Since my last post I have been exploring the land around Eanna and today decided to venture a bit further out. I travelled north East out of town and around the mountains just outside the main gate. After crossing a river and wandering a bit further on I discovered a small tribe of Kobolds.

The first thing that struck me about these Kobolds is there are not the brightest of creatures as if more than 2 came towards me I’d hide behind a tree and they would lose interest. I managed to break them up and take out around 5 or 6 of them, picking up more arrows from their corpses.

After dispatching the Kobolds I decided to continue North and after wading through a marsh by the light of the full moon, I came across some ruins which looked impressive by moonlight. Intrigued by the ruins I decided to take a closer look and made my way around the edges of the area until I could find a way in. The ruins consisted of 2 main areas perched on large rocky outcrops connected by a bridge. As I made my way around looking for a path up I discovered a series of huts surrounded by a wall and with what looked like more Kobolds wandering around the area.

I managed to take down all of the Kobolds with a combination of my 2 handed Orc sword and my trusty bow, before finding a path leading to the top of the ruins. Once up there I came across two players, one named 7 up (obviously a fan of said drink, though not a great MMO name) and another player who’s name I can’t remember. I sent a tell to say I was just exploring and was told “ok”, so continued to explore the area. Whilst taking some pictures of the area for this post I was jumped by Kobolds and Trolls, I tried to back off allowing the other players to take the creatures from me but they made no move to do so. I had no choice but to take down the creatures and continue trying to get a good view of the statues.

After I managed to take a shot of the 2 statues you can see in the image here I began to move away and 7 up seeing I was wounded decided to run after me zapping me in the back as I ran. It seems that 7 up had decided that by defending myself I was taking his kills, apparently I was supposed to stand there and let them kill me rather than defend myself. Had he/she taken the creatures from me in the first place when given the chance there would have been no need for me to take 7 up’s kills as he/she had said. I am confident that waiting for me to become wounded before killing me was the plan all along.

After dying I re-equipped and ran all the way back to find they had left the area, so decided to explore the ruins further. It seemed all the Trolls had been killed and so I went deep into the ruins, a trip that was worthwhile as I found a chest hidden in one corner. The chest needed no key and so was opened quickly allowing me to loot the gold inside.

I began to make my way out of the ruins but discovered the Trolls were re-spawning. With my 100+ arrows I managed to take out 5 of the Trolls and make my way around to the edge of the ruins themselves. I spotted a player in the distance firing magic at the Kobolds down below. As I moved in the players direction 2 Trolls came out of the ruins and I found myself running backwards frantically firing arrows in their direction. The player was aiding me with the use of her magic bolts and I managed to take both of them down.

Once at the foot of the ruins a few Kobolds were wearing the caster down so I laid into their backs with my sword and between us we killed each and every one of them. I left the caster to loot and decided to call it a day.

It may have been my last Darkfall session as I have 4 days left on my subscription and currently do not feel it’s worth continuing to pay for this game. Don’t get me wrong, Darkfall is not a bad MMO at all, it has some nice ideas and it’s fun exploring. The problem for me all along has been the player-base, or the majority of them. There are far too many players out there who don’t care at all about killing their own race, for me Darkfall was meant to be PvP but against hostile races rather than my own. I also didn’t feel the need to log in and play as I do with Everquest 2. In fact whilst playing Darkfall I kept thinking “there’s much more interesting things to do with my guild in EQ2″. So I believe it’s time for me to sign out of Darkfall Online for now, maybe I’ll return in the future, maybe not. To those I met along the way I wish you good luck and who knows, if you see Yetian Teaghlach in another MMO some day maybe you’ll say hi.

I will now turn my attention to my other MMO’s and I may begin to write my posts for those games in journal form if you enjoyed the format of my Darkfall Online posts.

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. Darkfall Crafting
2. Darkfall – Release day
3. From Copperdale to Eanna

Only a short one today I’m afraid, haven’t had time to explore the world of Darkfall much more since my last post.

I managed to complete a quest to kill 7 Goblins in 1 hour and as a result also managed to gather enough cash to buy my crafting tools. I would have had a larger amount of gold but for the Alfar that decided to kill me and steal all my shiny equipment whilst I was killing Goblins. It made my realise just how poor my combat skills are at the moment as he killed me quickly and easily.

Having lost my enchanted daggers and shiny new armour I decided I’d go buy my harvesting tools.

I purchased some tongs, a woodworking knife and a saw so I could begin making some arrows. The image attached to this post is an example of the crafting screen and as you can see it’s a simple click and create interface, a kind of crafting for dummies if you like.

I first had to convert some timber I’d collected into wood which is used in making bows and arrows, as well as converting some Iron ore into Ingots. These Ingots are used in making arrows which were the only Item I could make as I didn’t have enough leather to make a bow. I did have 4 leather pieces on me but I had already given these to a nearby merchant in return for some gold and another quest. As I write this I’m about to set off for some fishing and cooking to appease the said merchant once more. Maybe after this I’ll go hunt some Goblins to acquire the leather I need to make my first bow.

My Archery skills need a lot of work and the ability to make my own arrows will surely speed this up as each arrow combine provides me with 20 arrows, which would cost 40 gold if I were to buy them from the demanding merchant nearby.

11 days left on my subscription so still time to make my mind up on whether or not I continue to subscribe. I may try it for 1 extra month as I haven’t really had time to try as much as I’d like due to queueing for the first couple of weeks. I’m still leaning towards not playing past more than maybe that extra month though, as I have far too much on in Everquest 2 at the moment and still prefer to spend my time there. Not to mention my occasional foray into LOTRO and hopefully the upcoming Mortal Online Beta.

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. From Copperdale to Eanna
2. Darkfall Online – First Impressions
3. Darkfall – Release day

I completed the quest and had a think about which craft I would like to try as It’s only fair to give all aspects of the game a try where possible. I decided as I liked the idea of Archery and arrows are expensive I’d become a Bowyer and make my own bows and arrows. I may be wearing some shiny armour (crap but shiny all the same), but that will no doubt be stolen at some point and I like the idea of sneaking about with my bow and arrows at the ready.

I spent a couple of hours harvesting iron and timber in the hope I could sell some to raise enough cash (500 gold), to learn the bowyer skill. I managed to sell some but most people wanted massive quantities so I decided I’d try and sell a chest Key I’d found sometime earlier. Chests it seems are scattered throughout the world and certain creatures drop keys to open these chests, I’d previously got lucky and looted one from the corpse of a Goblin I’d killed. It was whilst trying to sell these chests a player named Maximus Espaniard contacted me asking the price, I said I’d seen them go for between 150-300 gold and he suggested I open a chest myself with it. He also suggested to my surprise that he’d guide me to a chest that I could open!! I was a bit dubious about this and left my key in the bank until we got near as I couldn’t help but think that Maximus would kill me and take the chest loot once I opened the said box.

Off we trecked towards and through the Heart of Eanna, a Human town which looked nice and not too busy, more on that later. Past Eanna we ran and to a small tower with a bank outside, here I removed the key and we ran a short distance to the chest which lay just on the shoreline half submerged in water. I opened the chest and the loot was worth it, 200g, a set of enchanted daggers (+strength) and a scaled breastplate! I quickly thanked Maximus and ran to the bank as fast as I could, as he’d said that there were hostile race players around. So if you read this, thanks for the help Maximus and you’ve managed to restore some faith on my part in the Darkfall player base.

I spent the next hour or so buying my Bowyer skill and doing a couple of quests to try and raise the cash for the crafting tools needed to make some arrows and a bow. I still have some way to go to raise the cash as after buying the Bowyer skill I have around 30 gold and all the tools will set me back around 150 gold.

I did decide after doing some quests and wandering around Eanna, that the town should be my new home and as a result bound myself there.

I have 16 days left on my subscription, so hope to collect enough gold to try crafting before I make my decision on whether or not I continue playing Darkfall Online.

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. Darkfall Crafting
2. Kobolds, Trolls and Ganking
3. Darkfall – Release day

In the starting area Monkfield there’s an NPC that gives you two quests, the second to collect goblin axes can be a pain if you die or get PK’d and lose the axes you’ve acquired. As a result I banked each one I looted and after a while managed to finish the quest. After completing this quest and another to harvest ore and wood I decided to head out on my travels and find another bind-stone.

After spotting an Orange dot on the map a long way NE I thought I’d travel in that direction to find a new bind-stone, as Adventurine had said that binding to a none starter stone would mean less queuing.

The first interesting sight was this massive tree, I think I’ll name it “the mystified tree” as it was obviously confused when deciding which direction it wanted to grow in. I only found this tree when running away from an Ogre that I’d decided I’d try to kill… bad idea.After resting under the now newly named tree I decided to continue my travels towards the mysterious dot on my map. I ran for around half an hour and despite finding a graphics bug (white shadows, just turn shadows off to fix), with nothing much to report. I did run into and then run away from an Orc and a random player who ran past me on his horse taking a swipe with his sword on the way. I don’t think his horse could swim as when I dived into the water he didn’t follow.

Many minutes later I came across a town, “wooooo” I thought finally somewhere new to bind as I spotted the large purple light in the distance. Off I went sprinting towards said light only to find that as soon as I got near an Orc guard tower started zapping me, that’s right I said Orc! It seems I’d run straight into an Orc starter town, so I turned around and ran away again.

Undeterred I set off again towards the Orange dot and on the way came across a large lake, well stumbled into it when again running away from an Ogre that almost killed me. I went for a swim to see what the town was like and after failing to climb onto a ramp I discovered an island in the centre linking to the other parts of the town. Just as I was swimming to the island, some kind of catlike race shaman decided to blast me with a spell, so I turned around and swam off. Now It may seem like I’m running off a lot, but remember I need to find a bind-stone or it’s a long run back.

I once again resumed my travels to finally get to the elusive Orange dot. Only to find it was called Firerun and was teeming with Orc players!! I came across some Humans and Dwarves who didn’t actually kill me, maybe due to the Orcs nearby. One of them invited me to my first Darkfall party/group and we promptly set about hunting down the Orcs. I managed to chase one with the aid of a friendly Dwarf and after a few back-stabs, he feel at my feet. I began to loot the Orc and as soon as I was done was chased down and killed by his friend. This meant I lost all my shiny new gear, my harvesting tools and spawned back at Monkfield.

I did however then managed to head NE again and find another town where I bound myself and as I had a bit of time left to play wandered outside the new town (can’t remember the name, Copper something I think). I found a Graveyard which contained lots of Zombie Warriors of which I killed a few, finding a couple of bits of armour and a mace.

While resting after the fight I spotted a fellow player running away from another Grey named (Rogue) player, with another Human chasing the Rogue. I stood up and ran off towards the Rogue, myself and the other chasing player downed him in no time allowing his target to escape. This is how the rogue system should work, a player attacks a member of his/her own race and is caught and punished for their transgressions. The rogue player then loses their equipment as punishment.

We both looted the Rogue and I manged to get myself some nice bits of armour and a new sword. The first time I’ve managed to have more than a couple of bits of armour, I’ll no doubt lose them soon, but hey I can look all shiny for a short while.

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. Darkfall Online – First Impressions
2. From Copperdale to Eanna
3. Kobolds, Trolls and Ganking

The queuing system is something I’ll talk about first, as it’s the first hurdle to get past before you can play the game. What a hurdle it is too, hours I spent queuing for the first two days and was unable to get in and play. I have come to the conclusion that the Darkfall Online queue system is random, not a queue at all!! Each time I have managed to get into game it has been from disconnecting from the queue and hitting the server button to queue again. I queue for 5-10 mins and then re-queue, this seems to get me in game faster than just waiting forever until I get a slot.

With regard to the game itself, lets start with the graphics. Whilst top graphics are not a game breaker on their own, they can make you feel more immersed in the environment you are wandering around. Darkfall’s graphics are not up to the standard of something like Everquest 2 or Lord of the Rings and the character models are not that great at all to be honest. The world itself looks good in places though the buildings are poor, they remind me of the original Everquest buildings.

With the graphics out of the way there is the UI system, which allows your windows to be moved about to a certain extent, but nothing like Everquest 2′s UI system which is so far the best I’ve used of any MMO. The main problem for me with the Darkfall system is I couldn’t work out how to add additional hot bars or even make the 1 hot bar I have horizontal instead of vertical. As a result I have to have it sat in the lower left corner of my screen. There is no manual as you download the game from the Darkfall website so all you have to help you is the in game help system, which isn’t exactly comprehensive.

To use your items in Darkfall you have to place them in your hotbar and then hit the numbered key to equip them. To use skills you have to do the same, this doesn’t use the skill straight away, instead it places the skill in your active slot so it can be used by hitting your left mouse button.

Darkfall is a game focused on PvP but it’s here that I find the biggest flaws that the game has shown me so far. You are supposed to be allied with certain races and if you hit a friendly character you go Rogue, which means your name turns grey and your fair game (I think). This turning rogue can happen accidentally as you hit a friendly character in the midst of combat and it does often happen this way. As far as I can gather killing a rogue player doesn’t give you any alignment penalty. The main problem with the PvP side of Darkfall is there is no real penalty for going rogue other than a shift towards an exile type of alignment. If you kill too many of your own you can turn red meaning your an enemy to your own race and city, at least that’s what I think it does. The problem is I’ve heard that you can easily restore your alignment by killing guild mates of hostile races, so anyone guilded doesn’t have to worry about killing their own.

Now I’ve not played World of Warcraft but I’ve watched a friend play and heard tales from many other friends about the player base, tales of immature WoW players (I’m not saying all WoW players, just a large amount), are all over the net and Darkfall is no different. Sure there is the odd player who will help you in chat with the workings of the game, but there are many more players that care nothing about their fellow players (apart  from maybe their guild mates). I should expect this from PvP I can hear you say.. well maybe that’s true but this is also a PvP MMO and I expect some degree of co-operation from my fellow friendly race players. Maybe this is just my first experience of the game but lets just say if you edited out the various offensive terms you can utter in a chat window, there would be more blank spaces than text.

This leads nicely into “ganking” a term and action that actually has a skill named after it in Darkfall Online. Sure the skill is needed as it’s used to finish off an incapacitated player after you kill them. The problem is that the only ganking I’ve seen so far (and there’s a lot of it), is people killing players of the same race who are supposed to be friendly. Yesterday I was resting after killing a Goblin and some random naked player ran over and slashed me to death with his sword!! The lack of real and severe penalties for killing friendly players is a big problem and there’s always plenty of player coming out of the woodwork to loot your corpse when you die. You won’t see anyone help you either when your killing Goblins and the like as they are better off letting you die and looting your corpse!! Oh and you’ll lose everything if you die as people can loot every item. Losing everything isn’t a major issue as I can see why they do it, but when you can be struck down at random by your own race it’s a problem.

Looting corpses is another thing that annoyed me over my first couple of days in Darkfall as it’s a free for all chaotic mess. After your hard work killing a mob you expect to be able to loot the creature for your hard earned spoils of battle, oh no not in Darkfall. You can loot sure, but you have to do it fast as anyone else nearby can loot at the same time, even if they haven’t hit the mob once.

The best Item I’ve managed to hang onto so far is a fishing pole, that’s right a bloody fishing pole!! I haven’t even seen water yet but after seeing the cost of harvesting/gathering tools (a lot to a new player), I ran to the bank and dropped the pole in there for later on. This is something you’ll do a lot as you worry about losing the items you have managed to find on your travels.

Combat in the game is a bit different to your normal MMO system. You ready your weapons and use either vertical or horizontal swings by aiming your cross-hair at a mob and hitting your left mouse button. The mobs will move around and try to get behind you where they will hit for more damage, so the trick is keeping your cross-hair on the mob so you can hit them. Bows and spells work in a similar manner, hold the mouse button down until the bar fills up and then release when ready, the arrow/spell will fire at the cross-hairs location at the time of release. As you can imagine hitting a moving target takes practice, and I need a lot of it.

The skill system is a nice idea and you’ll start seeing increases straight away, such as sprint and run, armour and weapon proficiencies. You only gain skill points by using the skill as there are no levels in Darkfall.

I’ll go more into detail about my experiences with combat and the skill system, (plus maybe gathering/crafting if I manage to do some) in my later posts about this latest MMO. My initial thoughts so far are that the player base and the pointless alignment system may make me stop playing Darkfall early on, but I’m going to give it at least a month of play before I make my mind up. Darkfall has some nice idea’s, I’m just not sure the implementation is right. Plus PvP games should be a bit more structured and make it harder for the WoW gank kiddies to ruin everyone else’s game experience. No doubt many of you will disagree with the points I’ve made in this initial Darkfall post and your more than welcome to say so in your comments. I class myself as a casual MMO player who plays PvE games as my main MMO’s, I like to have a PvP game as my secondary MMO for when I feel like killing someone.

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. Darkfall Online – Further Travels
2. Darkfall – Release day
3. From Copperdale to Eanna

Many people will moan about the fact that Adventurine are taking new players in batches rather than all at once, but I actually think it is a good move. Adventurine are no SOE or Blizzard and as a result don’t have the finances to risk opening tons of servers to start with, only to have to merge some later on if they are not all full. This way they ensure that each server they open has a good population at the beginning, sure they might have to merge later if people drop out of the game but it’s better than having empty servers from the off.

I’m actually looking forward to trying the game as it has some really nice ideas, I won’t go into them here as this isn’t a Darkfall news post but there is a nice post at Wikipedia about Darkfall as a game.

I’m not a massive fan of PvP in MMO’s but I do enjoy some now and again as a compliment to my PvE play in other games such as Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online. There’s something to be said for the increased danger element and the fact that you have to think a bit more, you can also pretend that your target is the annoying PvE player you met in your other game. I’m mainly going to be trying Darkfall though to see how the other features like the skill based system play out.

As I write this I’ve just completed my account registration and will wait for the chance later today, to buy the game itself. Keep an eye out here for my thoughts on Darkfall once I manage to get in game. Darkfall will be a 2nd game to Everquest 2 for me so expect views and experiences from a more casual viewpoint than some you’ll read on the web. How long will my foray into Darkfall last? Only time will tell…

Originally Posted At: MMO-Symposium an MMO Blog

Related posts:

1. Darkfall Online – First Impressions
2. Darkfall Online – Further Travels
3. Darkfall Crafting