I am an old shadowbane player considering joining Darkfall. I played with KGB for a while back in Shadowbane's glory days and need some information about Darkfall from people who I believe to be a reliable source.
(lol, skip to the last paragraph to get to the point)

I was a member of KGB back on the vengeance server as a member of the guild titled "The Academy of Light and Wisdom" which originally owned the city named "The Academy" (something like that). I think the guy who lead that guild when it joined KGB was named Barrio or Warrio. Anyways, once our guild joined KGB we became members of "KGB main" and our city became your capital on Vengeance. My characters were named variations of "omniwizard" and I rolled some terrible wizards. The character I played at banes and such was a nephelium wizard who wasn't so bad. Enough with that, aside from the fact that was several years ago and nobody probably remembers me, I wasn't that good at shadowbane- I was terrible to be honest. I left KGB and bounced around in some other guilds then joined Mark and Cedrics guild called "Clan Black Fang" and "The Brotherhood" and "The Riders in the Dust" and various other names. We were the guys who rolled aracoix on the first lore server and lost our city to the ireki guild. Clan Black Fang still has a website although the forums are getting pretty barren and we rarely play anything together anymore- we just chat occasionally in the forums.

I had tried World of Warcraft a few times when it came out, but it never really appealed to me. When I took breaks from Shadowbane I usually played Eve or DAOC- wow was such a grindfest. The forth time I gave Wow a try, I stayed a while, flopped around in Karazhan raid guilds and eventually landed in a decent end game guild and cleared BT and sunwell when it came out. The new Xpac was on the verge of coming out and a new patch had came out that nerfed everything so end game raiding literally died overnight. Wrath came out and two months later I came back and reached 80. My guild had reorganized itself and I found myself becoming one of the top five enhancement shamans on my server. About the time Ulduar had came out I was already bored with Wow and took another break. At the beginning of the fall semester I reactivated my account and had a very brief stint in TOC raiding. Convinced that I would never be satisfied with wow and that the game was waisting my time, I deleted my characters (specifically my 4 year old main shaman with 100 mounts and like 70 pets and 37 exalted reputations and 6k+ achievement points) because I knew that I would never have the patience to sit through eighty levels of wow level grind and all of the rep grinds and gold grinds again.

With Shadowbane and Daoc dead and gone, and eve being a massive timesink, moving over to Darkfall seems to be my only option anymore. With that being said, this old dog needs to learn new tricks. More specifically, this complete newb needs tips on how to play Darkfall. I've read the wiki, but it seems pretty bare. I would like to have a general idea what the skills are so I can contemplate templates while waiting to get setup to play Darkfall. I've read that magic was pretty important, followed by archery with melee being the red headed step-child. Most importantly, what works? Also, what about crafting- I spend a large amount of time in most of the games I've played being an greedy rich enterprising type of guy. The type of guy who camped auction houses in wow in Orgrimar and Stormwind who made profits by playing the auction houses. Im my later years in shadowbane I usually always had a trainer or merchant city built. If I'm making money I'm happy.

I'm currently an undergraduate majoring in Information Systems but I graduate this month. I am completely broke and until I get a job or start collecting debts from family members I won't be able to buy Darkfall or broadband. I am going to grad school next fall so I should have plenty of time to give Darkfall a shot. If I like what I see and stick around, I may consider joining you guys. But until then, I would appreciate any information about character builds, skills, and stats you can give me.

Darkfall is becoming the game we want it to be. It is not there yet, but far enough along to capture you like Shadowbane did. It is the only Open PVP, Full Loot, Shadowbane style Sieging, out there.

I am committed and so are many of us.

If your looking for competitiveness, skill based game, full loot, full pvp, asset stuff, and finding out who are really the best at pvp this game does a lot in those categories.

But, It does have a grind... not a level grind but a skill grind. The pvp can seem one sided at times until you learn the game and the learning curve is large. You have listed many WoW achievements and shows your dedication to a game so I believe you could make the change to DFO easily.

Honest advice, just give it a try and see... it's one of those games you either hate, love, or love to hate!

Thanks for the quick welcoming replies.

More specifically I was looking for a skills, talents, and general combat guide to drool over until I bought the game.
I've been reading a lot of stuff from the forums and from publicly available guides on the Internet but most of them only cover the basics- you can't really formulate templates from them. I have seen lists of magical skills and such, but very little guidance as to which spells and abilities are worth it. Lets face it, I'm haven't even downloaded it yet and I'm already afraid of failure.

I'll so miss shadowbane. I found the client backed up on my old video mp3 player. I actually started working on a few programming projects to create my own mmo- a shadowbane-like and another was going to be more like openpvp-mmorts. I rarely finish my programming projects unless its something for work or class- that and I fail at 3d modeling so I'd most likely have to buy several models elsewhere. I have some okie-dokie screenshots of terrain and I did have a working server-client code base and a working gui at one time.

Well quite honestly the internet sources you are browsing are all that can be offered to you until you become a Knight. We have information archives which when you become a Knight you'll have access to, as well as our helpful guild mates, however until then keep surfing you can learn alot about the game by reading Darkfall forums the main site, wiki's and my favorite tool Youtube videos.

Darkfall is a long run "development" and commitement but it is a lot of fun to play.

Can you log onto both the EU and US servers from the same account at the same time?
I would like to dual box the pve skills grind (that and my little sister wouldn't mind grinding for me).

I've read that you guys play both EU and US servers- you guys equally "built up" on both (transfers) or is EU your main spot and you just hang around on the US from time to time?

KGB has fully transferred to NA servers, we started out on EU but when NA came we didn't stay and no you cannot log in to both EU and NA servers from the same account. Unless you buy two accounts you have to choose which server you are going to play on.

I remember you Omniwizard & Barrio too for that matter.

I'd say take the plunge into Darkfall ... check out some PvP videos on you tube ... just search "Darkfall PvP" ... give you an idea of the game.

I've downloaded several youtube videos of darkfall recently- its as close as I can get without actually buying the game.

With that being said, I think good money could be had teaching a video editing class for novices. lol

Anyways, some of the videos have been helpful in allowing me to see how the solo pvp works out. The siege videos aren't as helpful since they always show some dude running around poking people with a pole arm and you can't really tell whats going down as far as the bigger picture.

Since you remember omniwizard you probably also remember how bad I am...i mean was back then.

It's hard, because you need a monster machine to run video capture AND be at max capabilities during large sieges. Especially since Darkfall is full loot, it's hard to justify even losing a couple of FPS to capture - when that could mean the difference between life and death.