Tell me if this sounds familiar:
Hyped game launches, servers get swarmed, queues go up, people bitch about queues and in-game lag, massive server outages which include the company compensating all accounts with additional game time, forum idiots asking how they can sue, everyone else laughing and taking it in stride.
If you guessed WoW, you win! Now please get WoW out of DarkFall and return Blizzard their launch strategy. What’s next, pk’ing someone with a starter sword and half health earns you a fluff pink pony and the title ‘self-created difficulty due to a lack of real content’?
Hardcore Casual 
Yes! It begins!
Beau
I wouldnt quite call darkfall a hyped game, its more of a niche and highly anticipated game by a small portion of MMO players.
Syn is there any stats on active accounts and how many the server actually holds? Surely they should have released two servers at launch. The way they are doing it at the moment imo risks alienating both people wanting to join and also people actually in the game who are being affected by lag/large queues etc.
As I said before there is an interest and willingness from me to give this game a try and support one of the smaller developers but not at the minute with all the problems they seem to be having with accounts etc. Its a pity as from reading yours and bonedeads blog it does look very interesting indeed
People keep tossing the 10k number for the server, and since it has a queue, has to be close to full. For such a huge world (and it’s stupid big), it feels very populated.
The tough part about DF is that even when you are not playing, it’s better to not log out, so the number of people actually PLAYING online is not the same as the number of people connected. Each town always has a few people just sitting around afk. Today’s patch fixed some of that, but I’m sure more changes to address this will follow, which should again help with queues and overall player activity.
I also think they are waiting for the first month to shake out, and see how many people from the original batch are going to re-sub. Once they know that, they will move forward. I don’t believe an MMO has a ‘window’ to sell, and once past people move on. If people are interested in DF now, they will still be interested in 6 months as well. It’s not like a single player game that sells 90% of it’s copies in the first month and is then forgotten.
True however I dont necessarily think a player will be willing to wait 6 months especially with other MMOs releasing this year – some people may resent the fact they arent getting to play from the off.
I myself will be looking to try it in a couple of months once things have hopefully calmed down and launch issues have been resolved. After getting badly burned by Conan and WAR at launch i dont want another MMO I get pissed off at due to teething problems
also 10k isnt too bad but surely they must have anticipated that a hell of alot more would be interested. Perhaps they only want the one server atm to iron out any gamebreaking bugs.
anyway glad your enjoying it I’ll keep an eye out for updates
Darkfall is raw, but there’s lots of fun to be had. Its a sandbox game so you have to break the habit of quests and achievement paths guiding your every move.
My mates and I mount up and go terrorize noobie cities, or hop on our boat (that we stole) and sail around fishin’ and gankin’ afk swimmers.
There’s tons of good times to be had, just find yourself a close group of players and start having fun.
(obligatory clan plug)
clandogpound.net come check us out or hop on ventrilo!
Given the huge amount of traffic among players between games, I don’t think delaying a ‘mass’ launch is going to hurt them in the end. What would hurt a lot more is having a mass launch and having 90% of the player base quit and leave with a bad image of the game. Look at WAR, right now it’s totally different than it was in the first few months, yet tons of players won’t come back because they still think it’s just a huge scenario grind. Granted because of EA WAR could never do what DF is doing right now, but how much better would that games image be if they had launched with 5 servers, and only added more once an established critical mass had been reach on all previous servers?
True about WAR and im not suggesting they open up 10-20 servers. One server seems to be a bit crap thats all.
I actually found the WAR beta more fun than the actual game and I have no doubts id like endgame, I just found the PvE and exp grinding a bit boring and drawn out
And WAR now is sorta like WAR beta, in that oRvR is the major focus (which lets you ignore PvE much more). Plus communities have settled and developed.
As for DF, it’s also much easier for them to monitor just one server, for stuff like banning and population balance issues.
If low population servers hurt WAR, they would hurt Darkfall 10 times over. The world is *huge* and even though the server is completely packed it doesn’t seem like that in-game. You can run around mounted or dismounted and only occasionally run across other groups. Right now they seem to have reached a decent balance, but if the server were less populated the world would feel like a ghost town.
Difference being, Blizzard actively announced they were trying to accommodate everyone that was paying to play. Where as Darkfall’s developers TOLD YOU they weren’t going to let everyone in and only a single server would be available. That just doesn’t spell success and YOU could of avoided it, but you didn’t, so you have tree to bark up.
Not to mention we’re talking a difference between WoW and Darkfall of a mere million or so players.
Please point out the ‘millions’ of players playing WoW at launch. It took a bit of time before pop culture hopped on the bandwagon.
And you missed the point of the post Heartless. The point is DF is going through exactly what even the all-perfect WoW went through, which is to say a normal MMO launch. It’s just entertaining for me to see people continually surprised by this, like somehow in 2009 the magic ‘I win’ tech button was found and now software/hardware is perfect day one.
Lag and queue times are making for a rough Darkfall experience atm. I still have a different feeling about this game than I did with WAR. This game is fantastic when it runs smoothly. It is actually what I had hoped WAR would be. A dangerous world, Territorial pride, and political intrigue. I see a light at the end of the tunnel that is Darkfall’s launch.
I have not had the desire to log into WoW or WAR since I started playing this game. I will allow those accounts to expire. WoW has mainly been my $15/month chat room with old friends anyway.
“It’s just entertaining for me to see people continually surprised by this, like somehow in 2009 the magic ‘I win’ tech button was found and now software/hardware is perfect day one.”
Yeh, Syn has a point here. Doesn’t matter if there are a million companies making a million MMO’s..they all still have to learn by themselves.
Just like parents having babies. Even though billions have been had by billions, no one can teach you how to be a parent.
Communities, games, platforms, coding..all that stuff is variable.
Of course, though, Syn has to shove in yet another reference to WoW, but that’s par for da course.
Beau
I’ll buy the Darkfall/WoW launch strategy:
1 – Hype Game, swarm server(s), huge queues, complaints
2 – ???
3 – Profit
The thing is, Blizzard knows what step 2 is. Adventurine on the other hand….
As for a million players… WoW launched in October and had a million in January. That is a heck of a ramp and long before any of the pop culture stuff.
Beua, you think when StarCraft Worlds launched the tech/hardware will perform like WoW does today? It will be the same shitshow WoW was in 2004, perhaps worse because the WoW tourists will be traveling en-mass to SCW.
Mythic had DAoC to learn from, yet still had launch troubles. Turbine had AC and still had (more minor) issues with LoTRO, and SOE had EQ1 and yet still managed to clusterfuck EQ2.
MMOs just need time to settle in, because no matter how much you plan, you just can’t fully predict player behavior or expectations. Either you accept and deal with it, or just adopt the 6 month wait plan some consider standard now.
@Wilhelm, the profit part come long after the launch, so apples/oranges here. And given that DF has been out less than a month, tough to say if they know step 2. Considering feedback from people actually playing, I would say they are doing well so far.
As for the million players, they reach 1 million in the US in August 05 (4.5 total), and 1 million in the EU in Jan 06 (5.5 total). By that time it had moved beyond being a good MMO and being the ‘it’ thing.
Syn, that was my point…I was agreeing with your point about MMO’s having rough launches.
They just do, sometimes.
And sometimes not.
Read what I say, G. lol
And for the love of God man, stop using “WoW Tourists” as though everyone IS one, but you.
Beau
@Beau: I was not attacking you, I just read the “they all still have to learn by themselves.” part as ‘they’ being the company, not the game. If I read ‘they’ as game, then yea, 100% agreement.
WoW tourist definition post coming Friday, don’t worry. (it will include a fun interactive checklist too, assuming I get around to it)
Nah man, don’t post that.
You realize that you would have to include yourself as a “tourist,” WoW or not, being that tourists typically run to the new attractions in town, even if it is just a pile of crap spray painted silver. (“I AM having fun, I AM having fun..just keep telling myself that..I AM having fun..”)
If you’re going to do it, just stop slamming WoW as though you had no connection to it.
Guess what? While you spent hours and hours raiding in WoW, I spent time not ONLY in WoW but in a million other games, and still do. Have since ’99. Yep,PVP’ing, role-playing, crafting, exploring, killing dragons and the whole gambit.
So, put me over you on your list. You have to admit that you flock from attraction to attraction pretty fast, and the only one you stayed with for the longest was…
….WoW.
If I am wrong, correct me.
You put your most into it, and reallllyy played it.
That would make YOU a tourist, leaving your “home game” to poke around in others.
Why else do you mention WoW at every post? Just leave it alone if you ain’t playing it. It makes you look like a spurned ex-lover. You’re a smart guy I think, make some posts about how much fun you have, how this works or that works, not how Blizzard is NOT doing it for you anymore.
Beau
I guess I also need to make a ‘reasons to hate WoW’ post, but that might be next week.
I played UO from 97-99, AC-DT from 99 till whenever I switched to DAoC, then WoW in 04-05 up until a month or so before BC. But again, the WoW tourist post will explain all this, patience!
Plus 04-05 WoW and WotLK are basically two different games, but again the ‘reasons to hate WoW’ post will explain that.
@Syncaine – As you say, apples and oranges. You say that WoW didn’t hit a million until it became a pop culture thing, when quite clearly it did so before that time.
So then you divide it suddenly into separate US/EU markets (which most people count together since the subscription model is the same) and still get to a million in the US market alone in 10 months, which is still an incredible ramp. And I would argue that is still before I could say it was a staple of popular culture, an “it” thing, as you put it. How do you mark that event, what is the slide over between game and “it?” Or is your definition “if it hits a million?”
You can slam what you don’t like about WoW all day long, but give them their due. Trying to dismiss their success as just “pop culture” seems pretty silly. I mean they beat the previous champion in the market space, EverQuest, in EU/US subscription numbers in what, two months? Tell me another one about no immediate success, I’ll laugh at that one too.
edit: sweet I anon commented myself. fail.
I’ve never argued that WoW was not a success day 1, or that it’s a bad game. I just don’t believe that WoW is 11x better than other MMOs and that’s why they have 11 million subs. 1 million in 10 months is great, but it’s not exactly overnight either, so if the design was so genius, what took people so long to catch on? And why did that same design magically change from getting 1 million in 10 months to multi-millions in a year? Was going from 1 million to 10 the full execution of the Blizzard master plan?
WoW’s status as the only way to make a successful MMO is a joke, one that is sadly believed by too many people which investment money.
Unless your business plan includes all the non-design advantages WoW was lucky enough to fall into (which we have gone over in length), you could copy/paste WoW, launch it in 2006, and not break a million subs (but still have a very successful MMO).
Heh, I was going to say, “Way to stand up and be counted Anonymous!”
10 months to a million (or 4 months if we counts subs the way everybody else does, including US/EU) isn’t that fast. We’ll take that as your benchmark then. So anybody who fails to hit that is less of a success? You’re arguing a very odd point, since there doesn’t seem to be anybody else who has done better that WoW in the same business. has anybody else come close to that mark in the US? If WoW wasn’t that spectacular in gaining subscriptions, you damn the rest of the market as losers.
I still don’t accept your “they got lucky” theory that seems to mean that if they launched at any other date, they would be a 300K sub MMO. If they had launched in 2006 it would not have been the same market, since the market was so heavily influenced by their own launch and success. EverQuest II didn’t take off and then grabbed a lot of WoW features. SOE might have come up with some of those on their own later, but WoW was having a tangible affect on the market just months after launch.
I’ll buy into “Blizzard is a machine with a long history of best selling products” if you want an excuse for the success of WoW. But this stream of “they sucked at launch, were slow to become popular, had issues that were beyond tolerable” seems delusional.
I will agree that the enjoyability of a given MMO for any individual is independent of the number of subscriptions. WoW is not 11x better than any other MMO you care to mention, and probably not 2x better, assuming we could find a way to quantify such a thing. But to slam Blizzard on things you either try to excuse in other games (rough launches are normal, get over it) or that they have obviously done better than anybody else (where is that other million sub mmo?) seems to be closing your eyes to reality.
I look forward to your post on why to hate WoW. I imagine we will find a few points of agreement, and since it will be subjective, I won’t argue (much) with the ones I don’t agree on.
So now we can only argue non-subjective points? How the hell will anyone have anything to post about…
I was saying that if WoW had not launch in 2004, but instead in say 2006 (or some other date), they would not have 11 million subs, no. Would they still be the top MMO, most likely, but not this 11x superior example of the one true way to make a game. It’s like the Wii, if Nintendo had done a Wii-like product against the PS2, and not the utter fail of PS3, would the Wii be the shining example of how to make a console? It would still be a great product, but not the pop sensation it is now (and I love the Wii)
Side note: The statement said Bliz had 1 million in the US in Aug 05, and did not hit 1 mil in the EU till later, yet had 4.5 mil in Aug 05. I thought they launched in Asia later than that? Where are the other 3.5 mil coming from?
China was June 2005. It seemed like it was later to me as well, so I had to go look it up. Age distorts your sense of time. Everything seems to be last month or a long time ago.
You can’t talk a theoretical “if WoW had launched in 2006” because it had such a huge affect on the MMO landscape. Besides, then you get into a nasty mess of alternate universes, Doc Brown, and the end of the world as we know it.
WoW just plain did it better than anyone had before, did it beautifully, and made it accessible to both the casual and the hardcore. The only thing “half assed” about the WoW launch was that they didn’t have enough hardware to support demand. Sure, there were some irritating bugs, and some memory leaks, but nothing game breaking. The only thing game breaking was the sheer number of players trying to connect.
So how many players it is that Darkfall can’t handle? 10k?
I don’t know if you guys have ever heard of Steve Pavlina. Currently he writes a self-improvement blog, but used to be an indie game developer. One of his articles from his game development days discussed one of the principles that go into making a successful game.
I’m working from memory here, so please forgive me if I dont get this exactly right. But the idea is that there are a whole bunch of factors that go into making a game successful. Obviously code stability and polish are in there, but there’s also marketing, website, getting the sales page right, making it easy to buy the game.
These factors are multipliers, they don’t just add together. So if you get one factor completely wrong, for instance your sales page, then it can completely ruin your success. The same goes for quality. If every other factor is perfect, but the game sucks, it won’t do well.
Like you, I don’t think that WoW is 11x better, or even 2x better, but I do think that they’ve done the whole range of things a little better than everyone else, at least at the beginning. In my mind this is why they are successful.
Regarding WoW, 2004 was in many countries the year where Broadband and sales on-line boomed. That was also a decisive factor.
All in all WoW was the first MMO with a huge degree of success for it was the first MMO a carrot could play and successfully level a toon to level 60. Nothing more, nothing less.
The “blizzard polish” (whatever the fuck it is) could easily made WoW more successful than EQ if they made a game with the same standard of difficulty but probably would never hit the million mark.
I guess they were aiming to have a virtual world where they could farm some of those Warcraft players while they were waiting for the next RTS. Turns out it became huge, but that is only for the easy mode that was to level a toon.
Even the only part of the game that presented a little challenge, the masses had to scream for. And now, the WoW Tourist, doesn’t even allow for a different game to be released without spewing their bile all over… Am I calling the kettle black? Yes I am, blame it on Blog-PvP.
Sweet man, well make ’em good.
I don’t agree that they’re 2 different games (da WoW’s you mentioned) but hey, in a certain area, maybe so.
I’m just sick of hearing about the game, being that it already is everywhere. I think these other games that you enjoy would benefit more from NO comparison to WoW.
Everyone knows WoW is the biggest and in many ways the best MMO there has been and might be for a while.
Notice I didn’t say it WAS the best, just in many ways.
So comparing anything to it is like comparing an indie band to a “mainstream” band that does pretty good work.
Also, I hope you played some games in between those 4, because there have been more releases and cool games with more intriguing gameplay than those! And there are more coming. Not every one is great, but almost every one of them has some cool part, or some really awesome gameplay.
I figure to have a pretty “healthy” gaming diet, you need variety.
If not, that explains a few things. All good, though.
Whatev. I’m tired.
Beau
I played a lot more games than those listed, those are just the ones that I stuck with for what I would consider a decent amount of time.
Actually the game I played the most was Myth 2, an RTS game from Bungie before Microsoft bought them out. They had a battle.net style online thing, and in many ways did what Blizzard did with Starcraft but better in terms of online matchmaking and ranking(familiar story huh?). Rank #1 in the world for a while in that, played a rather unhealthy amount for 6 months or so.