windows, such as paperdoll, backpack, etc. A links menu on the top left allows you to access options, journal, minimap, etc. Click now on minimap to open it, if it’s not open already in the top right corner. Leave it there, it will be handy shortly to find where the monsters are.

Click on Skills, and under general skills find ‘Rest’. Drag it to the ‘0’ (zero) slot of the hotbar (you’ll see how to use it in a moment). Equip one of the 3 starter weapons by dragging it from the backpack to your paperdoll.

Right click again – the utility windows will disappear. Press R to unsheathe your weapon. Now you can see your character!

Step 2 – Moving around
Time to familiarise yourself with the basic movement keys:

W,S,A,D move you forward, back, left, right
Space – Jump
Left shift – Sprint (it consumes stamina but you run much faster)
C – crouch (npcs have more trouble spotting you)

Remember that you can remap these and all other keys in Options, which is an item of the menu that you can see when you right click.

Step 3 – Get the starter quests
Run up to the NPC. To interact with him, you must first sheathe your weapon, if you are in combat mode (press R to sheathe/unsheathe).
Press F to interact with the guy. You will see a window where the last tab is Quests. Go to that tab and take the two quests available.
You will now see on the minimap (that you opened in step 1) the locations of the nearest goblins. Start running there.

Step 4 –Combat
Unsheathe your weapon (press R - you’ll now be in 3rd person view) and left click to hit your target. Note that you do NOT autotarget or lock target. You have to actually be facing towards your enemy and be aiming at it/her/him in order to hit. Keep an eye on your stamina bar so that you always have enough to sprint away if you are in too much trouble.

Step 5 – Loot
Let’s assume that you defeated your enemy. After a few moments, a tombstone will appear instead of its body. Sheathe your weapon (press R), then target the tombstone and press F to use it. Drag its contents to your backpack.

Step 6 – Rest
Walk out of the way of the spawn to avoid surprises, then sheathe your weapon if you were in combat mode (press R). Press 0 (we had dragged the Rest skill to this slot in step 1). Rest is now loaded, as you can see by the small campfire icon under the hotbar. To start resting, left click. You will see your character sitting down. When your life and stamina bars are full, press space to jump up.

Congratulations, you’ve learned the ropes of getting by in Darkfall, and are now ready to discover more by yourself, such as how to use magic, crafting, archery, and so on. If you are ever in doubt on how to do something, don’t forget to ask in general chat. People are happy to help and there’s usually a Dev at hand to answer most questions.

Blog Comments Fixed

I noticed today that the comments on the blog were not working. I fixed the issue and anyone that wants to can post comments now!

Darkfall Beta Patch Notes

Build 117 Notes - 2/06/09

A new patch has been released.

Fixes and updates in this patch includes:

• An exploit where a player could sprint for a very long time has been fixed
• Gold requirement for crafting Repair Shards has been removed
• All monsters was dumbed down as a test in the last patch. This has been reversed.
• Many monsters will now respawn faster.
• Some of the lag problems that some players experienced have been fixed
• Some rare client crashes have been fixed.
• Several world building updates
• More monster loot has been added.

Build 116 Notes - 2/05/09

A new patch has been released.

This is mainly a build to fix some harvesting issues that was introduced in build 115.

In addition this has been fixed:

• Number of reagents for casting Eldritch Sphere in Lesser Magic has been reduced
• Spell Description for Lay On Hands has been updated.
• Heavy duty logging has been reduced more to prevent FPS drop.

Build 115 Notes - 2/05/09

A new patch has been released.
This is mainly to address some server issues, but a couple of other things managed to get in.

Fixes and updates in this patch includes:

• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been fixed so you can't parry it.
• Lightning Bolt in Air Magic has been tweaked
• Run skill has been fixed so it skills up much faster
• You can now skill up in crouch, so that you can sneak up on your enemies at a faster pace.
• Block/Parry will now skill up a bit faster
• If there are any errors when starting the game, they should all be reported back to you.
• The problem some testers experienced with stuttering should now be much better. (We are doing some heavy duty logging on the client to catch the last few remaining client side bugs)
• A transparency slider has been added to all GUI windows, so that you can choose transparency level of each individual window.
• Updates to the world

Please note:
We have increased the hitpoints of all Clan Structures, so for the people who have built Clan Cities this will make them appear damaged.

Darkfall Beta Leak Report, Part 1

Darkfall Report. Part 1.

First login.

The thing that I noticed when I logged into Darkfall for the first time was that the graphics were actually pretty good. They weren't great, and I don't like the art direction, but the actual graphic quality is decent.

The thing that I didn't like right away was that all of the races look like caricatures of player models. Everything is oversized and ugly. If the rest of the game world was done in this oversized art style it would make sense, but since it's just the character models. They look out of place.

One other visual complaint that I have is the fact that when models are in front of each other they get this black outline around them. You can see what I mean in the screenshot to the right.



So I created my character and logged in.

After the game loaded I tried to look around but mouse look was so laggy that I had to adjust my settings before I could even start playing. Pressing mouse2 brings up the menu and a mouse cursor so you can click on the options. Clicking mouse2 again goes back to the default crosshair view.

Ok, so "Smooth mouse look" is on by default. That would explain the laggy feeling. Nope, still lagging, but not as bad. Next thing that I did was turn down the graphics settings. I have a Quad Core Intel processor and an 8800 GT video card. Not top of the line, but I haven't had any issues running Lord of the Rings at almost full settings and Darkfall's graphics are subpar to LOTRO. So this surprised me.

Once I got the graphics optimized I had to fix the keybindings. The default setup is... odd. Ok, now that that's done let's explore.
I equipped my leaf blade and started runni... er... walking around town. What's this? No running?

*Checks keybindings*

Ah. Ok, there's a sprint button. Holding down the sprint button makes you run faster. From what I could tell it doesn't really lower your stamina much, if at all, unless you are fighting, so that's good, I suppose. It's kind of a pain in the neck holding down a button all the time though.

So I ran around town a little bit, checked out the merchants. Lots of potential equipment to purchase, but I have no gold right now. Hey look, there's someone sitting on the ground! I know that there are guard towers in the starting towns so I figure I am going to die when I attack this guy, but what the hell, I'd like to see what happens. I sneak up behind the person and stick my sword into his back. As soon as I did that the guard towers started shooting laser beams. Really? Laser beams? After a few shots I fall unconscious and then I lost connection to the server.

When I logged back in I was at 100% health so I ventured off into the wilderness to find something / someone to kill.

(Sorry I don't have any screenshots of me fighting right now, I was trying to get some tonight but the game kept disconnecting me.)

After literally 10 minutes of running around I find 2 guys killing a goblin. I guess this is a goblin camp so I wait around for respawn. No respawn for 5 minutes so I ventured off over a nearby hill. Here I found some trolls. Or, more accurately, some trolls found me. I manage to kill one and try to run away from the 2nd. Luckily I still have a little bit of stamina left and am able to sprint away.

Now I'm just standing near a tree waiting for my health to recover. Nothing is happening. I assume there's a rest button or skill so I go looking through the skill list. Bingo, "Rest".
I drag the rest skill into the hotbar, click the corresponding number, click mouse1 and voila I'm resting. Supposedly you are very vulnerable in this mode so I was constantly looking around me to make sure no one was close.

But wait, nothing is happening still. It's been about 10 seconds and I still haven't regained any... oh.. wait. I think I just saw a microscopic sliver of health regenerate. Let me wait a few more seconds. Yep, it's regenerating all right.

A good 2 minutes later I'm about 90% full on health and stamina so I get up and go back to the troll area. I loot the gravestone (what, no corpse?) of the troll and get 18 gold. Wow. Some of the weapons I saw were hundreds of gold. Are you kidding me? So I go find another troll and engage it. Everything is going good until it's about to die. The troll suddenly turns and takes of running, so I chase after it. I manage to catch up to it by sprinting up almost all of my stamina. I just have enough for a few hits to kill it. I'm currently about 50% health and 0% stamina. As I'm looting the gravestone another troll comes out of nowhere and starts bashing me with his fists.

Oh yea, another thing. I haven't seen any monsters use weapons yet, but they all have weapons when they die.

Anyway, I can't do anything. I'm completely out of stamina so it kills me. I lie on the ground dying for a few minutes and then someone comes along and revives me. "Thanks!" I say.

Back to resting. 5 minutes later I'm full on health and stamina. So, right now I have been logged into the game for almost a hour and I have made 18 gold.

That was my first day. I was pretty bored at this point so I logged off.

My thoughts:

The game is slow. I mean sssllllooooowwwwww. Everything in the game feels like a grind.
Looking for monsters takes a long time, fighting takes a long time. The game is heavily group focused (it has to be, it's next to impossible to solo anything) but I could not find an easy way to start a group or to find members. It also strikes me as odd that a seemingly group focused game has group friendly fire.

Darkfall has a very old school MMO feel to it. I don't mean that in a good way. You get thrown into the game with no direction at all and just kind of fumble around until you can figure some things out. UO it definitely is not. First off, in UO you could start your character with at least 1 decent skill and two ok skills and earn enough gold by yourself the first hour to at least afford a GM katana and some GM leather armor from a local player merchant.

At the rate I was going it was going to be 7-8 hours of game time to even buy an upgraded weapon. Hardly the disposable equipment the game was supposed to have. But, of course, I'm still a noob and it very well might get easier as I start to gain skills. These are just my first impressions of the game.

I didn't really have fun the whole time I was logged in. Maybe Darkfall isn't going to be the game for me but I will continue to make an attempt at least to continue these blog entries.

First Post

I just got everything set up for my blog. I will start posting some leaks from the Darkfall beta soon.