General Discussion

Congrats to Liet for her outstanding accomplishment!!

/salute

Interesting article. Though, she does say something that's not really true. Shadowbane is not the only PvP game where you're fighting for something that matters. In Lineage II, you're fighting over control of a castle. Control of that castle definitely has benefits to it in that you control aspects of its surrounding territory and those are huge battles that take place during sieges. Aside from sieges, which are scheduled, there's control over areas or valuable resources which is more player driven. If there's a particular spot that's great to harvest a certain material, players will often maintain control of that area and attack anyone who enters it. If you go there and can fend off the defenders, it's yours. Otherwise, you have to go find another spot. So, there's certainly something to gain and lose in L2's PvP.

Another difference about SB, and this is what has kept me from really getting into it is that you have to spend 20 levels grinding through PvE content before you can even experience the PvP portions. Lineage II is open PvP from the moment your character enters the world - for better or worse. There is no starting island.

The first 20 levels in SB is incredibly boring and far from anything that would strike me as "exciting" or "heart-pounding". I'm sure once you've gotten through it once or twice, you devise a pattern and can whip through it in no time, but for someone just starting out, hearing about all this exciting PvP content, then being dropped in the middle of nowhere and having to grind for 20 levels, it's very very boring. I'm sure it's more exciting with more people playing to team up with, etc. But that's not the case as it is now. I've only ever seen one or two other people around at any time I'm on. They should at least spice up the PvE portion, or cut back on the having to travel for such long distances to find the next worthwhile group of mobs to fight. There's way too much land in the starter area for what little content is there.

Oh yeah, and fix the geometry hang-ups. I've had to start over on three different characters because they get stuck in geometry and the /stuck command they have does not work. It moves you away from the geometry, but then the moment you try to move, drags you right back in again. I've waited for over 30 minutes for a GM to come and fix it, and one time they did. But as soon as they did it and I moved.. bam, right back in the geometry again. This happened to me once back when I first tried it - before the first expansion even came out, and it happened to me again when I tried it with the latest expansion. One of the times was in the same exact spot it happened to me the first time. Kinda hard to have faith in the dev. team behind a product when a blatant, game-stopping bug like that has gone unfixed in all this time.

After the third time, I just gave up and quit the game.

well again i have to say you are wrong, Shadowbane PvP is the best out there! if you do it right you can hit max lvl (75) in 3 days no problem there with a lot of help from the guild

in L2 you have to spend over a month grinding PvE and maybe hit lvl 50, so im sorry to say this m8 but try a little harder next time. for the other info abourt you got PvP from lvl 1 is wrong.

yes you can kill someone but if he dont att. back you become red and everyone can kill you with no penalty and on top of that you got grifers comeing to the noob place killing all lowbies just for the fun of it since they dont know how to kill ppl at there own lvl! Pffff

if you call that pvp then you surely dont know pvp. so come back to SB and give it more then 2 days to hit lvl 20 Pffff  try and give it a month maybe?

and if you want to know the first 20 lvls are the hardests since the rest is PL f4twin, so nice try in saying SB aint the best PvP game out there, and nice giving up in testing the game do you also only spend 2 days on a beta game before you say this game suck?

Xanxari out!

You make a lot of good points, WSIMike, but I hope you don't mind if I address them anyhow.

- Shadowbane's PvP has a much greater basis in Player Control than any other MMO currently on the market. Yes, there are other games out there where you're fighting for something that matters but is there any other one out there where you put your gold and time into not only protecting but building and making a flourishing city? A city that you could of helped design, implement, and protect? A city where you can control the vendors or what other NPCs belong there? A city where you can control the guards?

- You are correct, the normal player will go through 20 levels of PvE first. You can actually jump to the mainland at Level 10 (or Level 1 if you are already part of a player guild) but it's not recommended. The reason we do this is we give players a chance to understand the mechanics of the game and their character a little more before sending them into the war torn lands. I like to look at it like going to high school before college... but on a much quicker basis. While 20 levels may sound like a lot, there are players who have easily gotten to Level 20 within a day or two of normal gameplay. Level 20 in Shadowbane is a lot easier to attain than Level 20 in pretty much any other MMO. Like I said, it's a tool for players to learn the game mechanics before having to jump into the real fun.

- There have been some geometry issues in the past. Over the course of the last year or so, we have addressed the vast majority of these, though. This is not a problem just in Shadowbane, I've encountered this problem in pretty much every MMO I've tried. It's a known problem in the industry and everyone is trying their best to alleviate it as best as they can.

With all of that said, I'll be the first to admit that Shadowbane is not a game for every MMO'r out there. In fact, there isn't a game on the market that is. Some of them have gone a long way in attracting a large subscriber base but there has yet to be that "perfect" game that everyone loves to play. Probably never will be (but that won't stop developers from trying, heh). Shadowbane is not a game about questing and, truth be told, that is all that some people like to do (which isn't a bad thing). But in Shadowbane, rather than focusing on the story arc of the single character and taking the game no further, it has extended the experience by creating a backdrop of political intrigue and warfare for players to become engrossed in. Players can join together to form guilds, raise armies and conquer Kingdoms. Leaders marshal their strength to build keeps, temples and fortifications. Armies battle their rivals to control resource mines crucial to their kingdoms' growth. And when diplomacy fails, legions and siege engines batter down the walls of cities, and the destinies of player nations are decided on virtual battlefields.

That is Shadowbane. And if that is something that sounds like you might want to play, you may want to try out the exclusive 20-Day Free Trial on MMORPG.com at:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/gameID/16/showArticle/3216

A friend of mine had his level 40ish rogue disappear and when he contacted SB CS he was told that the character had never existed. Did SB ever admit there was a problem with characters disappearing or is it still being met with denials? Do characters still disappear?

Without knowing the exact situation of your friend, it's hard to reply to this. The only issue that existed that I imagine you are talking about is when someone deletes a character and makes a new one with the very same name right away then begins to level him up. If done prior to a proper save, sometimes the new character would revert to the original status (Level 1). With that said, if you would like me to look into the specific issue, you can email me. We do track character data so it should not be hard to see if this character ever existed or not.

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Originally posted by AshenTemper

Without knowing the exact situation of your friend, it's hard to reply to this. The only issue that existed that I imagine you are talking about is when someone deletes a character and makes a new one with the very same name right away then begins to level him up. If done prior to a proper save, sometimes the new character would revert to the original status (Level 1). With that said, if you would like me to look into the specific issue, you can email me. We do track character data so it should not be hard to see if this character ever existed or not.

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Used to be that deleting a character was instant (no "Type YES" confirmation box) so I'm assuming that happened a lot back in the day and the guy just messed up.

Although if it happened after the confirmation box was introduced then I have no idea what it could have been, never heard of anyone's character just "disappearing." (And I've been playing SB since Beta >.<)