Like They’re Trying to be Mocked

People love to make snappy witisisms about games, and online games in general. Eversmack, World of Borecraft, World of Warhammer, Failhammer, Fail-Com are all common terms you heard from segements of communities who wish to deride another games success or who just try to call out what they see as poor games/design. Sometimes, games dissapoint on such a gigantic measure, that the very name of the studio comes be to a term of failure. Currently, one new expectant game just dropped it’s NDA, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it.

Long-claimed as vaporware by the internet masses, Darkfall actually looks like it is going to release in just a matter of days. Many, many pushbacks, and it’s seven years of development had many people wondering if it was every going to see the light of day. Well, Aventurine muscled through all the doubt, and they did it in their own way, and kept a veil of secrecy around their game, that forbid anyone from even mentioning they were Beta testing the game (paranoid much).

Since the shroud has been torn on this game, there have been mixed reviews from every corner that you can find. People have been claiming that this game may well be the savior of MMOs, others more realisticly call it a niche game. It’s catering to the hardcore PvP crowd with it’s full loots on death, and ever present danger from every other player, even those who are supposed to be your allies. If you think that WAR is failing because PvP dosen’t draw in a large enough crowd, then Darkfall is going to be just that much more player-specific. Yet, the game, or at least, the system around the game, is already having problems.

The Beta pre-order (limited) of the game was leaked to the general public, and their website forums were slammed by the awaiting hordes of MMO tourists. Remember WAR server wait times at launch? Sort of like that. Yet oddly enough, I don’t hear a lot of voices crying out doom and failure on them for not having adequate tech to handle what should have been an easy prediction. Of course, if you respond with sufficient resources, you have Mythic’s problem of too much tech, and not enough people. Maybe Aventurine will learn from WARs mistake and not spread players out so much that when the decline starts, it will hurt the player-base. I’m getting rambly…

Anyway, my point with all this is, that I hope Darkfall does well. I really do. I like the concept a lot. Sandbox games are a blast. Skill based games make me super happy. Being able to have one character and explore all the different avenues of a game w/o the need for alts is also a great feature. My worries for Darkfall is that the severly outdate graphics, the hardcore and childish mentality of  l33t PvPers is going to drive out the the first wave of newcomers. When it’s made clear that the player-driven content (ship warfare, player cities, etc…) isn’t implemented correctly, or at all, the second wave of ship-jumpers will do what they do. Then the constant ganking, loss of gear, and terrible terrible skill grind, will drive out the last final group. What will remain is a group of people who think the gameplay is superb, and hopefully, can be enough to make the game profitible, and continue to generate enough revenue for updates and continual work on the game. There will also be resounding cries, heard by the multitudes of how it is one of another in a long list of failures, because it’s not WoW. The word “Darkfail” will be repeated endlessly, because come on, all you have to do is change one letter.

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I will be.

Editor’s Note: I’ve been slacking on my posts, I’ve had this and another post in “edit” mode since Friday, too much fun actually being able to cruise forums from my iPhone at work.