First, go read this fine piece of gaming journalism.
Done?
Amazing right, I mean that guy has the game down to the minor details, everyone quit DarkFall NOW!!
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Oh now wait, it seems Tasos from Aventurine did a little digging, and I guess the guy did not exactly get as far into DarkFall as he claimed… Check out the comments section for the article too. See all those lemmings chiming in after? Priceless.
Nice to know at least some developers are willing to call people on their BS, nicely done Aventurine.
Hardcore Casual 
Very nicely done indeed. Eurogamer just lost all credibility. I won’t be reading reviews there anymore.
This quote threw any credibility the reviewer had right out the door and it was in the introduction to his bloody piece:
“But nevertheless, a job is a job, and play I must.”
Talk about going into a review with a negative bias…
About the same criticisms and complaints that I’ve read elsewhere. Eurogamer just has the balls to assign an applicable score based on their writers experience.
I haven’t played the game and so have no firm opinion of it. However, every description I’ve read of the controls brings to mind the term “execrable.” Even ones from obvious fans of the game. I just don’t buy the argument that clunky controls are necessary to make the game more “skill based.” See any FPS.
That said, the part of the review where he claims that the game has worse graphics than launch EQ is obviously over the top. Even from screen shots it’s obvious he is on crack. If he were talking about art direction, he might have a leg to stand on. Based on the screen shots I’ve seen, the game seems to have art direction that flies in the face of immersion or any sense of wonder. However, that isn’t what he wrote.
These particular quotes tipped me off to the reviewers style of play:
“or try to loot something from a corpse in a particularly dangerous area, and find yourself massacred while farting about with a tree for four minutes
“Worse still, the entire economy is player-driven”
“The quests are repetitive kill-X-of-Y monstrosities written with a six-year-old’s understanding of English. There are none of the intricacies of World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, and there’s none of the charm of old-world EverQuest”
“When I start my first quest, I don’t want a three-minute run to kill goblins, only to get killed by a six-foot wolf called BarBArIaX WooFKilLer.”
Oh and lets not forget quotes that show he doesn’t actually know what hes talking about:
“(the few Darkfall servers Adventurine is running have been mystifyingly over-subscribed)” (you mean the one Darkfall server that shows no sign of being full?)
“(a ten-second operation – five if you’re particularly nimble) ” (Ahh, so that’s why your Hotbar was completely devoid of anything. Way to play)
Overall, quite entertaining to read.
Just got back from reading the Adventurine response.
Taking them at their word, and assuming the guy only played the game for about nine hours….the review should never have been submitted or published.
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He never played for 9 hours. He played for 2 hours, and most of that time was spent making new characters, according to the logs. He CLAIMED that he played 9-20 hours, and was proven wrong.
“About the same criticisms and complaints that I’ve read elsewhere. Eurogamer just has the balls to assign an applicable score based on their writers experience.”
Ah, the trolls are even here it seems. The guy who reviewed this obviously did not even play the game.
pwned ;)
Syncaine, from what you’ve written it sounds as though a reviewer would really need to be settled in a guild to get the same impression of Darkfall that you have. Do you think it’s even possible for an external reviewer to get much of the heart of the game after a few hours play (even if he had spent 5 hours more online, would it have changed what he had seen?)
And of what he said, how much was flat out wrong? I’m just curious really.
Heartless –
“About the same criticisms and complaints that I’ve read elsewhere. Eurogamer just has the balls to assign an applicable score based on their writers experience.”
This gives you about as much creditability as the reviewer in question. Maybe you should follow the links in this article before you make yourself look clueless in future posts.
I think that Darkfall sounds like an awful game.
But not in any way that was claimed in 90% of that review. It was clear that he hadn’t played it even to me, who has never played it myself. That was utter trash.
I’d call him a WoW scrub, but he obviously doesn’t even have any expertise relating to MMO’s at all.
It’s a review from a guy that was never going to enjoy a hardcore PvP experience, but as the majority of Eurogamer’s audience would likely fall into this category, then it’s hard to argue that they aren’t performing their journalistic obligation.
The niche market that like this sort of thing will seek out Darkfall no matter how many 2/10 reviews stack up. Those that won’t enjoy Darkfall deserve to have at least a few reviews out there telling them what a hateful experience they’ll have playing it.
Saying all that, by EG’s own scoring policy, the game probably should have got at least a 3 or 4.
Syncaine, from what you’ve written it sounds as though a reviewer would really need to be settled in a guild to get the same impression of Darkfall that you have. Do you think it’s even possible for an external reviewer to get much of the heart of the game after a few hours play (even if he had spent 5 hours more online, would it have changed what he had seen?)
Funnily enough, Yatzhee gave a similar crushing review on EvE, skipping the entire corporation and PvP aspects of the game. But there is a real dilemma here. Our time is limited, and we have to be picky to avoid getting struck with the Sturgeon’s Law. Those first impressions are crucial. Of course, cynical developers can use it to their advantage as well. Tortage, anyone?
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Tasos is feeling a little defensive, isn’t he? :D
Awesome, my own clueless troll Heartless, just doing what he does best.
@Spinks: There are threads on the DarkFall forums pointing out what the review was wrong about, in terms of the actual gameplay, not opinion stuff.
The point is not whether he liked DF or not, 9/10 reviewers WON’T like DarkFall, just like 95/100 MMO fans won’t. But there is a difference between not liking the style/direction of a game, and playing it for a few minutes and pretending you played for 9 hours (which is still short for any MMO) and calling it out on technical issues.
CopperTopper, followed the links, read everything. The Eurogamer review is not the first or last place I heard the complaints levied against the game.
And anyone that actually expects me to believe “FUCK THE PLAYERS” Tasos is out of their damn mind.
The only question for Eurogamer to answer is why similarly bad MMOGs escaped with higher scores.
Defense! … Defense! … Defense!
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For those too lazy…here’s a listing of the technical things the reviewer got wrong lifted from the article’s comments page:
o ‘do’ anything – talk to an NPC, bind yourself to a location, loot a corpse, and so on – you have to click the right mouse button to toggle between interaction or movement mode.
-You simply have to hit F
Unbelievably, to do anything that involves any interaction at all, you have to stop still – this includes any and all inventory management, looting, chatting – anything interactive.
-You can auto run while interacting with your inv or anything else, you can also hold shift to sprint while doing these things. (save looting by design)
like an FPS, except with little to no reference point.
-You have a small crosshair on your screen
how slow and floaty the controls tend to be.
-The controls react just like any other FPS (I have 170 ping)
The difference in feedback between a sword hitting or missing is negligible
-Hearing the sound of the sword hitting, blood splattering and the grunt of whatever race or monster is not negligible compared to “whiff”
lack of hit detection
-If you hit, you hit, if you miss, you miss. Hit detection is spot on.
Judging the distance that one needs to be at to fight a foe is largely guesswork
-I could see this on the first few swings, but each weapon has a set range and it is the same every time you swing it. There is no guesswork, you hit if you are in range.
your combat skills affect how often you actually connect.
-Just false, combat skill has nothing to do with hit or miss.
changing weapon (a ten-second operation – five if you’re particularly nimble)
-If you use a hotbar (most people do) it takes as long as it takes you to click a key. In no way can you justify saying this, even if it’s hyperbole (I don’t think it is in this case with nothing on his hotbar)
EverQuest – which was actually graphically superior
– This is opinion, sort of, but no way 99% of people would agree with this, EQ2 maybe.
no definition in areas except those where you spawn as a newbie
– The entire world is hand crafted and looks amazing, no auto generation of terrain or anything.
It doesn’t even have [snip] some form of tutorial
– there is a breif tutorial of controls and UI at sigon.
horrible user interface, and broken combat system.
– the UI works fine, it’s FPS not MMO Combat is one of the best parts of the game and is far from broken
the few Darkfall servers Adventurine is running
– There is a single server farm called EU1
You can’t turn off the UI – the game just occasionally forgets to load it.
– There is a setting to turn off the UI that you can hotkey
At times you’ll be left waiting to die – for up to a minute.
– after 15-20 seconds you can hit spacebar and “tapout”
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Oddly enough while reading it, I saw somethings that I knew werent true… and I have never played the game.
That review is such BS; this is why I stick to the blogosphere for information related to gaming.
Hey Brainless_ have you played the game? For how long?
And let me guess: you tried to solo it?
Tool…
Obviously you missed the point Einherjer. You don’t need to play Darkfall to have an opinion about it.
Of course not. But if you back up your opinion with blatant lies and/or exagerations perhaps you should add a “in my imagination” before your opinion…
Willie’s descsription of the things the reviewer got wrong is confusing. I don’t play the game, but it seems like the reviewer may not be as wrong as people claim.
According to the things people say he got wrong and their explanation of ‘the truth’, I can’t say that I would disagree with the reviewer. Using the keyboard for an MMO should be an option, not a requirement. When you sit at an MMO for the hours required to seriously play, you shouldn’t need to have one hand on the keybaord and the other on the mouse. I play Eve with my keyboard safely in the cabinet, no keystrokes needed. That leaves my beer-hand free. :)
I’ve seen the graphics and they suck. Have YOU seen them? Wait, are you comparing them to run-on-a-toaster WoW, or are you comparing them to a game with modern graphics. Keep in mind that the graphics in an MMO are completely client-side. No part of the graphics goes accross the internet after initial install. It’s actually fair to compare MMO graphics to single-player games in my mind. Why shouldn’t I?
After 15-20 seconds I can kill myself with another keyboard shortcut? Oh boy, great, so like the guy said, you have to wait over a minute to die while someone teabags you probably.
The reviewer may not have given the game much time, and you may not like the review, but even Syncain complains about lots of things about DF.
On the other hand, it’s obvious that this reviewer doesn’t like MMO’s in general, and especially sandbox MMO’s. I especially love his comment about how awefull a player-driven economy is. This is a niche game, and it needed to be reviewed as a niche title. You don’t go watch Battlestar Gallactica and then say that itsucked because it wasn’t as funny as Friends. You have to say that it’s a niche title, then review it in comparison to other games in that niche. That way, if you’re looking for a game in that niche, you’ll know which ones are good. That’s the part I really had a problem with.
Not completely true, EVE is widely praised (especially on Eurogamer) and it is essentially a sandbox MMO.
I played Darkfall for over a month. Yes, it is trash but somehow it grows on you and becomes loveable garbage. It’s still a horribly designed game that will forever be in exploitable, fully-hackable beta. Just because you love the game doesn’t mean reviewers have to give it good scores. Free speech is important, but take a look at the Darkfall forums and you’ll see people in denial…”Go back to WoW noob…you hate the game because we pwn you”. The community is trash, but in a cynical way it’s kind of entertaining. You people need to let the reviewers trash the game, because it deserves it, and maybe Tasos et al will be motivated to fix all the UI problems and the daily-discovered exploits. Take a look at the latest player-pyramid, earthquake ‘exploit’. “oh it’s not an exploit” Bullshit! Why the hell do people play a game so that they can pile together and go AFK while other people raise their stats. It’s horrible game design.
So by your experience you believe it deserves a 2/10. You have read what 2/10 means for Eurogamer right? It’s a pity you lost that loving feeeeeling! Wow, wow, wow!
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“Worlds most accurate Darkfall Review.”
Exactly. The reviewer obviously set out to write a negative review. It does not matter how many hours he spent online, the results would have been the same. Nor does it matter at all that he panned the game. It just means more publicity for the game. Any publicity is good publicity.
It is laughable that he sees “intricacies” in World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online other than quests that involve killing X number of Y monsters Z number of times. Kill quests are still the meat and potatoes of all experience-based leveling in RP games, until someone comes up with a different model.
Darkfall looks like a great game, and I wish the developers the best of luck on their American release.
So,I picked up the game last week, yes darkfall has flaws,what starting mmo doesnt, i expected at least a year of patching to get rid of any hiccups. EXPECTED!
Anyone who has played any mmo game in the last 15 years knows that no game right out of the box is perfect and that patches and content will eventually be added to ensure system and server stability. As far as i can tell , Darkfall ‘s dev teams listen to the community and address major problems,as its my under standing as its summertime and some of darkfalls dev team is on vacation, that some stuff got put on hold.
As for eurogamers review, He didnt take the time to appriciate what he had in his hands, This is not wow candyland,this is UO pre trammel b4 the candyland whiners and pussys had UO put in trammel.
Yes u can get ganked while mining,why i lost 3 sets of armor two mounts and a few golds just yesterday.
Open world pvp means just that,u have to be careful while being out there,meaning u just dont walk up to a rock start harvesting. YOu go up to the rock and look around first, harvest your stamina to half then look again. remeber your a target.
Btw the people who keep compareing wow to darkfall.Stop, darkfall is not wow and wow is not darkfall,two completely dif games. and if I had to choose ill take the fact i have to be careful wherever i go and have that omg am i gonna get ganked feeling when i find something awesome and have to run back to town to bank it. WoW was made for kids and the crybabys that just want to mine or pve .wow has nothing on darkfalls pvp style. When some Punk decides to loot your monster u just killed,can u in wow kill him,no not without a duel and even then u dont get to gank his ass! try that in darkfall and see how fast u die for loot stealin.
I want to thank darkfall for being made, Yes u got a clumsy GUI yes its a pain to click between your interfaces. But these are very minor problems. as for graphics ,are wow graphics any better turned all the way down.no not really.
My friends and I have been waiting a very long time for a similair game to UO ,without all of UOs bullshit!
Right now if i was a game reviewer id give this game a 8 out of ten. And haveing played a great majority of the mmo’s out there, id say no other game has given me that so unsafe feeling when im creeepin out of town.
He who grinds the skills! Darkfall is not a level based game , ty ,,, its a skill based game and its based on how much u grind out a skill. Wich also adds a degree of secrecy when u go to attack someone because u dont really know what they got to bring to a fight. There is oh nooooz a lvl 70 runnnnnnn.its a hmmmm dam he hit me hard i better get to going b4 i die ,, oh dam he ganked me,oh dam he got 2 hours of stored up herbs,, DAM i knew i shoulda went back to town to bank my shit b4 i got ganked ,, ahh well lesson learned ,, well not really cause 4 hours later i got ganked again for my herb load, reminder dont collect herbs outside a newbie town,, your a gankers dream ,, Lmao
So all you whiners and reviewers who played 5 mins and went this is shit,please dont ever log into darkfall, we dont want your IMma LVL 80 toon in wow ass here!
Remeber people darkfall is in its infancy! and is only gonna get better!
Darkfall is an awesome game that is getting better every month. The devs are working hard to make it greater with every patch. If you like farming, crafting and tons of PvP then this is the game you want! Al the complaining about the graphics is bs. The game looks great if you turn on all the goodies. Full loot is not for everyone, but hell I love the adrenaline when getting attacked or fighting in groups.
Hooked on Darkfall with loads of other people.
Second expansion on its way!
Manners matter a lot to me. ,
In fact, ware- housing plays an even more important role in the case of money. ,
Since online advertising alone does not appear to offer enough revenue to support the cost of running and creating quality content, clearly there is a problem. ,
I deffinitly will not be visiting eurogamer any more after that review, although I have not played the game I am thinking about it.
I would like to see an unbiased review first though from somebody that actually does not have a hate on for all mmo’s.
dont go play MO online
i have played dfo and i love it it lagged in some points but what game doesnt try it out!