Forbidden Donut

Here is a translation of the article published in the PC Gameplay mag in Holland


Darkfall
Darkfall is one of the most ambitious MMORPG-games developing at this time. Even so ambitious that many ask themselves of the relatively small Greek developer studio Aventurine will ever finish this game, who has been in made for more then six years. But the makers are downright: Darkfall is at this moment in the end phase of development and will soon see life. (Its a dutch proverb, meaning it will soon be at life, being sold, etc.) Aventurine calls Darkfall an 'Next Generion Fantasy MMORPG' and tries to combine elements from Ultima Online and Everquest to impressivly new ones.

Darkfall's scene is laid in the Fantasy universe of Agon, a gigantic world of thousands of squire miles large that is fully designed by hand. This is one of the main reasons why Darkfall takes so much time. The by Aventurine designed 3D-engine aint a machine that throws randomly generated terrain, textures, fauna&flora and buildings on a field where there is little variation in different terraintypes. (Icefields, deserts, forests...) Aventurine wants to offer this game variated locations that consume only an unique design. Or to say like the Aventurine artists: "Textures from one place will not be recycled into another place." Thats because of the qualities of their 3D-engine, who enables huge differents in hights. You wont be able to climb mountains in Darkfall who are hundreds or even thousands of meters high and you will face impressive valleys of hundreds of meters deep who are formed by meandering rivers. Ofcourse you may expect huge waterfalls, fastly streaming rivers, glaciers, vulcanos and lavastreams, caves, tightly grown forests, etc. For design the makers chose for a realistic approach, meaning they made forms and colors that goes a bit further then the real realistic MMORPG's so they could create a colorfull and pleasant world where you would still be able to roughly cutt of heads.

The world is from everybody!
In this world well find six different races, the Humans, the elven race of Mirdain, the Dwarves, the Orcs, the wolflike race called the Mahirim and the Alfar. Each race has a very nice capital city and found, after ages, a place in the world of Agon. Each race has a extensive history telling why the Humans, Elves and Dwarves are allied with eachother, and why the Orcs and Mahirim would prefer to slaughter them all. And then the Alfar. These are against everybody and everybody is against them. Peace of cake, this way you dont have to put much time in diplomaticy. As a player you choose a race, edit your characters look and your good to go. You will start in the capital city of the race you picked. In this MMORPG you dont have to pick a class before you start. The game works with a system of skills that you can learn from NPC's or other players. For example, if you want to create a fighter, just buy the Sword Mastery, Sword Skill, Parry and Dodge skills. How often you use these skills, the better youll become with them and if you want to add some magic to your character then thats no problem. Twelve magic schools (Element of Earth, Witchcraft, Necromancy, etc...) are willing to school you and teach you hundreds of spells. You want a bit of Fire- or Lightningdamage coming from your wrists as a Fighter, or you want to cure something, or suck some life out of an enemy you just killed, then thats no problem. Do note, that the equipment your wielding reduces the power of your skills. A fighter in heavy armor will, for example, take longer to cast a Fireball then a mage in a woolen robe. But there arent only combatskills in this game. You will also have to learn to swim, you can grow all kinds of herbs, you can brew all kinds of potions, prepare food, catching fish and crafting items like weapons or armor. You decide how you will form your character in this game and the developers have announced that they aim for a number of 500 skills and the same number for spells at the launch of the game. That will create lots of.. Err.. combinations.
(Then there are a few lines of the Prestige classes, but before i came with the idea of translating it ive marked it black with a pencil because i thought they where out of the game. It said nothing that we dont know.)

A knife in your back!
There you are, in a enormous city full of problems (read:Quests). You fill your quest log, ride out and BANG! A PK'er stabs your back without any comment and steals your gear. Thats possible in Darkfall, because the whole world is PvP. There are no 100% secure 'safe zones' in this game. You are ofcourse relatively secure in the capital city of your race because of the other players and NPC guards and nobody is stupid enough to assault you in your own Guild house, where fully armed guildmembers who are desperately wanting to test their new Epic blade on a reckless PK. But in theory its possible and this will, assuming the makers, create excitement that you dont have in other "virtuous" MMORPG's. The makers except players to group up with friends for protection from other players, although playing Darkfall solo has its own opportuneties. Getting killed in this game creates some logic problems. For example, the weapons you dropped can be picked up by an hostile player and even your mount can be stolen. The prices of items and mounts are relatively lower then some other MMORPG's so you dont meet an financiel hangover with every blade cutting your throat by another place. But there's hope... An brave player, witnissed you getting killed by a PK can kill the lame bastard and returning you to life. And then you together can laugh out loud and steal the PK'ers items.

Dont push!
Next to a risky 'Pvp-only' design, Darkfall also has a very tactical combat form where you dont simply click a target and click the Autoattack button, but where you have to aim your attacks like in an actiongame and where you can manually block. You also cant simply track your enemies on a minimap, and players dont have big glowing names above there heads so you can hide in bushes and ambush people. You can also make use of the advantage of higher terrain (archers shoot further and do more damage) and you can even take advantage of the fact that players cant walk through eachother. In massive battles your Fighters can form formations so they can protect the more weaker players, not in full armor. Very interesting is the fact that you can fight on your mount and that you can use its speed and strength of your mount to break enemy lines. But notice, your mount can die so think twice when, as a Dark Ally, you rush into a whole army (Aye, we know our classics...). And before you let some meteors fall out of the sky better check if no friendlies are around, because 'Friendly Fire' cant be put off in this game. The physics in this game also make sure your opponents can be flown away by big magic spells and on that way you can even let Friendlies or Foes fall into very deep ravines. This will make sure the fun/frustration. And you dont only have to fight on land, because also on sea you can plan massive seabattles where huge battleships can fire their cannons into eachother, or even too fortresses on land. But also the weather has influence on combat. Fog and heavy rainfall can reduce sight, but the interesting part is that high players can make weather forecasts so they can decide if the time has come to make an surprise attack on an enemy village or city. And you ofcourse dont have to fight players all the time. Darkfall has lots of Fantasy creatures, including faeries, zombies, ogres and dragons, and from opposite races like religicious sect, thieving gangs, or monks, that, if we may believe, have shocking good AI. By the way, speaking of AI, you will be able to hire NPC's that can fight by your side, sell stuff or be out fishing the whole day, so you dont have to. Done with farming, rent an NPC!

Is expected spring 2008