Darkfall: Unholy Wars launches December 12th, 2012, and with luck you may be able to get it on Steam. Aventurine has posted the upcoming revamp to Darkfall to be voted on by the masses and, if the tides are right, approved by Valve to be released on Steam. You can head to the link below to vote for Darkfall: Unholy Wars, even if the game doesn’t get approved by December 12th, hopefully it will be greenlit eventually.
(Source: Greenlight)
When Darkfall: Unholy Wars launches, I will be a happy man. As Aventurine has ensured myself and the rest of us are aware, Unholy Wars is set hundreds of years after the events of Darkfall, in a world that has been completely rebuilt from the ground up and inhabited by creatures that have slightly evolved over their predecessor. Check out the video above, where Creative Lead Adam Oikonomopoulos discusses the change in art direction for Unholy Wars, as well as how the new Darkfall will expand up on the old.
Darkfall shut down November 15th. Darkfall: Unholy Wars will go live on December 12th.
Bad news (and possibly unsurprising), bears. On the Darkfall Epic Blog today, Tasos Flambouras has announced that Darkfall: Unholy Wars will not be able to meet its November 20th launch date. Rather, the relaunch of Aventurine’s MMO will take place on December 12th, slightly under one month from now. The announcement is due to “external factors, last minute issues, and testing feedback.” Unfortunately for players, this will not be extending the life of Darkfall’s current iteration. The shut down of Darkfall 1.0 will go ahead as planned tomorrow.
(Source: Epic Blog)
In thirteen days, Darkfall will shut down and make way for the launch of Darkfall: Unholy Wars on November 20th. As launch of Unholy Wars comes closer, Aventurine has been letting information trickle out via the Epic Blog, videos posted on Youtube, and through interviews with varying websites. In an interview with MMORPG.com, Aventurine discusses the new combat mechanics, boating, skill training, and a few other topics. At the end of the interview, the topic turns to the flagging system, detailing Aventurine’s new plans for red-flagged (criminal) players and the introduction of safe zones:
In reality we are keeping the whole turning red situation when you kill other players in place but turning red does no longer mean you get attacked by NPC guard towers. It is just there to indicate to other players you might not be someone they can trust. What they do with the information is up to them. However because this would make the entire world rather chaotic we felt we needed to create some areas where players can perform some basic activities in peace. All the racial capitals and satellite faction cities as well as surrounding areas where players will make their initial steps have all PvP actions disabled.
This change will no doubt annoy some of Darkfall’s more hardcore group. You can read the rest of the interview at the link below, it contains quite a bit of information.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Darkfall is currently in transition. The current iteration, Darkfall 1.0, has been made available for free to anyone who had purchased the game, and will remain online until November 15th. After, the servers will shut down and Aventurine will transition the service to Darkfall: Unholy Wars on November 20th. In preparation, Aventurine has posted an update on the Epic Blog, detailing that players should get their accounts in order for the transition. As the announcement details, Aventurine is looking into offering price promotions, and various other options for current subscribers.
As we count down towards Darkfall Unholy Wars, we would like to suggest that you get your accounts in order and to ask you to please update your account information. If you are experiencing issues like: forgotten username, passwords, email address, accounts not active etc., please submit a ticket to customer support with the Title “Preparing for Darkfall Unholy Wars”. We need your information for matters which relate to offering our existing customers a price promotion, but also in order to select some of you for various other privileges and requests.
You can find the blog post linked below, as well as yet another gameplay video of Unholy Wars.
(Source: Epic Blog)
Since Aventurine announced Darkfall: Unholy Wars, I’ve seen a bit of criticism from the community over the lack of video demonstrating the new gameplay. In a recently released trailer, Aventurine shows off the Baresark, one of the classes in the warrior school of training. The Baresark is a melee class with the ability to do area of effect damage as well as stomp the ground, throwing his enemies away and (in the video) over a cliff. The new UI is also shown in the video, and you can see that it is incredibly minimalistic.
More videos showcasing the new class-based system in Darkfall: Unholy Wars is sure to come. Darkfall shuts down November 15th and is currently free for all current and past subscribers, Unholy Wars launches as a separate game on November 20th.
Good news, Darkfall players! On November 15th, Darkfall will shut down for good. What’s so good about that? Starting on October 17th, Aventurine is inviting all players, past and present, to play the current iteration of Darkfall completely free of charge until the servers shut down in November. Players will simply be able to log into the servers starting the 17th (not necessarily right at midnight), and send the original version off in style. Following, Darkfall Unholy Wars is set for release five days later, November 20th.
Although the two games share the same brand name, Aventurine has stressed that Darkfall: Unholy Wars is a different game. While some aspects remain the same, the world has been completely rebuilt from the ground up, and just about every aspect of the game from the UI to the skill system, combat, and more have been completely revamped. While players characters are not making the transition, accounts that already owned Darkfall will not be forced to purchase Unholy Wars.
As a result, the Darkfall as we know it is considered defunct as of November 15th, and Darkfall: Unholy Wars will launch as something of a direct sequel shortly after.
(Source: Press Release)
Darkfall: Unholy Wars launches at the end of November, and Aventurine is letting the details flow free. In a post on the official website, Tasos Flambouras starts off with the question many have been asking ever since Unholy Wars was still Darkfall 2010: Wipes. Short story, they are coming. Darkfall and Unholy Wars are two separate games, which presents the problem of compatibility between the two systems.
Assuming we forced things and made it possible, the DFUW characters would completely destroy the Darkfall Online characters, and I make this comparison to also give you a practical idea of the incompatibility.
Luckily, players won’t have to worry about the grind. According to the blog, players will have no problem becoming viable. Also, Darkfall Online (the current edition) will be shut down to make room for Unholy Wars. Anyone who already bought Darkfall will not have to purchase Unholy Wars. There are plans for Darkfall-related side projects, and characters from the current game are being kept for such a purpose.
(Source: Unholy Wars Website)
A bounty system is to sandbox MMOs like peanut butter to fluff on a sandwich perhaps with a glass of cold milk on the side (soy or almond if you prefer). While the sandbox purists will say that developers should just allow players to run their own bounty system, because risk is just part of the experience, having some infrastructure in-game can be very helpful without restricting freedoms. Ensuring the person claiming the bounty actually made the kill, and that the bounty holder must pay up.
But it feels like the developers are just setting themselves up for abuse with current bounty systems, so I’d like to offer a few of my own thoughts on a bounty system. They are just my thoughts, they could be wrong.
I think most players will agree that a bounty system is specifically a player to player affair. I hate you because you kill me a lot, you talk crap in chat, or perhaps you just crossed an angry person with a lot of expendable cash. So I’m not entirely sure why some MMOs don’t have a 1:1 input to output ratio on bounty levels.
As a gamer, I take issue with government subsidized murder to deal with personal squabbles. If xXx Leg0la$ xXx wants me dead because I stuck my sword in his head and stole all forty of his apple pies, he can do so without asking companies like Aventurine to help him buy a bounty hunter, ie: my friend who kills me and splits the reward. Even more importantly, removing the glut will prevent people from using the bounty system to get rich, with the money coming from nowhere.
Ultimately, a bounty system should be a transfer of wealth, not a generator of it. It should act as an arbiter, essentially, to prove the kill and distribute the reward.
How do you keep someone like myself from gaming your bounty system? Simple: You can’t. And that is something that developers will need to understand going forward if you’re going to make this an enjoyable system and not a convoluted, overreaching and unenjoyable mess. A bounty system is a social system, and you’re up against geniuses in social engineering.
But even on a 1:1 ratio as mentioned above, you won’t stop the system from being gamed. When a player has a bounty on their heads, they will simply allow themselves to be killed by a clan member and split the profits. Prevent their clan from gathering the reward? They will set up a mule, outside of the clan, to get the kill. Allow only trusted/known people to gather the reward? Well then you’ve just negated the point in making the system official, if the person is known well enough that they could just as well be trusted on the honor system.
And enough on gaming the bounty poster, what about the bounty pursuant? Set up a clan member as a trap by throwing a massive bounty on his head, and when lone hunters show up to kill him, the group jumps out and just thrashes him. In RuneScape they do something like this by having everyone stand on one square, giving the illusion that there is only one person.
So your system is going to be gamed, one way or another, but at least in the world I’ve created it isn’t being abused to generate wealth out of nowhere.
Here is my ideal bounty system for a game like Mortal Online or Darkfall. Players naturally drop something identifying when they die, let’s say their head or a finger. Whatever the object is, it decays and disappears after a short period of time, let’s say 24 hours from the time of death, to prevent players from gathering them in large quantities and simply hoarding them until the appropriate bounty is posted.
I, as the bounty poster, give my bounty notice and reward to the broker, we’ll call him that creepy guy in the back alley on the edge of town. You, as the hunter, go to him to see who is on the menu. When you kill your target, gather his head/finger as proof, and bring it to the creep, he pays you the reward. And naturally you are free to keep the loot from the person you killed as an extra reward.
Simple, minimalist. An NPC to act as an arbiter and nothing more.
Aventurine has dumped a bunch of screenshots for Unholy War, the upcoming relaunch of the hardcore sandbox MMO. You can check them out in the gallery above.
Unholy War launches November 20th.
MMO Fallout 