Bonedead ninja edit: Please replace the word ‘slander’ with ‘libel’ whenever you see it. Thanks!
One would think the basic facts of a story would be simple to comprehend by people, and the discussion would revolve around the implications of the errors made within, but as Tobold and other commentators have made very clear, sometimes this is simply not the case.
I had originally written a post breaking down the now infamous ‘review’ on Eurogamer, but decided not to publish it after Tasos made his post, thinking it would be unnecessary to point out the multitude of errors in a review that was clearly an abomination overall. What’s amazed me most about this whole ordeal is how far people will stretch details to discredit a game they admit to having no interest in, and what some people accept as ‘opinions’.
Below is a breakdown of the lies or false statements made in the review, outside of the baseless opinions the writer throws out in his slander (a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report) piece.
As with many MMOs, you walk around using the WASD keys. However, to ‘do’ anything – talk to an NPC, bind yourself to a location, loot a corpse, and so on – you have to click the right mouse button to toggle between interaction or movement mode
Lie. The F key allows you to do all of the above, and it ONLY functions in movement mode. What the reviewer calls ‘interaction’ mode is what you use to bring up the mouse pointer and all its functionality, which does not allow any of the functions mentioned above. In fact, the game automatically places you in mouse mode once you interact with an NPC or corpse using the F key in movement mode, or keeps you in movement mode if the F key interaction is something like binding or looting a chest.
Unbelievably, to do anything that involves any interaction at all, you have to stop still – this includes any and all inventory management, looting, chatting – anything interactive.
False. You can chat by hitting the enter key in movement mode, as well as doing so in mouse mode. You can also do any of the above except for looting (by design) while moving using auto run. Using hotkeys, you can also perform inventory management tasks such as swapping out weapons/armor/spells without entering mouse mode.
You can’t turn off the UI
Lie. By default there is a key command to turn the UI on/off.
The lack of hit detection
False. The hit detection is spot on. This is not opinion, it’s a fact. The game detects when you hit something correctly, every time.
your combat skills affect how often you actually connect. It isn’t even an issue of timing your clicks based on the connection with your sword – it’s nigh-on random
Lie. Combat skills have ZERO effect on your ability to hit someone. If you are within range, you will hit whatever you are swinging at if you aimed correctly. There is ZERO randomness to this through ability scores or otherwise.
While playing for a few hours of reasonably solid combat
Lie. Aventurine’s server logs show he never played ‘a few hours’ in combat. He played for a total of two hours, and the majority of THAT time was spent in the character creation screen. Eurogamer declined an invitation by Aventurine (at their expense) to verify the logs, yet claim they are false.
For the most part, your first ten or so hours in Darkfall are spent dying, repeatedly, at the hands of either the AI or a cyber-bully in a wolf-suit. In fact, past that mark, it feels impossible to avoid the clammy hands and bloodied sword of somebody who has specially allocated part of their day to griefing
Lie. The reviewer never got beyond the first ten hours (even if you believe him when he said he played nine, rather than the server logs that show he ‘played’ two). Talking about ‘past that point’ is impossible for the reviewer, regardless of whose side you believe.
Even when you become semi-capable of operation without constant death, there’s little to enjoy.
Lie. Having self-admitted that he never reached this point in the game, it’s simply impossible for the reviewer to have personally experiences with it, and therefore he is attempting to pass second/third hand stories off as his own experience.
It doesn’t even have the basic features that make up even the most lackluster and dull cookie-cutter MMOs, … , or some form of tutorial.
Lie. When first logging in (and every time after, unless you disable it), the game opens up a tutorial screen explaining the basic commands and functions of the game. (many of the commands the reviewer does not understand are explained in this very tutorial)
Darkfall even lacks the basic lore that even the worst games have. There are wolf people, orks, humans, elves, and dark elves
False. The game does contain lore, explained in many of the games lengthy quest chains (starting with the first newbie quest chain a player starts directly in front of). Its opinion whether you think DF has ‘enough’ lore, but it’s a fact that it does contain stories, quest chains, and game-impacting racial alignment standings around the lore. Dwarves are also a playable race, but such an omission is slight compared to the rest of the writing.
Finally, to everyone surprised that Aventurine would respond to something like this, answer the following question: If someone at your workplace slandered you, and it cost you either a promotion or your job, would you remain quiet, especially if you had solid evidence to prove otherwise?
This is not an issue of a negative review (DarkFall will get plenty of negative reviews from general MMO players/reviewers, they fully expect that), or how long someone must play a given game before they are able to give an opinion, or whether the right ‘type’ of player was selected for the review. It’s a defense against slander done by a dishonest writer and the unethical website that continues to back him.
Hardcore Casual 