New Darkfall video highlights environmental sounds

@SocksForYou
The concept is really good but the game mechanics are really bad.
It's really old school FPS twitch based (so expect a lot of spastic moving and jumping) BUT the effectiveness of everything is based on grinding up skills in PvE.
The PvE is a hideous old school grind (yes today, right now) even with the out of game meditation. And when I say "hideous", think Lineage 2 back in the old days. The meditation uses in game gold, a LOT of gold. So you will be a grinding fool no matter how you slice it.
Most people still AFK grind, so find folks swimming in town, running against walls or casting buffs for hours and days..is still pretty normal.
The population seems really low for the huge world the game has and from what I saw, large scale PvP is pretty uncommon. It's mostly singles and duals running around ganking people.
It has a huge amount of crafting skills but that is also a huge grind AND as if to add to the masochistic nature of the game, there is no available auction house or system to sell anything aside from a chat channel or if you are one of the lucky few in the game to own a house and a vendor.
As this video shows, they are still sorting out things like the sound and lighting 2 years after launch.
But don't take my word for it, do the trial.

@Titan1

I have to concur. In place of XP grinding they have skill grinding. When I started I could get behind the system, as it made since. If I want to improve my Pole Arm skill I have to actually go use a pole arm. The problem is though that you have to use it...allot. Darkfall's biggest draw is PvP which is a shame as the PvE portion of the game can actually be entertaining. However due to the rough nature and learning curve few people want to go seek out new or rare monsters as you'll most likely encounter a veteran player who you will find impossible to kill.

The worse part is that the meditation system, which is cool doesn't' solve the problem. At low levels it can take an hour or so to collect around 1000 gold. To get most combat skills from 0 to 100 it will run 60 to 80k gold. To get stats up is even more expensive.So in order for me to max out 1 skill I have to grind anyway for the gold. So in the end this system honestly benefits older players as they have mountains of gold to seal up the skills which they never bothered to grind or macro up in the past.

To be honest though I don't see an easy fix in Darkfalls future. New players will feel useless and quit. Old players will get sick of having no one around and quit. While the game may not die, it surely won't grow.

@Phone Guy
Well not to mention there are some issues with skill balances to begin with. 2 handed sword is widely considered the only viable melee skill. This really sours the skill system as in game, all you see are people with 2 handed swords.
Also apparently the only thing that raises Dex is archery. (aside from meditation) where other attributes, there are several things each that raise them. This more or less traps everyone into grinding up archery.
So, while skill systems do work and are viable (Asherons call, Ryzom, old SWG for example) DF, not so much.
So while the game does in fact have a large skill selection, a player is going to need to grind up a large amount of skill to be competitive against old players because there are no skill limitations. One needs melee, a large range of spells and archery not to mention a few craft skills to be non reliant on others because there is no real "economy" in the game because of the lack of any auction or selling system available to all players.
The game has a good amount of basic imbalances that have yet to be resolved.

@SocksForYou

the PVE is a grind in terms of how much needs to be done to get your skills up for PVP......

....however, if you only care about PVE, or PRIMARILY, then its not a grind. cuz the AI is by far the best of any MMO, and its true action combat, so its different every time. its like playing against Quake bots. they can really seem human controlled sometimes.

@corpusc

This was the thing that impressed me the most about DF. I thought the way the mobs behaved was very interesting. While I have issues with a lot of the other ways this game worked, this was certainly a shining point.

I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised the first time I approached a hill where some goblins were and realized that they were taking pot shots at me. Approaching from the open like you can often do in just about any other MMO was obviously not the best way to go about things.

THAT was pretty darn cool, and it alone sometimes makes me want to give DF another try.