Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
SB now and then
Rickard-TF
Member Posts: 5
in Shadowbane
I would like to hear more about how the game is now compared to its release.
about lag, bugs, hacks, and game play? how about the back story and the game. Did they give up on it or did they start to use the races and class in game with the story? how about attitude? did it mature on the boards? Not that i left for any of these reasons, i was just looking to see how it is now?
---------
Rickard the Frog
www.houseofthefrog.com
Comments
The game back at beta had problems like any BETA game. It crashed every 30 minutes due to a large memory leak (which they have never fixed, they have drastically improved it though) It now takes roughly 7 hours in game playing non stop through sieges and it MIGHT crash on you. It will lag on you at this point.
The game was never truly built to sate the roll playing community. Although like any game out there it can be role played, nothing in game determines wether you do or don't. Mourning server, Wrath server and Redemption are the only three remaining servers to date. Death, Entropy, Damnation, War, Corruption, and Test were the original servers. They all ran into the problem of item duping and were shut down to "wipe the slate clean" Death, Entropy, Damnation, War, and Corruption all came down, leaving Mourning and Test as the 2 original servers. Death, Entropy, Damnation, War, and Corrution users were given the option to move their current characters with the items they were wearing and move them to Mourning or Vengance, All bank items and city contracts were lost forever. All the duplicated items were CCRed out of the banks and off the backs of the cheaters, many were banned permanently others were suspended. Vengance population peaked around 800 for 2 months and then WoW came out. half the server population left for WoW and the server was brought down. Once again They allowed characters to be moved to redemption but this time with full banks, this turned out to be a mistake because someone found a way to exploit it .. they brought 30 guild seeds with them and filled half of the zones with trees of life the first day... , so they wiped the server and let them move their characters with items only. Test underwent 3 patches and 2 wipes during this time. Just recently(within the last 3 weeks) several gold dupes and resource dupes were being taken advantage of, causing horrendous lag. Many were banned again and items, gold, and full cities were deleted because they were cheated into the game. These dupes were much harder to detect because they didn't ACTUALLY dupe the gold. They found a way to make vendors in open freehold cities give them money instead of charge for repairs.(some pieces of cloth didn't break at 0 durability, they actually went into the negative, so the formula for the cost of repairs flipped from a positive to a negative number: giving you money instead of you paying it.) -Using 14 day trial accounts so they would not be banned on their main accounts and transferring the money on graves in open cities.
Server population has dropped from 800 to around 350 on Wrath, Test remains around 70, Mourning around 300, and Redemption 200.
Wrath, Mourning, Redemption and test are all still running, but the game is certainly dying. If people don't come back in the next month and give it another go it will be gone in the next 60 days.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former -Albert Einstein
Ya I checked it out again a few weeks ago, after a few months away, the game is the same accept for the ToO xpack. Great concept SB had they just didnt do it right, the engine sucks.
I have been reading a bit on it here and there at other sites. It seems to be a lot better of a game from when it first came out but they lost their players before they improved it and fixed major bugs. So it seems to be a game slowly fading. All over the net there are X-Players that have a lot to say how the game has bugs and problems but they really love it. Strange to read so many post all over the net about how poorly this game was published, marketed, and serviced, to hear the same people rave about how they love what it should have been. This could have been the greatest game ever for pvp and gvg. Maybe they should have waited another year until it was done. I dont know, but there are a lot of loyal SB gamers out there that wont go back. I guess there is not a real second chances for good games that fail.
---------
Rickard the Frog
www.houseofthefrog.com
You forgot the best server of all at release...DREAD.
It was funny in beta because you would be in a party...fighting monsters...then the server would crash. Since all of you died to the monsters, everyone's loot was ripe for the picking.
You'd race back to where the group was...collect all their cash...then act like someone else had stolen it :P
Man I miss SB beta...bugs and all.
SB seiges are where the game really shines. Kind of like a 200 person EQ raid...every MMOer should attend one at least once. Preferably 10 or 20 times.
I remember the first huge 200 vs 200 seige on a town called Vengence (I was in TBW attacking). People would crash out and come back in literally 20 times. But it was so much fun you WANTED to.
If someone were to buy SB, revamp the graphics with the Unreal 3 engine, fix the lag and advertise...I think it would be a hit still.
SB now - population -300
SB then - Population -1400
SB now - Mine skirmishes
SB then - 100 man battles, daily raids you name it
The concept was gold, the execution was crap. (Stuck with it for one year after 3 months in beta)
Sounds like they don't have enough people for one good server. And they never figured out how to stop constant hacking/duping. Too bad, this one could have been a winner if it had released in '02 less buggy and laggish.