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Shadowbane Lives On
eToyChest is reporting that many of the developers are Wolfpack Studios, closed since May 15th, have banded together to keep Shadowbane running for the players. Now known as 'Stray Bullet Studios', they'll be running the game for Ubisoft while they work on a new MMO for the 'next generation'. Via his Zen of Design blog, it appears Damion Schubert will not be among the Shadowbane handlers.
Since it's now under new management, is it going to remain free? I looked at the Shadowbane web site, and it says there's a free trial, but nothing about a completely free game.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I don't understand. Were they not shut down by their producer by not producing any cash flow from that item? Perhaps there were other reason, I am curious about them. Now Ubisoft is giving them money to continue not making money. I guess Ubisoft is betting on their next project. As an investor, if a company came to me asking for money for a project, and they said their last project put another investor in the hole, namely me, I would be weary. Again, there must be more to this story.
You're talking about Eve Online there, just in space, not fantasy-oriented.
There will always be a niche market for well formulated PvP games. In fact, look at Guild Wars. While not neccesarily a MMOG; it can be said that a minority of players will line up to kill each other in a static world if given a fair ruleset that allows for some semblance of "skill". Even so, it is not a Free For All (FFA) PvP game like Shadowbane was, and since I have not played since the free period last year I cannot say how GW has panned out. I will tell you that skill based FFA PvP games will garner a lot of attention, as long as thier ruleset is consistent, fair and well forumlated.
Asheron's Call Darktide/Beta World Black was FFA PvP and players loved it. I should say players who were mages, melee characters hated it as there was a "lack of itemization" to use a WoW euphamism. They tried to balance the skills and did a somewhat fine job, but the macroing and duping drove away a lot of the 'honest' players. It was a combination of code and publisher policy issue that drove away the players.
Shadowbane also had a FFA PvP environment, and players loved the game; hated the login bugs, sb.exe errors, rampant duping, and tedium neccesary to recover from a ZERG destroyed city. Lots of people played the game on release, lots of people left the game in 6 months because of the flawed code and building ruleset. Code and ruleset drove the players away.
I hate to bring it up, as it is still looking 'far away', but Darkfall Online is the only real FFA PvP+ game that looks to be coming out. The original developers were supposedly Darktide players, played Shadowbane and other popular MMOG's, and thier rulebase (when I was following it 2 YEARS AGO) looked well thought out and fair a PvP environment. However, it has been in development for a long time. And people aren't really sure if and when it will ever *really* come out. Which is sad.
Ahh well, my point stands that games can be successful, filling the niche market of the PvP crowd. They won't neccesarily be 6 million+ subscribers successful, but they will make thier money.
Personally, I'd like to see Ultima Online circa year 1998 again.
Without the bugs, cheats, and duping of course. For some reason, even with its dated engine, Ultima Online was fun because of its unlimited freedom it gave the players. Of course, players kind of used this to go on mass murdering sprees of godly proportions and many people didn't like that and complained and we ended up with the UO that we have today which kind of blows.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
yeah i'm waiting for the right pvp niche game while I play asheron's call. Playing on the white server I started on with a friend still because to move to darktide it would take weeks of macroing just to get to a high enough level to have a chance against 90% of players.
Guildwars I have done a tiny bit of pvp but only at the lowest skill levels(random pvp arena as opposed to clan teams with larger numbers) the game is too teamwork based for me. Without studying the game rules(skill usuage) and working with the same people/setups all the time you can't be really good at GW.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
The thing that sucked so much about SB wasn't necessarily the buggy code - it was inherent design flaws.
1) to build a city, you had to farm monsters. endlessly
2) to rebuild a city, you had to farm monsters. Endlessly. without a base of operations.
3) because of this, guilds who were a part of a losing faction would quit that faction and join the winning faction, so they could play relatively safely
4) Because of this constant quit the loser, join the winner mentality, the world would end up with one superguild, and a few tiny guilds that would regularly get wiped out
5) This was boring