Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the old pc rpg Daggerfall? All the abandonware sites have removed it due to request by the publisher Bethsoft, but Bethsoft doesn’t sell the game anymore. Is there any place I can obtain it that’s not e-Bay? Also, does anyone know if it runs on XP? Thanks.
I don’t seem to have my copy any more, else I’d mail it to you gratis. Not a very good game, I’m afraid. The concept of a completely open-ended CRPG sounds great on paper, but in practice it just ended up feeling generic and stultifyingly boring. And the bugs! I doubt it would run on XP; it barely ran on the systems it was designed for. It was heavily patched, making the game stable, if not entertaining, but I don’t know if you can even get the patches anymore. Hopefully, the upcoming sequel, Morrowind, will be better, but this franchise has one of the most appalling bating averages in computer history: Arena was buggy and mindlessly reptetive, Daggerfall was buggy and pointless, Battlespire was buggy and impossible, and Redguard was, well, I don’t know anyone who ever played Redguard, and I doubt they exsist. But if you find someone who did, I’m sure that it, too, was buggy as hell.
Who the hell lets these people keep making games, anyway?
Well, Daggerfall sold fairly well, got a legion of fans, and generally good reivews (albeit after much needed patchwork.) Personally I’m waiting for Morrowind; its got nothing but good press thus far. Not to mention, all the game outlets that have run the beta say there aren’t any obvious bugs, something the developer learned from Daggerfall.
I think I’ll just play Baldur’s Gate to tide over my crpg craving until Morrowind is released.
So did Titanic.
Aw, who am I kidding? I’m going to buy Morrowind, just like I buy every other CRPG that comes down the pike. And, yeah, this one looks really good.
Still, every now and then I’ll remember the endless randomly generated quests in Daggerfall, and how I was constantly trying to remember if I was supposed to go to Gilsherton or Tongilsher or Shertongil (all of which would be on the map, thanks to the random syllable generator they used to name things), and spending hours combing the randomly generated dungeons (Hey, this dungeon has got the same rooms as the last six dungeons I was in, but in a different order! Wow, what gameplay!) trying to find the f*%&ing “mummy dust” which, after three hours of searching, I find in the broom closet next to the entrance, cleverly disguised as the background wall texture. Oh, and congratulations, I’ve got lycanthropy. AGAIN. Not to mention that the release deadline was continuously pushed back for (IIRC) close to two years, and they still didn’t deliver a finished product.
Or Battlespire, which I played off and on for three years without ever getting past the first level of the dungeon.
Or Arena, which I actually almost won, whose entire gameplay can be summed up thusly: Go on a quest to find the location of a piece of the Magic Staff, then go on a quest to get the piece itself. Repeat for all seven(?) pieces. Oh, and by “quest”, I mean “Go to an outside location, find the stairs to the inside location, find the little icon of the thing you’re looking for, and leave. Kill everything you meet along the way.” It was repetitive, sure, but at least it was repetitive.
So, really, there’s almost no way Morrowind can not be better than the earlier games in the series.
But I’ll say this much for all three games: they had the best character generation systems I’ve ever seen in a computer game. Seriously, it was almost worth the price of the games themselves. Almost.
Man, I never realized how much bitterness I still had over these games.
My bitterness regarding Daggerfall came about when I tried to find out how to join the assassin’s guild, whatever it was called. I got an invite to the thieves guild easily enough, and the mages guild and the warriors guild were straightforward … but how did I join the last one?
I conceded and read the hint book while browsing in Software, Etc. I found out that I had to kill at least three innocents.
So, in order to join an elite secret society of master assassins, I hacked apart three farmers in some bumblefuck town, and yay! I got a message saying that they had their eye on me, blah blah blah.
No. That’s not how you’re supposed to join an assassins guild. That’s how you become a cheap thug.
Stupid game. And same complaints as Miller just listed, too.
I’ve played Daggerfall on and off for at least the past four years… oftentimes, I’d get pretty far, but after a short while, I’d just stop caring. I mean, I was interested in what the ending would be like, but not that interested. Hell, they could’ve put some cooler monsters into the game to give someone a reason to be interested, but… oh no, I’m being attacked by a grizzly bear! Or a - gasp! - bat!
But I agree about the character generation, and the level-up system that they developed. I wish more RPG’s would develop that same feature.
You want http://gametz.com/
There are a number of copies available right now.
I was sure I still had mine, but it must be leant out. I’d say it was definitely still worth playing. The main criticism was that the world was just as huge as advertised, and there were far more places to go than anyone ever would.
Running on XP, hmm. If I had to guess, I bet it did. Even if it didn’t you could always turn your system into a dual boot.
Getting lycanthropy was probably my favorite experience in the game. It led to this whole quest that ended up with me gaining all of the benefits of it, but none of the drawbacks. Well, the only drawback was that afterwards, I was basically the most insanely powerful being in Daggerfall’s world.
The dungeons all looked like they were built by demented inbred dwarves on a PCP-LSD cocktail. This was simultaneously irritating and yet strangely enjoyable.
The final(ish) patch (of a looong series of them) added a “teleport to important dungeon points” hotkey, which made navigating the dungeons much much easier (and therefore, following the main plotline easier as well)–hitting the key would teleport the character about the dungeon to various locations, so finding that mummy dust involved much less scouring. Despite all the sizable flaws, in the end I more than got my money’s worth out of the game, which is what matters.
I’m looking forward to Morrowind.
Daggerfall is absolutely my favorite game that I never got anywhere in. I never ever got around to following the main story line, and I’m not even sure how one would do so. But I played through the random quests, and went down in the dungeons to practice pick pocketing on bats, and spent an obscene amount of time shopping for clothes.
The bugs were eggregious to the point of being legendary. You could fall out of a dungeon. You could even walk on top of it. I’ve been itching for years to play a game like Daggerfall, only playable.
And soon, the dream will live. Behold, Morrowind.
Oh how I miss the pretty, shiny, blue and black blades!
Oh how I miss creating oodles of characters and making them try on every piece of clothing available!
Oh how I miss spending hours searching for a dusty tome, finding it, and not knowing how the hell to get back to the entrance! (that patch would have helped sooooo much…)
Oh how I miss falling through the dungeon after not having saved for hours!
All in all, a little too much frustration for my taste. But it had its moments, that’s for sure. I’ll probably let myself be tempted by Morrowind.
I still have my copy of Daggerfall. I doubt I have a computer that could even run it, at this point.
I’ve kept it for the same reason people keep original copies of classic books- just because, dammit, they’re both well-written.
Every now and then I take a good number of my games to the local half-price bookstore, and get an embarassingly small amount of money for 'em- but I’m NEVER going to part with Daggerfall. It earned a place of honor on my bookshelf.
Of course, I never actually got anywhere in the story. 
Check out Dungeon Siege then. I’m playing through it to review it for my site, and the leveling system is very similar, just no where near as deep. Depending on what you use to fight, you get better at that skill (melee combat, ranged, or magic) and the corresponding ability score (strength, dexterity, intelligence).
Course, I can’t wait for Morrowwind, having seen a nice long demo at last year’s E3. I loved Daggerfall and used a cheat to have near infinite magic points, leading me to make the worlds most rediculous magic spells which could level entire cities in a single casting. When I finally got to the last guy in the game, I didn’t even know, cause one spell melted him totally. I think it was so powerful that it caused his pixels to disintegrate, as there was absolutely nothing left, no body, nothing. Just some weird staff thing.
I’ll look for my copy of Daggerfall, if you still need it, as I’m sure I have it around somewhere.
John