Shadowbane was a great game. It still remains one of my faveourite mmos of all time. But its execution was horrible.

The concept of building your city and using a mix of politics and force to defend it sounds good on paper, but didnt work out too well in game. It was tough for a new city with a fresh guild, or a smaller guild joining a small alliance to actually keep their city for very long due to the massive zerg alliances basically taking over the entire continent across virtually all the servers. It ended up toward the end being more about who you were allied with rather than how good your group set ups were or how mobilized your guild was. You could have the perfect group make up, everyone communicating on guild vent and all of your raid being great players, but much like warhammer has proven recently, the zerg conquers all no matter what. One ironic thing I always noticed was that the huge zerg ended up being really organised with loads of holy based groups (sentinels debuffing and nuking backed up by nuker healer crusaders and prelates) so the gap widened even further.

As for the pve side, yes it was very tedious levelling if you were solo. If you were a perma flying nuker like a warlock or fury, you could simply dual box with your strength based bard (so he could carry all your stuff :P ) complete with track and stealth then round up and aoe nuke the hell out of big groups of mobs at a time. If you were some poor melee or rogue class new to the game and a member of an npc guild, it took forever. Most of the time youd get into a little cave somewhere with the rock exploit and have your high level druid friends to sit and macro some aoe for a few hours, with the rest of us killing any stragglers and if allowed, looting.

It also had nothing really substantial outside of pvp, and even that was mainly high level sieges and mine fights. before that it was either random city defending or getting tracked, ganked and looted by level cap vampire fotm classes who only attacked when you were at low health with a mob on you. There wasnt any actual crafting in the traditional sense as in everyone having a trade skill, there wasnt any good pve encounters apart from tracking rune droppers or finding named, and even that was easy to do since websites listed their co-ordinates.

lol,  all these replies to the blog and you all missed the most important bit on what makes or break a PvP focus game.  It's right there at the end.  It's what he wrote last: TRAMMEL.

UO Trammeled and is still around today.  Shadowbane did not and is gone.  Darkfall will survive or close depending on how they handle their Trammel.  WAR launched with Trammel so did AION.  WOW went overboard with their Trammel that their PvP is concidered "TEH SUCK" .  Even EVE confronted it's Trammel, but being EVE did it differently from everybody else.

So what is TRAMMEL?  basicly it's the dev's response to the "gank them till they quit" crowd.  Trammel is the "new subscription/revenue source protection patch v. gank them till they quit crowd."  If you let this crowd run free you will soon have no new players.  No new subscription equals no growth and most likely shrinkage and eventually have to close down.

The "hardcore purest" hate Trammel, but the Dev's need it.  Because with out it the game will fail.  To be a viable business venture the Dev's must Trammel.  Now Trammel does not guarantee success because of other issues discussed in this thread but with out Trammel it's a guarantee failure.

i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.

in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.

but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.

at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.

what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain.  i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.

Originally posted by trojan99

i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.

 

in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.

 

but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.

 

at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.

 

what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain.  i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.

 

 

And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
 

In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...

M

Very good article, kind of makes me think of Mortal Online in their attitude in development, "game crushing bugs", and the attitude on the forums. Just chalk it up to another Shadowbane, though I think they will outlive their utility far sooner than Shadowbane did. The game is basically unplayable for an "MMO", unless "MMO" means 3 people on your screen.

Originally posted by Meridion

And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
 

In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...

M

 

 

the original authors topic was regarding pvp, not those who wish to sightsee. i understand thats a market too, but not for discussion in a pvp thread. with no pvp there is no motivation to be better being as most games dont really have challenging pve. at least not solo pve. anyway, if you dont like to fight, you need to be choosing carebear servers when available, or change your game choice entirely if not available.

Originally posted by Zerackus

. Shadowbane was the primary proof of this concept - a group of developers who cut their teeth on a hardcore PK mud, and spent years bringing that vision to life, in short bursts between postings on message boards about "not playing games to bake bread, but playing them to CRUSH!" (a direct quote from the game's art director, later memorialized in the game's marketing). When Shadowbane finally launched, it was an innovative sandbox-PvP design that was crippled by game-killing bugs, tedious leveling, and exploit-ridden combat. (In a footnote that cannot be touched for irony, most of the founding developers of Shadowbane later moved on to KingsIsle, and the successful tween-friendly and not at all dark and hardcore MMO Wizard 101.)

 

I would love to address these comments. Shadow Bane as a PVP game was a complete success. Yes, it was a horrible launch with bugs, lag and really just a beta, but as a PvP game it did "Crush". there has been nothing like it, build an empire, defend it, make alliances, use politics or watch your Keeps fall.

Leveling was simple, easy, and fast, I have no clue where "tedious" leveling came from, being a vet of the game, it was days to reach max level. The character combos and templates and flavors of the month chars, were awesome. Something new always answered the "it" build.

 

If Shadow Bane was launched right, polished, and run and supported correctly, we would still be playing the game this very day. It truely was the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers!

 

 

Zerackus

Undead Lords

 

Only true pvp game lightyears ahead of shadowbane and uo(carebare i say) was asheron's call Darktide best hardcore pvp ever in mmo.

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Originally posted by wootin

But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players

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While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Next week - how about something on the progress of the GSU and Aion?

 

Can't talk about that, sorry.

Personally, I've always felt that the core issue with PvP is that more than half the players will feel like they're not winning most of the time, get frustrated, and quit.   A fellow player is a very tough difficulty curve - there's a reason why real life fighter pilots get to be an ace at 5 kills and this is a big deal.   In a game about accumulation, another human brain can be insurmountable barrier that kills the difficulty curve and undermines the flow.   Everything else is just fallout from this core problem.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Einstein-DF

Originally posted by Zerackus

 

If Shadow Bane was launched right, polished, and run and supported correctly, we would still be playing the game this very day. It truely was the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers!

 

Zerackus

Undead Lords

 

 

You just sunk water with that ridiculous statement. 

 

Darkfall is what Shadowbane should of been without the game crippling bugs.

 

How is it ridiculous? Darkfall didn't exist when SB came out, thus his statement that it was (past tense) "the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers" is a reasonable one. If anything I would have clarified the type of PvPer being referred to, which is the group interested in having relatively high material risk (territory, city, items, gear).

I really don't think that comment was serious :p

Originally posted by andmiller

Originally posted by eburn

Shadowbane WAS the best PVP system. It's class system was extremely open ended. Instead of having 3 "trees" everyone could alot their points in a way that was 'flavor of the day' or in a unique way and still be viable. The community was pretty tight even if there was some hardcore inter-personal politics on each server that just added to the drama.

Shadowbane's downfall was it's grind and it's look aged like dairy. What variety there was in game play and number crunching, just wasn't there in personalization or look. If they'd have looked at equipment variety and kept innovating the maps and sub-game enhancements. We'd still be talking about it today.

It may have not have gotten 30 million subscriptions, but we'd still hear about it.

Honestly, playing as Alpha the minotaur on Mourning for a good 9 months I can say it was defiantly one of the best pvp experiences I've had with a mmorpg. I can share a variety of stories that are way more interesting than.. "Bobby wasn't geared for this instance but we pwned it anyway." 

I mean I was there when the Blood Axe Clan's giant city got SWAMPED by the Brotherhood. ;)

I was there when UHC stormed the BoD's city and I had to switch sides because old guildies were protecting their city fervidly against people using exploits and I knew about it.

Stacking aside, still one of the best mmorpg experiences I think anyone could have had.

 

Though SB is still one of my all time favorites, I doubt you were there in the beginning.  Because lag, crashes to desktop, and exploits made the large scale massive battle unplayable for most people.  Still love the game and the overall concepts more than most things I have played, and good post!

I was only there in the beginning actually. Beta'd with Bone Dog and went axe barb mino right off the bat. Then bow aracoix scout. While I had some lag issues I didn't really have the same problems most people did. It made me wonder if the servers were near Washington, DC. My loc.

Add Mortal Online to the list

In my opinion isn't that PvP fail but that free PvP is mostly boring. Games that haven't pure PvP but organized form of it, such as DAoC or RF Online, are mostly enjoyable and playable. And a PvP or RvR (RvRvR) game that has some ideas from classic PvE games (the mostrly boring genre) such as dungeons with great rewards can fail because gamer that can play a lot have a little (sarcastic) more benefits than "evening" players.

A PvP or RvR/RvRvR game must can playable from all gamers so no dungeons, an epic armour, epic weapons (both weapons and armour must be questable) and... this is the game. BTW people must (not can but must) have some rewards from PvP or RvR/RvRvR and i think that the Mythic's idea about Realm Points and Realm Abilities can be the best solution ever. Or other kind of rewards, but not weapons and/or armour pieces.

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Personally, I've always felt that the core issue with PvP is that more than half the players will feel like they're not winning most of the time, get frustrated, and quit.   A fellow player is a very tough difficulty curve - there's a reason why real life fighter pilots get to be an ace at 5 kills and this is a big deal.   In a game about accumulation, another human brain can be insurmountable barrier that kills the difficulty curve and undermines the flow.   Everything else is just fallout from this core problem.

QFT. Add to that the MMO mentality that fight must end up in a kill.

Take  a competitive market game like EvE. You win some, you lose some but you are hardly ever "killed" as such, you rather surrender and find success other way. This applies to a degree to EvE spaceship combat too. Yet still, sucess is measured by a mass of kill mails.

Unless the PvP proponets come here and gloat about how they kept losing but it was so much fun or how they hunted this one guy whole day until he finally escaped and how exciting it was we won't have real fun PvP game.

Originally posted by LumTheMad

 

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Originally posted by wootin

 

But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players

---

 

While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.

Yup, you're right, it's not an answer I like, but not for any personal agenda on my part. It's because this is MMORPG.com, not Bloomberg.com. Isn't the measure of the success of a game to players its popularity with other players, not it's financials? I mean, who wants to be told a game is a huge success only to excitedly log in to play with all of those other people and find - 30 multiboxers with 10,000 accounts each?

The problem I see is that with other games you can just shrug off the minute numbers of multiboxers who sell themselves on getting multiple accounts and assume subscriptions = players. But Eve is different. CCP actively sells as many multiple accounts as it can, so there's (in my unscientific observation) huge numbers of multiboxer accounts. So my point is, that throws the measure of "success" out of whack for this particular game.

'Nuff said, I won't beat this scrapped spaceship any longer. Thanks for your reply though, and it was definitely an interesting article to read.

Originally posted by PaPsn

An article by a whinning carebear imo :)

 No risk of loseing things = no challange , resources should be limited to make mining , PvE and more of the carebear activity inteesting. For me , this is the perfect mmo formula, this way you have a reason to kill and cant go serialkiller beacese if you do you'll make enemies, who have a habbit of uniting against you.

 In that kind of mmo , you have to adopt, make friends, join guilds simply socialise... If you are not playing for that , than go play an RPG , why spoil the fun of other people by whinning?

 

Let me clear something up for all you 'hardcore' players out there.

Hardcore game play means there is real risk involved in PvP. Many games have hard core PvP and I have no issue with them whatsoever. Why? Because they're fair and balanced.

Unbalanced, open, hardcore PvP is what's called a 'gankfest'. It's only enjoyable by sociopaths and people with severe anger issues. Games that employ this type of play always fail to deliver lasting, enjoyable PvP. Why? Because once you run out of people to gank, there's nothing left to do.

The irony of all this is, that because these trolls can't learn to keep their mouths shut, games will eventually be devoid of the very things they find enjoyable.

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Personally, I've always felt that the core issue with PvP is that more than half the players will feel like they're not winning most of the time, get frustrated, and quit.   A fellow player is a very tough difficulty curve - there's a reason why real life fighter pilots get to be an ace at 5 kills and this is a big deal.   In a game about accumulation, another human brain can be insurmountable barrier that kills the difficulty curve and undermines the flow.   Everything else is just fallout from this core problem.

Hmm, allow me to offer a counter-observation. When I logged into Planetside as a total noob from the EQ1 / Morrowind RPG world, I knew that I didn't know nuthin', and I anticipated learning the hard way. And boy, did I get my butt kicked. Over and over again lol.

But, I wasn't alone. I was fighting with a lot of other people to accomplish an objective, and my side wasn't always losing. I could see other people who were the same color as me losing too, but also winning. Because of that, no no matter how hard I got pwnt, I felt like it was MY fault, not my opponents. I wasn't good enough to do what the people around me were doing.

But, having so many others around meant that I could focus on my own gameplay and get better. It wasn't catastrophic when I got killed, because 100 other people were there fighting too. And I did get better, eventually holding an average 3/2 K/D ratio - not an ace by any means, but I was generally effective and useful to my side. And I still didn't mind getting killed even in a 1 on 1, because knowing that I was competent only meant that the other person was better and deserved respect for his win.

Now contrast this with most other games' PvP, where it's all about setting yourself and your personal buddies up to gank one or small groups of opponents. I get P.O'd when I get ganked by someone camping the frickin' newbie zone, and not at myself. I regard it as THEIR fault that I wasn't able to put up a good fight or even win, because heck, I'm in a loincloth with a newbie leafblade, y'know?

So that's totally lame to me, and I do then exactly what you say - quit the game and go look elsewhere.

Originally posted by wootin

Originally posted by LumTheMad

 

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Originally posted by wootin

 

But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players

---

 

While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.

 

Yup, you're right, it's not an answer I like, but not for any personal agenda on my part. It's because this is MMORPG.com, not Bloomberg.com. Isn't the measure of the success of a game to players its popularity with other players, not it's financials? I mean, who wants to be told a game is a huge success only to excitedly log in to play with all of those other people and find - 30 multiboxers with 10,000 accounts each?

The problem I see is that with other games you can just shrug off the minute numbers of multiboxers who sell themselves on getting multiple accounts and assume subscriptions = players. But Eve is different. CCP actively sells as many multiple accounts as it can, so there's (in my unscientific observation) huge numbers of multiboxer accounts. So my point is, that throws the measure of "success" out of whack for this particular game.

'Nuff said, I won't beat this scrapped spaceship any longer. Thanks for your reply though, and it was definitely an interesting article to read.

Not a chance in hell. Sorry, I like ALOT of folks on this site and (there are a handful that I'd bury on my friend's land or feed to hogs) but I'd much rather play a game like EvE with 30 multi-boxers and have fun than play WoW with 11 million individuals (which that isn't the case there either) and be bored out of my mind with the gameplay.

The only thing that a product having alot of users means to me when talking software is that it isn't complicated to use. It's easy. It's accessible. It requires little planning or thought to master. It has a very shallow learning curve. Human beings all too often take the path of less resistance.

WoW is that path, EvE is not.

Checkers is that path, chess is not.

Now, I will agree that a hefty number of sales does speak to the quality of the product, but not in relation to other products that may be equally good but require more thought to use. WoW is a solid game. No argument from me. That said, you can't ask the question "is it better than EvE" and use the resulting answer as a measure FOR ANYONE ON THIS PLANET other than the guy you just asked. We all like different things in varying degrees.

11 million people (or so) love playing WoW. If WoW was the only choice for playing an MMO I'd find another hobby, and I've been playing MMOs since 1997. *shrug*

Shadowbane was a amazing game for what it did good, and that was pvp.   The game allowed freedom to really come up with amazing templates and to defeat 1v3+ odds if you knew your game.  One player could make a real impact there.  I can remember times where I would kill guild master before they could place a bane stone or while they were planting a tree and come out with more enjoyment then any game since or prior.

It was a true griefers wet dream I admit but as I fit that format I enjoyed it.  The game's freedom out weighted its flaws.

Darstar

Kieffer

Gyois

Hing4life