Today we have some questions gathered from the Q&A posted in the community. These were answered by Elias, one of our designers, and by George, one of our programmers who are involved with the specific topics in the questions selected. Before we go into these, please allow me to address a couple of issues:

Wipe speculation: We addressed this, to the extent of our knowledge of the topic, during our last activity report when it was brought up by some members of the community in relation to Darkfall’s relaunch. This is not an issue for the present, but you wouldn’t know it looking at our forums. Furthermore the speculation and discussion about the possibility of a wipe is based on the current Darkfall status and facts. We haven’t wiped the server and we wouldn’t do it as things are now, so discussing this is pointless.
We’ll ask you to be patient a little longer until we give you all the facts on “Darkfall 2.0″ and we can have a discussion on a great number of topics, including this one.

We also read around the Internet about Darkfall going free-to-play: Rumor has it that if you start a sentence with “rumor has it…” you can say pretty much anything you want. Not true.

Also, don’t miss: this Saturday, there’s a Darkfall event taking place on both servers.

On with the Q&A questions:

Q: Originally Posted by gipsi: Are you considering the idea of limiting the potential for some types of spells such as launch, wall of force, stormblast, telekinesis (prevent to overcome the city walls with a click) and to lower the cost of warkulks to use them actively during the attack, all to make the defense a real defense, and attack a real attack?

A: (George) Yes, making city walls more meaningful is a big priority for us. We are working on many things that when combined will seriously improve the defenses of a city, and one of them is the better management of the potential of the physics spells. We are really determined to make siege machinery such as warhulks and cannons a lot more useful.

A: (Elias) Even more, with the redesign of spells, skills and magic schools we will try to give a boost to the cooperation of more than one players combining different spells / skills and roles to achieve the desired result.

Q: Originally Posted by Aristos: Will the subject of actual character personalization be re-addressed for the expansion? As of now, there are very few choices to pick from in terms of armor and weapons. There’s hardly any room for actual personalization.

A: (Elias) The combat gamelogic and all the gear / skills / spells have already and are still being redesigned in order to offer the players many viable gameplay choices and combinations.

Q: Originally Posted by Aristos: Will we ever see a more flexible crafting system where we can truly create original armor/weapons?

A: (George) Yes! The new crafting system is a complete overhaul.
A: (Elias) We put a lot of effort into making crafting more balanced and more interesting. Expect many changes on this one.

Q: Originally Posted by k4ts0u: Will you ever change the game mechanics like surges and fizzles???

A: (George) Both of these mechanics have been reworked. We will reveal more details when we properly present the gameplay changes.

Q: Originally Posted by topets123: Will there be a limit of buffs that can be used on players through the magic school chosen or will it continue like now that everybody can use
all buffs?

A: (George) There are new spell trees and new rules on how different magic schools can be combined. On top of that, we concentrated on reworking the buffs (and the debuffs). So you can be sure that it won’t “continue like now”.

Q: Originally Posted by Master Isaac: Will we ever see a rework of the melee AOE bringing melee AoE in line with magic AoE adjustments?

A: (George) We are determined to make the melee-focused player more viable. This includes many changes, but bringing more melee AoE is not one of them. On the other hand, you should expect that a magic-focused player capable of casting powerful AoE spells will have other disadvantages.

Q: Originally Posted by lokerrt: Will the changes to armor, weapons, and staffs render all old items completely useless, as before, or do you plan to introduce the salvage skill simultaneously with those changes?

A: (George) A new salvage skill will be available and it will play an important role in crafting.
A: (Elias) New materials and material combinations will be available as well to work in conjunction with the salvaging/dissolving skill.

Q: Originally Posted by martyn1987: Will race weapons have there crafting mats added to the game to be farmed?

A: (Elias) Top rank gear is being redesigned with everything else and thus will be in the game more often than it is now. However, it may not be race gear per se as we only have 6 races and many more gear types.

Q: Originally Posted by SgFg: Are you planning to bring in armor dyes/guild emblems/city flags/cloaks/tabards or something soon?

A: (Elias) We’d love to and really pushing for that direction. We’re waiting to find out the impact this has on game performance, which is our number 1 concern.

As always, thank you for reading.