Hey there avid Darkfall readers! It's week three of The Daze of Darkfall, and that means we only have one week left in our feature! Time sure does fly when you're getting your butt kicked in defense of your city!

And that is totally what I did this week! Yes, that's right, it's time for a real look into "hardcore" PvP and raiding! I was out in the PvE sections killing skeletons, I was defending our city against enemy invaders, and I was working with others in harvesting camps.

So this is it. This is the cream of the Darkfall crop. This is what people say is the most amazing part of this game. Is it? Will it live up to the hype? Skip along with me after the break, and we'll go through week three, step by step.

Capturing the city

After running halfway across the main continent, I finally found myself in my new home. Albeit my new home is a broken wasteland of stone and rocks at the moment. My clan was very successful in grinding out the 10,000 gold to capture a city in under six hours, leaving us with a brand new piece of real estate in a suitable location.

This is the part where things in my Darkfall experience began to get dicey. A city does not just fall into one's hands and just magically work. Construction needs to occur and buildings need to be built. Things like keeps and houses allow more clan members to bind their souls to the citystone, our new respawn point. But to get those, we need stone, and wood to start constructing. And to get stone and wood, you need resource harvesters. Or as I like to call us -- peons.

No, honestly, I'm not tripping out and recalling a game of Warcraft or any other real-time strategy game. This is all still very much Darkfall. My job for a few play sessions was going out with a pick axe or wood axe and working to harvest resources for construction. You wouldn't believe how ungodly boring hitting a rock is. Or, well, maybe you could.

And, commenters, I know what you're saying. You're saying that I should be out getting some PvP l33tsauce right now. Well, guess what, PvP l33tsauce does not build a city. Sure, I could go shoot and kill other people harvesting. But stone and harvest materials weigh you down and people to kill aren't exactly close to where I am. No, you can just go right outside the darn walls and start hitting trees/rocks. It's faster, it's more productive, you can move resources quickly, and it's not PvP. Sorry.

Clan's current plans are to do some more harvesting and production as a group, then we're going to begin "training for PvP." Right now, training consists of beating the crap out of one another to raise defenses and attack skill. Not exactly what I think Aventurine had in mind to raise combat skills, but I don't see them stepping in to stop my entire clan. Beyond that though, I really am looking forward to raiding and doing some real combat. The thought of raiding another city is exciting, although it will take some time.

End of part one

Well, those are my experiences so far. More of my Darkfall experiences are coming next week, during week two of this month long in-depth look.

Personally, Darkfall is a mixed bag right now. The menus still annoy me, the combat still intrigues me, the questing still sucks, the city building feels like a giant real-time strategy game (I enjoy being a commander more than a peon, but I think that's something everyone would agree on), but nothing's really happening. Darkfall's billed as one of the great PvP games, and so far I've seen one instance of PvP in the three days I've been playing. Granted, I could throw myself into PvP, but that just seems like a waste of my money, armor, and weapons at this point. Why PvP when it will cost you more than it will let you gain?

Maybe things will turn around. Tune in next time, dear readers, to find out if they do.

Hey, want to do the time warp? Check out week 2 and week 3 of The Daze of Darkfall!

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Colin Seraphina Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who thinks three hours of third-person harvesting is the bomb. When she's not writing here for Massively, she's rambling on her personal blog, The Experience Curve. If you want to message her, send her an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com. You can also follow her on Twitter through Massively, or through her personal feed, @sera_brennan.