Archives for 2012

We’re pleased to have one our of readers, Dylan Underhill, write a guest post on Dark Fall: Unholy Walls. He’s part of the Harlequin guild – thanks Dylan! If you’d like to share your thoughts on an MMO you’re passionate about, drop us a line!

Darkfall: Unholy Wars is an open world MMO.  No rules, no theme park – it’s a single instance world, everyone shares it. Total sandbox.  There is no targeting system other than you aim and you kill.  It is a game of jerks, circle jerking and jerkwads.  Oh, forgot to mention – it’s full loot PvP with siege weaponry and big toys.

This isn’t a game for carebears.  Strange things happen to these wonderful creatures in Darkfall.  Scientist from all over the globe have come together to deduce how Darkfall differs from other games. They were able to come up with this simple formula for the layman:

Full loot PVP Sandbox you say?

That’s right adventurer!  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a ‘sandbox’ MMO, a sandbox MMO is your typical MMO, but lacking a rigid structure.  Sure there are tools available to you, but at the end of the day you can do anything within the parameters of the game.  City building, raiding, mercenary work, city sieges, ship sieges, trading / merchanting – they’re all viable ways of playing the game. If you have the will, you could most probably accomplish it. The catch is, this isn’t a game that is easy to play solo.   Sure you can live your life on the sidelines or in the small scale, raiding, plunderering and pillaging at will, however, it takes a guild to build a city, an alliance of stout comrades to defend it and the resources, wit and ability to take one.

The rewards for taking a city in a game such as this, besides all the wonderful loot and plunder, along with the land, are the associated reputation and the fight. There is a certain satisfaction to be gained from this game as demonstrated by this infographic:

My mum told me this game had a grind

Your mother is a classy lady.  If she were talking about the original Darkfall, she would be 100% correct.  Aventurine has taken Unholy Wars in a direction similar to EVE Online.  They have a role system, which unlike its predecessor where you can level every skill and use them all at once (which led to people being almost required to level so many skills to be competitive).  In Unholy Wars, you can choose a role, which gives you the ability to use any of the available skills to that role.  These skills still require levelling, but there is not nearly as much required to max out a role versus its predecessor.

Furthermore, you can (almost – a limiting system is in place to stop it happening too frequently) freely swap between roles, so if you ever get bored of being a warrior and caving in skulls, swap it up and wear some robes for a bit.

TL;DR (typical!)

Being a heavily involved sandbox game, Darkfall is a great opportunity to join or create a tight-knit clan/community. The PvP players rely on the crafters, the crafters rely on the PvE players for materials, and the PvP players for protection, and the PvE players rely on the friendly PvP players for protection. It can certainly be played solo, but it will make life difficult..

It is also a great opportunity to get involved with other communities/clans via world politics. Meta Gaming is a huge aspect. You can become powerful through war, through the political propaganda machine, or through economic superiority. The choice is yours!