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I recently got in touch with Community member Daikos and discussed the new upcoming MMORPG Darkfall. I took advantage of this opportunity to get some valuable information from him. I was also able to get a player made FAQ that covers more information than the standard FAQ on the Darkfall website. You can view it here: http://webpages.charter.net/jrmonroe/faq.htm.
Versengen: Ok let’s start this by asking: Who are you, and what do you do? Daikos: I go by the pseudonym of Daikos, currently I am the co-leader of the Sumus Contra Mundum guild as well as a part of the Darkfall Community Staff. Versengen: As part of the community staff what are your duties? Daikos: I am responsible for keeping the Official Darkfall IRC room relatively civil. Versengen: This is a non-paid position correct? Daikos: Yes no member of the community staff is paid. Versengen: Being that none of the community staff is paid; what keeps you coming back to assist with Darkfall? Daikos: Darkfall is the only game currently in production that offers the game play that I am looking for. I feel that helping to keep the community going strong is the least I can do. If people don't support games like Darkfall which try to innovate and move away from the cookie cutter mold used in the rest of MMORPGs then there will be no future for the genre. Versengen: You say you are also a co-leader of a guild, Sumus Contra Mundum. Is this strictly a Darkfall clan, or a universal game guild that plays many games? Daikos: Sumus Contra Mundum is a multi-game guild. We were formed on WoW from two prominent guilds from other games. House Morier, which I previously had led, had a history in games such as Dark Ages of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Planetside, and most importantly Shadowbane. Facultas Ultrimque, previously led by Shoon, is one of the most recognized guilds in Shadowbane history with a history of success of multiple servers. Versengen: Is <SCM> currently recruiting and looking for new members interested in Darkfall? Daikos: At the moment we do not openly recruit. We have a strict recruitment policy which in almost every case requires that a person interested in joining must have played with us in a game. Versengen: Getting back to Darkfall, how long have you been a Community Staff Member? Daikos: I have been on the Darkfall staff for give or take a year now. Versengen: How did you get the position? Daikos: As Teth, a fellow staff member says, “this is one of the greatest stories of staff hiring around”. I have been an active member of the community for many years and had decided out of boredom to make a petition to get myself added to the staff, purely as a joke. This kicked around for a while and had some signatures on it. Eventually Brannoc showed up in #darkfall chat and asked who wanted to be a member of staff. I answered first ;) Daikos: Honestly though, only Brannoc knows why I was hired. Daikos: Every case usually is a judgment call by Brannoc. He looks for those who are active members of the community and who he thinks can be trusted to help manage the community. Versengen: Darkfall boasts many things that interest the gamer community. One of these things is SMS to mobile phone messages. Can you elaborate on that particular feature? Daikos: Not much information is currently available as to how many of these features will work. From a personal stand point the idea of SMS to mobile phone messaging excite myself and many members of my guild. The basic idea is that one will be able to send messages to a mobile phone informing members of a guild of raids and attacks on cities. Features like this are one of the reason why Darkfall is leading the pack of in production games. No other game on the market has features such as this or, I'd venture to guess, have even thought about features such as these. Versengen: Some of the other features include collision based FPS style combat. What do you know about this from what Darkfall has posted, and from personal experiences of your own with FPS style combat in the MMO world? Daikos: The developers have posted that the system of FPS combat will be very much like the innovative game Savage which was an FPS game that also involved melee. The use of a FPS style combat system will greatly add to the skill required in combat, especially PvP. The twitch element in Darkfall will make the game based much more on skill instead of what has become the norm, combat being based on who has the best equipment / highest level / best template. Versengen: Boats in Darkfall are going to be capable of cannon fire. What is your stand on this type of black powder combat? Is the any news of other black powder weapons? Daikos: I am very interested in seeing how the use of cannon on boats will work out. I think this will add a whole new element of combat never before seen in an MMORPG. I am traditionally a fan of pure fantasy MMORPGs that do not incorporate the use of technology such as guns and other firearms but I think that in Darkfall the use of black powder cannon will be appropriate. At the moment there is no news of other such weapons being added into the game outside of naval combat. Versengen: Players in Darkfall are able to build their own houses and even set up towns. Originally it was place them anywhere, but after some talk they changed the housing placement. Can you tell us anything about what it will take to get a house planted or forming a township? Daikos: At the moment there is a very limited amount of information about how city building will work. At the moment all that is confidently known is that those who wish to form a city will need to use a clan stone and gather enough resources to build their city. Versengen: How about player housing? Can we just buy a deed and place it anywhere? Daikos: No substantial information as to how player housing will work has been released yet. From the best of my knowledge the last plans were to allow players to construct houses in almost every area. Versengen: PvP is going to be a big factor in the daily life of Darkfall. Can you tell the readers about the PvP system? Daikos: PvP, in my mind, is the most important factor in Darkfall. Everything will revolve around combat between guilds and individuals. There will be full loot of corpses which will make being involved in combat much more risky but rewarding at the same time. Versengen: Being that there is full loot in Darkfall; do you see problems for the games future? In the past if you tried to get into a game with such a loot system in PvP, it is very hard to get on your feet if people kept looting you. Do you feel that Darkfall will have the same problem or do you think that the community will be good enough to realize a new player and leave him or her alone or at least leaving their items on their corpse? Daikos: I believe that Darkfall caters to a niche market in the MMORPG community. This will not be a game for everybody; it will not be the WoW killer in terms of numbers. Darkfall is meant for people who want to be involved in a world where everything they do has a consequence. It adds to the thrill of the game. I don't believe full loot will harm the game in any manner. What will harm Darkfall is people begin to make demands for nerfs and PvP starts being removed Versengen: long distance travel in Darkfall is going to be done with a complicated rune teleportation and mounts. What do you know about these forms of travel? Daikos: I do not know any large amount about how the teleportation system will work, if I had to make an educated guess I would see it working very much like Ultima Online and Shadowbane. The mount system though will provide for the majority of travel over shorter distances, I believe. Every race will have its own unique mount. In addition to this, one of the most exciting parts of having player controlled mounts is that Darkfall will allow for combat while on mounts. This adds many possibilities for tactics in combat. Versengen: The Darkfall Dev team is asking for players opinion on what has turned into what seems a very controversial topic on the forums, what they would like to see in Darkfall. The options are Single Character per Server (SCS) or the Single Race per Server (SRS). What do you think about this? Daikos: I would personally like to see a single race per server stance over a single character per server. I understand the argument for those on the SCS side, mainly being that ones actions will be constantly on them, they cannot adopt another identity to avoid the consequences of their actions. Despite this I think a single race per server is a much more enjoyable approach. Many people enjoy playing different types of characters and this would be restricted if an SCS stance were to be adopted. Versengen: If there was any one thing that you could change about Darkfall what would it be? Daikos: The one thing I would change about Darkfall would be to make it even more of a free for all. Darkfall uses built in game mechanics to prevent certain actions from taking place I.e. having strong preventative steps from any race any clan clans forming. I believe in having very free games where players make the rules not in game mechanics. Despite this I believe that Darkfall, when it is released, will be the game with the most player freedom on the market and it will remain that way for a long amount of time to come. |
