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Crowfall - The Lessons of Shadowbane, Murder of Crows with J. Todd Coleman - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Crowfall - The Lessons of Shadowbane, Murder of Crows with J. Todd Coleman - MMORPG.com
If you listen to the Crowfall developer streams, they reference Shadowbane regularly. That’s where Crowfall’s inception began. Looking at what Shadowbane was and what Crowfall plans to be, there are striking similarities between the two.
Comments
Sounds like the perfect one to assign to write this "article".
Shout out to any former members of Morloch's Vengeance!
I loved the idea of Shadowbane and enjoyed the crap out of my Minotaur Berserker. Until a Super Guild took over the server and decided everyone else was Kill On Sight 24/7. In my opinion these bully guilds killed the game before the first expansion came out.
If this is where Crowfall is headed, I'm going to have to make a hard pass.
Shadowbane was a complete mess. It was a buggy horrible game when it first came out. The visuals were horrible for their time. Existing games of the time looked much better. It spent a while in development and was "just around the corner" for so long that when it came out it was a step back in terms of graphics. Think blade of soul / archeage coming to the U.S. graphics (i.e.3-4 years after the game was released in Asia behind the times). It had none of the things it promised when it first came out. Combat was buggy as well. Getting kicked from servers. Basically, think of buying an alpha game in a physical box.
It was truly ahead of its time in terms of selling an alpha state product to people like we get now with kickstarter and steam early access is about what you got. BUT, back then no one was used to getting a shoddy alpha game at best buy.
EDIT: ......are these the same people that brought us shadowbane? wtf.......ok i was literally 100% going to buy this game but now my enthusiasm has dropped and I'm like 50% sure I'm going to buy this game now. I realize people change, but shadowbane did suck hard, especially compared to DAOC, i hope i dont see echoes of shadowbane in this freaking game.
Shadowbane was the probably the most fun I had in an mmo even more so than uo and eq. I left daoc for shadowbane Yes the graphics sucked and the rubber banding was atrocious but the city building, guild system and guild politics and the ability to raze it all in gvg was absolutely incredible.
The Black Watch for life!
Having said that I do not see Crowfall borrowing much from SB. I remember getting guild groups together to help me get my tlans, safely escorting me through enemy territory, the political intrigue and the absolute essential nature of player made and run towns. Much of that core underpinning seems missing. Having said that I am a backer and have enjoyed my time in the alpha and I am looking forward to the game as long as they can keep microtransactions as the primary business model out of the system.
Once you got past the crappy graphics and bugs, Shadowbane was probably the best pvp game to ever be released. The character build customization alone was worth playing for... kind of like path of exile. Build some crazy race/class/rune/weapon combo and see if it works.some did, spectacularly so, and some didn't at all. The pvp was rock paper scissors but there was never an OP build because there was always a build to counter it.
I'm really looking forward to Crowfall. Hopefully it will have been worth the wait.
when some of you posters are turned off because the devs mades shadowbane you are doing the entire MMORPG genre a disservice, shadowbane wasn't perfect by any means, but it had more balls than any game to date has put forth.
Things shadowbane did well/unique
** building your own city and actual guild politics that matter**
** the greatest character creation with so many unique and fun ways to customize or toon**
** second to none pvp, strategy and planning actually mattered when fighting mines/siege's**
** no instances, seamless huge world**
** in game economy based on a rune system that made huge impactful changes to your char **
ok bad things
**lag was always an issue**
** dupes/cheating/keyclone groups **
** unbalanced siege's could make a stale server, nothing to stop huge alliances ruling a server and making everyone quit **
+
Rampant cheating
________________________
Empty game.
No matter how good the rest of it is.
Ask darkfall if you dont believe me.
The best thing that ever happened to eve (maybe second best... warp to zero is best) was that when they found a Dev was cheating (giving Blueprints to his in game alliance) they very publicly and quickly removed him. People who don't mind losing their stuff in a fight don't feel the same way when they lose their stuff to a fight where one side is cheating.
Crowfall needs to be kept cheat free... SB was not.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
A game releasing with that type of review today would fail instantly.
Here comes the BUT
But Shadowbane wasn't about graphics, performance, AI, or anything other then player driven story, content, and world creation. No other game I have played since 93 has offered the detail in control of the world. The game was alive, the forums had consequences. You couldn't talk smack in forums and not expect a war to start in game where you jeopardized your hard work. There was real RP value with the belief systems. There was great character customization. There was a rock paper scissor balance that has not been reached since shadowbane.
You had something to loose which forced you to make alliances with others. It was the most social game I've ever played. Not something people would assume because of the game being pvp based.
I don't know much about crowfall. I am undecided about playing it but if it has the city building/conquest of shadowbane then I think every gamer needs to at least try it. Victory is sweet when you have skin in the game like shadowbane. Hopefully crowfall can recreate that now that tech may have caught up.
The only reason people still fondly remember shadowbane is because it shut down while it was still in that sweet honeymoon period, and even then, for many people, the honeymoon had ended and its long term flaws were quickly becoming apparent. Shadowbane, while fun for a short time, could never last in the long term without finding a way to fix all three of those points (of which the first two are rather simple albeit "easier said than done" fixes, but the third one would require something much more complex)
The dev team says they learned from their Shadowbane mistakes. Well, I guess if Crowfall manages to make it through development, we'll see I guess. For their sake and the game's sake, they'd better have.
And although I don't know about cheating, so far lag isn't an issue at all.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
and yes drop some shadowbane words on UO words on the website and get some attention
One of the major ideas behind Crowfall is that the world resets. Todd realized that servers in SB got stagnant once one group took over. Whenever they opened a new server, people flooded to it and there was a lot of activity.
In Crowfall, campaigns will last a matter of months. At the end, a winner is declared based on the ruleset of the campaign and then those people can join a new campaign and try to win again. There will be very limited imports into campaigns, so one guild can't just bring all their spoils from one campaign into the next. Each campaign starts as level as possible.
SB was out and running for quite a while, well enough past the honeymoon phase. A game like that would never have seen mainstream success, it was very niche, but that was fine. Now days, with the popularity of games like PUBG, I'm curious if an MMO like Shadowbane with inventory loot pvp and city building/destruction might see some success. Crowfall has potential since they are implementing different rulesets to cater to different folks. Some ruleset servers may have a limited playerbase but that leaves them room to try something new. The limited campaign timeframe is also a very good idea for a pvp mmo. People generally don't play a game for years straight, so being able to play a full campaign within a couple months and then have it reset keeps things fresh. Whenever they made a new server in SB it was always a lot of fun for the first few months, with all the politics, wars and shenanigans. I hope they can re-capture that with Crowfall.
The industry's track record lately has been pretty poor so I'm not going to get my hopes up. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.
Also, I believe switching worlds is something being talked about, at a heavy cost I assume or just once per cycle.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Personally I do think you have to be wary about segmenting things up too much such as clusters and linked instances... Part of the main reason people love sandboxesque games is being part of one world and belonging to that world, hopefully with the game having mechanics that provides a player with the ability to shape the world in some way, such as being part of a clan that can capture territory. That provides a player with a feeling of worth and that you matter within the larger scope of the game and that you have some kind of reputation to your name. If it is all split up then nobody cares.