As someone that sold their char for over 2000$ USD I can tell you Darkfall was a super fucking awesome mmorpg in it's first 6 months. It progressively got worse as time went along. Today it's no where near the same game as it when it started. It was a first person mmorpg that had a 3rd person view like that of M&B. It was skill based not level based. Clans could capture and build up hamlets and cities. It was a game of alliances, spies, massive wars, open pvp, full loot, and on place was safe! To be out with like 2 hours worth of decent loot then you get jumped it was an the cheapest high you can get, aaahhhh adrenaline my friend. That made it physically addictive for me.
I remember one day when we crashed the server with a few different massive wars going on. There was about 700 people fighting just on our side not sure how many we were fighting but it was alot. But on the other side of the world about 1000-1300 more people were fighting their own war.
If only the Devs at Aventurine played their own game and didn't give in to the minority (bitchy lil kids with too much time that only spend their time posting on the forums and whining) it would still be a great game. Too bad they caved into the minority and screwed it up. I feel DF had the most potential of any mmorpg since Ulitma Online back in 1997-99.
Aventurine, The company that made it was from Greece and they start developing it 03' it wasn't launched till what early '09 if my memory is right? It was called vapor ware for many years. Anyway it's so dead there now. I am pretty sure Aventurine is still in massive dept. I think they deserve it though they fucked up what coulda been the best mmorpg to have existed since UO or say Dark Age of Camelot.
What happened DF is almost exactly what on a smaller scale happened to crpg(b/c crpg has smaller player base). chadz, who is awesome btw and I appreciate all that he does, made a retirement system that me and other people tried to tell him from about 3 weeks after he made that it would eventually break the game. He took too long to come up with his next BIG patch. People had already invested alot of time in to the game only to have their chars nerf'd badly. Many people left and you will never see them again. They still love the game and a few play native. Most are so pissed and have so little faith that chadz can even keep the game from being broken that they will never return to crpg
Also alot of people feel that once chadz thinks his system is favoring grinders, aka people that love his game and play it alot, he will just do something to screw them over. Whether it's resetting gens or taking away 1/3 of your looms again not really sure but it's bound to happen watch. Anyway I am going off on a comparison tangent sorry.
DF does have 14 day trail going right but I think you will find the game to boring and the world way to big too be so empty. I think so many play M&B b/c they wish DF melee had this system.