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Don't do this to yourself...
serjndestroy
Member Posts: 69
in Shadowbane
Unless you are an explicit sadomasochist...
To sum the game up
-Good character customization(lots of races and lots of classes, which is cool)
-Bad graphics (not unforgivable, but Dungeon Siege on the PSP looks better for goodness sake),
-ATROCIOUS coding (get stuck in a bush. Use /stuck. Walk away for 5 seconds. Get teleported back to bush. Repeat until you get tired and exit. Log back in. Teleport back to bush. Not even mentioning the floating buildings and general torturous process of moving)
-HORRIBLE lag (in the sense of lag so bad the game is unplayable.. It takes at least 5 mins to load a (rather large admitedly) tile of terrain on a broadband connection, and the whole move 100 metres teleport back 50 metres due to latency, jump forward 25 metres, run in the opposite direction where you clicked issue. On top of that, combat is often impossible as you click the skill to use, the casting animation starts and... nothing (excepting getting lag killed by the monster of course, and losing all the items in your inventory in the process). Lag out in a strife zone and you are dead (No, wait, you are dead when you enter a strife zone anyways, because there are always 10 max lvls ganking people, but more on that later)
-Mental servers ( Up.... Down.............. Up. No DOWN.. U..No, wait still down)
-Generic skills/combat system (excepting the party/siege system. And flight(which is rather cool)
-Ridiculous amounts of traveling (have to spend 10 mins minimum running to a place to grind, not mentioning the fact that you will most likely get killed at the grind zone, as soloing is not a smart idea, and any group will be 100 times more likely to kill you and loot your body than help you)
-THE WORST COMMUNITY I HAVE SEEN IN ANY GAME EVER! (Wish there were more effects that I could apply to this text, as it cannot be over emphasized. In the painfull week I wasted playing this, this monstrousity, 5 people (no, I over exaggerate) 2 people actually used the chat channels! Nobody talks, ever! Not in party chat, not in guild chat, not in class chat, not in local chat... Maybe an ad for a gold-selling website or item now and then, but other than that nothing. I have not found 1 helpful person in the entire game, only ganking high levels that try their very best to make the game as unpleasant as possible. And the worst is, it is impossible to level after you leave the safety area, as you cannot get to a grinding zone without getting ganked (Oh yes, they say "Join a strong guid, they will help you"
good one! Try that, I beg of you. After you succeed you should fly to the moon and fetch eggs from the silver pigs that live there, as for to have the delusion that someone is going actually help you you have to be on either very illegal drugs or another plane of existence..)
Maybe, just maybe I would be able to play the game if the community was not composed of (lets save the obscenities) , but until then I would rather make parmezan of my testicles...
To sum the game up
-Good character customization(lots of races and lots of classes, which is cool)
-Bad graphics (not unforgivable, but Dungeon Siege on the PSP looks better for goodness sake),
-ATROCIOUS coding (get stuck in a bush. Use /stuck. Walk away for 5 seconds. Get teleported back to bush. Repeat until you get tired and exit. Log back in. Teleport back to bush. Not even mentioning the floating buildings and general torturous process of moving)
-HORRIBLE lag (in the sense of lag so bad the game is unplayable.. It takes at least 5 mins to load a (rather large admitedly) tile of terrain on a broadband connection, and the whole move 100 metres teleport back 50 metres due to latency, jump forward 25 metres, run in the opposite direction where you clicked issue. On top of that, combat is often impossible as you click the skill to use, the casting animation starts and... nothing (excepting getting lag killed by the monster of course, and losing all the items in your inventory in the process). Lag out in a strife zone and you are dead (No, wait, you are dead when you enter a strife zone anyways, because there are always 10 max lvls ganking people, but more on that later)
-Mental servers ( Up.... Down.............. Up. No DOWN.. U..No, wait still down)
-Generic skills/combat system (excepting the party/siege system. And flight(which is rather cool)
-Ridiculous amounts of traveling (have to spend 10 mins minimum running to a place to grind, not mentioning the fact that you will most likely get killed at the grind zone, as soloing is not a smart idea, and any group will be 100 times more likely to kill you and loot your body than help you)
-THE WORST COMMUNITY I HAVE SEEN IN ANY GAME EVER! (Wish there were more effects that I could apply to this text, as it cannot be over emphasized. In the painfull week I wasted playing this, this monstrousity, 5 people (no, I over exaggerate) 2 people actually used the chat channels! Nobody talks, ever! Not in party chat, not in guild chat, not in class chat, not in local chat... Maybe an ad for a gold-selling website or item now and then, but other than that nothing. I have not found 1 helpful person in the entire game, only ganking high levels that try their very best to make the game as unpleasant as possible. And the worst is, it is impossible to level after you leave the safety area, as you cannot get to a grinding zone without getting ganked (Oh yes, they say "Join a strong guid, they will help you"
good one! Try that, I beg of you. After you succeed you should fly to the moon and fetch eggs from the silver pigs that live there, as for to have the delusion that someone is going actually help you you have to be on either very illegal drugs or another plane of existence..)Maybe, just maybe I would be able to play the game if the community was not composed of (lets save the obscenities) , but until then I would rather make parmezan of my testicles...
Hail DnDOnlinegames!
Comments
Seems like you just need to find a better guild.
On Mourning, there is a guild called dragonscale. They let all new players join. They always have groups going and such.
As far as lag goes, it can take the screen a while to load when you first log in. But after that, I never have any lag. You might need a better graphics card or computer.
Having once had a toon in dragonscale, if Steven is still in charge there, he is a good fella. The guilds I was in were long time allies with DS and at one point had cities right near each other.
Ganking has always been a problem, but the lack of chatter is somethign that wasnt there when I quit, the channels were always going (if you were in one of the newbie cities). Granted, the desert one was always the better one (Khar IIRC).
That being said, the exploits and idiots would make it a game I would never play again, there just isn't enough time in the day to deal with that kinda crap in a game.
Nobody chats because they all use teamspeak or ventrillo.
Shadowbane has always been a bunch of close knit friends in every guild to getting recruited can be a pain, especially since there is always a 89% chance your probably going to be a spy.
It doesn't take long to level up or do anything in shadowbane anymore, as a matter of fact you could do everything except banes and mines solo. You may have more luck if you level up to lvl 60+ and then ask for a guild, since nobody likes to recruit a leech.
$0
I anxiously awaited the publishing of Shadowbane and bought it soon after it came out. I played for about 2 days and cancelled my subscription (when it was still pay-to-play.) I've recently started playing again, and it's better now and probably one of the better free games going, but it still has its faults.
On the positive side :
- Leveling is pretty easy, experience comes fast and cash flow isn't much of a problem if you don't forget to bank your earnings before going out.
- The overall guild/city/guild-warfare system is by far the most imaginative and in-depth system going, which is why I had so strongly anticipated the game in the first place. There's definitely all the tools to really bring a guild together in attempting to accomplish something.
- The class diversity and ability to sub-class makes this also one of the more interesting systems going. A lot of choices for character development.
- Gameplay is engaging once you get the hang of it, although the learning curve is very steep.
- It's free.
On the negative side :
- A total gankfest. I laugh everytime I hear people talk about "skill" in a game like this. How much skill does it take to kill a character less than half your level that you can kill in 2 or 3 shots? Not saying that I've never ganked anyone in a game, I've done my share, but really, all it makes you is the bully down the street. If it were a case of defending your guild's hunting areas that would be one thing and I'd understand and respect it. But so far I have yet to be ganked by anyone who's even so much as in the nation of the guild that supposedly controls the area I'm hunting in. I guess it gives those that desperately need it some shred of self-confidence, but I personally find it rather pointless. I'd much rather win a fight against someone who could actually defeat me. Still, it's a relatively unrestricted PvP game, and that comes with the territory. A minor complaint rather than a major issue.
- Horrible, horrible graphics. If, like a poster above said, you actually think this game looks good, you haven't played many MMORPGs. They have improved it somewhat since the debut of the game, back then the facial features (only hair, beards and skin tone or color, not even that for some races) that could be customized looked like they were drawn on with a magic marker, but it still leaves much to be desired. I've played a number of other free games that were far better looking. I could overlook that however, if there weren't so many other issues.
- Lag. My system isn't top-of-the-line, it's a couple of years old, but I'm not talking about system performance, I'm talking about internet latency. I will occasionally experience some graphics lag and every once in a great while latency issues in other games I play (that are far more taxing graphically,) but this is the only game where I will frequently (at least once or twice an hour) have periods where I can take no actions beyond moving, can't talk to NPCs, can't fight back if something or someone attacks me, etc. etc. And I don't mean 3-4 seconds, I mean 2-3 minutes sometimes. If this were an issue on my end, I'd experience it in other games too, but I don't.....not even in Asian-based games.
- Great UI concept, terrible execution. It's very versatile, gives you a lot of options and a lot of info that can be easily accessed. Unfortunately, while the windows can be moved around, they snap to certain locations and only resize to certain sizes. It's probably best that you don't move the windows from the way they're set up intially, because this is the most unobstructed view you're ever going to get. Maybe there are user-designed UIs out there that adress this issue, but I've yet to find any.
- Point-and-click movement works great in 2D isometric games, but sorely lacks for versatility in 3D games. If you haven't spent a lot of time playing a game that utilizes keyboard controls as at least an option for movement, you don't know what you're missing. I've gotten used to the system, but that doesn't mean I don't think it sucks
.
- Terrible camera controls. I've tried using the control that freezes the camera view, but no matter where I set it, it'll inevitably wander off to its own angle sooner or later, most often sooner.
- (EDIT : Forgot to add this) Lack of community. Of the very few fan-driven info sites I've been able to find, I've found TWO that still work, and their info is either limited to the level 40+ game or simply duplicates what's on the official site. Fan sites with game info are one of the critical resources anyone new to a game needs, especially those with the previously-mentioned steep learning curves such as this one. Also when the players in the game talk to you like you're some kind of moron in a channel labeled "Info" if you ask the simplest question that can't be found anywhere in the game's pathetic Help system. So actually count this as two negatives, as I'm not going to list the lack of documentation (outside of the well-done yet not very informative official website....which has good info on classes, races, the guild system and the game's backstory, another reason why this should have been a great game instead of just a decent one.)
Assessment : Overall, as a free game, this is a good one. But if Shadowbane had lived up to its pre-release promise, noone would be playing it for free. Contrary to what the SB fans here will tell you, this is NOT the best PvP system out there, although it could have been. That honor still goes to Dark Age of Camelot, which sadly is probably on its way to either becoming a free game or being shut down entirely. Mythic made enough mistakes on their own, but since being bought out by EA....well, in the MMORPG field, EA ruins every game they get their huge, greedy paws on, and DAoC has been no exception. Nonetheless, the PvP in DAoC is far and away the best in the industry.
Shadowbane could have, should have, would have, been the best overall PvP game around, IF Wolfpack hadn't screwed the pooch so badly on the interface and controls, and tried to at least put it on par with the graphical level of the games that were its contemporaries. Unfortunately they failed to do any of those things, so we're left with a decent game that's free to play at least
http://camelotmonkey.com/showchars.php?user=arghos
I had to quit personally when the game became too much of a time sink. The problem with becoming a powerful, well known guild is it also made you a target. Having Sarafias aka Sero wake me up at 4:30 am on a Sunday morning to defend the city on a regular basis just got to be a bit much (the pitfalls of having the guild leader as your roomate). I think most of the hardcore gamers just got burned out. When a game begins to intrude on real life, sometimes you just have to walk away, which is what happened to most of the old school guilds and players.
While it was true that the game could be fun if you found a good guild and such, it is hard for me to say that with whatever current state the game is in nowadays. Even with the horrible lag, piss poor graphics and such, I will still look upon my time with that game with a certain sick fondness. It wasn't the game itself, it was the people I played with that will make it stand out in my mind.
So to any AT guys that read this that remember Rastan in his minotaur and confessor incarnations, or remember Noro, or Tsyndria, or the myriad of toons I rolled and played, I just want to say hello and thanks for making my time in SB fun and memorable. And if any of you are on LOTRO, feel free to look me up on Arkenstone as Sonnou or Tsyn.
As for the rest of you wanting to try SB, good luck. It sounds like graphics and gameplay haven't improved much since the good old days, but the game can be fun. Enjoy.
Argh, you make the game sound so enjoyable back in the olden days. Too bad I missed it.
www.oblinq.com/SnowmonkeysTemple/
Character Customization - You wont find a better system anywhere A+
Graphics - Very bad , 1999 ish graphics D+
Coding - True you can get suck sometimes but they have /stuck command that works well. C+
Horrible lag - Not for me unless its like 100 vs 100 . B+
Mental Servers - Servers go down once a day for 15 mins. B+
Generic Skills - Disagree, their skill system like the customization was well done. B
Traveling - I will agree here, too many large empty areas, maps have too many cities too. C+
Community - Kind of bad I agree, but its still better than say guild wars community or WoW. C+
Ganking - FFA PVP, what would you expect? A+
Overall - Not bad for a free game,unfortunately cheating is bad on mourning and its the only decent non-asian controled server. C
Hell yeah, the old school days were great fun. I couldn't imagine trying to play it again. I went to the boards once about 6 months ago and it was 10 times worse then when I played.
"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~ Ronald Reagan