Teer of Lys

Shadowbane was ahead of its time then, but it would find a lot larger of a market base now. If you guys were to take what you learned from then and put it into a new game now I can't see it being anything but a commercial success. God knows that we need an alternative to the games that keep coming out trying to be what SB was and stopping less than halfway there.

I'd like to take the opportunity to say thank you for an amazing 6+ years of gaming. However many problems SB had in the beginning, you guys nailed so many things down that have yet to be duplicated in any game since. Any MMO I've touched since always ends up being measured against it... and so far they've all fallen short.

The market, btw, is ripe for Shadowbane 2. And you'd have a rabid horde of fans leading the way in. Definitely a 100K-500K initial box sale endeavor imo. Go on... give in to your blood thirsty natures. ;)

Shadowbane had some problems, but what it did right it did better than anything I've ever seen then or since, and that was a player/community driven end game where in game decisions had often violent repercussions up to and including getting your house burnt down. That along with the insane variety of viable character creation options still have me pining away for the old days. There's definitely a large enough community out there for an updated version of this kind of niche hardcore game to turn a profit. It's just going to take some developers with balls big enough to take the chance at it

My guild joined Xsyon full force because of its promise of open PvP and eventual Siege/Territory control style warfare. Everything in the game points to it. You plant a city to be near limited resources. You harvest resources to craft. You craft to prepare for PvP (creating armor, weapons, and storage to hold them) and to fortify your city. You PvP to secure territory and resources. Currently, everything to do in the game revolves around an end game of player vs player conflict.

The problems at present come in because the game is so far from finished.

The PvP as it stands currently is not fun and is only there as a placeholder according to the devs until they figure out what they want to do with it. It consists of strafing around each other, clicking one mouse button, and hoping for a hit. If both players are good you can run out of stamina dancing around each other before either person scores a blow.

City building is by far the best and most interesting thing the game offers as terraforming really lets the imagination run wild. Our guild planted our totem on a peninsula then painstakingly raised land bridges through our border on the surrounding waters so that we could wall in large portions of the river. We also dug land trenches on the outside of the walls to create dry moats that wouldn't allow players to even get to the walls. We were all excited about the design and defensive opportunities... until we realized that the devs are probably more than a year out from making them matter with Siege play. What we ended up with was a cool looking camp that was not a bit more useful to us than some one who had just planted a totem and logged off.

If the game mechanics were not so reliant on the player conflict side of the gaming experience to make everything else matter it might be enjoyable. As is, stockpiling resources is easy if time consuming and they are far from limited. Crafting is pointless as everyone has a pre-order weapon that can't be lost and is better than anything craftable and armor is as effective as being naked with the added 'benefit' of encumbering you which makes you slower. PvP is neither fun nor meaningful, and city building, while cool for a bit, ultimately serves no real purpose.

I have hopes for the prospects of the game 6 months to a year down the line, but I have doubts that a large enough player base exists that will enjoy the game while it's still on that journey to financially support it until then.

OCC is still around and kicking. Google 'The Burning Horde' for our website. (Not sure if the bot filters will nix a website URL).


To stay on topic though, PvP gives me a reason to log in. As a veteran Shadowbane player, I built my personal reputation on my Thief killing and stealing from anything from a loan player to a ten man group of active players with hit and run tactics.

After that it was learning siege warfare strategies. Coming up with group compositions and tactics to take an outnumbered handful of people and pull out the win vs superior numbers. Taking over and holding territories that meant something. Playing the political game on the forums to ends that ranged from stifling their recruiting of new members and allies to just having a good time mocking an enemy.

Things like that never end as long as the player base keeps up for the server, and PvE alone just doesn't have what it takes to make for an interesting end game. If you think about it... say you could only make one character ever in an MMO. You hit level cap, and eventually get the top end gear for your toon. Everything is maxed, you have all of the shineys you want. What then? Wait for another patch? It just seems like without competition between players the only point of leveling and getting better gear in an MMO is... to level some more and get even better gear. That's the reason it takes so long to grind everything in non-PvP based games... because there's nothing or little to do once you've reached completion.

- Teer of Lys

I'm with you on Shadowbane being the last game that had a great PvP makeup. The player run world meant that politics mattered and most guilds knew most of the others. Through a dozen or so years of gaming my all time favorite memories stem from protecting our cities, taking other people's cities, and the random intense PvP encounters in the open field from Shadowbane.

The down side is that playing anything else now, even games like Warhammer which are focused around PvP, just feels like they didn't have the guts to take it the last few steps.

As a heads up though, some guys are working on Emulating the game. Google SBEMU and it's the first link.

IMO PvP should be more guild centric than faction centric, with the potential for asset loss (player built cities being at risk). Then instead of being forced to play with these 4000 yahoos or those 3500 yahoos on a two sided server, you get comfortable in a guild the size of your choice and rely on either PvP/organizational skill within the guild or political skill (alliances) to protect what you have.

When you have something to lose as a guild it makes winning that much more meaningful. When you can make your online enemy guilds lose what they have, winning is something worth doing.