Just released on July 10th. It appears to be a re-skinned version of the original. Free to play but has an in game store where you can buy improvements for your characters. The developer Trion said they did a lot of work to the code to update it and get it ready for the future, one of the biggest changes is they went from a 32bit to 64bit client. Most people are saying there's a small graphics improvement but otherwise they can't see any major differences. It has a lot of bad reviews on Steam (600 of the 900 reviews right now are bad), but I read through a lot of them and it seems that people are just pissed off that they lost all their stuff from the first one and there's no major changes to the game. Also you only get 20 inventory slots to start with and several character classes are locked at the start. You can pay $20 and buy the character pack to unlock all the currently available classes, or $50 and get the current classes and 2 more that will be released later this year. Or you can grind it out and unlock all the classes with in game currency over time. Trion has said they are actively working on hardware updates, bug fixes, and more content for the game. I loved the first game and played for a few years until they stopped doing updates and the player base disappeared. I'm going to give it a shot and hope things get updated. Not paying for anything though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/743090/ or http://www.trionworlds.com/defiance/en/
So I downloaded and played for about 90min. Aaaand.... its the same exact game. I don't see a graphics difference or anything else. They removed some weapons, vehicles, and items from the game. If you had an account from the previous game it was carried over but you character is gone. Some vehicles and outfits were transferred though. I had lots of outfits and vehicles in the old game but only an atv and one outfit transferred. They have lots of bugs and connection issues right now. Some people, me included, have not been able to connect for almost a day and Trions response is they are working on it.
I played for a few more hours now and have only ran into a couple bugs, nothing game breaking, one was a never ending arkfall which was fun for a little while. My only real complaint is the lag. The mobs either don't load until your in the spawn or they teleport around and chase you for miles. Sometimes I rubber band pretty bad for a few seconds.
Thanks for the heads up. I have to admit. I'm not sure there will be time with all the other games we are focused on (quite a few are getting major updates soon). Also, even if the game is not as bad as people report, player population looks fairly low in the game. I'm not sure how much low player count on the servers would affect the game, but I figure that's something worth noting. That being said, I highly recommend you bring this game up at our next meeting (this Saturday). Maybe we can find an interest for it.
