The World-Graphics-Technology
The consensus about the graphics is that they’re much better than expected, something we’ve been saying all along. The game has been very stable and smooth overall, even in the full debug mode it’s running in. We’re experiencing really good gameplay from all over the world, even though our beta servers are in Germany, we’ve had no problems reported by testers in Western N. America, or in the Far East.
"The Client is astonishingly stable (except for the Crashes while changing resolutions/graphic settings - though this has got alot better since the last patches too.”
“The meticulously detailed world map is as huge as promised and feels so much more 3-dimensional than past MMORPG's that relied on height mapping. The overpasses, caves, chasms and crags, they add huge amounts of atmosphere to the environment.”
“Only testing for a couple of hours now, but i just have to say, everything looks just so detailed... i am not really into gfx, but i am really amazed on all the things i've seen so far... very impressive...”
“I walked from Chopping Necks (westernmost Ork starter town) to the coast to the east over 2 or 3 hours and NOT ONCE was I bored with repetitive landscape. There is almost always a settlement of goblins, freaky bird-men, hivekin, or something going on, and it's on all sides of you. I swam to an island off the coast, then to a second island. In total, the trip took about 4-5 hours one-way. I explored what looked like ~3% of the total map. Do the math! The world is gigantic!”
“Build 50 is extremely stable. I haven't crashed once and I've been playing a lot of hours. I have found very few bugs.”
“The amount of scaling possible with the graphics is genius. You have more options than ever and they all make sense. You don't have to have an enthusiast-level rig to enjoy df.”
“From the moment of logging in I was in awe. The world is simply amazing and one cannot describe the intricacies and details of the vast world of Agon. I have never been a visually captivated gamer but I can't help but stop to admire the craftsmanship that formed this virtual world.”
“The graphics scale pretty well apparently. The game looks fine. They need to do some optimization, but everything is running in debug mode and I get 60-90 FPS.”
“The world is amazing, I must say. I've only been around the Alfar parts so far - pure awesomesauce there - and every part there feels unique.
I walked around fighting some goblins near one of the starting zones and looked up and thought that the sky looked abit strange, but then realized that it was not the sky that I was looking at, I were inside the mountain and I was looking at a huge cliff that were hanging over me. So you can see that they have spent alot of work shaping the world, which is again, pure awesomesauce.
Climbing mountains feels really cool as well. To stand up there looking down at the world and you get the feeling that you can almost touch the sky.
I've only been around the Alfar parts, but never get bored exploring. The world really is huge, when you look at how long it took to walk from A to B on the map.”
“I wont nit pick for silly things but the game it self ran very smooth I was running at 120-150 ping to the European servers. I only ran across one lag spot as I was running around the land. I love seeing the skill gain system working just from using abilities, it's been to long to see that. I have a high end system but I run on an 8800GT (waiting for release to get my new card) and it still ran smooth.”
“I think there should be more about the quality of the graphics as that was one of the major criticisms made by your detractors. After playing, I honestly think you guys managed to make fools out of them.”
“The client is very stable, haven't had a single crash. The worldbuilding is very good indeed (as other's have noted as well). It looks and feels believable as a world filled with strange creatures, and that you can go wherever you want is really fun.”
“Performance is better than I would have ever imagined on my machine.”
“The graphics are strange in some places and absolutely superb in others. Some stuff like rocks, gardens and books just blew me away with the detail and beauty. Some rocks looked like a photograph while others had some pretty sharp edges to them and didn't look very real. Note that I have not seen much of the world and it is strictly limited to the dwarven starting area.”
“Main thing that has impressed me so far is the quality of the worldbuilding. The people responsible for that really outdid themselves and should be proud of their work. It is sheer delight to go striking out in a random direction and seeing what you can see; both overall settings and nuanced details are superb.”
“Have u ever stop playing, sit back and admire the sunrise or the sunset in ANY other MMO? Darkfall was my first...
Yes the graphics ARE that good”
“Every bit of the music I've heard so far fits the setting it's in, especially the Alfar starting areas and Shoal itself. It's not the typical fantasy MMO style tunes that I had expected but more eerie and dark, sometimes hollow feeling. Even the weird almost digital/ambient-industrial sounding splash screen music is well done and gets you in just the right mood to play.
And the sound effects are everything they should be, from the blocking of a wooden shield, the tinking of metal on metal, the character's vocal grunts and the spattering of blood... on everything. Even when I don't have arrows sticking out of me already, I can tell something is shooting at me and usually from which direction, when I hear the whizzing of an arrow fly past my head.”
“Client is stable and amazing, i've been playing since the MUD/"The Realm"/
UO 97 before T2A (The Second Age) and i've seen bad clients and good clients, ive seen non-stop .exe crashes and memory leaks (shadowbane.exe anyone? lovely memory leak that took over 6+ months to address) to amazing stability (darkfall client) WoW was another well done and stable client, even with all the add-ons that could be attached to the GUI, I also beta tested both WoW and Warhammer, my experience with warhammer was less than satisfying and there graphics aren't as good as people claim they are because for the graphics I receive compared to the performance I
get, to me indicates they did not optimize their graphics/polygons/etc. In closing the Darkfall client does not seem to have any noticeable memory leaks, however cluster loads can seem completely random at times, however are short, 5-15 seconds range = great.”
"The world is massive feeling and as I looked up at the sky I saw the sun moving. The shadows drew closer to me from a tower up on a hillside and I was looking at how the shadow changed as the sun moved. Then I got annihilated by a pack of goblins scouts because I was paying too much attention to the wrong parts of my surroundings."
“I can't give enough credit to the art direction. Everywhere you go, you get a pretty clear "Darkfall" ambience that is truly unique and immersive. There is a lot of attention to detail and you can tell that there was a lot of love put into some of the design. The quality of graphics and animation have a little inconsistency, but overall there is a "wow" factor that I never expected from an MMO that gives you free range over everything. Just watching the sun/moon phases takes up way too much of my time. I never thought I'd be sitting in the swamps of Morak and commenting on the beauty of the sun eclipsing as it sets under a misty horizon.”
Next: AI
