I’m in the Dawntide Beta (Phase 2, I think?) now.  As you know there is no NDA.
I downloaded the client which was about 370mb’s compressed and 1.21 GB installed. I logged in and played for about 20 minutes quickly to just get a feel for where the game is at. In my opinion, having tested a great many games, Dawntide is still in that fresh Alpha phase resembling most games after they have just left internal testing. There are only maybe…2 other games that I’ve tested that were at this point when going to beta and they remained in beta for over a year. Dawntide easily has that long to go before it is ready.
The atmosphere was charming. I’m a sucker for the low-fantasy medieval stuff. The little village you start in is quaint and things seem to have been placed to expedite the testing process. It’s all about making sure something works right now.
My character (named Keen for any of you in beta) is a Brawler type with Mining/Blacksmithing/Long sword/block/heavy armor advanced skills. I put 3 into str, 2 into dex, and 5 into intelligence. I don’t know what effect the stats will have on my character.
Crafting is important to me in Dawntide. I ran directly to a “mine” (cave with rocks in it) and gathered 20 copper ore. It took me a little while to figure out how to learn my copper ingot recipe because the crafting interface is a tad clunky and not intuitive (oldschool, actually). I made 5 ingots (took 5 ore each) and then bought a ringmail boot recipe on accident while browsing the blacksmithing recipes. Oops! Turns out it’s not all that bad since it only requires 6 ingots.
That’s where I stopped for the night. I’ll continue to play around and see what I can accomplish tomorrow.
Great to hear you’re in the beta. I did some research into the game after you had mentioned it a while back. The concept and idea seem solid. With a good amount of work and polish it could be a great game.
I am very excited to see where this game will go. I myself am an old school beta SWG player that wants the “glory days”, so to speak, back. I’ve been a long time reader of this blog and I felt that this game was worth chiming in on. My friends and I were super involved with SWG in the early days on Bria when it was still just a baby beta server and we all say that to this day, we have never had an MMORPG experience such as that. It truly was about the community and having said community make the game experience whatever they wanted. This MMORPG is showing amazing promise in that field.
Granted I am right there with you when looking at new games with a grain of salt; after all, we have all been bitten in the ass a bit by inflated promises. However you have to respect the hell out of a studio that comes right out and says what it’s going to deliver, where they are getting their ideas, and are not trying to shovel their own self serving garbage down our collective throats. Games now a days need to be less about pleasing everyone, as they are about actually creating an entertaining bloody product! I see SWG as the king of all niche games, (well the way it started out anyway); it seemed to have it all even with the horrid rubber banding and bugs. It had a die hard community, an open world where you explored all that you could JUST for the screen shots, an incredibly fun faction system, a “do it yourself” story line with tons of room to RP (if that’s your thing), and possibly the, dare I say it, best housing system that I’ve seen.
I have yet to actually get my hands on Dawntide, however I eagerly await my change to get into the meat and potatoes of the game so I can test my theories and see if they have any weight to them. I really hope that my cross section of these two games holds true, at least in some respects, and that this development studio will finally do what no other studios can comprehend now a days, and that’s stop thinking on such a ridiculously singular mindset!
In closing I’d like to say that Dawntide has put a glimmer of hope in my eye, I sincerely hope that my faith is not misplaced.
Sounds interesting. Never heard of the game before 🙂
I’ve had a fair amount of difficulty getting Dawntide to run since it moved to Beta2, although I had no real problems in Beta1. I’ll have another bash this weekend.
So far I’ve yet to see more than one or two other player-characters, so I am guessing there aren’t many people in beta playing GMT hours. It’s a game with huge potential but I agree it’s a long, long way from finished. Beta1 was definitely what other games would call “Alpha”.
It has a great feel to it, especially for a largely empty world, and the look of the game is perfect for a low-magic, medieaval game and I get the strong feeling that the designers for once have a clear idea of what they want to achieve..
Cool been looking into this game recently…no beta yet 🙁
Cool!
I agree, Dawntide does have a way to go. What excites me about the game though is that everything the developers have said is smart, makes sense, and sounds much like my dream, sandbox MMORPG.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much time and I have not been a great beta tester, but it is still at the top of my list of games.
Just got into beta myself. Actually got a character made and walked around for a few minutes before I had to run to work. Good looking world thus far, but have not made it out of town as yet. When I logged back in yesterday, was greeted by the wonderful grey screen some players have. Working on fixing this issue today.
Someone tell me how I can get my hands on this beta so I can give this game a real review!
@Faucius
Here
http://www.dawntide.net/beta.html
someone in the beta please send me a friend invite???
This reminds me (from the videos so far) a lot like Asheron’s Call and a mix of Ultima Online, but mostly AC. I’m surprised I have not seen anyone else reference this yet.
I just finished downloading the client and am patching up now. Ironically I found out about dawntide from the forums of Mortal Online.