This comes out a bit late, but here it is. I played Darkorbit since 2008 and got a lot to say. This is by no means a 'new player review' but I can share a new players experience, by practice and theory.

Game started out good. Game was alive, it was fun, noone was really outgearing anyone. It was very social but competetive. You had a lot of Clans at the time, always a friend on your side and always something new to do. That has shifted over the years for the worse.

Lets start with the positive aspects of the game in it's current state
- If you are fully maxed out on equip, PVP is a lot of fun

Enough of the good things, let's move over to what's going terribly wrong
Im going to start with simple things
- Servers are dead. Simple as that. The game has no playerbase. As to why, later more
- Servers are laggy. On a low amount of players encountering each other the game gets almost unplayable
- Support was always terrible and unhelpfull and will always stay as it is

Let me explain why the game has no playerbase. It's pretty simple, and many players may already know. It's very beginner unfriendly. For multiple reasons in fact. You won't find help as a new player, you won't find a clan and you will constantly be killed by both enemy and your own faction. On top, the players you will encouter are most likely going to be bots anyway. I would argue 95% of the playerbase uses bots for obvious reasons. Without them, you can't keep up, and obviously can't catch up either.
But hey, wait. There is another reason why you won't keep up. Massive Pay2Win. Let's not call it massive. Hardcore Pay2Win. Without a premium account, you don't even need to start playing the game. But thats just a few $ every month. Adding in hundreds to thousands of $ to just keep up with the real badbois, that played this game for years and invested just as much money as you have to nowadays. Simply to keep up. You are still missing all the skill it requires to play highlevel PVP.
The community itself is insanely toxic. Don't bother asking them for help. They'd rather wipe you off the map before properly communicating with anyone outside their bubble. There will be 1 Clan per Server dominating everything. Noone has a say other than them. There might be 2, maybe 3. At best. And you won't be a part of them, and never will be, unless you pay ridiculous amounts to get up to their 'level' -sorta say.

I myself played active for a good 9 years, witnessed the big banwave in 2010 which wiped out bots from the game almost completely. In 2015 or 2016, not sure here, another one of these banwaves appeared. And my accounts got banned too, because, I was botting at the time. And I'm not afraid to say it, because everyone was already. It's not a secret, it never was.

TL: DR
Bigpoint, or how I'd like to call them, Bugpoint, doesn't care about developing Darkorbit in favor of the community. They showed over the last 10 years, how they can make the game progressively worse. A game that started out good and ended in the mess that it is in right now. Simply put, a game full of bugs, 3rd party software of all kind and hardcore P2W. This game won't improve in future, just keep your hands where they are. Not in Darkorbit

Wish you a great day and hope you are doing fine in this pandemic.

This is not a review from a new player. You will begin this game with the bare minimum equipment/weakest ship. First, I will start by giving you some information you will need to know to be competitive at a high level. $100 usa dollars on a Helix special hour, that means you BUY with real money, in game currency called uridum- you will receive about 1.3 million worth. In order to obtain the best of everything, it may cost you lets just say 10 million uridum. Now you understand that the game is very pay to win, because even after you do achieve a decent ship, you need other pay to win items such as the best ammo. You can earn uridum in-game by killing npc, doing quest etc, and their are some things you can purchase that will make your grind easier, but ultimately, the most effective way to get a competitive ship is to... BOT, yes. Cheat, Darkorbit does NOT ban them. I know because I bot. I don't want to overwhelm you too much on this topic though, so let's review a few other things.

* Community* Very small, it's more toxic than helpful, people are more often greedy and will bully you. The servers have lost probably 75% of their population since 2010. There are 60 servers but they will be reducing that to 20 very soon to raise population.

*Gameplay* At the highest level after you become addicted, it's skill based, assuming everything is "even' sadly, that's very rarely the case. Other then that... even a person with a fairly equipped spaceship will die in under 10 seconds to a uber equipped ship, meanwhile you will only scratch them... it's ONLY skill based when both players are completely maxed out

*Servers* If too many people are in one area fighting each other the server lags unbelievably. You can have 60 fps and be lagging like crazy.

*Support* It's getting better, they will actually help you now days, probably because of the decline in players.

*Game Developers* Everything they release cost money... period

Clan aka similar to a Guild- Typically every server has one to four bully clans, these clans basically run the server and will do whatever they please, there is NO other clan that will be able to protect you from them. They aren't going to be concerned with you on a personal level, nobody takes new people serious, but they will most likely kill you in 1 second for the luls then go about their business if they see you.

So why play? It's hard to recommend the game in it's current state, I do believe the upcoming server merge will improve the game, and I think the current support team is trying to make the game more noob friendly, better log in bonuses, etc. I play because of the friends I have made throughout the years. I do enjoy the game.

When this game first started it was a great game.It had a few gliches, but they were usually fixed quickly. Now though it is so diffrent. All the support and administration appears to be worried about is raking in the money and having nothing repaired. They continue to keep adding new items(for $$$)yet do nothing about the game problems that ccur. Sure they fix the easy ones, but the chat between players goes down an average of 3-4 times a week and sometimes for a day or more.The lag has gotten worse also.As for a plyer having an in game problem you can almost forget about supports help and if they have to turn it over to tech support you might as well just start a new ship. I speak from experience with a problem that is almost 90 days old and nothing has been done to crrect it(I have not had acccess to 24 lf4 cannons). You will however hear "be patient" or how support can notpush tech support along. Tech support is non-existent and most likely incapable of fixing anything. Why fix it when you can just add more items to mess it up even more.
This game was good at one time, but the number of players has shrunk drastically to where some servers are all but dead.It used to cost you a small bit of money to get a good ship with all you needed, but with all the new items you will spend a thousand dollars or more.If you wish to go the free roite it will take lots of time and almost forever to attain any status. Then there are the big money players(which DO of course coddles)who will take every advantage to, make your gaming experience a bad one.
The best thing to do is not even start playing this game unless you have money to back you. Also remember that if you have a problem do not expect much help from incompetent support.
Maybe the CEO or corporate people with DO should look into this matter and get rid of those not doing their jobs.Im sure there are good computer techs out there that are competent enough to fix the problems and not go to sleep or be on a constant coffee break.

This game used to be allot of fun, but now if I could give it a zero rating I would! The game has changed so drastically that if you do not spend hundreds of dollars you will take forever to get anywhere in the game.So many of the new items DO puts out cost money and I believe are overpriced for the game. They add items at different times throughout the year and also add new items on events. However their adding these new things usually results in more game problems. True they do get it fixed EVENTUALLY, but its the overall problems they create.
The support is almost non-existent at times and they appear to totally care less about any problems you may have. Again however they do EVENTUALLY fix it sometimes quickly and sometimes in a month or so.
Dark Orbit is saying that they have a "Fair Play Initiative,"but it is doubtful as many players continue to cheat and DO does nothing about them. I personally have written in about 20 times on one player with three ships all doing the same thing at the same time over and over again and yet the answer you get is their so called "SCRIPT"is collecting evidence. Well 5 months later the cheater is still there cheating away. Almost every player in the server has seen the players cheats and talked about it.It appears however that the DO support answer is basically "we don't care and its not our job!"Well maybe they should learn to pass it on to the appropriate people that can take care of the cheats.
DO has lost very large numbers of players over the last 2 or so years.At first they most likely did not realize the actual numbers of players that were leaving the game.So DO'S answer to the problem is to merge servers to increase the number of players in each server. Now mind you when DO first started it had one server for each country or given area.The game expanded with more servers due to the increase in the number of players was so great. Eventually with the changes and the adding of more money items DO has started their own downfall.So DO in 2018 has started eliminating servers and merging them with each other in an attempt to save the game. I do not believe this is the answer and their end will most likely come in a year or so.
Then you have the Multi Company Clans that are almost 80% responsible for many players leaving the game.In most servers there are usually between 2 and 10 Clans that actively dictate the game to all other clans and players. This has caused a problem with very many other players not being able to participate in the events put out. They will shoot anyone not in their clans away from the alien ships to be destroyed to get the benefits of teh event. Thus only one or two clans benefit from the event with its rewards and thus also making them stronger. HOw many people want to play a game that you can not participate in completley. Yet DO says they do not care.The other problem with these clans is that they love to shoot new players and so many new players just give up. There have also been many of the long time players leave the game because of what it has become. What it has become is a costly game, a game where MCC' S have taken over the servers and only allow those they feel should participate get too and worst of all a game filled with many cheats and yet DO has not felt the need to correct anything.
Recommendation: Do not even bother starting to play this game.It is no longer what it was and or worth it to play. By all means do if you like to play a game that you are dictated to by others in the game, spend hundreds of dollars to achieve a better ship only to be killed by the upper players still and if you wish to see cheats or even maybe cheat yourself.The game is no longer as enjoyable as it once was and fairness has gone out the door!

They advertise free but believe me you have to pay to get anywhere interesting because getting blown away gets tiring after a while.

Support for any billing issues is very slow and most of the time done through a web site. You can't talk to anyone, they ask you for something and you upload it through either a screen shot or some other type of format.

Their systems often lag and it seems their administration makes errors, in my case and speaking of personal experience they billed me $19.06 to much which resulted in a lack of funds on a prepaid credit card of all things. Did not think that was possible!
Anyway the only communication I received from them was when I tried to log back in I got an "Account suspended" page with instruction on how to wire them $111.37, then they would "release my account"

This is how they handle their problems.

Uridium is the game currency and you can collect it ( took about a week to get 1,000 and that doesn't get you much) EG their biggest ship cost 80,000 Uridium, Thats without lasers ( 15 at 10,000 Uridium) and shields ( 10,000 Uridium each) and of course Engines ( 2,000 Uridium each)

You can buy 350,000 Uridium for 99.99 USD The most basic lasers do not damage much. The most basic amo does 1x damage and both of these can be bought for " credits" which you get for selling minerals and killing foes.

You can bid for Elite items that usually only Uridium will buy ( EG: 3x damage lasers amo cost 5 Uridium each, if you have 15 lasers it costs you 75 Uridium per round. The game is designed to make you spend or wander for months just to get a free upgrade that will cost you 500 Uridium to repair if it gets destroyed, I got destroyed 149 times in 2 months.

Even if you do manage to climb up to the most powerful ship you still get killed because thers a little something called the skylab, takes like 75 hours to upgrade from level 6 to 7, this is just one module and there are about 10 of those that must work in conjunction to produce what they call SEPROM.
This enhances weapons by 60% at level 6 I was producing about 600 units a day which is 6,000 rounds of lasers, you can easily use that up killing only 1 tough boss. The storage would hold 1,800 total I had to upgrade to get more. The ship ( biggest they had) hold 1,500 units of anything so unless you buy "extras" you will have a tough go at it.

Now saying all that I did enjoy the game, it just cost me a fortune to do it and in the end, my account was suspended for what I feel was an error on BigPoint part in their billing methods, Overcharging me $19.06. ( on a prepaid card!) which resulted in a lack of funds using a " Forced Post" method of transaction.

At the very least this type of behavior is unethical and I can not in good conscience endorse it.

Darkorbit were to start that is, right here it goes.

Darkorbit is a created by the known company called Bigpoint, it is a free MMO game to play, you don't have to pay any cash to get better stuff (ships, weapons or ammo), unless you want to that is.

You start of with a litle ship that has around 2000 hitpoints at first, but to get a better spaceship or better weapons or even more ammo you got to go around collecting raw materials that you can find around the area of space you are in or you can get these raw materials from fighting NPC spaceships that are also flying around the area of space you are in.

The area's of space are in levels, as you have just started the game you will only be aloud to go into the level one space area, so you will only be able to fight the weaker NPC spaceships ect. Level 2 will give you better enemy NPC's to fight and maybe better raw materials and they just keep getting better as you advance in the area's levels in space as you advance in rank and level.

But this game is not just for the farmville players but for those that are willing to be attacked even as they are just starting out, as you got to pick what company you won't to be part of (earth, mars or venus), you can also betray your company and become a rouge member of this game, or you can change what company you want to be in for a small price if you have the price that lets you change (small if your been playing for a while and got millions). Here is the charge they take from you for changing company.
Here you can change your company for a 5000 Uridium fee.
Notice: Half you honor points dissapears also!
So you will lose soom of the honor you have gained from fighting NPC's or other players.

When you have picked you company you have got to be on alert at all time maily when you are just starting out as you will be easy pickings for the other company's out there, that is were the player vs player comes into the game, as you may think this is not really a war game like any over games you will always be at war with all the other two company's and they can come into your companyy's space area and fight all that is there in your company, they will evenattack you if they see you, so this a warning for all first timer's to this game.

When you are in your company they will not attack you unless you go and betray them there for you be a rouge and will have a little simbol that you see and what the other players see as well so if you get that little simbol you will not only have the two other company's to watch out for but also the company you have pick to join.

You can get little robots called drones to help you out, they can help you defeat other ship's or they can heal your ship. Thats all aboutthose that i can tell you.

You can also pay to get a little help to get better ships ect. And you can pay in two ways the cheapest way is by phone (texting) and that is only for the cheapest amount while all the others is for the use of you bank card (credit card)

The rest i will leave for tyou to find out for your self as i don't want to spoil it all for you by putting it in this little review about the game, but i will tell you this if you like darkorbit, don't forget to try out all the other games from bigpoint you never know you might like them all.

Thanks
Angrynoob
Games Reviewer