Apocalyptic Situations

[Froed]

*This is obviously a post-release idea, so if you make an argument citing otherwise, go die*

Alright, so you know what I'm talking about: the stereotypical defeat the baddies or THE WORLD WILL END scenario favored by books, movies and single player games. Problems tend to arise when you apply this formula to an MMO that caters to moronic new players/characters and/or a static game world. In my own experience, I noticed that WoW was tremedously good at pointing out how bad shit was going down, but nothing - ever - did.

Case in point: Shadow of the Necropolis! Probably the most disappointing patch-that-couldn't pre-exp. Were you around for this "event"? Well, if you weren't, here's a synopsis – Undead are ATTACKING ALL THE MAJOR CITIES, OH NOES! and there's cool flying necropoli hanging around. Please feel free to enjoy new quests, dungeons and grind areas! WOO! – However, the "attacks" on the cities were built for low level characters, because those are low level areas, and any apocalyptia therein was quickly washed away. Essentially, there spawned little skeletons just outside the major cities and didn't really do anything, so no one cared. I had more fun with the new "weather" (toggleable/stupid) that day anyways.

Okay, so what does this have to do with Darkfall you're demanding, as you poke me with sharpened sticks. Simple, DF has the potential for harboring world changing events because of all its design choices (non-static mobs, siege warfare, no levels, etc). Moreover, these events could be much more climatic, when losing means actually losing something. Like say demons decide to go on a rampage, and if the players don't kill them, they take over major regions of Agon, limiting city/land control for players until they unite and beat off the invasion. If the players give up, then its time to start a new server called Carebearland. AND, it serves the second purpose of cleaning the risk board of Agon when the siege conflict has gotten stagnant.

So, what are your opinions? Would you like a scenario that would make you care and fight for your precious Agon? or is a world infested with your fellow forumfallers scary enough to begin with?

[Zwarp]

I like it, however not to the point of loosing my char as in a perma death situation.

[maskedtears]

uhhh... I think we will already have those problems. So no..wait yes?

[Stilicho]

Won't the word stones change the world?

[Nuzor]

great idea, i think there's going to be some amazing event's lined up for post-release content updates, they should put some serious thought into something like this, i can just imagine all clan-war's suddenly put on hold as everyone defend's themselves against the wrath of some nasty-ass demon horde.

good stuff.

[KellorKleft]

With the world villain in the center of Agon, the Watcher, I'm sure him and other baddies will be up to a lot of stuff. When his fortress rose it completely devastated the land around it. Maybe events such as that, and city takeover will be in the events. Also, they said pvp bosses have minions that patrol around their base, and even march out out raid outlying cities. We should expect this as well.

[Alfemus]

No levels in Darkfall therefore hopefully if such a thing were to be put in then everyone should be able to enjoy it.

However not sure if we are at that point in MMO development to have this implemented in the way you have explained though.

[Stilicho]

With the world villain in the center of Agon, the Watcher, I'm sure him and other baddies will be up to a lot of stuff. When his fortress rose it completely devastated the land around it. Maybe events such as that, and city takeover will be in the events. Also, they said pvp bosses have minions that patrol around their base, and even march out out raid outlying cities. We should expect this as well.

We can't trust the lore, it's outdated.

[The Lost One]

Would be a good way to shake things up once all the major clans have established themselves and settled in for the long haul.

[maskedtears]

I actually read it this time and I really do like it. What would make it golden though is if these events are set off by players. Like say some group gets a hold of some area and in trying to mine the dungeon or something, there will be an epic disaster or a legion of undead will pour out from the depths of the sea or something like that... It would be amazing. -drools just thinking about it-

[freeze_SD]

such events took place in UO on a frequent basis... well... not really frequent, but whatever...

for example in 99 (not sure) a whole town was conquered by undeads... they spawned everywhere in town... from lowly skeletons up to lich lords... in huge packs... they used this event to also introduce new monsters... forgot the name... the green zombie... rotting corpse or something like that.

GMs payed attention to the attendance of players and when there were enough players, they took control over an extremly powerful mob... back then it was a black lich lord.

it was mad fun... the whole siege lasted about a month...


or Halloween 2001:
http://www.gamerdna.com/public/images/user_image/image/1246/halloween2001vesper.jpg

they decorated vesper with corpses and spider webs and stuff like that and let monsters spawn... took a few hours to gain back control of the town



if the devs decide on monster rampages that occupy whole towns, they should do so... I always loved it... tons of loot everywhere... tons of ppl to kill via monster blocking and luring... i just loved it :D

[dyndragon]

This kind of content would possibly be the biggest value-adding feature of the DFO. If they could implement GM run events like this transparently without patching, all the better. Events like this would basically, for a little while, turn the entire server into one giant co-op game--something that has, until recently, been overlooked in games. Problem is each server would have to have GMs running the event, and if there's a lot of different servers...it would become less and less feasible.

[lilyeti]

Yes, they mentiond that occasionaly Demi-gods will arise and the players will have to defeat them.v Im hoping for many events. atleast 1 a month.

[Thorpeyrox]

I have to say the Scourge Invasion at the major cities in WoW was weak, I killed them all In one shot... The worst thing is in the next expansion they plan to REMAKE the instance and call it Naxxaramas 2 lol.

Although world shakers like 'The Watcher' will simply be awesome, I hope they are implemented to the max, I hope they devs will have no mercy on the weak if invasions as such were to come about.

[sorros]

they already said this kind of thing could happen. There was a post about how, say, if a goblin tribe grew too large in their lair, they may come out of the mountains and raid the nearby towns/villages, etc. i guess we'll have to see how good that is, eh? :p

[sorros]

I have to say the Scourge Invasion at the major cities in WoW was weak, I killed them all In one shot... The worst thing is in the next expansion they plan to REMAKE the instance and call it Naxxaramas 2 lol.

Although world shakers like 'The Watcher' will simply be awesome, I hope they are implemented to the max, I hope they devs will have no mercy on the weak if invasions as such were to come about.

skill-based game, so no 'low level newb QQ its not fair the high levels stick around" crap.

[Thorpeyrox]

they already said this kind of thing could happen. There was a post about how, say, if a goblin tribe grew too large in their lair, they may come out of the mountains and raid the nearby towns/villages, etc. i guess we'll have to see how good that is, eh? :p

Yeah I read that to, I just want these out of village raids for example to be very challenging and insense not just gank a few goblins and it will be under control.

[Froed]

they already said this kind of thing could happen. There was a post about how, say, if a goblin tribe grew too large in their lair, they may come out of the mountains and raid the nearby towns/villages, etc. i guess we'll have to see how good that is, eh? :p

But that's just children's play my good lad! We're talking about (and thanks for pointing this out you guys) GM run events where world changing shit goes down~!

[Thorpeyrox]

skill-based game, so no 'low level newb QQ its not fair the high levels stick around" crap.

Yeah but the creatures could still have a low AI level giving newbs a good time but old schoolers no challenge what so ever, people should learn the hard way in a game like this.

[Mhorham]

How about the Alfar succed in collecting a few wordstones and Melek gains enough strength to come out of hiding and pwn a mercian starer town burning it to the ground. The only way to stop him from doing in another town is for the mercians to kill that bone dragon a couple of times. The Alfar know this are naturaly going to defend the bone dragon when he spawns. Im sure everyone else would get in on it aswell.

[Thorpeyrox]

How about the Alfar succed in collecting a few wordstones and Melek gains enough strength to come out of hiding and pwn a mercian starer town burning it to the ground. The only way to stop him from doing in another town is for the mercians to kill that bone dragon a couple of times. The Alfar know this are naturaly going to defend the bone dragon when he spawns. Im sure everyone else would get in on it aswell.
Maybe if it was an invasion at a later point in the game lead by Melek and the invasion will keep going until Melek is "injured" for example and teleports back to his tower and slowly his men become unorganized and sloppy.
But in all honesty events like that would rock.

[Parasol]

The feature about attacks of monsters on player's cities pwn so much, so exciting!! "amagad Gobelins and are attacking!! Yesterday Lezards, today Gobelins, wtf!!"

This aspect of Darkfall can be really impressive in my mind, creating new PvE-PvP (PvEvP?) situations, making the living world of Agon a dangerous and living place, and more.

I like this PvE concept of agressives and actives monsters, I hope the devs will find other ideas like yours to make the best PvE never seen before.

*want play* :ohno:

[Ketra]

Back in the day before SWG sucked too much to play, there were two cities on Tatooine called Anchorhead and Bestine. One was rebel the other was Imperial. Players would constantly run between the two cities and pvp and sometimes would get large groups (armies, even) together to assault the cities. I remember being in a very large rebel group that repelled a bunch of Imperials from Anchorhead and we were all chilling, rebuffing, repairing armor, healing, etc inside the city when all of the sudden... tons of AT-STs, stormtroopers, and all manner of Imperial nastiness came over the hill with Imperial players as well. It was a hard fight and a lot of us died, but it was a blast. I remember that after I was laying on the ground as a corpse, a rebel transport landed and dumped out some equal level rebel npcs that rained havoc down on the Imperials that occupied the town, giving us some time to regroup and attack.

These were GM ran mini events and were tons of fun. Players could also request event support and get items and npcs and actors (like Vader, but played by a dev named Pex) to come to their events and help add flavor and such. I think a lot of GM support and presence in the game in terms of spontaneous events would be awesome.

Hell, if a GM gets bored, why not let them spawn some trouble in Merica? It's not going to piss people off that much if the people that play the actual game are anything like those on Forumfall.

[Ganon]

nice situation, id like it.
I hope it would happend.

[maskedtears]

Yes, they mentiond that occasionaly Demi-gods will arise and the players will have to defeat them.v Im hoping for many events. atleast 1 a month.


I thought they said that it was to get skills for your own player so a bunch of players defeating it isn't likely. Only one person is going to get the skills. :( Atleast that is how I interpreted it.

[Deja vu]

such events took place in UO on a frequent basis... well... not really frequent, but whatever...

for example in 99 (not sure) a whole town was conquered by undeads... they spawned everywhere in town... from lowly skeletons up to lich lords... in huge packs... they used this event to also introduce new monsters... forgot the name... the green zombie... rotting corpse or something like that.

GMs payed attention to the attendance of players and when there were enough players, they took control over an extremly powerful mob... back then it was a black lich lord.

it was mad fun... the whole siege lasted about a month...


or Halloween 2001:
http://www.gamerdna.com/public/images/user_image/image/1246/halloween2001vesper.jpg

they decorated vesper with corpses and spider webs and stuff like that and let monsters spawn... took a few hours to gain back control of the town



if the devs decide on monster rampages that occupy whole towns, they should do so... I always loved it... tons of loot everywhere... tons of ppl to kill via monster blocking and luring... i just loved it :D

the trinsinic (sp?) undead raid was awesome. I hope DFO has things like this happen. I would love to see a Lizardman raid on one of the ork cities.

[Dazarthas]

Sweet idea, OP... hopefully we see a form of this after Darkfall releases.

[ermorden]

unite and beat off the invasion.

Sounds like a job for that one chick with 4 arms from mortal kombat.

[ermorden]

Yeah but the creatures could still have a low AI level giving newbs a good time but old schoolers no challenge what so ever, people should learn the hard way in a game like this.

You should read about the AI in this game.

[Nuzor]

i hope this is the way forward for darkfall, instead of in WoW where you get a new shitty raid dungeon a month, we get a new global event that is effecting us in the towns and villages and actually threatening our way of life in game, in WoW you know those boss mobs aren't going to come and ransack your town's.

[Baenor]

Didn't Tasos already talk about this sort of thing in one of the updates? I think an example they used was a dragon attacking a city or something.

Would be extremely fun.

[epicor]

Some of you guys are talking about creatures raiding towns and such. While thats really kool to have (and i cant wait to see it) the OP is talking about large scale GM lead events. Things that have to be triggered and would effect the world, not just one town.

I for one would really love to see a minion horde take over a section of agon. Especially if the seige warfare becomes complacent and stale. It would allow for redrawing of territory lines and maybe (via patch) change the landscape within the area that was taken over. Say mines in different locations, new types of cities at clan stones. That sort of thing. You really could even go so far as to hollow out mountains and dig new lakes or dam off old rivers to make major changes to that area.

[IcePillow]

From a humble peasant, I shall rise - to become the greatest warrior in the history of Agon!