Carrots and peas have an unholy alliance that's signed in the tears of cabbage.
Darkfall is out.
Kinda.
Much like Light & Dark it's currently suffering from a series of technical challenges.
I'm still keeping an eye on it.
It was easier before.
In the old days, in the long long ago, during the Before Time, gamers were tolerant.
Gamers were nerds and geeks who played online games instead of going out into society.
And we understood technical challenges, and didn't mind lack of polish becauses, well, that's how it started. You made something, and improved as needed.
But today, social society *IS* online.
It's how fathers and sons spend time together, it's how husbands and wives reconnect after a hectic day of shopping and soccer practice.
And people demand polish.
Warcraft both helped and severely harmed the gaming community.
Addons to make a game self play are demanded (IE: JPE's recent bitching about a lack of threat meter because "When Im' in a pug idiots pull aggro"... well, that's kinda the point of kin isn't it? Darj can't pull aggro from barulador's because i know bar's abilities inside and out, and I know how to manage Darj. But i can't make that promise to a guy I've never played with. Granted a threat meter would be a one stop shop to easy town PuG success.
I'd make this promise today, the day lotro gives me a threat meter, within a week Legion of 5 would down the most difficult content the game has to offer, and I wouldn't even need all 60's to do it. Cuz I'd write a script, mail it to our top 6 highest levels, and we'd have "perfect DPS/gameplay" for said encounter.
In fact, I'm posting on the tech forums of lotro now figuring out with other poeple how to write one.
Do you realize behind me on my whiteboard at work, I have about 90% of the formula written to calculate threat?
If someone, anyone, would spend, I dunno, one hour a night with me, just runnign dozens and dozens of tests, i could crack the threat formula the dev's use inside a week. There's only 1 variable, and it's not immune from discovery. All it takes is time to figure out.
On the warden forums, they already have a method for calculating threat.
It's wrong, but it works in practice.
Today, if an MMO isn't out of the box perfect, it's tossed in the trash bin.
Darkfall will suffer that fate I have no doubt.
No matter how amazing it currently is (and it really is), the warcraft crowd and the "There's a slight flaw this game iz teh fail!" losers will make sure it goes down in spectacular flames.
Take a look at the recent yelling and bitching on the lotro forums about bag space.
Not a single one realizes WHY dev's limit inventory space. But they all say the same thing, "if we complain enough the dev's will realize they're going to lose poeple and they'll change it".
And not a single person realizes what that'll do to the world economy, and how it will stifle game growth by a lack of new players as a result.
But you know what? They're probably right.
The dev's may very well cave.
They caved with DDO and the same argument.
Players ruining their own game for instant gratification.
I hope Darkfall makes a play, but it likely won't.
It's a hard game to play. It requires a significantly gerater level of skill then WoW or lotro to play.
And it doesn't take a genius to realize that dumbing down a game is all the rave in the MMO world.
It's like trying to sell a BMW in a recession.
You don't turn out a game for elitists when no one wants to be elite anymore.
