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Why Darkfall is Important
December 8th, 2008 by Paragus
Darkfall is on the verge of becoming a reality. Shockwaves were sent through the MMO community on Friday as Tasos Flambouras announced that Darkfall will be releasing in European markets on January 22, 2009. This announcement was followed by the deafening silence of "vapor trolls" who were once over-spoken forum activists convinced the game would never see the light of day. Not only is Darkfall coming out, but it is only 6 weeks from going live.
Every MMO player who loves this genre even a sliver as much as I do has a vested interested in seeing Darkfall become a success. If you have been playing MMOs for any length of time, you are no doubt feeling somewhat disenchanted with the state of the genre over the last few years, especially if you are a veteran like me who remembers the way things used to be. You might remember a time where a new MMO didn't look exactly like the one before it, a time when innovation was profitable to a developer.
The Death of Innovation
It is easy to figure out how and when innovation died. A certain company made an MMO some years ago that made unimaginable amounts of money by using a model that dumbed down the game to appeal to a wider audience. MMOs are expensive and risky business propositions, and in the last few years we have seen 40-80 million dollar debacles that have brought their developers to their knees or out of business. The safest route for profit is to look at the industries most profitable game, and build the same dumbed down model for mass appeal they used. The profit being rewarded to the companies who follow in the footsteps, combined with the innovative games being debacles, has sent a dangerous message to new developers and helped fuel a trend of linear copycat theme-park MMOs.
Sandbox games have traditionally offered their players freedom, something that most of the more recent games have been lacking and some newer-school players may have never experienced. The freedom is yours to go anywhere without being boxed in by mountains that always seem to mysteriously bottleneck into a loading screen. The freedom is yours to pick a character that is yours to shape, instead of being pigeon-holed into some specific role where for some reason can figure out how to use a single type of weapon. These are the promises that a sandbox game makes, but unfortunately there has not been a successful one made since Asheron's Call.
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