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"Darkfall deserves your best wishes, even if you don't plan on buying it."

This seems to be the sentiment of most Darkfall enthusiasts, as the reality of the game's announced launch date has set in. It's no secret that the wild success of World of Warcraft has changed how studios develop games for the last 3-4 years, but is it about time that we went back to how MMOs were originally created?

Darkfall boasts a sandbox-type freedom and the return of the once-hated ganking and player killing found in earlier MMOs. It boasts innovation (then again, who doesn't) and a death penalty that makes you actually fearful of dying. These factors, and many more, are what drive the game's loyal fanbase for over seven years.

So to answer the question posed in the title, yes Darkfall will be important to the genre. If this niche game succeeds, it will show that innovation is not dead and we're collectively ready for a change. If it fails, it means that we're not really as ready for something different as we all claim.

[Via WorldIV]

Audio Visual Enterprises SA and Aventurine SA have announced today that the official release date for their fantasy MMO Darkfall Online will be on January 22nd, 2009. After a development cycle that has spanned almost eight years now, it's good to know the game will be leaving its current beta stage and entering the real world like a big boy (or girl, we haven't checked).

Be sure to check out the official announcement over at the Darkfall forums, and check out their main website for more information on the game that boasts being a "seamless and zoneless, non-instanced, sandbox game world."

Aventurine's Darkfall has been in development pretty much since the dawn of time (alright, since 2001, but that's not far from the dawn of time for the MMORPG genre), and we have on more than one occassion wondered whether or not those promises of an eventual beta test would be fulfilled. Turns out that for some, they have been.

The developers have posted a large collection of quotes from beta players' feedback. They claim it's representative, and it's mostly (but not all) positive. Sounds like players are impressed with the hugeness of the world and a solid crafting system, but a bit turned off by a complicated and unconventional control scheme. The devs say they're working on it.

If you fall into Darkfall's hardcore Ultima Online-esque PvP niche, feel free to scan through to see what you've apparently been missing out on for the past seven years.

If you've never heard of Darkfall Online, don't feel too bad. This indie MMO has been in development for some time now, with the creators wisely keeping their heads down and their noses to the grindstone. That way, when a big announcement come along, it'll blindside you like a very pleasant tsunami. And blindside us it did: Darkfall Online is jumping into Beta, and you're invited to sign up to participate.

The official announcement in the Darkfall forums is very to-the-point: sign up, check it out. To coincide with the announcement of the Beta phase, developer Aventurine has ginned up a lengthy trailer to showcase what the game is about. There's a forum post offering instructions on how to get that, or you could check it out in pieces on YouTube. Go familiarize yourself with Darkfall on the official features page! Then, to get look at the game right away, you can click on through below the cut for the first part of the trailer.

How many years has Darkfall been in development? Forever is a pretty good guess. Actually, go back to 2001 and that's when Darkfall was announced! Sheesh and people say Blizzard is slow. Darkfall sounds so good -- the real-time tactical and reactionary gameplay, the unrestricted siege warfare, the destructible terrain, and the bi-millennial patches.. err. But seriously, the proposed game systems sound decent. If the mounted combat emulates Mount and Blade, it's worth looking into. The current problem lies with the developer's decision to keep testers selected from the MMOG community away until the game is near-completion.

Progress is coming along nicely according to this latest Darkfall update by Associate Prouder, Tasos Flambouras. The Darkfall staff has expanded by eight new team members and the focus has been on polish and on the publishing side. You know server infrastructure, customer and technical support, the all important billing system, and distribution. It's summer though, and the development team needs some time off so they are rotating vacation time for the next three weeks. Don't rush it guys. There's always Warhammer Online to contend with if you launch too early. Still no word or more importantly a date on when the next beta phase will start, we'll be waiting!

[Via Warcry]

In a recent post over at Darkfall's official forums, associate producer Tasos Flambouras gives us an unofficial update for the community on the state of the game as it stands. He spends most of the post shooting down rumors created by the community, and letting us know the reasons behind the most recent delay in any official updates.

As for real information though, we get word of the thought behind the universal banking system and how vehemently opposed the devs are to introducing even more NPCs to the game. Their reasoning is that there are already too many games out there with controllable NPCs to add to your party. Flambouras says, "Even if it's all the rage in MMOs lately we want to further the multiplayer real-time aspect with Darkfall rather than go the other direction. There is no progress in having to introduce single player features such as more NPCs to a MMORPG."

There's a PvP-oriented game with real-time, aimed combat, a wide variety of races and tactical gameplay, but it's name doesn't have Conan or Warhammer anywhere in it. Darkfall aims to be the best free-for-all, PvP oriented game ever made. "Too good to be true" is an accusation they hear often; and yet one they aim to live up to, says Associate Producer Tasos Flambouras in Darkfall dev journal #25. Though Darkfall is feature complete, they have not yet opened their doors to regular players. The devs have hired a team of professional beta testers to check through the game first. When they do open the doors, the game will be as close to a finished product as possible, and they can focus on tuning the game for various hardware configurations and stress-testing the server without having to worry about fundamental game issues at the same time.

Darkfall NPCs go about their lives and level up as they age. Because the NPC AI is so sophisticated and seems exactly like a player to the servers, the NPCs themselves are doing a fair amount of game testing just by running around and exploring. Perhaps when the game goes live, the NPCs will eventually set up camps and build cities around popular player re-spawn points, the better to knock them on the noggins as they groan back to life. Darkfall's aim is to give players a world and let them do in it whatever they like. There won't be quests that tell you what to do, where to do it and what to do after that. It's well to the left of the sandbox-game MMO divide. Perhaps Darkfall will succeed where Shadowbane failed, to make a wide-open world where nobody is safe and anything can happen.

Darkfall is an up-and-coming MMO that we haven't given much time to on Massively, but reading over this recently-released 'Dev Journal' on the WarCry Network, it sounds like there's a lot there to sustain interest.

Just from this latest Journal entry by Tasos Flambouras, I'm picking out intriguing details:

• No radar: meaning that it's possible to engage in guerilla tactics and not have retaliation easily track you out of line of sight
• Alignment matters: it sounds like the only thing a player should concern himself over is his alignment, even more than guild alliance. Your moral posture will determine the method of play
• Multirace guilds, or clans: this sounds similar to Horde vs. Alliance interplay, but with a little more complexity
• Real-time combat: body strike location, weapon range, friendly fire, multiple opponent strikes with a single swing ... sounds like the Age of Conan take on combat, but with just ... more

Now, I'm not saying there aren't other games out there that offer these things and more, but these guys have the advantage of being in development and learning from other MMO mistakes. Read all about Darkfall on its website.