Darkfall: Overview
Darkfall is a hardcore, action-oriented MMORPG first announced in August 2001. Developed by Aventurine SA out of Greece, Darkfall promises real-time combat in the gritty and seamless fantasy world of Agon.
The game has been consistently promoted as a title for hardcore fans of player vs. player combat. Their enormous world will support over 10,000 concurrent players and is completely without safe zones. While there is a player reputation system to punish murderers, the best protection for players in Darkfall is their friends, their clan and their own skills.
To achieve this hardcore system, Aventurine promises several key features such as manual targeting, friendly fire, no radar and complete corpse looting. There will also be mounted, first-person ranged and naval combat options for the extra bloodthirsty. Darkfall destroys the idea of "get a sandwich" combat and replaces it with fast paced, bloody action where players need to be alert on both offense and defense.
Players of Darkfall’s six races enjoy a usage based skill system. There are no rigid classes. Instead, players get better as they practice any of the 500+ skills in the game and can truly craft a unique character that does what they want him to do.
Darkfall's world consists of the lands of Agon, Niflheim, Yssam, Gairn and Rubaiyat, as well as an assortment of other islands and areas for players to explore. It is massive, potentially one of the biggest ever attempted, and pulls it all off without the need for zones or loading screens. And unlike many large worlds, Aventurine SA has gone to great lengths to hand-craft an interesting landscape, rather than randomly generate the terrain.
Their dynamic world is about more than just hardcore PvP action. They also promise a city planning and management, a political system, a diplomatic system and even a legal system to go along with a range of quests that are both developer and player generated.
Aventurine SA hopes to begin external testing by the end of 2007. At this time, they have not released launch, pricing or publishing details.
