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The State of Darkfall - Disturbing News
I believe Darkfall is in serious trouble. I think there is a strong possibility that the game may be released, but I also have a strong suspicion that if it is it will be revealed as the Emperor with No Clothes. There are a number of reasons I've come to this conclusion. Here is how I have interpreted today's announcement on top of the scan clues that have been provided over the past few weeks.
* Within the last few months they shifted from the Blizzard-like "when it's ready" stance to a finite date. This usually is a precursor to running out of financing.
* One of the most prominent public appearances of the game in recent weeks has been at a fundraising effort, expressing the game's merits to investors, apparently who likely have very little experience in the gaming industry. It's almost desperate, but I wouldn't fault anyone for finding funding if they can find it.
* Little information at all has been available within the last few weeks about the state of the game, other than some very controlled experiences released by exceptionally biased and friendly people. Classic damage control and spin.
* Tasos has clearly laid out that "Darkfalls partners (distribution, billing, account management, support, etc.) entered into the game at a late date and we needed more time than expected to integrate properly." Billing, account management, and support are enterin late? Billing? My god...this has to be one of the most important aspects of running a business as can be imagined...how can this be listed as a late entry to a successful business model?
* A shift from the "no pre-orders" stance to "A pre-order will be made available mid-February" with the incentive of "pre-orders will also get priority for the game launch if we have to go to a staged release." An extremely clear sign that they are running out of money and need funding...this time, from prospective customers rather than outside investors. Investors eventually start demanding revenue be a portion of the operating expense...and that has clearly begun to happen.
* An apparent acknowledgement that they are not prepared to handle with their infrastructure the apparently demand for their service, which is confirmed by: "Demand for Darkfall at launch could be much higher than expected. If this is the case, we need a different process to better handle the demand." This is extremely alarming, since Tasos has touted the 200,000+ gamers that have registered for the game. It cannot possibly be a surprise that a fair portion of those 200,000+ gamers might actually want to play it...causing infastructure demand. But they clearly cannot handle the load....this is a dillema.
* A total lack of stress testing is absurdly alarming, and should have anyone who is a devotee of this game crying foul. In Tasos' own words: "We want as many players as possible in the game before the launch and we havent had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet.". Let me reiterate: "we haven't had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet." Even if you extend their deadline to the end of February, that's a frightening statement.
I firmly believe they have a good multiplayer game, based on the reports from the extremely select group of playtesters that have been allowed to talk about it. But a good multipler game is definitely not a MMOG, and a MMOG is exponentially more complicated and expensive to run than a multiplayer game.
It appears to me that Aventurine is running out of money and running out of time. I speculate that the game isn't capable of handling 10's of thousands of users, and even if the game was capable of it they don't have the clerical and bureaucratic infrastructure to handle it. All of it promises, even with the very best of intentions, an absolute mess.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it again:
I want Darkfall to succeed.
Every success in the MMOG industry continues to perpetuate the entertainment of the future. It is an inevitable future, and the more diverse it is the better. I want them to succeed, but I also am tired of stomaching the ecstatic delusions of devotees who refuse to learn from the painful lessons of previous experience.
All this being said...let's see how this all turns out. No doubt this post will be sliced and diced by the partisans...have fun with it.
Comments
Well said and I couldn't agree more. I have been telling people that this game was in serious trouble and they just call me a troll. I don't speak as good as you do but what you said is how I have felt about this the whole time.
They are an independent company, funded by independent investors, did you think it would be smooth sailing for them
The guys are probably crapping their pants as the success of Darkfall is critical to their livelihoods and the ability to feed their children
Don't be a doomsayer, just make a judgement when the game is released, until that time everything is speculation
Blizzard use to be an independent company who had very little money when they made Warcraft and then Diablo and we saw how they turned out
Every company starts somewhere, Aventurine is no different its just a shame that it happened to take so long for the production of the game, and thus the silly amount of vaporware and critiques appearing from people in the gaming world
Very nice and a must read for anyone looking into this game.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
qft.
playing: darkfall
waiting: earthrise
Yes it is all speculation... Including if the game will ever be released.
Tasos posted on the Darkfall forums 7 months ago they where hireing people for customer service. Now today he says they need to set CS up...uuhh really, What where those peeps doing that you hired ? Maybe you where just BSing people back then !
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Don't be silly Tasos has said time and time again the servers have been tested by advanced AI bots and paid professional testers. Tasos never lies so how could the servers not be ready?
That's an obvious consequence of a beta that relies on a painfully small group of friends and family players and AI bots.
I can't imagine trying to build and stress test enough servers with live players by Feb. 25th to meet potential demand. It's going to take a hell of a lot of work, along with trying to get billing, account management, distribution, and support systems up and running. That doesn't even take any patches the game client itself will need between now and then due to the influx of live players kicking the tires and finding any new bugs to squash or exploits to fix into account.
They've got a lot to do between now and Feb. 25th if they expect to keep that deadline. I wish them luck. They're going to need it.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Extremely well said, although i will say that every Tasos says is pretty much in one eye and out the other..
Its time for RESULTS!
Dota2 > Your mother
As a professional game tester I can say this:
You can hire in-house paid testers, but nobody can afford to pay THOUSANDS of people to test a game.
The biggest internal testing team I've seen for a MMO is roughly 120 people, and most of them were running private versions of the game so that if they crashed the server, only they would be affected (this is to test quests, different clothing and armor combinations, other graphics and engine issues).
Of course, during the internal testing process, they would have the entire team on one serve quite a bit, but the pings would be at ~30ms at most, so they couldn't really test lag.
Having AI running on the server to simulate battles works for the engine tests, but it still cannot take latency and varying machine setups into account. Therefore, they would need to have an open beta.
The problem with an open beta, is that it takes an astronomical amount of bandwidth to have an open beta, and thus, a significant amount of money.
I'm guessing that the investors are getting nervous, and they want to be sure to not waste any money on overestimating the infrastructure they'll need. Servers cost A LOT OF MONEY ....
I think that their strategy is the most logical. They will provide a 'free trial' to see how their infrastructure holds up against different amounts of users, and at the same time it will show the investors just how much demand there is for the game. This way, when launch comes, the game will actually work properly, which is extremely crucial to the game's success (think about it, a crappy launch can often mean doom for a new MMO...WoW excluded as its launch was horrendous).
I'm just gonna wait and see...since preorders are at least 2 weeks AFTER trial/OB starts.
same here. These people just refuse to learn from history.
Its not like we havent been down this road before. Those of us aware of the past can easily see this likely doesnt end well for Darkfall.
There is an underlying problem as well...
Fanboism types invest their heart, mind, hopes, desires, and ego into the game. Any threat to their preception, their reality, must be viciously defended. They wont respond to history lessons or rational logic. Their ego is tied to the success of the game. Failure means a bruised ego and a wounded pschye.
Go take a peek over at the Dark and Light forums (still trying to fathom why a forum exists for a game thats shut down). Despite the fact that the developers stole money from people who cancelled their accounts and sold a game 90% incomplete, there are still posters over there defending Dark and Light. Their egos are still infused with the game and must deny all critics despite the overwhelming evidence.
So while the folks here point out serious signs of trouble, it will continue to be ignored by those infected by the Fanboism virus.
But OP, there is one problem to all this!
It was Tasos himself telling us they had problems. It was not some beta leaks, The developers were "honest" and told the community (and trolls) about it.
Wouldent it be better if they would just lied? As Funcom did with AoC. What more can we ask for? We wanted to know how things was going, and they told us.
Still, i wonder if it wasnt better if they would have lied to us. It seems as not all of us can handle the truth.
Vanguard, AoC, WAR, and soon DF.....and the trend continues. As long as people keep buying unfinished products, they'll keep selling them.
QFT.
I made that mistake with AoC and got my fingers burnt. Never again. Unfortunately some people never learn.
WAR was very polished on release, its just that i got bored of watching the guy i had just killed run back up and start hitting me.
most people have only ever played wow, so they dont realise just how well turned out war was for a release game.
LOL! Seriously tho. You clearly have no idea about the HUGE HUGE HUGE (say it 1000 times) differences between a RTS game and a MMORPG.
Developing a RTS game is complete peanuts compaired to developing a MMORPG.
I completely agree with the OP!
So many people have been telling over and over that they needed many REAL beta testers to test out the game!
It's not only about Stress testing you know! You can do that in a week or two.
Having 1000 or more people on one single Beta test server for a couple months gives you insight if your game ACTUALLY works.
Does the PVP system work? Does the PVE work? Does these 2 game features blend in well?
Does the crafitng really work? City building? With 1000 or more people... multiple cities will be build on the server. Is it going to handle it?
What if those 1000 or more people suddenly gather in one spot in or around a big city also filled with NPC's. What is going to happen? Not only the server infrastructure itself. But bandwith and more important... on the client itself.
More important, that early in the Beta process you then get a rough idea from these 1000 or more players... that after testing for a month or more... do they find the game fun to play? Or is it already becoming boring after a month or so, because sertain systems and ideas seem not to work or play out as intended (Warhammer Online ringing a bell?? ).
All this they could have forseen! And now a week before the supposed launchdate, they suddenly wake up from their Neverland Dream and landed in the Real World.
Cheers
The most ridiculous thing about this whole absurd situation is that they are developing a game designed to be played by hundreds of thousands of players and are leaving stress testing until the 11th hour.
I'm sorry, I don't care who you are - independant developer, bedroom coder or international games company - if you don't consider the fundamental infrastucture upon which the very livelihood of your product is built, then you deserve to fail. It's like building a plane and then designing the wings one month before its first flight.
This just keeps reminding me of DnL
-------------------------------------
-=:Sometimes "The Majority" Only Means All The Fools Are On The Same Side.:=-
i hate to agree with Guillermo197 cuz he seems like such an ass, but i must agree with everything he said. real people are needed, not bullshit lame reasons such as "we have thousands of AI bots testing" ...thats just a lame excuse for not being real.
I wouldn't go further than comparing this to Shadowbane. I mean its the SAME
exact scenario.
I can't agree more. Essentially we have millions of MMO-n00bs trolling forums thinking they discovered the genre or some shit because of WoW. They have no idea what MUDs were or any idea of the evolutionary timeline of the genre leading up to their precious 3D fantasy dress-up game.
The general sheepish nature of much of WoW's population doesn't help either.
Yet, the prospect of these players moving on to the 'next big hype' will continue to sway MMOG publishers to force development into make horrible decisions for many, many years to come.
I admire Blizzard for bringing the game to the masses and I hope they continue to deliver, but man did they ever screw over veterans and purists in the subculture.
It wasn't horrendous. The launches for Anarchy Online and Horizons were horrendous. WOW had a lot of problems on launch, but it was playable (provided you didn't mind the heavy lag during peak hours and hour-long wait queues).
People do tend to forget, though, that WOW wasn't a flawless launch.
I would also like to comment that the delay Tasos put out is very good news. The game is really solid and just needs some more time. An additional month feels like enough time to me. Far better than releasing it a month early after all these years of waiting. So again, this is very good news and people should be highly positive about it. Darkfall potentially is a game you could play for a very long time, I know I will. -leakreader2
Oh hey thar is that leakreader2??!?!?!?!??! Omg have you come to crush all trolls hopes and dreams with your leaks?!?!
I too find it worrisom. However I plan to bury a game only after it has lived, not before
MMORPG Characters immortalized!
LLyncu: Star Wars Galaxies (Chimaera)
Xiode: Age of Conan (Mannanan)
I didn't find this disurbing at all.
I found it refreshingly honest. They don't sound super professional. But that second to last paragraph made no bones about that. They said they want a good game with a tight community and that there is a lot of hype around the game.
I guess the problem is most people are really bad at managing a project yet they think they are good at it. These guys making this game are basically normal. Good management is actually quite rare.
You know what you are getting. This is not AoC. It might be unplayable I have no idea. But they have made it quite plain how they are operating and what their goals are.
You can really fault them if they wind up with 100k or 200k subs. They are not like WAR and thinking they will get 1 million. In fact they seem surprised that they have 200k apps.