First impressions:

After several hours in-game, I've come to a few conclusions:

1) The game is very unrefined. You'll actually look at placeholder descriptions, you'll have very limited character customization options, there will be spelling and grammatical errors, and so on, so forth.

2) The game lacks solid quests. Sure, there's some starter-NPC nonsense in the vein of: "Go fetch that, go cook this, go kill that", but nothing too inspiring.

3) The graphics are decent, at best. They chose a realistic style, and as usual, all this does is highlight the flaws of the graphics engine. However, there's some definite atmosphere.

4) The game is completely unmoderated -- you'll find people on (very expensive) mounts camping the newbie areas and murdering all those whom dare to try and play the game. In 5 hours of playtime, I've been ganked 3 times, and had 6 -attempts- on me. The first time I didn't care, but the second 2 times I was killed trying to fulfill the same quests, which is on a timer. The problem is: unlike many people who play MMO's, I simply don't have the time to keep playing until I finish the quest; I should have been done hours ago, and been snoozing. This last death was simply the end of my evening, play-wise.

That's something MMO designers should start keeping in mind a little bit more: not everyone has the time to keep going at it, some of us are more casual than others. It's really worth it to cater to -both- groups of gamers, and yes; that should be possible. By no means am I advocating PvE servers or any such things, but perhaps the timer on timed quests should reset if you get PvP'd. Just a suggestion.

That said, I'm enjoying the game, but as usual I find myself wishing human nature was better ;) I'll keep you updated!

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I have just purchased Darkfall Online, and because of the scope of MMO's (which makes writing a single review very difficult), I'll keep a bit of a journal, instead. Below is the first entry.

Day 1, the Preamble (May 25^th, 2009)
I'm downloading Darkfall. While waiting, I've decided to do the smart thing and read several little strategy guides online. Although there is one for sale, I'll be damned to spend 30 dollars on an Unofficial Strategy Guide, so instead, I stuck with this guide:

http://www.dfguide.com

It's clear that Darkfall is a game unlike other MMO's; this is all about PvP, and I'm somewhat nervous about it, as I -do- tend to care a lot about my hard work that I put into a character. However, I've decided to stick to a few rules:

1. It's only a game, don't get worked up over it.

2. The game is released as-is, anything in the game is free play, which includes what I'd call “dishonorable” behavior in other MMO's. Don't expect others to follow some moral code, and just join them.

3. Find a nice guild of like minded people, and just play the game with them.

I'm very psyched about playing the game, but alas! An hour and 30 minutes of waiting remains, in the absolute best-case scenario of maintaining a good speed on this torrent.

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