Darkfall: Unholy Wars

[Mogi67]

http://www.darkfallonline.com/
Upcoming pvp-centric MMORPG from Aventurine. Darkfall: Unholy Wars is the revamped version of Darkfall Online, first released in 2008.

Darkfall departs from the conventional MMORPG paradigm of character levels as the main form of character progression, favouring instead a broad skill-based system similar to that found in games such as Ultima Online, EVE Online, and Asheron's Call. Skills and skill proficiency determine a wide range of a character's capability in the game, including weapons and weapon skills, a few special attacks, spells, and archery, all aspects of player crafting, as well as more basic facets of gameplay, such as the ability to swim, craft various items types, and to ride and control mounts.
Skills may be learned from NPC trainers in the game, however certain skills will require other skills as prerequisites. Without exception however, skills are improved (raised in power) through actual usage in game.

The only major non-WoW clone MMO sandbox game that is in the works

Features:

• • FFA pvp
  • Player owned cities
  • Seamless, open world with no invisible boundaries or zone loading
  • Full item loss on death
  • Multiple guilds can form massive alliances
  • FPS style combat
  • Player owned ships and naval battles
  • Player owned housing
  • Player driven economy

The goal of Darkfall is its support for large-scale territorial conflict between player clans. To this end, empire building through the conquering of pre-made cities is a major part of the game. To promote such conflict, there is a finite number of pre-made cities (97 locations - 44 cities, 53 Hamlets) within the world. The potential pre-made city and hamlet sites are marked in-game by structures known as clanstones.
These pre-made city sites are spread across the entirety of the world, and vary greatly in location, surrounding terrain, access to nearby resource nodes, and consequently, their ability to be defended by the owning clan.
Player clans have full diplomatic control over their relationship with other player clans, and can declare war on other clans unilaterally. Clans that are at war with each other may kill each other freely without alignment penalties. Player-owned cities can be freely attacked and then sieged. Sieges last for 4 hours. In the first two hours the defenders may launch an attack on the enemy's shard holder or city. If the defenders are victorious, the siege ends. The attackers may attempt to capture the defender's city after two hours have passed. They only have two hours to destroy the clanstone. To this end, Darkfall contains a variety of different siege weapons such as cannons and siege hammers, all of which are player-crafted.

The game is currently available for preorder with beta testing beginning on Monday, December 17th. The game launches early next year. I'm currently going to be running with a guild of Asheron's Call players, we've got an alliance together of about 100 people so far. We're going to try and find a holding to seize on monday so we'll have safe and reliable access to a bank. There are safe zones in racial cities and starter areas, but once your in the wilderness you can get raped. In DF1 people would typically have numerous sets of gear stashed away. It's a lot like Ultima Online, where item loss is painful but not debilitating.
Anyways here's a video that some guy made about some of the shit that happened in DF1. It's pretty entertaining even if you don't want to play the game
A History of Darkfall
DF1 naval siege

I suspect that many people here would not really appreciate this type of game. When the game actually comes out, you will be brought into a world full of hate. A community that will have "no qualms" when griefing the **** out of you. It is a very unforgiving game. It will make you rage and want to quit more than any other video game could make you feel. When you die, It means something. You don't just lose your massive mana charges. You lose everything you have on your body. Everything you work for. Alot of people will quit the game within the first couple weeks. One character per account per server. One name. One reputation. Be a f****t or be a role-model. Your choice. You are stuck with that persona. You are your own author of your own story.

 

[Krynn72]

This game has always been on my periphery. I hear something about it every now and then, and it always sounds good on paper, but then when I watch a video of it, I lose interest.