Mr. Jennings, you didn’t exactly “discover” him, did you?

Ceadrick :
I know people like this. The guy is serious. He thinks he’ll be somebody because he can play a video game. Scary. On a side note I do hope this game does well. Why you ask. Because then there will be a place for the nutters.

He’s precisely the type of guy who inspired me to write this a couple of days ago.

But anyway, his life to waste.

Vetarnias :@TariqOne
But if it turns out to be fraud or scam, what’s your recourse? They’re in Greece and distribute it themselves, so if what they’re doing is okay under Greek and/or European law, you can’t do anything. You can’t have your local authorities pull the product off the shelves if you live anywhere else because it isn’t there to begin with. It’s basically at your own risk, which is probably one of the main reasons I decided to hold out on the game until I obtained some confirmation of its credibility.

I agree with everything you’ve said. Indeed, I went from must-buy to probably-never-ever myself over the course of these last few months. I deliberately held off on yelling fraud for all the reasons you set forth above (plus my constant fear of devolving into that angry-internetman-the-customer-is-always-right old man I know lurks inside of me).

I believe or want to believe there is a place for a Darkfall-like game, despite the fact that such things seem to attract the most fetid group of cretins imaginable. Yeah, despite all that I want to play the game described on the Darkfall website. I just don’t think Darkfall is that game.

In that respect alone, Darkfall seems to be an exception in that it lacks complete mainstream visibility. No advertising whatsoever — and this coming from a former player of Pirates of the Burning Sea, which was barely advertised but which at least had some store presence through the SOE distribution deal.

So on that level at least, Darkfall is not placed into the situation of other games such as Age of Conan, where the box listed features that one could accuse of being misleading.

So how do you hear about Darkfall? Through forums, or at the most distant from such sources of information, word of mouth from your real-life friends. In fact, the last day’s development just indicated that Aventurine is perfectly satisfied with reaching its player core through their forums. What is that number usually thrown around about the percentage of MMO players who read the forum? Five percent? Ten?

It’s the first game where I can’t imagine a player NOT reading the forums on a regular basis. I’ll give Aventurine that, they’ve managed to attract all the demographic they were ever interested in purely through internet word of mouth, to the extent that any additional advertising became purely redundant.

But if it turns out to be fraud or scam, what’s your recourse? They’re in Greece and distribute it themselves, so if what they’re doing is okay under Greek and/or European law, you can’t do anything. You can’t have your local authorities pull the product off the shelves if you live anywhere else because it isn’t there to begin with. It’s basically at your own risk, which is probably one of the main reasons I decided to hold out on the game until I obtained some confirmation of its credibility.

Their snafu over billing isn’t exactly encouraging.

Vetarnias :Well, we’re talking about a company that still hasn’t updated its website’s front page. It oozes professionalism through every pore.

Beyond that, it hasn’t updated any of its content. Reading the FAQ and features list, they may as well be describing another game entirely.

At what point is a line crossed? Surely if you released a $52 boxed game, and on the box it described items like player-designed housing and the like, when such features were not in the game at all, people would have cause to be annoyed.

I think Aventurine is very close to if not right across that line. Those of us who’ve slogged through the forums, the leaks, etc. have more or less a rough idea of what’s in and what’s out, but there is something beyond genial incompetence in leaving wildly out-of-date features lists on their website. I’m hesitant to say fraud or scam, because I don’t want to be needlessly provocative, but at some point even gross incompetence transmogrifies into something even more reprehensible.