Darkfall Online is an MMORPG released in 2009 and got shut down in 2012. Darkfall: New Dawn is a licensing project rebooting the original game and then will continue to improve its functionalities until it reaches its full potential.
Design wise, New Dawn will stay true to the dream that was sold before the original launch, while picking up the good aspects of what the game ended up being years later. Our focus being to create a meaningful empire building game where sandbox features and PvP are just tools to an end.
Darkfall Online boasts impressive technology that has yet to be equaled in the industry, providing large scale battles with projectile calculation and player collisions in a seamless open world.
True Action Combat
Most of the game is played in first person view, for archery and magic, and a close third person view for melee combat. It has naval combat, mounted combat and an heroic fantasy version of tanks.
You could compare Darkfall to an MMOFPS, but with a living, breathing, virtual world.
Characters in Darkfall are completely free of restrictions. This is a game without classes that offered a multitude of skills and spells that increased with use and let players feel the limit of their own abilities. There are no mages, warriors or rangers, only combatants that use whatever tools they can to reach victory.
Large Scale Warfare
And victory is of the utmost importance, as Darkfall is an open PvP full loot game, where equipment pieces are consumable commodities rather than a traditional “best in slot”. War in Agon is just as much about economy than it is about fame and glory.
Darkfall pits three asymmetric racial alliances over the control of Agon. In traditional heroic fantasy fashion, the Humans, Elves and Dwarves are allies. Against them are the Orks and Mahirims, a race of wolfmen. And finally, standing alone, are the cave dwelling creations of a living god: the Alfars.
This racial war aspect, and the alignment system, balances the harshness of the world, as you almost always find shelter amongst your kin.
However, where Darkfall shines the most is in its conquest and clan driven political system. The game is comprised of capturable holdings and villages where players can create a home and influence the day to day lives of each other through war, alliances, sieges and trade.
A lot of these features were at the first step of implementation and aside from the combat aspect, Darkfall was rather incomplete. New Dawn will finish and expand Darkfall to make it the ultimate empire building game, but also a game where players can act as their own agent and have meaningful daily activities.
