Gameplay and Combat
The combat system of Darkfall is completely different from all other MMOs that I've tried, and similar to that of FPS games. Instead of selecting a target and using various skills strategically, here you have to aim your attacks, predict your enemy's moves, and evade their strikes. I am not saying that Darkfall doesn't have a lot of skills to choose from, but right now most people only use simple melee attacks. The strategy involves trying to hit your opponent in the back and pelt him with Mana Missiles or arrows if he tries to run away. If you are the one doing the running, make sure you're not going in a straight line because if you do, you'll become a perfect target for your enemies' projectiles. Chases, by the way, take the longest time since everyone has a lot of stamina and can run/sprint around for minutes. Overall, the combat gives you a lot of freedom and is very different from other MMOs; FPS gamers will surely find a good application for their skills in Darkfall.
The full loot PvP ruleset adds a lot of excitement and sense of danger to the game. It also adds a lot of annoyance sometimes and naked people ganking everyone and some spawnpoints. I haven't ever played UO and the other MMORPG that I'm subscribed to - Age of Conan - has a pretty much non-existand death penalty, so this is all new for me. I rather like it so far: it never made much sense to me when in AoC the death penalty was so light that people used to kill themselves as means of transport.
There are a lot of skills, including ones like Running, Swimming, or even Resting. The system definitely reminds me of Morrowind, and it's a lot of fun to get "skill ups" no matter what action you take. Combat skills are harder to level up though, and might take a long while to master since the higher you get, the slower you learn.
The World
The world is huge and seamless, except for a little HDD trashing at the beginning of each invisible "zone" (might be just my 1 GB of RAM though). Regrettably, it also feels very empty. Don't get me wrong: it is very detailed and full of landmarks such as mountains, rivers, meadows, trees (some giant ones), lakes, lava fields, and so on. However, there are very little mobs around (they're concentrated in a few small camps), the world is so big that the few thousands of players who bought the game aren't enough to fill it (run from Alfar to Mirdain starting town for 30 minutes and you'll likely meet no one), and finally, there are precious few NPCs. Only the starting and the main towns have NPCs in them; while exploring, I've come across many very nice and detailed looking towns, which were completely devoid of life. I do hope this only means that Aventurine hadn't had the time to populate them with NPCs, and not that the server wouldn't handle the load of they did.
The Graphics
I said I wouldn't be able to really review the graphics, and that's true. I'll just say the game runs reasonably well on my old box (Athlon XP 3000+, Radeon x800GTO, 1 GB RAM). RAM is a problem though and I think having more would really help. I'll definitely post about Darkfall's performance on my new "rig" once I get it back from repairs.
The graphics look better than I expected, but there are some glitches and weird things that need fixing. While the sky looks great, the sun looks strange and changes in size depending on the position of your crosshair. It is also sometimes shining in front of the moon. The day/night cycle changes almost instantly. There are some really bad animations and effects, spell effects probably being #1. The list goes on; I don't want to sound all negative though, since like I said, the game still looks much better than I've thought before.
The Sound
The sound in Darkfall definitely needs a lot of work. Some effects (OK, most of them) are pretty much terrible. I guarantee you'll cringe after hearing all those mana missiles skill grinders shoot off in towns. However my biggest problem is the 3D effects. While I'm able to tell the position of the enemy by listening to the fighting sounds, I can't tell the distance with any accuracy because it sounds nearly the same: it doesn't matter if the players are fighting 1 or 100 meters away.
The best part of Darkfall soundtrack is probably the music you hear on the login screen. The ambient soundtracks - there's only one for each race's teritory, I believe - are unintrusive and silent, but far from the wonderful soundtracks in World of Wacraft by Jason Hayes, or Age of Conan by Knut Avenstroup Haugen. I guess I shouldn't even bring this up since Aventurine is much smaller than Blizzard or even Funcom, but it would be nice to have some awesome fantasy/medieval music in the game.
The Wishlist
Chat bubbles - right now, everyone is asocial in the game. The chat system pretty much sucks and if you say anything to people around you, there's a high chance they won't see it. I believe text bubbles above your character's head with messages that you post to Public or Race channels would be great and help the community feeling. Before you start screaming that it would break stealth or whatever, consider that you don't need to talk while sneaking, and party/guild chat or /tell text wouldn't be visible anyway.Improved chat system: right now you have to switch between the chat channels in order to see what people are saying in them. Like I mentioned before, no one ever uses Public since they won't see miss Race or Party otherwise. There's no "All" channel that would have all the messages in one place. It would be best to have fully customizable channels like in Age of Conan, where you can choose everything from what channels should be visible to what combat messages you want to receive.
Tradehouses: some people might think spamming the chat with WTB/WTS for hours is cool, but let's get real. It's 2009 and modern MMOs must have a way to sell your stuff easier. It could be auction houses, AoC-like tradehouses, NPC vendors that you hire, or, heck, even player stalls/shops like the ones you see in Asian MMORPGs. To improve realism, the trade houses could even be local for each city instead of universal. Anything that makes trading easier and more fun.Proper party controls - some people might think it's "hardcore" and cool to have to invite players into their party by typing /party_invite First Last every time. I don't. Darkfall needs a proper Party window for creating, inviting or leaving parties.
State of the Game
Darkfall needs a massive amount of polishing. The GUI is awkward (although usable) and incomplete: it says gui_window_chat_toggle in the Input Bindings, for example, and not Toggle Chat. All hotkey descriptions are like that and it just screams "beta test!". When pointing at objects, the status window also happily informs you that you're in fact looking at a r_Alfar_Female_Robed model and not an Alfar Female that would make more sense in this stage of the game. These are all small things, but they add to the overall "unfinished" impression.
Despite all the flaws, Darkfall does have a lot of potential. Right now the biggest problems I see is the Aventurine's failure to meet the demand for the game, the lack of proper customer support, and abundant macroing or even hacking. However, they seem to be aware and working on all of this problems. If the company keeps improving DFO they could turn it into a truly great MMORPG, so I wish Aventurine developers the very best.
A personal message from the Community Liaison Thraiax:
