Status Update January 17, 2007

[Tasos]

Hello everyone, we hope you’re doing well. Today we have a small status update for you which we’ll follow up with more as needed.

The beta development milestone was met early in December. Since then we've had a fully functional and stable beta build up on remote servers, which is being patched regularly. At the moment we're using part of this system to show the game to prospective partners, distributors, publishers, technology providers, etc. Our motivation here is to provide the best quality assurance, distribution, and service for the game and its players, so we consider this to be a very important phase for Darkfall.

We've already planned for self-publishing, but we need to know who's willing and able to do it better. We can’t announce a clear ETA on the first phase of the public testing yet, but we'll keep you posted on developments.

In the meanwhile we're working overtime on balancing, optimizing, beautifying, adding content to the game etc. We've added some new features, and a few surprises that we weren't sure we'd be able to get in before launch.

We've also hired a few extra people to help in the final push, animators, worldbuilders, and sound engineers. There's a lot of work to be done in all these fields, and in applying the final polish on Darkfall.

Development-wise we’re grinding away, a lot of repetitive tasks, with little to report but you should know that everything is going well.

That’s it in broad strokes, now we’ll try to give you a little insight on our update inconsistencies so that you know where we’re coming from:

It's easy to imagine that 5 minutes is all it takes to make an update, a developer will pop online to say hi, or that we could just appoint someone from the community to generate updates. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works in a professional environment. There are clear guidelines, we're bound by NDAs, and all disclosure needs to be approved, as is the case with most development studios.

Often due to disclosure issues we’re forced to be vague, or talk around topics and this is sometimes mistaken for coyness, by those who wish to interpret it that way.

We get plenty of requests for publicity, most of them involve us having to create regular content, or answering interview questions we've answered a million times before. Answers to questions we haven't answered before are often in the realm of information we're not allowed to disclose.

As all our resources are put into game development, it's a stretch for us to de-prioritize in order to create Darkfall features and updates. Even so, taking a look at what other MMOs in development are doing, it seems that we've produced more substantial content than most, while giving the community an extensive and truthful look under the hood.


It’s important to remember that we're just game developers making a game, not trying to string anyone along, we're not looking for investors, we're not looking for pre-sales, there's no conspiracy, so we don't invest a lot of time in hyping Darkfall up, when we need to be in our perpetual development crunch. We firmly believe that the game speaks for itself.

Whenever we’ve dropped off the radar, it's because we were working hard, and not because some catastrophe had befallen Darkfall development. If we don’t update there’s nothing substantial to report, but we’ll try harder to communicate this and to stay in touch with the community.

We’ll follow up with some fresh updates within the next couple of weeks, and keep you posted on any developments as permitted.

Thanks for reading.

[Moosebish2]

Woohoo! Update!

The beta development milestone was met early in December. Since then we've had a fully functional and stable beta build up on remote servers, which is being patched regularly. At the moment we're using part of this system to show the game to prospective partners, distributors, publishers, technology providers, etc. Our motivation here is to provide the best quality assurance, distribution, and service for the game and its players, so we consider this to be a very important phase for Darkfall.

When I first signed on, I'll be honest, I wanted beta to come ASAP. Well, it's been a few months and I've come to realize that I don't care when it comes out, just as long as it coems out. I want darkfall to be the next best MMORPG stealing millions of players away from WoW. So, keep up the good work and I'll keep checking for updates.

[doma]

heey, Tasos posting. Why dont you wake up Claus man. Let him post some

[Crying Hyena]

Makes sense.

[crazyhorse]

thanks for the beta update. Keep chuggin along, we are all by your side!

[freeze_SD]

finally

thx

is that the "whole" january update?
no offense at all... just curios

[Maxim]

*cheer*

[Shads]

Great update, thanks for calming the spirits Tasos. Glad to hear everything is on track with game development, I'm pretty impatient (as well as a lot of other people) to see what these surprises you mentioned are going to be.

As far as regular extensive updates are concerned, don't worry. There is a big majority of silent lurking Darkfallers out there whose favorite pass-time isn't yelling at the devs for updates. Don't pay attention to the angry trolls, and keep up the good work.

PS
Still, I'm sure you can manage a few screenshots of battle situations (even with interface windows hidden). A couple or so a week would make the people on these forums quite happy

[Maglubiyet]

Thanks for the update, been waiting for one to come.

Be nice to know some of the few surprises that you have fit into the game. Although im sure as you said those are things that fall under your NDA.

[freeze_SD]

Originally Posted by Shads

PS
Still, I'm sure you can manage a few screenshots of battle situations (even with interface windows hidden). A couple or so a week would make the people on these forums quite happy

hehe, aye
you don't have to show us new things ^^
it's just that we can say "wow, that looks cool"
even if it's just another human in dragon armor ^^

[Lordi]

woot

[losinglife]

sweet and i was just about to hit the sack too

[Yuengling.OoB]

surprises = farming & animal breeding

[Mushukyou]

Originally Posted by Tasos

[FONT=Tahoma]
Whenever we’ve dropped off the radar, it's because we were working hard, and not because some catastrophe had befallen Darkfall development. If we don’t update there’s nothing substantial to report, but we’ll try harder to communicate this and to stay in touch with the community.

We’ll follow up with some fresh updates within the next couple of weeks, and keep you posted on any developments as permitted.

Thanks for reading.

I'm sorry the kids have to whine. I hope you don't take it personally when they do. I'm sure you guys are doing a great job. I know your game is a bright light in the darkness, so I look forward to it big time.

You guys should get a MySpace account to help advertise the game.
It's free and works great.

[PaleOne]

But Tasos,

We don't need all that other crap we just need exactly what you gave us its like leaving a a bunch of messages on you "A friends" answering machine and not getting a call back. Just let us know your still alive

I don't need anymore features to be announced Im happy with the game as described Thank you again for taking the time to let us know things are procedding as planned

Ill be good for at least a week now

Pale