Testare: MMORPG Italia
Grafiknivå: Default Settings
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Vaporware? Not at all! The guys here at Aventurine have great ideas to bring lots of innovations to the MMORPG’s world. Fortunately they’ve been able to put them in practice, and Darkfall Online is an absolutely reality, and is going to come between us. Let’s start from the top:
You log in, choose your preferred race between the six available, the hairstyle and so on, and you can modify everything using a lot of sliders. Then you can choose the starting area between the three available per every race, everyone is different (so there will be a total amount of 18 different starting area).
Initially the Control System seems to be a little complex, because it’s absolutely different from those present in others MMORPG’s titles. Anyway you can learn it in no time, it’s highly clear and has an high range of personalization without much problems: you can reassign every button, but Aventurine has done a great job so you’ll just need for some practice.
Then we’ve taken the first quests from the starting NPC. The game isn’t quest-driven at all, but the first ones help to understand how to move around the world and how to use the Combat System, which is completely in real time: by equipping your weapon, if short ranged, the view changes from the first to the third person (by now there’s no zoom level at all), and you start to utilize it: every blow you score must be calibrated. If the target moves, you won’t hit it. You need to study its movements to understand where it’ll be an half a second later, and then target there so your blow can score efficiently. Ranged attack are more complex: on a low range they are completely useless, and in the long range you have to study the parabolic trajectory your arrows will follow, targeting more or less on the top of the target.
Starting areas are full of Goblins, that Aventurine presents like the “rats” of Darkfall. As soon as mobs see us they will start the attack from the long distance (we are speaking of more than ten meters) using arrows hurled by their bows, and while we run against them to hit with our equipped sword (at start you only have a sword, an axe and a mace), they switch to the melee mode equipping axe and shield. They move trying to avoid our blows and run away if they are in danger. On the other side we’ll be the ones who run away if the enemies are two or three. Once we defeated them, we can loot exactly what they’ve used during the fight: a bow, some arrows, an axe and a shield.
Goblins have a really tweaked intelligence, the only way to defeat them is to use a tactic approach during the fight, by using the environment as our ally: it’s better to go on the top of an hill located near their camp if we want to use a bow, or trying to attract their attention and then hide between the surrounding rocks to catch them.
We tried out the Spell System too: every spell must be selected by pressing one of the rapid button to which we’ve bound them, and then executed by using the left click: you load the spell and then you release it in the right moment, taking care to not hit one of your allies (or your enemies if you’re using an healing spell). To cast a spell you have to get a staff that you can buy from a NPC vendor: staffs permit to cast most of the spells but there will be also some more powerful which will need special staffs.
Let’s move to one of the most discussed aspect of the game: the graphic quality. Well, this won’t be a problem at all: it’s absolutely excellent, fluid and detailed. The effects are really great: someone could hide behind a tree and you could find him by noticing his shadow on the ground, or you could find the position of an enemy hidden by the darkness thanks to the reflex of the moonlight on his armor plate.
The weather changes too and this is an element which greatly have influence on the gameplay: an army can decide to wait a foggy day to score a powerful attack, or the sound of the rain could mask the steps of an assassin behind you.
Then we move to the sound, an element which we didn’t analyze from the soundtrack side because we preferred to concentrate on the environmental effects: these are absolutely detailed and realistic. You can perfectly ear steps in the distance and if you move staying down you’ll do less noise so you can try to score a backstab attack.
Moving to the graphic interface, this is completely different from what we usually see in MMO games. You can be shocked because at start you don’t know where it is but. right clicking, a popup menu will appear, and using it you can open every window you want: minimap (which has a blocked zoom level and doesn’t show anything but points of interest – for example the position of Goblin’s camps – and our party), the inventory, the equipment panel and everything else you need.
Every single window can be switched off by right clicking it again, or we can choose to have it constantly on video as we prefer. The top of personalization. We won’t have any designed interface, no mods to modify it. We are able to create and set it completely as we want.
In conclusion: Darkfall exists, is really innovative and seems to confirm his plans. While we were trying it, here in Athens, we didn’t have any surprise, just confirmations: the game is really interesting, we’ve never seen something like this 'till now, and seems to be ready to realize its promises.
In few words: it’s a completely new approach to the Massive Multiplayer Gaming, and this is exactly what the communities are waiting for. Maybe it’s too soon to say this will be the next Ultima Online but it has all the elements in the right place.
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