f13.net

Throne of Oblivion (http://chronicle.ubi.com/Articles/News/20041020_preordertoo.htm)

Perpetual optimists required.

Edit: Yesterday's other news posting was a reet good laugh (http://chronicle.ubi.com/Articles/News/20041020_policyonstructureplacement.htm)

Oh Jesus Fucking Christ Jumped Up On A Stick.

Thank you for reminding me why I quit that fucking game.

That's exactly where Wolfpack sits in my brain.

$19.99 for SB, both expansions, and a free month.

Hmm...

Don't be an idiot.

A steak knife and a cheap bottle of bleach would cost just as much. Would probablty provide the same level of entertainment.

I'm so bored.

Because the engine they designed is woefully inadequate to support the game they want you to play? No amount of expansions can fix it. But vampires as a playable race is a cool idea.

I hesitate to imagine what your Saturday nights are like

On weekends he splurges on the high test and gets Clorox scented bleach.

Still playing after a year and a half or so, still having more fun than i ever did on EQ DaoC or AO.  Someone please PM when another MMORPG comes out with full unrestricted pvp, until then ill keep putting up with all of SBs many faults just for sheer fucking joy of being able to kill every idiot that pisses me off no matter what guild/clan/nation/realm/city/whatever they belong too without silly penalties.  The expansion looks great so far, though im a bit underwhelmed with vampires, id post more but theres that damn NDA still.

*sets way-back-when machine to 1999, launch of AC and it's Darktide server*

NDA?  What happened to "now available"?

Avialable for pre order i guess, the expansion is not yet out and won't be until december i believe.  Its still in beta atm.

Someone with a very loose grasp of the english language and the roman calendar wrote their press releases.

Bad way of wording it i guess, but the link you follow to get that reads "Pre-order Throne of Oblivion".

Or it could be that the reader likes to skip context and has a very loose grasp of marketing.

Edit: Beat me to it :(

So - just for the record then - "Now Available" doesn't actually mean that the game is available.  In fact, the expansion is not only unavailable, but the people who know about it are not allowed to talk about it.  But please to be sending us money now before WoW and EQ2 kthx.

Gotcha.

Shadowbane could be very enjoyable game revolving around team-based open-ended PvP that I enjoy playing with taking only seldom hiatus due to many longstanding issues.

What makes SB unfun is broken beyond repair economics, poorly written client, tedious and unfun game play outside of PvP and lack of content. Shadowbane still does not have quests, crafting (you can randomly roll items) or dungeons. PvE and exp is tedious and repetitive to the point where game masters have to police against macroers or everyone would macro.

What makes SB fun is that your nation defines your identity, players have to face real consequences for their actions and skill-based group-oriented PvP.

Lineage 2?

(I didn't want to PM you as I don't know you well enough and I'm terribly shy)

While I am of the opinion that L2 is a great game, it's hardly 'unrestricted' PvP.  You can attack and kill anyone, almost anywhere, but most of them will not fight back, therefore turning you red, and hitting you with some really nasty penalties should you get killed.

Let me know when they change SB so that:

 - Cities are captureable not destroyable.
 - City ownership costs increase exponentially the more cities your guild (country?) own.
 - Unused cities fall into disrepair and fade away.


This post brought to you by back seat driver MMO dev #83768716822.

Sorry, you lost me right there...

Hi, I'm Threash!  sorry but L2 does have some silly pvp rules.  Plus it requires way too much catassery, takes me a week to finish a char in SB and thats if i really wanna take it as high as possible.  I don't know anything about AC or the darktide server, someone explain please?

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/200px-Lord_flies_cover.jpg)

It is unrestricted PvP. It's just not without consequence. It seems that your definition of unrestricted would = no consequences. Griefing abounds in that atmosphere. ;)

PvP should not have any artificial consequences outside of loosing any given battle and failing your goal associated with that battle. You are probably talking about killing unwilling or helpless player or PKing.  PKing should not be possible in well-designed PvP game since nobody should be entirely helpless and nobody unwilling should be forced to PvP, unless you are talking unwilling to face risks associated with PvP rewards. Ether way your response about L2 clearly shows me that ether PvP is afterthought there or you don’t know what you are talking about. I personally wouldn’t know since I can’t stand the grind for long enough to get to the point where you get to PvP.

Solving the issue with CSRs is a temporary solution.  Hard code limits on the number of buildings planted in a siege will kick in with the expansion, and we're rebalancing the siege experience so fewer are needed.  Which is to say, we're working hard to calibrate the siege experience to match what the engine can do.

You're seeing vampire iteration 1, of course.  We still have to go through a few iterations on 'em.  Still, look at their max stats.  They aren't as gimped as they seem at first glance.

We're currently targetting late November.  Actual launch date will, of course, depend upon when its ready.

While those aren't our plans, you might be excited about our territorial control plan.  It seems to target some of the same goals that you seem to be going for.

In L2, if you attack a player, and they elect not to fight back, you either disengage, or you gain criminal notoriety and face generally unwanted consequences upon their death. There are elements to this that can be exploited using multiple characters and gank squads consisting of only one lowbie "criminal", and a herd of "lawful" assists should a lawful player elect to fight back. So it is unlimited, but it isn't perfect. It isn't an afterthought, it just wasn't designed with spotty western griefers in mind.

As with L1, the joy is in the high-end siege game. However, this requires a HUGE investment in your character, and you will need to continue to invest, since siege death does incur an experience penalty.

What more consequence do you want than being able to hunt down and kill whoever killed you?  If you kill someone there is always a consequence, they dont like you.  Consequence does not mean "instant revenge", it does not mean if i kill you im automatically at a disavantage.  Unrestricted pvp means i can kill you and you can kill me, anything other than that just gets in the way of pure pvp.

Please bring back beta 3 on one server please. Having your city knocked over by people in the middle of the night was acceptable when it could be rebuilt in a couple of days. Syncro-treb for hours was no bad way to remove a tree. The siege system changes late in beta went too far, the timescales and costs for building in release were too extreme. Beta 3 wasn't perfect, and the balance probably lies somewhere between the play it offered and the technical improvements made later.

But that's just my 2c.

Game long since moved on, building times were shortened and few other things were implemented since then to make it harder and not as painful to loose a city. IMO short-term problems are chain-banes, placing bane stone is too easy and too many people can easily do it non-stop and tedious PvE and long-term problems are repetitive game play and lack of diversity in player experiences. Basically everyone is tired of defending cities from non-stop banes when you don’t really need them.

You can PvP from level 1 so there's no grind to get to it. The highest I attained in L2 was 22 and I did plenty of PvP while I played. No, I did not participate in large-scale seiges, but I did partake of Player vs. Player combat. I have gone red at times and I escaped sometimes and managed to clear my murderous status before having to face the consequences. But the fact that anytime someone could come up to me and kill me made it feel quite unrestricted to me. And no, I don't recall any level limits on it either as I would often get smacked down by some player who was many, many levels higher than me.



Yes, and consequences get in the way of unrestricted car theft, too. You know, there is unrestricted PvP in real life, too. You can walk over and attack your neighbor if you so choose. But there are consequences. If we view it the other way, we can say it is restricted because there are laws that say you go to jail if you do it. That would still be a consequence of an action. Foreknowledge of it means that you have a choice of whether you want to face those consequences or not. Either way, it's the same. It states that it is unlawful.

So I think the issue here is not whether PvP is unrestricted or not, but whether unrestricted means a lawful state or chaotic state. I will concede the definition to you that unrestricted would mean no stipulations, no restraints, no conditions. Therefore, we can not definitively call L2 PvP unrestricted.

Why don't you see unrestricted PvP? Because the games are trying to emulate some level of societal involvement and player accountability. Do you really believe someone could be held accountable in an unrestricted PvP environment? Or is it just that you don't want to be held accountable since it is an escape from real life? If that's what you want, Unreal Tournament has fantastic, unrestricted PvP. Probably the best. And there are many other games like it. But that's a cheap shot.

So we're looking for a virtual world with unrestricted PvP then? An MMOG with it? Can we say SB has it? Possibly at times. Honestly, I doubt any dev is going to bother with true unrestricted PvP because it has been done by other games and from the looks of it, many MMOG devs are trying to create a virtual world with their games as well. And let's face it, people are inherently evil, selfish pricks. To think that players would not use an unrestricted PvP environment just to harass others is foolish. Granted, perhaps only those who enjoy doing that to each other would be attracted to it.

And not to get muddled in terminology, but a quick note on PK. This was another term bastardized over the years. Back in my MUD days, it was used to classify a MUD that had PvP combat. Instead they simply called PvP, PK. Player Killing. It's what happens when a Player vs. Player encounter ends. One kills the other. Now, perhaps some MUDs turned it into a term meaning a griefer, but not the ones I played and administered. Ah well, the more I write, the more there is to pick apart so I'm done now.

Actually, I don't mind penalties, though I think that L2 is just a bit on the heavy-handed side.  They're *so* strong that even when you have damn good reason to kill someone, you generally don't, because you then become a walking bullseye.

If instead of being 'red' to everyone, you were 'red' to bounty hunters, but killing bounty hunters didn't make you turn red, that would seem pretty appropriate.  While you'd still be technically red to everyone, they wouldn't SEE it.  If they killed you, they'd get no penalties, it's just that you wouldn't have a bullseye floating over your head, except to those who put themselves at risk of being retaliated against.

But dragging the conversation to L2 wasn't really my intention..  On the topic of Shadowbane, I didn't even know they had another expansion coming out.  I tend to go in whenever they have one of those winback programs, and occasionally even pay for a month after that.  The game is distracting, for a little while, to me, at least.  If they had a complete engine ovehaul, it might even become a much better game.

In a game with levels, like Shadowbane or L2, there is no way to achieve the type of PVP you speak of. It requires that new characters have a one-on-one chance against veterans. No game has this, other than maybe old school UO.

PKing is entirely possible in every single MMOG that allows PVP out there, according to your definition.

What you are missing here is that there ALWAYS are consequences wether they are hard coded to the game or not.  What you want is a system where the game automatically penalizes you for killing someone (keyword:game, you dont respawn in rl thats why the penalties are a bit more severe :P), i want a game where the person i killed has to come back and penalize me himself.  Killing other people should be the point of the game, adding hard coded penalties to punish those who do this goes against everything a pvp game should strive for.  There ARE consequences to killing people in Shadowbane, they can make your guild KoS, they can destroy your cities, they can make life hell for you if they so wish, and if you want you can do it right back to them.  All this without silly rules to punish those who dare to do what you are supposed to be doing in the first place.

Not to defend SB in this regard since it is very unfriendly to newbies, but new player will always tend to loose to veteran even if everything else is equal. Only solution I can see that would work is to artificially separate new players from established player base until they learn the ropes. Again with regards to SB, if you play it correctly you should join a guild right off newbie island and in that situation you are not PKed, you lost PvP battle.

Most of what you stated there is your opinion about what a PvP game should strive to be. And that's fine, but it is just that. An opinion. It's unfortunate, but what will end up happening is that someday, someone will design a game as you described from the ground up. Until then, players will just bitch about PvP implementations. I've given up looking for answers to it because we will never see everybody agree on how it should be done, or "the right way". The best we can hope for is a niche game that caters to the vision you have (which, by the way, is multiplayer FPS ;).

Originally Wolfpack quoted 50K subscriptions to generate positive cash flow, now SB is run by UBI and this number might be a bit lower due to brining support costs 'in-house' and absorbing publishing costs for expansions.  According to SirBruce SB peaked at 50K subscriptions with current number of subscribers unknown. Comparing number of active players at peak hour I’d guess that total number of active accounts fell to somewhere around 25-27K accounts before big round of cancellations around SB expansion's and WoW/GW beta times and further to 20-22K presently. All of this suggests that SB is currently very close to loosing money. This could mean possible immediate cancellation or elimination of all future development and eventual cancellation due to lack of interest.

Call me crazy, but who develops an entire expansion for a game "very close to loosing" money? Last ditch efforts are only done by stupid people so it's either doing better than you thinking or Ubi is-- oh, shit.

You're wrong.  Shadowbane peaked much higher than 50k subscribers.

Also numbers in game in no way compares to active accounts.  Many people take a break from the game yet leave their accounts active.  This seems to be happening recently with SB and all of the new games coming out.  I expect a surge in SB with the release of their expansion.

While your estimate of 50k subscriptions may seem accurate to the naked eye, you're way off target.  It peaked much higher.




-The Insider

I had a source that gave a number that was higher for the peak (I would have to dig it up, I think it was like 68,000, 72,000, somewhere like that) and then it fell back down after that, but I could never confirm the number so I never used it.  Whatever the peak was, it is far less now.

Bruce

Well I have a source as well inside UBI that tells me the accounts peaked close to 90k at release, possibly slightly higher.

Ironically, SB's accounts currently are on the rise.  It's true a lot aren't playing cause of all  the new games (halo 2, wow, eq2 , etc), but they're also not cancelling.  This is why I expect a surge in their ingame populations with the new expansion.  New game hype will be dying down, and they will have their best expansion yet, in my opinion.

Yeah, well, tell your source to talk to me.  Until then, it's unlikely to show up on the chart. :)

Bruce

  What makes me think 'expect' is a synonym for 'hope', here?  I smell partiality.

My source doesn't want to let anything out so I don't think he will but I'll see.  Only reason I corrected sinij is because I hate to see people pass around false information as fact, it just bugs me especially when you know the opposite to be true.

And sidereal, I won't lie I like SB's concept although I hate its technical problems and think it's one of the most innovative mmorpgs that has come out in the past 2 years.

But anyone that has been following mmorpgs for any decent length of time also knows that expansions boost account numbers, at least temporarily if nothing else so it's only common sense.  So yeah I do "expect" the numbers to rise more when the expansion hits, like any other mmorpg that releases an expansion.

What part of my posts that specifically mentions in multiple places that all information is guess and estimates you got confused with "pass around false information as fact" ?  Simple fact that every large guild that I know, including guild that I belong to, moved on from SB should make you question subscription numbers and claims like "SB accounts currently are on the rise". That and there is no reason to keep account active in SB if you do not plan to play - there is no time lost for veteran rewards or house that will collapse if you cancel.

To me you sound like PR guy trying to do damage mitigation - it is of no use right now, as a player you ether like concept or don’t and if you don’t you won’t try the game and if you like concept and frequent this web site by now you tried it and made up your opinion about it. Inflating numbers and trying to portray servers as anything but empty will not gain you any subscribers. If you want to get people back playing, and hopefully paying for SB, talk to the guild leaders and beg, bribe, plead, threaten, whatnot them to give SB another try. If guilds come back to SB so will everybody else.

 These guys do.  (http://discussions.playnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=135005)

Here's a nice little review (http://www.mmhell.com/reviews/122304/shadowbane_throne_of_oblivion.html) of Throne of Oblivion that should make everyone rush to re-sub.

That sounds like Shadowbane. Entropy players should buy better graphics cards, however.

No doubt I loved this game. It's still my favorite mmog to date, but just as with everyone else, that wasn't enough for me to put up with the technical problems. If they provide the game and both expansions in a Trial though, I'll give it another shot.