I haven’t had much time to get into Darkfall since I was able to purchase a copy a few days ago, but I feel early impressions of a game are still important even if it’s only 2 hrs.  To me Darkfall Online made me feel the same way I did when I got my first hand-me down car when I got my license.  I knew it was a piece of shit, but I was glad to have it.

Right off the bat on the games first loading screen there was already a resolution bug.  I know it’s only a minor thing that doesn’t effect the game at all, but it does speak volumes about how polished the game is and that’s none, zero.  I’m sure there’s a ton of bugs more important than this one which is why it’s probably still there, but common, do you really want the first thing the gamer sees about your game to be a bug?

After you created your character, I selected the wolf race Mahirim, you start out in a little town where you’re presented with a 6 page tool tip guide that’s pretty much tells you how to move and drag and drop items.  A pretty useless guide, or so I thought.  Once I closed that I didn’t see my character so I though maybe it was still loading, I didn’t realize at the time that you start out in first person mode.  After a few seconds I tried to move and saw my cursor move but still no character.   I then right clicked and was suddenly able to move.  This is where reading the tool tip guide would have helped cause I didn’t know there was a button to switch between movement and interface mode.

So after I got acquainted with how that works I was ready to start on my journey.  Since the game gives you no direction I decided to try to find the closes NPC and get a quest.  Once I found him and got 2 quests I was ready to go, but again I found more things that bugged me.  First, it takes 3 clicks to get to your quest description.  You first have to open your journal, then click view quests, then select the quest you want and click description.  I don’t know if it’s just me, but every time I open my journal it took around 5-6 secs, even though there’s nothing in it yet.  It was taking me around 10-12 secs to get to my quests description because of the slow loading and because there’s no quick quest widget where you can easily see your active quests.

Aside from the slow loading journal/quest book, the mini map bugged the hell out of me also.  There are icons all over the map but no legend to tell you what those icons mean.   Then when you mouse over a dot as I did in the screenshot it doesn’t tell you either, just gives you the coordinance.  Telling me what it is would be a hell of a lot more useful.

Moving on, literally, I started to move towards my first quest’s objectives when I was hit with another annoyance.  Running.  I’m not complaining that I have to run, that’s a given when playing  a MMORPG, but as I ran it felt like I was being held back by a giant rubber band.  Randomly it seemed my character would run and slow down constantly.  It must be the lag but it happens every single time, on multiple days even when there was no one around me.  I know it doesn’t seem like a big issue, but honestly the running annoyed me more than anything else, by far.

Now we come back to the interface and movement modes.  As I was working on my quests, I had to loot some goblins bodies.  After you kill something, a few seconds later a tombstone appears that you can loot, but to loot you have to sheath your weapon.  Having a no “loot all” option, something I actually like, you need to open your bag and quickly drag and drop the loot from them before someone comes by and takes it first.  Once you’re done looting, you’re back in interface mode, so you first need to right click to get back to movement mode, then click R to re-arm yourself.   I might be getting picky here, but I don’t like having to click 2 buttons to get back to fighting mode.  After I’m done looting why can’t there be one button that gets me back quickly.

That’s basically it so far.  I’ve done about 5 quests and played for about 2 hrs which has left me with a pretty bad impression of the game.  I’m going to continue playing until my free month expires, however at this point I think it’s going to be pretty hard for Darkfall to win me over.