31st Patch thoughts

A new patch has arrived and it has brought some changes, most are good and some are bad. The new fishing nets for ships are cool but the amount of loot you receive for them is just too low, classic Av style. I mean what's the point in giving a player who has managed to build a boat a damn R0 bow? It doesn't make any sense! I'm pretty sure, Av will increase it soon enough because they always do it like that. I guess they're cautious and that's a good thing but yesterday, when I looked at the fishing box and saw the Short Bow I didn't know what to do, cry or laugh.
The most controversial change is the way you go from red to blue. Now, you need to spend 1k per point and wait a day for every two points. So, if you're -60 alignment, you'll have to spend 60k over a month to get your alignment to 0. This harsh way to go back to blue magnifies the holes in the alignment system (Sea Towers, sieges with roamers or mercenaries, a blue and a red attacking you, etc...).
In a month or so, if you see a clanned blue player he is either a) someone who has not PvPed since patch (Booooh), b)someone who goes through the Chaos Church thingy (good for him) or c)someone who does acrobatics not to deliver the final blow to any blues neither ganks any blues (ergo, a bad partner for a fight("I'm dead. Oh, wait I've just killed this guy. Noone has ganked him?" "Oops, sorry, he was an ork")).
This system needs many tweaks still and I hope Av realizes that.

Exploit

In yesterday's Sea Tower Sun did it again. They used once more the exploit of spawning a ship in front of the enemy's ship (our ship in this particular case) to make it stop so they could board it. What bothers me the most is how so many people  thinks this is not an exploit when the definition is pretty clear: "An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or design flaw by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers."
First of all, IMO, this will remain an exploit until Aventurine says otherwise and it might happen, but until then, I think it's pretty obvious that Aventurine did not intend naval combat to be like that.
Surprisingly, some Sun players have said that Darkfall has many exploits and lots of players uses them. Well, I don't but in any case, this excuse sounds to me like they know it is an exploit but don't care so much.
The second excuse I've been reading a lot is that Naval Warfare is boring, chasing a ship and all but then I wonder why do they come to the Sea Tower at all. I don't find Naval Warfare boring at all and yesterday, I was looking forward to it
The worst of it all hasn't arrived yet though. Aventurine won't fix this in time and won't do anything to prevent this exploit. Then, everyone will start using it because if they don't, they're in disadvantage. Unfortunately, not everybody can spawn ships left and right, so Naval Warfare will be used less and less.
I also find it surprising how few Sun have spoken to say that they don't like this tactic. Is winnig that sweet?

Hyperion is back!

As announced in this thread, Hyperion and King Mannus are back to Agon! I gotta say I'm pretty excited about it and it looks like the rest of the server is aswell. Mostly, this is a change of pace for me. I kinda needed it since my last weeks in Darkfall had been pretty dull. I was tired of soloing the same spawns and so, now i got new spawns and more chances to group up. This also means new objectives for the clan and a new status quo. Basicly, it's new stuff, what I needed the most while I wait for Darkfall Arena.
The only thing that has me worried about this is performance. Last siege (yeah, I know, no report) was kinda playable and we'll be more people for next sieges or events. I can only pray Aventurine improves it in Arena as they've been saying or earlier, even better.

Not what I'd like, again.

Yesterday, there was a new GM event in Agon. The first part of it involved some Flag Hunting and there were hints to deduce the location of each flag. That part was not a huge success, probably because there were few Flags in a big world with a lot of players and, probably too, because you only needed to claim them, not defend them or guard them, just take them and then go back to safety. The second part of the event happened in the center, below the great fortress. I was curious, so I took a scrub gear bag and I went there. GMs had spawned three GM controlled Demons but, of course, as soon as I got there, two other players, even more scrubby than me, killed me while the GM Demons were trying to hit them with fireballs, unsuccesfully. Apparently, later on, some organized groups arrived and there was a hell of a PvP session while the Demons ate popcorn.
This time around, I wasn't expecting it but I'd like to see, from time to time, enemies putting everything aside to fight the greater evil. I hope Av wasn't expecting the players to team up against the mobs because that would mean they don't understand the current status with Agon and I want to believe they do.
I still think that events are a great way to create a narrative for Darkfall and I'll keep my eye on them to see if they improve, change or adapt. Let's hope they do!

Comment on the 25th Feb. Activity Report

As usual, last activity report is bitter-sweet. You'll see there's a lot of sweetness in it but there's also many bitter things. Let's get going.
Aventurine keeps updating and improving Agon's geography and apparently, they're nearly done for real now but I'd expect to see that in the upcoming game-changing expansion and not one day before. For me, Agon's already quite pretty but "the redistribution of everything" is a key change. Right now, Yssam and Cairn are too good while Niffleheim is kinda bad. That could also mean a regionalization of resources but we shouldn't take that for granted. Tasos keeps expanding on new models, mobs, weapons and props that we've been hearing about for quite a long time. More of everything is good, there's no discussion about it but I'm more concerned on the current systems than in the supposed lack of variety in armor, weapons and mobs out there.
The alignment changes they've announced seem very cool but it looks like it won't be enough. Aventurine has said nothing about defending your clan city without going red, healing reds and stuff like that. We can just hope Aventurine will make alignment a meaningful feature.
The new GUI is a very awaited improvement and everyones is just praying so Av can improve its performance. The new tools (political map and vendor information) are also cool. BUT, no news on chat bubbles. I want to be able to cry for mercy or swear on someone's grave or just ask for some quiet conversation. Mmmm well.
Probably, the bit that has made every player happy is the fix to the player lag. Noone thought Aventurine could fix that so, if they truly do, 10 points for them!
Tasos also speaks of a new light system that looks very good even in low settings. Does that mean compulsory shadows for everyone? If that doesn't mean shitty performance, it's also great news. I really really want to sneak up from the shadows.
Besides a very vague statement about the conquest system and a mention to Quest Rewrite, there's only the new armour system to comment. There's been a lot of discussion in Forum's around what is this system going to bring to the table but nobody really knows yet. I'm not very excited about it but I guess we need to wait for more information.
The bitter part is the lack of updates or even mentions about the Prestige Classes. Have they been completely scrapped? Are they coming? Not a word since months ago. I'm hoping for a lot from those PC and well, I know I'm not the only one. A word about it would be nice, Av.

Conversations out of Forumfall

Since I was really curious about Sun's opinion on their own size but couldn't really create a thread on Forumfall because trolls and flamers siege and destroy any interesting thread, I decided to pm Frank Sinatra himself and ask him. I've edited just very little pieces to make it more readable.

ERRUK:
Hello Frank!
I got a question that I think is shared by a good share of this community and I believe it hasn't been asnwered due to the amount of trolling and flaming this forum has. So, even if I'd like for everyone to share his opinion in a correct way, I can't really expect that so I've decided to ask you.
It looks pretty obvious that the current negative opinon on Sun comes from the size your clan+alliance has obtained. Right now, the population of EU1 isn't willing to ally up to confront you, I'm pretty sure that the reason behind it is that it doesn't really affect their actual gameplay time, maybe just a little, some sea towers and being unable to siege you without hiring. So, what are your thoughts on this?

FRANK:
You are welcome to relay this, I'm all for getting the chance to say anything without getting attacked . My answer to your question is that I beleive that most players need a vent for their frustrations. I kinda look at it like Aventurine allways gets blamed for not putting more sand in the box, and Sun allways gets blamed for how we play with the sand there is. So i dont really think its personal hate, but more a outlet for frustrations. Its quite insane really because Darkfall has massive flaws, but its still the best mmo ive ever played which says a lot. I think the main frustration is that this game is so full of potential, but AV simply seems to small a company to fullfill this potential, and the almost provocating slow speed that new stuff is implemented just makes it a tough love.
As for the other part of your question regarding that it doesnt really affect other players gameplay then I think you are partly right.  I agree that it's a point that people don't really gang up on us because we dont really hurt their gameplay except in few circumstances like some seatowers.
However someone always wins the seatowers, some win the diceroll (I really think the seatower loot should be placed in the capping ships strongbox to be sailed home) and some win the battles. Sometimes its us and we get massive blame, and sometimes its others and they get massive blame. The short truth is simply that those who win in a competetive game will allways get the blame.
I wrote that I only partly agreed, because I also firmly beleive that another point is essential here. Running a large guild, or a big alliance is hard work - and the administrative tools needed for this is non existant.
Its really annoying that Av wants large battles but doesnt spend time on the organisation of these large groups.
The problem is that some of the things that would be helpfull to make organising large guilds and alliances easier are also sometimes anti sandbox, ill give some examples:
-Raidgroups where each groupleader is shown on the other groupmembers maps.
-Layered banking, make a sg bank a captain bank etc. Make sure that flowign income comes to the sg bank like for villages,workbench, seatower etc.
-Tax, implement a tax to be bound to a holding, that works just like the houses except instead of loosing your house the sgs can define what to do, for example get kicked from stone and kicked from the guild.
The tax part is MASSIVE work, and so easy to solve.
-City vendors, either just have then standnig with their wares or make a warehouse with the vendors in them.
-Make groupleaders be able to kick members of the group, so stupid that you have to remake the whole group if someone is afk.
-Have a looting chat channel, where you can see what is being looted and by who and when for the whole raid.
-Let allies travel for 1 portal shard.
-Make a alliance bank that sg's have access to.
-Make a alliance tax.
-Make payment schemes possible for city protections
-Make a auction house
-make some guild achievements, for example slaying a major mob like dragons and demons will give a Guildwide buff that lasts until serverdown.
-Let raidleaders set waypoints for the whole raid in another colour than the group waypoint
-Let the beacon spell have its effect where it hits and not only if it hits a player.
-Ingame parsing of node hits on holdings
-Let the city vendors sell bags with items in it for a set price. So the alliance crafters can make full sets and sell them instead of having to buy a item at a time.
And i guess i could go on.
So to sum up, I believe people always need someone to blame and for the moment thats us because we are the strongest. In 6 months its probably someone else and thats just how it goes. As for having more larger groups, i simply think that the main deterent is that its so much work due to a severe lack of tools for organising bigger guilds and alliances, and the above points would help that part a lot. The only reason we pull it off is that we have a big group of leaders in Sun, and we are good a dividing tasks and giving each other room to take a breather when we need a break.

ERRUK:
I agree with what you say and I'd also like to see some of the tools you mentioned (I think most of them aren't that anti-sandboxy) in this great game. I also understand that some players have chosen you to vent their frustrations because you are the most powerful force in EU1 but part of that strength comes from your sheer numbers.
What I meant to ask was if you would consider downsizing so EU1 Political Power Struggle is more balanced or to reduce that negative trend towards Sun. Maybe you'll stay like this until server population increases and balances the PPS or until enough people ally up to fight you?

FRANK:
We cant downsize since downsizing means throwing friends out of a guild. We are a old guild who plays several games and we obviously cant throw memebrs out due to suddenly being too many because the other clans lost people. All we can do is to disband the alliance but it wont change much since vogue isn't having that many actives. (5 at the last seatower).
We field 50-60 Suns currently in sieges, and if thats the largest force in the game, then the problem isn't us but the rest of the guilds. My point in the former post was to make it easier to handle bigger alliances or guilds, and then im sure you would see more of those.
Everyone in our guild has a Alt in Sun and some has several - you can safely dovide our numbers by 2 and we are simply not that big in my oppinion. Even if we had 80 or 100 players i dont see that as a problem since someone has to be the strongest, and compared to US1 thats not even remotely high numbers.
I might add that you are right that we would love a strong enemy. Even though people dont belive it then we would be perfectly happy living in a hamlet or a chaos city if it was because there simply were stronger forces than ours, and while we do give quite a bit away, we are not really here to be nice to anyone or to be saviours of anything.

Thanx for the answers Frank!!

Interview with Ginger Magician!

Well, what else there is to say? Enjoy it!

EL: Can you tell us something about you for those that don't know you?

GM: Well its hard to imagine any DF player who doesnt know who I am but I am basically the most famous soloer in the game with the most kills and the biggest reputation. I am also active out of game on the forums and my threads are usually some of the most popular ones around. I also have a long and distinguished history as a MMO player going back to 2003 with Neocron and then Eve Online.

EL: Can you tell us something about you IRL?

GM: My real name is Jonathan and I'm 40 years old and male and an English gentleman from the SE of the country.

EL: How do you feel about being a popular player of Darkfall? Do you feel loved or hated by the community? Do you enjoy it?

GM: I have never cared what people thought about me good or bad. Popularity and fame or even infamy in my case have their uses. For example I should imagine its much like the case of a real life celeb who everyone knows and who never needs to introduce himself to anyone. My gaming profile is much the same and being famous as a gamer can help you get certain infos and access to people easier.

EL: What do you think about the current EU1 server status?

GM: I think its pretty healthy. Playing for such a long time now we have ofc become accustomed to relatively low population and its nothing unusual. I always said since beta testing the game that it would not have a very wide market and so it has proved. One of my main concerns is the zerging seems to have gotten worse lately and to have 50% of the active population in one clan can't be good for anyone.

EL: What's your opinion on Lux Arcana?

GM: I quite like Lux Arcana to be honest. They always seem a well organized and discplined clan to me and the leaders are very mature and dont tolerate smack talk. For the casual and more mature player they are an excellent choice.

EL: What's your opinion on the Grind and Character Progression?

GM: Well this recent patch claiming 2 times increase in skillgains for me I have not noticed any real difference and the grind is probably still too long. There are very few players of my level around and 1v1's nowadays are usually pretty boring. A lot of people run as soon as they see me or attempt to hide and log off. If the grind was reduced there is also the question of whether the game is interesting enough to keep people playing once they max out. Atm I would have to say that its not so AV need to tread carefully with their grind reduction strategy imo.

EL: Do you miss big scale fights, sieges and other big-sized clan stuff?

GM: I have done all these things and tbh I dont find them very exciting or even particularly skillful. A lot of luck comes into play with large scale fights and the vast majority of them are pure numbers affairs where the side with more numbers always wins. Being solo means its a lot harder when it comes to pve and there are a lot of mobs which I cant kill solo but then again I really dont like pve and darkfall pve in particular so I dont feel like I am missing out at all.

EL: How's your average day on Darkfall?

GM: Depends what I feel like doing what I need at that particular moment and what gear I have available. Too much of my time is spent making gold and getting gear but its the same for everyone. My best days are those spent roaming in a gear set I am happy with and having and winning various pvp encounters around the map.

EL: What's the most enjoyable moment you recall having in Darkfall? And worst?

GM: There are so many enjoyable pvp fights that its hard to pick out one special moment. Beating Evaner Mordred 1v1 and then having him post the video in a thread was a special moment and it made a lot of people realize that there was more to me than just the forum talk of the haters. Coming fourth in the EU server melee/archery tournament and beating 2 alfars in a row was another highlight.
One of my worst moments was losing a full set of infernal that I had just crafted 5 mins before because of a crash and losing all that gear to a naked scrub alfar was very annoying.

Activity rising!

I think nobody saw that one coming. In the latest Activity Report by Tasos, many awaited changes have been already announced and some of it may come today in a new patch. Unfortunately, there's no Patch Notes yet but looking into the Report, it's easy to get some clues, so let's carry on with it.
The AR starts with massive area redesings and it seems Human lands are already done. It's nice to know that worldbuilders are still working to improve the beautiful Agon but in my opinion, it's already a great world. The bit that caught my attention is this: "clan city layouts are being scrutinized at the moment". Does this mean clan city changes, possibly somethin more dynamic or player chosen? That would be nice...
Tasos also explains some incoming additions to Meditation like more skills and, wait for it, attributes. Obviously, Tasos is not feeling the love with Meditation but hopefully, with time and few tweaks, people will start to see what do they have under their noses.

As far as the newbie experience goes, we’re going to help that along quite a bit with a total approach to character progression, an example of some of the actions we’ll be taking is increasing drop rate and frequency of attribute consumables and spell books.

I can just hope I'm lucky enough. But I know I'm not.

We got to see a demonstration of the new political map. We’ve talked about this before but we didn’t mention that the map will also mark locations of player vendors with details on what they sell.

That is a very nice addition and it will make player vendors something really meaningful. I bet Vendor Booth prices are rising as we spe... as you read and I write. Tasos can't say nothing really interesting about the new GUI yet and by now, I'm so used to the current one that I don't need many changes.

The designers are undertaking the massive task of  redesigning the newbie experience and working on a total monster classification, redistribution and localization based on the lore. This is part of an overall strategy of localizing resources.

Well, well, this is a big one. It seems like Darkfall is going the way of the regionalization but maybe they just want the resources to be localized so people need to travel more and trade more. Mob redistribution is very likely a first step and I'm eager to see where is this going.

There are alignment system changes coming as we’ve mentioned before. These are a complete approach on improving the alignment system and solving certain inherent issues surrounding it like for example a  new approach to improving alignment,  making it more meaningful with changes such as locking reds out of alliance, racial, and trade channels, adding a chaos chat open to everyone.

I certainly hope those alignment fixer are not reduced to simply being locked out of several chat tabs. Any player getting zapped by player city towers should become grey for every player in that clan so they can defend their cities without losing alignment. Or something.

There are also upcoming changes to sieging and PvP,  like addressing one man clans declaring war on everyone, the one siege limit against one clan, self sieging etc. Some of these fixes are coming in the next patches. There are more changes to improve PvP and massive battles like for example changes to spells like confusion, pungent mist and eye-rot going in tomorrow’s patch.

I believe those changes are the crown's jewels right now. "The one sige limit against one clan" and other sieging system tweaks are a very demanded feature that can change the political status of Agon. A little nerf to all those blinding spells are also great news, not only because they were a bit OP but because I don't have them yet! Jajajajajaja! Well, I was going to buy Confusion in a couple of days.
After a few ship-related changes (protection from swimmers, hell yes) and the announcement of today's patch, the last activity report of 2010 ends. Now, he can only wait for the patch notes and the servers to go online. And tomorrow...

I'd like to be a Tibetan Monk to meditate for free!

First of all, sorry for the last few days of inactvity. There has been a big change in my RL, a good one, and I've been readjusting my shit. I hope I'm back for real now despite having Fallout New Vegas screaming for some of my game time.
Anyway, today is a patch day and a very awaited one because it includes the new and shiny Meditation skill to skill your magic schools while online. First, at forums an awful lot of people is already QQing because they believe it's too expensive and because it doesn't skill the intensifies, stats and such. The problem is right now people only knows about the whole price for maxing out any school but they don't know how many points are spent every hour or how many points you need to skill from 49 to 50 for example. That's the information that really matters.
I believe this system has been created thinking about all those lengthy grinds using slow level and useless spells to get other spells. Now, after patch, you don't need to grind Beacon to get Telekinesis if you know what I mean. Of course, you'll have to use your newly acquired and useful spell to increase your stats and intensifies but you won't be using Beacon for that long. Instead of that you'll be able grind using the spells you want to use.
I've also started to use the Meditation skill and a fairly quick overview showed that 5000 points seem to last for 24 hours aprox and you need a month to skill an elemental school from 50 to 100 so right now it seems like gold farming is more important than ever but if you play regularly enoguh you should be able to gain more gold than points are spended.
Well, all in all, this post title still aplies and we'll have to wait until someone makes proper testing to know exactly how this Meditation skill truly works. Anyway, I expect Av to lower a bit the gold cost of Meditation pretty soon.

Event comentary: Dead be comin...

Yesterday evening, there was a server event involving GM controlled mobs attacking three racial capitals. The result of it was somewhat dissapointing yet fun, let me explain. My problem, I think shared with my clanmates, is that I wanted the event to be what it could be in a typical fantasy story; every ork and mahirim putting aside their grudges or problems to combat the undead hordes. But, this is Darkfall and player freedom is one of its best features and so, any player can play the event as they see fit. Another problem in this kind of events is the alignment system combined with zap towers. If you put all these together its pretty obvious that the event was not going to unfold as I pictured it.
We players didn't have an ETA on the event so a group of Luxers waited in Flaming for a long time. In that time, players were slowly coming and although some of the were orange to us, clans at war, there were no fighting. It seemed it was going down as I imagined at that time (I'm pretty sure that's what tricked me). There was even a Samurai Pizza Cat there, a clan we've been fighting a lot these days, Deltus. But someone talked to him and some kind of truce was agreed. Aero Greenduda, a known griefer appeared there and tried to create havok but he was very soon taken care of.
Then some more members of SPC came to Flaming Skull and they did attacked us. Later I talked with one of them Invictus and they didn't know nothing about the truce with Deltus. Because of that, we really didn't react upon it, we were there for the event not to fight SPC and some of our members died in the chaos. Then each and evey player there jumped over the graves and completely looted them despite being from supposed friends for the event if you know what I mean. That should have shattered my illusions but they didn't.
Finally, we regrouped in a spot far from the growing amount of players gathering around the bank and waited for the mobs. When they did come, true chaos ensued. Players unwillingly hitting other players and getting zapped, GM controlled and strong mobs hitting everything, unclanned blues ganking downed players and wardecced players rezzing other wardecced players ( ;-) at Kaputtmacha ), Lux and SPC fighting each other around the Sun Exarch... it was very funny but not what I wanted nor expected. I finally died to Invictus the more active player in Luxers killing before and during the event, lost a PvE bag but later on, managed to ninja loot a Blue Tail Runner and a Mysterious Essence, a special object dropping from that particular mobs. I still got no clue what to do with that but I hope it's cool.
When the event was over, on my way back to Andruk, I sent a tell to Invictus out of curiosity and I'm glad I did. Invictus attacked us because he could do so without getting zapped, we're at war after all, and without Luxers around, his chances to get loot increased; a perfectly valid reason! Also, Invitcus said he thought that Aventurine was looking for exactly that kind of PvE-PvP chaos but I'm not completely sure about it. As I have previously said, Agon is a too agressive world and that's gonna make it hard for Devs to tell a coherent story. Obviously, the "Dead be coming" can now be translated into a nice story with great enemies fighting together undead hordes among strangers, backstabbing and nobility included but... I don't know, I guess I'll have to wrap my head around this kind of dark and mercyless world we play in and, from now on, acknowledge that in Agon nothing happens like in fairy tails o happy fantasy stories. I guess Agon is more like Westeros than Middle-Earth and Darkfall has more in common with A Song of Ice and Fire than it has with The Lord of the Rings.
All in all, it was fun and, most importantly, something very different to what we're used to in Darkfall so I hope Aventurine keeps it up and announce another event where Mysterious Essence holders become giant dragons to kill and destroy everything in their path :-P.

Offline Skilling revealed and Community Feedback

There's a couple of new information bits that have recently surfaced and I'd like to comment on them. The first one is an interview from ZAM and the second, a new activity report about community feedback. The most interesting part of the interview is this one:

ZAM: You recently announced that you're incorporating offline skilling for some of the “tedious” tasks. Could you tell us more about this feature and give some examples of which skills might be included?

Flambouras: This will be a work in progress. In a nutshell: players can buy meditation points and use them to raise skills while they’re offline. The skills we’re starting with are the magic schools only. Not the spells, just the schools. We’ll expand on this with frequent updates.

Magic schools offline skilling is a very good thing but now some new questions rise: Will it skill the intensify, duration and so on from the skilling school? There will be gains in INT while doing so? I think the answers to both questions is NO. I believe AV wants to make online skilling more effective than offline but that will leave macroing as the most efficent way to skill up. Anyway it will be great to skill Witchcraft and Spell Chanting.
The activity report is not full of information but it's something. The newbie experience sure needs to be improved but I hope they don't dumb the game with those simbols ! on top of quest givers. The crafting fundamental changes look good even if we don't know nothing about them, I just hope crafting becomes something more engaging than it is now.

Additionally, new trade route missions feedback and information was discussed along with future sea fortress changes, on making them go live during peak hours. Solo player combat mechanics and party mechanics were also brought up with feedback on the solo player experience and recommendations on how to make solo players more self-sufficient. Party number limits were also mentioned.

This ^ is also good news, all of it and so are mount upgrades and ship power improvements. I was very surprised to see that they call the proxy clans an exploit when siege mechanics are so flawed. What do you want us to do AV? With current server population and many clans having many holdings what else is there to do? I'm not happy either with this:

We agree that as far as alignment goes, going red is too forgiving when it needs to be more of an active decision with implications for the player.

The problem with alignment goes beyond it being too forgiving. The problem is that you can red by defending your holding while a guy healing and buffing a red can stay blue. Alignment has many issues and before tackling the penalty for being red you need to fix them.

The feasibility of player housing in or around NPC cities, or auction houses were also brought up. Feedback on the economy was presented and a lot of it is consistent with our development plans.

Does this mean that there will be player housing in or around NPC cities? And auction houses? I sure hope so. Well, something is something, uh?

Tasos keeps it up!

Lately, Dev communication has increased and players can't be happier about it. In the last blog post from Tasos himself, he talks about some interesting stuff.

All quests are being rewritten, more dynamic quests are going to be added, faction quests will be more helpful towards newbies and there will be more advanced quests added to the game. The events team is also preparing epic dynamic events and more lore driven events.

Quests are good because they give the player an objective when you don't have anything else to do. Of course, Tasos also hypes once more the dynamic events and lore driven events. Hopefully, they'll come soon.

The meditation feature was demonstrated to us today, it’s almost complete and should be added to the game in the next patch or shortly after that.

The meditation features is the offline skilling system for those living under a rock and it "should be added" very soon. I'm surely waiting for this new feature and hoping it will reduce the grind or at least the perception of it.

A new dynamic lighting is now working properly, we were shown a test of this in-game and it was very impressive. We expect this to be added in the next expansion after it is implemented.

Very few players have shadows on in Darkfall, at least I  don't, so this new dynamic lighting systemis not really important to me. What I'd like to hear is some like Server Optimization or whatever makes Darkfall run better on my computer. Some time ago, I was fascinated with Half Life 2 because it was a GREAT game and you couldn run it on a damn Gameboy! I'd like to see something like that in Darkfall too.

We have a sophisticated political map in the works which makes clan associations easy to explore, also it features locations for vendors, banks and other in-game resources. We saw a small demonstration of this in action and it looks really good.

About time...

Finally, we were given a demonstration of the new environmental sound system and we got to see the entire functionality of it which has so much more than a demo we had shared with the community a while back. This is a high-end, next gen, real-time surround-sound environmental sound generator which also integrates with the game music system.  Very few other games have something similar to this. During its demonstration we had a very immersive experience and we can’t wait to see this feature in-game.

I don't know what to think about it but I guess it's good news. Anyway, the really important thing about the post is the post itself. Aventurine has increased the level of communication and that's a very good thing. Hopefully, we'll never be back into the dark cave where we can only hear the Forumfall screams.

How Aventurine works

In today's Activity Report, posted in the Darkfall Blog Tasos give us a peak into Aventurine work process. It's not like I know what Scrum or Agile Software Development exactly means but it seems Av is using some nice and advanced tools to improve our beloved Darkfall and that's also good news! Tasos has also posted the precise activity each of the 11 teams are working on. And now, the question is: Which is your favourite team? Mine is surely team 10. I'm eager to see Agon's lore fleshed out in lots of events. I'd like to see Agon's History being guided by us, players.
On the bad side, the offline skilling system seems to be still kinda far away but patience, my padawan, it shall come.

Gameplay focus changing

These last few days I've barely been playing Darkfall due to Bad Company 2 but I'm already feeling inside the need for some PvP in Agon. That's right, PvP. Even if I still need to level a lot of stuff and the fact that I should do it on mobs for some effectiveness, I don't feel like doing PvE anymore. It's probably just a phase and I still want to find one of those damn treasure maps but right now, whenever I got online I just want to kill some other players.
Another thing I still would like to do and probably will tonight is to participate in clan events. As already stated, events are awesome sauce since most of the clan are ingame and playing with more people is what really makes the game fun.
I guess that soon I'll have all the weapons and upgrades unlocked in BC2 and the "game fever" will decrease a bit. It happened with Darkfall too, the first weeks I couldn't stop playing and all those sweet dings were more than a carrot to me. With time, the fever goes down and I could properly balance real life with ingame life. That's not an easy thing to do...

Nutcupping and stuff, you know...

Nutcup is another shiny MMORPG concept strongly tied to politics. In Clan Discussion sub-forum there's always a thread about some clans who have nutcupped and that, my friends, is one of the worst sins in the e-bible of videogaming. Why? Well, I guess people sometimes think that every videogame should be perfectly balanced in each and every aspect so it can be a nice e-sport where you can show your true gaming skills. In most sandbox MMORPG that's just not the case, mainly because players have more freedom and options. In Darkfall city A might be easier to defend than city B but you're free to bring as many soldiers as you want to conquer it and so can do the defending side.
A nutcup is just a bad word to say alliance. Unfortunately, clans doesn't have many tools to wage war on other clans so when your target allies with 5 other clans making the victory impossible, you can't sabotage those quick allies or compromise their trade routes or whatever, the only thing you can do is go to forums and call them cowards and nutcuppers for not giving you a fair fight when Darkfall IS NOT about fair fights.

Darkfall, I'm cheating on you...

Yup and the friend I tried to pull into Darkfall is to blame, great irony! These last few days I've been playing more Bad Company 2 than Darkfall. In games, like in life, there are times where you feel like killing people with swords and other times, you want put a bullet in their foreheads. It's going to be tough to do anything else besides playing with these two games in my hard drive and I'm talking about living the real life but I'll manage. Bad Company 2 is the new shiny game so I guess I'll spend some more hours on it than in Darkfall for the next week or so but I'm not abandoning Agon now that I am enjoying myself so much.
Also, I can't help myself but to think what kind of great game a mix between Darkfall and Bad Company 2 would be. I pray Cthulhu that Aventurine next project is an MMOFPS. Oh, it would be very nice.
Anyway, this blog is not dead even if its periodicity slows a bit down.

Offline Skilling System

Yesterday, Tasos posted another of those beloved Activity Report and that one contained a very important new. Av is planning to implement an Offline Skilling System to "curbing macroing, giving newer players a better chance to close the gap, and to cut down on some of the tedious repetitive tasks that exist in the game". There already are several threads in forums about this key subject. Most of the people think it's a good adition to the game but some others fear it will empty the world because everyone would like to do offline skilling.
First of all, we still don't know how are they gonna implement this, we only know they'll "start with a small amount of skills and gradually expand it, and obviously many skills won't be included" in the beginning. Knowing how Av works, initially, the offline gain will be very little and only on several skills hard to level like melee and maybe buffs.
This seems like a very good idea and I surely hope it works but as with everything else, we'll have to wait, see and then, rant on forums.

We all like to be patched...

Today, Aventurine has reward our continous pasion with yet another patch. This one was kinda little with only fixing a bug about treasure maps (I haven't found one yet :-o); more upgrades to certain zones (Scaranibben and Thorsland are the only ones I recognize) and the inevitable Halloween theme.
Apparently, besides some Halloween weapons, now some mobs appear in player cities and we have evidence to prove it! This is a cool addition and I hope they keep it after Halloween or tweak it a bit so it can work, not only for a month, but forever. This patch has also ninja-added a new Hellfreeze loading screen. Maybe it has increased the treasure map drop rate. One can only hope. Get ingame to see the changes!

Damn stupid players...

In Darkfall Official Forum, we see every day posts from angry players who name call or even insult the Devs because Runners have too low health, portal shards don't drop enough, travel is too easy or any other thing you can possibly imagine. Those players are so angry because of the sense of entitlement they feel towards Darkfall, their beloved game that is being destroyed by Aventurine. I can totally understand that feeling, I also feel I kinda own Darkfall but if you stop to think for a second, the rational part of your brain will tell you the truth: you don't own it, you only play it and those who really own it, know better than you. Yes, that's a hard one to swallow, Aventurine developers know what they're doing. That's why it's so sad to see player x tell Tasos he's a retard or any other insult they, imaginative players, can come up with. But this here, it's even sadder. Some Minecraft players have decided to attack the Minecraft server to force Notch, the developer (notice the absence of plural), to create more content because they think he's slacking.  For the love of God, can you even believe it? So, next time you feel the need to insult Devs (or other players for that matter) because they're not doing what you want them to do, take a step cak from the keyboard, have a deep breath and learn some programming to make your own perfect game.

Loneliness

When I created my character I used Lonneh because the RP I had imagined was all about being an orphan and a lonely wanderer. Even if I've done a LOT of solo, now, after having met Lux Arcana, I don't really feel like soloing. Actually I find it hard to understand why people plays solo in MMORPG; I guess if you have lots of friends in different clans and you're able to tag along whenever they do stuff, it can be bearable. But playing Darkfall for months completely alone? That doesn't make much sense to me.
Anyway, my dear friend Anthas has less time to play than I do and so, the last few days I've been playing solo again like I used to do when I started but now that I know how e-life is in an active clan, I've been bored like hell. I haven't seen much of NEW clan either so my nice intentions stated here have gone down the drain. That's why I've decided to go back to Frostbourne with Anthas. This way, when he logs in we can play together and in the meantime I'm still able to play with the rest of the clanmates.
Also, as Lahmage said, being in an active clan that prepares events every few days is really the sauce of life (Does this exist in english? :-P) and a much better way to enjoy this game.