I love DDO, but it’s not the sort of MMORPG you play all the time. So I’ve been looking for a more traditional, explorable world, crafting sort of game to play alongside it.
I thought I’d found it a couple of weeks ago with Dark and Light. The featurelist on the website is extraordinarily tempting.
No zones, no loading time, all Dark and Light players within the same world.
A medieval world of 15 000-square-mile of land (not including seas)
A complete, original and easy-to-use automated transportation and warp system.
Hot spot management system: wherever you are in the huge world of DnL, you can call for or be asked for help to conquest, fight, defend…Master Dark and Light while experiencing three evolving axes for every character : combat, craft and social
The general progress of a player’s CXP (craft XP) and FXP (fight XP) axes is totally intertwined with the progress of their commitment to the social axis.
Discover a real social game, where guild and community life involvement is rewarded with SXP (Social XP), and gives access to forts and holdings.
A guild system worked out for far more strategic groups’ actions
A ranking system within guilds and the attributes given to the leader make the management and involvement in a guild a real strategy for every player.
Rich career paths: choose between specialization and versatility.
A greater system of title management, governed by the player’s CXP, FXP and SXP levels, which allows you to become a lord, baron, count, duke and even the king, by bargaining, negotiating…and being smart!
Diverse game aspects promising numerous challlenges: crafting, conquest of territories, fortress management, resource gathering, exploration…On a side note, never forget to swear allegiance to your faction!A deep and refined crafting system to specialize your character the way you want
A crafting system based on five families and offering a great variety of combinations for recipes: tanner, tailor, armorer, blacksmith and jeweller.
A deep crafting system where players specialize in the craft family they choose in order to reach the highest performance in one or various sectors of this associationBecome a smart and brave strategist to perform your fort or holding management!
The combat system allows you to assault a fortress
Maintain your fort and protect holdings to keep strong and powerful
Discover the economical system based on three elements: holdings, the extraction of resources and merchants all over the world.
Choose among 300 individual elements in order to rebuild your armor and try new weapons such as bows, rods, staves, swords or even, thrown weapons and dual wielding weapons.
Try new robes, chainmails and clothingChoose to explore the world of Dark and Light the way you want
Use the teleporting points which have been placed in key locations (near villages and places of interests) to move faster
Fly in the air without restrictions with your own dragon, glider and parachuteDo not forget to swear allegiance to your god, this may be very helpful !
Having a high faction can have an in game impact: increase of the mobs’ aggressiveness, benefits from divine protection…
Make donations in temples and be sure that your faction will increase !Introducing a deep and addictive storyline which contains advanced management options
A deep storyline that allows rich and varied game options and opportunities
Discover the 13 realms: three non-PvP kingdoms, ten kingdoms to conquer (PvP allowed)… The Dark, Light, Al Drifa, Ysatis’ and Agnar’s kingdoms will be open at release. Kingdoms beyond those will open as the players evolve in Dark and Light.
500 quests at release
Choose the race of your choice amongst 12 races, elect your orientation thanks to 14 classes, benefit from 27 equipment slots per character and many specific slots per skill
Entirely dedicated to evolve according to gamers in-game decisions and strategies: DnL game rules will allow gamers to manage their own DnL storyline, create their own events to set their plans of conquest or fortresses attacks.
A Game-mastering team in five languages entirely dedicated to enhancing the role of players in a truly interactive scenario: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Unfortunately, what sounds on paper like a brilliant game, feels more like the MMORPG equivalent of “The Producers”. Almost every decision you could make to destroy your game has been taken. The list could go on and on, but the thing I take the greatest exception to is their bizarre pre-order system.
In most games, pre-orderers get a little something extra. Maybe something physical, like some heroclix, or a coin. Often you get a few days head-start, or some minor item or cool sounding title. DnL pre-orders, called Pioneers, potentially get level 35, 250k goth (goth being the currency), and a 2 man summonable flying riding dragon. This, in a game based around PvP, is a massive advantage. It’ll be a long time before any regular folks catch up with the Pioneers. We are utterly 2nd class citizens, wandering the massive world with it’s randomly placed monsters, on foot. Needless to say, the Pioneers tend to think it’s a rather better game. After all, they don’t have to worry about the broken transport system, the difficulty of making enough money to feed youself and keep your gear repaired, and that the monsters have been randomly scattered across the starter kingdoms, with neither rhyme nor reason.
On the first day they let non-preorders in, they’ed forgotten to make the starting areas non-pvp. Slaughter predictably commenced. Not helped also by the fact that the human starting location spawns you in within agro range of some pretty darn scary spiders. Only the kindness of our Pioneer faction-mates allowed anyone to survive that fateful day.
I could go on, but frankly it’s not worth it. Do not touch this miserable excuse for a game with a bargepole. At least not for several months. I’ll be playing out my month, and I have the gravest doubt that I shall be seen beyond that. I think I might have gained a fear of small developers, which would be a shame.