Everything I know about MMOs I learnt from Lum - SB resets the world

[IainC]

Via Brokentoys Shadowbane hits the reset button.

Seems ermm... drastic.

[Nebu]

This may be just the thing to attract some new blood (or old blood back) to the game.  I'll be interested in seeing what effect this has on server populations.  I sincerely doubt that this will help with the fragmented nature of the playerbase as many of the existing guilds will simply reroll and reform.  It's certainly going to be an interesting study.

[Surlyboi]

Heh, we get to watch the implosion all over again! 

[Mrbloodworth]

I can't think of another MMO who has done this. Am i reading the right? ALL Servers and player data will be wiped?

[Righ]

I assume that there is still a (compared to beta) catasstastic PvE grind to rank up a town, and that the act of destroying a ToL doesn't result in the defeated guild knocking out a near complete replacement town in the next 48-72 hours? Because that ease of building and lower consequence of loss is largely what made the beta so much better than the released game. There was more PvP, less PvE gold farming, and a dawn raid on an unoccupied town that left it in ruins was amusing and a focus for revenge, not disheartening and a cause to cancel.

[tazelbain]

Probably a good idea. Probably a lot residual junk in their databases from the years of screw ups. Not like anyone is paying a sub anyway.

[Dash]

Half the fun of the game is starting fresh for me.  Easy for me to say since I have no chars there with a ton of time on them.  Definitely drastic heh, but interesting.

[WayAbvPar]

I assume that there is still a (compared to beta) catasstastic PvE grind to rank up a town, and that the act of destroying a ToL doesn't result in the defeated guild knocking out a near complete replacement town in the next 48-72 hours? Because that ease of building and lower consequence of loss is largely what made the beta so much better than the released game. There was more PvP, less PvE gold farming, and a dawn raid on an unoccupied town that left it in ruins was amusing and a focus for revenge, not disheartening and a cause to cancel.

If this got fixed I would seriously consider playing again.

[Signe]

NONONONONO!!!  Geez.  I don't think I could do all that again.  I would probably want to, though.  Where's Cevik?  HELP!!!

[WayAbvPar]

He is sailing the Spanish Main with us in PotBS. Yarrr!

One thing I keep meaning to ask and have repeatedly forgotten- Were the king and queen of House Daenyr F13 folks? I remember most everyone else from here that were Inner Council types, but can't remember who Tearin (?) and Morgan were.

[Signe]

Jordan.  Sheesh. 

[WayAbvPar]

Jordan.  Sheesh. 

Doh! Maybe Morgan was someone's alt? Or I am just obsessed with X-Play.

[spiralyguy]

Damn that seems drastic.  Never played Shadowbane but I couldn't imagine sticking with a game after seeing my characters deleted.

[Threash]

Characters werent a big deal in sb, i had at least 8 maxed ones and i only played a few months.  It only took a few days of afk macro farming to get to a level were you could hold your own in pvp, a week or so to max out.  The bigger loss is the cities, i havent played in years but a decent city used to take a couple months to build and lots of gold to mantain.

[spiralyguy]

It only took a few days of afk macro farming to get to a level were you could hold your own in pvp, a week or so to max out.

*shudder*

You know you need to rethink your game mechanics when.....

[naum]

Leveling in SB was easy, and maxing out a character was easy for me even.

Grind came after you had town and then you had the grind for loot for guild fees and town maintenance.

[Threash]

Only for those who couldnt find any of the numerous dupe bugs i guess.

[sinij]

SB is not your typical game where you kill foozles to accumulate loot, if anything it is like RTS where goal is take over the map. Reseting map is one of the more exciting things for SB community, you get to play all strategies from beginning, instead of being locked into stagnant 'end game'.

Can you also edit your subject? It is not obvious what this thread is about.

[tazelbain]

Only for those who couldnt find any of the numerous dupe bugs i guess.

If they finally closed up the dupe bugs, than the reset would be good to get everyone on even ground.

[IainC]

A quick skim of the SB forums* shows that the community is pretty much behind this 100%. I'd never played SB and only have a very hazy idea of its general schtick. It's interesting though that what would normally be a quit condition for most games is seen as a good thing here.


*Yes, I have time to read forums for other games at the moment.

[Signe]

Why?  Are you fired?

PS  Because if you are, Google would probably have you.  End of the road, go left!

[waylander]

The community is behind this just like they were behind new servers, but they all ended the same way. Now they're down to two servers, and those two will end just like all the rest. 

The bottom line is that SB's city and siege mechanics alienate the medium sized guilds, and you always end up with a few superpower zerg nations.  When that happens large scale PVP grinds to a halt so that none of the remaining big nations get destroyed, and PVP ends up being a lot of hit and run small skirmishes that don't mean crap.  If a big nation is taken out, most of their people leave and the rest are absorbed into the survivors.  Ultimately there's almost no one left, and the server dies.

In the summer of 2002's SB beta, the game mechanics were such that a medium sized guild could create, support, and rebuild a city without it being so crushing that they left the game. The mobile trebuchets and unscheduled sieges also made it so that PVP was unpredictable, so people had to be on their toes.  So you had a lot of participants and being crushed didn't make you want to quit the game.

They made city building and city crushing too painful, made it hard for a medium sized guild to survive as anything other than a vassal to a larger nation, got rid of mobile trebuchets, and put sieging on a timer.  The scheduled sieging IMHO was very boring, and a lot of the time the city being sieged set their siege window at BUMF**K A.M. in the morning. Since city sieging could only happen on a set schedule, people spent all their time rolling exp groups for shits and giggles.

So this reset does nothing but further the decline unless there have been changes to make medium sized guilds more viable IMHO.

[HaemishM]

Every time I read anything about this game, I get the urge to replay it, despite knowing the grind of leveling without resorting to AFK macroing will kill all interest by level 20.

I should really seek help for that.

[AngryGumball]

Half the fun of the game is starting fresh for me.  Easy for me to say since I have no chars there with a ton of time on them.  Definitely drastic heh, but interesting.

This is why I still want new WoW Servers, rerolling on wow is fun with everything else charging up to lvl 60,......err thats right outlands ruined that. :P

[Mantees]

In addition, numerous updates and enhancements have been made to the Shadowbane service to improve the performance. Some of the changes were not as effective due to preexisting data and resetting the service will allow the servers to work under optimal conditions.

LOL!
Sounds like "We triedshard to fix the lag but with no success. So we wiped all items.

[Nija]

I never bothered playing SB after release. Did they have the same "tons of items = tons of lag" problems that UO had way back when? Talk about learning from the past.

Anyways, does this mean SB beta is finally over?

[stray]

I love this game, but it really looks like shit. Hell, it looked like shit when it was new. I couldn't play it anymore.

[Venkman]

This seems like a sledgehammer solution. Heck, even SWG just completely changed the game (though I do wonder what would have happened had they proposed the NGE and told everyone there'd be a wipe...  )

[Righ]

SB is not your typical game where you kill foozles to accumulate loot, if anything it is like RTS where goal is take over the map.

Oh come on. Even with the resource system in place, there's a metric fuckton of foozle killing in SB.

[stray]

Not really. Two weeks at most for a casual player to level.. And just a few days for the smart people in a Druid group. Hardly any focus on uber loot (and most of the best magic stuff was randomly spewed from vendors anyhow). People could still kick ass in non magic gear. Runes were easily acquired.

[Righ]

The PvE grind is required for ranking the ToL and city structures.

[stray]

True, but there are more avenues to that than just straight up grinding. Besides resources, I'm sure other rules have changed since I've played (perhaps it's even easier now?), but even better than grinding is placing your city by one good rune mob, having easy access to others, and always have someone around to sell them. Opening up your vendors is a good idea (at least at first), and last but not least -- don't be afraid of recruiting!  Tight-knit guilds are good for nothing but mercs or gankers in that game.

[edit] I'd probably play a lot more mmo's if they were paced like SB was. Not saying it's perfect, but every other game I've played is painful in comparison. Even WoW.

[cevik]

I don't think I could do all that again.  I would probably want to, though.

Seconded.

[naum]

[edit] I'd probably play a lot more mmo's if they were paced like SB was. Not saying it's perfect, but every other game I've played is painful in comparison. Even WoW.

I'll say it again — if they (Wolfpack / Ubisoft) resolved the technical snafus (hello sb.exe error) and twiddled with some of the mechanics, I would still be playing it today, even with the craptacular state of graphics… …also, random maps on startup would be cool too…

[Righ]

I'd probably play a lot more mmo's if they were paced like SB was. Not saying it's perfect, but every other game I've played is painful in comparison. Even WoW.

I assume that you were not lucky enough to play the pre 3.1 beta. That was as close to perfect as any MMO game has been and is the reason why I consider any post-release version of SB to be a clusterfuck of PvE grind. Hell, other than the end-of-the-world client bug, pre 3.1 beta was more stable too. If they had just fixed that instead of changing up the whole siege system and introducing more bugs, crashes and grind, there would be a hardcore PvP game out there that was attractive to catass and casual players alike.