First Impressions: Dungeons and Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited Beta.
Dungeons and Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited is in its closed beta phases. However the NDA has been lifted and I write this review fully aware that certain aspects of the game are subject to change before launch.
I have to admit; when this was a subscription based game I totally ignored it. But since they decided to turn this title to the free-to-play/RMT market it’s been getting some attention. I wrote a two part article on how some community players felt about the change, and even got some feedback from Jerry Snook of DDOcast, a podcast dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I was surprised and excited to receive the invite for the closed beta test in my inbox, so I quickly downloaded the game. Lucky for me I already had a Turbine account through LOTRO; I was good to go in a matter of a few hours. And even more surprisingly enough, I actually liked the game and spent about 20+ hours on it.
Using my new GPA system, this is how I felt about it…
Graphics: Really nothing bad nor good to say about the graphics in DDO except that they could be better. If I had to compare it to another game it would be Age of Conan. That is because that this game would soar if it had the looks of AoC with DDO’s playability. I know for a fact that AoC’s graphics are superior.
But the no-nonsense look to the game give it a certain charm and I found did not way to heavy on my system. There isn’t too much detail unless you turn your setting all the way up and it still doesn’t overpower even an average rig like mine. However, I do feel that the ambience and the lighting could have been better in some of the dungeons. When I walk by a torch, let me look like I am walking by a torch. Some parts of the game look sort of two dimensional. Some of the character details are rather bland, being that most of the faces look alike. It’s a weak point but not a deal breaker.
I give 1 point for graphics.
Game play and Mechanics: Regardless of how DDO looks, the way it plays is how it shines! My first feelings of combat were that I was playing a game of whack-a-mole. Only to find that there were other aspects to DDO besides the traditional “go kill ten rats and call me in the morning” MMO quests. You DO NOT get equipment or experience points for killing a random mob. So the days of standing in the field and grinding to Valhalla are over in DDO. I’ll break it down.
Combat: plays like an fps, but don’t worry about hitting something, if you point in the general direction and you should see the face of the creature/NPC in the portrait box. When it came down to it, I was just spamming my mouse in the portrait box until it was dead. That made things easier and more engaging because I actually had to RUN AROUND, for some mobs actually have AI that says, “Let me run away now”.
Character development: I played Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, I was surprised on how Turbine stayed true to all the old D and D components. Most of the feats are the same, with the added touch of enhancements. This is like a mini-feat that players can use to customize their character as they’re leveling. I was a little confused on the difference of rank and level, a friend and DDO player explained to me like this, “Rank is for MMO levels, Levels are actually for D and D.” That made more sense as I gathered “action points” for each rank, seems like 5 ranks and you hit a new level. In the beta, you have a maximum of 4 levels that you can expand later. I will hit that further through the review. Turbine kept the depth and breadth of multiclassing elements, while staying true to it’s pen and paper roots DDO gives players a more creative and expansive area to develope their own personal style.
Questing: is your mainstay of gathering experience and character progression. With DDO being a “wheel based” mMO, questing can take place in certain mini-instances within the main village map. Your Newbie area is called Korthos; you will gather many small quests within the village although you can go to a larger instanced map. The larger instanced map, here it’s Korthos Island, and there is smaller mini-achievment quests and some larger quests in instances within the island. Yeah, it’s confusing; it’s basically an instance of instances. Sounds weird and quirky, but it works. You get experience and rewards for completing quests and quests are repeatable with an advancing level of difficulty. With Elite being the hardest it’s smart to bring a group.
Grouping: Since we are on the topic, I’ll talk about the most interesting part of DDO. Are you a soloer? Well then you can buy yourself a party of up to five “hirelings”, that was a HUGE part of the pen and paper version of D & D. There are two ways about it, you can talk to an npc and buys regular NPC hirelings, or go through the case shop for “golden seal” (insert joke here) hirelings. The difference is that Golden Hirelings can be used up to five; meanwhile regular in game bought ones can only be used 1 at a time. So you can literally carry around a party in a bottle!
If you are the social type, DDO has a very intricate and user-friendly grouping system. You are able to search for any certain groups that are in actually doing certain dungeons and filter accordingly. I played a cleric first and needed some DPS, searched for fighters, rogues and monks and put together a great party that I had a lot of fun with.
Loot: is divvied out through a “reserved” system and through quest rewards, you will have loot waiting for you even if a party member acts like dirty ninja. I liked this aspect of the game and it made it so I didn’t have to worry about rolling or missing out on stuff, it was there for me at my leisure. If you like to grind some, then you can grind dungeons for rewards and chest drops but that is by choice not by force.
UI: small, simple and very easy to use. It is very customizable I felt and UI is an important part of the game. This is how I am going to interact with the gameworld, players and even my character. The menus are easy to navigate through and the game also has a built in voice chat that works very nicely. The character screen is very basic and the tooltips are useful but not overwhelming. You can turn them off, but I chose to leave them on.
Footnote on Dungeons and Quests: This game is not all about hack and slash, there is an aspect of puzzle solving that the game mechanics weigh heavy into. Some mini-quests are hidden and I actually had to pull off some Lara Croft moves to find them. That is refreshing to me in a mMO; there are many small parts of DDO that add up to the whole. The FPS combat plays right into having to look around the map for clues on a puzzle. This also creates the ability to make “interesting choices” and employ both platform mechanics AND mmorpg play. Nothing in DDO is just a straight line, it made me stop think and have a few “beardy” moments. KUDOS to you Turbine, you knocked this category out of the park!
I give DDO 2 Full for Game play and mechanics.
Community: Very helpful and polite. Yes there was a part when the gen-chat becomes a wow-fanboi flamefest and it was quickly met with a GM and put to rest. I was happy to see that, but also felt that it was a sort of censorship. However, I see that Turbine and the DDO development team is leaning heavy into the social aspect of mmorpg’s. I fell into a few good parties and everyone was easy to play with and we all had a good time. Parties are easy to find, either through the UI function or good ole fashion spam in general chat.
If you are afraid of asking a question in general chat, then just type it into the /advice chat and someone will answer you. They answered me on many occasions and didn’t mind my line of questioning. I think that DDO is going to retain a lot of the older players, this is going to help all new players to make it through the beginning “newbie” stages, and it’s been fun for me so far.
2 Full points.
Customer service: Honestly, I have never had a problem with Turbine in the past trough Lord of the Rings and don’t think I will in DDO. When I cancelled my subscription for LOTRO it was handled quickly and professionally. I also like the fact that when I do buy something through the item shop it gives me a receipt via email. I like that.
It gives it an almost personal feel to the game other than “thanks for your cash!” of the other free-to-play games I tried. Also, Turbine is primarily an English speaking company so even if you do have an issue there will not be a language barrier that I have ran into before.
Cost and Accessibility: Well, well, well. The moment of truth! OK, first off. Software is free. Downloading is very simple and takes maybe a few hours depending on your internet connection and location. The turbine loader runs in the background even after you finish downloading the game and patching is automatic and went through without a problem. I’ve had TONS of problems in the past dealing with patching issues and download; this was very simple that anyone can do it. Even a younger player can download, patch and find logging in to be fast and easy. Good job there.
On the other hand…
One the positive, they didn’t ask for a credit card, not even to this point of playing. And I am not complaining that they give you $17.00 to use in the form of 1600 turbine points in the item shop of the start in a beta. But the conversion rate isn’t the best when buying Turbine points. At the best rate you are paying over a penny a point. After some mathematics’ it breaks down to .0118181818181 a point.
With most of the items in the shop being 10 points and up it’s not hard to go through 1600 points. It has some of the usual fair, hair dyes, experience potions, increase loot-luck potions. What got me the most was two things: the fact that you had to BUY something to advance past level 4 and the fact that a lot of content of the game is unlocked through the shop. I saw one instance area for $8.25, which is a bit much for a new group to buy on the spot. However you can buy group a member guest passes if they can’t pay for it themselves.
I have heard that DDO VIP’s (that pay 15 a month like a sub) have access to that content. I think of it like this, “if I walk in at $15 a month, isn’t the other stuff I buy going to add up as well?” The answer to that is, yes, of course it will. Considering that you can’t readily find potions and healing pots in a lot of the dungeons, and the token NPC doesn’t sell them either.
Second, as I might have mentioned before the Golden Seal Hirelings only last for an hour. You want to run five through a dungeon area; it will cost you almost the price of a full membership to do so. It will run you $13.75 for 5 hirelings for 5 hours, which can gang up on you and quickly blow any budget out of the window. If you run out of ammo, it will run you $.55 for 100 regular run of the mill arrows. I was stuck in that spot and had to blow some points while I was deep in a dungeon. Make sure that you stack up before you leave, especially casters, I haven’t seen any spell point drops so far in the game and had to buy some from the item shop a few times.
This is a Freemium game, not a free game; you are forced to go through the item shop at some point and it’s not cheap. If you are looking for a game to freeload off of you will not find it in DDO.
1 Point awarded.
Now let’s look at it on paper.
1. Graphics: 1 point
2. Game play and Mechanics: 2 points
3. Community: 2 points
4. Customer Service: 2 points
5. Cost and Accessibility: 1 point
Total: 8
GPA: B “A Very Good Game.”
It’s not that DDO wasn’t a good game, is why Turbine had to go an alternative route, it’s because it wasn’t good enough. There is some stiff competition out there and it’s not going to get any easier. I would consider looking to DDO over some of the other traditional free-to-play or freemium games.
As for DDO’s fate on my hard drive, I’m going to keep it around and updated. I enjoyed it so far and am interested to see how it’s going to make out in the future. For the 1600 free Turbine points that they gave me and the fact that they didn’t ask for a credit card up front, makes it a no risk game to keep.
Puzzles are cool, especially when they are easy.
Dungeons and Dragons Online, you defiantly earned your 6 gigs of space you are taking up and would recommend this game my friends and my readers; try it out.
Until then…
Play safe,
Inktomi
My Game Point Average Rating System (ver 1.0)
Recently a new ratings system for games was proposed on another website, I took a little of that framework and adjusted it for my own reviews. It is simple and still in it’s “new idea” phase, as I didn’t want to complicate things (too much). It’s also open for discussion and if anyone has an idea or a pro/con to throw in, let me know. It is still in its “Beta” phases as only I came up with this system as I was writing a review for a game.
Rating scores much like the grade system used in most schools.
A: Exceptional, best in its class
B: Very Good
C: Acceptable
D: Decent
F: Fail (not fail, fail, epic fail. Just fail.)
How points are awarded
· 2 Full points: Exceptional Score, really nailed the category.
· 1 Full: Passing points
· ½ points :Acceptable
· 0 points :Miss
The Categories
1. Graphics: contains UI, Avatar design (including character creation, movement and animations)
2. Gameplay and Mechanics: Exactly how you play the game, details your impact on the environment and the environments impact on you.: Contains Questing, grinding, leveling, character progression and any gear or weaponry acquired ingame and the basic all around fun factor. This is the biggest category and most important to pass in.
3. Community: The other people you will be playing with, simplest yet important category; this is only for MMO’s and multiplayer games.
4. Customer Service: Self explanatory means if you have a problem how is the company going to handle it.
5. Cost and Accessibility: How do you acquire the game, ease of installation/uninstallation and down-loadable or not. Whether a box is involved, how easy/hard it is to find the software and how much it’ll cost you. Also any and all item shop ratings go here too, rated on cost effectiveness of the item shop and the currency conversion. Example: for $10 you get 10 doodads and it cost $1.00 per doodad for a thingamabob; not cost effective. I will also rate a monthly subscription based on price.
Example:
“New MMO on the Block” by mmoware.com
Graphics: 1
Gameplay: 1
Community: 2
Customer Service: 1
C & A: 2 (it was a free download that worked and the game had no item shop, not realistic but hey, you never know)
Calculated points: 7
GPA or Game Point Average: B-
How I got that: I count up from the bottom in 2’s, each category can only have a maximum of 2 points total. So “New MMO” landed halfway through B, this system alleviates all A pluses but also gives an easier shot in getting a higher grade as well as missing the mark with half a point; you’ll see it works.
It’s either an A (best score evah) or A- still up there but not best score evah. An F- is just the lowest of the low, score of 0 in all categories and almost impossible to get unless your game turns out to be malware of some sort. Then you get the F-hammer!
The best thing about it, a game can be re-reviewed and old points do apply. This is an open system because sometimes things change in mmo’s and I don’t think a hard and fast 1-10 system works for malleable games such as MMORPG’s. Companies can make improvements and in rare cases screw things up. So I left it an average based system, open for nips, tucks and constructive criticism. This system also makes it REALLY hard for a game to get an F, it has to be really bad or unplayable to receive that score. And there are games that warrant it, but not usually. Unlike Stradden’s scoring system, if you fail, you fail; no such thing as an F+.
Let me know the first game I’ll be using it on is DDO Unlimited.
Play safe,
Ink
First Impressions: Dungeons and Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited Beta.
Dungeons and Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited is in its closed beta phases. However the NDA has been lifted and I write this review fully aware that certain aspects of the game are subject to change before launch.
I have to admit; when this was a subscription based game I totally ignored it. But since they decided to turn this title to the free-to-play/RMT market it’s been getting some attention. I wrote a two part article on how some community players felt about the change, and even got some feedback from Jerry Snook of DDOcast, a podcast dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I was surprised and excited to receive the invite for the closed beta test in my inbox, so I quickly downloaded the game. Lucky for me I already had a Turbine account through LOTRO; I was good to go in a matter of a few hours. And even more surprisingly enough, I actually liked the game and spent about 20+ hours on it.
Using my new GPA system, this is how I felt about it…
Graphics: Really nothing bad nor good to say about the graphics in DDO except that they could be better. If I had to compare it to another game it would be Age of Conan. That is because that this game would soar if it had the looks of AoC with DDO’s playability. I know for a fact that AoC’s graphics are superior.
But the no-nonsense look to the game give it a certain charm and I found did not way to heavy on my system. There isn’t too much detail unless you turn your setting all the way up and it still doesn’t overpower even an average rig like mine. However, I do feel that the ambience and the lighting could have been better in some of the dungeons. When I walk by a torch, let me look like I am walking by a torch. Some parts of the game look sort of two dimensional. Some of the character details are rather bland, being that most of the faces look alike. It’s a weak point but not a deal breaker.
I give 1 point for graphics.
Game play and Mechanics: Regardless of how DDO looks, the way it plays is how it shines! My first feelings of combat were that I was playing a game of whack-a-mole. Only to find that there were other aspects to DDO besides the traditional “go kill ten rats and call me in the morning” MMO quests. You DO NOT get equipment or experience points for killing a random mob. So the days of standing in the field and grinding to Valhalla are over in DDO. I’ll break it down.
Combat: plays like an fps, but don’t worry about hitting something, if you point in the general direction and you should see the face of the creature/NPC in the portrait box. When it came down to it, I was just spamming my mouse in the portrait box until it was dead. That made things easier and more engaging because I actually had to RUN AROUND, for some mobs actually have AI that says, “Let me run away now”.
Character development: I played Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, I was surprised on how Turbine stayed true to all the old D and D components. Most of the feats are the same, with the added touch of enhancements. This is like a mini-feat that players can use to customize their character as they’re leveling. I was a little confused on the difference of rank and level, a friend and DDO player explained to me like this, “Rank is for MMO levels, Levels are actually for D and D.” That made more sense as I gathered “action points” for each rank, seems like 5 ranks and you hit a new level. In the beta, you have a maximum of 4 levels that you can expand later. I will hit that further through the review. Turbine kept the depth and breadth of multiclassing elements, while staying true to it’s pen and paper roots DDO gives players a more creative and expansive area to develope their own personal style.
Questing: is your mainstay of gathering experience and character progression. With DDO being a “wheel based” mMO, questing can take place in certain mini-instances within the main village map. Your Newbie area is called Korthos; you will gather many small quests within the village although you can go to a larger instanced map. The larger instanced map, here it’s Korthos Island, and there is smaller mini-achievment quests and some larger quests in instances within the island. Yeah, it’s confusing; it’s basically an instance of instances. Sounds weird and quirky, but it works. You get experience and rewards for completing quests and quests are repeatable with an advancing level of difficulty. With Elite being the hardest it’s smart to bring a group.
Grouping: Since we are on the topic, I’ll talk about the most interesting part of DDO. Are you a soloer? Well then you can buy yourself a party of up to five “hirelings”, that was a HUGE part of the pen and paper version of D & D. There are two ways about it, you can talk to an npc and buys regular NPC hirelings, or go through the case shop for “golden seal” (insert joke here) hirelings. The difference is that Golden Hirelings can be used up to five; meanwhile regular in game bought ones can only be used 1 at a time. So you can literally carry around a party in a bottle!
If you are the social type, DDO has a very intricate and user-friendly grouping system. You are able to search for any certain groups that are in actually doing certain dungeons and filter accordingly. I played a cleric first and needed some DPS, searched for fighters, rogues and monks and put together a great party that I had a lot of fun with.
Loot: is divvied out through a “reserved” system and through quest rewards, you will have loot waiting for you even if a party member acts like dirty ninja. I liked this aspect of the game and it made it so I didn’t have to worry about rolling or missing out on stuff, it was there for me at my leisure. If you like to grind some, then you can grind dungeons for rewards and chest drops but that is by choice not by force.
UI: small, simple and very easy to use. It is very customizable I felt and UI is an important part of the game. This is how I am going to interact with the gameworld, players and even my character. The menus are easy to navigate through and the game also has a built in voice chat that works very nicely. The character screen is very basic and the tooltips are useful but not overwhelming. You can turn them off, but I chose to leave them on.
Footnote on Dungeons and Quests: This game is not all about hack and slash, there is an aspect of puzzle solving that the game mechanics weigh heavy into. Some mini-quests are hidden and I actually had to pull off some Lara Croft moves to find them. That is refreshing to me in a mMO; there are many small parts of DDO that add up to the whole. The FPS combat plays right into having to look around the map for clues on a puzzle. This also creates the ability to make “interesting choices” and employ both platform mechanics AND mmorpg play. Nothing in DDO is just a straight line, it made me stop think and have a few “beardy” moments. KUDOS to you Turbine, you knocked this category out of the park!
I give DDO 2 Full for Game play and mechanics.
Community: Very helpful and polite. Yes there was a part when the gen-chat becomes a wow-fanboi flamefest and it was quickly met with a GM and put to rest. I was happy to see that, but also felt that it was a sort of censorship. However, I see that Turbine and the DDO development team is leaning heavy into the social aspect of mmorpg’s. I fell into a few good parties and everyone was easy to play with and we all had a good time. Parties are easy to find, either through the UI function or good ole fashion spam in general chat.
If you are afraid of asking a question in general chat, then just type it into the /advice chat and someone will answer you. They answered me on many occasions and didn’t mind my line of questioning. I think that DDO is going to retain a lot of the older players, this is going to help all new players to make it through the beginning “newbie” stages, and it’s been fun for me so far.
2 Full points.
Customer service: Honestly, I have never had a problem with Turbine in the past trough Lord of the Rings and don’t think I will in DDO. When I cancelled my subscription for LOTRO it was handled quickly and professionally. I also like the fact that when I do buy something through the item shop it gives me a receipt via email. I like that.
It gives it an almost personal feel to the game other than “thanks for your cash!” of the other free-to-play games I tried. Also, Turbine is primarily an English speaking company so even if you do have an issue there will not be a language barrier that I have ran into before.
Cost and Accessibility: Well, well, well. The moment of truth! OK, first off. Software is free. Downloading is very simple and takes maybe a few hours depending on your internet connection and location. The turbine loader runs in the background even after you finish downloading the game and patching is automatic and went through without a problem. I’ve had TONS of problems in the past dealing with patching issues and download; this was very simple that anyone can do it. Even a younger player can download, patch and find logging in to be fast and easy. Good job there.
On the other hand…
One the positive, they didn’t ask for a credit card, not even to this point of playing. And I am not complaining that they give you $17.00 to use in the form of 1600 turbine points in the item shop of the start in a beta. But the conversion rate isn’t the best when buying Turbine points. At the best rate you are paying over a penny a point. After some mathematics’ it breaks down to .0118181818181 a point.
With most of the items in the shop being 10 points and up it’s not hard to go through 1600 points. It has some of the usual fair, hair dyes, experience potions, increase loot-luck potions. What got me the most was two things: the fact that you had to BUY something to advance past level 4 and the fact that a lot of content of the game is unlocked through the shop. I saw one instance area for $8.25, which is a bit much for a new group to buy on the spot. However you can buy group a member guest passes if they can’t pay for it themselves.
I have heard that DDO VIP’s (that pay 15 a month like a sub) have access to that content. I think of it like this, “if I walk in at $15 a month, isn’t the other stuff I buy going to add up as well?” The answer to that is, yes, of course it will. Considering that you can’t readily find potions and healing pots in a lot of the dungeons, and the token NPC doesn’t sell them either.
Second, as I might have mentioned before the Golden Seal Hirelings only last for an hour. You want to run five through a dungeon area; it will cost you almost the price of a full membership to do so. It will run you $13.75 for 5 hirelings for 5 hours, which can gang up on you and quickly blow any budget out of the window. If you run out of ammo, it will run you $.55 for 100 regular run of the mill arrows. I was stuck in that spot and had to blow some points while I was deep in a dungeon. Make sure that you stack up before you leave, especially casters, I haven’t seen any spell point drops so far in the game and had to buy some from the item shop a few times.
This is a Freemium game, not a free game; you are forced to go through the item shop at some point and it’s not cheap. If you are looking for a game to freeload off of you will not find it in DDO.
1 Point awarded.
Now let’s look at it on paper.
1. Graphics: 1 point
2. Game play and Mechanics: 2 points
3. Community: 2 points
4. Customer Service: 2 points
5. Cost and Accessibility: 1 point
Total: 8
GPA: B “A Very Good Game.”
It’s not that DDO wasn’t a good game, is why Turbine had to go an alternative route, it’s because it wasn’t good enough. There is some stiff competition out there and it’s not going to get any easier. I would consider looking to DDO over some of the other traditional free-to-play or freemium games.
As for DDO’s fate on my hard drive, I’m going to keep it around and updated. I enjoyed it so far and am interested to see how it’s going to make out in the future. For the 1600 free Turbine points that they gave me and the fact that they didn’t ask for a credit card up front, makes it a no risk game to keep.
Puzzles are cool, especially when they are easy.
Dungeons and Dragons Online, you defiantly earned your 6 gigs of space you are taking up and would recommend this game my friends and my readers; try it out.
Until then…
Play safe,
Inktomi
My Game Point Average Rating System (ver 1.0)
Recently a new ratings system for games was proposed on another website, I took a little of that framework and adjusted it for my own reviews. It is simple and still in it’s “new idea” phase, as I didn’t want to complicate things (too much). It’s also open for discussion and if anyone has an idea or a pro/con to throw in, let me know. It is still in its “Beta” phases as only I came up with this system as I was writing a review for a game.
Rating scores much like the grade system used in most schools.
A: Exceptional, best in its class
B: Very Good
C: Acceptable
D: Decent
F: Fail (not fail, fail, epic fail. Just fail.)
How points are awarded
· 2 Full points: Exceptional Score, really nailed the category.
· 1 Full: Passing points
· ½ points :Acceptable
· 0 points :Miss
The Categories
1. Graphics: contains UI, Avatar design (including character creation, movement and animations)
2. Gameplay and Mechanics: Exactly how you play the game, details your impact on the environment and the environments impact on you.: Contains Questing, grinding, leveling, character progression and any gear or weaponry acquired ingame and the basic all around fun factor. This is the biggest category and most important to pass in.
3. Community: The other people you will be playing with, simplest yet important category; this is only for MMO’s and multiplayer games.
4. Customer Service: Self explanatory means if you have a problem how is the company going to handle it.
5. Cost and Accessibility: How do you acquire the game, ease of installation/uninstallation and down-loadable or not. Whether a box is involved, how easy/hard it is to find the software and how much it’ll cost you. Also any and all item shop ratings go here too, rated on cost effectiveness of the item shop and the currency conversion. Example: for $10 you get 10 doodads and it cost $1.00 per doodad for a thingamabob; not cost effective. I will also rate a monthly subscription based on price.
Example:
“New MMO on the Block” by mmoware.com
Graphics: 1
Gameplay: 1
Community: 2
Customer Service: 1
C & A: 2 (it was a free download that worked and the game had no item shop, not realistic but hey, you never know)
Calculated points: 7
GPA or Game Point Average: B-
How I got that: I count up from the bottom in 2’s, each category can only have a maximum of 2 points total. So “New MMO” landed halfway through B, this system alleviates all A pluses but also gives an easier shot in getting a higher grade as well as missing the mark with half a point; you’ll see it works.
It’s either an A (best score evah) or A- still up there but not best score evah. An F- is just the lowest of the low, score of 0 in all categories and almost impossible to get unless your game turns out to be malware of some sort. Then you get the F-hammer!
The best thing about it, a game can be re-reviewed and old points do apply. This is an open system because sometimes things change in mmo’s and I don’t think a hard and fast 1-10 system works for malleable games such as MMORPG’s. Companies can make improvements and in rare cases screw things up. So I left it an average based system, open for nips, tucks and constructive criticism. This system also makes it REALLY hard for a game to get an F, it has to be really bad or unplayable to receive that score. And there are games that warrant it, but not usually. Unlike Stradden’s scoring system, if you fail, you fail; no such thing as an F+.
Let me know the first game I’ll be using it on is DDO Unlimited.
Play safe,
Ink
Global Agenda Closed Beta Date Announced
Today Hi-Rez Studios announced that closed beta for the upcoming MMOFPS Glogal Agenda is set to begin on July 24th. You can find the full article with more information and signup for the Global Agenda closed beta here.
Ok. Great. When does Closed Beta Begin?
The exact timelines for Closed Beta Testing Phase 1 (CBT-1) could change based on Hi-Rez’s assessment of the games’ readiness. But, at present, the plan calls for Closed Beta Phase 1 to begin on July 24th, 2009.
Testing for CBT-1 will unfold over a series of short testing windows, each labeled CBT-1A, CBT-1B, etc. The servers will only be available for testing during the specified times for each test. The first weekend of testing, CBT-1A, will have separate test windows for “NEW BETA PLAYERS” and “CURRENT ALPHA PLAYERS”.
NEW BETA PLAYERS will test from FRIDAY JULY 24th AT 3 PM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME through MONDAY, JULY 27 T 6 AM EASTERN.
CURRENT ALPHA PLAYERS will test on MONDAY JULY 27 OM 6PM EASTERN to MIDNIGHT EASTERN.
The dates and times of subsequent CBT-1 testing phases will be released as we progress further. However, generally, testing will be concentrated during extended weekends (FRIDAY THROUGH MONDAY).
When and how will I know if I made it into Beta?
Invitations for Closed Beta Phase 1 (CBT-1) will be sent in groups.
The first group was sent in late June and was primarily directed to existing Alpha testers. Subsequent invite waves will be sent during the weeks of July 8 and July 15, 2009.
In order to participate in the Beta, players that receive an Invite must RSVP by visiting the Global Agenda website and following the instructions in the invitation. Each invitation will include a date by which a player must confirm their participation prior to the invitation expiring. Once a player confirms their participation, additional information will be sent regarding the test program.
Global Agenda Closed Beta Date Announced
Today Hi-Rez Studios announced that closed beta for the upcoming MMOFPS Glogal Agenda is set to begin on July 24th. You can find the full article with more information and signup for the Global Agenda closed beta here.
Ok. Great. When does Closed Beta Begin?
The exact timelines for Closed Beta Testing Phase 1 (CBT-1) could change based on Hi-Rez’s assessment of the games’ readiness. But, at present, the plan calls for Closed Beta Phase 1 to begin on July 24th, 2009.
Testing for CBT-1 will unfold over a series of short testing windows, each labeled CBT-1A, CBT-1B, etc. The servers will only be available for testing during the specified times for each test. The first weekend of testing, CBT-1A, will have separate test windows for “NEW BETA PLAYERS” and “CURRENT ALPHA PLAYERS”.
NEW BETA PLAYERS will test from FRIDAY JULY 24th AT 3 PM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME through MONDAY, JULY 27 T 6 AM EASTERN.
CURRENT ALPHA PLAYERS will test on MONDAY JULY 27 OM 6PM EASTERN to MIDNIGHT EASTERN.
The dates and times of subsequent CBT-1 testing phases will be released as we progress further. However, generally, testing will be concentrated during extended weekends (FRIDAY THROUGH MONDAY).
When and how will I know if I made it into Beta?
Invitations for Closed Beta Phase 1 (CBT-1) will be sent in groups.
The first group was sent in late June and was primarily directed to existing Alpha testers. Subsequent invite waves will be sent during the weeks of July 8 and July 15, 2009.
In order to participate in the Beta, players that receive an Invite must RSVP by visiting the Global Agenda website and following the instructions in the invitation. Each invitation will include a date by which a player must confirm their participation prior to the invitation expiring. Once a player confirms their participation, additional information will be sent regarding the test program.
Review: Aion Beta Weekend
After my last entry about some of the upcoming MMOs, luck would have it that I was able to get a chance to play Aion during one of their recent beta preview weekend type events. Today I am going to try to give you my impressions from playing during the recent weekend event that had a level limit of 10, but did allow players to make characters from both of the game’s factions. While I will be the first to admit that 10 levels is hardly enough to review much of anything, but I think I got a chance to sample the game and take a look at various aspects that were present.
Just to recap quickly here before I get started, I went into this with a few preconceptions about the game in terms of graphics, polish, and whether or not the game would be bringing anything new to table. I have seen some pretty remarkable screenshots of the game, so graphically I set the bar pretty high. The game has also been out in a foreign market for a while, so I expected a fair amount of polish. In terms of innovations I approached Aion with fairly low expectations. As soon as the log-in screen popped up as seen above, I felt somewhat reaffirmed that graphically I would not be disappointed. So with all that being said, let’s get started!
Character Creation
Before we can do anything, we have to create a character. The game is based around 2 main factions that are to be pitted against each other akin to what we have seen in Warhammer and World of Warcraft. One of the main differences with Aion is that the game only features 2 races to chose from, the Elyos (Angels) and the Asmodian (Demons). If your used to some of the other RvR MMOs out there where each team has several races to chose from, this might concern you as it did me.
As soon as I saw the actual character creator, my concerns about character customization for my appearance pretty much vanished. I have to say in all honesty that Aion sports one of the most customizable character creators I have seen. Aion gives you infinitely more options than many of its competitors, and rivals and possibly exceeds Age of Conan. For starters, the creator has a color palettes that enable you to make almost any part of your character into any color you can imagine. This opens the door for some very creative and also very silly looking toons. Hair, skin, and lip color can be anything from standard colors to wild shades of green and purple.
Sliders and more sliders. This creator has sliders for everything you mind can think of, as well as stuff probably wouldn’t have considered. When you make your character, the 2 main aspects are designing your face and your body. The body creator has 12 sliders alone, one of which includes a height slider that can make your character as small as a child or a tall as an ogre. As if that wasn’t quite enough, the face customizer has another 25 sliders! It’s very easy to lose yourself at this point, and if it wasn’t a beta, I might have been there for quite some time trying to sculpt my guys face. In conclusion here, there are enough options to make your character look unique despite the fact there are only 2 races to chose from.
The other decision you have to make is what archetype do you want your character to be, as well as the gender of your character (this is actually done before the customizing step). This probably where my first beef comes into play. I am the type of person who would rather pick a class right out of the gate, rather than an archetype. My concern with this route is that you do not actually get to play the class you want until you have put in 9 levels into your guy. While this is not really a large time investment by any means (took me 90 minutes my first time), I’d like to find out sooner rather than later if the class I am going to be is to my liking without having to invest the time to find out. I don’t want to put in the time and finally get to my class only to find out it’s not a good fit for me, then have to reroll and repeat the early content again just to try again.
User Interface
The Aion User Interface is pretty much the cookie-cutter UI we have seen from most of the traditional style MMOs in recent memory. If you spent any time at all playing WoW, EQ2, AoC, or WAR, you will pretty much feel right at home instantly.
You will find most of the standard UI elements here along with the ability to customize it a bit. Aion gives you 3 rows of hotbars to be stacked on top of one another, but they remain completely invisible if there are no abilities dropped into them. Aion also uses the same exact keyboard buttons assigned to some of the basic functions from previous MMOs as well. Again if you have played a recent traditional MMO, you will find yourself open your inventory, character window, map, etc. without even having to look up the predefined assigned key.
The character window itself is broken into several different tabs of information. The main screen features the standard equipment paperdoll which is accompanied by all of your characters primary stats, defensive skills, and resistances. Below that you will find your backpack contents and gold totals. One confusing things for me was the fact that instead of using the term backpack, Aion calls it the “Cube”. The cube initially only has a limited number of slots, but there is an NPC who will expand your cube for a fee.
Another interesting aspect is that much like Warhammer Online, Aion also features an unlockable title system. It seems that by completing certain quest or quest chains you can unlock new titles to be displayed next to your name. What makes this system a bit different than WAR’s title system is that the Aion titles actually have different bonuses associated to them. I was able to unlock Tree-Hugger by completing one of the early quest chains that gave me an accuracy boost. The list seems to have 50 hidden titles in total, so most likely there will be certain titles that end up being favored by certain classes in the game because of the bonuses they give.
Combat
Aion’s combat style follows the traditional MMO style combat from games like WoW, EQ2, and WAR. The game features the standard tab targeting system, and activated abilities that are on various different cooldowns. The game’s mini-map color codes aggressive monsters as red, and when you target them you even see their aggro radius as if it were a tiny radar.
The combat sounds and animations struck me as being pretty well done. While the combat seems to be in many ways the same recycled form of combat we have seen in the last few MMOs, it does feel responsive and look well. The game’s combat does feature positional attacks and a combo type system for chaining weapon attacks together.
They really seem to go out of their way to make the skill chains easy to learn compared to some other MMOs. As an example, the character I picked was under scout archetype. One of my stun attacks can only be performed directly after my character evades an incoming enemy attack. In some previous games, it would be up to the player to watch the combat very closely for the evade message or animation. In Aion, when my character evades I get a visual flashing effect on the ability that pretty much screams “press me!”, that get accompanied by another visual in plain view near the center of my screen. This makes it fairly user-friendly for even new and inexperienced players to know when to seize the opportunity to use a situational skill.
One final quick note here. This game also seems to feature items that can be socketed with other stat boosting items to give very specific effects much like the Warhammer talisman system. The stones can be popped into both weapons and armor and seem to drop fairly regularly off of mobs I fought. They effects I saw ranged from adding HP and MP, all the way to boosting crit chances and evade percentages. This gives a little bit of room for the player to mess around with various set ups, and the stones can be removed from a special NPC in case you want to try a different stone.
Quests
Questing in Aion is pretty lame to be honest, there just isn’t really any other way to say it. You can tell as soon as you talk to your first NPC that your questing career in Aion will pretty much consist of the same drab recycled kill and collection quests that we have seen in WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR etc. Quest NPCs can be spotted by the usual floating icons over their heads to indicate quest offerings or turn-ins.
This is yet another game where the work of a hero is to collect flowers, kill animals, collect dingleberries, and do some part time work for Fed-Ex. I won’t harp on this too long as I have already ranted on this countless times in the past, but there really isn’t much anyone can write at this point in a quest box to make collecting sacks of grain into something heroic. I didn’t really care for it in Warhammer, but at least Warhammer mixed things up with their public quest system, there just isn’t anything along those lines here to help break up what will be a long chain of tedium.
The one thing Aion seems to do a little different in the quest department is their campaign quest system. The quest journal is divided into normal quests and the campaign quests. Each of Aion’s major zones seems to feature a campaign series of quests. These are pretty much a long series of quests that chain together that help walk you through the area and give you a little story at the same time. The initial level 1-10 noobie area campaign seems to revolve around the fact that you have lost your memory and need to try to recall it. The bad news is these quests pretty much are the same exact kill and collection quests you will find in the other part of your journal. When the campaign starts, you will see all of the quests listed with the recommended character level for it, although at the start you can’t see the specifics of the quests. As you start to progress through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to see quests further down the list as well as their reward.
The one saving grace about the campaign system is that they do seem to go a little out of their way to help drive home the story element that comes along with some of them. A lot of these quests will reward you with cutscenes at various stages to help give you an idea of what is going on. Not all cutscenes seem to be created equally though. In the quest to recover your lost memory, the final stages have some pretty impressive and entertaining ones (as seen above), but at the same time there are some that tell you a farm has been pillaged that seem unnecessary. I’ll take anything that helps break up the tedium though I guess.
The World
I wanted to devote a section here about some observations I made about the world and some features it has.
The first thing I want to touch on are the graphics and the games performance. This game probably has the best graphics of all the traditional MMOs on the market with the exception of Age of Conan which I think has a completely different art style. Performance wise, the game runs great on a wide variety of systems. I also have to say the sound and music seemed pretty well done as well. A lot of the musical scores I heard in some of the various areas seemed to be professionally composed and helped add to the immersion factor.
There are a lot of familiar features to Aion that seems to have been copied from other games. I noticed right out of the gate that they have flight masters for flying you across a zone the same as found in WoW, EQ2, and Warhammer. The only difference here is that instead of riding a flying animal, your character uses a special pair if wings to fly himself over to wherever he is going. Aion also seems to have a working mail system and auction house system in place much like its competition. One good feature that I think is new to this game is a fast way of selling vendor trash type loot at the merchants with a single button. One thing that I did find somewhat annoying was the fact that binding to a new location costs money.
One of my biggest concerns regarding the world is the layout of it. The world is divided into 3 parts, one of the Elyos, one for the Asmodians, and the Abyss PvP area in the center. Each of the race’s section of the world map seem to be divided into 5 main zones and a city. After leveling from 1-10, I had completely exhausted the first zone, leaving 4 more to be explored. Given the amount of areas remaining, and the number of levels I have yet to climb, I suspect that the game is extremely linear in terms of how you progress through the content and the map. In a lot of other games, you are given choices on which zone you want to spend your time adventuring in at any given level. Since other games have multiple races and multiple areas to go with them, in WoW for example if you tire of the human areas, you can head over to the elves for a change of scenery and content. I fear that Aion will send you down a very narrow set of rails in order to reach the max level with little room for deviation. This can be worse if you decide to level up an alt because you will be forced to do all of the exact same content you did the firs time around in all of the same places, including the campaign quests.
This leads to me another concern regarding how someone will experience PvP during the leveling process. In Warhammer Online, each area you level up is connected to an area controlled by the enemy. This means that if someone really wants to experience the games PvP at any stage, they only need to wander over towards the local hotspot. While I haven’t seen this during the preview weekend, I have heard there are portals that can open up randomly that send you to the enemy area for PvP. Depending on how rare these occur, your exposure to the PvP side of the game could be very limited initially. I like to have an opportunity to test my character in PvP even at the early stages so I can see how well the class I picked handles itself in a variety of situations.
Flight
No doubt one of the main selling points and innovations of Aion is the flight mechanic. Initially you can’t fly right out of the gate when you start, but once you reach level 9 and complete the campaign to get your class you will be able to glide and fly after a ceremony.
The flight system seems to work very well and I found the controls very easy to get a handle on. In the bottom right part of user interface, there is a little flight indicator that tells you if you can fly in a certain area, and how much flight time you have left. If you are in a flight-enabled area, you simply press the “Page Up” button for your character to sprout their wings and take off. Once you are in the air, you can press “R” and “F” to fly up and down respectively, or you can hold your right mouse button down to tilt your altitude. The meter will start to tick down and when its out your wings will vanish sending you plummeting. You can manually land or turn off your wings by pressing the “Page Down” button. Sometimes I found the fastest way to get back to the ground safely from high up was do turn off my wings to fall, then turn them back on right before I hit the ground (use this method at your own risk).
Having a third dimension to the game is definitely a very interesting feature, and flying was genuinely a fun experience. Having that third dimension made finding some quest locations tougher though, as on several occasions I reach the quest waypoint only to realize my real destination was actually high above me on some floating island. My only beef is that the PvE areas I explored have certain parts you can fly, and others you can’t, so you will find yourself hitting invisible walls that force you to land when transitioning to a no-fly area. I would love to see more areas be flight enabled.
PvP
Unfortunately the limitations of the weekend didn’t give me a chance to really be able to check out the PvP. This is what will inevitably make or break the long term playability of this game. While I was unable to participate in any PvP, I did notice a few features related to it.
For starters there seems to be a tab on your main character window dedicated to your PvP stats from the Abyss. The window seems to keep track of your PvP rank, as well as your kills and points earned broken down into various time frames so you can monitor your progress. Everyone seems to start out as a rank 9 Soldier, and by earning points you can advance through the ranks. There is also a rank window that breaks down the point totals needed to reach certain ranks, as well as which players on each side are at the top of their game. Points are earned by killing players in the Abyss, and unlike other MMOs, they are lost when you are killed. This is one aspect that makes Aion stick out from its competition. Warhammer and WoW were both notorious for treating people with kid gloves by rewarding them with points even for a loss, while Aion seems to have some sort of consequence for a loss. This will undoubted stop competitive players from just rushing into fights without any fear of death, which is a good thing in my opinion.
The abyss seems to be the focal point of the Aion endgame and its PvP. By looking at the map, we can see that it has 3 different layers, and assorted keeps to fight over in it. I am not really sure how this endgame will stack up against what we saw in WAR, but this is going to be what makes or breaks this game. The area looks to be a decent size by looking at the maps, and I hope that is the case. If all of the endgame PvP is going to be in this area, it will need to be very large to stop it from getting old. Despite its flaws, Warhammer had a variety of areas and fronts for people to fight on to add a little variety to the PvP endgame, hopefully this area will offer enough to keep people entertained for a long time.
Conclusion
Aion is a graphically stunning game and has tons of polish. The game has been out overseas for a little while now, and I think that ultimately that fact will be a large benefit to the North American fans. Since the game has been out and patched for a while in other markets, NA players will be getting a game that is polished and feels complete. There are not that many MMOs that have come out in the last few years that players have been able to say that about. The game has a real focus on endgame PvP, and the patching the game has gone through already has no doubt made class balance less of an issue. I am glad to see that there is a loss for death in PvP, as bind and zerg rushing seems to plague a lot of other traditional style MMOs that have tried for the same goal.
On the flip side, Aion strikes me as very linear game. The way the overworld is layed out has me worried that in addition to being constricted, players will be forced to stomach through the same content over and over again every time they level up another character. Aion also is not a game that is oozing with innovation. Outside of the flight mechanic, I think a lot of people will legitimately be able to criticize this game for being somewhat of a clone in some aspects of some of the more recent traditional games. The endgame PvP is going to be the real test of whether or not this game breaks through to people and distinguishes itself from the rest, or if it gets written off as another MMO using an already exhausted formula. I think despite that, this game will appeal to a lot of people who might be current WoW and WAR subscribers. The game already has a huge following overseas, so it should be interesting to see how it fairs in a completely different market.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Review: Aion Beta Weekend
After my last entry about some of the upcoming MMOs, luck would have it that I was able to get a chance to play Aion during one of their recent beta preview weekend type events. Today I am going to try to give you my impressions from playing during the recent weekend event that had a level limit of 10, but did allow players to make characters from both of the game’s factions. While I will be the first to admit that 10 levels is hardly enough to review much of anything, but I think I got a chance to sample the game and take a look at various aspects that were present.
Just to recap quickly here before I get started, I went into this with a few preconceptions about the game in terms of graphics, polish, and whether or not the game would be bringing anything new to table. I have seen some pretty remarkable screenshots of the game, so graphically I set the bar pretty high. The game has also been out in a foreign market for a while, so I expected a fair amount of polish. In terms of innovations I approached Aion with fairly low expectations. As soon as the log-in screen popped up as seen above, I felt somewhat reaffirmed that graphically I would not be disappointed. So with all that being said, let’s get started!
Character Creation
Before we can do anything, we have to create a character. The game is based around 2 main factions that are to be pitted against each other akin to what we have seen in Warhammer and World of Warcraft. One of the main differences with Aion is that the game only features 2 races to chose from, the Elyos (Angels) and the Asmodian (Demons). If your used to some of the other RvR MMOs out there where each team has several races to chose from, this might concern you as it did me.
As soon as I saw the actual character creator, my concerns about character customization for my appearance pretty much vanished. I have to say in all honesty that Aion sports one of the most customizable character creators I have seen. Aion gives you infinitely more options than many of its competitors, and rivals and possibly exceeds Age of Conan. For starters, the creator has a color palettes that enable you to make almost any part of your character into any color you can imagine. This opens the door for some very creative and also very silly looking toons. Hair, skin, and lip color can be anything from standard colors to wild shades of green and purple.
Sliders and more sliders. This creator has sliders for everything you mind can think of, as well as stuff probably wouldn’t have considered. When you make your character, the 2 main aspects are designing your face and your body. The body creator has 12 sliders alone, one of which includes a height slider that can make your character as small as a child or a tall as an ogre. As if that wasn’t quite enough, the face customizer has another 25 sliders! It’s very easy to lose yourself at this point, and if it wasn’t a beta, I might have been there for quite some time trying to sculpt my guys face. In conclusion here, there are enough options to make your character look unique despite the fact there are only 2 races to chose from.
The other decision you have to make is what archetype do you want your character to be, as well as the gender of your character (this is actually done before the customizing step). This probably where my first beef comes into play. I am the type of person who would rather pick a class right out of the gate, rather than an archetype. My concern with this route is that you do not actually get to play the class you want until you have put in 9 levels into your guy. While this is not really a large time investment by any means (took me 90 minutes my first time), I’d like to find out sooner rather than later if the class I am going to be is to my liking without having to invest the time to find out. I don’t want to put in the time and finally get to my class only to find out it’s not a good fit for me, then have to reroll and repeat the early content again just to try again.
User Interface
The Aion User Interface is pretty much the cookie-cutter UI we have seen from most of the traditional style MMOs in recent memory. If you spent any time at all playing WoW, EQ2, AoC, or WAR, you will pretty much feel right at home instantly.
You will find most of the standard UI elements here along with the ability to customize it a bit. Aion gives you 3 rows of hotbars to be stacked on top of one another, but they remain completely invisible if there are no abilities dropped into them. Aion also uses the same exact keyboard buttons assigned to some of the basic functions from previous MMOs as well. Again if you have played a recent traditional MMO, you will find yourself open your inventory, character window, map, etc. without even having to look up the predefined assigned key.
The character window itself is broken into several different tabs of information. The main screen features the standard equipment paperdoll which is accompanied by all of your characters primary stats, defensive skills, and resistances. Below that you will find your backpack contents and gold totals. One confusing things for me was the fact that instead of using the term backpack, Aion calls it the “Cube”. The cube initially only has a limited number of slots, but there is an NPC who will expand your cube for a fee.
Another interesting aspect is that much like Warhammer Online, Aion also features an unlockable title system. It seems that by completing certain quest or quest chains you can unlock new titles to be displayed next to your name. What makes this system a bit different than WAR’s title system is that the Aion titles actually have different bonuses associated to them. I was able to unlock Tree-Hugger by completing one of the early quest chains that gave me an accuracy boost. The list seems to have 50 hidden titles in total, so most likely there will be certain titles that end up being favored by certain classes in the game because of the bonuses they give.
Combat
Aion’s combat style follows the traditional MMO style combat from games like WoW, EQ2, and WAR. The game features the standard tab targeting system, and activated abilities that are on various different cooldowns. The game’s mini-map color codes aggressive monsters as red, and when you target them you even see their aggro radius as if it were a tiny radar.
The combat sounds and animations struck me as being pretty well done. While the combat seems to be in many ways the same recycled form of combat we have seen in the last few MMOs, it does feel responsive and look well. The game’s combat does feature positional attacks and a combo type system for chaining weapon attacks together.
They really seem to go out of their way to make the skill chains easy to learn compared to some other MMOs. As an example, the character I picked was under scout archetype. One of my stun attacks can only be performed directly after my character evades an incoming enemy attack. In some previous games, it would be up to the player to watch the combat very closely for the evade message or animation. In Aion, when my character evades I get a visual flashing effect on the ability that pretty much screams “press me!”, that get accompanied by another visual in plain view near the center of my screen. This makes it fairly user-friendly for even new and inexperienced players to know when to seize the opportunity to use a situational skill.
One final quick note here. This game also seems to feature items that can be socketed with other stat boosting items to give very specific effects much like the Warhammer talisman system. The stones can be popped into both weapons and armor and seem to drop fairly regularly off of mobs I fought. They effects I saw ranged from adding HP and MP, all the way to boosting crit chances and evade percentages. This gives a little bit of room for the player to mess around with various set ups, and the stones can be removed from a special NPC in case you want to try a different stone.
Quests
Questing in Aion is pretty lame to be honest, there just isn’t really any other way to say it. You can tell as soon as you talk to your first NPC that your questing career in Aion will pretty much consist of the same drab recycled kill and collection quests that we have seen in WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR etc. Quest NPCs can be spotted by the usual floating icons over their heads to indicate quest offerings or turn-ins.
This is yet another game where the work of a hero is to collect flowers, kill animals, collect dingleberries, and do some part time work for Fed-Ex. I won’t harp on this too long as I have already ranted on this countless times in the past, but there really isn’t much anyone can write at this point in a quest box to make collecting sacks of grain into something heroic. I didn’t really care for it in Warhammer, but at least Warhammer mixed things up with their public quest system, there just isn’t anything along those lines here to help break up what will be a long chain of tedium.
The one thing Aion seems to do a little different in the quest department is their campaign quest system. The quest journal is divided into normal quests and the campaign quests. Each of Aion’s major zones seems to feature a campaign series of quests. These are pretty much a long series of quests that chain together that help walk you through the area and give you a little story at the same time. The initial level 1-10 noobie area campaign seems to revolve around the fact that you have lost your memory and need to try to recall it. The bad news is these quests pretty much are the same exact kill and collection quests you will find in the other part of your journal. When the campaign starts, you will see all of the quests listed with the recommended character level for it, although at the start you can’t see the specifics of the quests. As you start to progress through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to see quests further down the list as well as their reward.
The one saving grace about the campaign system is that they do seem to go a little out of their way to help drive home the story element that comes along with some of them. A lot of these quests will reward you with cutscenes at various stages to help give you an idea of what is going on. Not all cutscenes seem to be created equally though. In the quest to recover your lost memory, the final stages have some pretty impressive and entertaining ones (as seen above), but at the same time there are some that tell you a farm has been pillaged that seem unnecessary. I’ll take anything that helps break up the tedium though I guess.
The World
I wanted to devote a section here about some observations I made about the world and some features it has.
The first thing I want to touch on are the graphics and the games performance. This game probably has the best graphics of all the traditional MMOs on the market with the exception of Age of Conan which I think has a completely different art style. Performance wise, the game runs great on a wide variety of systems. I also have to say the sound and music seemed pretty well done as well. A lot of the musical scores I heard in some of the various areas seemed to be professionally composed and helped add to the immersion factor.
There are a lot of familiar features to Aion that seems to have been copied from other games. I noticed right out of the gate that they have flight masters for flying you across a zone the same as found in WoW, EQ2, and Warhammer. The only difference here is that instead of riding a flying animal, your character uses a special pair if wings to fly himself over to wherever he is going. Aion also seems to have a working mail system and auction house system in place much like its competition. One good feature that I think is new to this game is a fast way of selling vendor trash type loot at the merchants with a single button. One thing that I did find somewhat annoying was the fact that binding to a new location costs money.
One of my biggest concerns regarding the world is the layout of it. The world is divided into 3 parts, one of the Elyos, one for the Asmodians, and the Abyss PvP area in the center. Each of the race’s section of the world map seem to be divided into 5 main zones and a city. After leveling from 1-10, I had completely exhausted the first zone, leaving 4 more to be explored. Given the amount of areas remaining, and the number of levels I have yet to climb, I suspect that the game is extremely linear in terms of how you progress through the content and the map. In a lot of other games, you are given choices on which zone you want to spend your time adventuring in at any given level. Since other games have multiple races and multiple areas to go with them, in WoW for example if you tire of the human areas, you can head over to the elves for a change of scenery and content. I fear that Aion will send you down a very narrow set of rails in order to reach the max level with little room for deviation. This can be worse if you decide to level up an alt because you will be forced to do all of the exact same content you did the firs time around in all of the same places, including the campaign quests.
This leads to me another concern regarding how someone will experience PvP during the leveling process. In Warhammer Online, each area you level up is connected to an area controlled by the enemy. This means that if someone really wants to experience the games PvP at any stage, they only need to wander over towards the local hotspot. While I haven’t seen this during the preview weekend, I have heard there are portals that can open up randomly that send you to the enemy area for PvP. Depending on how rare these occur, your exposure to the PvP side of the game could be very limited initially. I like to have an opportunity to test my character in PvP even at the early stages so I can see how well the class I picked handles itself in a variety of situations.
Flight
No doubt one of the main selling points and innovations of Aion is the flight mechanic. Initially you can’t fly right out of the gate when you start, but once you reach level 9 and complete the campaign to get your class you will be able to glide and fly after a ceremony.
The flight system seems to work very well and I found the controls very easy to get a handle on. In the bottom right part of user interface, there is a little flight indicator that tells you if you can fly in a certain area, and how much flight time you have left. If you are in a flight-enabled area, you simply press the “Page Up” button for your character to sprout their wings and take off. Once you are in the air, you can press “R” and “F” to fly up and down respectively, or you can hold your right mouse button down to tilt your altitude. The meter will start to tick down and when its out your wings will vanish sending you plummeting. You can manually land or turn off your wings by pressing the “Page Down” button. Sometimes I found the fastest way to get back to the ground safely from high up was do turn off my wings to fall, then turn them back on right before I hit the ground (use this method at your own risk).
Having a third dimension to the game is definitely a very interesting feature, and flying was genuinely a fun experience. Having that third dimension made finding some quest locations tougher though, as on several occasions I reach the quest waypoint only to realize my real destination was actually high above me on some floating island. My only beef is that the PvE areas I explored have certain parts you can fly, and others you can’t, so you will find yourself hitting invisible walls that force you to land when transitioning to a no-fly area. I would love to see more areas be flight enabled.
PvP
Unfortunately the limitations of the weekend didn’t give me a chance to really be able to check out the PvP. This is what will inevitably make or break the long term playability of this game. While I was unable to participate in any PvP, I did notice a few features related to it.
For starters there seems to be a tab on your main character window dedicated to your PvP stats from the Abyss. The window seems to keep track of your PvP rank, as well as your kills and points earned broken down into various time frames so you can monitor your progress. Everyone seems to start out as a rank 9 Soldier, and by earning points you can advance through the ranks. There is also a rank window that breaks down the point totals needed to reach certain ranks, as well as which players on each side are at the top of their game. Points are earned by killing players in the Abyss, and unlike other MMOs, they are lost when you are killed. This is one aspect that makes Aion stick out from its competition. Warhammer and WoW were both notorious for treating people with kid gloves by rewarding them with points even for a loss, while Aion seems to have some sort of consequence for a loss. This will undoubted stop competitive players from just rushing into fights without any fear of death, which is a good thing in my opinion.
The abyss seems to be the focal point of the Aion endgame and its PvP. By looking at the map, we can see that it has 3 different layers, and assorted keeps to fight over in it. I am not really sure how this endgame will stack up against what we saw in WAR, but this is going to be what makes or breaks this game. The area looks to be a decent size by looking at the maps, and I hope that is the case. If all of the endgame PvP is going to be in this area, it will need to be very large to stop it from getting old. Despite its flaws, Warhammer had a variety of areas and fronts for people to fight on to add a little variety to the PvP endgame, hopefully this area will offer enough to keep people entertained for a long time.
Conclusion
Aion is a graphically stunning game and has tons of polish. The game has been out overseas for a little while now, and I think that ultimately that fact will be a large benefit to the North American fans. Since the game has been out and patched for a while in other markets, NA players will be getting a game that is polished and feels complete. There are not that many MMOs that have come out in the last few years that players have been able to say that about. The game has a real focus on endgame PvP, and the patching the game has gone through already has no doubt made class balance less of an issue. I am glad to see that there is a loss for death in PvP, as bind and zerg rushing seems to plague a lot of other traditional style MMOs that have tried for the same goal.
On the flip side, Aion strikes me as very linear game. The way the overworld is layed out has me worried that in addition to being constricted, players will be forced to stomach through the same content over and over again every time they level up another character. Aion also is not a game that is oozing with innovation. Outside of the flight mechanic, I think a lot of people will legitimately be able to criticize this game for being somewhat of a clone in some aspects of some of the more recent traditional games. The endgame PvP is going to be the real test of whether or not this game breaks through to people and distinguishes itself from the rest, or if it gets written off as another MMO using an already exhausted formula. I think despite that, this game will appeal to a lot of people who might be current WoW and WAR subscribers. The game already has a huge following overseas, so it should be interesting to see how it fairs in a completely different market.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Review: Darkfall Beta
Darkfall Online is a game that is not for everyone. The nature of the game is such that you will either love it or absolutely hate it depending on your playstyle. If you are a casual gamer, someone who does not like harsh PvP in an MMORPG, or you place a heavy emphasis on graphics, there will probably be little here that will appeal to you. On the other hand, if your MMO history involves playing games like Ultima Online or Asheron’s Call, like PvP with consequences, and value gameplay over graphics, there is a good chance that this game will provide you with something you have haven’t seen in a long time.
Darkfall is a lot different than most MMO’s. The game is entirely skill-based, meaning there are no levels, no experience points, and all advancement happens through the raising of various skills through use. The core of the game revolves around open free-for-all PvP with full looting. This means that when you die through PvP or PvE, the entire contents of what you are wearing and carrying can be snatched up by anyone. Now while the game allows you to attack anyone, the games races are divided up into loose teams, but whether you respect those teams is completely up to you.
There are consequences for your actions in Darkfall. Should you choose to attack members of your own team and go “red”, your experience in the game will be different than those who work with their racial team. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall only allows you one character per server, which means that if you chose to go red, you will not be able to log onto a non-red alt character to get supplies and switch back. It is also worth mentioning that unlike some other RvR based MMOs, there are no language barriers stopping you from saying whatever you want to anyone else.
Character Creation seems fairly simple. I would say its has a bit more options than WoW and WAR, but not even close to AoC. You get to pick your face, hair color, facial hair, and various natural jewelry stuff like rings through your nose. There is no setting for height, and no sliders to sculpt your character’s face and body like Oblivion / AoC. Once you decide on your look, you’ll have to chose a first and last name (yes, the last name is mandatory). Once you are all squared away, you get to chose from 1 of 3 starting cities near your racial capital and you are off to start your journey with nothing except an undroppable starter weapon. I was very surprised by the size of the starter town when I first logged in, I vision of some huts on a dirt road was thrown out the window pretty quickly. I do think they could definitely use some more NPC’s, it looks like there are no non-essential NPC’s at all and it makes the town seems a bit deserted given how big they are.
User Interface
The UI has a learning curve. If you have played other recent MMOs, you can pretty much just forget everything you have seen. The cookie-cutter interface from WoW, EQ2, WAR, AOC is completely gone. I think people are going to struggle with it the first time they sit down and it could turn some people off. Luckily, there is a small tutorial to help you get your bearings. Right clicking the mouse turns the game into UI/Menu mode, much of what you would expect if you pressed the “ESC” key in any other MMO.
When in this mode, you will see that this is the only time you have a mouse cursor on your screen. This means when you are in play mode, there is no clicking on your hotbar to active abilities, you just press the numerically assigned button on your keyboard. The UI is completely customizable as you can move and resize any window to fit your personal preference. The in-game help pretty much tells you that controls will feel better to FPS players over MMO players. The “F” key is the default use button and works just like it would in Call of Duty, as does spacebar with jumping, and “C” for crouching. The “R” key draws your weapon, and will put you into 3rd person if you have a melee weapon equipped.
You can’t loot a target with your weapon drawn. When monster or players die, they leave a tombstone which can be looted by pressing the use key. When the loot box open, this will put you into UI mode, so you will not be able to move or do anything. You also need to open your backpack (Default “B” button) and manually drag and drop the items from their corpse to your bag one at a time. This will definitely be perceived by many as clunky, but at the same time there is a case to be made by others that looting should not be fast to prevent people from cleaning out bodies quickly in the middle of a heated battle. After playing for a while, I think it has grown on me a lot because the time associated with cleaning someone out adds a risk when you are in a heated situation.
My main beef with UI is the chat box. The chat box has multiple tabs that correspond to the different channels, such as group, clan, local, tells, and alliance. The problem with this is that it is becomes easy to miss messages. Let’s say you are in your group chat tab running around looking for trouble, and you run across another player and kill them. Unfortunately, that player asked if he could join you and wanted to provide you with some valuable information, but you missed it because his text was under the local tab that you were not looking at because you were talking in group. Unless you are paying careful attention to the various tabs, you are bound to miss a tell or message in another channel. You can however click and drag those tabs out to create new chat windows for that channel. This also means that having a different chat box for each channel can start to clutter up your screen. I think the chat would be better served with multiple channels in the same tab, and leaving it up to the user to decide which channels they want to see in each tab. Aventurine has stated that further revamping of chat is already in the works and will arrive shortly, so there is a good chance that this will be less of an issue very soon.
The World
The environment looks very nice. The sky looks great, and you can see every branch on every tree swaying in the wind. The game runs very smooth to me with everything cranked, but I have a relatively powerful machine. The graphics are by no means cutting-edge, but considering you are getting a zoneless and seamless world with no loading screens, it looks quite well. The world size does seem massive, and I was shocked to see how little I moved on the world map after walking for a few minutes. Traveling from my starter town to my neighboring enemy’s starter area can take me anywhere from 25-45 minutes on foot depending on my route and how much stamina I burn sprinting. I think it is probably bigger than Asheron’s Call.
There are lots of interesting and hidden places scattered around the world that will appeal to explorer types. I have seen underground cities, giant tree top villages, mountain top fortresses, hidden treasure boxes, and ancient ruins just to name a few. My beef as far as the overworld goes is the scarcity of monsters. Since there are no experience points in Darkfall, monster serve the critical role as a source of items, gold, and materials. This shortage not only makes it difficult to getting these resources, but it makes the world seem a bit devoid of life at times.
Characters and Animations
Chances are that if you are a fan of this game, it isn’t because it is a graphical behemoth. This is one of the areas that people who are sticklers for visuals may be disappointed. The character models are a mixed bag. There are times when I like them, and times were I think they could be a bit better. Graphically, they will come in a distance behind some of the newer MMO’s on the market. I do however think some of the armor models make them look a lot better. When you wear heavier armor, you can see the glare of the light reflecting on some of the metallic pieces, which is a nice touch. It does vary from race to race, I hear a lot of opinions from various people who either like or dislike a certain race’s model design.
The character animations are another issue that detract a little from the game’s visuals. Some of the various animations when characters run around seem a bit off. I think it is something that most people will notice fairly quickly after watching some of the video and in their first hours in the game. Since you are in a first-person view for most of the game, you won’t be looking at your character nearly as much as other games that have you locked in the 3rd person. While they can take some getting used to, they are by no means a game breaker to me and most of the target audience of the game. If they decided to review and rework the animations down the road, I don’t think many would complain, but I think most agree that their time is better spent on other things right now.
Combat
There are 3 major different combat types in Darkfall; Melee, Archery, and Magic. This will most likely be one of the more hotly-contested aspects of the game, where most people will either love it or hate it. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall’s combat plays out more like a first-person shooter than a traditional MMO. This means there is no tab targeting, your attacks need to be manually aimed, and your attacks can also be dodged. It is also worth mentioning that the different races all vary in size, which means that certain larger races (Ork / Mahirim) may have a larger hitbox than some of the shorter races (Alfar / Dwarf). I have heard some people freak out about this issue making different races having advantages, but as someone who plays a Mahirim, it was not much of an issue for me personally. I am sure others will disagree on this point, but I would just suggest people play what they like and you will adapt.
Stamina also plays a very critical role in combat because when your stamina is depleted, you will not be able to attack or put up much of a defense. Stamina management will be vital to most of your fights, and in most cases, running out of stamina can be as equally devastating as running out of life. Darkfall also seems to recognize back attacks, and rewards them with doing an increased amount of damage. This can make turning your back and fleeing from someone have some risk if the other person is able to hit your back, especially with arrows. To combine these points, some people will find that melee combat will often have some people sprinting the entire time trying to get behind behind their targets or to make themselves harder to hit. While it can be annoying sometimes to fight someone doing this, these people tend to burn themselves out faster, but the use of this tactic will no doubt frustrate some players.
Each of the 3 combat types have skills associated with using them. When that skill reaches 25, new attacks will open up to be purchased. These new attacks initially after purchase do not seem to show a noticeable increase in damage, but after skilling them up a bit, they start to show more of a return. Some players might be disappointed to find that there are not many “special” attacks compared other MMOs for the melee and archery types where you may be used to having a hotbar full of different abilities. As a fan of Asheron’s Call which had literally no abilities, it doesn’t bother me as much because the combat has more freedom than other MMOs by combat having no autolocking hits, but it definitely will be an issue to some players. Hopefully as the game progresses, they will introduce a some more skills down the road to beef up the amount of tools non-magic players have at their disposal.
Melee
This is the most basic forum of combat in the game and most likely the path most will follow, especially at the very start of the game because it is inexpensive. While melee is a bit easier on your purse, it has the obvious drawback of limited range. Different weapons types do however offer varying range, such as polearms reaching farther than daggers.
When your melee weapon is drawn, you will be pulled out into a 3rd-person viewpoint. Even if this view, your visibility behind your character is minimal. This means sneaking up behind people is a legitimate tactic as opposed to other MMOs where you can spin the camera to see behind you. I can testify first hand that this works quite well, which is good because this game has no “stealth” skills like other MMOs that can make you go invisible. The only time in Darkfall where you can spin the camera at your whim is while resting.
Pressing “T” will toggle your attacks between a horizontal slash and a vertical chop. While both of these do exactly the same damage, certain situations may find one over the other as more practical. The horizontal slash makes it easier to connect with your targets due to the wide cone of damage, but in crowded combat, this could also have you striking your allies for damage because the game has friendly fire. A vertical chop while having a narrow cone of damage, works better in crowded situations because it minimizes the chance of striking nearby allies in a frantic battle.
Archery
Firing a bow in Darkfall requires some degree of skill when it comes to aiming your shot. When you fire an arrow, it will arc through the air as opposed to traveling in a straight line like a bullet. This means that the archer will have to compensate for this by aiming the crosshair above his target depending on how far away it is. Pressing and holding your left mouse button will make your character load an arrow, which can be held as long as you continue to hold down the button. This allows you to wait for the moment of your choosing to take your shot.
The upside to archery, besides the range advantage, is that arrows can be very hard to dodge if the shooter has good aim because of the speed they travel towards through the air. The downside to archery is that you can only hit one target at a time, and that arrows are not free. This can make it hard for new and financially struggling players to keep up with the price of obtaining arrows on a regular basis, although many of the starting mobs are known to drop small quantities. Archery only skills up when you shoot an arrow, and since they are not recoverable once fired, raising this skill can end up costing you.
Magic
Magic is broken up into many schools, each with their own spells. In addition to skilling up each school of magic, each spell acts as its own skill. The more you cast a spell, the better you will become with it. Higher skilled spells will evolve and start to travel faster through the air, do more damage, or even shoot multiple projectiles.
Like archery, firing spells at your enemy will require some degree of coordination because they need to be manually aimed. The good news is that magic is a lot easier to aim than your bow because your spells will travel in a straight line exactly to where your crosshair is pointed without arcing. In addition to the ease of aiming and obvious range advantages, many of Darkfall spells have splash damage that can hit a target if your shot is close enough, or even hit multiple targets.
Magic does come with its disadvantages as well. Most of the spells in the game require a reagent or component to cast with the exception of the starter spells. This means the life of a mage can be costly, and skilling up spells and school with components can be a hard road. As such, starting the game as a pure mage right out of the gate will come off as extremely difficult. Spells are also easier to dodge than arrows at range because they are easier to spot and generally travel slower through the air. Magic also has a tendency to fizzle more when you are wearing heavier armor, but there is an armored magic casting skill that helps offset it a little if you are able to skill it up.
Those who delve deep into magic will also be forced later on to make decisions about which schools to pursue. New spells and schools of magic are unlocked as you progress through prerequisite school, but some restrictions start to show up down the road. Darkfall does not let you specialize in schools of magic that are polar opposites, such as Fire and Water, Earth and Air. You can have 2 out of the 4 elements, as long as they don’t clash with each other, but your end game plans will need to be thought out to avoid training in the wrong areas.
Finish Him!
Probably one of my favorite aspects of PvP combat that makes Darkfall unique is the incapacitation of a player when they reach zero life (excluding the rare and freakish decapitation). This starts a 60 second or so window where you get to decide the fate of the fallen player, or have some choice words with them. There are no revive spells in Darkfall, but when someone is in this state, anyone can help them back up without need of any spell or item. If the person lays there for too long, they will bleed to death and expire. The option is also your to deliver the final blow to send the fallen player back to their bind point naked, and ironically this is called the “Gank” skill by the game. Incapacitated players will yell out “HELP ME!” when reaching zero life, which can be heard from quite a distance away.
Quests
Questing in Darkfall at this point doesn’t seem to play as much a role than it does in some of the other more recent MMOs. Considering that there are no experience points, quests seem to be a way to get your hands on some items or cash. Finding the quest givers is not as easy also from recent games. There are no floating icons over NPCs like in WoW, WAR, and AoC. Some vendor NPCs simply will have a quest tab on their menu, but you won’t know until you talk to them.
The quests themselves are really nothing special in all honesty. Most of them consist of the same basic stuff we have seen the last few years where you are sent to either kill a certain amount of a monster, or collect some items from monsters, or kill the monsters in a certain time frame. It isn’t to say they aren’t rewarding to do, but they are just as uninspiring as any other MMO, unless I just haven’t found the good ones yet.
PvE
PvE in Darkfall is a bit different than other MMOs in a few ways. For starters, since there are no levels or a con system, you never really know just how powerful a monster (or player) is until you fight it. Luckily, if you find yourself getting in a bit over your head, it is not too hard to escape the aggro range by sprinting away. Since there are also no experience points, your motivation for engaging in this part of the game will be for monetary gain and equipment. Monsters for the most part seem to drop the items you see them wearing or using in combat, so if a goblin is shooting you with a bow, you can assume that it will be on his body after you beat him. That being said, the monster AI is a step up from other games. Monsters with bows will try to kite you sometimes, others call for help, and some strafe around you to avoid being hit.
There is no kill stealing or tagging system for monsters either. This means anyone can loot anything regardless of who hit it first, last, or did the most damage. While this can sometimes be problematic depending on who is near you, most of the time people seemed to have some degree of respect for who did the dirty work. Another interesting thing though about looting in general, is that multiple people can loot the same target at the same time. I have had situations where me and a friend were both grabbing items out of the loot bag at the same time, which can lead to some humorous situations with people frantically trying to identify and grab the stuff they want before the other guy. Remember that if you are defeated in PvE with people nearby, there is nothing from stopping another player from walking up to you while incapacitated and opting to finish you off and cleaning you out. I can say from personal experience that I have never seen this happen, but I will admit to seeing someone bleed out and getting there too late to save them, then sneakily rummaging through their bag to capitalize on their misfortune.
You also need to be careful not to accidentally damage strangers, or you run the risk of going “rouge” status for a short time, which allows other players to attack you without any alignment penalty for a short time. If 2 players are meleeing the same monster, it can be easier than you think for someone to get accidentally hit by a wild swing, but most of the time other people were good sports about it. There are those who will try to capitalize on it though; I remember a circumstance where I saw one of my guildmates being chased by someone he accidentally hit. Magic users need to be extra careful as well because since most spells have splash damage, it can be very easy to hit both the monster and another player trying to melee the same target.
Alignment System
The alignment system is the main mechanic that determines if you are in good standing or bad standing (red) with members of your own racial pairing. The basic theory is that killing someone who in your racial pairing (who isn’t red) will result in a loss of alignment and bring you closer to being red, while killing the natural enemies of your race and red players will increase your standing. The value of a negative hit is much higher than that of a positive one, so it will take several enemy kills to negate the effects of a single friendly kill. If you only hit another player, will be rogue flagged for a short period of time, in which case you can be killed by friendly targets as a means of self-defense. Your alignment is displayed as the bottom meter in the window where your life, stamina, and mana are located.
Having a bad alignment and going red does have some consequences. Besides the obvious of being a target to everyone in the game, your own racial towns will not welcome you and you will be attacked by the guard towers. You will also not be allowed to bind at the same bindstone as normal players, which makes sense because since the bindstones are in town, you would be attacked immediately. Upon going red, you will be automatically bound to remote bindstones in the wilderness where there is little in the ways of merchants and banks in many cases.
The alignment system has its flaws. For starters, it can be easy to flag other players as rogue status by deliberately trying to place yourself in front of their attacks. This can lead to you getting attacked by what would be otherwise friendly players, who then try to capitalize on your rogue status. This means that when you are in a crowded PvE area with strangers, you need to be very careful about your surroundings. Another personal beef I have is that players of an enemy race have their names colored blue, even though they are technically your enemy. The game displays them as blue because their alignment is good in the context of their race. This can lead to confusion if you see another player at a distance and can’t quite make out what race they may be. I think it would make more sense to display their names in red naturally since you will be rewarded for killing them.
Full Loot
This is one aspect of the game that I think tends to scare away or concern players who have never played in this type of environment, but may be considering it. I’m sure most people following the game know and understand that Darkfall has full loot upon death, which means that everything on your body is lootable with the exception of your starter weapons, but does not include what you may have banked. Every player starts with a single starter weapon which can always be traded for a different one for a small fee of 20 gold. For the price of 100 gold, you can secure a 2nd weapon, and for 1000 gold you can secure a 3rd. Most players will eventually have 3, which will probably consist of a melee weapon, a wand (needed to cast magic), and a bow (no starter arrows). So you will never be without a weapon no matter what happens.
Now I am not going to sugar-coat it, catching a beatdown and awaking up at the bindstone in your underwear sucks, and everyone is going to have days where it happens. On the flip side, there is definitely something to be said about bending down over a fallen opponent and seeing a pile of treasure. The first time you do this, it will definitely bring a smile to your face. If full loot scares you, consider the nature of the game. This is not an item-based game, and while items do help a good bit, they are expendable and replaceable. Remember that the core of your strength in Darkfall is your skills, and nobody can ever take that from you. I think people who are used to raiding weeks for epic purple gear might have a hard time understanding this, but hopefully this should give you some perspective.
Summary
Darkfall is still pretty rough around the edges and could use some polish in many areas. Given all of the hype and hysteria surrounding the game, it would be easy to be disappointed if you go into it with unrealistic expectations. The game is being developed by Aventurine, an Indy developer that has made an MMO with a fraction of the manpower, and at a fraction of the price compared to the industry leaders. I personally think the game would have benefited a bit by prolonging the release for at least another month or so, and some players who demand polish may be better off waiting for a little bit before jumping in especially with access being limited initially.
That being said, Aventurine has created the solid framework of an MMO that offers a unique experience that the genre has not seen in quite some time, and I am sure many players will be more than happy to jump into Darkfall at the ground level despite its issues. Anyone who has seen their patches can attest to the fact that they are frequent and robust. I have no doubt that as time goes on, Darkfall will further develop into an interesting and needed alternative to the theme-park model that has been beaten to death in the last few years.
If you are a fan of harsh free-for-all PvP, full looting, clan warfare, and non-linear gameplay, Darkfall might be just the sort of thing you have been looking for. If you are a casual gamer, someone who enjoys a linear style gameplay, or looking for a graphically intense experience, this game might not be for you. I also think to fully appreciate the game, playing with a group of friends or being in a clan will expose you to more of what the game has to offer. I don’t think it was ever intended to have mass appeal, but more to cater to a niche of PvP players who are looking for something more than what is out there now, and I think in that respect it will succeed.
If you have any questions about anything I have said or not said, leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
Review: Darkfall Beta
Darkfall Online is a game that is not for everyone. The nature of the game is such that you will either love it or absolutely hate it depending on your playstyle. If you are a casual gamer, someone who does not like harsh PvP in an MMORPG, or you place a heavy emphasis on graphics, there will probably be little here that will appeal to you. On the other hand, if your MMO history involves playing games like Ultima Online or Asheron’s Call, like PvP with consequences, and value gameplay over graphics, there is a good chance that this game will provide you with something you have haven’t seen in a long time.
Darkfall is a lot different than most MMO’s. The game is entirely skill-based, meaning there are no levels, no experience points, and all advancement happens through the raising of various skills through use. The core of the game revolves around open free-for-all PvP with full looting. This means that when you die through PvP or PvE, the entire contents of what you are wearing and carrying can be snatched up by anyone. Now while the game allows you to attack anyone, the games races are divided up into loose teams, but whether you respect those teams is completely up to you.
There are consequences for your actions in Darkfall. Should you choose to attack members of your own team and go “red”, your experience in the game will be different than those who work with their racial team. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall only allows you one character per server, which means that if you chose to go red, you will not be able to log onto a non-red alt character to get supplies and switch back. It is also worth mentioning that unlike some other RvR based MMOs, there are no language barriers stopping you from saying whatever you want to anyone else.
Character Creation seems fairly simple. I would say its has a bit more options than WoW and WAR, but not even close to AoC. You get to pick your face, hair color, facial hair, and various natural jewelry stuff like rings through your nose. There is no setting for height, and no sliders to sculpt your character’s face and body like Oblivion / AoC. Once you decide on your look, you’ll have to chose a first and last name (yes, the last name is mandatory). Once you are all squared away, you get to chose from 1 of 3 starting cities near your racial capital and you are off to start your journey with nothing except an undroppable starter weapon. I was very surprised by the size of the starter town when I first logged in, I vision of some huts on a dirt road was thrown out the window pretty quickly. I do think they could definitely use some more NPC’s, it looks like there are no non-essential NPC’s at all and it makes the town seems a bit deserted given how big they are.
User Interface
The UI has a learning curve. If you have played other recent MMOs, you can pretty much just forget everything you have seen. The cookie-cutter interface from WoW, EQ2, WAR, AOC is completely gone. I think people are going to struggle with it the first time they sit down and it could turn some people off. Luckily, there is a small tutorial to help you get your bearings. Right clicking the mouse turns the game into UI/Menu mode, much of what you would expect if you pressed the “ESC” key in any other MMO.
When in this mode, you will see that this is the only time you have a mouse cursor on your screen. This means when you are in play mode, there is no clicking on your hotbar to active abilities, you just press the numerically assigned button on your keyboard. The UI is completely customizable as you can move and resize any window to fit your personal preference. The in-game help pretty much tells you that controls will feel better to FPS players over MMO players. The “F” key is the default use button and works just like it would in Call of Duty, as does spacebar with jumping, and “C” for crouching. The “R” key draws your weapon, and will put you into 3rd person if you have a melee weapon equipped.
You can’t loot a target with your weapon drawn. When monster or players die, they leave a tombstone which can be looted by pressing the use key. When the loot box open, this will put you into UI mode, so you will not be able to move or do anything. You also need to open your backpack (Default “B” button) and manually drag and drop the items from their corpse to your bag one at a time. This will definitely be perceived by many as clunky, but at the same time there is a case to be made by others that looting should not be fast to prevent people from cleaning out bodies quickly in the middle of a heated battle. After playing for a while, I think it has grown on me a lot because the time associated with cleaning someone out adds a risk when you are in a heated situation.
My main beef with UI is the chat box. The chat box has multiple tabs that correspond to the different channels, such as group, clan, local, tells, and alliance. The problem with this is that it is becomes easy to miss messages. Let’s say you are in your group chat tab running around looking for trouble, and you run across another player and kill them. Unfortunately, that player asked if he could join you and wanted to provide you with some valuable information, but you missed it because his text was under the local tab that you were not looking at because you were talking in group. Unless you are paying careful attention to the various tabs, you are bound to miss a tell or message in another channel. You can however click and drag those tabs out to create new chat windows for that channel. This also means that having a different chat box for each channel can start to clutter up your screen. I think the chat would be better served with multiple channels in the same tab, and leaving it up to the user to decide which channels they want to see in each tab. Aventurine has stated that further revamping of chat is already in the works and will arrive shortly, so there is a good chance that this will be less of an issue very soon.
The World
The environment looks very nice. The sky looks great, and you can see every branch on every tree swaying in the wind. The game runs very smooth to me with everything cranked, but I have a relatively powerful machine. The graphics are by no means cutting-edge, but considering you are getting a zoneless and seamless world with no loading screens, it looks quite well. The world size does seem massive, and I was shocked to see how little I moved on the world map after walking for a few minutes. Traveling from my starter town to my neighboring enemy’s starter area can take me anywhere from 25-45 minutes on foot depending on my route and how much stamina I burn sprinting. I think it is probably bigger than Asheron’s Call.
There are lots of interesting and hidden places scattered around the world that will appeal to explorer types. I have seen underground cities, giant tree top villages, mountain top fortresses, hidden treasure boxes, and ancient ruins just to name a few. My beef as far as the overworld goes is the scarcity of monsters. Since there are no experience points in Darkfall, monster serve the critical role as a source of items, gold, and materials. This shortage not only makes it difficult to getting these resources, but it makes the world seem a bit devoid of life at times.
Characters and Animations
Chances are that if you are a fan of this game, it isn’t because it is a graphical behemoth. This is one of the areas that people who are sticklers for visuals may be disappointed. The character models are a mixed bag. There are times when I like them, and times were I think they could be a bit better. Graphically, they will come in a distance behind some of the newer MMO’s on the market. I do however think some of the armor models make them look a lot better. When you wear heavier armor, you can see the glare of the light reflecting on some of the metallic pieces, which is a nice touch. It does vary from race to race, I hear a lot of opinions from various people who either like or dislike a certain race’s model design.
The character animations are another issue that detract a little from the game’s visuals. Some of the various animations when characters run around seem a bit off. I think it is something that most people will notice fairly quickly after watching some of the video and in their first hours in the game. Since you are in a first-person view for most of the game, you won’t be looking at your character nearly as much as other games that have you locked in the 3rd person. While they can take some getting used to, they are by no means a game breaker to me and most of the target audience of the game. If they decided to review and rework the animations down the road, I don’t think many would complain, but I think most agree that their time is better spent on other things right now.
Combat
There are 3 major different combat types in Darkfall; Melee, Archery, and Magic. This will most likely be one of the more hotly-contested aspects of the game, where most people will either love it or hate it. Unlike other MMOs, Darkfall’s combat plays out more like a first-person shooter than a traditional MMO. This means there is no tab targeting, your attacks need to be manually aimed, and your attacks can also be dodged. It is also worth mentioning that the different races all vary in size, which means that certain larger races (Ork / Mahirim) may have a larger hitbox than some of the shorter races (Alfar / Dwarf). I have heard some people freak out about this issue making different races having advantages, but as someone who plays a Mahirim, it was not much of an issue for me personally. I am sure others will disagree on this point, but I would just suggest people play what they like and you will adapt.
Stamina also plays a very critical role in combat because when your stamina is depleted, you will not be able to attack or put up much of a defense. Stamina management will be vital to most of your fights, and in most cases, running out of stamina can be as equally devastating as running out of life. Darkfall also seems to recognize back attacks, and rewards them with doing an increased amount of damage. This can make turning your back and fleeing from someone have some risk if the other person is able to hit your back, especially with arrows. To combine these points, some people will find that melee combat will often have some people sprinting the entire time trying to get behind behind their targets or to make themselves harder to hit. While it can be annoying sometimes to fight someone doing this, these people tend to burn themselves out faster, but the use of this tactic will no doubt frustrate some players.
Each of the 3 combat types have skills associated with using them. When that skill reaches 25, new attacks will open up to be purchased. These new attacks initially after purchase do not seem to show a noticeable increase in damage, but after skilling them up a bit, they start to show more of a return. Some players might be disappointed to find that there are not many “special” attacks compared other MMOs for the melee and archery types where you may be used to having a hotbar full of different abilities. As a fan of Asheron’s Call which had literally no abilities, it doesn’t bother me as much because the combat has more freedom than other MMOs by combat having no autolocking hits, but it definitely will be an issue to some players. Hopefully as the game progresses, they will introduce a some more skills down the road to beef up the amount of tools non-magic players have at their disposal.
Melee
This is the most basic forum of combat in the game and most likely the path most will follow, especially at the very start of the game because it is inexpensive. While melee is a bit easier on your purse, it has the obvious drawback of limited range. Different weapons types do however offer varying range, such as polearms reaching farther than daggers.
When your melee weapon is drawn, you will be pulled out into a 3rd-person viewpoint. Even if this view, your visibility behind your character is minimal. This means sneaking up behind people is a legitimate tactic as opposed to other MMOs where you can spin the camera to see behind you. I can testify first hand that this works quite well, which is good because this game has no “stealth” skills like other MMOs that can make you go invisible. The only time in Darkfall where you can spin the camera at your whim is while resting.
Pressing “T” will toggle your attacks between a horizontal slash and a vertical chop. While both of these do exactly the same damage, certain situations may find one over the other as more practical. The horizontal slash makes it easier to connect with your targets due to the wide cone of damage, but in crowded combat, this could also have you striking your allies for damage because the game has friendly fire. A vertical chop while having a narrow cone of damage, works better in crowded situations because it minimizes the chance of striking nearby allies in a frantic battle.
Archery
Firing a bow in Darkfall requires some degree of skill when it comes to aiming your shot. When you fire an arrow, it will arc through the air as opposed to traveling in a straight line like a bullet. This means that the archer will have to compensate for this by aiming the crosshair above his target depending on how far away it is. Pressing and holding your left mouse button will make your character load an arrow, which can be held as long as you continue to hold down the button. This allows you to wait for the moment of your choosing to take your shot.
The upside to archery, besides the range advantage, is that arrows can be very hard to dodge if the shooter has good aim because of the speed they travel towards through the air. The downside to archery is that you can only hit one target at a time, and that arrows are not free. This can make it hard for new and financially struggling players to keep up with the price of obtaining arrows on a regular basis, although many of the starting mobs are known to drop small quantities. Archery only skills up when you shoot an arrow, and since they are not recoverable once fired, raising this skill can end up costing you.
Magic
Magic is broken up into many schools, each with their own spells. In addition to skilling up each school of magic, each spell acts as its own skill. The more you cast a spell, the better you will become with it. Higher skilled spells will evolve and start to travel faster through the air, do more damage, or even shoot multiple projectiles.
Like archery, firing spells at your enemy will require some degree of coordination because they need to be manually aimed. The good news is that magic is a lot easier to aim than your bow because your spells will travel in a straight line exactly to where your crosshair is pointed without arcing. In addition to the ease of aiming and obvious range advantages, many of Darkfall spells have splash damage that can hit a target if your shot is close enough, or even hit multiple targets.
Magic does come with its disadvantages as well. Most of the spells in the game require a reagent or component to cast with the exception of the starter spells. This means the life of a mage can be costly, and skilling up spells and school with components can be a hard road. As such, starting the game as a pure mage right out of the gate will come off as extremely difficult. Spells are also easier to dodge than arrows at range because they are easier to spot and generally travel slower through the air. Magic also has a tendency to fizzle more when you are wearing heavier armor, but there is an armored magic casting skill that helps offset it a little if you are able to skill it up.
Those who delve deep into magic will also be forced later on to make decisions about which schools to pursue. New spells and schools of magic are unlocked as you progress through prerequisite school, but some restrictions start to show up down the road. Darkfall does not let you specialize in schools of magic that are polar opposites, such as Fire and Water, Earth and Air. You can have 2 out of the 4 elements, as long as they don’t clash with each other, but your end game plans will need to be thought out to avoid training in the wrong areas.
Finish Him!
Probably one of my favorite aspects of PvP combat that makes Darkfall unique is the incapacitation of a player when they reach zero life (excluding the rare and freakish decapitation). This starts a 60 second or so window where you get to decide the fate of the fallen player, or have some choice words with them. There are no revive spells in Darkfall, but when someone is in this state, anyone can help them back up without need of any spell or item. If the person lays there for too long, they will bleed to death and expire. The option is also your to deliver the final blow to send the fallen player back to their bind point naked, and ironically this is called the “Gank” skill by the game. Incapacitated players will yell out “HELP ME!” when reaching zero life, which can be heard from quite a distance away.
Quests
Questing in Darkfall at this point doesn’t seem to play as much a role than it does in some of the other more recent MMOs. Considering that there are no experience points, quests seem to be a way to get your hands on some items or cash. Finding the quest givers is not as easy also from recent games. There are no floating icons over NPCs like in WoW, WAR, and AoC. Some vendor NPCs simply will have a quest tab on their menu, but you won’t know until you talk to them.
The quests themselves are really nothing special in all honesty. Most of them consist of the same basic stuff we have seen the last few years where you are sent to either kill a certain amount of a monster, or collect some items from monsters, or kill the monsters in a certain time frame. It isn’t to say they aren’t rewarding to do, but they are just as uninspiring as any other MMO, unless I just haven’t found the good ones yet.
PvE
PvE in Darkfall is a bit different than other MMOs in a few ways. For starters, since there are no levels or a con system, you never really know just how powerful a monster (or player) is until you fight it. Luckily, if you find yourself getting in a bit over your head, it is not too hard to escape the aggro range by sprinting away. Since there are also no experience points, your motivation for engaging in this part of the game will be for monetary gain and equipment. Monsters for the most part seem to drop the items you see them wearing or using in combat, so if a goblin is shooting you with a bow, you can assume that it will be on his body after you beat him. That being said, the monster AI is a step up from other games. Monsters with bows will try to kite you sometimes, others call for help, and some strafe around you to avoid being hit.
There is no kill stealing or tagging system for monsters either. This means anyone can loot anything regardless of who hit it first, last, or did the most damage. While this can sometimes be problematic depending on who is near you, most of the time people seemed to have some degree of respect for who did the dirty work. Another interesting thing though about looting in general, is that multiple people can loot the same target at the same time. I have had situations where me and a friend were both grabbing items out of the loot bag at the same time, which can lead to some humorous situations with people frantically trying to identify and grab the stuff they want before the other guy. Remember that if you are defeated in PvE with people nearby, there is nothing from stopping another player from walking up to you while incapacitated and opting to finish you off and cleaning you out. I can say from personal experience that I have never seen this happen, but I will admit to seeing someone bleed out and getting there too late to save them, then sneakily rummaging through their bag to capitalize on their misfortune.
You also need to be careful not to accidentally damage strangers, or you run the risk of going “rouge” status for a short time, which allows other players to attack you without any alignment penalty for a short time. If 2 players are meleeing the same monster, it can be easier than you think for someone to get accidentally hit by a wild swing, but most of the time other people were good sports about it. There are those who will try to capitalize on it though; I remember a circumstance where I saw one of my guildmates being chased by someone he accidentally hit. Magic users need to be extra careful as well because since most spells have splash damage, it can be very easy to hit both the monster and another player trying to melee the same target.
Alignment System
The alignment system is the main mechanic that determines if you are in good standing or bad standing (red) with members of your own racial pairing. The basic theory is that killing someone who in your racial pairing (who isn’t red) will result in a loss of alignment and bring you closer to being red, while killing the natural enemies of your race and red players will increase your standing. The value of a negative hit is much higher than that of a positive one, so it will take several enemy kills to negate the effects of a single friendly kill. If you only hit another player, will be rogue flagged for a short period of time, in which case you can be killed by friendly targets as a means of self-defense. Your alignment is displayed as the bottom meter in the window where your life, stamina, and mana are located.
Having a bad alignment and going red does have some consequences. Besides the obvious of being a target to everyone in the game, your own racial towns will not welcome you and you will be attacked by the guard towers. You will also not be allowed to bind at the same bindstone as normal players, which makes sense because since the bindstones are in town, you would be attacked immediately. Upon going red, you will be automatically bound to remote bindstones in the wilderness where there is little in the ways of merchants and banks in many cases.
The alignment system has its flaws. For starters, it can be easy to flag other players as rogue status by deliberately trying to place yourself in front of their attacks. This can lead to you getting attacked by what would be otherwise friendly players, who then try to capitalize on your rogue status. This means that when you are in a crowded PvE area with strangers, you need to be very careful about your surroundings. Another personal beef I have is that players of an enemy race have their names colored blue, even though they are technically your enemy. The game displays them as blue because their alignment is good in the context of their race. This can lead to confusion if you see another player at a distance and can’t quite make out what race they may be. I think it would make more sense to display their names in red naturally since you will be rewarded for killing them.
Full Loot
This is one aspect of the game that I think tends to scare away or concern players who have never played in this type of environment, but may be considering it. I’m sure most people following the game know and understand that Darkfall has full loot upon death, which means that everything on your body is lootable with the exception of your starter weapons, but does not include what you may have banked. Every player starts with a single starter weapon which can always be traded for a different one for a small fee of 20 gold. For the price of 100 gold, you can secure a 2nd weapon, and for 1000 gold you can secure a 3rd. Most players will eventually have 3, which will probably consist of a melee weapon, a wand (needed to cast magic), and a bow (no starter arrows). So you will never be without a weapon no matter what happens.
Now I am not going to sugar-coat it, catching a beatdown and awaking up at the bindstone in your underwear sucks, and everyone is going to have days where it happens. On the flip side, there is definitely something to be said about bending down over a fallen opponent and seeing a pile of treasure. The first time you do this, it will definitely bring a smile to your face. If full loot scares you, consider the nature of the game. This is not an item-based game, and while items do help a good bit, they are expendable and replaceable. Remember that the core of your strength in Darkfall is your skills, and nobody can ever take that from you. I think people who are used to raiding weeks for epic purple gear might have a hard time understanding this, but hopefully this should give you some perspective.
Summary
Darkfall is still pretty rough around the edges and could use some polish in many areas. Given all of the hype and hysteria surrounding the game, it would be easy to be disappointed if you go into it with unrealistic expectations. The game is being developed by Aventurine, an Indy developer that has made an MMO with a fraction of the manpower, and at a fraction of the price compared to the industry leaders. I personally think the game would have benefited a bit by prolonging the release for at least another month or so, and some players who demand polish may be better off waiting for a little bit before jumping in especially with access being limited initially.
That being said, Aventurine has created the solid framework of an MMO that offers a unique experience that the genre has not seen in quite some time, and I am sure many players will be more than happy to jump into Darkfall at the ground level despite its issues. Anyone who has seen their patches can attest to the fact that they are frequent and robust. I have no doubt that as time goes on, Darkfall will further develop into an interesting and needed alternative to the theme-park model that has been beaten to death in the last few years.
If you are a fan of harsh free-for-all PvP, full looting, clan warfare, and non-linear gameplay, Darkfall might be just the sort of thing you have been looking for. If you are a casual gamer, someone who enjoys a linear style gameplay, or looking for a graphically intense experience, this game might not be for you. I also think to fully appreciate the game, playing with a group of friends or being in a clan will expose you to more of what the game has to offer. I don’t think it was ever intended to have mass appeal, but more to cater to a niche of PvP players who are looking for something more than what is out there now, and I think in that respect it will succeed.
If you have any questions about anything I have said or not said, leave a comment and I will do my best to answer.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
