There are a lot of questions about travel times and how large the world is. I keep hearing that the size of our world is that of Germany. Of course it's not. It's not even remotely close. Even if we had the option for it to be that large, why would we choose it? Spread out 10 k people in Germany and see how often they run into each other. This is a PvP game and players have to meet. Additionally, this is a world loaded with content and points of interest. When you reach one, you can see the next one in most cases. That being said, the Darkfall world is larger than most, and possibly the largest in area, all of which is accessible to the players. Travel times can be long and there are not a lot of options to move instantly, and definitely not exactly where you want to be.
My eye caught a thread where the monthly subscription and billing methods of Darkfall were discussed. Several posters insist that there's no way we could offer Darkfall lower than other MMO subscriptions out there. I don't see why not. As a matter of fact if we're left to our own devices, or if we have a say in the matter, Darkfall will be extremely competitive. We have a lot of faith in this game and that's our competitive advantage. We want as many people as possible to be able to try it out.
In another post the uniqueness of Darkfall's characters was put into question by one of the posters. We've talked about this many times in the past, and I think that in testing where most of our screenshots are taken from we don't pay so much attention to modifying or dressing up our characters so you end up seeing a lot of the same stuff all the time. We won't implement character creation morphing because we're shooting for performance during massive battles, rather than spending time drawing everyone's uniquely disfigured character. Still...we've done everything possible to give your character variation and uniqueness and your character will definitely stand out in a crowd if you want him/her to. Henning took some quick screenshots with some new facial / hairstyle / equipment variations of characters exclusively wearing armor they looted off of monsters. The female ork is wearing face paint and angra skeleton shoulder pads, beastman bracers, and a servants of Malaut girdle, and revenant greaves. The Alfar female is wearing face paint, zombie shoulder pads, hobgoblin bracers, and Ciel Fey boots. The human male is wearing face paint, black knight shoulder pads, gloves, girdle and boots, and a hobgoblin helmet. That's a tar lake behind the alfar by the way.
That's all for today, thanks for reading. I don't think we'll miss any updates due to the holidays; at least I'll try not to. I'll try to give you a status report and a few other belated updates as soon after the holidays as possible.
On behalf of the Darkfall team I'd like to wish everyone Happy Holidays, and thanks for reading.
Tasos Flambouras
