Action and Adventure

About a week later, I again logged into my new addiction. Beta was really ramping up and release wasn't too far off. More and more people were starting to be let in, and you could tell, both in and out of game. If you want to skip another rant about forum hysteria, then skip ahead to under the picture!

On the forums, the story wasn't so pleasant. Opinions were obviously mixed about the game at that stage, but there were a few specific posters who were going out of their way to not only derail threads, and not to just troll, but spread misinformation. This ties into the Forum Hysteria I commented on in my first post. Well these specific posters ended up doing some actual damage before they were removed from the beta program (again, not because they had differing opinions, many had differing opinions and were arguing them vehemently. These folks were there purely to bring chaos). This damage, resulted in the first big forum hysteria.

It started with the guard towers. The intention of the developer team was to put guard towers at a few newbie quest hubs outside of the newbie cities. The vast majority of these were within sight of the newbie cities, sometimes even just a 30 second run from them. However, by mistake, one guard tower (just one) was placed in the middle of nowhere, deep in the wilds of Agon. One person reported this issue on the forums, and soon, it was taken up by the dedicated chaos bringers. They began to spam post after post, topic after topic about these new "wilderness towers". They claimed there were dozens and dozens of these, spread thick throughout the world, and that PvP was literally impossible now, because EVERYONE could just run 20 seconds and be within tower range. No one could get in game and check at this time, because it was down for patching, but that didn't stop people from commenting as if they had seen it themselves.

Soon the forums were on fire with rage posts about these dubbed "wilderness towers" and how they are the death of the game, and how Aventurine is turning their back on the PvPers, making the game carebear, lying, etc. All the while, the truth of the matter was, there was only 1 guard tower that was in the middle of nowhere. A developer (Claus maybe?) posted that this tower has been removed in the patch, and that it was purely a developer error, all was again ok with the world. This post was utterly ignored. People raved over these wilderness towers, not just for days, but for over a month, even bleeding into the regular forums once the NDA was dropped. It's a myth that lived on for a shockingly long time, considering how fast it was cleaned up. Just another example of forums gone wrong.

Anyway, enough rant, now for the fun.



These are Alfar. If you run into them in the wild, chances are, they're going to try to kill you, and very likely succeed. This is the story of my first run in with them.

As I mentioned before, beta was in full swing by now, there were more and more players in the world. I ventured out of my home in Sandbrook and checked out the immediate goblin spawns. I noticed a great number of people being flagged grey for accidentally hitting others. Like rabid animals, as soon as someone went grey, the entire camp of players descended on them to finish them off and get free loot without an alignment hit. A terrible sight to behold, but this is Darkfall.

The camp was not just inhabited by new players though, the first newbie gankers were showing up. This was not such a good idea with such a large newb population. One character charged into camp wearing full banded armor and tried to kill someone at low health. The entire camp of newbies dropped what they were doing and charged the ganker, blood lust in their eyes, drunk off the prospect of getting banded armor. He didn't stand a chance, he was dragged down and butchered by the waves of new players. Someone had hit the wrong person in the melee, and he too was cut down where he stood.

I decided that it was not a wise choice to kill goblins today. Picking a random direction I set off south towards Hildershall. I stopped at a few camps to test them out, hivekins, sarlids (would soon become my favorite mobs for the swords they dropped)

Sarlid Swords!



But the real treat was when I found this massive NPC city filled with rebel Mercians. I noted that some of the guardsmen were wearing banded armor. It was still my deepest desire to get banded armor, after being robbed of the chance to get some from troll lords. I tried killing the Mercians several times on my own before realizing they were just too hard and too many to kill. Then made the horrible mistake to ask for help over global chat.

While I waited for a response, I explored. Not too far away, I found one of the coolest things I've seen in an MMO. There a medium sized hill with an ornate stonework platform atop some stairs. The platform looked like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, like a part was missing. It didn't take long for me to find out what was missing. A floating crystal platform came down from the heavens and connected with the hill platform. It waited for about 10 seconds before taking off again. Away into the sky it floated before reaching a giant island in the sky. But I would explore that later, I pushed down my awe and got back to business.

After about 15 more minutes of trying to kill Mercians, I noticed another player. He wasn't moving, just standing there, so I began to type to him, asking if he wanted to join me. That's when I noticed the blue shade of his skin, and my heart sank....




He pulled out a serrated two handed sword and took a swing at me. I was drawing my own weapon to fight back when I noticed 8 other Alfar tearing towards me from behind him. Well I did the obvious thing, I ran. I sprinted as fast as I could, dodging and weaving while spells flew over my head, arrows hitting me in the back. I thought I was going to die, and with all the loot I had gathered today! As I got to the crest of the next rise, I saw the floating platform. It was coming down back to the ground. I had a chance. What follows sounds like a load of BS even to myself, but it did happen. You can probably already guess.

I charged towards the hill with a squad of Alfar behind me. One was just behind me, the others a bit farther off. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I got to the top of the stairs just as the crystal platform was leaving, with a leap of faith I barely landed on the edge and was sailing to safety. Or so I thought.

The enemy with the two handed sword had landed on the platform with me. His companions were left impotent underneath us, firing futile spells up at the lift. Me and the alfar circled eachother for a bit, swinging now and again, he with his great sword, and I with my shortsword and shield. But I knew that this battle had to be quick; I charged. The battle was fierce and close, but in the end, I stood over my foe, his blood on my sword, staining the pristine crystal we stood upon. I took his expensive armor and reagants and stepped off the platform onto the floating island, safe at last. Then, I took the cowards way out, and logged off.



So ends my series on my beta impressions of the game. This serves to give a feel for the game as a whole rather than getting into the specific mechanics of the game. It's been 11 months since that adventure on the floating platform, and a great many features have been adding to the game, but the feeling you get from the game, has not changed. That's what these early adventures are to show: just what is possible in the game, and why I support it so wholly.

In the coming weeks, I will be adding a lot of different things to this blog site, and taking input from anyone reading as to what you want me to do in the future. Primarily this will serve as a site for Travelogues, first person stories from a new character in Darkfall, but I am open to suggestions.

This is Signus, signing off for a while, have fun out there.