I have been an avid MMO gamer for more than ten years now. Having been involved in the alpha and beta testing for many games I have played those that were good, bad, and utterly horrible. While I am not a beta tester for Darkfall I have spent a few days doing some extensive research into the game and would like to impart my opinion based on what I have read and beta testers I have spoken with.
Darkfall bills itself as a revolution in the MMO genre by saying that the game is not an MMO, not a real times shooter, not a first person shooter, but a combination of the three. In my experience a game design can do one of those things and do it quite well but when you try to combine them you end up with a game that lacks in all three departments, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Darkfall is the game that will finally steal the crown from Blizzard Entertainment.
One thing that worries me is that the game has a dominant real time combat aspect. Which in every other "twitch" based game as meant that he who has the fastest connection wins. This in my opinion provides an uneven playing field for all players. Cable is faster than DSL and both blow dial up out of the water. Yes people still use dial up. If player A on cable attacks player B on dial up player A will be cutting player B to bloody ribbons while player B is still attacking the empty air where Player A was seconds ago.
In Darkfall PvP is a forced thing and the company openly states that there are "no safe zones". Games that force PvP are destined to fail in my opinion. While there are players who live and breathe for PvP the vast majority of gamers do not fall into that category.
When a player is killed in PvP the victor may loot the body of anything that it carries. I am not a fan of this. Perhaps taking all the cash someone has on hand or 1 item would be OK but access to everything could be in my opinion one of the game breakers. I must admit however that Aventurine has alleviated the problem somewhat by forcing the looting of a body to take time. In a game that is 100% PvP with no safe areas time is something that may not be in abundance.
In Darkfall players may build cities, protect them with walls and towers, and hire npc guards to protect them. This is a nice concept in theory. Everyone would love to build an empire but this presents a problem that has reared its ugly head in other games such as Star Wars: Galaxies. In its heyday you could not take more than a few steps out of one city until you ran into another. Is it going to be that way in Darkfall?
The PvP aspect may help alleviate the over population of cities problem by allowing players to siege other cities, raid their neighbors, capture cities, and most of all destroy them thus clearing the landscape.
Another thing that really worries me about Darkfall is the boast that the game will support 10,000 players simultaneously. In most instances more players means more lag. Aventurine also lists dynamic lighting and shadows and beautiful and picturesque landscapes as features. These are quite nice and make a game beautiful but they also limit the game for players who do not have state of the art computers. This alone will limit the playability and thus the profitability of Darkfall.
Darkfall is a game that has no levels or classes and is completely skill based. This is a brilliant concept, but hardly revolutionary and hardly true. While having no classes is in theory true all characters fall into one category or another. Mixing and matching makes the character more versatile but in essence every character is predominantly one class or the other.
No leveling is a misnomer, while you may not have to go from level 1 to level 2 etc, you must develop your skills in order to improve them and become more powerful which is the same thing as leveling but with another name.
I must admit that I do like the fact that you can change your character dynamically simply by learning other skills. Re-rolling characters is something that I have always hated and I take my hat off to Aventurine in this aspect.
After investigating Aventurine's Darkfall I have come to the following conclusion. The game has some interesting concepts, some good, and some bad. Combining MMORPG, RTS, and FPS could be a good thing, but as yet no gaming company has been successful in its attempt, all they end up being is mediocre at all three. Forced PvP may appeal the type of player who enjoys hunting other players but will not to the vast majority of gamers. Forced PvP guarantees one thing...a gank fest from day one. Historically games which force players to PvP with no safe areas have enjoyed limited success and most have fallen by the wayside and are but memories now. If you are the type of player who likes the element of danger involved in a game where you can be killed at anytime by anyone then Darkfall will most likely be your cup of tea. On the other hand if you are a gamer who likes to run quests, play versus the environment without the possibility of being looted of your hard won items Darkfall will most likely be a disappointment. Will Darkfall be the WoW killer that everyone has been screaming for over the last 5 years, highly unlikely. In my opinion it will enjoy limited success for 12 to 18 months an then pass quietly into the annals of other failed attempts to merge different game styles into one.
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