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

[Falconeer]

I said it so many times in the last 3 months. Save for the graphics, SB is awesome right now and it's all all ALL about PvP.

The world reset is a requested, needed and overall great thing and no matter what you heard, or what is your past experience, this is definitely something worth playing right now. If it wasn't for my recent re-involvement with EVE I would be offering you all money to start again and play with me. Serious.

[HaemishM]

I said it so many times in the last 3 months. Save for the graphics, SB is awesome right now and it's all all ALL about PvP.

If it takes more than 1 week or afk macro to level to competitiveness, no, it is not fucking awesome. Even with the speed of leveling they had right after they went free of charge, it was painful to level.

I really loved their character skill system, but oh god, the PVE grind.

[tazelbain]

I'm really sad about this server wipe. I've played SB for 2 years now and worked hard making my toons and finding the gear that suits them. I don't own a town but have a nice little shop that makes a moderate amount of money and I try to put some good stuff in it at fair prices. I've never duped gear. I don't have FC items.... except one piece that I won fair and square in a tournment. Otherwise, I have my friends and my banks and vaults of cool stuff that I've saved up to make future specialized toons. I guess I'll never be able to make them.

I spent alot of time on SB when I wasn't working. Now that I'm employed again I don't have the same luxury. I doubt I'll ever have the time to get back to my current place in Sadowbane. I don't relish the thought of being a poor, defensless errant from now until forever, every time I log into the game. So I guess you've decided who you want to attract to your new, clean servers.... and it's not people like me.

I've hunted and found every rune in the game. Most are in my vault. I got a sense of accomplishment from that and I'm proud of the place I've made in my SB community. I've gotten there with persistance and hard work... and now all of it will be gone. Yes, I understand it's just pixels; But it's pixels that I've put together in a unique way that makes me happy. When those pixels disappear, all the hard work and hundreds of hours they represent will disappear too. It' will make it all not matter.

I like my toons. They seem to have personalities of their own. One toon has all pulple Vorgrim clothes that I gathered from killing monster Vorgrim droppers. I'm proud of that toon. She feels like a friend to me. I'm going to miss her. I have doubts that I'll ever be able to create her again, under these new circumstances. I doubt I'll have the heart to try. I don't think I'll probably be playing Shadowbane after the wipe. So count 1 more daily player among those that choose to die along with the 18 toons that have become friends.

The changes you want to make sound like good ones. Those ideas could be be made without the wipe, however. So why not try that first Let us keep our toons and our banks... or at least our vaults, so we don't have to start from scratch... naked in a new and hostile world with no shelter.

The idea of leveling the playing field sounds nobel... until you stop and think about it. This is like an experiment in Communisism or Socialism and if you know anything about history in the real world you'll be able to guess what the results here will be. In the real world, money and power always rise to the same few anyway, sooner or later. You are setting up conditions to make a brutal world that will be disapointing and crippling to a large portion of your players. Perhaps that what you want, a place where everone but pvp toons perrish. Where all the pvp players slaughter everyone else continually. They will wear standard armor and use substandard weapons because no one who has the knowledge, patience, maturity and ability to build towns, run shops and roll gear has stayed alive or with the game long enough to have the opportunity to do so. It takes all kinds to build a community. The warriors are a large and wonderful part of Shadowban, of course.... (I'm building one right now, and she'll be great if I have time to finish her.) But where will the pvper's be without the support of the cities, the forges and the people with the resources who roll the weapons and the armor for them?

If you haven't noticed, a pixeled society mirrors the way the real world works. So let it work... with all it's glory it's mistakes and it's recoveries... It's interesting and .... human. Don't sterilize the world and try to start over if some things didn't go exactly as planned. It will balance itself out in time. Our real life God is not so unforgiving.... take notice of that and learn from it... Please . It's not too late to change your minds and change the destiny of Shadowbane.

[Falconeer]

I don't know what to say Haemish. I played until a month ago and it needed 7 (seven) days to level to max with CASUAL and pickup grouping and 2 (two) days to max with a powerleveler friend. They sped up XPing to the point you can actually just care about the game, the politics, the killing.

[Draegan]

Due to not having anything better to do with my free time tonight, I'm going to give it a shot.

[Falconeer]

Beware. Without a guild it's totally pointless. Worse than that: as soon as you hit level 20 (2 hours) if you are without a guild you are basically a sitting duck waiting to be shot every time you leave the city for some xping.

[HaemishM]

The idea of leveling the playing field sounds nobel... until you stop and think about it. This is like an experiment in Communisism or Socialism and if you know anything about history in the real world you'll be able to guess what the results here will be.

Can I please bitchslap our entire educational system for this?

You are setting up conditions to make a brutal world that will be disapointing and crippling to a large portion of your players. Perhaps that what you want, a place where everone but pvp toons perrish.

I... words just fail me. Play2Crush, anyone?

[Draegan]

Beware. Without a guild it's totally pointless. Worse than that: as soon as you hit level 20 (2 hours) if you are without a guild you are basically a sitting duck waiting to be shot every time you leave the city for some xping.

So what are you supposed to do?  Just delete the game from your HD?

[Soukyan]

Beware. Without a guild it's totally pointless. Worse than that: as soon as you hit level 20 (2 hours) if you are without a guild you are basically a sitting duck waiting to be shot every time you leave the city for some xping.

This is my problem with the game. Everyone talks about how grand it is for PvP and how easy it is to level, and as soon as you say, "Cool, I'll give it a go.", all the reasons NOT to play come flying out. Don't have a guild? Don't like to macro? Don't like to farm gold? Perhaps you'd better just stay away then. Oh yes, and the graphics and world design are absolute amateur crap.

[dbltnk]

This is the best decision WP/SBG made in a long time. Less servers with no more FC gear is just what SB needs. I'll roll a Priest and log in for Mines and Banes on the ARAC server.

[Signe]

Awww.  Want some Crybaby Soup?

[Falconeer]

@ Draegan and Soukyan

Heh, no., Point is stay in a safeplace, look for guild recruiters and get into a guild from the get go. They will be all out looking for cannon fodder too. This is Shadowbane. There is NO solo play (unless you are a thief, assassin, scout). It is about Guilds warring. So you are supposed to get into a guild as soon as you get to level 20. That's it. And that is why I was advocating some Bat Country-ing the way it's happening in EVE.

And forget about macros. If they are keeping the current XP gain you grow so fast that you don't even care about macroing. Not to mention that there will be carnage for XP spots (as everyone will be reset to level 1 so there will be XP gold rush - remember that they are merging 5 servers into 2), so definitely no room for unattended macroing, just for attended slaughtering.

[Soukyan]

Oh wow, I hadn't realized that they were merging the servers as well. That should make for some good fun PvP to be sure.

[Draegan]

Hows the click to move interface while PVPing?  Seems crappy.

[cevik]

Hows the click to move interface while PVPing?  Seems crappy.

To be honest, I played the game through beta and into release (and spent way more time playing than is healthy for any normal human psyche) and of all the bitches I had with the game (as well as all the praise I had for the game) I can't say that the click to move interface entered either list.  I can barely remember it being any different from any other game.

I guess what I'm saying is:  You get used to it, it doesn't make that much of a difference.

Beta was WAY more fun than release though.  Just FYI.  Things sound entirely different now than the last time I played, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[Draegan]

Just played for a little while.  If you up the resolution the graphics aren't eye bleeding.  The terrain is empty, then again this game is old.

I could get used to the right click to move, but having to edge out my mouse on the screen's edge to turn my camera is so old and it turns me off.

[NiX]

I'd be up for trying this. Otherwise I'll end up buying PotBS and burning out on that.

[Draegan]

I'd be up for trying this. Otherwise I'll end up buying PotBS and burning out on that.

I may end up doing that tonight.  *sigh*  What a waste of money with Assassin's Creed sitting there unfinished.

[Threash]

Hows the click to move interface while PVPing?  Seems crappy.

Takes a while to get used too but when you do its much better than the normal.

[cevik]

I'd be up for trying this. Otherwise I'll end up buying PotBS and burning out on that.

I may end up doing that tonight.  *sigh*  What a waste of money with Assassin's Creed sitting there unfinished.

I recommend PotBS with a caveat:  The missions in PotBS suck, they suck bad.  Don't play the game to solo quest, play the game to go out in group gank fests.

Shadowbane is fun, but it takes too much of a time commitment in my humble opinion.  The end result of losing in pvp is so devastating that you can't take any time off to do something other than crush your enemies.  I loved the game, but.. well.. I just don't recommend anyone doing that to themselves.

It's sorta like Crystal Meth.. great stuff, euphoria is the bomb.. but you only get one set of teeth..

[WayAbvPar]

I recommend PotBS with a caveat:  The missions in PotBS suck, they suck bad.  Don't play the game to solo quest, play the game to go out in group gank fests.

The lion's share are boring as hell. There is the occasional gem, however. I really enjoyed The Dreaded Rear- Admiral, for instance.

[cevik]

I recommend PotBS with a caveat:  The missions in PotBS suck, they suck bad.  Don't play the game to solo quest, play the game to go out in group gank fests.

The lion's share are boring as hell. There is the occasional gem, however. I really enjoyed The Dreaded Rear- Admiral, for instance.

Admit it, you just liked it for the name.

[Falconeer]

but having to edge out my mouse on the screen's edge to turn my camera is so old and it turns me off.

You can and SHOULD turn that off from option menu, and use mousebutton 3 (or just push down your mousewheel) to rotate camera. Makes all the difference in the world. That, and the interface being the wonderfully free (shift+drag things, icons and powers anywhere in the screen). Someone should copy/clone that.

[UnSub]

Don't sterilize the world and try to start over if some things didn't go exactly as planned. It will balance itself out in time. Our real life God is not so unforgiving.... take notice of that and learn from it... Please .

The emo is completely wrong - God reset the world once (although he allowed Noah to carry his vault over into the new game). Shadowbane should at least get the same benefit.

[Xilren's Twin]

When is the merge and wipe actually happening?
And I assume SB is still free?

[Ratman_tf]

Wat? Are we saying God is like some coked out game developer? Cause then the world would make a bit more sense. 

[Lantyssa]

Does that make SOE the mortal representation of the entity which bought out Genesis Games?  This New Gnostic Experiement really does explain so much...

[stray]

I was God in Shadowbane. Named one of my alts "All-Father" (the god of sb lore). Made him a grey bearded prelate. People thought I was an event character.

[Snee]

I tried SB for the last couple of days, since it sounded different/interesting. The character creation optimizations were nontrivially fun.

Assuming your max is increased when your leftovers go to an actual attribute which I assumed they are, since it would otherwise be annoyingly stupid.

The click to move and camera interfaces drove me absolutely crazy. a keyboard option would have killed them?

Also couldn't find a way to get the screen res up decently. It just looked strange.

Perhaps I would have gotten used to it in time, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen soon.

for PVP I will stick to Eve and Vanguard, I guess.

[tmp]

The click to move and camera interfaces drove me absolutely crazy. a keyboard option would have killed them?

It's old game. Bandwidth used to matter more back then, and click to move can save plenty packets.

(though that said they did have keyboard option in AO or i'm getting completely senile. Had lot of rubberbanding as drawback though)

[Koyasha]

At least back then, not sure what the state of technical matters is now, there weren't a lot of options and it was pretty much either between rubberbanding or trusting the client implicitly as far as the location of the character is concerned.  EQ does the latter, UO and several other games did the former, and the former type gets very irritating in any situation when there's lag, especially a lot of lag.  Shadowbane presumably anticipated a decent amount of lag at sieges, but did not want to trust the client implicitly as far as location was concerned, cause castle walls and other physical barriers are kind of a big deal (and EQ's method means movement exploits are easily possible).  So they probably went click to move to reduce rubberbanding without having to trust the client.

Both because of my improving connection and because of technical improvements in games I experience less obvious lag of that sort, so I'm not even sure which method most newer games use (though I'm pretty sure WoW does not trust the client implicitly otherwise I think I'd hear about a lot more warping/speedhacking sort of thing).

[Falconeer]

Have a mine defense and then tell me. Shadowbane's PvP is still awesome. Seriously get in a large guild or alliance which holds at least a mine and then try a mine defense. It's 1 very intense hour of mid-scale (10 to 20 vs similar forces) PvP where you don't know the size and sides of your attackers but you know they will come.  You can easily get into many of those several times a day, every day.
Should be cloned ASAP in any other MMORPG.

And the interface is so higly customizable that, overall, is a good one. And once again, assign a mouse button (3rd being the best choice) to camera rotation, pushing borders is just not good.

[Soukyan]

The click to move and camera interfaces drove me absolutely crazy. a keyboard option would have killed them?

It's old game. Bandwidth used to matter more back then, and click to move can save plenty packets.

(though that said they did have keyboard option in AO or i'm getting completely senile. Had lot of rubberbanding as drawback though)

Bull. SB came out after DAoC, IIRC. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the bandwidth argument is crap. And there was no need to implicitly trust the client. DAoC did a "sanity" check on your character location every 5 or 10 seconds. It calculated where you could be in a radius out from your previous location based upon the maximum run speed that was available within the game. As long as you were within that circle, you were fine. If your character was outside that radius, you were warped back within it. While this did allow people to run speed hacks, those hacks were limited to working at the fastest run speed available via buff in-game. Not a perfect solution, but a working one that allowed for keyboard movement. And I don't know that SB was concerned about bandwidth as I don't know what the stated reason was for click-to-move, but I have never rubber-banded in a game as much as I did in SB so apparently those saved packets were not helping them.

That aside, it was nice to be able to click the horizon and let the character cruise along. Not that an auto-run hotkey is more difficult. Just sayin'. 

[stray]

Yeah sb was quite a while after daoc.. By a couple of years almost.

[tmp]

Bull. SB came out after DAoC, IIRC. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the bandwidth argument is crap.

Well it's possible makers of two different games have decided to splice their limited bandwidth pie in different manner, and use the server cycles to perform pathing rather than sanity checks if the players are cheating.

Not saying it's impossible to do key movement stuff and hence click to move, just that perhaps they'd thought their resources would've been better spent on other aspects. Hence click to move.