The website to order Darkfall has been accepting orders each day for roughly 5-10 minutes before closing again due to availability. During that 5-10 minute window, and roughly 30 minutes before and after, the website is slammed with traffic and takes 3-4 minutes to load (if at all). As you can guess, this makes actually hitting that small window rather tough.
On the one hand, it’s beyond annoying to sit there and reload a website over and over only to ultimately fail and have to wait another day. Granted no one is forcing you to sit there and play the internet lottery that is getting a DF account, but the customer is always right and all that crap, right? Plus guild mates on the outside looking in are starting to get antsy when they keep reading about the current guild war or the work being done to growth the guild’s city.
On the other hand, at least Aventurine is doing their best (while giving up quick cash mind you) to limit the impact of tourist MMO players looking for a week long WoW vacation. Sure only (whatever number they have sold so far) are able to play, but at least you can log in to a lag free experience without login queues or newbie areas swarmed with wide-eyed players looking for the yellow exclamation point.
Given the alternative, reloading a website might not be so bad…
Hardcore Casual 
Being in irc helps. (irc.stratics.com #darkfall)
Those people will go nuts the moment orders are open. Before that happens, be on your profile page (with your name/cc info etc).
When orders open and everyone goes crazy refresh your page, at the bottom will be the buy or order button (where it used to say shop is temporarily off).
Once you’ve begun the process BE PATIENT, no premature refreshes. Let every load attempt finish before refreshing or proceeding. If you hit a “Service is temporarily unavailable” placeholder page dealy, wait til it is done loading and refresh.
I had to refresh a few times and ran into the “Service temporarily unavailable” placeholder a few times.
I never saw a congratulations you bought darkfall page. I checked my bank website and saw I was charged, checked my email and had the purchase confirmation.
Hope this helps.
PS (If you’re thinking in your head about giving up and never playing DF, that may help too, as it is what I was doing heh)
Good luck, you’ll get in.
Just post screenies or it didn’t happen! :)
Beau
Wow sounds like that company really has their shit together with their “AAA” MMO. Sounds like a blast..have fun with that…
“Wow sounds like that company really has their shit together with their “AAA” MMO. Sounds like a blast..have fun with that…”
We all know that the best things can only come from enormous companies that print their own money… Don’t forget that some of the best technologies that exist today were developed in a persons garage/basement.
Try it before you knock it imo.
Pingback: The Darkfall Lottery | Stropp's World
I was thinking that just last night as I missed another opportunity to get a copy (I got so far as the page where I have to reenter my security code, clicking the button, and immediately got ‘service not available’ and had to start from scratch).
As intrigued as I am by the reviews, I don’t have high hopes that I’ll stay more than the first month. Hell, the way things are going I’ll probably lose interest before I even get to buy the thing! When I was on the page to enter the security code I was torn between clicking to continue and just closing out, already!
It reminds of that South Park episode where Cartman buys a theme park and runs TV ads specifying that no one else can get in.
I bet it’s all part of some cynical marketing ploy :)
Regardless of what Darkfall may or may not be, I’m fascinated by this staged entry programme they’re using. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of another MMO launching in this fashion, so am very curious to see if it’s a useful way of avoiding or managing the very early server-crush that most new games seem to get; an initial sharp sudden peak and similarly sharp fallout in subs.
As it is, it sounds like they’ve moved the overload bottleneck from the actual live game/login servers to a less important website server instead, which must help.
Call it the WoW Tourist Rush or whatever, but if anyone can find a way to more smoothly manage it, that can only be a good thing for any game. It does depend a great deal on the patience and persistence of prospective players holding out, but perhaps the enforced scarcity might work well to keep people excited and wanting in.
An interesting and indeed novel approach, although I’m not sure I’d be this sanguine about it if I was actualy trying to get in and play!
I do think its a good idea with staggered entry however again you bring up this ‘WoW tourist’ crap, I mean are people not allowed to try a game and see if they like it? Darkfall being the way it is will attract hardcore pvpers who will stay no matter what state the game is in, there will always be other gamers who want to suck it and see. If they dont like it then they leave which is fair enough
People are, but when you have a pool of ’11 million’ and encourage them to swarm servers, you get a rep for that. No one will really notice if 10% of LoTRO or EVE fans try out a new game, but when 10% of WoW fans do (especially since so many of them are just looking for WoW+1 due to WoW being their only MMO), you have a problem.
:) fair enough. Im hoping you get into darkfall soon so I can see a half decent review, I dont trust bonedeads judgement.
Im not saying Im going to give darkfall a go for definate but having not experienced the world of full loot pvp I cant say im not disinterested.
Beware darkfall here lurks another WoW tourist ;)
WoW tourist needs a slightly stricter definition too. It’s not EVERYONE joining a new MMO from an old one (that would make everyone a tourist). It’s specifically players of WoW (especially if WoW is their 1st MMO, and for most it is) who go into ANY new MMO and demand it play exactly like WoW. You see it on almost every message board, people wondering why feature x is not like it was in WoW.
The other problem, server flooding aside, is that if the devs actually listen, they just make whatever MMO a closer copy of WoW, and at least for me, that’s not a good thing. That’s another reason EVE players have a natural hatred for WoW players, they see that kind of thing on the forums all the time. I don’t doubt DF will be similar.
While you can certainly try and put a positive spin on it, if they were confident in their game then they wouldn’t be so concerned about selling boxes (downloads) that won’t turn into subscribers. It also seems to be bad business to require potential customers to camp the website spamming F5, when they could just as easily create an order queue.
But perhaps the ideal Darkfall players aren’t the type willing to stand in line…
Well wow wasnt my first MMO but it was the first to capture my imagination over the things they did well, I agree with you in respect to WoW players expecting things to be cloned. I myself thing certain things should be cloned yet others done differently ala WAR. My main hope is Champions Online however i do fancy having a crack at darkfall just to establish what kind of player I am
I’m sure they will expand the gateway to pvppwned-land over time, but right now it might be best to just rest and let them get their server up to speed and wait for the bored wow crowd to forget the game exists. I REALLY like the one-server, one or two char model for certain reasons because it prevents anonymity but at the same time its a beast to implement as we can see. If EVE does it though I’m sure Darkfall can make their one server (or several linked servers) work just fine eventually
Oh come on.
This is now a clever ploy to foil the dastardly hordes of “WoW Tourists” waiting to storm the gate and ruin the game? Darkfall fans really do come up with the most amazing and contorted explanations for pretty obvious things.
Applying Occam’s Razor, they launched owning in all likelihood one server with a hoped-for max concurrent capacity of 10K. They hadn’t had as many as 10K concurrent people on one server as of launch. So they dribbled out keys at 50+ bucks per torrent, hoping to capitalize a broader release. With maybe as many as 100K people interested in buying one, this also had the effect of making it seem like a rabid horde of detestable WoW players is beating down their door.
Their tiny capacity makes moderate demand look like a crapstorm. They’re not being strategic. They just weren’t ready to release and released anyway.
Just one problem with that Tariq, most people with an account are amazed by the game…
If the game indeed did suck and was not ready for launch, those first few in would have let it be known already, and that whole ‘slow sale’ process would be shot as demand would plummet. If AoC had followed this release strategy, would they still have sold 800k copies of the game once people figured out what AoC was past lvl 20?
In fairness, I didn’t say the game sucked. It appears to be missing some features — like housing — that attracted me in the first place, but I’m in no position to say whether it sucks or not. I’m just responding to the notion that this was a genius ploy to foil your “WoW Tourists.”
As I said they weren’t ready to release to moderate (my guess is +/- 100K, as stated above) demand but went ahead and did it anyay. I’d not restate the need for throttles as a genius ploy. My view is that it’s the only way to squeeze people onto a server they are hoping can handle a load of 10K concurrent players while they work up a solution for the remaining interested customers.
The game may well be amazing. I have my doubts it will have staying power or wide enough appeal to keep a world that big feeling full and rich with PvP opportunities. But I don’t doubt that many people playing it are having fun with it right now.
I am hoping to get in within the next couple of weeks :)
Well, here is what (imo) they are avoiding if we assume DF has about 100k actual interested players (non-tourists). If they did a full release, they would get 400k buyers, need to open 4x the servers they need, and after 1-2 months all but a few servers would be ghost towns (even if the actual 100k are still playing at this point). Now that 100k has a lesser gaming experience because of the full release, and they also leave. (no one likes server merges, especially in a game like DF where reputation and community are so important. Imagine what EVE would be like if you suddenly split the server in two randomly)
In the short term, you sold 300k more copies. In the long term, you might have lost your core audience, and also had them generate a bunch of ‘DF is dead’ sentiment on their way out (remember this is a game that needs user-generated hype to sell).
If you don’t believe in your game, we take the 400k and run with it. If you really think what you have created will entertain people for a long time, you give up that 300k or so of initial sales, and cultivate the 100k or so that are actually interested in your product.
I understand your theory. I just highly doubt that’s what is going on here.
Remember, this is a company that cannot seem to take the time update its website (look at the FAQ up there and tell me what game they are describing). They have a billing system that gets knocked offline routinely and loses beta tester preorders.
I’m not speaking to the quality of THE GAME here. I’m talking about how prepared they were to release the game in the face of what I believe to be about 100K total-total people wanting to buy (including tourists). The game might be great, but there is every reason to believe that this staged release is not a strategy to grow the game, but rather an emergency response to being unprepared.
But yes, sure. This way they don’t need to buy more servers. Indeed, I’d argue that if they keep up this level of service/service competence, they’ll never ever have to buy more servers.
I see your theory and raise it with mine own!
DF fuckin roolz bitches. It will also make you revert back to your old ways of say lol haha fucker butt tickle giggle. Okay maybe not, but it should.
Housing isn’t in? My guild has a city and I’m pretty sure there are also 2 houses. So yeah, pretty sure that is in there.
My guild is marked for friggin death, we got da purdiest city ya ever did see. People want to take it from us, this makes me a saaaaaad panda. Oh but then they attack with like 50+ people and we chase them back to their city. Ahhh, best gaming experience ever.