Darkfall Online: Interview Part 1
Wouter "Hyrrix" Ryckbosch, 2003-08-27

The fine people at Razorwax and Aventurine, developers of Darkfall Online, took the time to sit down and answer a set of questions we had for them. If you're not familiar with Darkfall at all, it's recommended that you take a look at our introductory preview of the game first. Answering today's questions are Claus Grovdal, producer & lead designer, and BT oren, designer.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): The whole thing actually started out as a joke. We had the first meeting with the Aventurine team in Athens, Greece, and sometime during the meeting, someone joked that it would probably be better if we just moved there. The idea caught wind when Aventurine came to Oslo, Norway a few weeks later, and realized they were in one of the most expensive countries of the world. After that, relocating became a matter of business sense. Moving to Greece meant we could spend more money on game development, and less money on the cost of living and taxes.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): All the terrain is hand-modeled and hand-textured by our art team. All dungeons and areas of interest are hand-placed by the design team. The Agon landscape is absolutely breathtaking and is filled with interesting and exciting places to see, visit and explore. Yiannis Koumoutzelis, one of our 3d artists, worked on shaping the terrain by hand for months matching every area to the design specifications and giving everything a unique feel and appearance. Auto-generated terrain cannot begin to match the appearance, uniqueness, and function of the Darkfall terrain.

The landscape features huge mountains that are several thousand feet high, deserts, swamps, wastelands, plains, highlands, forests, jungle, frozen wastes, snow covered hills, miles and miles of underworld areas and caves, hundreds of dungeons, underwater dungeons and lost cities, alternate planes of existence, catacombs, hundreds of islands you can sail your boat out to explore, city sewers, graveyards, tombs...there's just so much diversity in the areas a player can experience in Darkfall.

Aside from the visual effect, creating the terrain by hand also has practical purposes, as terrain in Darkfall affects combat. Paths leading through and up mountains, plateaus and passages, overhanging cliffs and ledges, can all be used for strategic purposes, as well as for off the beaten track travel.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): The starting alignment of a clan is determined by the alignment of the founder at the time of founding the clan. The clan alignment is totally dynamic though - changing in real-time - and is calculated based on the average alignment of the members of the clan.

BT Oren (designer): The Mirdain are a fairly standard race of forest-dwelling elves. As with dwarves, I think most gamers know what they want from their elves, and that they would be disappointed if we became too creative with ours. It would certainly have been fun to go overboard and design, say, a race of four-armed, club-wielding barbarian elves, but it would have been a bad move for Darkfall. When you're making a fantasy game, there is a frame of reference which you need to take seriously if you don't want to alienate fans of the genre.

As with all races in Darkfall, however, we've tried to make the elves exciting without ignoring people's expectations. The Mirdain lack the most hippie-like aspects associated with elves, and instead belong to a highly organized, oligarchic forest-republic run by a handful of immensely powerful noble families. The mirdain are masters of diplomacy and subterfuge who - generally speaking - prefer manipulating from the shadows to getting their hands dirty.

The name mirdain comes from the Mirendil, the forest in which these elves have lived since time immemorial. We decided to call them Mirdain (instead of just elves) to lessen the confusion caused by the fact that there are four subspecies of elf on Agon: The mirdain and the alfar, which are playable races, and the ithwen and the Ciel Fey, which are not. The Ciel Fey are elven fundamentalists who live in pact with nature, and who protect their forests against all intruders, by any means necessary. The Ithwen are a golden-skinned people who were driven into exile when a Celestial Dragon laid waste to their homeland.

The Alfar are similar to the dark elves that are a part of many fantasy settings. They are an evil race shaped in the image of Melek, an insane and unpredictable god who dwells among his people, and who uses them as his tools of conquest. The alfar are sadistic, poison-mongering murderers, who despise all other races, and are feared and despised in return.

The mahirim are the tallest and most physically intimidating of Darkfall's races. They are fur-covered predators who  inflict terrible damage with their natural attacks, and who run with the speed of a horse. They are ruthlessly efficient hunters with prodigious natural strength, and an instinctive, animal grasp of several predatory skills.

Throughout most of their history, the mahirim were primitive, nomadic hunters who followed the seasonal migrations of prey-herds across the Tribelands. In recent centuries, however, the teachings of a prophet called Amurran have led them towards a greater degree of cultural sophistication. Now their level of organization increases, while their weapons and equipment become more advanced. The mahirim are becoming a military force to be reckoned with, rather than just a collection of dangerous individuals.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): First of all, destroying or conquering a city is extremely hard, time consuming, and expensive for the attacker.

The center of all cities is the clanstone. The clanstone protects all buildings and defensive structures up to a certain area, making them invulnerable to attacks.

In order for the attacking force to gain control of the city, they have to defeat the clanstone. The clanstone itself is invulnerable, so the attackers have to construct a siege fort close to the city, and raise a Gloomer inside the siege fort.

While the siege fort is being constructed, it is highly vulnerable. The attacking force will have to defend it from counter-attacks by the defenders, constantly hitting it with raiding groups and raining missiles and projectiles on it from catapults, ballistaes and archers on the city walls.

When and if the siege fort is safely constructed, the attackers have to build a Gloomer inside it. When ready, the Gloomer will attack the clanstone itself and attempt to neutralize it by draining its powers. The Gloomer will neutralize it in small sequences, leaving both the clanstone and the buildings and structures in the city vulnerable to attacks. The attackers must try to damage the clanstone during these short neutralization periods, and eventually hope to destroy it. The defenders will obviously have to defend the clanstone in the neutralization periods, and try to destroy the siege fort before the clanstone is destroyed. The siege fort is always vulnerable to attacks.

If the clanstone is destroyed, the attackers have won, and they are free to take it over if they so desire. Buildings will still be owned by the defending clan, but they are free to be attacked by anyone.

This is however were it gets really interesting, and the potential political backstabs and intrigues of Darkfall comes into play. If the attackers raise a new clanstone at this site, it will be vulnerable to attacks for a period of time. During this period, their new clanstone can be attacked, destroyed and replaced by anyone.

Agon history is full of examples of seemingly successful captures being sabotaged or literally stolen in the last minute by both the former defenders, or even deceitful third parties who have been standing quietly on the sidelines ready to capitalize on the situation.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): Darkfall is not a game where numbers mean everything. Individual player skills, teamwork, strategy, organization, diplomacy, resource management, and many other factors, other than clan size, bear down on who is going to be successful or not. Some of these factors are adversely affected by large numbers, so a smaller clan could in fact do very well in Darkfall.

It's theoretically possible that a few large clans could prevail. While possible in theory, in practice these clans would have to overcome a lot more than just their opponents. In Darkfall it's going to be very challenging to set up, run, and maintain an efficient mega-clan. You could say that if someone is able to totally conquer and rule the entire world, it would probably be well deserved. We're looking at ways to prevent this from happening, but obviously it's hard to predict how the game is going to be played out before it's even tested.

Even though there's a very simple and easy way to make sure we don't have to deal with this at all, and that's capping the guild size to a low number of members, we don't want to be forced to do this. We have spent a lot of time trying to find better ways to limit the potential "zerg fests" that have plagued other online games, and we think we have found ways to combat this problem, without eliminating the potential for large guilds and alliances.

Claus Grovdal (Producer - Lead Designer): The players can decide themselves where they want their guards to patrol. Players also decide who the guards should attack, and who they should ignore. Guards can be set to attack specific races, specific alignments, all but allies, all but clanmates, etc.

The second part of this interview will be posted tomorrow, so be sure to stay tuned!