Darkfall
Encyclopedia
Darkfall is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game
(MMORPG) developed by Aventurine SA
that combines real-time action and strategy in a fantasy
setting. The game features unrestricted PvP
, full looting, a large, dynamic game world, and a player-skill dependent combat system free of the class and level systems that typify most MMORPGs. Darkfall has a 3D world environment and contains mild violence.
, Ultima Online
, EVE Online
, Wurm Online
and Asheron's Call
. Skills and skill proficiency determine a wide range of a character's capability in the game, including weapons and weapon skills, a few special attacks, spells, and archery, all aspects of player crafting, as well as more basic facets of gameplay, such as the ability to swim, craft various items types, and to ride and control mounts.
Skills may be learned from NPC trainers in the game, however certain skills will require other skills as prerequisites. Without exception however, skills are improved (raised in power) through actual usage in game.
While certain races have friendships and hatreds with other races in Darkfall, these are not strictly enforced upon the players, and it is possible for allied clans to declare war upon both their own race and their racial allies. Declaring war against a clan will prevent players of the declaring clan from sustaining alignment penalties (as well as gains) associated with attacking and killing players of the opposing clan, regardless of race.
The races, organised by faction, are:
As with other MMORPGs, player characters have a set of semi-static attributes, which determine their in-game physical and mental prowess. These attributes are: strength, vitality, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, and quickness These attributes improve over time in response to player activity. For example, repeated use of a melee weapon will result in a gradual improvement in that player's strength statistic, which in turn will allow him to deal greater melee damage. There are also three dynamic attributes: hit points, mana
, and stamina, which determine a player's overall vitality and capacity for physical activity and/or magic, which fluctuate in response to performing actions and receiving damage.
Likewise, the casting of magical spells requires and expends mana points, and the execution of various physical activities, such as sprinting, the swinging of weapons, and casting of spells expend stamina. All three of these statistics are regained over time at varying rates, and may be rapidly regained through the use of healing and other restorative spells, potions and items.
Darkfall is different from most other MMO games as it uses a mouse controlled camera paired with WASD movement similar to shooters like Doom, Quake, and Counterstrike, to fire spells, bows, and control melee attacks.
The ability to fully loot other players is a significant departure from other, contemporary MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft
and EverQuest II
, in which the quest for better gear is the primary driving force for of player character improvement once maximum level has been attained. In Darkfall, character skills are the primary driver of character improvement, and gear also plays a large role in determining a player character's overall power.
Friendly fire
and collision detection
are always in effect in Darkfall. Combined with a real-time combat system, Darkfall's combat is anticipated to provide a more realistic combat experience than other fantasy MMORPGs. The developers have opined that historically successful battle formations and tactics will be widely adopted and adapted for use in Darkfall.
The goal of Darkfall is its support for large-scale territorial conflict between player clans. To this end, empire building through the conquering of pre-made cities is a major part of the game. To promote such conflict, there is a finite number of pre-made cities (97 locations - 44 cities, 53 Hamlets) within the world. The potential pre-made city and hamlet sites are marked in-game by structures known as clanstones.
These pre-made city sites are spread across the entirety of the world, and vary greatly in location, surrounding terrain, access to nearby resource nodes, and consequently, their ability to be defended by the owning clan.
Player clans have full diplomatic control over their relationship with other player clans, and can declare war on other clans unilaterally. Clans that are at war with each other may kill each other freely without alignment penalties. Player-owned cities can be freely attacked and then sieged. Sieges last for 4 hours. In the first two hours the defenders may launch an attack on the enemy's shard holder or city. If the defenders are victorious, the siege ends. The attackers may attempt to capture the defender's city after two hours have passed. They only have two hours to destroy the clanstone. To this end, Darkfall contains a variety of different siege weapons such as cannons and siege hammers, all of which are player-crafted. There is a limit on the rate of destruction of a captured city of 1 building per day, however any number of buildings may be disabled at any time by bringing their structural integrity to zero.
Player housing was later added. Houses were stationed across the world and the owners could built various things inside their home or as an add-on to it once they locate a rare item called a "house deed" and find an empty spot for their home. Players would then pay taxes on their home or else they could lose it to another player who is willing to pay the tax. Clans are able to fight over these villages for control of the tax revenue which adds additional PvP elements.
In the patch "Conquer the Seas", Darkfall received two large fortresses at the North and South ends of Agon. These fortresses are only attack-able from a player built ship. If a clan controls the sea tower they get a server wide broadcast of their accomplishment, free recruitment postings in NPC towns, and additional revenue. Tons of fixes to the conquest system were also introduced in 2009 and bugged city structures were fixed.
, walking silently, and using world objects as cover; that is, stealth is not automatic, and not restricted to any particular class or subset of players. Since Darkfall is a class-less MMORPG, any player is able to practise stealth-enhancing skills such as "crouch-walking" and to follow a stealthy play style.
This feature of stealth also comes with semi-realistic limitations - wearing heavy metallic armour
emits audible clinking sounds, and reflects light, and moving more slowly decreases the volume of footsteps. Stealth in Darkfall is also made possible through the deliberate lack of showing players on the minimap and use of first-person perspective for ranged combat and general movement.
named Agon, on which all six racial capitals are found, surrounded by four smaller continents to the north-east, north-west, south-east and south-west. In addition, there are numerous small island
s and archipelago
s. It was estimated by one of the developers before release that it would take roughly eight hours for a human to run from one end to the other. In reality, the time to cross the main continent is closer to 4 hours, stretching the time to cross the map on a diagonal up to around six. (For comparison, Blizzard's World of Warcraft continent of Eastern Kingdoms is three hours from north to south.)
The world includes a wide range of diverse terrain
types, including forest
, plain
, desert
, ice
, jungle
/tropical, swamp
, and wasteland areas. Every part of the Darkfall world has been handmade by the developers and not computer generated. Darkfall developers have stated that any/all terrain can be accessed and traversed by characters possessing the appropriate skills, e.g. mountains may be climbed by those who possess the ability to climb; islands may be reached by swimming.
spawns relative to land mass compared to contemporary MMORPGs, in an attempt to reflect a more "realistic" style. Mobs also display generally higher artificial intelligence
than in other games, and will frequently call for help, strategically retreat, dodge, and switch between melee and ranged attacks. Consequently, mobs are generally more difficult than in other MMOGs, to the extent that widescale mob rebalancing was a specific focus for the recent Darkfall expansion. The December patch of Darkfall further improved the AI of the mobs, making them even more difficult to take down.
. The most notable effect of this is that players are fighting with other groups of people that are in the same dungeon in the non-instanced world. This is a result of the fact that the entire game world is seamless; everyone on a given server is sharing the same game session, from towns to dungeons.
announced the development of Darkfall and launched its official website. The Razorwax development team was based in Oslo
, Norway
, and initially consisted of five members: Claus Grovdal (Lead Design and Producer), Ricki Sickenger (Lead Tools and Game Logic Programmer), Henning Ludvigsen (Art Director), Kjetil Helland (Lead 3D/Client Programmer), and Erik Sperling Johansen (Lead Server Programmer). Approximately 14 months later, in October 2002, the Razorwax team was integrated into Aventurine SA
, a newly-formed company based in Athens
, Greece
, ostensibly created for the continued development and subsequent commercialisation of Darkfall. When the Razorwax team and the Aventurine team had their first meeting in Athens
, a member of one of the teams joked that Razorwax should relocate from Norway to Greece due to the lower taxes and cost of living in Greece. Eventually, the two teams realised that this idea actually made very good business sense, and by December 2002, the relocation of Razorwax, now Aventurine, was finalised.
In September 2005, a signup page for a closed clan beta was made available on the web; this beta never happened, however a 1.5 minute Darkfall gameplay video was released on February 2006 as recompense to the community. A later statement from associate producer Tasos Flambouras explained that a decision had been made internally to devote additional money and resources into expanding the scope of the game.
Darkfalls first major public revelation was at the game convention E3 in 2006, and while Aventurine did not have a publicly playable version at the time, various industry journalists were shown a standalone demonstration version of the game. From June 2006 onwards, just after E3, the Darkfall development team began releasing bi-weekly developer journals and community question/answer articles, published on the game forum site Warcry.
An announcement on the 11 July 2006 stated that preparations were being made to begin beta, although Aventurine stated it did not have a publisher for Darkfall at this time, and that they were considering the possibility of self-publishing the game. Six months later, on 17 January 2007, Aventurine announced they were in active discussions with prospective partners, distributors, publishers, and technology providers, and that a fully functional and stable beta build was running on remote servers.
On the 30 January 2007, Aventurine released their second official gameplay video, consisting of about one minute of ingame footage demonstrating real-time melee combat, mounts (including mounted combat), spellcasting and naval combat. In May Aventurine gave an update on their progress towards beta, announcing that their internal target date for beta was for summer 2007. A later update, on 2 August 2007, stated that beta would not start until negotiations with possible publishers were complete.
On 22 February 2008, Aventurine released a "location test video" depicting various NPC
and player-crafted city locations in the game. Later, in April, it was announced that Darkfall was feature-complete, and in May, that "... our launch date will be inside 2008, with the public beta preceding it by a few weeks. This is official and internally we're a lot more specific, but pending an announcement, we cannot say more at this time".
In June, Aventurine confirmed they had signed with Greek company AudioVisual Enterprises to distribute Darkfall in Europe
, and this was confirmed by AudioVisual in a stock market
announcement made to the Greek stock exchange.
On 29 August 2008, Darkfalls official beta was announced as the final scene of a 17-minute gameplay video, which demonstrated numerous aspects of the game, such as small and large group PVP, including small and large group mounted combat, ship sailing and naval combat, magic and archery, and vehicular combat, creative use of in-game physics and magic, crafting, banking, 3 different PVE encounters demonstrating mob AI
, and city building and sieging. This was soon followed by a "limited public hardware test" of Darkfall as the first phase of public beta, which was then followed by a staged gameplay-oriented public beta.
On 16 October 2008, Darkfall was publicly presented at Athens Digital Week. This event was unofficially reported by a member of the Darkfall forum moderators during this event, including a 30 minute video of Darkfall played live on stage.
On 5 December 2008, Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall would be released for the European market on 22 January 2009, with an American release to follow. This launch date was later revised to 25 February 2009. The NDA for beta players was lifted on the 18th of February.
On 24 June 2009, Tasos announced that Darkfall will launch in North America on 7 July 2009, alongside Darkfall's first free expansion to the game. Darkfall launched successfully in N. America on July 13, 2009.
Darkfall's first free expansion launched in July and features massive monster re-balancing, player housing, Darkfall's village system, the Nexus system, a character specialization system, the weather system, special items, new weapons and much more.
Darkfall's second free expansion launched early December 2009. The EU-1 server went down late on Thursday December 3 and the North American Server went down shortly after for patching. The update was the largest the game has seen to date and added many desired dynamics to the game not seen in the games first 9 months. Shortly before both servers went live extensive patch notes were released for the 2nd expansion titled "Conquer the Seas".
On June 11, 2010 Darkfall developers released patch outlines which outlined critical fixes to the game. These fixes are some of the most important changes made to Darkfall to date.
On February 10, 2011 Darkfall developers released yet another patch which addressed several issues that had major effects on gameplay. Three Notable changes were clan bank permissions, War Status Timouts (7 days from declaration), and bindstone mechanics designating where you will spawn in the event changes in political affiliation and alignment
April 25, 2011 Aventurine changed hosting locations to Chicago to improve server stability.
The game launched on multiple online outlets such as Impulse on July 1, 2010.
After the first anniversary of Darkfall's launch, a 7-day trial was offered for 1€. In May 2010 the trial offer was retired, replaced in June 2010 with a 14-day free trial.
Game Observer gives Darkfall an overall score of 83/100.
Eurogamer
game reviewer Ed Zitron awarded the game a rating of 2 out of 10. However, this review was not received well as it contained several basic gameplay description errors, and Darkfall lead developer Tasos Flambouras claims that game server logs show that the Eurogamer reviewer played the game for under three hours, a claim denied by the writer. Eurogamer's subsequent offer to compromise by commissioning a second opinion review (by noted games critic Kieron Gillen
) was declined by Flambouras, but was carried out anyway, being awarded 4/10.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
(MMORPG) developed by Aventurine SA
Aventurine SA
Aventurine SA is a Greek video game developer and publisher. The company's first game, Darkfall , is currently active. History and creation =...
that combines real-time action and strategy in a fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
setting. The game features unrestricted PvP
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
, full looting, a large, dynamic game world, and a player-skill dependent combat system free of the class and level systems that typify most MMORPGs. Darkfall has a 3D world environment and contains mild violence.
Skills
Darkfall departs from the conventional MMORPG paradigm of character levels as the main form of character progression, favouring instead a broad skill-based system, similar to that found in games such as RuneScapeRuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...
, Ultima Online
Ultima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
, EVE Online
EVE Online
Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates...
, Wurm Online
Wurm Online
Wurm Online is a 3D MMO produced by Code Club AB in Sweden that allows players to choose between a PvP game and a non-PvP game based on different servers. Development started in 2003 by friends Markus Persson , and Rolf Jannson.-Gameplay:...
and Asheron's Call
Asheron's Call
Asheron's Call is a fantasy MMORPG for Microsoft Windows-based PCs developed and published by Turbine Entertainment. It was published by Microsoft until 2004. Asheron's Call is set on the continent of Dereth and its surrounding islands on the fictional planet of Auberean...
. Skills and skill proficiency determine a wide range of a character's capability in the game, including weapons and weapon skills, a few special attacks, spells, and archery, all aspects of player crafting, as well as more basic facets of gameplay, such as the ability to swim, craft various items types, and to ride and control mounts.
Skills may be learned from NPC trainers in the game, however certain skills will require other skills as prerequisites. Without exception however, skills are improved (raised in power) through actual usage in game.
Playable races
There are six playable races in Darkfall, divided into 3 factions. Unlike other MMORPGs, racial choice does not heavily influence character choices or progression options. Each race begins play in their own homeland, and have their own unique storylines, histories, and racial alliances/enemies. It is possible to form mixed-race clans of opposing factions, however racial alignment adjustments (see 'Alignment') are always in effect.While certain races have friendships and hatreds with other races in Darkfall, these are not strictly enforced upon the players, and it is possible for allied clans to declare war upon both their own race and their racial allies. Declaring war against a clan will prevent players of the declaring clan from sustaining alignment penalties (as well as gains) associated with attacking and killing players of the opposing clan, regardless of race.
The races, organised by faction, are:
- Alfar (dark elves)
- Orks, Mahirim (wolf men)
- Humans, Mirdain (forest elves), Dwarves
Attributes
- Strength: Increases damage dealt with melee weapons, and moderately affects max health.
- Vitality: Grants a bonus to max health and moderate bonus to stamina. A high vitality may slightly reduce the effects of poison and bleeding.
- Dexterity: Increases archery damage and may reduce damage taken from area effects.
- Quickness: Slightly increases melee and archer speed and may reduce damage taken from such attacks. Also grants a moderate bonus to max stamina.
- Intelligence: Increases the power of spells and greatly affects max mana. It also improves resistance against mental attacks.
- Wisdom: Grants a bonus to all crafting and harvesting skills. Also moderately affects max mana, and grants a slight resist bonus against curses.
As with other MMORPGs, player characters have a set of semi-static attributes, which determine their in-game physical and mental prowess. These attributes are: strength, vitality, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, and quickness These attributes improve over time in response to player activity. For example, repeated use of a melee weapon will result in a gradual improvement in that player's strength statistic, which in turn will allow him to deal greater melee damage. There are also three dynamic attributes: hit points, mana
Magic point
Magic points are units of magical power that are used in many role-playing, computer role-playing and similar games as an expendable resource that is needed to pay for magic spells and other abilities, such as special attacks...
, and stamina, which determine a player's overall vitality and capacity for physical activity and/or magic, which fluctuate in response to performing actions and receiving damage.
Likewise, the casting of magical spells requires and expends mana points, and the execution of various physical activities, such as sprinting, the swinging of weapons, and casting of spells expend stamina. All three of these statistics are regained over time at varying rates, and may be rapidly regained through the use of healing and other restorative spells, potions and items.
PvP
Darkfall has been designed from the outset as a full-loot PVP game, meaning on death players are able to fully loot other players of their gear and gold on their person. The ability to fully loot other players has been factored into the game as an important facet of the risk versus reward nature of the game.Darkfall is different from most other MMO games as it uses a mouse controlled camera paired with WASD movement similar to shooters like Doom, Quake, and Counterstrike, to fire spells, bows, and control melee attacks.
The ability to fully loot other players is a significant departure from other, contemporary MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
and EverQuest II
EverQuest II
EverQuest II is a 3D fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Sony Online Entertainment , based on EverQuest, and shipped on 8 November 2004...
, in which the quest for better gear is the primary driving force for of player character improvement once maximum level has been attained. In Darkfall, character skills are the primary driver of character improvement, and gear also plays a large role in determining a player character's overall power.
Friendly fire
Friendly fire
Friendly fire is inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces while attempting to engage enemy forces, particularly where this results in injury or death. A death resulting from a negligent discharge is not considered friendly fire...
and collision detection
Collision detection
Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics...
are always in effect in Darkfall. Combined with a real-time combat system, Darkfall's combat is anticipated to provide a more realistic combat experience than other fantasy MMORPGs. The developers have opined that historically successful battle formations and tactics will be widely adopted and adapted for use in Darkfall.
City building and conquest
These pre-made city sites are spread across the entirety of the world, and vary greatly in location, surrounding terrain, access to nearby resource nodes, and consequently, their ability to be defended by the owning clan.
Player clans have full diplomatic control over their relationship with other player clans, and can declare war on other clans unilaterally. Clans that are at war with each other may kill each other freely without alignment penalties. Player-owned cities can be freely attacked and then sieged. Sieges last for 4 hours. In the first two hours the defenders may launch an attack on the enemy's shard holder or city. If the defenders are victorious, the siege ends. The attackers may attempt to capture the defender's city after two hours have passed. They only have two hours to destroy the clanstone. To this end, Darkfall contains a variety of different siege weapons such as cannons and siege hammers, all of which are player-crafted. There is a limit on the rate of destruction of a captured city of 1 building per day, however any number of buildings may be disabled at any time by bringing their structural integrity to zero.
Player housing was later added. Houses were stationed across the world and the owners could built various things inside their home or as an add-on to it once they locate a rare item called a "house deed" and find an empty spot for their home. Players would then pay taxes on their home or else they could lose it to another player who is willing to pay the tax. Clans are able to fight over these villages for control of the tax revenue which adds additional PvP elements.
In the patch "Conquer the Seas", Darkfall received two large fortresses at the North and South ends of Agon. These fortresses are only attack-able from a player built ship. If a clan controls the sea tower they get a server wide broadcast of their accomplishment, free recruitment postings in NPC towns, and additional revenue. Tons of fixes to the conquest system were also introduced in 2009 and bugged city structures were fixed.
Alignment
Darkfall features a player character alignment system that ranges from good to evil based upon the actions of players. Characters start the game with a good alignment, which decreases on performing "evil" actions such as attacking racial allies without provocation, or killing racial allies. The consequences of evil actions include being temporarily attackable by guard towers in NPC controlled cities, and other players being able to attack these "grey" players without repercussion. A succession of evil actions results in negative alignment, and a permanent "kill on sight" ("red") status. Alignment can be regained only by killing racial enemies and/or by killing permanently other evil players.- Update: Can only regain alignment by praying at a church in a chaos city.
Stealth
In Darkfall, stealth is accomplished by playing stealthily, employing real-world stealth techniques such as moving in darkness/shadow, employing camouflageCamouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
, walking silently, and using world objects as cover; that is, stealth is not automatic, and not restricted to any particular class or subset of players. Since Darkfall is a class-less MMORPG, any player is able to practise stealth-enhancing skills such as "crouch-walking" and to follow a stealthy play style.
This feature of stealth also comes with semi-realistic limitations - wearing heavy metallic armour
Armour
Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...
emits audible clinking sounds, and reflects light, and moving more slowly decreases the volume of footsteps. Stealth in Darkfall is also made possible through the deliberate lack of showing players on the minimap and use of first-person perspective for ranged combat and general movement.
Geography
Darkfall claims to feature one of the largest online worlds of any MMORPG created to date. The Darkfall world consists of a large, central continentContinent
A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...
named Agon, on which all six racial capitals are found, surrounded by four smaller continents to the north-east, north-west, south-east and south-west. In addition, there are numerous small island
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
s and archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
s. It was estimated by one of the developers before release that it would take roughly eight hours for a human to run from one end to the other. In reality, the time to cross the main continent is closer to 4 hours, stretching the time to cross the map on a diagonal up to around six. (For comparison, Blizzard's World of Warcraft continent of Eastern Kingdoms is three hours from north to south.)
The world includes a wide range of diverse terrain
Terrain
Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...
types, including forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
, plain
Plain
In geography, a plain is land with relatively low relief, that is flat or gently rolling. Prairies and steppes are types of plains, and the archetype for a plain is often thought of as a grassland, but plains in their natural state may also be covered in shrublands, woodland and forest, or...
, desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
, ice
Ice
Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...
, jungle
Jungle
A Jungle is an area of land in the tropics overgrown with dense vegetation.The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala which referred to uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to "dry land", it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its...
/tropical, swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...
, and wasteland areas. Every part of the Darkfall world has been handmade by the developers and not computer generated. Darkfall developers have stated that any/all terrain can be accessed and traversed by characters possessing the appropriate skills, e.g. mountains may be climbed by those who possess the ability to climb; islands may be reached by swimming.
Monster spawns and AI
Darkfall has a relatively small number of mobMob (computer gaming)
A mob, mobile or monster is a computer-controlled non-player character in a computer game such as an MMORPG or MUD. Depending on context, all such characters in a game may be considered "mobs", or usage may be limited to hostile NPCs and/or NPCs vulnerable to attack.-Purpose of mobs:Defeating...
spawns relative to land mass compared to contemporary MMORPGs, in an attempt to reflect a more "realistic" style. Mobs also display generally higher artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
than in other games, and will frequently call for help, strategically retreat, dodge, and switch between melee and ranged attacks. Consequently, mobs are generally more difficult than in other MMOGs, to the extent that widescale mob rebalancing was a specific focus for the recent Darkfall expansion. The December patch of Darkfall further improved the AI of the mobs, making them even more difficult to take down.
Wild creatures
In order for the world to feel more alive and add new elements to the gameplay, the most recent patch of Darkfall included non-aggressive wild animals (such as deer and kangaroos) that players can hunt. They provide a number of resources.Dungeons
As is typical of any fantasy MMORPG, Darkfall features several dungeons and underground areas. Both the Alfar and Dwarven racial capital cities are located predominantly underground. It should be noted that the dungeons in the world of Agon are not traditionally "instanced" like in other games. An instance is a separate game universe that a group of people are taken to when entering a dungeon so they can fight through the dungeon alone. In Darkfall the dungeons are available for everyone, and are not instanced—so-called open world dungeons as were the norm in first-generation MMORPGs such as EverQuestEverQuest
EverQuest, often shortened to EQ, is a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was released on the 16th of March, 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost...
. The most notable effect of this is that players are fighting with other groups of people that are in the same dungeon in the non-instanced world. This is a result of the fact that the entire game world is seamless; everyone on a given server is sharing the same game session, from towns to dungeons.
Development history
On 29 August 2001, RazorwaxAventurine SA
Aventurine SA is a Greek video game developer and publisher. The company's first game, Darkfall , is currently active. History and creation =...
announced the development of Darkfall and launched its official website. The Razorwax development team was based in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, and initially consisted of five members: Claus Grovdal (Lead Design and Producer), Ricki Sickenger (Lead Tools and Game Logic Programmer), Henning Ludvigsen (Art Director), Kjetil Helland (Lead 3D/Client Programmer), and Erik Sperling Johansen (Lead Server Programmer). Approximately 14 months later, in October 2002, the Razorwax team was integrated into Aventurine SA
Aventurine SA
Aventurine SA is a Greek video game developer and publisher. The company's first game, Darkfall , is currently active. History and creation =...
, a newly-formed company based in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, ostensibly created for the continued development and subsequent commercialisation of Darkfall. When the Razorwax team and the Aventurine team had their first meeting in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, a member of one of the teams joked that Razorwax should relocate from Norway to Greece due to the lower taxes and cost of living in Greece. Eventually, the two teams realised that this idea actually made very good business sense, and by December 2002, the relocation of Razorwax, now Aventurine, was finalised.
In September 2005, a signup page for a closed clan beta was made available on the web; this beta never happened, however a 1.5 minute Darkfall gameplay video was released on February 2006 as recompense to the community. A later statement from associate producer Tasos Flambouras explained that a decision had been made internally to devote additional money and resources into expanding the scope of the game.
Darkfalls first major public revelation was at the game convention E3 in 2006, and while Aventurine did not have a publicly playable version at the time, various industry journalists were shown a standalone demonstration version of the game. From June 2006 onwards, just after E3, the Darkfall development team began releasing bi-weekly developer journals and community question/answer articles, published on the game forum site Warcry.
An announcement on the 11 July 2006 stated that preparations were being made to begin beta, although Aventurine stated it did not have a publisher for Darkfall at this time, and that they were considering the possibility of self-publishing the game. Six months later, on 17 January 2007, Aventurine announced they were in active discussions with prospective partners, distributors, publishers, and technology providers, and that a fully functional and stable beta build was running on remote servers.
On the 30 January 2007, Aventurine released their second official gameplay video, consisting of about one minute of ingame footage demonstrating real-time melee combat, mounts (including mounted combat), spellcasting and naval combat. In May Aventurine gave an update on their progress towards beta, announcing that their internal target date for beta was for summer 2007. A later update, on 2 August 2007, stated that beta would not start until negotiations with possible publishers were complete.
On 22 February 2008, Aventurine released a "location test video" depicting various NPC
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
and player-crafted city locations in the game. Later, in April, it was announced that Darkfall was feature-complete, and in May, that "... our launch date will be inside 2008, with the public beta preceding it by a few weeks. This is official and internally we're a lot more specific, but pending an announcement, we cannot say more at this time".
In June, Aventurine confirmed they had signed with Greek company AudioVisual Enterprises to distribute Darkfall in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and this was confirmed by AudioVisual in a stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
announcement made to the Greek stock exchange.
On 29 August 2008, Darkfalls official beta was announced as the final scene of a 17-minute gameplay video, which demonstrated numerous aspects of the game, such as small and large group PVP, including small and large group mounted combat, ship sailing and naval combat, magic and archery, and vehicular combat, creative use of in-game physics and magic, crafting, banking, 3 different PVE encounters demonstrating mob AI
Ai
AI, A.I., Ai, or ai may refer to:- Computers :* Artificial intelligence, a branch of computer science* Ad impression, in online advertising* .ai, the ISO Internet 2-letter country code for Anguilla...
, and city building and sieging. This was soon followed by a "limited public hardware test" of Darkfall as the first phase of public beta, which was then followed by a staged gameplay-oriented public beta.
On 16 October 2008, Darkfall was publicly presented at Athens Digital Week. This event was unofficially reported by a member of the Darkfall forum moderators during this event, including a 30 minute video of Darkfall played live on stage.
On 5 December 2008, Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall would be released for the European market on 22 January 2009, with an American release to follow. This launch date was later revised to 25 February 2009. The NDA for beta players was lifted on the 18th of February.
On 24 June 2009, Tasos announced that Darkfall will launch in North America on 7 July 2009, alongside Darkfall's first free expansion to the game. Darkfall launched successfully in N. America on July 13, 2009.
Darkfall's first free expansion launched in July and features massive monster re-balancing, player housing, Darkfall's village system, the Nexus system, a character specialization system, the weather system, special items, new weapons and much more.
Darkfall's second free expansion launched early December 2009. The EU-1 server went down late on Thursday December 3 and the North American Server went down shortly after for patching. The update was the largest the game has seen to date and added many desired dynamics to the game not seen in the games first 9 months. Shortly before both servers went live extensive patch notes were released for the 2nd expansion titled "Conquer the Seas".
On June 11, 2010 Darkfall developers released patch outlines which outlined critical fixes to the game. These fixes are some of the most important changes made to Darkfall to date.
On February 10, 2011 Darkfall developers released yet another patch which addressed several issues that had major effects on gameplay. Three Notable changes were clan bank permissions, War Status Timouts (7 days from declaration), and bindstone mechanics designating where you will spawn in the event changes in political affiliation and alignment
April 25, 2011 Aventurine changed hosting locations to Chicago to improve server stability.
Launch
The game went live on February 26, 2009, 9:00 AM GMT +1, twelve hours after the announced launch time. The launch saw a number of setbacks due to unexpected high demand; players stumbled upon a critical bug which the developers took the game down to fix, and Aventurine's website was unable to handle the overwhelming amount of traffic to the online store and forums, causing those features to become generally unavailable to customers for several hours. It was also reported by Aventurine that there were problems with the pre-order system. As a result of these problems, customers were awarded with 4 days free game time.The game launched on multiple online outlets such as Impulse on July 1, 2010.
Subscription model
The game client is sold for $29.95 USD, which includes one month of game time. A monthly subscription fee of $14.99/month is required to continue playing, with options for discounted longer-term subscription.After the first anniversary of Darkfall's launch, a 7-day trial was offered for 1€. In May 2010 the trial offer was retired, replaced in June 2010 with a 14-day free trial.
Reception
MMORPG.com gave Darkfall 6/10, praising its innovations, concepts and world design, but criticizing the lack of polish and the missing elements promised before the final release.Game Observer gives Darkfall an overall score of 83/100.
Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
game reviewer Ed Zitron awarded the game a rating of 2 out of 10. However, this review was not received well as it contained several basic gameplay description errors, and Darkfall lead developer Tasos Flambouras claims that game server logs show that the Eurogamer reviewer played the game for under three hours, a claim denied by the writer. Eurogamer's subsequent offer to compromise by commissioning a second opinion review (by noted games critic Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen is a British computer games and music journalist, as well as a comic book author. Gillen has worked for many years as a video game journalist and has, more recently, worked on various comics. He is perhaps best known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie...
) was declined by Flambouras, but was carried out anyway, being awarded 4/10.