Thanks for watching everyone. Shadowbane was certainly a niche title, but a very important one historically. My next video will be a character analysis video, and a very special one at that. Stay tuned, it should be out by the end of the week. Also subscribe to my Twitch channel, one month from now I will be moving and have upgraded internet, to celebrate I will be doing a KOTOR 2 streamathon.
This video made me wonder. If a MMORPG prospers on PVP and as you put it "prey on sheep" could it not be balanced by a reward for protecting and coming to aid of said sheep. Police force (knights) if you will.
Absolutely. A good idea. Bounty systems have accomplished this in games. Games also try to do such with alignments, but the issue in their alignment systems are typically that being 'evil' is far more rewarding.
Eve online does seem to have a nice balance of sheep vs wolves, with boutny systems, security levels, etc... I think the problem is most devs who want to develop hardcore pvp don't seem to put any interest in the sheep.
Is there any chance you could consider doing a Death of a Game for the MMO, Two Moons? Assuming there's enough material for it, of course. As far as I know, it went down for, and I quote from the game's site years back, 'lack of popularity'. I'd like to see its rise and fall, given it was a game I spent a lot of my childhood playing and had very interesting mechanics like sitting down and letting people buy inventory items you set the price of and the like.
Shadowbane was one of my favorite mmos ever. Clocked thousands of hours in it. Nothing was better than getting a stone dropped on one of your alliances town at like 3am, so you had to wait for people to log on the next day for them to find out thus beginning the prep for massive siege battles that could last for hours. Flanking tactics, splitting up your alliance into groups to attack from various fronts, having a stealth small roaming gank squad to pick up enemy stragglers it was great. Wish something like it would come around.
An important point: Shadowbane was one of the few games that gave beta players a huge advantage that was almost insurmountable on release. Beta players established guilds prior to launch that already knew which areas of the world they wanted to control based on drops they wanted (i.e. Tlanarian Blades). On release, they rushed these down while new players/guilds to the game were stuck on the backfoot. That caused a lot of people to leave the game early rather than swearing fealty to established guilds/alliances. It was severely off-putting and though I think Shadowbane tried to address this later, the damage was already done.
the guilds completely taking over after every wipe was annoying for this exact reason. i don't know what the solution to this problem is, but clearly it was constant underlying issue in people feeling like they could never be on even keel with the bigger guilds who just steam rolled everyone.
I heard of massive guilds with lots of cities and territory. Players would wake up one morning to discover everything sacked by people living on isolated islands almost impossible to counter attack.
It was a guild ran game, wtf are you guys even talking about. Yeah, cities got destroyed, even the biggest guild's cities got destroyed regularly, they just rebuild, that was the fun of it. The reason pvp mmos get ruined is because of people bitching and crying about it, play a different damn game.
@@OverlordLaharllol It wasn’t just about city wipes. The guilds were able to control the glyphs, runes, or whatever they were that you needed to actually build your character. They were specifically able to do this because the devs failed the change the locations of those drops after beta.
Those old Shadowbane clips really bring me back. I remember watching my parents play it when I was younger, having my own character on my mother's account that I ran around with when she wasn't doing guild leader things or otherwise. It's a shame the game is dead and gone, but Shadowbane will always have a place in my heart.
The best part of shadowbane, was that your character and gear really mattered very little. You could have a character that was pvp capable in a few hours, you could get basic pvp quality gear fairly cheaply. And tweaking classes, races, disciplines to your style was amazing. The person driving the character was what became well known and mattered, not the pixel character which you could delete and reroll in a few hours. Now games tie up everything in the gear on your character, and crafting/leveling all that crap, and so little time is actually spent fighting and "playing"
That's because most MMOs are really only concerned with keeping people paying a subscription or buying stuff in the cash shop for as long as possible. They don't need to be good from a game design perspective. They just need to be addictive.
Shadowbane's character/class customization was absolutely amazing. There's been nothing quite like it. That said, it also resulted in a balance NIGHTMARE. It was also many years ahead of its time - gaming PCs of the time, and the game servers themselves, simply could not handle the large-scale city-siege battles that were a highlight of the game.
I think you missed one key reason why the game failed, though you mentioned the two issues as disparate ones. I think a lot of players enjoyed being the "sheep" or the underdog, and trying to rally together with other underdogs/sheep to take on the zerg/wolf. I'm sure the difficulty here drove many players away, but I don't think it's as big a contributing factor as a connection I think you missed really shedding light on. You mentioned that, in Shadowbane, you had everything on the line: your home, your bank, your very guild. You also mentioned the server issues and infrastructure that couldn't handle the demand. These two issues go hand in hand, and I think they were single-handedly the largest reason for Shadowbane's failure. When everything you've worked months on as a guild/nation is on the line, it is nothing short of infuriating when you lose it all BECAUSE the game servers crap out, lag or glitches prevent you from acting. Some of the biggest sieges I took part in were lost because the game froze for the majority of the participants, as the servers and clients just couldn't handle the scale of what the game was actually designed around, and we logged back in to our home burning to the ground. We saw all our effort over such a long period of time go to waste, and often our nation disband, merely because the technical aspects of the game couldn't handle it. As a player, it's hard to recover from that kind of infuriating experience... knowing that you lost it all - and it wasn't even just because the enemy was better. In the end, I believe it caused more of us to jump ship than anything else about the game. I would like to thank you for the video, though, because I think the game was very relevant and would love to see something similar with a better engine/infrastructure. I think the game had more potential than anything else I've seen on the market... even to-date. I don't think, as you question, that this is the fate of all PvP-centric MMOs. EVE Online is a good example of this. Wolves overtaking the sheep hasn't caused that game to fail, yet. They won't be epic giants like WoW, perhaps, but they can find a niche - and that's okay. Every MMO doesn't have to be a behemoth. If a Shadowbane-clone released today, with the exact same game design principals but better infrastructure... I would drop whatever I was playing at the time and get on-board... and I don't think I'm alone. That alone makes me hopeful for Crowfall. As for Shadowbane itself, no other MMO has left such profound memories for me, and it's precisely because they were all player-created. The politics... the intrigue... the betrayals. As a former Clan Havion vassal, I will still remember... I might event chant on my death bed... "Remember the Shrubbery!"
Ahhhh Shadowbane...How I loved thee. I will forever remember being a part of planting the ToL seed for Cornerstone on the Mourning server. I salute you Lex Talionis! Dura Lex Sed Lex! --- Balel, Crusader of LT.
The issue is vertical progression. If the 'sheep' or people who lose have no way to turn things around, the game is DOA. Crowfall and Camelot Unchained are addressing this and slower paced survival type pvp is popular so hopefully we can go back to meaningful pvp rather than throwaway arena/merry-go-round keep swapping.
I agree. I had a decent time with Shadowbane until a huge guild on our server declared war on our tiny guild (They owned a huge portion of the world map and were too big for anyone to fight back). Here I am, going to sleep to go to work the next day, knowing that everything we've worked to build will be gone while I'm dealing with real life responsibilities. I got home from work in-time to log in and be surrounded by enemies destroying our buildings and was killed instantly. Then I uninstalled the game and went back to Dark Age of Camelot.
They make them because they are sick of themeparks where the player is on rails and has no impact on the world. Player made kingdoms that rise and fall is a concept that will always have appeal its just very difficult to make profitable hence only small studios with low budgets have tried it. Going after a niche is a smart idea for small studios, and it worked big time for CCP with EvE.
I don't really agree with this mindset. All MMO's have griefers, the issue in FFA PVP games primarily have not been griefers. You can't blame players for playing the game. You have to blame the creators for not placing proper rules. Some games have found ways to deal with this, EVE is likely the highest profile. SWG had bounty systems, Darkfall New Dawn has their alignment/meditation. It took games like Shadowbane failing, for the newer ones to succeed or attempt to.
the answer is always social restructuring, alliances, politics, etc..most players are too egotistical and stupid to realize this...when the real world consequence of death is removed from conflict..people aren't forced into the same desperate corners of nessessity...
Watching this vid almost 3 years after it came out and both games you keep mentioning (Crowfall and Camelot Unchained) still have no set release date. RIP.
From my experience of 40-50 MMOs (Both PvE and PvP, including Shadowbane btw :)) I honestly think most PvP titles will continue to struggle. The people wanting the extreme FFA PvP with full loot etc. are a tiny (but very loud) minority of people from my experience, and most of them only want it assuming they get to be at the top of the food chain, otherwise they quit like everyone else. Not even the "hardcore PvP" fans enjoy just being fodder for the higher ups. Another problem is that PvP is very polarizing. It's not just a smaller detail like you might say that RP features, level of customization is. PvP will completely kill any potential interest of a hell of a lot of potential players from the very start. They simply don't want it in any way, shape or form. That severely limits the potential player base and will obviously make getting funding for such a game harder. The market simply isn't nearly as big as the market for PvE MMOs or PvE MMOs with some PvP arenas thrown in for the hell of it. I think the issue is that hardcore PvP players and hardcore PvE players simply play MMOs for completely different reasons and get enjoyment out of completely different things. While both types of games are still called MMOs, they really don't have much in common as far as achievements, advancement etc. is concerned. Most PvE players seem to play for the feeling of progress, leveling up, getting better gear, raiding, killing mobs looking for rare drops etc. If you then include FFA PvP with full loot to their game, you instantly kill their entire reason for playing in the first place. Losing everything is the exact opposite of why they enjoy the game genre in the first place. There's just no way to get around that. You simply cannot have both groups of people happily playing the same game, as their desires conflict with each other and ruin the other guy's enjoyment. I think that's why we've seen so many of the utterly "meh" MMOs in recent years that try the whole "We're a game for *everyone*!" nonsense and fail utterly. You're never going to be "for everyone" and by trying you end up being "for no one in particular". Pick a niche and make the best possible game for that niche alone, and don't try to pretend your game is something it's not. You only piss people off and nothing else. I guess we'll see if Crowfall or Camelot Unchained can add something new to the genre, but I honestly don't expect their PvP to keep most people interested for very long, since that's always what seems to happen to all PvP MMOs that come out. They just tend to become a brawl fest with the same fights over and over, the fact that they're people and not NPCs don't really seem to add much to the longevity for most MMO players. It's especially bad because PvP MMOs tend to lack badly as far as non-PvP stuff is concerned, so if you get bored of the PvP there's nothing to do but quit. Just pretending that fighting players over and over is actually game content won't actually make it true and sooner or later most players tend to come to that realization and quit the PvP games. The simple fact is that, for a lot of gamers, PvP MMOs just aren't good games. If people *really* wanted fast, action packed, balanced, skill based combat, they'd play a FPS and not a MMO. PvP MMOs just aren't even close contenders to FPS as far as those things are concerned.
Mobas would like to have a word with you..or the tons of private T2A era UO servers that are populated still. Sure I'll play a fps for shits and giggles for like an hour but lose interest fast. I think mobas like smite and LoL, even vainglory, hit the PvP need pretty well. Most the UO private servers really aren't that chaotic and violent either except certain places that are basically designated for it. Very overexaggerated with what that games PvP/pk scene is. Hell even WoW vanilla private servers set to PvP aren't bad at all. It's like any major city you figure out which places to avoid if you don't want trouble. Lol
i was there when shadowbane died. idk about the lack of sheep issue. seemed to be plenty of sheep to keep me occupied. the biggest problem i saw was that the chinese guilds all banded together into a massive nation that owned the server. the europen, american, korean, and japanese guilds eventually got together to try to fight back. but we were too late and suffered from too much infighting. the game died from choking on the massive cn alliance. it became impossible for independent guilds to survive.
A new Ross's game Dungeon, a mandelore review, and A nerdslayer Death of a game in one day. Holy fuck guys keep your long form highly edited and researched videos to one at a time.
Man, your review is just so deep that even a person like me who didn’t play some of these games that you reviewed, feels he is so involved. Thanks and keep up with your top of the line contents.
When I first get a notification of a new NerdSlayer video: :D :D :D :D :D When I see it's "only" 25 minutes: :( :( :( :( When it's still fresh NerdSlayer content and I'll take whatever the hell I can get: :D :D :) :D
Eli Jennings Am I the only one who thinks that's the biggest flaw of his videos? He repeats himself so much that it just pads the video. The subject matter and research is great, but I feel he could get the point across in at least ten minutes less.
Honestly, I haven't noticed that! I like long videos, but it might be because I typically have them on in the background, so you might have a point too. I'll keep it mind next time I rewatch!
That's 25 minutes nerd provided 100% garentee you'd be watching this video instead of committing crime or being at risk of being killed or injured. For 25 minutes nerd kept his viewers safe, how do you like them outside the box thinkins?!?! lol
Great video man! If you don't mind, I'd like to suggest a video on either Pirates of the Burning Sea, another sandbox PvP MMO that is still running but is very much beyond the point of death, or Rusty Hearts, a PvE dungeon crawler that was closed in 2014, and had a dedicated enough player base to launch a private server which finished the game's development and has been expanding on it.
Ah..Burning Sea... The downfall of Sony Online Entertainment caused many great titles to die.. Though Burning Sea could have stood a better chance if there were more low-mid level ships
I truly miss those old school days, I joined a faction called Lords of Death and they were the PvP Gods of the server. In the end an Alliance of Carebears formed and took out a majority of our cities, but it was all in good fun. Sigh... Forever missed....
Best game ever....The music gives me chills....I loved my Aracoix Thief ...rarely ever lost in 1 v 1 battles. I was on so many servers and in so many alliances, OOTB was my first and QFT was my last...LOC was mostly in the middle...but i run into a few of the guys in other games, well anyone that kept their name from the game. nothing compares imo to this game as far as PVP and allegiance to your friends.
Might be too early to do that game. It could be the next ff14, have some sudden resurgence out of nowhere. Just too early to call it on that game, no matter how bad it's launch and year has been.
thats not a very good customer approach babe. i might be a future customer, you never know. you might alienate me and your playerbase might lose its 3rd concurrent player.
Bunch of friends and I caused a serverwide change due to their font choice. You couldnt tell an l from an I or a | in game. So a full group of Il|II||l variations meant you had to click to target and it was virtually impossible to coordinate targets. It is sad how many games in this series I have been a part of.
then came everyone having the same name with just one slight variation in xv or z's ... or that one guy named "water". You've been killed by water.. Shadowbane was the best mmo of all time. without a doubt.
you couldn't tell an l from an I or | in Rune Halls of Valhalla either. I was only 10 and didn't even know where the | character existed on the keyboard so I made my clan tag lAoDl while everyone else had |AoD|
Yep I also used the in the beginning of test server with webeadLy(lower case) an elf thief and webedeadiy(capitol) an elf scout had many great times with it and guess what. It's back on steam check it out and come play with us! -webedeadly/Aceofspades/any card name like kingofdiamonds ect.
Ah Shadowbane.... how I miss this game! MMORPGs have never been the same since I played this. This coming from someone that started in Beta WoW all the way up until just before the release of Cataclysm. There was nothing quite like the exhilarating combat of SB. The HOURS upon HOURS of time you would put into the development of a toon simply to have the end goal in mind fully realized. I had multiple spiral bound, 3 subject notepads that had lists and lists of stats, builds, discs, locations of disc drops, great places to go and level alone or with my guild. GOD that was incredible... in its waste of time and the memories created. Melisandre my Nephalim Mage Assassin was incredible and has spoiled caster/mage based toons in ALL other RPGs since. The pure variety, which as you stated is what many games today don't even come close to, was insurmountable. You could create something, your own completely unique character and have it be a complete flop or something incredible (spent over a year trying to perfect the Elf BladeWeaver Prelate/Crusader) and something that some try to recreate (like ESO) but pale in comparison. I was sad to lose the friends I had made during that time, we all went to different games when SB finally shut down. I went on to Warhammer and WoW but ultimately gave up on MMORPGs (on PC that is) simply due to growing up and other life responsibilities taking that time. There is still a semi-active SB emulator out there that I may one day install and play again simply for the nostalgia of it, but my gaming has moved more to console based due to simple time constraints but oh how do I miss those days.
Maybe goes without saying, but all of the inspiration referring to Game of Thrones is from the book series, this predates the show. The only reason I even got into and hooked by the books is because they were required reading at Wolfpack.
I forgot about the crazy amount of customization from Shadowbane. I’m lucky: I played Shadowbane at a young enough age that my memories of playing have WAY better graphics than seeing footage of the game. I really hope a company can see things Shadowbane did well (most importantly the number of playable races, classes, specializations, runes, etc) and make something new and better with those ideas
"He claims that the "Realms" added in the Throne of Oblivion expansion pack were unwanted additions which referenced the Realm vs. Realm combat of DAoC. The Realms system wasn't anything of the sort, but rather a way for guilds and nations to lay further claim to a segment of the map. The realm owner could tax cities within his realm for some of the resources kept in their warehouses. Further, the realms helped to deal with the "problem" of too many cities blanketing the map by instituting limits on the number of cities which could be built within any given realm." - soulein
That moment when you realize there's no problem with the video's resolution but the trailers' actual resolutions being in the 144-360p range. I keep forgetting how lucky I am to be this old.
So great to watch this. I loved Shadowbane, and I still use their strategy guide for ideas when it comes to designing characters: there was just *so* damn much variety. Makes a lot of sense that it was developed by MUD fans. Great stuff.
I liked a lot of the aspects of this game, like the classes, races, the combat mechanics, the ability to build a town, and so on, but sadly, it's free for all PvP meant it is was pretty much doomed from the get go, other than as a very niche game. People just don't like investing a lot of time to build something up, only to see it torn down. And since most people can't be top dog, well, that's the fate most of them will face. If you want a broader audience, then you have to provide protection from PvP to such a degree that the casual PvPer can essentially avoid it whenever they desire, and only engage in it (or the risk of it) of their own choice. Probably its strongest feature, in terms of general appeal, was its races. The races were quite a bit different than what most of the games had, with meaningful differences. Flight, significantly faster movement, and so on... all things that could be gained based on the race you picked. And there were the races that were monsters elsewhere, with minotaurs (pre-WoW) and centaurs. That, combined with the potential to build a town, I expect is why it sold as many box copies as it did.
I'd love for you to do Asheron's Call Nerdslayer - You are going to get some nostalgic heebiejeebies going with that one. I'm watching your SB video now and am already starting to feel some insane nostalgia feelings... I played the game religiously and loved it. There wasn't many games for us hardcore PVP'ers and Shadowbane (and Asheron's Call Darktide) was certainly it. Thanks man! Love your videos! Keep 'em coming. PS: I hope you do well Crowfall! It certainly has my interest peaked.
Asheron's Call? Yessir... Even though it still had a population (not huge but still a population) it was closed down by WB out of the blue. A lot of people fought to keep it going but it was as hopeless as the City of Heroes fight... You can't fight big business. :(
I put up the money for crowfall based on shadowbane, but have been a bit disappointed, but thealpha/ Beta hasn't really had much to offer so far so hopefully it gets better.
@CompositeAwe d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/wowpedia/thumb/3/3e/Jasani%2C_Shrine_Keeper.jpg/250px-Jasani%2C_Shrine_Keeper.jpg?version=789a54dc9bce7a7b97c053cae8466f0f this is not a Sylvari. Not even close.
I had an idea that could prevent prevent the wolf from feeding on the sheep, even though it may go against some of the ideas of a PvP game, so it would probably need to be implemented in a different game. You can have two groups, the guilds and the unaligned. Guilds are for the hardcore players who want to gain control over the game world, and will compete with each other to do so, in return getting their hands on the best gear. For those who log into a PvP game but want to play it casually for some reason, they can have unaligned status. They won't the support network of a guild or get their hands on the best gear, but at the same time they will be protected from the predations of the guilds who would not be allowed to go after unaligned players. That way you get the hardcore competitive element that rewards that sort of thing, and a casual element where the players can quest to their hearts content without fear of getting ganked, at the price of losing access to the best gear and the support and resources that a guild can provide.
This was the very first game I followed pre launch. I remember checking the forums several times a day. I was so pumped to get a beta code only to realize my dumpy computer couldn’t run it. I gave the code to code to a friend who went on to have fantastic adventures culminating in his guild name one of their cities after him.
I played Shadowbane back in the day. I forget the server name but I will never forget the name of our foe: Noxus. They were the griefers of our server. They either glitched a city into the ocean or set it up on an island so far out in the ocean that it took forever and a day to travel there. This allowed them to grief anyone they wanted with relative impunity. If they died, they respawned at their seemingly unsiegeable city. Several prominent guilds formed an alliance and we all swam that stupid ocean and destroyed their city. That was about the time real life and a general sickness of MMO's killed my interest in the game. Losing my guild's city in a siege we didn't even really get to participate in because of server issues probably didn't help.
If you want to reclaim some nostalgia head over to www.Magicbane.com or www.ShadowbaneEmulator.com, two different servers ran by two different teams. SBEmu added some changes to the game to evolve it, while MagicBane is vanilla of the last patch before 09, though they are in the process of making some changes as well. If you need some Shadowbane fight videos, while mine aren't the best, I have some on my channel that you can view.
Apparently there is now a listing on steam for shadowbane. The release date is set for the 5th of this month, with the publisher listed as changyou.com hk limited.
Holy Shit! I remember back when I was a hardcore DAoC junkie, this was supposed to be the DAoC killer. There was much talk amongst the playerbase. It came not even close.
Shadowbane was just a more hardcore game. DAoC was an evolution of EQ, Shadowbane was built for pvp guilds from UO. They really weren't operating in the same space as far as the type of players they were trying to attract.
I played this with some other Daoc guildmates when it first came out. Shadowbane was fun. The problem was that if you lost, you lost everything. Your inventory, your city, you had to start all the way back over. The vast majority of gamers don't want to see all their hard work destroyed that way. Each server had their own Uber Beta Guild that knew all the maps and locations from beta and took over each server. I don't remember the server name but our UBG was called The Black Watch. We fought them as 70%/30% population underdogs and finally beat them. Too bad by then the game was essentially dead.
Loved how you nailed one of the major consequences of the failure of SB with the wolf/sheep metaphor. By the time the player base realized they were the problem it was too late. Ironic thing about SB, is that wolf population continued to fight each other long after the game "ended" and are still doing so late into their 40s.
I never played this game, but my brother used to fondly recall this game. The way he made it sound, sometimes people could straight up ruin the server for everyone else by conquering so much. (I’m pretty sure this was the game he mentioned).
About your wolf-sheep thing (which was quite true for Darkfall, DF-UW and even the new editions), I did not feel it when playing Shadowbane. When I would roam alone and get killed, I did not feel like a victim. BUT it can be said that *it was very much a group versus group game, with a big focus on teamwork* (at least, that is what I experienced when I played, which was only during the last months of the game). I mean that it probably could not attract and retain the solo average gamer, which is true of other similar games.
Still, it was doomed to die just because of the reality of new games, with better and better graphics and immersion, no matter how hard the core community wanted Shadowbane to last.
The possibility of builds and being actually renouned from 1vxing or how you conducted yourself. Real politics. Seen 1 full group beat 3 full groups in siege. Play to crush bro.
i actually really liked this game. I remember at first it was alot of fun but near the end it was alot of problems with supporting the amount of multiplayers logged in during combat which caused alot of disconnect issues and no support stopping cheaters.
I am considering playing Crowfall. I was always a PVE player, to me the only reason to play an MMORPG was the big bosses I would have to kill inside dungeons. But I really liked the leveling system of this new game, based on time offline. I work all day, so games like Rust and Ark Survival, that I played while on vacation, were completely out of question while working. So I think a system like that will be able to not force me to log on when I can't, which will really be cool. I hope that the game doesn't have features like those games, like building a house that will be destroyed while I am offline, or if it has it must be a guild thing, not a personal thing. I have some experience being the sheep in some games due to lack of time to play, so I can predict if that would happen and I would prefer to not even start. And that's a problem in PVP persistent games you won't find in PVE. I can get to end game in 3 months or a year, and the content will be the same, save updates in PVE, in PVP it becomes a burden if you feel forced to upkeep something. But I will learn more about the game, for not it seems really nice.
This game turned into hundreds of people standing in front of the only high level exp zones (undead oarsman) preventing people from leveling up. And if someone was a few levels higher than you, you couldn't kill them. I remember dueling a character three levels above me, and literally couldn't damage them (I am talking first month or two). I don't know if they ever fixed the ganking, but it simply wasn't fun to have hundreds of people standing around waiting for someone to leave town. This is another game that level racing created barriers to entry.
This was my very first mmo. It was a bit clunky, but fun at least for when I played. I remember sneaking around in stealth whenever there was guild wars and looting the bodies as they fell. You could even sneak into enemy forts and buy from their vendors if they happened to have better stuff for sale. There really wasn't much in the way of questing once you completed the beginning area. It was mostly just trying to level up and interact with a player driven world. I don't play a lot of pvp centric these days since the toxicity gets tiresome, but I still hope to see another Shadowbane like game some day.
Thanks I just stumbled in your video. Man those were the good times. I hail from the Carnage server where alot of heroes were born. I remember setting the alarm clock earlier in the morning to fight banes in different time zones. Was hoping to see myself in your video but sadly nope.
Wow, you mentioned Winterblades in the video! I was directly involved with some of those wars they mentioned being the former leader of Atomic Godz. Was fun times but boy was that game a killer. I would say it was TOO hard core. Formerly known as Lothos (don't play MMOs anymore)
You can still play shadowbane on the EMU and chinabane servers. I played at release and then played magicbane for years until it went down months ago, when chinabane (changyu) bought the rights to SB. Still to this day it's one of my favorite games of all time for the pvp and city building/warfare.
I was a bit disappointed in the Matrix Online video, granted probably not your fault the information just wasn't out there.. but this was back on top form, nice one :) so... how about that Huxley video?
Turning 41 Years old soon... I'm playing games since Vic-20 and Commodore 64 Era. I played many many thousands hours in my whole life. Shadowbane had it's flaws yes, but it's the very best game I played so far even compared to curent games. Oh and by the way... I'm a developer at Ubisoft, I know a bunch on games too ;)
Much the same here though my Vic-20 was an upgrade from my Timex Sinclair 1000. I played mostly on Vengeance server but also on Scorn and Mourning and my Shadowbane experience shapes me to this day. Nothing like it since and had I still the time I would play and enjoy. Nice to see another fan.
I was one of the many people who left UO for Shadowbane because of the prior launch of Trammel and other "bad decisions". What really killed Shadowbane was WoW. One of the guilds I was in around the time WoW launched, at least half the players quit and went over to WoW, and this pretty much happened to every guild/nation. WoW was the nail in the coffin. We went from Banes with hundreds of players to banes with 1 group vs 1 group, and most of the time someone was botting more than 1 character (unless you count the CN zergs, then they always brough like 3 to 5 groups to banes, and then 3 groups would die before eventually killing off 1 NA or EU group).
I played in the SB beta, I didnt play at launch. having our guild city get wiped out while we were at work so we didnt even get to fight was not fun and pretty much the whole guild gave up on the game. not fun having everything lost with no chance to even fight over it. The SB character options were just awesome
I"m not going to lie. I loved the hell out of Shadowbane. It was plagued with so many issues but the game was enriched with lore, customization and depth. The combat and gameplay mechanics and animations were atrocious but it was incredibly deep. I remember getting my hopes up for spiritual successor 'gorillabane' by stray bullet games but that ultimately fell through. I'm fairly excited for Crowfall
I think he means powergamers. PvPers are fine, but powergamers aka no-lifers take things entirely too far and think because they're good at the game that it's some kind of accomplishment like winning an Oscar.
I, and a good number of my guild, were some of the ones who were chased away from the game due to the hands-off approach they took to dealing with assholes in the game. We were on a server where there was a guild of griefers who found an exploit where they managed to make their base on an island that actually DID NOT EXIST on the map. So, not only could nobody else get to it, but nobody else knew where it was. They went around the server committing extortion on all the guilds, and when anyone tried to fight back, they'd just disappear back to their hideout and there was nothing we could do. It's one thing to have to fight off a guild of griefers. It's another when we're not even allowed to fight back because they've cheated and we can't reach them. And it's even more of a slap in the face when the admins/mods/whatever they called themselves back then would respond to the complaints with nothing but utter indifference. I loved the concept of the game and the massive battles you could do instead of just ganking and counter-ganking in the middle of nowhere, but I was not about to waste my time and money on a game where the people in charge had nothing but disdain for the players.
I would pay for a reboot of this on a current engine with some tweaks to baning and how the economy is handled. (can't be a 24/7 chore) Best PVP I've ever participated in. (Elf Bow Bard)
SB was definitely too hardcore for its own good. I remember seeing people quit in the early days constantly because their town they worked on for literally months got bane'd and destroyed one night. The ability to pull out your upgraded vendors didn't come until the expansion and like you said, too little too late. But SB had some of the most enjoyable character building ever. The meta used to evolve based largely around spec groups. In the early days Healer Channelers were top tier. Max block skill max channeling skill they could block the world while casting godly nukes. I remember later werewolf rune warrior archers were strong, paired with barbarians with 2h axe piercing debuff's. You call a target in vent, barb debuffs and 7 archers murder it in one second. I remember when the throwing rune was first applied to a Templar making the Deflar. Defensive stance throwing templar with almost 0% chance to hit or be hit, but with his 50% spell power buff and his "of the thunderbolts" proccing throwing weapons. You'd either die almost instantly fighting him or he'd get no procs and you would just swing and swing and miss and miss. That was the worst meta. It was nice tho having the ability to build almost any type of character and to try to build it within some framework of a 10 man group and how to maximize effectiveness. The video mentions the politics of SB, but didnt mention what we affectionately called Forumbane. Each server had a forum where people would go and post about any political or non-political stuff, but many wars started on the forums before anything happened in game.
I played from release until the end of the emulator (off and on). I was a part of, GL'd, IC'd many nations and cities on many servers. It was a blast, the politics, the combat - the inevitable confrontation with the Chinese and Koreans. I will always remember this game as my favorite online MMORPG PVP game. So many classes, so many creative ways to build characters - it was great. Needs redone - the company that purchased it and threw it on Steam ruined it.
Also, the release date was delayed multiple times. I had it preordered and even forgot I had it preordered because it got delayed so long. I came back from a deployment in the middle east, and there it finally was, lol. I never did play it; I gave it away.
Thanks for the video. Crowfall is releasing this month(July 2021), and it will be interesting to see if any lessons were learned to bring success to Crowfall.
I remember some Guildmates in WoW who romanticized and waxed nostalgic about Shadowbane. Stories, like a guild whose members all changed their names to "Guild Member X", where X was a roman numeral, and would then go on mass raids against other guilds - it was supposedly impossible to differentiate priority targets and then communicate it to teammates, because "Guild Member XVII" is hard to pick out from "XVI" and "XVIII" in a mass of overlapping nameplates that all look similar. Ah the good old days.
Interesting info about ChangYou. When sbemu (one of the emulators which is a story in itself) was about to be relaunch they contacted ChangYou to see if it was okay. At this time it was about 5 years into its creation and ChangYou forgot they purchased the code. After they were notified ChanYou began launching "Steambane" as we know it today.
Main problem I had with SB was at release you had to compete vs already established guilds who had been organized during the beta. It was litterally 100 vs 12. Join the zerg army beta guilds or get run over by the horde.
I played Shadowbane when it first came out. My favorite aspect of the game was by far the character customization. So many races and classes to choose from was a big draw and playing non-humanoid characters like Centaurs was unique (and still is in many ways). However it was around the 1999-2004ish period that I defined myself as a PvE Role-player in regards to MMORPGs. I never really enjoyed the constant threat of PvP so I did leave Shadowbane really quickly. I've always liked PvP but I do require that I have the ability to opt-out at some point and just smell the flowers. As such open world PvP games have stopped appealing to me all together because as a sheep I don't like getting eaten too often lol. As such I try to avoid "wolf games" and games that constantly reward power players. Now in my early 30s I no longer have the time to invest into these games so I fully understand why PvP focused MMORPGs have such a hard time finding a strong footing. I did always like the idea of kingdom based warfare but I've never seen it implemented in a way that felt good.
Shadowbane has been the best pvp experience I've ever had along with lineage 2. Such a great game. I remember the servers being overrun with Chinese players near the end. What a great game.
Greetings,great reviews I might suggest you checking out the Continent of the Ninth Seal classic pvp for what it was fantastic and It's interconnected to Black Desert and somehow the Blade&Soul games,I would to love to see your thoughts on Lineage 1,2 and why Lineage 1 is still top in Korean charts which is amazing for such an old game... Thanks for bringing back nice memories. :)
I loved shadowbane. My friends and I would spend hours discussing new builds to overcome the current FotM spec. I didn't mind the graphics at all but the lag was horrible. I have had an itch to go play on the emu servers for years but I am refusing to do. It wont be the same. For us, this game was the good ole days.
My first MMO, shall The Fallen Angels live forever, was so fun ganking those Blood and Iron bastards while getting paid to do it. We duped so much gold it was funny, we had cities full of it with gold hidden in all the walls, also many of TFA got the god mode glitch were we had tons of extra abilty points given to us and they where never taken away.
Pretty good analysis. A LOT more could be mentioned, but it is what it is. I stupidly bought a lifetime sub to the game. I was delusional thinking that it could possibly succeed. The parts of the game that actually worked were far outnumbered by the ones that didn't. The only mmo I've played that was definitely and infinitely worse was Horizons. Wolpack tried; Artifact didn't even do that. I did enjoy my mage assassin, such as he was. He had these sort of ice bolts (??) that moved slowly .. you could get two in the air a few seconds apart. When they hit they would have this great crunching sound. The main problem with the game was TREMENDOUS LAG and exploits. It made it unplayable unless you were keen on being ganked. A bit like the old radar hack in DAOC which would facilitate roaming gank squads that could track you down wherever you were in the zone.
Thanks for watching everyone. Shadowbane was certainly a niche title, but a very important one historically. My next video will be a character analysis video, and a very special one at that. Stay tuned, it should be out by the end of the week. Also subscribe to my Twitch channel, one month from now I will be moving and have upgraded internet, to celebrate I will be doing a KOTOR 2 streamathon.
This video made me wonder. If a MMORPG prospers on PVP and as you put it "prey on sheep" could it not be balanced by a reward for protecting and coming to aid of said sheep. Police force (knights) if you will.
Absolutely. A good idea. Bounty systems have accomplished this in games. Games also try to do such with alignments, but the issue in their alignment systems are typically that being 'evil' is far more rewarding.
Eve online does seem to have a nice balance of sheep vs wolves, with boutny systems, security levels, etc... I think the problem is most devs who want to develop hardcore pvp don't seem to put any interest in the sheep.
you forgot another rly strong game with open pvp and empire creations came out at that time EvE online
Is there any chance you could consider doing a Death of a Game for the MMO, Two Moons?
Assuming there's enough material for it, of course. As far as I know, it went down for, and I quote from the game's site years back, 'lack of popularity'.
I'd like to see its rise and fall, given it was a game I spent a lot of my childhood playing and had very interesting mechanics like sitting down and letting people buy inventory items you set the price of and the like.
Shadowbane was one of my favorite mmos ever. Clocked thousands of hours in it. Nothing was better than getting a stone dropped on one of your alliances town at like 3am, so you had to wait for people to log on the next day for them to find out thus beginning the prep for massive siege battles that could last for hours. Flanking tactics, splitting up your alliance into groups to attack from various fronts, having a stealth small roaming gank squad to pick up enemy stragglers it was great. Wish something like it would come around.
An important point: Shadowbane was one of the few games that gave beta players a huge advantage that was almost insurmountable on release. Beta players established guilds prior to launch that already knew which areas of the world they wanted to control based on drops they wanted (i.e. Tlanarian Blades). On release, they rushed these down while new players/guilds to the game were stuck on the backfoot. That caused a lot of people to leave the game early rather than swearing fealty to established guilds/alliances. It was severely off-putting and though I think Shadowbane tried to address this later, the damage was already done.
the guilds completely taking over after every wipe was annoying for this exact reason. i don't know what the solution to this problem is, but clearly it was constant underlying issue in people feeling like they could never be on even keel with the bigger guilds who just steam rolled everyone.
I heard of massive guilds with lots of cities and territory. Players would wake up one morning to discover everything sacked by people living on isolated islands almost impossible to counter attack.
It was a guild ran game, wtf are you guys even talking about. Yeah, cities got destroyed, even the biggest guild's cities got destroyed regularly, they just rebuild, that was the fun of it. The reason pvp mmos get ruined is because of people bitching and crying about it, play a different damn game.
@@OverlordLaharllol It wasn’t just about city wipes. The guilds were able to control the glyphs, runes, or whatever they were that you needed to actually build your character. They were specifically able to do this because the devs failed the change the locations of those drops after beta.
Those old Shadowbane clips really bring me back. I remember watching my parents play it when I was younger, having my own character on my mother's account that I ran around with when she wasn't doing guild leader things or otherwise. It's a shame the game is dead and gone, but Shadowbane will always have a place in my heart.
“With Crowfall and Camelot Unchained on the horizon”
This sentence aged like milk facing a hot summer sun.
The best part of shadowbane, was that your character and gear really mattered very little. You could have a character that was pvp capable in a few hours, you could get basic pvp quality gear fairly cheaply. And tweaking classes, races, disciplines to your style was amazing. The person driving the character was what became well known and mattered, not the pixel character which you could delete and reroll in a few hours. Now games tie up everything in the gear on your character, and crafting/leveling all that crap, and so little time is actually spent fighting and "playing"
That's because most MMOs are really only concerned with keeping people paying a subscription or buying stuff in the cash shop for as long as possible. They don't need to be good from a game design perspective. They just need to be addictive.
So, as someone who's not a shadowbane player, where would you recommend that someone look to really try and get why it was so fun?
@@deathpyre42 ...just go play it on magicbane or shadowbaneemulator. Both servers still up, although magicbane more active.
That was the best part. The permafly warlock or a glitch hiding druid casting AoE's and you was maxed out in about 6 hours.
I seriously appreciate how much more compact and concise this video is compared to your previous ones.
Indeed, 20-30 minutes hits the sweet spot. Previous videos that were close to an hour were just too long.
longer videos are fine, i more meant the cutting out of redundant info, and that far-too-long introduction
Shadowbane's character/class customization was absolutely amazing. There's been nothing quite like it. That said, it also resulted in a balance NIGHTMARE.
It was also many years ahead of its time - gaming PCs of the time, and the game servers themselves, simply could not handle the large-scale city-siege battles that were a highlight of the game.
I think you missed one key reason why the game failed, though you mentioned the two issues as disparate ones. I think a lot of players enjoyed being the "sheep" or the underdog, and trying to rally together with other underdogs/sheep to take on the zerg/wolf. I'm sure the difficulty here drove many players away, but I don't think it's as big a contributing factor as a connection I think you missed really shedding light on.
You mentioned that, in Shadowbane, you had everything on the line: your home, your bank, your very guild. You also mentioned the server issues and infrastructure that couldn't handle the demand. These two issues go hand in hand, and I think they were single-handedly the largest reason for Shadowbane's failure. When everything you've worked months on as a guild/nation is on the line, it is nothing short of infuriating when you lose it all BECAUSE the game servers crap out, lag or glitches prevent you from acting. Some of the biggest sieges I took part in were lost because the game froze for the majority of the participants, as the servers and clients just couldn't handle the scale of what the game was actually designed around, and we logged back in to our home burning to the ground. We saw all our effort over such a long period of time go to waste, and often our nation disband, merely because the technical aspects of the game couldn't handle it. As a player, it's hard to recover from that kind of infuriating experience... knowing that you lost it all - and it wasn't even just because the enemy was better. In the end, I believe it caused more of us to jump ship than anything else about the game.
I would like to thank you for the video, though, because I think the game was very relevant and would love to see something similar with a better engine/infrastructure. I think the game had more potential than anything else I've seen on the market... even to-date. I don't think, as you question, that this is the fate of all PvP-centric MMOs. EVE Online is a good example of this. Wolves overtaking the sheep hasn't caused that game to fail, yet. They won't be epic giants like WoW, perhaps, but they can find a niche - and that's okay. Every MMO doesn't have to be a behemoth. If a Shadowbane-clone released today, with the exact same game design principals but better infrastructure... I would drop whatever I was playing at the time and get on-board... and I don't think I'm alone. That alone makes me hopeful for Crowfall.
As for Shadowbane itself, no other MMO has left such profound memories for me, and it's precisely because they were all player-created. The politics... the intrigue... the betrayals. As a former Clan Havion vassal, I will still remember... I might event chant on my death bed... "Remember the Shrubbery!"
Ahhhh Shadowbane...How I loved thee. I will forever remember being a part of planting the ToL seed for Cornerstone on the Mourning server. I salute you Lex Talionis! Dura Lex Sed Lex! --- Balel, Crusader of LT.
Heh, hello from a morloch horde/vengeance officer.
The issue is vertical progression. If the 'sheep' or people who lose have no way to turn things around, the game is DOA. Crowfall and Camelot Unchained are addressing this and slower paced survival type pvp is popular so hopefully we can go back to meaningful pvp rather than throwaway arena/merry-go-round keep swapping.
I agree. I had a decent time with Shadowbane until a huge guild on our server declared war on our tiny guild (They owned a huge portion of the world map and were too big for anyone to fight back). Here I am, going to sleep to go to work the next day, knowing that everything we've worked to build will be gone while I'm dealing with real life responsibilities.
I got home from work in-time to log in and be surrounded by enemies destroying our buildings and was killed instantly. Then I uninstalled the game and went back to Dark Age of Camelot.
Something I should have covered as well, to which I agree to your point.
They make them because they are sick of themeparks where the player is on rails and has no impact on the world. Player made kingdoms that rise and fall is a concept that will always have appeal its just very difficult to make profitable hence only small studios with low budgets have tried it. Going after a niche is a smart idea for small studios, and it worked big time for CCP with EvE.
I don't really agree with this mindset. All MMO's have griefers, the issue in FFA PVP games primarily have not been griefers. You can't blame players for playing the game. You have to blame the creators for not placing proper rules. Some games have found ways to deal with this, EVE is likely the highest profile. SWG had bounty systems, Darkfall New Dawn has their alignment/meditation.
It took games like Shadowbane failing, for the newer ones to succeed or attempt to.
the answer is always social restructuring, alliances, politics, etc..most players are too egotistical and stupid to realize this...when the real world consequence of death is removed from conflict..people aren't forced into the same desperate corners of nessessity...
Without a doubt, this is one of my new favorite series on RUclips. Live your vids man. Highly informative and interesting.
Watching this vid almost 3 years after it came out and both games you keep mentioning (Crowfall and Camelot Unchained) still have no set release date. RIP.
From my experience of 40-50 MMOs (Both PvE and PvP, including Shadowbane btw :)) I honestly think most PvP titles will continue to struggle. The people wanting the extreme FFA PvP with full loot etc. are a tiny (but very loud) minority of people from my experience, and most of them only want it assuming they get to be at the top of the food chain, otherwise they quit like everyone else. Not even the "hardcore PvP" fans enjoy just being fodder for the higher ups.
Another problem is that PvP is very polarizing. It's not just a smaller detail like you might say that RP features, level of customization is. PvP will completely kill any potential interest of a hell of a lot of potential players from the very start. They simply don't want it in any way, shape or form. That severely limits the potential player base and will obviously make getting funding for such a game harder. The market simply isn't nearly as big as the market for PvE MMOs or PvE MMOs with some PvP arenas thrown in for the hell of it.
I think the issue is that hardcore PvP players and hardcore PvE players simply play MMOs for completely different reasons and get enjoyment out of completely different things. While both types of games are still called MMOs, they really don't have much in common as far as achievements, advancement etc. is concerned.
Most PvE players seem to play for the feeling of progress, leveling up, getting better gear, raiding, killing mobs looking for rare drops etc. If you then include FFA PvP with full loot to their game, you instantly kill their entire reason for playing in the first place. Losing everything is the exact opposite of why they enjoy the game genre in the first place. There's just no way to get around that. You simply cannot have both groups of people happily playing the same game, as their desires conflict with each other and ruin the other guy's enjoyment.
I think that's why we've seen so many of the utterly "meh" MMOs in recent years that try the whole "We're a game for *everyone*!" nonsense and fail utterly. You're never going to be "for everyone" and by trying you end up being "for no one in particular". Pick a niche and make the best possible game for that niche alone, and don't try to pretend your game is something it's not. You only piss people off and nothing else.
I guess we'll see if Crowfall or Camelot Unchained can add something new to the genre, but I honestly don't expect their PvP to keep most people interested for very long, since that's always what seems to happen to all PvP MMOs that come out. They just tend to become a brawl fest with the same fights over and over, the fact that they're people and not NPCs don't really seem to add much to the longevity for most MMO players.
It's especially bad because PvP MMOs tend to lack badly as far as non-PvP stuff is concerned, so if you get bored of the PvP there's nothing to do but quit. Just pretending that fighting players over and over is actually game content won't actually make it true and sooner or later most players tend to come to that realization and quit the PvP games.
The simple fact is that, for a lot of gamers, PvP MMOs just aren't good games. If people *really* wanted fast, action packed, balanced, skill based combat, they'd play a FPS and not a MMO. PvP MMOs just aren't even close contenders to FPS as far as those things are concerned.
Nailed it.
Mobas would like to have a word with you..or the tons of private T2A era UO servers that are populated still. Sure I'll play a fps for shits and giggles for like an hour but lose interest fast. I think mobas like smite and LoL, even vainglory, hit the PvP need pretty well. Most the UO private servers really aren't that chaotic and violent either except certain places that are basically designated for it. Very overexaggerated with what that games PvP/pk scene is. Hell even WoW vanilla private servers set to PvP aren't bad at all. It's like any major city you figure out which places to avoid if you don't want trouble. Lol
i was there when shadowbane died. idk about the lack of sheep issue. seemed to be plenty of sheep to keep me occupied. the biggest problem i saw was that the chinese guilds all banded together into a massive nation that owned the server. the europen, american, korean, and japanese guilds eventually got together to try to fight back. but we were too late and suffered from too much infighting. the game died from choking on the massive cn alliance. it became impossible for independent guilds to survive.
Man, I'm watching now, but I want to say... too soon. Even like 10 years on, too soon man, I'll never find another shadowbane, and it hurts.
Check out The shadowbane Emulator babe. It's stable, has players and it's Shadobane! It relaunched yesterday I think :D
It’s out on steam
Come join us on steam it's back baby!
A new Ross's game Dungeon, a mandelore review, and A nerdslayer Death of a game in one day. Holy fuck guys keep your long form highly edited and researched videos to one at a time.
Man, your review is just so deep that even a person like me who didn’t play some of these games that you reviewed, feels he is so involved. Thanks and keep up with your top of the line contents.
When I first get a notification of a new NerdSlayer video: :D :D :D :D :D
When I see it's "only" 25 minutes: :( :( :( :(
When it's still fresh NerdSlayer content and I'll take whatever the hell I can get: :D :D :) :D
Eli Jennings Am I the only one who thinks that's the biggest flaw of his videos? He repeats himself so much that it just pads the video. The subject matter and research is great, but I feel he could get the point across in at least ten minutes less.
Honestly, I haven't noticed that! I like long videos, but it might be because I typically have them on in the background, so you might have a point too. I'll keep it mind next time I rewatch!
That's 25 minutes nerd provided 100% garentee you'd be watching this video instead of committing crime or being at risk of being killed or injured. For 25 minutes nerd kept his viewers safe, how do you like them outside the box thinkins?!?! lol
Great video man! If you don't mind, I'd like to suggest a video on either Pirates of the Burning Sea, another sandbox PvP MMO that is still running but is very much beyond the point of death, or Rusty Hearts, a PvE dungeon crawler that was closed in 2014, and had a dedicated enough player base to launch a private server which finished the game's development and has been expanding on it.
man I remember rusty hearts. It was ok, but kind of repetitive. Like even for an MMO.
Ah..Burning Sea...
The downfall of Sony Online Entertainment caused many great titles to die..
Though Burning Sea could have stood a better chance if there were more low-mid level ships
I truly miss those old school days, I joined a faction called Lords of Death and they were the PvP Gods of the server. In the end an Alliance of Carebears formed and took out a majority of our cities, but it was all in good fun. Sigh... Forever missed....
LoL I was one of those carebears!!
Defeating LoD was what killed Death server. Everyone forgets how important a great antagonist is.
Shadowbane is now on Steam. Look it up! I'm Steve the healer.
When I die I want NerdSlayer to catalog my gaming life, it would be the ultimate honor!
Best game ever....The music gives me chills....I loved my Aracoix Thief ...rarely ever lost in 1 v 1 battles. I was on so many servers and in so many alliances, OOTB was my first and QFT was my last...LOC was mostly in the middle...but i run into a few of the guys in other games, well anyone that kept their name from the game. nothing compares imo to this game as far as PVP and allegiance to your friends.
Can you do a video on lawbreakers? Your logo next to the lawbreakers logo would be two smileys side by side, gotta be crazy to pass that up.
Bum Numba One definitely will do one for that game.
Might be too early to do that game.
It could be the next ff14, have some sudden resurgence out of nowhere.
Just too early to call it on that game, no matter how bad it's launch and year has been.
how much do they pay you to shill?
About as much as you make exposing your extra chromosome.
thats not a very good customer approach babe. i might be a future customer, you never know. you might alienate me and your playerbase might lose its 3rd concurrent player.
10:23 oh shit! I was just watching this stuffing Halloween treats into my mouth and heard my name!
:D
Bunch of friends and I caused a serverwide change due to their font choice. You couldnt tell an l from an I or a | in game. So a full group of Il|II||l variations meant you had to click to target and it was virtually impossible to coordinate targets.
It is sad how many games in this series I have been a part of.
then came everyone having the same name with just one slight variation in xv or z's ... or that one guy named "water". You've been killed by water.. Shadowbane was the best mmo of all time. without a doubt.
Uh, no. It was the ugliest though.
idiots like you who think their name made a difference in targeting make me laugh
you couldn't tell an l from an I or | in Rune Halls of Valhalla either. I was only 10 and didn't even know where the | character existed on the keyboard so I made my clan tag lAoDl while everyone else had |AoD|
Yep I also used the in the beginning of test server with webeadLy(lower case) an elf thief and webedeadiy(capitol) an elf scout had many great times with it and guess what. It's back on steam check it out and come play with us! -webedeadly/Aceofspades/any card name like kingofdiamonds ect.
So weird to watch old MMO combat, both players just standing in place and whaling on each other.
morons did that, yes ;)
@@Shuxley They still do to this day.
EarthboundX it’s build vs build why shadowbane was unique to other games , you have to remake or just take it.
It's now on Steam actually ^^
Nice video. I'm actually a kickstarter backer of Crowfall and am looking forward to its release
wish i could be excited about it. ex-uo player. :(
Mate ive been binging all the DOAG videos for some days now. I fucking love them. Keep up the good work!
Ah Shadowbane.... how I miss this game! MMORPGs have never been the same since I played this. This coming from someone that started in Beta WoW all the way up until just before the release of Cataclysm. There was nothing quite like the exhilarating combat of SB. The HOURS upon HOURS of time you would put into the development of a toon simply to have the end goal in mind fully realized. I had multiple spiral bound, 3 subject notepads that had lists and lists of stats, builds, discs, locations of disc drops, great places to go and level alone or with my guild. GOD that was incredible... in its waste of time and the memories created. Melisandre my Nephalim Mage Assassin was incredible and has spoiled caster/mage based toons in ALL other RPGs since. The pure variety, which as you stated is what many games today don't even come close to, was insurmountable. You could create something, your own completely unique character and have it be a complete flop or something incredible (spent over a year trying to perfect the Elf BladeWeaver Prelate/Crusader) and something that some try to recreate (like ESO) but pale in comparison.
I was sad to lose the friends I had made during that time, we all went to different games when SB finally shut down. I went on to Warhammer and WoW but ultimately gave up on MMORPGs (on PC that is) simply due to growing up and other life responsibilities taking that time. There is still a semi-active SB emulator out there that I may one day install and play again simply for the nostalgia of it, but my gaming has moved more to console based due to simple time constraints but oh how do I miss those days.
Maybe goes without saying, but all of the inspiration referring to Game of Thrones is from the book series, this predates the show. The only reason I even got into and hooked by the books is because they were required reading at Wolfpack.
It's been too long nerdslayer, too long...
Shadowbane was and is one of the most loved games for me. (Sylver Velthanor, CoS, Treachery)
I forgot about the crazy amount of customization from Shadowbane. I’m lucky: I played Shadowbane at a young enough age that my memories of playing have WAY better graphics than seeing footage of the game. I really hope a company can see things Shadowbane did well (most importantly the number of playable races, classes, specializations, runes, etc) and make something new and better with those ideas
"He claims that the "Realms" added in the Throne of Oblivion expansion pack were unwanted additions which referenced the Realm vs. Realm combat of DAoC. The Realms system wasn't anything of the sort, but rather a way for guilds and nations to lay further claim to a segment of the map. The realm owner could tax cities within his realm for some of the resources kept in their warehouses. Further, the realms helped to deal with the "problem" of too many cities blanketing the map by instituting limits on the number of cities which could be built within any given realm." - soulein
That moment when you realize there's no problem with the video's resolution but the trailers' actual resolutions being in the 144-360p range.
I keep forgetting how lucky I am to be this old.
So great to watch this. I loved Shadowbane, and I still use their strategy guide for ideas when it comes to designing characters: there was just *so* damn much variety. Makes a lot of sense that it was developed by MUD fans. Great stuff.
Your video editing and other production value is getting better and better, it's unbelievable that you don't have at least 100k subs!
I liked a lot of the aspects of this game, like the classes, races, the combat mechanics, the ability to build a town, and so on, but sadly, it's free for all PvP meant it is was pretty much doomed from the get go, other than as a very niche game. People just don't like investing a lot of time to build something up, only to see it torn down. And since most people can't be top dog, well, that's the fate most of them will face. If you want a broader audience, then you have to provide protection from PvP to such a degree that the casual PvPer can essentially avoid it whenever they desire, and only engage in it (or the risk of it) of their own choice.
Probably its strongest feature, in terms of general appeal, was its races. The races were quite a bit different than what most of the games had, with meaningful differences. Flight, significantly faster movement, and so on... all things that could be gained based on the race you picked. And there were the races that were monsters elsewhere, with minotaurs (pre-WoW) and centaurs. That, combined with the potential to build a town, I expect is why it sold as many box copies as it did.
It's back on steam check it out and come play with us!
I'd love for you to do Asheron's Call Nerdslayer - You are going to get some nostalgic heebiejeebies going with that one. I'm watching your SB video now and am already starting to feel some insane nostalgia feelings... I played the game religiously and loved it. There wasn't many games for us hardcore PVP'ers and Shadowbane (and Asheron's Call Darktide) was certainly it.
Thanks man! Love your videos! Keep 'em coming.
PS: I hope you do well Crowfall! It certainly has my interest peaked.
Is that really "dead" though? Not long ago I bought it for $10 and there were still a fair amount of players.
Asheron's Call? Yessir... Even though it still had a population (not huge but still a population) it was closed down by WB out of the blue. A lot of people fought to keep it going but it was as hopeless as the City of Heroes fight... You can't fight big business. :(
I really want Crowfall to succed.. Also to make a Female Centaur... MMO's just don't do that... I've alwasy wanted to play a Dryad in WoW :(
I put up the money for crowfall based on shadowbane, but have been a bit disappointed, but thealpha/ Beta hasn't really had much to offer so far so hopefully it gets better.
ummm.. you can play a dryad in Guild Wars 2. they're called Sylvari.
Never played WoW? You can make a female centaur, they're called Tauren
That's minotaur not centaur *facepalm*
@CompositeAwe
d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/wowpedia/thumb/3/3e/Jasani%2C_Shrine_Keeper.jpg/250px-Jasani%2C_Shrine_Keeper.jpg?version=789a54dc9bce7a7b97c053cae8466f0f
this is not a Sylvari. Not even close.
Dude you never fail with the edits. Well done again. Every single time.
Thank my editor Tom. :). I give him paint brush, he paints the masterpiece.
My fav mmo of alltime. I’ll never forget the time I spent with The Fallen Angels. Most fun I ever had.
Thank you for posting this. This game WAS my 20’s. Long live BANE!!!
OMG i miss this game ! very keen & detailed video you have made; thank you
my first video 11 years ago was a shadowbane screencap
I had an idea that could prevent prevent the wolf from feeding on the sheep, even though it may go against some of the ideas of a PvP game, so it would probably need to be implemented in a different game. You can have two groups, the guilds and the unaligned. Guilds are for the hardcore players who want to gain control over the game world, and will compete with each other to do so, in return getting their hands on the best gear. For those who log into a PvP game but want to play it casually for some reason, they can have unaligned status. They won't the support network of a guild or get their hands on the best gear, but at the same time they will be protected from the predations of the guilds who would not be allowed to go after unaligned players. That way you get the hardcore competitive element that rewards that sort of thing, and a casual element where the players can quest to their hearts content without fear of getting ganked, at the price of losing access to the best gear and the support and resources that a guild can provide.
This was the very first game I followed pre launch. I remember checking the forums several times a day. I was so pumped to get a beta code only to realize my dumpy computer couldn’t run it. I gave the code to code to a friend who went on to have fantastic adventures culminating in his guild name one of their cities after him.
I played Shadowbane back in the day. I forget the server name but I will never forget the name of our foe: Noxus. They were the griefers of our server. They either glitched a city into the ocean or set it up on an island so far out in the ocean that it took forever and a day to travel there. This allowed them to grief anyone they wanted with relative impunity. If they died, they respawned at their seemingly unsiegeable city. Several prominent guilds formed an alliance and we all swam that stupid ocean and destroyed their city. That was about the time real life and a general sickness of MMO's killed my interest in the game. Losing my guild's city in a siege we didn't even really get to participate in because of server issues probably didn't help.
If you want to reclaim some nostalgia head over to www.Magicbane.com or www.ShadowbaneEmulator.com, two different servers ran by two different teams. SBEmu added some changes to the game to evolve it, while MagicBane is vanilla of the last patch before 09, though they are in the process of making some changes as well.
If you need some Shadowbane fight videos, while mine aren't the best, I have some on my channel that you can view.
Thanks man, I've never played the game but this should be really interesting to check out :3
Apparently there is now a listing on steam for shadowbane. The release date is set for the 5th of this month, with the publisher listed as changyou.com hk limited.
Holy Shit! I remember back when I was a hardcore DAoC junkie, this was supposed to be the DAoC killer. There was much talk amongst the playerbase. It came not even close.
Shadowbane was just a more hardcore game. DAoC was an evolution of EQ, Shadowbane was built for pvp guilds from UO. They really weren't operating in the same space as far as the type of players they were trying to attract.
I played this with some other Daoc guildmates when it first came out. Shadowbane was fun. The problem was that if you lost, you lost everything. Your inventory, your city, you had to start all the way back over. The vast majority of gamers don't want to see all their hard work destroyed that way. Each server had their own Uber Beta Guild that knew all the maps and locations from beta and took over each server. I don't remember the server name but our UBG was called The Black Watch. We fought them as 70%/30% population underdogs and finally beat them. Too bad by then the game was essentially dead.
Loved how you nailed one of the major consequences of the failure of SB with the wolf/sheep metaphor. By the time the player base realized they were the problem it was too late. Ironic thing about SB, is that wolf population continued to fight each other long after the game "ended" and are still doing so late into their 40s.
I loved this game. Very dark and appealing aesthetic. They don't make MMOs as dark as these anymore, even Crowfalls world looks lighthearted.
I never played this game, but my brother used to fondly recall this game. The way he made it sound, sometimes people could straight up ruin the server for everyone else by conquering so much. (I’m pretty sure this was the game he mentioned).
I miss this game so much I probably had 2000 hours loged in this game
You can still play it ;). I'm playing it right now and there's a bane in an hour..
It's back on steam now if you didn't see already! Come play with us!
I don't even care if "ugh, it's monday", nerdSlayer uploaded!! o/
About your wolf-sheep thing (which was quite true for Darkfall, DF-UW and even the new editions), I did not feel it when playing Shadowbane. When I would roam alone and get killed, I did not feel like a victim. BUT it can be said that *it was very much a group versus group game, with a big focus on teamwork* (at least, that is what I experienced when I played, which was only during the last months of the game). I mean that it probably could not attract and retain the solo average gamer, which is true of other similar games.
Still, it was doomed to die just because of the reality of new games, with better and better graphics and immersion, no matter how hard the core community wanted Shadowbane to last.
The possibility of builds and being actually renouned from 1vxing or how you conducted yourself. Real politics. Seen 1 full group beat 3 full groups in siege. Play to crush bro.
i actually really liked this game. I remember at first it was alot of fun but near the end it was alot of problems with supporting the amount of multiplayers logged in during combat which caused alot of disconnect issues and no support stopping cheaters.
I am considering playing Crowfall. I was always a PVE player, to me the only reason to play an MMORPG was the big bosses I would have to kill inside dungeons. But I really liked the leveling system of this new game, based on time offline. I work all day, so games like Rust and Ark Survival, that I played while on vacation, were completely out of question while working. So I think a system like that will be able to not force me to log on when I can't, which will really be cool.
I hope that the game doesn't have features like those games, like building a house that will be destroyed while I am offline, or if it has it must be a guild thing, not a personal thing. I have some experience being the sheep in some games due to lack of time to play, so I can predict if that would happen and I would prefer to not even start. And that's a problem in PVP persistent games you won't find in PVE. I can get to end game in 3 months or a year, and the content will be the same, save updates in PVE, in PVP it becomes a burden if you feel forced to upkeep something. But I will learn more about the game, for not it seems really nice.
Every time you say "take over the world" I expect to see the M. Bison clip.
This game turned into hundreds of people standing in front of the only high level exp zones (undead oarsman) preventing people from leveling up. And if someone was a few levels higher than you, you couldn't kill them.
I remember dueling a character three levels above me, and literally couldn't damage them (I am talking first month or two).
I don't know if they ever fixed the ganking, but it simply wasn't fun to have hundreds of people standing around waiting for someone to leave town.
This is another game that level racing created barriers to entry.
This was my very first mmo. It was a bit clunky, but fun at least for when I played. I remember sneaking around in stealth whenever there was guild wars and looting the bodies as they fell. You could even sneak into enemy forts and buy from their vendors if they happened to have better stuff for sale. There really wasn't much in the way of questing once you completed the beginning area. It was mostly just trying to level up and interact with a player driven world. I don't play a lot of pvp centric these days since the toxicity gets tiresome, but I still hope to see another Shadowbane like game some day.
Thanks I just stumbled in your video. Man those were the good times. I hail from the Carnage server where alot of heroes were born. I remember setting the alarm clock earlier in the morning to fight banes in different time zones. Was hoping to see myself in your video but sadly nope.
It's back on steam check it out and come play with us!
Wow, you mentioned Winterblades in the video! I was directly involved with some of those wars they mentioned being the former leader of Atomic Godz. Was fun times but boy was that game a killer. I would say it was TOO hard core.
Formerly known as Lothos (don't play MMOs anymore)
Awesome, I was wating for one of your videos.
Keep it up man!!
You can still play shadowbane on the EMU and chinabane servers. I played at release and then played magicbane for years until it went down months ago, when chinabane (changyu) bought the rights to SB. Still to this day it's one of my favorite games of all time for the pvp and city building/warfare.
I was a bit disappointed in the Matrix Online video, granted probably not your fault the information just wasn't out there.. but this was back on top form, nice one :) so... how about that Huxley video?
Turning 41 Years old soon... I'm playing games since Vic-20 and Commodore 64 Era. I played many many thousands hours in my whole life. Shadowbane had it's flaws yes, but it's the very best game I played so far even compared to curent games. Oh and by the way... I'm a developer at Ubisoft, I know a bunch on games too ;)
Much the same here though my Vic-20 was an upgrade from my Timex Sinclair 1000. I played mostly on Vengeance server but also on Scorn and Mourning and my Shadowbane experience shapes me to this day. Nothing like it since and had I still the time I would play and enjoy. Nice to see another fan.
I was one of the many people who left UO for Shadowbane because of the prior launch of Trammel and other "bad decisions". What really killed Shadowbane was WoW. One of the guilds I was in around the time WoW launched, at least half the players quit and went over to WoW, and this pretty much happened to every guild/nation. WoW was the nail in the coffin. We went from Banes with hundreds of players to banes with 1 group vs 1 group, and most of the time someone was botting more than 1 character (unless you count the CN zergs, then they always brough like 3 to 5 groups to banes, and then 3 groups would die before eventually killing off 1 NA or EU group).
Thanks for sharing your perspective
I played in the SB beta, I didnt play at launch. having our guild city get wiped out while we were at work so we didnt even get to fight was not fun and pretty much the whole guild gave up on the game. not fun having everything lost with no chance to even fight over it. The SB character options were just awesome
Defenders set bane times sooo that was your guild leaders fault.... Either that or you didn't put your buildings under protection.
I"m not going to lie. I loved the hell out of Shadowbane. It was plagued with so many issues but the game was enriched with lore, customization and depth. The combat and gameplay mechanics and animations were atrocious but it was incredibly deep. I remember getting my hopes up for spiritual successor 'gorillabane' by stray bullet games but that ultimately fell through. I'm fairly excited for Crowfall
So a ffa pvp game died because pvp is toxic. Not a shock there.
Yeah even labeling non-hardcore people as "sheep" or "carebear" in eve is quite offputting.
I think he means powergamers. PvPers are fine, but powergamers aka no-lifers take things entirely too far and think because they're good at the game that it's some kind of accomplishment like winning an Oscar.
LOVED this game, solo looting/stealing on a theif, making stupid regen-ranger builds, ganking with the vamp scout :D so much fun.
I, and a good number of my guild, were some of the ones who were chased away from the game due to the hands-off approach they took to dealing with assholes in the game. We were on a server where there was a guild of griefers who found an exploit where they managed to make their base on an island that actually DID NOT EXIST on the map. So, not only could nobody else get to it, but nobody else knew where it was. They went around the server committing extortion on all the guilds, and when anyone tried to fight back, they'd just disappear back to their hideout and there was nothing we could do.
It's one thing to have to fight off a guild of griefers. It's another when we're not even allowed to fight back because they've cheated and we can't reach them. And it's even more of a slap in the face when the admins/mods/whatever they called themselves back then would respond to the complaints with nothing but utter indifference. I loved the concept of the game and the massive battles you could do instead of just ganking and counter-ganking in the middle of nowhere, but I was not about to waste my time and money on a game where the people in charge had nothing but disdain for the players.
I would pay for a reboot of this on a current engine with some tweaks to baning and how the economy is handled. (can't be a 24/7 chore)
Best PVP I've ever participated in. (Elf Bow Bard)
SB was definitely too hardcore for its own good. I remember seeing people quit in the early days constantly because their town they worked on for literally months got bane'd and destroyed one night. The ability to pull out your upgraded vendors didn't come until the expansion and like you said, too little too late. But SB had some of the most enjoyable character building ever. The meta used to evolve based largely around spec groups. In the early days Healer Channelers were top tier. Max block skill max channeling skill they could block the world while casting godly nukes. I remember later werewolf rune warrior archers were strong, paired with barbarians with 2h axe piercing debuff's. You call a target in vent, barb debuffs and 7 archers murder it in one second. I remember when the throwing rune was first applied to a Templar making the Deflar. Defensive stance throwing templar with almost 0% chance to hit or be hit, but with his 50% spell power buff and his "of the thunderbolts" proccing throwing weapons. You'd either die almost instantly fighting him or he'd get no procs and you would just swing and swing and miss and miss. That was the worst meta. It was nice tho having the ability to build almost any type of character and to try to build it within some framework of a 10 man group and how to maximize effectiveness.
The video mentions the politics of SB, but didnt mention what we affectionately called Forumbane. Each server had a forum where people would go and post about any political or non-political stuff, but many wars started on the forums before anything happened in game.
I played from release until the end of the emulator (off and on). I was a part of, GL'd, IC'd many nations and cities on many servers. It was a blast, the politics, the combat - the inevitable confrontation with the Chinese and Koreans. I will always remember this game as my favorite online MMORPG PVP game. So many classes, so many creative ways to build characters - it was great. Needs redone - the company that purchased it and threw it on Steam ruined it.
Please do a video on face of mankind. Such a sleeper with so many unique features that we dont see today.
Also, the release date was delayed multiple times. I had it preordered and even forgot I had it preordered because it got delayed so long. I came back from a deployment in the middle east, and there it finally was, lol. I never did play it; I gave it away.
Thanks for the video. Crowfall is releasing this month(July 2021), and it will be interesting to see if any lessons were learned to bring success to Crowfall.
Crowfall has no population. There is noone to fight.i hit max level and saw maybe 3 people the whole time I played
Actually had lots of fun with this game as a kid. Forgot what the name of this was called, glad I found this video.
I remember some Guildmates in WoW who romanticized and waxed nostalgic about Shadowbane. Stories, like a guild whose members all changed their names to "Guild Member X", where X was a roman numeral, and would then go on mass raids against other guilds - it was supposedly impossible to differentiate priority targets and then communicate it to teammates, because "Guild Member XVII" is hard to pick out from "XVI" and "XVIII" in a mass of overlapping nameplates that all look similar. Ah the good old days.
Interesting info about ChangYou. When sbemu (one of the emulators which is a story in itself) was about to be relaunch they contacted ChangYou to see if it was okay. At this time it was about 5 years into its creation and ChangYou forgot they purchased the code. After they were notified ChanYou began launching "Steambane" as we know it today.
Still playing. Shadowbane Emulator. One of my favorite games came back to life! Good video.
It's back on steam check it out and come play with us!
One of my first jobs was doing billing support for Shadowbane. We got free copies to try, but I didn't have a computer that ran it. Good times.
You do such a great job with these videos bro.
Main problem I had with SB was at release you had to compete vs already established guilds who had been organized during the beta. It was litterally 100 vs 12. Join the zerg army beta guilds or get run over by the horde.
This video brings up some memories! A guild I used to play in is even featured in one of the video snaps.
It's back on steam check it out and come play with us!
I played Shadowbane when it first came out. My favorite aspect of the game was by far the character customization. So many races and classes to choose from was a big draw and playing non-humanoid characters like Centaurs was unique (and still is in many ways). However it was around the 1999-2004ish period that I defined myself as a PvE Role-player in regards to MMORPGs. I never really enjoyed the constant threat of PvP so I did leave Shadowbane really quickly. I've always liked PvP but I do require that I have the ability to opt-out at some point and just smell the flowers. As such open world PvP games have stopped appealing to me all together because as a sheep I don't like getting eaten too often lol. As such I try to avoid "wolf games" and games that constantly reward power players.
Now in my early 30s I no longer have the time to invest into these games so I fully understand why PvP focused MMORPGs have such a hard time finding a strong footing. I did always like the idea of kingdom based warfare but I've never seen it implemented in a way that felt good.
Shadowbane has been the best pvp experience I've ever had along with lineage 2. Such a great game. I remember the servers being overrun with Chinese players near the end. What a great game.
Greetings,great reviews I might suggest you checking out the Continent of the Ninth Seal classic pvp for what it was fantastic and It's interconnected to Black Desert and somehow the Blade&Soul games,I would to love to see your thoughts on Lineage 1,2 and why Lineage 1 is still top in Korean charts which is amazing for such an old game...
Thanks for bringing back nice memories. :)
Oh, the memories and frustration I got from Shadowbane, good times...
It's back on steam check it out and come play with us!
I loved shadowbane. My friends and I would spend hours discussing new builds to overcome the current FotM spec. I didn't mind the graphics at all but the lag was horrible. I have had an itch to go play on the emu servers for years but I am refusing to do. It wont be the same. For us, this game was the good ole days.
My first MMO, shall The Fallen Angels live forever, was so fun ganking those Blood and Iron bastards while getting paid to do it. We duped so much gold it was funny, we had cities full of it with gold hidden in all the walls, also many of TFA got the god mode glitch were we had tons of extra abilty points given to us and they where never taken away.
I never realized how many MMOs there have been until I found your channel
Pretty good analysis. A LOT more could be mentioned, but it is what it is. I stupidly bought a lifetime sub to the game. I was delusional thinking that it could possibly succeed. The parts of the game that actually worked were far outnumbered by the ones that didn't. The only mmo I've played that was definitely and infinitely worse was Horizons. Wolpack tried; Artifact didn't even do that. I did enjoy my mage assassin, such as he was. He had these sort of ice bolts (??) that moved slowly .. you could get two in the air a few seconds apart. When they hit they would have this great crunching sound. The main problem with the game was TREMENDOUS LAG and exploits. It made it unplayable unless you were keen on being ganked. A bit like the old radar hack in DAOC which would facilitate roaming gank squads that could track you down wherever you were in the zone.
Great video! I would love to see an Asheron's Call (1) video!