First wave of Darkfall beta invites went out and…

I didn’t get one!  Or did I… if I did get one, I couldn’t tell you.  (I didn’t get one, I swear…yet)  Right from their news section:

This is an update about what is happening today:

We have sent out the first wave of invites to clans and individual testers. We will send more waves of invites within a few hours. Invited players will be able to download the Darkfall installer.

We are applying the latest patch, and players will be able to start patching soon, and entering the game.

We are spacing out the invites in order to facilitate the download of the client and patching. We will continue sending out more invites every day until we reach our capacity.

Since this first phase has to do with stress testing the servers, and doing final testing on features, we are not lifting the NDA until this testing is concluded.

We apologize for the problems with the forums and the website today, we have been experiencing denial of service attacks, and we are working to resolve them.

At least this should finally silence the “Zomg vaporware!” crowd.   The game has moved into a more public beta phase now that they are sending out waves of invites to individual and clan testers.   The information about the NDA dropping after “this test” (I read that as “phase”) can’t come soon enough.  I want to hear more about the game than the table scraps I’ve been able to find in dark alleys from men in trench coats wanting to sell me watches along with their info.

Check your emails regularly for the next couple days!   Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who gets to inhale that ‘vapor’ 😉

  • I’m eagerly awaiting MBJ’s announcement next week, hope it’s some awesome news about the future else it might be good news for DF (though I have close to ZERO belief in DF being worth my time, I’ll prob still try it).

  • “Zomg vaporware” crowds can never be silenced! 🙂

    The NDA being still intact may indicate some problems with the game itself. I understand the ‘semi-indie company’ status of Darkfall developer, and that their resources may not match the worldwide interest in this game, but so close to launch and… ALMOST nothing for the masses.

    They may be over-careful though (and many games published this year seem to confirm this is necessary nowadays)

    And at what Punk said – we really have no way of checking it out. Perhaps there will be more beta leaks on Youtube. (Should be, shouldn’t it?) Again they may say whatever they want about beta & only gold phase game, actually purchasable and playable, will be the proof we need.

    The shroud of mystery around this game reminds me of “the Ginger invention” that generated a lot of hot air few years ago. Remember that? People (read geeks :)) speculated about it over the whole globe. Some expected antigrav power, some low cost fuel some went into weird theories about time travel. The actual invention was… mediocre at best.

    The same is with Darkfall IMO, according to the hype this is THE GAME, the tanglible results may vary…

    And finally, Keen, thanks for your blog, I really enjoy reading it.

  • I am close to believing it… but won’t until Keen can come out and say, “I am playing it and it is pretty good.”

  • Ofcourse it’s something, and I still don’t think this is vaporware, but Tasos is REALLY screwing over there fans. They talked about a trial, but this is nothing more then an extended beta. They’re not even lifting the NDA.

  • There are forums out there that completely ignore the NDA and will let you know what players really think. Something-leaks or beta-something-or-other. 😉

  • @Cowabungaa: I won’t disagree there.

    @Snafzg: Yep, leaks are everywhere and at this point I think it’s irresponsible and wrong to even have an NDA up. I’m of the mindset that when your game is in “open beta” (However you may classify that), and about a month away from release when you’re going to be offering Pre-orders, that you need to allow information about your game to be available to the public.

    @Werit: I hope to be able to deliver that message soon. I will definitely let people know what I think about the game at the first opportunity.

  • @Keen: I’m glad to see that you are interested in DF. I can’t wait either and looking forward to your reviews…if they pull this off watch out mmo world.

  • If you remember correctly, AOC didnt have its NDA the whole way up till launch, and they still got a shit ton sub’s and still fell hard as hell. Personally the NDA being up till release wouldnt bother me at all. Even games like Starcraft II and stuff like that arn’t allowed to be released info wise until release that includes the NDA dropping. And if you think you find “all” about a game before it releases..those are probably just stuff the company told you to get you to buy it. Why should MMORPG’s be diffrent?

  • On my guild forum my GM posted that he was able to get anyone that wanted in to Darkfall Beta and invite. I really haven’t heard much about this game other then it’s hardcore PVP. Maybe I’ll take him up on his offer

  • I’ve been trying to keep up with all things confirmed on the Darkfall release and keep them all in one place for people to find on my darkfalling.com site. I’m getting some private info from people who are actually in the beta, so at least I know the beta is real and they’re loving it.

    Their NDA is really tight, a lot tighter than any games I have beta’d before. The only reason that I can really think of is that they’ve developed everything in game themselves instead of contracting it out, so maybe they’re a little over protective.

    Ah well, the leaks are coming now. They’re all over youtube and the betaleaks blog. So far so good. It may not be the prettiest game out there, but I don’t really care as long as it plays well.