Dark Fall

[Mango.]

also check out mortal online, i think thats coming out soon and it looks like itll actually be decent.

[Squeezer]

why does everyone have a boxxy avatar now?

[PaulOakenfold]

Paul;

Here's an example of why this game is only on the up-swing. The game currently costs $70 (CAN). The developers can only open up the shop for people to purchase the game for about 5-10 minutes a day. In that five to ten minutes I assume they try to sell around 50-100 accounts a day.

They're potentially making $7000 a day just on new accounts, now that doesn't include any part of the money they make per person per month. What they're doing is slowly bringing in new players into the game, which won't rape their servers. It also makes people want this game so much more because they have to literally camp out their site waiting for new accounts to pop up.

Another thing that I find interesting is the amount of people that play older MMORPGS and want some fucking freedom while they're playing. They're definitely not marketing this to players who need training wheels while playing. Dark Fall needs players to make their diverse economy and game play work, like UO it was successful when it was more of a community run game. WoW isn't completely cut-off from this idea, but trust me there's a huge difference playing a game like UO than playing a game like WoW.

There's a good enough base for this game to survive on, and soon when people realize how mind-numbing it is to play WoW they'll switch over. Or they won't, the game has enough of a backing to survive without accepting WoW addicts into their community.

That's exactly what Warhammer fans said. Better game, players from other MMOs, lots of financial support... imminent failure.

[RATTY...]

Fighting over WHICH MMORPG IS THE BESTEST EVER is even worse than wasting time playing it.

Saw my friend play a siege on Darkfall, zergling mass attack in SC is nothing compared to this. And if you're sitting on a shitty computer, prepare for 10 FPS average on gigantic fights.

[PaulOakenfold]

Fighting over WHICH MMORPG IS THE BESTEST EVER is even worse than wasting time playing it.

When you want to act smarter than other people, it's actually better to be that. Read a post in your life.

[Vykromond]

plenty of mmogs besides wow do just fine and turn profits, the fact that it has 12 million really doesn't matter. darkfall will carve out a niche and probably make a decent profit for its studio, despite being a fairly bad game all things considered. stuff like warhammer is worse because they were expecting millions and never got them- so the huge development cost is a drag. but eve online, which was developed much much more cheaply, is a major success despite the fact that it has 1/25 of warcraft's playerbase.

[PaulOakenfold]

eve online

your avatar

[RATTY...]

When you want to act smarter than other people, it's actually better to be that. Read a post in your life.

It's pretty obvious that you're a person who's been wasting a lot of your life on WoW because you sound so bitter.

[PaulOakenfold]

I've never played WoW, now reread the posts and figure out where you went wrong.

Congrats.

[shigs]

Pauls right. Given the last three years where Blizzard has held a majority share in the MMO market. Every year we've had new releases trumped to knock the socks out of WoW, Age of Conan and Warhammer last year and DarkFall and DC Universe this year. It won't happen.

If kids are into MMO's they're playing WoW, because thats what there friends are playing. They came from MUDs and they went into MMO's and they never came back. Its all about the Mass Multiplayer.

These other MMO's just can't hit critical mass to compete with WoW when they're sharing 50% of the market share with the 100's of both paid/free subscription based games out there. Not to mention that the majority of MMO dev teams really struggle, often releasing dodgy software on both server and client.

Blizzard is to MMO's what Microsoft is to Operating Systems, there's plenty of viable alternatives out there. Many which look, feel and play better..

But, WoW is the MMPORPG just as Windows is the Operating System in your average home.

[Xog]

Yes, my name is Poison Spitter, im in Coalition of Character Killers ( lotd.org ). I'm Alfar. Been playing for a few weeks now.

[gran guerrero]

Diablo 3

[Cops]

Pauls right. Given the last three years where Blizzard has held a majority share in the MMO market. Every year we've had new releases trumped to knock the socks out of WoW, Age of Conan and Warhammer last year and DarkFall and DC Universe this year. It won't happen.

If kids are into MMO's they're playing WoW, because thats what there friends are playing. They came from MUDs and they went into MMO's and they never came back. Its all about the Mass Multiplayer.

These other MMO's just can't hit critical mass to compete with WoW when they're sharing 50% of the market share with the 100's of both paid/free subscription based games out there. Not to mention that the majority of MMO dev teams really struggle, often releasing dodgy software on both server and client.

Blizzard is to MMO's what Microsoft is to Operating Systems, there's plenty of viable alternatives out there. Many which look, feel and play better..

But, WoW is the MMPORPG just as Windows is the Operating System in your average home.

That's the problem that you and Paul have, you believe that if you're into MMO's then WoW is the only game out there. I've been playing MMO games for a good 9 years now, and I can tell you that people who played the games that paved the way for WoW aren't particularly happy with WoW. Besides the visual appeal that wears off rather quickly the game play is rigid and repetitious.

Like Vyk said, DarkFall is being realistic about the size and base of their game. All they need to do is zone on their niche, and the rest is history.

[RednaZ]

Runescape :groovy:

[shigs]

That's the problem that you and Paul have, you believe that if you're into MMO's then WoW is the only game out there. I've been playing MMO games for a good 9 years now, and I can tell you that people who played the games that paved the way for WoW aren't particularly happy with WoW. Besides the visual appeal that wears off rather quickly the game play is rigid and repetitious.

I've been playing MUDs, MMO's and all the rest for the last 11. I've been developing for the last four. admiteadly working on MUDs, but virtual words are virtual worlds. I won't assume what your problems are. But I'll try and dispell this myth that I seem to think that WoW is the only game out there.

Facts however are facts and in the last six years nothings touched WoW's market share. Name one other MMO thats hit 50%, do I think WoW is good? No, I won't pay the subscription fee for a eye-candy hack-and-slash grind fest, But 50% of the market will. Kids play where there friends are playing thats a fact. That dosen't mean I'm a blizzard Fan Boy, simply that I can assess the market and see Dark Falls position within it as a niche game trying to appeal to the PvP crowd.

Lets not forget that the PvP crowd are VERY fickle. Your first wave of players are happy as long as they've got newbies to slay, Your newbies won't hang-around to be PK'ed out of spawn indefiniatly and given they can't advance or grind due to the constant spawn-killing they give up and leave. DarkFall hasn't addressed these population issues.

Like Vyk said, DarkFall is being realistic about the size and base of their game. All they need to do is zone on their niche, and the rest is history.

Who is the base? Lets bare in mind despite what you may think we're in a recession and consumer spending is on the down-turn. Aventurine poor customer-service, failed deadlines, large queue times and laggy servers. Not to mention macroing and cheating. DarkFall hasn't done anything special here, players are still grinding and still cheating there way around the time vs reward system ALL MMO's seem to put into place.

We are spacing out the invites in order to facilitate the download of the client and patching. We will continue sending out more invites every day until we reach our capacity.

This is where I think the real source of fail lies, Aventurine is finanicaly uptight. 2001 the hype begun after 7 years, we had one of the worst beta launches in MMO history and they still haven't got the servers to accomodate player-demand. An educated guess tells me they pushed for an early release to generate cash-flow and because of this DarkFall will fail, not because DarkFall sucks but because Aventurine is both aloof, arrogant and stupid.