I have to say, Character Creation in Shadowbane is the vastest, most complicated, and best out of any game. It even manages to make WoWs character creation look bad. The system of Talents and traits really lets you create an intricate back story and life of your character. Also, i gotta say the class system is just as amazing, you start with about as many class choices as WoW, adn then at level 10 its branchs off to make well over thirty possible classes. This is the best class system Ive seen, allowing you to really create the character you want. if you were to take shadowbane, renovate the graphics, add a gathering and crafting skill along the lines of WoW or runescape, then potentially make non-pvp servers for casual player (I personally love the city-building, guild war style pvp) and then if you sold the game for like 50 to 60 dollars but made it free to paly, i guarantee that you would make a huge amount of money on it. The potential is here, it just needs a little touching up.

Shadowbane... *sigh*

I loved this game...

I loved the insanely detailied backstory given to the universe...

I loved the well thought-out *NOT D&Dcloned* character races...

I loved that the politics were 100% player driven

I loved the ability to create player cities and nations...

I loved my half giant dual-pickax-wielding ranger...

I loved charging around with my minotaur who got taller as his strength went up and roleplaying his snorting, grunting, half speech as I thwacked my two-handed axe at elfs and humans 1/4 my size...

This game lost me when the end game politics go too hot to handle... But I stil think fondly about the hours... days... weeeks....months..etc... that I spent playing this game...

*sniffle*

I want to play shadowbane again...

What a great game.

I loved the accountability aspect.

Once I got ganked while leveling an alt. So I burned thier city down.

Those were the days. . . .

I'll play again if I get tired of AoC before Darkfall comes out. 

I was always impressed with SB's character classes, first game I ever played a flying character (among others) and I still can remember the thrill.

I loved building cities, hated the mechanic they had for defending them (my guilds city was burnt to the ground at 3:30 am EDT with no one to defend it)

I loved the looting system.  You could protect the gear you were wearing, but anything in your backpack (including gold) was fair game.  Was a great system.

If only they had more time and money to work out the defects prior to release, it could have been a contender.

Great concepts, lackluster execution.

Shadowbane will never get looked at...  Once stray bullet games launches there up & coming title.  Shadowbane is going to be layed to rest.

Ashen Temper was the only glue holding SB in the MMO world...  once Stray Bullet Games Sci Fi MMO hits the markets their debt to ubi and SB will be paid off and it's good bye Shadowbane.

Ashen Temper left Stray Bullet Games.  He is with BioWare now.

I miss SB.  Killing HG barbs with my bird scout was a rush.  Taking out full groups solo (ok, I had to gank and return about 5-6 times, but still).  Winning 1v3 with my Nightstalker (not every time, but often enough that I'd pick fights against those odds).  Doing what someone else posted, getting ganked then burning down a town in retaliation, was absolutely awesome.  The politics...I've seriously considered writing in my old guild leader for some elections since (Khronik, you're a big pimp GL), lol.  The game failed only due to that busted-ass Arcane Engine garbage.  Though it was killing itself, from too many people who quit when they lost their city, anyway I suppose.  Still, there's never been a game that's been as influencial for me as this one.

The Chronicles of Spellborn looks like they might have been SB players once upon a time.  No cities to siege, but at least they'll have open pvp servers with good gameplay.  Assuming they can get past the clusterfu...swedishchefborkborkbork of their failure of a release.  This game was really a pvp (real pvp, not "RvR" crap) contender in beta...and yes, I believe that Frogster/Mindscape/Acclaim/the TCoS PR dev did a voltronesque "and together we form the Swedish Chef" release.

I totally sign this thread.  When I first got into MMOs, Shadowbane ruined my experience by being one of the coolest concepts around.  Getting ganked with my gimpy build made me a better gamer and build maker, but now I don't have anything to play that I can even have a unique character build. I'm still looking for the game that picks up its legacy.

As for not releasing screenshots on the new stray bullet game...  The Old Republic team has been writing storylines for two years but they just announced that it is even officially being developed.  I'm definitely going to try the new stray bullet game when it comes.

Huh that sound like AoC, Vanguard, and so on and so on....SB will never be redone in any form close to what it is because the "next generation" of players that flooded into WoW and others can not and could not take the hard core crush or be crushed mentality required. They would be horrified to lose all they had aquired farming in a PvP death. There would be a whole new level to cry more noob...

I can remember playing through the entire weekend with my buddies over at my house, leveling my elf assassin. I remember the first time I saw her poison spell go off and not knowing it was my spell that was causing the purple skulls to fly up from the ground like that and asking "Who the f#$% did that?" I remember being just quick enough with that spell to get the Aelfborn theif with it before he could vanish and ganking his ass. And waiting around for that dude to respawn so I could get my bounty hunter rune.

MAN, I wish this game had had more to it in end game then GvG battles. Of course, GvG was kinda boring on my server because almost everything belonged to Deathshead Legion. You can only get your ass kicked so many times before it just gets old.

Originally posted by throckmorton

100% agree.

Shadowbane is the most revolutionary MMO out there, and it's 5 years old.

 

Everyone complains about modern WoW clones. I'd love to see a Shadowbane clone.

Sadly, the lack of success that Shadowbane has had scares away developers.

Darkfall anyone?

lol

I wholeheartedly agree.  Everytime i talk about mmos and such, it's always Shadowbane that has that special place in my heart.  It really had the best design in my opinion to date, but as others said, the idea wasn't performed as great as it should have been.

I'll never forget the thrill of parties running into each other randomly and a big gankfest ensuing, hehe...

Originally posted by Galgamemnon

I have to agree, newer developers should look at older successful games like shadowbane and try to use the information to create a newer more solid and satisfying mmorpg.

 

I still aply shadowbane though, can't beat the pvp in this game.

 I enjoyed Shadowbane myself, but I think its important to point out that at no time was Shadowbane considered even close to a success. It was released fairly buggy, and by the time most of the bugs were fixed players had found loopholes to exploit allowing one side to basically own the map. A possible example of PVP'ers devouring their own.

  I migth wish for a game with AC's skills/stat system and Shadowbanes races/pvp/abilites, but I don't see that happening dispite my own wishes.

shadowbane had some decent ideas, but development time and a horribly outdated graphics engine/shoddy coding destroyed it.

Originally posted by Jessonater

Originally posted by throckmorton

100% agree.

Shadowbane is the most revolutionary MMO out there, and it's 5 years old.

 

Everyone complains about modern WoW clones. I'd love to see a Shadowbane clone.

Sadly, the lack of success that Shadowbane has had scares away developers.

 

Darkfall anyone?

lol

 Sadly not even close. Untill they actually show something more then a video with a few goblins or release so players can actually discuss facts over the current wall of dev promises DF is just Hype. At the very least in comparison Shadowbane had several more races and more interesting races choices (Centuar, Minotaur, Vampyre) then DF's 4 standard fantasy races.

Originally posted by winter

Originally posted by Jessonater

Darkfall anyone?

lol

 Sadly not even close. Untill they actually show something more then a video with a few goblins or release so players can actually discuss facts over the current wall of dev promises DF is just Hype. At the very least in comparison Shadowbane had several more races and more interesting races choices (Centuar, Minotaur, Vampyre) then DF's 4 standard fantasy races.

 

As far as I am concerned, all pre-release MMO's are hype. Just because Aventurine has held its cards close to its chest does not mean that the game is any less legitimate.  AC2, AoC, and Vanguard are good examples of developments with lots of PR that turned out to be junk. IMO singling out DF in this respect shows a lack of objectivity.

I will admit that the race selection in Shadowbane was the most creative that I have seen. However it was another contributor to the overly complicated and one-way character development that had some players spending more time rolling new toons than engaging in PvP.  For me the jury is still out as to whether their development system was really suitable for a PvP centric MMO.

This is a request to all who've posted. A group I am apart of, for several months, have been researching and writing a game for each genre. Our current conclusion is that a MMO would hold the most interest for all of us and yet the market is flooded with them. I have found a handful of websites similar to this one and we've been methodically working our way through all of them picking out the highlights/downfalls for every game.

Now my question to you is... what else?

Originally posted by winter

Originally posted by Jessonater

Originally posted by throckmorton

100% agree.

Shadowbane is the most revolutionary MMO out there, and it's 5 years old.

 

Everyone complains about modern WoW clones. I'd love to see a Shadowbane clone.

Sadly, the lack of success that Shadowbane has had scares away developers.

 

Darkfall anyone?

lol

 

 Sadly not even close. Untill they actually show something more then a video with a few goblins or release so players can actually discuss facts over the current wall of dev promises DF is just Hype. At the very least in comparison Shadowbane had several more races and more interesting races choices (Centuar, Minotaur, Vampyre) then DF's 4 standard fantasy races.

 

Vamps were an xpac race.
 

DF - human, dwarf, elf, alfar, mahirim, orc (1 "different" race mahirim)

SB - human, dwarf, elf, half-elf, HG, Mino, irekie (1 "different" race irekie)

SB was great.  Burning cities was great.  Putting people in therapy b/c you burned their city was great.

DF could surpass SB.  We shall see.

I agree, SB had quite a few great gameplay mechanics that I really loved, and if they had resolved the stability issues and some of the city seige issues more quickly I probably would have left DAOC for good.

To this day I think their pvp loot system was the best compromise out there for risk vs reward (equipped items could not be looted, but anything in your backpack including gold was fair game)

Thieves could really steal from you, and I loved the player classes. Was one of the the first games where some characters could fly (and help their teammates fly) and I loved it.

Like someone else said, I'd love to see a well made SB2 or SB clone.