RIP: Shadowbane

[waylander]

Going down May 1st

We come to you now with regret and sadness, but also happiness and pride. Regret and sadness that it has finally come to this and as of May 1, 2009 the Shadowbane servers will be powered down once and for all. Yet happiness that it lasted so very long, and pride to be able to stand before such a passionate community to thank you for your undying support and unwavering loyalty to Shadowbane.

Memories of Ages past and present will always remain in the hearts of those who fought for land and title, power and greed, and above all, the sword known as Shadowbane. Tales of epic proportions will be remembered and told for years to come. Allow me to remember the tales past with you one final time.

The Children of Aerynth formed communities, better known as Guilds, to achieve their common goals. These very Guilds built cities beginning with an acorn harvested from the World Tree. The World Tree’s acorns sprouted into stone trees, the Tree of Life, which served as the focal point to all cities within Aerynth. The Tree of Life was most important to these communities as they allowed for a sort of immortality to the spirits of the dead as they were linked to the Tree by powerful magic from which even the Wise couldn’t explain. From these cities raised Empires and Alliances but also brought the strife of war. Many wars would erupt among rival Empires creating fear and chaos across the fragments. Empires sought out the power of the One Sword to either bring Order to the world or to let Chaos reign freely. Humans, Minotaurs, Irekei, Northmen, Dwarves, Centaur Lords, and many other races filled the ranks of these Empires on the battlefields known as Aerynth, Dalgoth, and Vorringia over the Ages. In the distance, you could hear the roars of the fired buildings as they crumbled and collapsed into ashes and rubble, the consistent rhythm of the drums of war as Empire’s marched, and the sounds of gears and pulleys as Siege Engines fire upon resilient and towering walls as the many Empires engaged in battles across the continents vying for power and dominion. Alliances were formed to achieve common goals among various Nations only to be met with strife from within tearing the Alliance apart and pitting Nations against each other once again. Each war created new opportunity to rebuild old Empires once lost and rekindle old friendships or rivalries. New Ages began but the cycle remained the same. The search for the Sword known as Shadowbane continued on.

Epic sieges outside the city gates, Events giving the individual player or entire nations the choice to side with Order or Chaos, and politicking in the political arena to posture for an advantage using the power of the pen instead of the might of the sword are just the beginning of countless memories that we can remember and keep with us for years to come. Adventures through the many Ages have lasted over 6 years for some, while other’s adventures were still a new experience. No matter if you were a seasoned veteran or a fledgling still learning the ropes you poured yourselves into your quests to find Shadowbane. Unfortunately, the Sword has slipped into the Void never to be found again.

Many passionate and creative individuals have poured their hearts and souls into developing and hosting Shadowbane. We want to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous work and valiant efforts throughout Shadowbane’s lifetime.

Remember, Play to Crush!

I looked but didn't see this posted anywhere else, if it was please just lock this post.

Two things killed Shadowbane.

1.
Listening to the extreme hardcore players and making losing a city so painful that people opted to quit rather than rebuild. That was a change they snuck in just before release after a long focus group discussion where moderates like me lost out.

2.
A poor game engine that couldn't handle massive PVP fights, and at times couldn't even handle a simple group vs group fight.

Oh well, it was good for the memories either way.

[rattran]

It's always sad when a mmog dies.

That said, I get to continue playing games to bake bread.

[Stormwaltz]

I won't see you in Shadowbane, bitches.

*raises a glass and a loaf to the Great Experiment*

[Falconeer]

Shadowbane still has the best worldly pvp ever. I guess there's a reason why I am not a game designer, but player built cities, infeudation and subinfeudation and land control? I can't really understand why no one is cloning that point by point. Hell, we play so many stupid browser games with the same concept just because it's a great concept.

Shadowbane 2, just better graphics and less bugs, would be money if they could do it with a low budget.

[eldaec]

If the devs don't close the server by dumping everyone to one final sb.exe then they should never be allowed to work again.

[EWSpider]

Shadowbane still has the best worldly pvp ever. I guess there's a reason why I am not a game designer, but player built cities, infeudation and subinfeudation and land control? I can't really understand why no one is cloning that point by point. Hell, we play so many stupid browser games with the same concept just because it's a great concept.

Shadowbane 2, just better graphics and less bugs, would be money if they could do it with a low budget.

This.

I don't care what anyone else says.  Once some of the more serious technical issues were worked out SB was and still stands as some of the most fun I've had in a MMOG.  The class design and lore were fanfuckingtastic.  I absolutely loved creating different characters/builds and exploring all the interesting options offered.  As waylander pointed out there were some early design issues that caused problems, but I still had fun despite them and many of those issues were worked out and/or mitigated as development continued.  A big salute to Lietgardis and any other old school SB devs that still hang out here.  Shadowbane was a great game for many people despite its flaws; don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

[Nebu]

The MMO medium is like a sea of lost potential.  We send another MMO off to their watery grave.  

Shadowbane had so much wasted potential.  Were it not for the aggrivation I suffered because of it, I could probably muster a little sympathy.  

[Fabricated]

[HaemishM]

Shadowbane had 4 things that were done better than anyone else:

1) Customizable UI - it was arcane at first, but even without modding, the damn thing was so deeply customizable you could literally have a completely different game from someone else.
2) One of the deepest character advancement systems I've ever seen. Lots of options that could make 2 players of the same class be completely different types of characters.
3) A flat xp curve.
4) The ability to group with players of any level and still gain the same amount of experience as you would solo.

The excreable click2move, the shitastic bugginess of the engine and servers, and the retarded design decisions that virtually guaranteed 1-2 authoritarian guilds would take over a server causing the losers to quit make it deserve a watery grave.

[Signe]

5)  Duck hats.

[WindupAtheist]

In the aftermath of the Trammelization of UO, Shadowbane was the Great White Hope of the disenfranchised PK asshat brigade. Oh, how many threads I saw about how the game was going to be doomed as soon as SB came out. It was like the retardation surrounding Darkfall, only that much louder since UO itself and the debate regarding FFA PVP were both still relevant.

Looking back on those days, and even though I don't really play UO anymore, I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly dance on Shadowbane's grave.

/bakes bread

[Slayerik]

In the aftermath of the Trammelization of UO, Shadowbane was the Great White Hope of the disenfranchised PK asshat brigade. Oh, how many threads I saw about how the game was going to be doomed as soon as SB came out. It was like the retardation surrounding Darkfall, only that much louder since UO itself and the debate regarding FFA PVP were both still relevant.

Looking back on those days, and even though I don't really play UO anymore, I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly dance on Shadowbane's grave.

/bakes bread

Hey WUA!

edit: Sorry, i forgot the 

[tazelbain]

SB was an example of what not to do every fucking way.  It fucked the concept of Open PvP so hard it may never recover.  Good riddance. 

[Ingmar]

In the aftermath of the Trammelization of UO, Shadowbane was the Great White Hope of the disenfranchised PK asshat brigade. Oh, how many threads I saw about how the game was going to be doomed as soon as SB came out. It was like the retardation surrounding Darkfall, only that much louder since UO itself and the debate regarding FFA PVP were both still relevant.

Looking back on those days, and even though I don't really play UO anymore, I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly dance on Shadowbane's grave.

/bakes bread

It was the same thing on DAOC boards. Shadowbane was going to KILL DAOC DEAD.

[Der Helm]

I miss it already

I may not have played in a year, but it was always good to know that I could get back into it for free.

[Jack9]

The few gamers I still talk with on a regular basis, still talk about the fun they had in Shadowbane (pre oblivion). I agree there were many many design flaws and a crappy engine. It survived nonetheless. This speaks to the strength of the market available. Open summoning and pvp worked in a simplistic sense. There was lots of good ideas (pre-order unlockable classes!) and lots of bad ones (only tree you can port to is your home city?).

I'm a lot too old to spend the time and effort on the next one, but I will always remember the fun I had sneaking though the bodies looting, assassination attempts on me in my own bank, and the massive sight of catapults outside a burning city's walls (at 1fps if you were lucky).

[Falconeer]

SB was an example of what not to do every fucking way.  It fucked the concept of Open PvP so hard it may never recover.  Good riddance. 

The only game Shadowbane influenced is EVE, the MMO with the healthier pvp in the world, and you talk about hard to recover fuck ups?
Well, you are just wrong. Shadowbane was plagued, no.. DOOMED, by technical ineptitudes. When they recovered from that, 4 years later, it was too late. So yeah, rest in peace.
But the PvP system grew on strong ideas and became unmatched after a few years later, and it's obvious to me that your concept of open PvP is very limited and simplihistic, some version of persistent Unreal Tournament where it pretty much means nothing.

Unless you are pretty much uninformed about Shadowbane save for the terrifugly first year experience.

[tazelbain]

SB was an example of what not to do every fucking way.  It fucked the concept of Open PvP so hard it may never recover.  Good riddance. 

The only game Shadowbane influenced is EVE, the MMO with the healthier pvp in the world, and you talk about hard to recover fuck ups?
Well, you are just wrong. Shadowbane was plagued, no.. DOOMED, by technical ineptitudes. When they recovered from that, 4 years later, it was too late. So yeah, rest in peace.
But the PvP system grew on strong ideas and became unmatched after a few years later, and it's obvious to me that your concept of open PvP is very limited and simplihistic, some version of persistent Unreal Tournament where it pretty much means nothing.

Unless you are pretty much uninformed about Shadowbane save for the terrifugly first year experience.

It doesn't matter what happened after the first few months if the game doesn't turn around commercially.  This isn't art to be admired for how aesthetically pleasing the game mechanics appear.  Subs are that what influences the genre.  If UO had negative subs than SB had an imaginary number of subs.

EvE is a fine (logistical simulation) game, but the bulk of the players live in PvE space.  I am sure that is in no small way due to SB.  But SB push EvE away from Open PvP not towards it.

[Numtini]

I'm surprised it lasted this long and yes it was completely flawed. But I still have some very very fond memories of my short time there.

[DLRiley]

God bless games like ShadowBane that fail in an utter sea of flames fueled by its own failure. I can't help but dance on its grave. Oh and people please stop saying EvE is some great spiritual successor to the world pvp model. Its a game with as larger percentage of pure pve'ers than even WoW and makes no bone about stacking the odds nice and high for the old "me gank noobies" crowd.

[UnSub]

Let's not forget the issues of guilds 'winning' the map, requiring things to be reset.

And runes that were essential to being competitive.

And having a different publisher in every region. Hello, Entranz.

I might go back and try it before it dies forever... or maybe not.

[slog]

Let's not forget the issues of guilds 'winning' the map, requiring things to be reset.

And runes that were essential to being competitive.

Those are not always bad things.

[UnSub]

Let's not forget the issues of guilds 'winning' the map, requiring things to be reset.

And runes that were essential to being competitive.

Those are not always bad things.

Your point is lost in a thread about a game that died, was resurrected, fully reset its servers at least once and is on on the verge of fully dying again. 

[eldaec]

The only game Shadowbane influenced is EVE

sb.exe launched 25th of March 2003.
EVE launched 5th of May 2003.

I really don't think either one had much influence on the other.

[Falconeer]

I could be wrong, but you couldn't build your homebases in 2003 in EVE.

However, my main point still stands: they are the only two western MMOs with meaningful territorial conquest, where you have to BUILD your empire, where alliances and diplomacy are critical, where you have to keep your vassals close and happy, because losing a war means LOSING a lot.

Still, Shadowbane concept is fail and EVE is awesome? Whatever rocks your carebear boats, dudes.

[Arinon]

Let's not forget the issues of guilds 'winning' the map, requiring things to be reset.

Lets also not forget that most of the guilds that 'won' did so because they were hand picked for the beta and basically spent months training for release.

[Nebu]

Lets also not forget that most of the guilds that 'won' did so because they were hand picked for the beta and basically spent months training for release.

Which points out another problem with beta tests.  Many guilds with a desire to win-at-all-costs will selectively forget to identify bugs and broken game mechanics that they can exploit early to their advantage.  While these things get corrected eventually in many cases, they do allow these guilds to have a large advantage in the early arms race leading to a fairly long reign at the top. 

[koro]

I could be wrong, but you couldn't build your homebases in 2003 in EVE.

However, my main point still stands: they are the only two western MMOs with meaningful territorial conquest, where you have to BUILD your empire, where alliances and diplomacy are critical, where you have to keep your vassals close and happy, because losing a war means LOSING a lot.

Still, Shadowbane concept is fail and EVE is awesome? Whatever rocks your carebear boats, dudes.

Well, losing in EVE means a lot, but how many people outright quit when they lose territory in EVE versus either rebuilding their empires or being absorbed into another alliance? Even reverting to a more casual lowsec/highsec Empire-based corp is a legitimate, if a bit dull and humbling, option. From the limited amount of time I've put into EVE, it seems like even if the corp/alliance itself can't regain a foothold, individual players can still have enough of a "résumé" of skills and ship piloting abilities to fall back on when they try to get into another corp. Alliances and the reasons for them existing seem fluid enough that it looks pretty tough for one single ubercorp to effectively control 80% of the map (barring Chinese EVE of course).

When your tiny out-of-the-way Shadowbane guild city that you've worked for three months constantly farming PvE to rank up gets roflstomped at 5 AM Eastern by the server uberguild who only allowed you build yourselves up that high out of a desire to have something to destroy rather than crushing your Tree an hour after you plant it (which they will do if you try to rebuild), it's just that much easier to simply quit rather than going through the futility of either trying to rebuild or trying to join another guild who likely has half a dozen people with the same class and confirmed-not-gimp build template as you.

[naum]

I loved SB, was one of the best MMO experiences I had, even if plagued by:

* technical problems, sb.exe errors and network instability for a game that needed "big battles" to be handled smoothly without hundreds of dropped connections…

* should have had server choices — blitz server (frequent restart/rerolls with even more rapid XP advancement), regular interval resets and perma-world…

* maps should have been random, with the rune drops at different locations…

* grind of leveling replaced with grind for money to build and maintain castle… …should have incorporated more offline "work" accrual and/or other means (not even sure best methods for this, but I believe others have thought on this matter in more thorough veins)…

Maybe some or all of these were rectified since I last played… …but if so, it was long after any hope of "critical mass"…

RIP, Play 2 Crush

[Lightstalker]

Those without beta experience could be competitive from day 0, but yes there was a strong advantage towards beta guilds.  Of course, mitigating that advantage leads us back to drastic changes in how the game plays, right before release, and without testing - another complaint lodged against SB.exe.  Maybe the team doesn't see a priori that weight based inventory (or elven boots, or tower archers) will crash other people's clients but some issues with the play of the game should not have been a surprise:

• Blacklist KoS.
• City construction time / upkeep costs / administration-trust breakdown.
• The loss of your ToL disbanding your guild communication channel and scattering your players to the 4 winds.
• Nothing to do short of totally annihilating each other for guilds while at war - you could always gank, no need to declare war for that.

Loads of the things that "SB should have done" were planned - random (or at least a variety of) maps for an obvious example.  They ran out of time and shipped what they had, it isn't all that uncommon for an MMOG to do that sort of thing.  It is no surprise that the to-do list wasn't finished when it came time to deliver product, especially when they had such glaring concurrency and stability issues.  The argument that something was bad because they did it wrong is not that interesting - Shadowbane was a case where despite being done wrong the game was still fun (up until you quit).  There have been some games out recently that have not been fun despite having more of the technical ducks in a row, hard to judge which is more frustrating.

Full disclosure: I started playing in Feb 03, became a moderator in March, and burned the cities of my own nation to the ground in September 03 when it became obvious that we could no longer maintain 24-7 watch over our assets.  Stories of being horribly outmanned and breaking a siege by launching a counter-siege, or using Camoflage to hide 3 groups of non-stealth classes while the enemy rolled through our position are enough to remember fondly the potential for fun (and maneuver) within the game.  Much of the community lacked respect for themselves and their opposition.  I would still play on an invitation only server (e.g. open to wargamers with lives/jobs), but as an open system too many of the rules of fair play are left to the discretion of the player.

[Falconeer]

When I say Shadowbane PvP is great I use the present. When I say they should clone it I mean the system NOW in place.

Many people hate Shadowbane for what it did 6 years ago to their PvP feathers. I can understand the emo behind that.

But why can't people understand the game slowly evolved and became much, much, much better? It built on MANY of the mistakes listed here and after a few years delivered lots of what it was supposed to be. PvP-wise, of course.

I am not trying to convince anyone SB deserved your money or your heart. I am just saying too many love to spit on its grave without knowing all the good actions it did to repent its sins before dying. Which led to the best open/worldly PvP short of EVE.

It was a piece of shit for so many reasons, but a pretty much resource-less piece of shit.
And instead of giving it the deserved credit for offering worlds worth building and battling for (a feature STILL FUCKING missing in the 2009 fantasy MMORPG industry!), it's so easy to join the clueless and uninformed bandwagon, led by Marshall Carebear and The Betatesters (class of 2003).

Well, shame on you.

[DLRiley]

Had to end it by calling people carebears.

[Koyasha]

Ironically, I started playing this just recently.  Friend of mine was kinda bored with WoW and wanted to screw around some other things, but had no money, so I thought of Shadowbane after a bit, since it's free.  In the time I played recently it seemed to have improved quite a bit.  A lot of nice things such as the ability to untrain skills (as opposed to release where, if you spent even one skill point in the wrong place, FUCK YOU, REROLL, BITCH) traveling stance (out of combat running buff, as opposed to back where only a couple classes could increase their movement speed), and a number of other things that made the game much easier and more fun to play. 

I may play a few more times in these last few days, but I'm really somewhat saddened that I never really got a chance to play the new and improved Shadowbane seriously.  I strongly suspect that if you took Shadowbane, made it work right (technically), then reworked a number of the systems that need overhauling, you'd have a reasonably successful game, especially in this age where pretty shitty games get almost a million box sales.  A game where you fight for something significant, not just more points or whatever, has a place.

Shadowbane wasn't really a good game.  But it was bold, trying at some ideas that were good, at least parts of them.  I'm sorry to see it go.

[Righ]

Shadowbane beta was awesome. After they decided that building a town should be a fucking chore involving weeks of PvE farming, the awesome was forgotten fairly quickly. Once people started knocking over towns made out of pure PvE grind, you had to be either duping money or a Korean PvE grind fetishist to find anything fun about the game.

PvP games will always weigh themselves down with worthless PvE, and once they transition from beta to retail they will decrease the rate of gain from this PvE content to try to retain accounts. It's counterproductive, but I don't see anybody rushing to change the model.

[Stephen Zepp]

So what's the middle (hopefully, successful) ground?

Planetside failed on the MMO side (based on forum discussions here) much in part due lack of persistence, and lack of "meaningful-ness".

Many feel that SB farming for gold to invest in cities was it's downfall, since it was made to require so much (time) investment.

If both ends of the spectrum are failure, is there a middle ground, or is it simply a no win scenario?