So Darkfall is having some troubles launching. I think this was predicted. (Not a hard prediction to make.)
This dude has a real need to pick on Adventurine about it. The best theory is that it’s payback for all those times he was ganked in UO.
Quoting the Lum …
But now, it’s shipped. And as Tasos and the other Aventurine developers are about to discover, things change when you go live. The wolves have teeth, and they’re going to be looking for soft necks.
It’s almost like he believes that if Darkfall fails, he becomes a better person. I guess Lum has something in common with Darkfall’s PK community. 
Admittedly, the Darkfall community is a peachy bunch. Lum links an hilarious video. The author (of the video, not Lum) is either developmentally delayed or brilliant. I’m not sure which.
Darkfall is the continuation (or possibly inception … it started that long ago) of a series of small underfunded inexperienced companies attempting to build the holy MMO jesus: a dynamic environment where player actions and skill matter. Like UO-pre-trammel, Shadowbane and ‘Dark and Light’ many attempts have failed. But the goal is worthy.
Keen and Graev have an early review up. There’s a great quote in the post …
[The] “I know you can kill me if you want to” atmosphere has created this sense of dire realism. Stepping outside the newbie town and running 100 yards feels like an epic journey because I truly do not know what waits for me behind the next tree. If you die, you lose it all.
I’d love to at least occasionally experience that in a game. It’s been a long time. In LotRO, my current MMO, there’s never any tension. At most, when approaching a new situation, you wonder if you’ll succeed the first time. If you die there’s only a mild sense of annoyance that the repair bill will be higher than usual.
Sadly, I think Darkfall and its community are in for many months of grief. Grief while the players for whom this game was not meant, figure that out, stop playing and, sorry to say, stop whining. But grief also as Adventurine fixes many bugs and exploits that should not have been there on launch day.
The video above (and I don’t know if it’s true) indicates that you can escape death by logging out. That problem was identified and fixed in other online games a decade ago. A comment at Lum’s claims other problems …
If you are using a G15 keyboard, all you need to do is bind these 3 things to one key to jump around and kill people without them having a chance.
1. bind sheathe weapon
2. bind the command /stuck
3. bind unsheathe weaponSince there is no timer or actually requirement to use the /stuck command, it instantly transports your character several feet away.
Where there are two obvious exploits, there are doubtless countless more.
I’ll wait a bit for the wrinkles to get ironed out (and for them to fix their ordering processes). Hopefully the game will survive long enough for me to give it a try.
By Keen February 27, 2009 - 11:44 am
To clarify, the /stuck command has about a 30 second cast time and requires you to hold perfectly still now. The G11/G15 can certainly do wonders though.
By Tachevert February 27, 2009 - 12:01 pm
I’m still willing to give it a go.
By The Common Sense Gamer ? Darkfall: Up to now February 27, 2009 - 1:18 pm
[...] sounding like the launch for Darkfall has kind of fallen on its ass a bit: Sadly, I think Darkfall and its community are in for many months of grief. Grief [...]
By wilhelm2451 February 27, 2009 - 3:39 pm
I don’t know. That dude also covered and mocked a lot of stuff about Warhammer Online and Mark Jacobs. It seems to be more his Schtick than any burning desire to see Darkfall fail. The fact that Adventurine has set themselves up with lots of big talk and delays… oh, wait, that was Warhammer too. Nevermind.
It seems like taking Yahtzee to task about being negative about a single game on Zero Punctuation as though he wasn’t negative about nearly every other game.
I mean, I saw worse things written about Darkfall on Keen and Graev’s site some time back!
By Tuebit February 27, 2009 - 4:32 pm
It definitely is his shtick to trash stuff.
But … Mark Jacobs had many millions to work with. Adventurine (likely) had peanuts by comparison. I commend them for their successes.
Lum has it in for harsh PvP games. He believes there is no real market for such a beast. His posts about Darkfall are colored by that.
I think he’s wrong, and intend to poke at him whenever I get the chance (what with him “workin for the man” and all).
There definitely is a market for something both very different and harshly PvP centric. I’m an absolute care-bear by comparison to most fans of Darkfall, but I’m very much looking forward to a game where I have to keep an eye out over my shoulder at all times.
This is not to suggest that Darkfall will succeed. Clearly, they’ve got some hurdles to jump (quality issues; the pressures of a live game). And there may well be significant design issues that ultimately disappoint that highly specific market segment they’re going after.
But hell, they’ve held it together for 7 years, despite harsh criticism and likely a shoestring budget (by comparison) and made it to a disastrous launch day. They deserve kudos.
By Wilhelm2451 February 27, 2009 - 5:11 pm
I guess I don’t read his stuff in that harsh a light, but humor cuts a lot of slack with me.
As for small teams, I’ve shipped products with a 7 person start up and a 70,000 person corporation. Keeping it together and shipping is good for the resume, but I’ve found few people willing to put up with a product that isn’t what they expected just because you’re from a small, plucky team of can-do operators.
Of course, I work on enterprise applications for heartless corporations, so my view of the world is colored by that as well.
By Tuebit February 27, 2009 - 6:50 pm
Just to clarify …
I enjoy Lum’s writing (he’s a great writer with an awesome sense of humour). I just disagree with his perspective on PvP.
As for cutting Adventurine some slack because they’re a small plucky team. I think I’m willing to cut some slack for “indies” … given the complexity of MMO making, I think Adventurine, even with it’s relatively large team, still deserves to be considered indy.
That said, crap is still crap, and if Darkfall is that, I won’t play long (assuming I ever get to give it a try).
My amazement is more on a personal level. Based on my professional experience I think I can extrapolate the complexity that must be involved in making a MMO .. and Darkfall has promised some features that most other companies balk (or fail) at. And just imagine the quality challenge. It’s not just about validating data and business rules … you’ve got a nearly living entity that evolves and changes over time.
Apparently (I wasn’t in Beta) they’ve managed to produce something at least playable. On a personal level, I’m amazed that a relatively small and unknown team made it this far. Kudos to them.