Darkfall Day 9 & 10

Day 9 was more gathering and spell practice at our clan alliance city.

On Day 10 that city was lost.

One of the things that drew me to Darkfall, despite not caring much for wide-open, free-for-all, full-loot PvP, is the potential for political intrigue and siege warfare. Amusingly, a certain section of the playerbase thinks the game should be about solo PKs killing solo newbies and taking their shit. Fortunately for me, there's a great number who are already engaged in building cities, alliances, and the engines of war. Never mind that our clan and its alliance were just on the losing end of the the latter.

A large alliance helped one of the allied clans attack and capture our allies' city from its stalwart defenders. When I got the news that the attack would be taking place in a few short hours, I made sure to hurry home after work to participate. The outcome was, to my mind, vitually pre-ordanined; I didn't expect us to hold the city, really, not in the face of overwhelming odds. Ironically, by careful study of the rules of war laid out by the game's developer, our undermanned alliance did actually win the contest by capturing the attackers' home village while they were just starting their attack on us. Perhaps that reads a little convoluted, and in fact the rules are full of various suppositions and mitigating clauses. Short version: attack another city but lose your own first and you've lost. Defenders win.

So if we won, how did we lose? Because of a little ruse de guerre called a "fucking bug." Ah, I'll let wiser men debate the finer points. Simply put, the pertinent rules didn't work. And so, fat saved from fire, it was promptly dropped back into the coals.

This is not to say that the attacker's wouldn't have won otherwise. The taking of their home village was a desperate gambit, one that, miraculousy, should have paid off. But kudos to them anyway for amassing a larger and better prepared force.

The siege, or raid, was both awesome and suckified. Seeing the defenders arrayed along the battlements in their armor was very cool. Raining arrows and spells down on the attackers as they finally arrived across the narrow isthmus connecting the city to the land was thrilling. Being in and amongst the chaos of the fray was fun. What sucked: frame rates that made it seem like we were playing a slideshow instead of a game and that also made it nearly impossible to aim at anything; client crashes when respawning after deaths (25% of the time for me); the inability to tell friend from foe unless you happened to know all of the names of the two-dozen-or-so clans involved in the melee; and the lack of a freaking door on the city, making all the walls and fortifications moot.

In its suckitude, the siege reminded me much of those in Shadowbane, which were always insane lagfests once you got above 40 characters on the screen. Last night we had probably a couple hundred, maybe more. I turned down all of my video and audio settings, but it didn't help.

As for me, I died 8 times. I didn't have much equipment to start with, so after the first death it was mainly a matter of running around and trying to attack the enemy with Mana Missile and my newbie staff, although I did try to melee a bit. Having nor armor, though, I tried to keep my distance. I'd look for players sitting down trying to recover their health and stamina, or those relatively low on health. I'd peridodically find a quiet corener outside the walls and rest myself. And at some point, when an alliance commander suggested it, I used my brief time of post-respawn invulnerability to block those smashing our clanstone with siege hammers, to not much effect.

All in all I'm glad I participated. It was about what I expected, which is to say a fun-filled lagfest, even if I did die a lot. Aventurine is going to have to get the siege system worked out if they expect the game to survive for long. It's not much fun to fight by strobe light, and it's no fun at all to play by the rules and get shafted anyway.

As a further irony, this is the city I spent all day getting to on Sunday through many perilous adventures. Now I'm based in the dwarves' capital city. Nice knowing ya, dear city, I guess.