According to today's Darkfall activity report from developer Tasos Flambouras, the team has spent the majority of the past week working on features for the game's relaunch. He also says that the upcoming "Arena" expansion will bring a major change to the starting areas:

"A significant change coming with the 'Arena' expansion to NPC city layouts is that there will be only one starting town for each race. This will be each race’s capital city. There will also be three racial NPC faction cities around each capital. In addition to these changes geared to make starting areas more user-friendly, all NPC racial vendors will offer the same serivces whether they are situated n the capital or in the faction cities. All types of workstations will be in all NPC cities as well."

In addition, "over 50 percent of Darkfall’s quests have been rewritten and many introductory training quests have also been added to guide new players through most aspects of Darkfall’s gameplay." For more details, check out Flambouras' activity report.

In celebration of Darkfall's second anniversary, Aventurine is currently offering a sale on the game. Players in North America can purchase the fantasy MMO for $9.95, while European players can pick it up for 9.95 Euros. The price includes a month of free game time. The sale ends on April 1.

To help with offline skilling, the team is offering 25,000 Meditation Points to all new and active accounts. All trial accounts will receive 2,500 points and can upgrade to a full account to claim the 25,000 points as well.

It looks like undead creatures will be making their way to the North American Darkfall server on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 19:00. This is the sequel to the Dead Be Comin Event, which featured the being known as Cyriakos attacking several cities.

According to a blog entry, Cyriakos is exacting vengeance for the children of Melek by sending an army of zombies to the Alfar capital of Shoal. If you'd like to participate, try to meet up with the horde before they arrive at the gates of Shoal.

Darkfall Developer Tasos Flambouras has published an activity report that outlines the team's recent sprint presentation. All of the game's development teams discussed their current work on the fantasy MMO, which includes details on the upcoming expansion:

"Before I go on, a few words on the next expansion: It’s code-named Darkfall Arena internally, what used to be called Darkfall 2010, we called it that because in its original design the plan for it was to come out within the previous year. In practice this re-launch project grew a lot bigger than the original design and we are taking this opportunity, and the extra development time, to make more fundamental changes to the game. A major catalyst for these changes is the Darkfall community’s feedback and player data we’ve collected over the past two years."

According to the activity report, the expansion will reshape the world of Darkfall. The team is streamlining the game by removing dead spaces, optimizing the terrain, and repositioning everything to bring points of interest together. Check out the entire blog post for more details on Darkfall Arena and other updates to the game.

Today's Darkfall patch adds offline skill meditation to the game, which attempts to give newer players a chance to close the gap and cut down on some of the tedious repetitive tasks that exist in the fantasy MMO. Details on how to use the meditation system can be found on the Darkfall blog. Additional skills will be added at regular intervals and changes could be made based on player feedback.

For more information on Darkfall and its future, check out our recent interview with Developer Tasos Flambouras.

Released in February 2009 in Europe and July 2009 in the United States, Darkfall is a subscription-based fantasy game that differs from the standard MMO model. Setting aside experience and levels, Darkfall focuses on skills as a method of advancement – for example, the more you use a spell, the better you get at it. Besides this skill-based scheme, Darkfall also hosts unfettered PvP combat: you can be attacked anywhere, at any time.

Darkfall has been described as having a steep learning curve, and the game has undergone several changes to entice new players. Aventurine has implemented everything from bug fixes and a streamlined introductory flow to a new blog and Facebook page to bring new players into the fold. We had a chance to speak with Developer Tasos Flambouras (who also got some feedback from Designer Claus Grovdal) about the game’s new features, the recent Hellfreeze expansion and Aventurine's vision for the future, which includes the possibility of a Darkfall sequel. Keep reading for all the details!

Darkfall Developer Tasos Flambouras confirmed in his newest activity report that the team will be adding offline skilling to the game as early as the next patch, which is scheduled to launch in a couple weeks. Here are the details:

"The purpose of offline skilling is curbing macroing, giving newer players a better chance to close the gap, and to cut down on some of the tedious repetitive tasks that exist in the game."

The rest of the post vaguely discusses the next expansion, which Tasos previously stated can be considered a relaunch of Darkfall. For example, Tasos said in his newest report that "more specialized tools are being produced for use in the next expansion, since it involves a massive task as far as world building goes." We'll just have to wait and see what that truly means for Darkfall players.

In last week's activity report, Darkfall Developer Tasos Flambouras said that he recently gave a short postmortem on the game's development at the Hellenic Game Developer’s Conference. In the speech, he talked about the the next expansion/relaunch and mentioned plans for the sequel to Darkfall.

As one would expect, the brief mention of a Darkfall sequel and relaunch confused many players. In an attempt to provide some clarification on the matter, Tasos just posted a thread outlining Aventurine's future plans for the game. He says the team hasn't diverted resources to a Darkfall sequel, and there are no plans to replace the current game with a Darkfall 2. Basically, it appears that a sequel may be part of Aventurine's long-term plans, but that doesn't mean the company is currently working on a new game.

Tasos also confirms that the team is in the process of developing a major expansion for Darkfall. It can be considered a relaunch, but Aventurine will not be wiping the servers. The relaunch simply means that "it may give fresh options to new and existing players."

Darkfall Online has been looking for ways to reach out to players, new and old. The team just announced the creation of a new blog set up to give players the most up-to-date information on the game, new content, contests, and more. The blog includes posts like "Tips For New Players" and a look into Aventurine's motion capture studio. The blog even has some off-beat posts just for fun such as "Darkfall's Rescue Lolcat" in which a member of the team talks about a recently rescued kitten.

The company has also set up a new Facebook page to keep players up-to-date on all things Darkfall. Head on over to "like" the page and keep your news feed full Darkfall news.

The Hellfreeze expansion is finally live in Darkfall, but don't be surprised if there are a few hiccups downloading the patch through a torrent client. Apparently the Aventurine team had a long night of dealing with hardware issues, which Developer Tasos Flambouras has outlined in a post on the game's forums.

The Hellfire expansion adds a wealth of new content to the game, from new terrain to new mounts and ships. Newbie dungeons have been added to all the racial capitals, and 17 of the existing dungeons have been revamped. For more details, check out the Hellfreeze overview page.