Darkfall Release Delayed

The European release date for Darkfall has been delayed. Originally set to hit the shelves on January 29th, the release has been pushed back to February 25th. There will, however, be a 'stress test' beginning on January 22nd that will open the servers to many, but not all, of the 200,000 players who have applied. Read the official word on all this below:

We know that the community has been speculating and wondering about the Darkfall release for some time. We haven't replied until now because there were several complex issues to plan and work out. We also needed to get authorization before we could proceed with this official announcement:

Starting on January 22nd there will be a Darkfall trial with the distribution of the release candidate client allowing thousands of players to sample the game for free, help us stress test our servers and test the final features of the game.

It's important to understand that there are well over 200 thousand applications by players wanting to get into Darkfall. This number makes it unrealistic to distribute the client and to open up our servers to everyone. We'll try to accommodate as many players as are possible for us to manage at this stage. Even so, the demand exceeds our current capacity. Interest in Darkfall has surpassed all our expectations to the point that we may need to manage our release differently.

The date of the Darkfall European commercial release has been pushed back to February 25th, 2009. A pre-order will be made available mid-February. The pre-orders will get priority for early access to the game. The pre-orders will also get priority for the game launch if we have to go to a staged release. We'll go to a staged release only in the case we have more demand than we can handle properly, and until we can upgrade our capacity. The pre-orders are necessary so that we can have some measure of the demand.

The reasons for the new release date follow:

• At this stage, everything is connected: Hundreds of elements need to come together. When one thing falls behind, everything else tends to follow.
• Demand for Darkfall at launch could be much higher than expected. If this is the case, we need a different process to better handle the demand.
• Darkfall's partners (distribution, billing, account management, support, etc.) entered into the game at a late date and we needed more time than expected to integrate properly.
• We fell behind on a couple of weeks of beta testing progress and we need to make this time up. We need more playtesting data on several features we haven't had much chance to test externally.
• We'll use this extra time to implement updates based on tester feedback and also make some enhancements we were saving for after release.
• We want as many players as possible in the game before the launch and we haven't had the chance to stress test our servers with live players yet.
• We underestimated the effect the holidays would have on our preparations. While we worked through them, the world around us seemed to stop.
• We don't want to rush things more than needed. An extra month may not seem like a lot of time, but it's enough to allow us to take care of any compounded delays.

Our hope for Darkfall is to have a good game with a tight player base that we can nurture and steadily build up. Hype surrounding Darkfall is huge right now, despite our best efforts. We're not sure how this will translate on launch day but we have to make allowances for the possibility that demand could be more than we anticipate.

Announcements will follow with more information on Darkfall pricing, pre-ordering information, North American player access, and system specifications.

The Darkfall Team

Can't accommodate 200,000 players on their servers in a MASSIVE multiplayer online role playing game? *raises a brow*

Gentlemen (and ladies)! Start your response engines!

Permalink

That's what she said!

Wrong thread?

Who's your daddy?

Teedle...I wondered how long it'd be before you turned up. LOL!

R..O..F..L

LAWL
LAWL
LAWL
LAWL
LAWL
LAWL

umm yea they cant accomdate 200k players thats more than 1 servers you have any idea how much them servers cost? probly be around 30-50k that get into the free trials

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/4/feature/2597/Darkfall-Launch-Delayed.html

Great analysis of the "announcement".

I am shocked, simply shocked... I never would have expected a delay.

Oh wait we are talking about Darkfall? Never mind, comment withdrawn.

Perhaps it's time Aventurine gets a new head, I mean, for Tasos to step down and allow someone who's a bit more empassioned and organised to get this plane off the tarmac. From the excuses listed, all I see is poor management. Not even a small-business owner would allow their enterprise to be run like that.

Shame, Tasos, shame.

Thats what they get for trying to "do it on their own".

They fuel hype for this game for YEARS and he's surprised that 200k people are interested...what an ass.

This thing is so NOT ready to go. Everyone knew that except for Tasos.

They shouldn't have caved into pressure for a release date and not give one, now all they got is a lot of pissed fans and stupid excuses. They can't even give free trials to everyone as they can't accommodate everyone on their servers xD what the hell are the publishers doing? Why don't they have the servers ready? they stand to lose the most money if the game starts to look bad. I'm surprised that there is no PR management from them at all yet. Perhaps they made a bad choice with this publisher?

I'm shocked and amazed that this game has been delayed

[/sarcasm]

Ooo openish beta 22nd January, Nice!

And what major MMO hasn't been delayed, let alone something from an indy developer.

was trying to look whether they at least put up a decent "launch worthy" site,
but then i see no site at all.

Awesomeness!

Yet,i will still be sure to play it one day

I am tired of the BS line "Well they are just an Indy publisher." There are plenty of Indy companies that seem to be able to stick to schedules and produce product just fine. Sometimes you have to admit you need help, or that your horse is lame and needs to be shot.

bloody but most big name mmos companies cant so dont know what you expect there just human after all

weezer:
Perhaps it's time Aventurine gets a new head, I mean, for Tasos to step down and allow someone who's a bit more empassioned and organised to get this plane off the tarmac. From the excuses listed, all I see is poor management. Not even a small-business owner would allow their enterprise to be run like that.

Shame, Tasos, shame.

I agree this sounds like poor business management more then anything else.

Though this is bringing back memories of my Dark and Light beta experiance, lets hope they do better then that MMO.

steveyk:
They shouldn't have caved into pressure for a release date and not give one, now all they got is a lot of pissed fans and stupid excuses.

They shouldn't have tried developing a MMORPG

so I think the real question here is: what on earth will the fanboys do if they get a chance to play it and it's crap?

I forsee hundreds of suicides.

mrcheese:
so I think the real question here is: what on earth will the fanboys do if they get a chance to play it and it's crap?

I forsee hundreds of suicides.

The remainder may have to go back to *gasp* WoW/WAR/EQII/Vanguard/AoC/Real life (yes, in that order too).

mrcheese:
so I think the real question here is: what on earth will the fanboys do if they get a chance to play it and it's crap?

I forsee hundreds of suicides.

I'll buy the Kool-Aid.

Ralackk:

weezer:
Perhaps it's time Aventurine gets a new head, I mean, for Tasos to step down and allow someone who's a bit more empassioned and organised to get this plane off the tarmac. From the excuses listed, all I see is poor management. Not even a small-business owner would allow their enterprise to be run like that.

Shame, Tasos, shame.

I agree this sounds like poor business management more then anything else.

Though this is bringing back memories of my Dark and Light beta experiance, lets hope they do better then that MMO.

except dark and light bearly worked

darkfall works... stable as hell too
they just dont want to pull a funcom

yamisniper:

Ralackk:

weezer:
Perhaps it's time Aventurine gets a new head, I mean, for Tasos to step down and allow someone who's a bit more empassioned and organised to get this plane off the tarmac. From the excuses listed, all I see is poor management. Not even a small-business owner would allow their enterprise to be run like that.

Shame, Tasos, shame.

I agree this sounds like poor business management more then anything else.

Though this is bringing back memories of my Dark and Light beta experiance, lets hope they do better then that MMO.

except dark and light bearly worked

darkfall works... stable as hell too
they just dont want to pull a funcom

Are you saying this as someone who has had the opportunity to play it then?

I'm going to remain skeptical until I get my hands on the beta and can try it out myself. Dark and Light was supposed to be something new and great. It wasn't until people were able to play it that they could see how bad the game really was even though they promised alot. I hope Darkfall delivers on all its promises but I will wait and see.

You can hardly call an MMO stable if it fails to meet the Massive-Multiplayer part.

bloodyleach:
You can hardly call an MMO stable if it fails to meet the Massive-Multiplayer part.

That's what I thought too. The announcement that the game was going to be delayed so close to its ostensible release date was very weird. If they, as originally planned, had actually released the game this month, shouldn't they have had a decent estimate of player population and the server space needed already in place?

Ralackk:

yamisniper:

Ralackk:

weezer:
Perhaps it's time Aventurine gets a new head, I mean, for Tasos to step down and allow someone who's a bit more empassioned and organised to get this plane off the tarmac. From the excuses listed, all I see is poor management. Not even a small-business owner would allow their enterprise to be run like that.

Shame, Tasos, shame.

I agree this sounds like poor business management more then anything else.

Though this is bringing back memories of my Dark and Light beta experiance, lets hope they do better then that MMO.

except dark and light bearly worked

darkfall works... stable as hell too
they just dont want to pull a funcom

Are you saying this as someone who has had the opportunity to play it then?

I'm going to remain skeptical until I get my hands on the beta and can try it out myself. Dark and Light was supposed to be something new and great. It wasn't until people were able to play it that they could see how bad the game really was even though they promised alot. I hope Darkfall delivers on all its promises but I will wait and see.

and no other sources lmao but which is fine to wait and see better than pointing fingers...

O.o

Well it can't be said that PerfectInsanity chose an inappropriate screen name...

Kalia:
That's what I thought too. The announcement that the game was going to be delayed so close to its ostensible release date was very weird. If they, as originally planned, had actually released the game this month, shouldn't they have had a decent estimate of player population and the server space needed already in place?

The whole "we didn't expect this much attention" is a poor, poor excuse. Why produce a Massive Multiplayer Online RPG if you don't want thousands and thousands of customers playing your game? If you ask me, they're trying to smoke-screen non-readiness and hide a feature incomplete game. Sure, Aventurine may be releasing a free "trial" of the game on the 22nd (while that date itself holds or not is a different story), but I seriously doubt that it will be feature-complete. If anything, it will be a build of Darkfall Online that was demonstrated in '08. That, I am willing to put money on.

Again, it comes down to poor management and a sheer level of incompetence (perhaps even laziness). Even if they enlisted a bit of help from day dot in the marketing/PR department (and even entice an investor or two), then Aventurine wouldn't be so "overwhelmed" today.

Get real, Aventurine: you know your game was going to attract a lot of attention. Why would any developer underestimate their own product unless they knew it was mediocre to begin with? Perhaps Aventurine made a mistake in setting a release date (or a time-frame) in the first place; they should have learned a thing or two from Blizzard and told everyone, "When it's ready". Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I don't doubt that Darkfall Online will see the light of day, but I'm quite certain it will have a very, very sluggish start. Whether they, Aventurine SA, will be able to recover from it or not depends on how their think-tanks manage things from now. Tasos is carrying the pillar of the earth on his own shoulders here.

I am glad you have such an abillity to forsee the future of a game and that you exactly know where it went wrong and who is to blame and how the launch will take place one day and to top it off.. all of that without any knowledge about the developers, their time schedules, their management, their release partners, and ohh yeh, without even ever having touched the game. Bravo!

Now rather than jumping on the BashBandwagon for yet another delay - wooptifuckingdoodledoo - you could just try taking a step back and realise that for such a small company it is a huge frigging project to deliver an mmo and unforseen delays derived from unforseen problems are bound to happen. The point behind this should be that they are trying to make an mmo's which is such a carbon copy of the other mainstream mmo's. And yes they might fail at doing that, but a game doesnt have to be running wow smooth, or be aoc pretty to be enjoyable.

But then again perhaps you should apply at adventurine then and help them "Get Real" as you obviously seem to know the in's and out's of game development/management and public relations.

Personally, i hope they pull of their imo great concept, but if not, there's still so much other worth while things to do. The world will not stop turning with the rise, or fall of Darkfall.

Peace