Don't know if anyone else has even bothered to look at it, but holy hell is it addictive. Game is basically Borderlands, but with in an MMO world, so you have hundreds-thousands of people running around instead of 4. Combine this with the Rift events from that game as "Arkfalls" and a number of other cool things (like a quad bike from the start that has a jet engine to get around) and I've been hooked for a few days.

Don't get me wrong, there are some downfalls for sure, phasing issues when there are hundreds of people in the same area, some people having problems logging in, etc. But Trion have been working day and night patching fixes since launch, and well, its Trion, they have a rep as the best customer care in MMOs the business for a reason.

Anyone else out there having a go?

Trailer for those who might not have seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sg702Sv45Y

Sounds like Firefall

That's what I thought first time I set my eyes on this. It seems interesting but I have forsaken MMo's for the time sink they are. No mas!

This one seems to be a mixed bag. I've heard a lot of positive stuff about it, but I've also heard quite a bit of negative as well. Would definitely wait for the review first.

It may be a while before we see a worth while review of this game. It is an MMo, which will require some extensive play of low,mid and high level game play to justify an actual opinion at least. My 2 cents at least. the one thing that is intriguing is how they plan to use the show to add events for the game that will coincide with the show.

Heard a lot of mixed reactions to this game. Not going to pay money for it simply because I'm not really in the mood to pay money for an MMO right now.

I will probably watch the series, but the game seems like a no go for me

Yeah its kind of interesting how the two are going to interplay and I can't wait to see how it turns out. At the moment they have a chain of missions classified as "Episode Missions." These go through a side story interacting with two of the main characters from the show where you acquire an item (which they quickly do an old switcheroo and steal from you) that shows up in the first 15 minutes of the pilot episode. When the pilot premieres in 2 weeks, that mission chain goes away, and I'm assuming a new one shows up. The two stories are meant to intertwine but still be independant, as the TV Show takes place mostly in the St. Louis area, while the game is in the San Francisco bay area.

Really I was quite skeptical myself, I've done the MMO circuit, played pretty much everything out there at one point or another, haven't really found anything I REALLY enjoy enough to play for long, and to be honest, this seemed like a giant ploy to grab a buck.

However, I bought the game on a whim, because of the potential of what it could be, and I played Rift at launch to a about six months in and Trion was far and away the best MMO experience I've had. Turns out, its a pretty awesome game even ignoring the whole TV Show thing. Its hard to explain, but somewhere between going invis, running around on a jet powered quad bike that is fully physics based and doing an arkfall trying to kill a giant tunneling worm thing with a hundred or so other people, I realized, this is a lot of fun... and that I had just lost 10 hours of my life somewhere and needed to eat. Granted, the game is not as refined as a total picture as Borderlands, but its got a pretty good start. Think more like, Borderlands 1 vs Borderlands 2. Most people say they didn't change much or enough, but they changed thousands of things in very little ways. They made everything slightly better, and all those tiny little changes add up to a much better game. Defiance right now is like Borderlands 1, its a little flighty at times, it has a couple issues, but knowing Trion, they are going to fix em.

The bad, the interface is a bit clunky, due to the fact that they had to be designed for both PC, X360, and PS3. Its something I've kind of gotten used to after a couple of days. Totalbiscuit did a first preview of the game where he was quite harsh about the whole thing, talking about what is essentially the first five minutes of the game, showing the AI to be quite dumb/buggy. Well, that was done during a beta, and even now, its nothing like that. The AI I've noticed scales actually quite nicely as you move through the game. Starter zone, you're fighting mutants that act essentially like zombies with guns, graduate to these giant bug things, then raiders who are like mad max style punk dudes, and now fighting cyborgs, each ramping up the diffuclty a bit. Phasing is a bit annoying at the moment, as a couple of times, while about 200 people surrounding a boss blowing the hell out of it, it will roll away spraying players in its wake, only to phase out for a second or two while I run up to it. Only happened a few times but its there, that's how the game avoids using separate servers to hold this many people. Another so-so part, the PvP. I am an avid PvP'r, obviously if I play Dota this much. I have always been more of a pvp person than say, a raiding person, because people act unpredictably... sometimes. I have to say my experiences in the game so far haven't been that great, although they have been extremely limited as I've only done one match of each kind. They have this mode called the Shadow War, which is essentially capture the flag, except that instead of just a couple points, you start off with 3, and as more people join in the game, more spawn. On top of this, there are still NPC hordes roaming around, that are intent to kill you. This is where I learned, that in pvp, you are a frail leaf on the wind, as I was run over by a yahoo on his quad bike and instantly killed. After a bit, I got the hang of it, and was doing things like riding my bike into a point, run over someone if I could, ditch the bike, go invis, and running around shotgunning people in the back. Supposidly this game mode can support something like 200 people in one game, and like I said, the more people that join, the more happens. At a certain population for instance, special vehicles are spawned. We're talking tanks, and mounted guns. The other PvP aspect is your usual shooter 8v8 deathmatch. Voice chat is pretty buggy right now, but I've just disabled it so we'll see. The writing is hit and miss, some is quite good, some is meh, the annoying thing is your character is a mute. Ala half life, and dragon age, you never say a word, but stand there silently, as people talk to you. Pretty standard actually in MMOs, I suppose I just got spoiled by The Old Republic.

There are what you would call instances in the game, they call them "co-op" maps, and they are probably my biggest problem with the game at the moment. Sometimes you queue for one, and the game puts you in a finished instance right before it closes it out because people are leaving. Not a big deal, a bit of an annoyance really. This is due to the way in which they are done, none of this run all the way across the map to a portal, find people to go, wait for everyone to get there, etc, no. You hit a button, pick the one you want to do, and it puts you in the queue for it while you run around shooting things. I've found it quite nice actually, your queue pops, you click the button and bam, you're there with 3 other people to kill things. Only done the one so far but it takes about 20 minutes to do, apparently some take upwards of an hour, so depending on how much time you have, you pick accordingly. Theres I think 10 in the game at the moment. Each one unlocking as you gain EGO power levels.

I keep refering to this as a MMO, but it really isn't. Its a third person shooter first, but with RPG elements, and a whole lot of people running around in it. Its really kind of hard to explain, but, I got lost in this thing until my fingers ached, my eyes burned, and my mind was numb, and that is generally the sign of a good game. Tried to be as critical as possible so people know what they are looking at, and overall, the game is actually really good, and if I continue to play or not, I feel that by the time I get through the main story, I'll have gotten my money worth. Overall, the game is a pleasant surprise, and if you like Borderlands, you'll probably like this.

So I see you are writing a dissertation on Defiance.

Jeez

People were seeking an honest review of the game. I gave as much since I am as qualified as any reviewer to judge how a game is good, seeing as I have a masters degree, a minor in English Literature, have played every MMO since Everquest, and over a decade of gaming experience, I was trying to offer up the oh so elusive look into the game for people, since most of the normal game sites tend to shy away from MMO reviews until they have either gotten of money for it, or can safely bash said game because public opinion has turned to favor the bad.

I however did not want to turn it into a dissertation but how else can you talk about such a broad spanning range of a game such as an MMO other than to address each aspect? I mean, do you review a game based on simply the single player aspect? Or the PvP aspect? The Coop multiplayer aspect? I mean there is just soooooooo much to cover in a game of this type, how can you possibly cover it in a paragraph or even a 5 page long document?

I really feel that what I said was the epitome of brevity when it comes to subject matter, and to write any less would have been shot sighted and uninformative.

Hmm I will give this a read, I'll just need a dictionary and about 3 hrs in order to properly understand and dissect the piece. Please give me some time as I'll have to dig a few of my old textbooks out of my storage closet in order to properly understand the subtext of your review as well as the references made within. I'm assuming you went with some of the classics, i.e. Sartre, Beauvoir, and Nietzsche.

Thank you for this post, and I look forward to analyzing it!

Well thank you for this "quick" write up ZB. It does look interesting, may/may not take a look at it in the future. Cheers.