Hello Nostalrius community,
My gamer tag is Xipos, and I'm an experienced MMO gamer. Growing up, I played stuff like Ultima Online, RuneScape, Shadowbane, before eventually WoW came out, and I played that actively until the end of WoTLK. As many of you, I still regard Vanilla WoW as the best iteration of WoW yet.
However, after a long time of WoW, I got bored of the stale playstyle. It was all just a mindless grind that reset with every expansion, forming an evil circle of pointlessness (my opinion, no offense to hardcore wow fans). I wanted an MMO where things weren't so easy, and where grinding did not substitute difficulty. So I went searching on the internet, for a few weeks. I wanted to find a new game to try, anything quite frankly. I tried some strange asian grinders, but they were even worse than WoW. Then one day, in 2008, I found a gem, hidden under meters of dirt in the internet. It had a surprisingly active and vibrant community. At this stage, the game was in it's alpha, and people were speaking of rumors about great battles occuring in-game already, with the most exciting and adrenaline rush-inducing combat ever experienced in a game... That game was no other than:
Darkfall Online
General game information
What was so amazing about this game? Let me tell you what Darkfall Online is:
Darkfall Online is a sandbox MMORPG, heavily focused on PvP-gameplay. The game features full loot FFA-PvP with FPS combat mechanics, meaning that for every skill and spell in the game you have to manually aim, and you are able to kill anyone anywhere on the map, and loot their items. The original developers were heavily inspired by Ultima Online, and strived to make the game as hardcore as possible. As a sandbox MMORPG, player freedom is the very core of Darkfall.
In Darkfall, player owned clans can take control over cities, and through the conflict over control for scarce resources, the intricate sandbox politics are born. Massive alliances form, and wage war against each other. The original Darkfall saw multiple world wars, some of them spanning over the duration of several months. Are you a mercenary for hire? Are you and your friends a group of strong, kind-hearted protectors of the weak? Or would you rather destroy anyone and anything in your path? In Darkfall, you control your fate.
Regarded by many as the best MMORPG ever made, it actually never got that great of attention by the worldwide gaming community. As the previous developers failed to keep the game alive, two independent companies has risen from the Darkfall community to bring it back, and fulfill Darkfall's fate to become the King of all MMORPGs.
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As already mentioned, you can kill anyone, anywhere. Keep in mind however, that there are pseudo-safe areas, such as the racial NPC cities. Guard towers protect positively aligned players by preventing negatively aligned players from entering. Theoretically, it is still possible to attack others inside cities, though you would most probably die before achieving anything meaningful.
Sieges and macro-politics are a major part of Darkfall. Clans can take control over cities, and can contest the control over villages where players can own their own houses. The villages once controlled by a clan, yields hourly tax incomes to the clan-bank.
As there are rare resources that are sought after by every player, some cities are better situated than others. This can spark wars between clans and even alliances between clans. Sometimes it just happens out of pure spite for the other players/clans, and you just want to stomp their face in. Fair game, it is all allowable in Darkfall, in fact, hardcore PvP is the foundation the game was built upon. The only other game that has something similar to this scale of sandbox politics and warfare, has to be Eve online. That said, Darkfall also went through 3 different world wars while it was originally up and running. Take it from someone who experienced all 3 of them; It's a gaming experience that will never be topped. All the out-of-game planning, preparations, diplomacy, spying on other teamspeaks/ventrilos, hiring mercenary clans, cutting off supply lines, blackmailing neutral clans, planning siege strategies, practicing tactical formations, and much much more.
About Darkfall's Combat: The game is based around FPS combat, meaning you have to aim everything; heals for other players, spells, melee swings, archery. It is also FFA, meaning that you can also hit your allies with offensive spells, or heal enemies! So be careful where you swing your sword... On death, players leave behind a tombstone, that contains their whole inventory. Everything you had on you, or in your inventory gets dropped for anybody to loot. It sucks if you die, but it is damn pleasing when you're the one standing over a defeated enemy's grave, taking his stuff
So what happened?
In 2012, after a long time of silence from the developers, the game got shut down in favor of a re-release. The re-release, Darkfall: Unholy Wars, was a disaster to put it mildly. The very core of what made Darkfall the most unique game in the world had been compromised, and they sold out in favor of getting more casual and carebear players in. Player freedom had been ultimately removed, or atleast degraded to an unnoticable level. Many of the Darkfall 1 veterans had been scammed, and enraged by the developers' lack of insight, we left, never to return.
What now?
UB3RGAMES was formed from the ashes of the Darkfall 1 community. We stood up against the tyranny of the incompetent Darkfall developers, and took matters in our own hands. Darkfall was too good to let go off. After nearly 4 years away from Darkfall, nothing could substitute the greatness and the potential it had. 2 Community made companies were made, each with their own vision of Darkfall's future. They got their own license deals, that allowed them to independently develop Darkfall 1 further. Darkfall: New Dawn represents a more developed form of Darkfall, that will appeal to a greater audience. We have had several months of InDev period, with amazing progress already, and with a few more months remaining before the ultimate release of the game.
The reason I write this now, is because Darkfall: New Dawn has a free trial period from 15.-29. November. If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, do yourself a favor and potentially discover your new favorite game. Also, the graphics are not that bad... Take a look yourself! I strongly advise you to go for Darkfall: New Dawn, instead of Darkfall: Rise of Agon, seeing as you most probably are new to this MMORPG genre. New Dawn is deffinitely more friendly towards new players, and will have more balanced content! Also, the game is nowhere near what it will be like at launch, however it is still very much enjoyable. Definitely better than anything else on the market, which says alot about how the launch will be!
Click the link below to reach the official website.
https://darkfallnewdawn.com/news/
Finally, I will leave you with some videos showcasing the game. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you in-game and on our community forums soon!
Video of Darkfall 1's history through a player's eyes. Graphics and animations are very old! :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ63P-wZxIg
From a noob to a pro; A fun video portraying every player's journey through Darkfall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRKiIo- ... &index
Nice PvP videos, showcasing that in Darkfall, player skill matters more than gear and numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp6xyuj9I6I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_KmEG_DzI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MwBaqZkic