Nothing like a little dramatics to break the writer’s block, right?
Darkfall Online released just a little while ago, and the MMO, with mostly unrestricted combat and old school elements like looting of bodies, celebrates the great constant of the Internet.
That constant is that if you build it, they will come – come and break it, that is. It’s fun building the sandcastle though, right?
Broken Toys has an interesting read regarding the nature of Darkfall and why success is needed, and I do have to agree. There honestly does have to be a place where the hardcore, destroy-your-enemies-and-simulate-teabagging-on-them-afterwards players have to go. Darkfall’s target market probably includes males between the ages of 18 – 35, who may or may not cling to their copies of pre-Trammel Ultima Online in the dark and sleep better at night knowing they wrecked someone enough to make them log off.
All of this, by the way, is my perception. I actually don’t know much about the game’s specifics, what it’s targeting, what is really the detail in the Darkfall marketing machine. But what I do have is perception.
Outside perception is important in any game’s marketing life. After all, if people see huge explosions and great mechanics sprinkled in with a bit of violence, it is immediately a quality 5-star title. We can ignore the rage that happens when someone actually purchases said game and finds it to, let’s just say, “not live up to expectations” (because saying “epic fail” would just be so cliche).
What I see from Darkfall’s perception is that we have a game that is marketed to “hardcore” players. Sadly “hardcore” has become in this day and age all too associated with another word that has almost the same number of letters, “douchebag”. The demand of a game with “real” PvP, where you not only get to kill your opponent but also take their stuff while simultaneously typing how you slept with their mom, is there. In fact, it was there so much that developer Aventurine was unprepared for the onslaught, including server downtime on launch day, forum shutdowns, and numerous outages.
Don’t worry though, Aventurine – this can only be a good thing. Being so busy that your servers crash and that people can’t pre-order your game fast enough has to mean you’re a success. You can now thumb your noses at the people who called your game vaporware and scratched their heads as the design languished for years before receiving a sudden jolt of inspiration (read: probably money) to actually finish the job.
The severe launch problems can only discourage the MMO tourism aspect of people looking to “try out” a game before going back to the one they played before, usually with war stories and campfire tales of failure and crap on the level of the sequel to the Blair Witch Project. So what you have left, after constant downtime, a slew of bugs and hardware that chokes on the critical mass of players is really your “dedicated” fanbase, the ones who will stick with the game for years (or however long they can put up with nonsense). After all, if a little downtime makes the carebears cry, it must be because they suck and not at all because Aventurine was not prepared and just a little cocky, right?
But don’t take my worrd for it. Just go look at the Darkfall forums, and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. Congratulations Aventurine. You have your fanbase – a fanbase that is frothing at the mouth and is in constant need to gnaw on the nearest bit of human flesh laying around (like your foot or the hand you’re feeding them with), but a fanbase nonetheless.