Kill Ten Rats

Lets be honest, Aventurine have not been ones to heed conventional wisdom when it comes to Darkfall.  Lets look at how they differ.

1.  If a bad review comes out, don’t post about it on your forums.  The added attention will just get people who are already on your forums to read a review that says your game sucks.  The more responses from the developers, the longer the controversy is dragged out.

Aventurine started 3 threads in 3 days in their “news” forum.

2. Make your forum big and flashy and often updated.  It’s the first thing potential new players see.

Aventurine’s web site is lack-luster and rarely updated.  Looking at darkfallonline.com, a user can’t immediately tell if the game has been released or if the game is in beta.

3. Let people buy your game.  If you need more servers, quickly put more up within the first couple days.

If you can find the link to the store, you’ll find it’s offline approximately 23 hours of the day.

4. Don’t create a system where people can lose all their stuff.  It’ll just cause them to quit when they can’t get their corpse or lose something special to them.

Aventurine’s design philosophy is designed around the exact opposite.

(or at least, one of many)

A long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, I was a reviewer. People agreed or disagreed with my opinions, but far and by large everybody thought my reviews were fair and hitting the points that needed to be hit. I liked that, because that’s how I set out to do the reviews – as fair opinion that hits the highs and the lows equally. I did that gig for a little shy of two years, and got to review a few titles, so I’m sure I wasn’t catastrophic at it.

So if Adventurine (or whoever) is looking for a fair review, send me Darkfall. I have no intention of “playing” the game, so you can set me up with a timed account that expires whenever it reaches the number of hours you think it’s appropriate for a fair appreciation of the game. I might form my opinion earlier, or maybe the time expires and I have to make do with what I have (which I doubt). Also, since I have no veiled interest in this game one way or another, that’s probably the best place to be to approach a review. If it’s good, it’s good and if it’s bad it’s bad and no skin off my back in either case. Not planning on “playing it” regardless, since I’m about to start dealing with a house move soon.

All I offer is fair; if I think it’s good, good for you. If you think it’s bad, then eat it, basically. Drop me a line if interested. If not, best of lucks.

For Darkfall fans, I’m probably not their favorite blogger.  Twice I’ve titled articles with the word “DarkFail” in it.  But grumblings about me are nothing compared to the whirlwind the Eurogamer review has created.  In the Darkfall general discussion forum today, 13 of the top 20 threads are about the Eurogamer review.  Creatively, players in the game created a block of spam-text all stating “so and so has declared WAR on Eurogamer.net”

Such passion for an MMO is uncommon.  Sure, people will insist the game they play is the best and call anyone who is biased towards a different game a “fanboy”, but for Darkfall fans it seems to go deeper.  An assault on Darkfall is an assault on the playerbase itself.
Maybe it’s because Darkfall is so unique?  No other MMO allows full player-killing and looting of their corpse anymore.  For fans of that kind of gameplay, Darkfall is their last hope.

A response came back from Aventurine.  They said we played two hours, but No! we played nine.   To see everything.  To be everywhere.  We stand behind Zitron, firm, but then… To be careful we will re-review it by Gillen.  Nine is still enough for us to care.   We do not like Darkfall, anywhere.

–Ravious
would you, could you, in the dark?

The word “schadenfreude” referrs to the guilty pleasure of watching other people fail.   It’s like watching the Angry Video Game Nerd play Superman 64.

Today’s dose of schadenfreude comes from reading Eurogamer’s review of Darkfall.  Eurogamer isn’t known for being the harshest reviewers in the biz.  Dofus and and Conan both earned 8 out of 10 by their estimation.  Even Pirates of the Burning Sea, which they describe as “broken” and “disjointed”, can get by with six-thumbs-up out of 10.  So how did Darkfall Online fair?  It got just 2 out of 10.

Here’s some quotes from the review that had me laughing:

“Enemies’ AI boils down to running in circles, which is actually surprisingly effective, considering how slow and floaty the controls tend to be.”

“Not even old-school EverQuest – which was actually graphically superior- felt quite as stiflingly slow and ponderous in its levelling curve.”

“It doesn’t even have the basic features that make up even the most lackluster and dull cookie-cutter MMOs”

“Underneath the lack of originality, there’s a hole where the game should be: a loose, incongruous mess of bad controls, horrible user interface, and broken combat system.”

“Even if you were so inclined to take part in this painful experience, it’s rather difficult to actually buy it.”

“It’s the emperor’s new clothes of 2009: such a marvellous game that only an idiot wouldn’t realise the beauty of the gaping holes in its content, its wonky control system, and its seemingly decade-old engine”