A guy from LoD went to the darkfall devs office and actually played the game...
here is his story:
QUOTE:
Hey guys,
Don’t have much time to write right now because I am in some internet cafe in Athens. Here’s a few words though.
The Darkfall guys were very cool. They were not at all what I expected.
Most of them were big tall guys from Norway, and a lot of them do
different martial arts. The offices are nice, and they have about 20 to
30 people developing. I got a glimpse of different things people were
doing while going around the desks: coding, landscape design of what
seemed to be human style cities, and other stuff. The game is very
real, and developers are lead by awesome people.
I wish I was a little better prepared, so some of my questions must
have seemed a little stupid. First we spoke about the early days of UO
and a lot of the inspiration comes from there. We spoke about all major
games since then and what I liked and didn’t like about them. It was
great to realize that these guys think exactly like me! Finally someone
is making a game after my own heart! I am just going to mention some
features everyone probably knows already, but they were kind of new to
me. First of all, you can kill anyone you want (or can). Every kill
gets recorded along with some details about it. You can loot
everything, and you can loot any corpse. Unlimited people can be
looting the same corpse simultaneously. I think its worth saying again:
You can PK anyone!. You can kill their mount while they are on it. You
have freedom to pretty much do anything you want and if you are skilled
enough get away with it. The justice (or retribution) is in the hands
of the players.
There is a lot we talked about. Like for example small guilds vs, a
zerg. The way combat works in this game, I truely believe skill would
be the key and 20 well coordinated capable people can take on a hundred
*beep*s. Casual players won’t be at much of a disadvantage if they have
better skills. By skills, I mean knowing how to use the terrain, your
weapons, in-game objects, etc. to your advantage. With no skill,
someone can have the best developed character in the game and someone
with better knowledge and ability can smoke them. You won’t be able to
build cities anywhere but just at key locations, which means more
conflict for the limited number of city spots. This will also mean less
clutter of cities like we’ve seen in other games. A band of lawless
thugs and PKers can live outside with no problem. Its a completely
viable way of playing. Trading will be simple. You carry your stuff on
you, but if you don’t have any protection you may end up a dead trader
with a lot of loot for someone. We talked about a lot more stuff too
which I will write about later. (EDIT: WTF are you Asp! We want more!!!)
I played the game (a stable version they had from about a year ago). I
played an Orc (of course); The best made Orc I have played… ever. The
inventory screen is exactly like UO. It brought back fond memories. You
know how back then you would kill someone you loot all kinds of bags?
(i.e. Some neatly arranged ones or just messy thrown together ones). It
certainly adds more pleasure to the kill when you get to see the time
and care someone put in arranging their stuff while you’re looting it.
It definitely makes the kill a more personal thing.
So first, I ran around a bit near a town on the shores to get a feel
for the controls. It was pretty easy. Then I tried out equipped
different armor and weapons. The Orc looked friggin’ bad ass and battle
ready! The armor and weapons looked kick ass on him. I tried putting on
a longer ranged weapon- I think it was a halberd. Length matters!
(EDIT: “That’s what she said!”… I had to do it for ‘The Office’ fans).
You could reach farther, BUT, when you swing around you can hit your
own people if you’re not careful. There is friendly collision so
sometimes long weapons are good, or in other situations you might want
to go with shields and short sword. There will definitely be work for
battle leaders; it will be crucial to organize into squads or units,
choose the weapons, locations and what to do. It is very realistic.
It’ll be possible to do battles like in the movie “300″,
and have small number of organized people kick ass and slaughter a
large number of swarming *beep*s. As I mentioned, the game has friendly
fire, so if uncoordinated groups will end up hitting their own
guildmates or possibly even healing you.
Next they showed me some sweet magic effects (from year ago mind you,
which they claim is even several times better now). The effects alone
make the friggin’ spell feel like a powerful thing. The eye candy was
great… The ground shakes, you burn! It’s just really impressive the way
they have done it. It’s very real feeling so you feel you really want
to get out of the way of a fireball or the burning ground around you.
So next, we tried out the horses, and they were easy to handle. The
difference from any other game I’ve played is though that you can
actually fight from them! You can do some tricks specialized for just
horse fighting when attacking or defending which I won’t go into
details (EDIT: Damn you Asp, we want details!). But get this, you can
kill the mount while the guy is on it!.!.! which I did, and it felt
good, Muahaha.
Then we went to business: straight one on one fighting. An Orc with a
mace and shield vs. another race spell caster. Starting close to him I
had the advantage. He couldn’t get off his spells on time with me
getting him from the back and the side. It was a lot of fun because it
was real time collision fighting. I was very impressed, and the way the
controls are, fighting felt easy and intuitive. After a few hits with
my mace he was dead… And I had all his stuff! My first kill in DF.
Next we tried fighting from a ship. The ships are incredible,
especially if you are into the whole pirate thing. We were on a smaller
eight-gun ship, but they said the largest is huge with 50-guns! You can
shoot from each canon. Here’s what’s great… The canon can be destroyed,
the ship can be sunk, you can board the ship and kill, or you can just
make your way to the captain who steers it and turn the guns away from
your ship. You can bombard buildings or even people on the shore from
the ship. It felt like I could do anything I wanted to do… in very nice
looking graphics. Try to imagine large ship sinking, and everyone is
scrambling from the lower levels trying to get up onto the upper decks
through the small doorways or stairs to avoid drowning with the ship!
This is going to be fun guys.
We talked about the economy. The best items will be crafted by people,
and items can wear out or be looted. Player economy looks like is going
to work pretty much like real economy with supply and demand but I
won’t go into details (Edit: !!!).
I have to go, but just to finish up quickly… The game is awesome. I was
pessimistic but to be honest no matter how much anyone complains about
release date they will buy this game as soon as it comes out and will
be the best game ever released. I do believe the release will be
sometime next year. I spoke with them about beta phases and schedule,
but I promised not to reveal information about dates, but I will say
beta shouldn’t be too long. Anyways, thanks guys for helping set this
up. I got a couple Darkfall t-shirts I will ship to you that helped.
It’s a great game coming not too long from now, and now I know for sure
that it is going to be completely awesome.