Official Announcement: DFUW SHUTTING DOWN

treyu86

You can read the official post from the Director of the company, he posted it a minutes ago:

https://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?426595-Service-disruption

"Dear friends,
We have been involved with Darkfall for over 13 years now and it is our hope that we will be able to continue well into the future with your support. Unfortunately, and against our best efforts, the conditions in Greece have caught up with us and do not allow us to continue operating the game as we have been so far.

We hope that the disruption of Darkfall Unholy Wars service is temporary and that we will be back soon in a more sustainable format. We apologize for the inconvenience to all that are affected."


Reading between lines, it seems as if they have to close it for now but are planning on reviving it soon as a free to play model, they had been supossedly working on f2p model for months anyway...This is also the perfect excuse to reset chars and server and do a fresh server start. 

SBFord

Thanks for the tip. I'll post the news and link your thread.

Ammon777_new

Bye bye Darkfall.

SBFord

In fairness, things in Greece have been horrific in the last few years and Aventurine is hopeful it's temporary. 

filmoret

I thought it shutdown like 6 months ago.

Volgore

Always bad to see a game go down!

But then, i guess no one did really expect this one to make it that long.
Although Aventurine messed up on several fronts, hats off to them for dragging this game so far -even moreso considering the very critical conditions that strain the greek economy.
My uneducated guess is that from all the billions the EU pumped into the corrupt government, not a penny helped Aventurine to stay afloat.

SpottyGekko

I guess the fact that they've licensed the code to 2 other development groups had nothing to do with this ?

They'll quite likely make more money from the licensing than they would have from the DF:UW servers, which by all accounts were stone dead anyways.

I'm willing to bet that DF:UW will only re-appear if neither of the 2 new versions generate any revenue for Aventurine.

Parepin

It's worse.  I think AV is sinking as a whole.  Got this info from a website I can't link since it takes a stab at MASS in an interesting way lmao:

Status:
* AMS taken down by Aventurine as a result of the security breach by BPG (yes its nothing wrong with it, all active subs can still post on forums)
* Aventurine is in the process of liquidation, so if You feel your entitled a refund, RUN and get it!

Galadourn

SBFord said:

In fairness, things in Greece have been horrific in the last few years and Aventurine is hopeful it's temporary. 

In all fairness, the excuse AV brings up about Greece-related financial problems  is just that, an excuse.  Things are f*ed up in Greece, but their business model and customer base is (or should be) global, they should have no problem keeping the game going if they were getting enough subs. But I guess they aren't getting any subs.

Vrika

flizzer said:

Not even sure how this became a communist versus capitalism argument.

Shifting blame. It's much easier to blame Greece and political agendas than it's to admit that Darkfall was shut down because it wasn't profitable.

Compare Darkfall to EVE. Iceland had so bad situation they had to put capital controls in place, and their whole banking system just about collapsed. EVE did just fine because it was profitable. Darkfall is now shutting down because it's not profitable.

Dakeru

H0urg1ass said:

flizzer said:

Not even sure how this became a communist versus capitalism argument.

It's probably because you don't pay attention to world events.  Greece is collapsing under the weight of it's socialist policies and taking things like Darkfall with it.

I think he is aware of the connection - I interprete his question more as a:
Why are we virtually putting different political systems up against each other on a gaming forum?

SpottyGekko

Vrika said:

flizzer said:

Not even sure how this became a communist versus capitalism argument.

Shifting blame. It's much easier to blame Greece and political agendas than it's to admit that Darkfall was shut down because it wasn't profitable.

Quite so.

The Greek "collapse" has been going for a few years now, it just provides a handy excuse for finally shutting down a game that has been dead for years.

The DF development was partly funded via government grants for tech startups, and Aventurine seemed to be doing some other projects for government departments as well. The problem was that the Greek government was spending money it didn't actually have, that was all borrowed funds. All that public money would most probably have dried-up once the free-spending government was reined-in.

kdchan

RIP UW, was a terrible mistake. DF1 with updates and tweaks (expecially the New Dawn version) is the best sandbox mmorpg ever created and i will go play there.

Nokksonwood

kdchan said:

RIP UW, was a terrible mistake. DF1 with updates and tweaks (expecially the New Dawn version) is the best sandbox mmorpg ever created and i will go play there.

If that was the case, it would have had a massive player base. DF1 had some amazing ideas, but throw in a rubbish company and highly toxic community, you end up with a pos game. I jumped in on and off for about a year. The community was pretty bad and  it seemed to contain mostly teenagers with chips on their shoulder ;(


Also, the game was riddled with bugs and a lot of the major guilds abused the flaws.

Seelinnikoi

You all got Tasos'd! :awesome: 

Slapshot1188

Does Tasos still lift?

goboygo

Full loot PvP for the win.  Why people think full loot free for all PvP MMO's will end any different is beyond me.  I fear of ROA and ND as well. Its never been the game or the mechanics, its always been retention in a full loot FPS style game.  And I've never been proven wrong.

scorpex-x

It's sad to see any mmo close now because they aren't being replaced, just think how you would feel to see your favorite game close. 

As much as I dislike some games I still would not want to see them close.

goboygo

scorpex-x said:

It's sad to see any mmo close now because they aren't being replaced, just think how you would feel to see your favorite game close. 

As much as I dislike some games I still would not want to see them close.

What frustrates me so is that a hybrid PVE -PVP version of darkfall without full loot would of been successfully.  Everyone I know that ever tried it left for the exact same reason but they loved the core game world and combat.  People that play this game say they need the fear of losing stuff to keep them playing, they are a small percentage, most people just want a fun game to play and dont mind working hard to build their character up.  Sieges were the best part of DF and not because you had the change to take peoples stuff because they were FUN.  And thats all you need to have a successful game.

RavingRabbid

I never played DFO, but I did kind-of keep some track of it coming and goings. It seems to me that when they changed the game from it's original format it may have lost a lot of its player base. IMO What they need to do is go back to what their original vision was. Its sad to see a game go down. I hope they rebound and learn form what happened.

filmoret

I don't know how many times I heard people say.  "Don't try to change our game into carebear crap."  Well now you don't have a game so maybe next time you should listen and quit flexing your finger muscles over the internet because you are badass.

Gruug

In concept, DFO was a decent game. Very sandbox like. However, some aspects just turned a lot of people off. Some did not like the graphics style. Some did not like the pvp style in the game. Others did like both or accepted both. If the game could have been played the way most wanted to play it, it may have done better. By that I mean that many that tried it and quit did not like being "ganked" constantly. There were suppose to be enough people to provide some "protection" to players in a variety of ways, but there just were not the numbers to support it. I came away from my time with DFO pretty much thinking this as well...good concept....not workable or fun as it was implemented.

Mardukk

Sad to see an open world non linear quest hub game go down.  It was fun but too much of time investment to regear after getting rolled time after time.

zintar

I played MMorpgs since AC1 was released.  I played both DF and DFUW.  DFUW imo is far superior to any other mmorpg on the market.  It is way ahead of DF in almost everyway.  The full loot pvp aspect makes even the most mundane tasks exciting.  Never have I got the adrenaline rush from any other game rpg or fps that I used to get from DFUW even after years of playing it.  AV has through mismanagement and complete lack of good judgement managed to destroy an awesome game.  It is a very sad time.  My only hope is that someone else will pick it up and re release it. 

Raapnaap

I wouldn't assume it's case closed for DFUW, since certain people are attempting to buy up the rights for it.

MMOExposed

I still dont understand why developers like this wont follow the Guild Wars 2 route. more people would play and more will be willing to spend money for new models.