Darkfall is now accepting registration for beta testing,

http://www.darkfallonline.com/beta/

It's pretty straightforward, follow the instructions. If you get a confirmation at the end, we've received your beta application. There's no confirmation email.

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=64329

A new gameplay video has been released for Darkfall,

On FileFront (click Download now! under the player)
http://files.filefront.com/Darkfall+gameplay+trailerwmv/;11645449;/fileinfo.html

Torrent:
http://media.darkfallonline.com/Darkfall%20gameplay%20trailer.wmv.torrent

Direct download link:
http://media.darkfallonline.com/Darkfall_gameplay_trailer.zip

On youtube (in 6 parts):
http://www.youtube.com/DarkfallOnline

For those who don't know what to do with a torrent file here are some instructions:

Step1: Get a BitTorrent client. For example uTorrent http://www.utorrent.com/

Step2: After installing the BitTorrent client, click the torrent link I posted to download the torrent file.

Step3: Double-click on the torrent file to open it in your BitTorrent client program.

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=64217

A small update posted on the 22nd from Tasos on the official forums:

Hello,

I thought to quickly check in before too much more time passes. As we step up publishing activities, the updates should increase in frequency and quality, which should make up for the ones we’ve been missing the last months. We take for granted sometimes that the Darkfall community is savvy enough to understand the limitations of independent game development and make allowances, however we’re also keeping track of what we need to give you in order for you to know exactly what you’re getting into with Darkfall.

On progress, there are no major problems to report, some minor delays maybe here and there which don’t affect our timeline. Most of us had a short break, the last for a long time. Everyone is back and we officially entered into our crunch period on Monday. We’ve had several new people join the company the past month, and more on the way.

There's a video coming out, most probably next week, or shortly after. We’re talking about a long 100% in-game pure gameplay trailer with no scripting, no simulation, no post-processing. It’s us play-testing while fraps is running on free cameras and playercams and all the footage was collected and edited. The scenarios for it had to be run as part of our testing and development schedule as they came up. Nothing is scripted. We wanted to give you something that can put you in the true spirit of the game and this requires us to be actually playing the game like you would be, and not just taking you on a sightseeing tour or have a company make a marketing cinematic trailer for us.

If you're experiencing problems with the website and the forums it's because these days we're upgrading our webservers and this should be going on most of next week as well. Thank you for your patience.

Our next update would be the video, so until then, thanks for reading

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=63380

Theres been alot of talk in the last few days about whether Darkfall would be launched simultaneously in both Europe and North America. Earlier today Tasos made a post on the official forums to clarify what going on with publishing and launch in different regions. Here's what he posted:

The answer to the question on whether we're going to launch in N. America and Europe at the same time is: "Right now it doesn't look that way"

I’ve been frustrated by issues like these while waiting for a game myself, and I’ll try to explain this as well as I can:

1. First of all, this isn’t an issue of us being located in Europe. It just means that things are moving faster for Darkfall in Europe. A few months ago, it was the other way around and that’s how fluid things are at the moment.
2. It would be a publishing and a logistics issue that the European launch might precede a N. American launch. We have a publishing partner in Europe; we haven’t settled on one in N. America yet. Unfortunately as things stand right now, we can’t launch in both regions at the same exact time but, of course, we would like to.
3. While the actual status on this hasn’t changed much since our friends visited our offices, things are moving at a fast pace.
4. What we can say with relative certainty is that the first beta test will be on the European servers. This isn’t to say that N. American players will be excluded from it.
5. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that N. American players would be excluded from playing on a European server.
6. While we haven’t selected a publisher in N. America yet like we have in Europe, this doesn’t actually mean that we need one, or that we're going to wait for one, in order to launch the game there.
7. Our publishing effort has been for a common infrastructure and we’ve been adopting solutions with a global reach so that the setup in one region could be shared by- or quickly duplicated in the other. I don’t want to say that we could be up in N. America in no time, but that’s our intention.
8. It’s important to remember that our preferred scenario is to launch Darkfall in N. America and Europe at the same time. This is on our mind as we move forward. Even if we don’t manage this, it’s our intention to move very quickly to catch up.

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=61038

Yesterday Darkfall Online developper Tasos Flambouras posted a small update on the state of the game on the game's official forums.

Briefly checking in with you on our progress:

We're working on two fronts, development and publishing.
Development is mainly focused around testing and fixing bugs. We're also optimizing client and servers. We're playtesting a lot, we've also logged many hours of large battles and we're very excited with what we're experiencing. While playtesting we're getting a lot of video footage that's going to end up in a video we'll be releasing next month so you'll get an idea of what we've been talking about.

As far as publishing activities go, we're working on the servers, customer and technical support, billing, and distribution solutions along with our partners.

We've been hiring people in all departments, and we have eight new team members.

Since it's summer and a lot of people are on vacation in Greece, we've been getting a lot of requests to visit the studio. We've already had a few people come over and we had to say no to a couple of others due to the bad timing of their visit. The people who have been here may or may not write about their visit, we didn't make them sign NDAs and we showed them the game.

We enjoy these visits, but unfortunately we can't spare the time unless it's media so we won't allow more visits for at least a couple of months. We've also had some media over here and there should be a couple of articles in the local press.

We've been putting in the long hours, so the next three weeks we're on a weekly vacation rotation, the last chance we'll get to rest for a long time.

The next update will likely be in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading.

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=60100

Earlier today Darkfall Online developper Tasos Flambouras posted a new community QA on the official forums. It covers quite a few interesting topics, so enough with the jibber jabber and lets get straight to the QA:

Here’s the QA…we worked with lists sent to us by community members and tried to answer as many as possible without too much embellishing. There was an effort to answer question categories that weren’t addressed in the previous QA’s. We didn’t address the questions having to do with beta and publishing due to recent developments, we would like more time before we get into that.

Do different weapon types damage them (mobs) easier, like a spear, mace, etc.?

Different monsters are vulnerable to different types of attack. In some cases they could be nearly immune to certain attacks like a fire elemental may not take fire damage. This applies to various armors and protections as well, the varying degrees in which they could protect the player against specific types of damage. There’s a whole system in place behind this, and players will learn from experience and through various information sources within the game.

In regards to this (link) info, are factions in the way described still in?

Factions work like they were described and this is through the quests. You get the symbol of the faction you’re working with when you accept the quest. Factions in Darkfall aren’t meant to be an active part of the world in themselves, but rather more of a storyline element of the lore guiding the actions of the players.

Will flying creatures (dragons, birds, etc) actually fly or just hover like in most MMO's?

They fly, turn, they swoop down, and they hover as well depending on the situation. They work like a proper flying mob should.

Will we see mobs walking around, with one mob every 5 meters, on a "zone" (EQ, wow, style)? Or will they be more spread, and you'll have to find them a bit? (Oblivion, morrowind style)

More like Oblivion and Morrowind but it’s usually more complex than that…In Darkfall monsters have their own habitats, they’re not just scattered randomly. In the generic example of the goblins we tend to use, you would likely find them in a goblin village.

Can you tell us anything about the way crafting materials are gathered?

You can gather crafting materials from killing mobs, and looting and/or skinning them. You can harvest materials from the environment, for example from rocks, trees, bushes etc. You can get the materials faster from organized resource production, like mines and farms, while collecting in nature is slower. You can craft crafting materials used to build complex items when they’re made of building blocks. Finally you can kill players and take theirs.

Are solo players able to venture into a clan controlled mine and harvest there if it’s not guarded?

You can harvest in someone else’s mine, however they’ll get a message that you did. So as with everything else in the game, you’re free to do whatever you like, but you’re held accountable for your actions.

What kind of explosives does DF have in it? By explosives I mean anything from exploding arrows to explosive traps. And I don't mean siege weapons--I mean explosives that someone can craft and use on his/her own.

Darkfall has a thrown explosive called a battle spike, they’re crafted and there are various types. They’re used to damage structures and vehicles mostly. Darkfall also features several explosive spells.

What about maps? How do maps work in game? Will it be possible to mark a map with an interesting location on?

Darkfall has a global map and a mini map interface. There is also a weather map where you can zoom in to get local weather. You can add your own markers on the global map.

Will the whole world map be visible from the start or will players have to explore to view the whole map?

Yes it’s visible. The world is pre-existing; this isn’t the dawn of time in the storyline. We could have opted for map fog, but it’s just going to be a pain and someone will have a full map online anyway relatively quickly.

I'm wondering is the cave system going to be complete at launch?

Nothing is ever complete in an MMO, but we’ve done what we planned to do for launch.

How extensive is it?

There are caves all over the world, the dwarves live inside a mountain, some clan city locations have caverns and tunnels going through them, there are the Dungeons, and the underwater passages.

Can caves lead you well into another races territory going undetected below the ground surface?

No they don’t. There's no need for that....the world is so massive you don't really need to sneak underground to go undetected.

Will you actually have employees that’ll work closely with the community to record the happenings of a server and put it on the website in the form of Lore?

We have talked about a journal before, and there will be an effort to have one. We have an automated feature like a newsreel in place which reports events as they happen. Players can access these newsreels even when they’re out of the game.

You've mentioned that if you are attacked by someone of a "friendly" race and kill him while defending yourself, there is no alignment penalty. My question is what if you are attacked but the attacker misses, and you end up dealing the first blow to your attacker? Wouldn't this be interpreted by the game as you attacking the other player?

Yes you’ll get hit with the alignment penalty. Turn-based games know what’s going to happen before it does, but Darkfall is a real-time game. You cannot lock a target, you actually have to aim. When you let an arrow fly towards a target, the system can’t know where it’s going until it hits. Between the time you let it fly and it hits something, many things can happen: someone could run into its path, the intended target could duck etc. While a turn-based game could deal with this specific scenario by penalizing the attacker, it misses out on all the real-time coolness.

Is there an option for chat bubbles?

No chat bubbles, no damage numbers jumping, no neon rings around your feet, no glowing characters, no radar, no attack indicators. You can spell-cast a beacon on someone that signals his location for the duration if you like but that’s about it.

Do clans that don’t have a clan city have access to clan vaults?

Yes they do if they go to a city.

Will a clan member’s rank be visible as a title?

Yes it’s visible right after his name when you identify them with a mouse-over.

Are there writeable books in-game?

Not really other than your player journal, various in-game public and clan forums there isn’t anything you can write on at this time.

Are offensive skills going to be dependent on supporting skills?
For example, like in UO, to take up swordsmanship you needed Tactics and Anatomy. Is DFO going to be like that or if you want archery you can just take up archery?

Both; there are skills that unlock others, but there are also skills you can just learn and practice without prerequisites.

What’s the status on taming?

There are no pets and no taming. Our goal was to move Darkfall as far away as possible from MMOG half-measures like instancing, zoning, use of NPCs where you can use players, various automations etc. So taming falls into that category in a way, on the other hand we give you mounts you can use in combat, which you can control to attack while you’re riding them. The functionality is there, we just don't feel that pets would add much to the game as it is.

Will there be a sprint feature?

There’s a sprint feature, using it will use up stamina. You can sprint for a reasonable amount of time before you run out of stamina.

What happens when you run out of stamina?

You can’t sprint, you can’t do melee attacks, you can’t run with a mount, and various other discomforts.

Also, for the most part swimming in any MMO usually sucks major balls because it is so damn slow. Any idea how it will be in DF?

In real-life, running is about 5 times faster than swimming so it’s an existing analogy. You can sprint-swim in Darkfall, it’s not that slow but if you want to get somewhere fast, you should probably use a vessel.

Do you need a skill to place buildings (architect)?

No skill, you need appropriate rank in the clan, or be the city mayor to place buildings.

Can characters go into prone mode?

No they can crouch though. Before someone feels this might be some pvp limitation, I’ll remind them that you can’t go prone in Counterstrike or Quake.

If two people are dueling with swords, will their swords bump in to each other when they attack at the same time? Will there be sparkles, as a special effect? (In other words, is there weapon collision?)

This is probably too much to ask for from a MMOG, and from most games for that matter. In console games where you might have seen something like this, it’s not the collision detection on the weapons that creates that effect.

Can we move while we have an arrow stringed on our bow?

Yes, you can move, jump, and crouch freely.

Most spells will burn up reagents. How common are these?

Some spells don’t require reagents. For most of the ones that do, you can get them all over the world by harvesting, buy them at vendors, loot them, or you could build farms for higher outputs.

Will they "stack" easily in our inventories?

Yes they’ll stack.

Does the low level spell/special ability become completely useless when you earn high level one like we can see in other games?

That’s a good question actually. In Darkfall, the early spells are not useless at all. Some of them don’t require ingredients and they cast faster, fail less, so they’re very practical. Others are unique and really useful so they are used regularly throughout the character’s game-life.

Is a staff/wand and reagents needed for healing spells as well?

You always need a wand or staff to cast, but some spells don’t require reagents. Other than spells for healing you can use potions, food, and resting to recover hit points.

In a war is it possible for me as a lone wolf, to hide in the city about to be sieged, and then kill whoever I want, or will the city be closed apart from to those involved?

I said earlier in the Q that we try to move away from MMOG half-measures. So you’re free to do what you asked if you could do. We don’t lock any players out of events or locations like sieges, quests, dungeons, etc.

Will there be sabotage that can be performed against enemy towns which doesn't involve siege warfare?

You can destroy buildings at the rate of one per day without a siege. You can disable buildings without any limits. By ‘disable’ I mean that you can bring their structural integrity down to zero which negates all bonuses the building may give out, and functions that it may perform.

Can boats sail from ocean to river and sail deep on into the continent?

Yes you can depending on the size of the boat. If it’s too big, it could run aground; not fit inside a small river, it could get stuck under a low bridge etc.

On the subject of mounts can I get knocked off in the middle of a battle?

If your character gets incapacitated or killed, or if your mount is killed, you get knocked off.

If I do what happens to my horse if everyone else dies will it just wander around the map so anyone can take it, or will it stay in the same area?

The horse stays in the area for a while, then after a while it will die.

Do we acquire mounts except stealing them from other players? Do we buy them from vendors, are they bred/crafted or do they spawn in the wilderness?

You summon them through a medium which is crafted. You can also loot this from players.

Will mounts be allowed everywhere or will there be places where you can't mount?

They’re allowed everywhere, and they can also swim.

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=58769

The following as been posted by Darkfall developper Tasos Flambouras on the game's official forums:

This is not an update as much as it is checking in with the community. Just to inform you about the sparse updates: they're due to an urgent health problem that landed me in the hospital for a week and I'm still trying to catch up with work.

Our main contact has left Warcry so we'll see what we'll be doing with the Journal there. We will be giving out a few interviews to various mainstream media and we will try to keep some specialized updates for the core Darkfall community. We're looking at releasing a comprehensive video sometime in the next few weeks. We're doing this ourselves and our first priority is working on the game, so we can't just slap something together in a couple of days. We also won't hire a production company to make a Darkfall-inspired cartoon for us, so we'll be using actual Darkfall gameplay footage like we always do.

I don't have the time to continue last week's Q&A but I'll address some specific concerns stemming from it:

I never said that public beta would be two weeks. I said several weeks. Public beta will be as long as it needs to be. We hope and we're working hard so that it won't need to be very long. The clan beta will likely be a stage of public beta. The announcement of launch within the year is an official company commitment and it's not a guestimate. We're making strides with publishing in the direction where we maintain full creative control on the game.

The universal banking system we're implementing in Darkfall is because we found it was very tedious not having it. Universal banks have become an industry standard for a reason. We've found that their existence does wonders for the fun factor as opposed to their absence. Darkfall is challenging in every way, you don't need it to be tedious. We'll balance universal banks to work as well as possible and we'll continue balancing them if we have to.

As for caravans, firstly, we never confirmed that they were in the game. They were never in the original design; they weren't announced as a feature, they were just brought up and have been promoted by some community members. We have looked at them as a possible cool feature but to be honest, I can't say they're that cool in practice. As things stand you can form a caravan using mounts, ships etc. With them you can move large quantities of goods, fairly fast, rather than running small loads back and forth over and over. The world is huge and the distances to travel are great and there will be a need for transport of large amounts of resources such as those intended for city building.

You do have the freedom of forming caravans. You also have the option of universal banks. When we make design decisions like these, we're thinking of the majority of players and we speak from experience. Few players would initially enjoy the absence of universal banks, but even they would get tired of the wasted time commitment.

Finally, these raised undead armies, armies of dead players, and armies of NPCs etc. we keep reading on the boards: What's this NPC fascination about? Why not raise a player army instead? Every bot takes up resources players could be using and Darkfall is a massive multiplayer game. Even if it's all the rage in MMOs lately we want to further the multiplayer real-time aspect with Darkfall rather than go the other direction. There is no progress in having to introduce single player features such as more NPCs to a MMORPG.

As for underscores, numbers, etc. in names it's just the way it works right now. If you don't like them, sure we'll take them out until you petition them back in when you run out of naming options. : )

There's no ETA for the next update, but we'll do our best on that.

Thanks for reading

source: http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=55937

As previously mentioned, there's a new Darkfall video available. It can now be viewed here at Curse. See below!

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Note: due to technical difficulties we've made a separate news for this.

Just posted on the official site. Something alot of people will love to see. Maybe it's no beta date, but the next most awaited thing after a beta date. The game looks pretty decent judging from the screenshots here (same locations are shown in the video). Enjoy!

Another developer journal that is 1 week early. Tasos answers 29 Fan questions, continuing the Q&A style of these journals, answering various questions from the official forums.

However, he said that the ETA for the next developer journal is unknown, due to heavy workload. Maybe another information blackout is following ? We can only hope that isn't true.

I must note how the devs have regularly been in contact with the community for the last 2 years in some way. So an information blackout is unlikely.

Associate Producer Tasos Flambouras does a bit different approach to the dev journals, in the style of a Q&A. He picked various questions from the community as he promised last time. You may also notice that the journal came one week earlier, compensating for the delay last time.

The aspects covered in this journal were quite interesting. Mainly, will the game be downloadable, why didn't Darkfall secure a solid publisher yet, ship warfare, beta/launch ETA and other issues.

This journal was scheduled for last Friday, but it was delayed. Tasos Flambouras informs us how he almost delayed it this time too, so he only posted a short status update this time and promises a community driven Q&A (like the last few journals) next time. Basically answering questions that were brought up on the official forums General Darkfall Discussion board.

Apparently Aventurine showed the game to some high profile industry veterans recently and these people were very enthusiastic about Darkfall. This gave the developers at Aventurine a big morale boost. Tasos says he can't be more specific about it, but that it was a notable event there. I am assuming it was a Greek/Athens gaming convention, but I didn't do any research on it.

Tasos also explains how he isn't the only one working on these journals, that usually several developers contribute to these journals.

Tasos writes the final Darkfall developer journal this year. It seems he changed his style of writing these journals and now answers various questions he has seen on the Darkfall official forums, combined with a few new screenshots. The new screenshots also include first time female pictures: the alfar female and the ork female. There's also a screenshot of a human male with some ugly flowers in the background.

Like I said 2 weeks ago, I think Tasos should really post at least one of these answers on the official forums, the appropriate thread. The reason is obvious.

I also wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to both Aventurine and anyone reading and using Curse.

A delay from both Warcry and me. It seems Warcry was having problems with uploading the latest developer journal, so they only managed to do it this Monday.

Nothing new this time, Tasos tells us about Aventurine being slow in testing the game, while the other development areas are progressing ahead of schedule. He elaborates on universal banking and the probable outcome of the single character per server versus single race per server debate.

Mr. Flambouras was also kind to answer some questions he has seen on the official forums. I know he frequently checks the forums, but he should really start posting a bit to raise the spirits of the community. It might make up a bit for the bad PR.

Another Surly article on Warcry, this time he discusses all of the important happenings in Darkfall's long development. You can also find out stuff like where did Razorwax, and later Aventurine, get the funding for their game from.

Most of the info regarding funding and copyrights in the article was dug up by various Darkfall fans over the years. Interesting what they do when they don't get to play the game they want.

There hasn't been one. According to lepidus over at Warcry, Tasos was busy with travelling and couldn't write a proper developer journal. Instead, he sent Warcry 4 exclusive screenshots. Here they are:

One of the Darkfall @ Curse contributors, Dronjak, has made a fan video out of the many screenshots and few Darkfall videos that exist. You can tell him what you think in the comments below.

Progress on the official darkfall site has been steady. They've been updating the race, monster and some other pages on the site, and they even changed the design a bit. The most recent update was the Ork race page. The lore has been rewritten, and new screenshots have been added.

A couple of new dwarf pictures have appeared on the official site, too. You can check out all of the new screenshots in our gallery. Here are a few examples :

Ork Race	Orkish Town	Dwarf in City

Dwarves fighting Ice Giant	Orkish Town

To get to the root of what makes partial or full loot in PVP exciting and all around a bonus to the PVP experience is to first look at gambling. What makes gambling addicting? Ask any gambler what the exciting aspect of the games they play are, it's the risk factor. You're risking something to get something. You might be risking a little to gain a little, a little to gain a lot, or everything to garner an immense gain. This is what gets people's adrenaline pumping even in something as simple as a game of cards. The same can be said for PVP, as it's essentially a gamble, is he gonna beat me or am I gonna beat him. If you aren't fighting to protect your items or take his, there is no rush in the fight cause it's for nothing except bragging rights.

Of course if you're going to lose items in PVP, they can't be overly valuable or things that make or break your character and require hours to grind for such as in games like Everquest or World of Warcraft. They should be player crafted for the most part and relatively easy to acquire. They should only modify your damage through a small percentage boost or through special effects like elemental damage or status effects such as slowing the target or inflicting a Damage Over Time status like Poison, not be the pure source of damage dealing. Because they are relatively easy to acquire and not the things that make or break you, death is merely a minor inconvenience if you planned ahead for it. You can stop at the bank and take out a new set of items, or you can withdraw some money to buy a cheap storebought set. Death will set you back some, but not be a character killing blow like if full loot was introduced into World of Warcraft.

How do you make PVP rely on the player's skill and not on his class, items, or levels? First you eliminate class and levels in one swoop by using an Ultima Online style skill system where you advance your level of skill in a skill by using it. Swing a sword at a monster/player to raise your sword skill, cast magical spells to raise magery, etc. To eliminate the reliance on items you make them not the major factor in the strength of your character as laid out previously in this article.

The key to making the game rely on the player's skill after setting the framework of character development as such is to use a collision detection system and make the combat twitch based. This means giving the player the ability to manually dodge attacks directed towards him/her as well as give more meaning to positioning and tactics. This is contrary to popular EQ-esque games such as World of Warcraft where the only thing that has a say as to whether an attack lands is the attacker's character skill and the defender's character skill in the corresponding skills. Essentially, PVP is dumbed down to timers and dice rolls, leaving the player in the background when they should be the most important factor in the battle.

In Asheron's Call this was done by using collision detection and a crude tracking algorithm for war magic bolts and missile attacks (bows/crossbows). The server would anticipate where the player would be by processing their speed of movement in a direction against the speed of the projectile (arrow, xbow bolt, or war magic bolt) and directing the projectile to that point. This tracking was crude as the player could through it off by changing direction rapidly sliding side to side while casting or performing actions, thereby throwing the tracking off. Eventually Arc war spells were added that were extremely fast and had no tracking, simply traveling directly to the location of the player at time of spell release. This caused players to need to develop new techniques for dodging. This led to large variety of amazing casting techniques (the way in which the player slid while spellcasting to dodge projectiles) coming about and creating tremendously fluid and fastpaced fights.

By having the ability to develop unique methods of dodging attacks manually, every player was different. You truly were only as good as your skill at dodging made you. If you sucked at it, you got owned. If you were great at it, only those as good or better than you could touch you. While player's items in Asheron's Call did in fact play a decent part, they were no where on par with the level of necessity that grinding epic gear in World of Warcraft is. The skill of the player generally determined the outcome of the fight, and that is how it should be.

Where the two come together is that in a full loot game, where the items are semi valuable, but not the be all end all of the character's strength, twitch based combat is the logical evolution of PVP and gameplay in general. By placing the fate of a PVP battle almost entirely in the hands of the player and not the character's stats/items, you increase the adrenaline rush and excitement of the battle. No longer is it "My class/items > yours," it is instead who is more skilled at combat and adds a new level of complexity and enjoyment to the battle.

http://df.warcry.com/news/view/72342-Darkfall-Journal-9-The-Beta-Question

This dev journal on Warcry is pretty short, and Tasos doesn't mention any beta date. He did say they are aiming for a beta sometime this summer, but as most people who follow(ed) Darkfall know, we won't know until we actually get our Darkfall clients and start PK-ing each other in game. Tasos also explained that Aventurine is adding new content to the official site (as you may have noticed in our News section), and that they will be doing so in the following weeks.

Quite suprisingly, there's been alot of activity at the official site - unlike the last few years. Tasos' latest post (check it out here) confirms this. This time we are talking about the monsters page over at darkfallonline.com

So I am not sure if I should spam this site's news everytime there's a official site update, because there will obviously now be a good number of them. These updates are mostly screenshot updates, so I'll just tell you guys who visit Curse and care about Darkfall to keep checking our screenshots and render gallery from time to time.

Some new neat Rubaiyat screenshots have been uploaded to the official Darkfall site. There are 7 of them, you can check them out here:

Darkfall Screenshot Gallery

The races page on the official site has been revamped a bit, check it out here:

http://darkfallonline.com/races/

Some new artwork has been added to the Mirdain section on darkfallonline.com, along with 5 new screenshots of Mirdain on their mount and wearing some pretty cool looking armor. Tasos also said this is just the beginning of updating the official site with new content

Enjoy the screenshots:

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?p=778293#post778293

Aventurine caught the intruder that had made an illegal copy of a part of a trial version of Darkfall. He managed to download an older test client but he was arrested by the Dutch after Aventurine sent evidence of this act to Dutch Public Prosecutor’s office. According to Tasos, the source code is safe, but he couldn't say too much because there is an ongoing criminal investigation and the intruder is in custody.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml

Very interesting article about the mainstream MMOs and why they are boring to play, yet attract so many players. Judging by this article, Darkfall might revolutionize the genre (if it doesn't end up buggy as hell).

Here it is, I've really enjoyed the answers. I've made up some of my own questions and also gathered some old questions (regarding city sieging) from various darkfall forums. First things first, here's a quote from Tasos Flambouras regarding this Q&A:

There's a lot of detail in conquest and city building that we cannot talk about. We wanted to answer all the questions, and if some answers seem vague or raise more questions, it's in an honest effort to give as much information as we're allowed to.

Here comes the good stuff:

Answers by Tasos Flambouras, Claus Grovdal, and Kjetil Helland.

1) Is the Gloomer system still in? Do we need it to weaken the clanstone of an enemy city, so we can proceed to destroying enemy walls and structures?

The gloomer isn't in the game in its original form. The concept remains but has been added on and improved. The attackers need to protect their assets and their challenge shard - which isn't stationary anymore but in the hands of a clan leader. While in possession of the challenge shard, the holder is a bleep on the defender's and attacker's maps and global messages are issued. He cannot use magical means of transportation, and his clan has to protect him while the defenders and allies need to kill him within the allotted time in order to break the siege. There are other ways to break the siege, by taking attacker territories, or defending your clan stone.

2) What is needed for an attacker to construct the Gloomer, and other siege equipment used to conquer a city?

Siege equipment is made by crafters, who use the appropriate resources. These are player spawned. For the higher level siege equipment you need a siege workshop which can only be constructed in clan cities.

3) How much time does a newly constructed clanstone need to become invulnerable to enemy attacks?

No time, it’s invulnerable immediately until the challenge phase.

4) Can we use cannons, or are the cannons only available for ships (apparently, gunpowder wasn't invented in Agon) ?

Players can spawn cannons, city defenses can spawn cannons. There are several different types some of which can fire different elements and projectiles aside from the cannonballs.

5) What types of siege equipment do the defenders have at their disposal?

The defenders have all the siege engines available in the game, in addition they can use huge defensive bombards spawned by the clan leaders, defensive structures, towers etc.

6) Can the defenders set traps in front of their city, or some kind of obstacles for mounts?

There are several options along these lines, but we cannot be more specific at this time.

7) What types of siege equipment do the attackers have at their disposal?

They can use cannons, siege weapons, mobile attack platforms, warhulks, and ships.

8) How long does a siege usually take?

A siege can last several hours, depending on how evenly the opponents measure up. There is a time limit when the siege effort fails.

9) Can you burn down wooden structures with fire arrows shoot from outside the city walls? Can fire spells set wooden buildings on fire?

There are spells that can damage structures, and the structures will catch on fire at some point. The arrows will not set buildings on fire though.

10) Are walls and/or other structures repairable when the actual siege has taken place? If it is, does it take up resources (like stone)?

Yes they are repairable, during the siege. You need to craft the repair materials, so you need crafters and resources. A well prepared clan will have the materials needed for repairs stockpiled in advance of a siege.

11) Is there a limit to how many structures the attacker can destroy after they conquer the city?

There is a limit - per day on all buildings except for the walls which can be destroyed liberally. You have to consider that since the attacker has conquered the city, destroying the buildings is destroying his own property. The limit serves the purpose of allowing the original city owners to fight to recover their lost city.

12) Do large clans have an advantage over small clans when it comes to conquering each other's cities? If yes, how big of an advantage is it?

We've talked about how a small disciplined unit that trains together can fight back the zerg. Also, a large clan has a lot more to defend. When you issue a challenge on a clan city, all your assets become vulnerable to attack by anyone. So size is both an advantage and a burden.

13) What prevents or discourages "Ninja Raiding", aka 3 am raids on your city while everyone is asleep? Will NPC guards play an important role in this aspect of the game?

There is a process which takes a while to be able to begin the siege, it's not instant. Also, universal messages are issued and the attacker's assets all go vulnerable for a certain time. Allies are alerted, enemies are alerted, the 3am raid may not be the optimal time for a clan to try to attack and defend at the same time. There is also out-of-game messaging, so the clan which is being attacked can be alerted. City defenses can be spawned by few defenders, and the guards will also help in fighting back. If all else fails, the defenders always have the option to mount a counter-attack to take back their city.

14) Will clans instead of destroying or taking over their enemy clan's town be able to just take some control or tax them for a period of time?

It’s not a game mechanic, but players have the freedom of playing out a scenario like that. There are some resources that could be taken over and taxing those who want to use them, mines for example.

15) Can attackers "starve" a city until it surrenders by cutting out supply lines, for example?

They can starve a city logistically by waging a war of attrition on the population and controlling resources. Full loot can eventually exhaust defensive resources, making a city takeover attempt easier.

16) Is it even possible to conquer racial towns, or even racial capitals?

Most of the cities in Darkfall are clan cities and are player controlled. There are a few NPC cities and racial capitals that cannot be conquered at this time.

17) Can you tell us anything specific about attacking port towns and the importance of ships when attacking ports?

Imagine a quiet port town. Now imagine a couple of 50-cannon ships, or worse, firing on it.

18) Do you think that the servers will be able to handle a large scale city siege without much lag?

The game and the technology have been designed from the ground up for massive real-time battles. So far we've simulated battles with a couple of hundred players, and it works great every time.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Don't forget to visit the IRC channel at quakenet. You can discuss it on our forums here