12th Warcry Developer Journal

I look at it like this, Jarly:

If Tasos has the time to write a seven paragraph dev journal about how he has no time to release footage or information, he could have just as easily spent that time giving people something they actually want: detailed and meaninful updates, including screenshots and game footage. Tasos is (or should be) aware of all important going ons regarding that codebase and the graphics engine. He, presumably, has a compiled version of the game at his fingertips, to be launched and video captured on a whim, should he spend the ten minutes installing some video capture software.

Instead, we get him wanking off at a keyboard once every four-to-six weeks, waxing poetic about how great the beta is coming along (for fourth year in a row) and generally stalling for time.

There is, in 2007, NO FUCKING EXCUSE for not releasing materials. You don't need a PR guy. You don't need a special staff of Intel-trained engineers. It's a damn screen capture.

Here's my theory on why we dont' see any progress/footage: the game looks like shit and plays like shit on a large scale because these guys started building it years ago and are not experienced game developers and have no idea how to really balance a load or apply a bloom effect without eating up resources; rather, they are merely fanbois of Shadowbane who thought they could build a better mousetrap. They're embarassed of said laggy gameplay on a WAN, and the archaic and outdated graphics engine, and know that releasing that footage will completely kill all the momentum they've managed to eke out of their official forums (masochistic lot of suckers that we are), but simply do not have the resources to fix it up. They have no plan moving forward and are desperately trying to secure publishing before this all comes to light and the public turns on them.

I will conclude this with an open letter to Tasos, and the Darkfall developers:

If you happen to stumble upon this and manage to make it this far, do the following before writing an ascerbic reply bereft of any real content or meaning (your specialty): 1) go ride your giant cat around and tell yourself how awesome that :06 video was again, 2) go wash up, then 3) come back to the keyboard and prove me wrong, or agree.

I'm betting you're incapable of line item 3. And, for the record, "proving me wrong" will require more than simply stating facts to the contrary. Show us something or STFU.

This article begins with Tasos bitching about how the DF community didn't throw him a goddamn parade for releasing a video of a giant cat walking through the woods. It's been seven years, and they've released four videos, and one of them was of a cat. Walking around.

Fuck that dude forever. Seriously. He goes on to say that videos take considerably more time to produce and uses this as his excuse for why they usually only release still shots. Perhaps someone should invite him to check out YouTube and how, in fact, he's either lying or clueless.

The fact that Darkfall is mentioned by anyone is because the MMO industry has been stagnant since WoW came out and effectively distilled the entire genre into one client; I am going to both laugh and cry when DF fails to release before AoC, Gods and Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Huxley, and Whoknowswhatelse and is completely and utterly forgotten, a la Roma Victor.

I've been following this thing for years, and enduring the snotty attitude of the devs for roughly the same amount of time. Come uppance is nigh.