With The World of Warcraft pulling in six million subscribers worldwide in a market already oversaturated with MMO's, the chances of any startup company looking to bank on the genre at this point are slim and the case with Dark and Light is no different. The game has been in development for nearly four years yet it has gone largely unnoticed by the majority of the gaming community. Well, after our press conference with some of the developers at E3, we're here to tell you that you're not missing out on much at all.
Don't get me wrong. The developers who gave us the presentation were indeed very sincere in their efforts to create a fun and viable product and honestly, Dark and Light's concept sounds very interesting. Seriously, if there's any other massive multiplayer title out there that lets you leap off mountains the size of Everest with a hanglider, then I'd be hard pressed to think of one. Unfortunately, in contrast to many games like Tabula Rasa, The Chronicles of Spellborn, Guild Wars, and Warhammer Online, Dark and Light lacks focus and innovation. Beyond its limited creative features which include a complex weapon upgrade system and 15,000 square miles of terrain, there isn't much else that hasn't been covered already. To get an idea of what the gameplay would be like, take the land conquest feature from Shadowbane, the prospect of guild owned fortresses and flying mounts from Lineage II, and the visual equivalent of Everquest II running on the lowest settings and mix it together. At first this might not seem like such a bad idea, but the combat is so slow and unoriginal, that even with a bloated arsenal of skills at your disposal (some classes have hundreds), it still feels like a grind. For a monthly fee that is sure to be within the same price range of what other MMO's on the market are charging, it's going to take a lot more to capture everyone's attention and loyalty.
There were also still quite a few bugs that kept showing up during the presentation which baffled even the lead developer himself. Skills weren't working properly, the game crashed at one point, and there were various clipping problems. With less than three weeks left before launch, it's apparent that Dark and Light still requires a lot of last minute touch-ups before players can fully enjoy it.
JD
