Darkfall Beta

So the elusive Darkfall made a surprise visit this week, with a new trailer of in-game footage and a chance to sign up for beta. For the unaware, Darkfall is an MMO which has been in development for many many years, and is often rumoured to be vapourware. I have mixed feelings about the game. It features an incredibly old school hardcore rule-set, and many features that I find intriguing. Players are free to attack each other anywhere (at the cost of their alignment), all armour and items are lootable from player corpses and a skills based rather than level based character development system to name a few. 

However, there are a few things that I have misgivings about. The game features real time combat, which in my mind just means players will run about flailing wildly at each other, or aim arrows and spells in first person view. I am much more a fan of the auto attack, choosing abilities and spells to use sort of combat. I had issues with the more action combat in DDO, and AoC was worse, as that just felt like a gimped version of auto attack that made me press 3 keys instead of 1, and claimed that this made it visceral. Tedious yes, visceral no. Anyway...

My other big concern for Darkfall is the look of the game. In my mind, the character design and artwork just looks extremely ugly. The new trailer did little to put my mind at rest, as it mostly involved badly animated chunky warriors swinging awkwardly at each other.

Interestingly, the trailer suggested  a 2008 release. That would be a surprise. I am certainly interested in trying the game, and of course I signed up for the beta straight away, I just have my doubts.