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Farewell Shadowbane

SHADOWBANE FAREWELL
We come to you now with regret and sadness, but also happiness and pride.. Regret and sadness that it has finally come to this, and as of May 1, 2009 the Shadowbane servers will be powered down once and for all. Yet happiness that it lasted so very long, and pride to be able to stand before such a passionate community to thank you for your undying support and unwavering loyalty to Shadowbane.

Memories of Ages past and present will always remain in the hearts of those who fought for land and title, power and greed, and above all, the sword known as Shadowbane. Tales of epic proportions will be remembered and told for years to come. Allow me to remember the tales past with you one final time.

The Children of Aerynth formed communities, better known as Guilds, to achieve their common goals. These very Guilds built cities beginning with an acorn harvested from the World Tree. The World Tree’s acorns sprouted into stone trees, the Tree of Life, which served as the focal point to all cities within Aerynth. The Tree of Life was most important to these communities as they allowed for a sort of immortality to the spirits of the dead as they were linked to the Tree by powerful magic from which even the Wise couldn’t explain. From these cities raised Empires and Alliances but also brought the strife of war. Many wars would erupt among rival Empires creating fear and chaos across the fragments. Empires sought out the power of the One Sword to either bring Order to the world or to let Chaos reign freely. Humans, Minotaurs, Irekei, Northmen, Dwarves, Centaur Lords, and many other races filled the ranks of these Empires on the battlefields known as Aerynth, Dalgoth, and Vorringia over the Ages. In the distance, you could hear the roars of the fired buildings as they crumbled and collapsed into ashes and rubble, the consistent rhythm of the drums of war as Empire’s marched, and the sounds of gears and pulleys as Siege Engines fire upon resilient and towering walls as the many Empires engaged in battles across the continents vying for power and dominion. Alliances were formed to achieve common goals among various Nations only to be met with strife from within tearing the Alliance apart and pitting Nations against each other once again. Each war created new opportunity to rebuild old Empires once lost and rekindle old friendships or rivalries. New Ages began but the cycle remained the same. The search for the Sword known as Shadowbane continued on.

Epic sieges outside the city gates, Events giving the individual player or entire nations the choice side with Order or Chaos, and politicking in the political arena to posture for an advantage using the power of the pen instead of the might of the sword are just the beginning of countless memories that we can remember and keep with us for years to come. Adventures through the many Ages have lasted over 6 years for some, while other’s adventures were still a new experience. No matter if you were a seasoned veteran or a fledgling still learning the ropes you poured yourselves into your quests to find Shadowbane. Unfortunately, the Sword has slipped into the Void never to be found again.

Many passionate and creative individuals have poured their hearts and souls into developing and hosting Shadowbane. We want to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous work and valiant efforts throughout Shadowbane’s lifetime.

Remember, Play to Crush!

Update for those that care:

Following our recent news, the support and enthusiasm the community has shown for Shadowbane has led to an extension of the closure date to July 1, 2009. This should allow the community enough time to play out its final days appropriately. We are looking into various options to make these final days as fun as possible!

True Buddy Gaming

My buddy and I started really hitting Guild Wars pretty hard again after the update.  It goes hand in hand with us taking a small break from Lord of the Rings Online.  The thing is my guild is pretty dead (my alliance has a low pulse).  His guild has been dead from the start, nearly.  So except for all the intelligent PUG players, it’s just us.  And, it’s wonderful.

The concept of “buddy gaming” embodies the veritable no-man’s land between solo play and full-on group play.  In many EQ-style MMOs, having a buddy to group up with to make things more efficient (read: kill/heal faster) has been around for a long time, but that’s not exactly buddy gaming.  Buddy gaming is more aimed at content designed for a party of 2-3 players than just doing content designed for solo players faster.

Continue reading True Buddy Gaming

Twitch Fun vs Strategy Fun

Most battles in MMOs are not fun.

I ride my goat in Moria. I get hit off of it by a goblin throwing spears. The goblin has absolutely no hope of killing me. By the time it’s dead, I’ll still have 90% of my health. When it’s dead, I will receive no sense of accomplishment. The only thing I feel is annoyance at being knocked off my mount.

It reminds me of those random battles they used to have in single-player RPGs. Remember those? The enemies there usually had no chance of killing you either. You could just choose “attack” from the menue multiple times until the enemy was dead. Some RPGs even gave you the ability to automate your characters so that you wouldn’t have to be bothered with actually playing the boring fights. Others had items that allowed you to avoid random battles, or vehicles that allowed you to skip random battles on the over-map.

The question comes up, why even force the player to have boring fights at all? Thankfully in most MMOs you can expect the grey-con mobs to stop attacking you automatically. But lets be honest, any npc at your level or below is going to die easily unless it has friends. Without a chance for me to fail this battle, I’m bored as hell.

In games like Guitar Hero I can enjoy playing a song I’ve already played to see if I can do it with less mistakes. Or I can play a fighting game to see how many people I can beat in survival mode, or how well I can combo my opponent. But those are twitch based games.

MMOs usually have me hitting the number 1 on my keyboard, waiting, and then pressing the number two. I might tap six or seven keys on my keyboard in the time I would have tapped dozens of buttons in twitch-based game. To top it off, I’ve been using the same four skills in the same order over and over again in nearly every fight for the last hundred hours of gameplay. That’s like playing the same song on easy-mode repeatedly.

Combat in my current MMO is not twitch based enough to challenge my reflexes. Therefore, it’s not twitch-based enough to cause twich-fun.

That isn’t to say that twitch-fun is the only kind of fun. There’s also fun to be had at thinking up strategies and planning ahead. There’s a lot of fun in games like Starcraft or Chess in anticipating what you think is going to happen, making a plan, and executing that plan.

In most battles in MMOs, you’re fighting something that does the same behaviors over and over again with little to no variation. This goblin will throw spears at me, then I’ll tap the same buttons I always do, and it will die. That’s like playing chess against a computer opponent which makes the exact same moves every time. Worse yet, this computer opponent doesn’t change up its moves if you leave yourself exposed, or screw up. It just keeps throwing those same moves at you, blind to the circumstances.

Creative Anger 1: X-COM: Phoenix. An Introduction.

(if we can’t get the X-COM name rights from Take 2 we can always call it Raspberry or Doom Wombat)

This project is a remake and expansion of the classic PC title “X-COM” and its sequels. It will attempt to introduce new, key elements of gameplay which were not present in the original, while at the same time expand and cross over into a new genre, which is always risky. In addition, many elements of the original work must be kept in place and remade only as necessary.

In order to do this, the first and foremost item is to identify the original work, its elements, determine which core elements, systems and flavor we are going to keep, which ones we are going to discard, what kind of new elements we are going to introduce and determine the best possible ways to integrate them seamlessly with the main vein of the work, making sure they are conceptually sound.

Continue reading Creative Anger 1: X-COM: Phoenix. An Introduction.

Review: LotroCast

There are very few LOTRO podcasts.  When a LOTRO podcast pops up, the question isn’t, “Should I listen to this podcast instead of others?” but rather “Should I bother listening at all?”  It’s not worth my time to tune into a podcast to hear about how someone “Hit level X last night” or about how “So and so on blanky blank server is a noob.”

 

So does LotroCast live up to the critical test of being worth listening to?  Yes, it does.

Episode 3 of LotroCast includes a developer interview.  The interview was well done with good questions.  Sean of LotroCast must have magic powers, because a lot of tid-bits of information were released which normally would be reserved for a well prepared press release.  LotroCast’s episodes on PVP and Lore-Masters also show-cased experts of those arenas who had thoughtful insights.

 

LotroCast is relatively new, however, and Sean makes some common rookie mistakes.  Among these mistakes is the talk of server events.  A podcast which is (at it’s most often) twice per month, is not going to be anyone’s source for time-sensitive information.  Hearing people complain that Freeps are overpowered in PVP is still interesting even after Book 7 has changed everything.  Hearing about some player-run event that happened weeks ago on a server I don’t play, is not.

 

Sean also has more to learn about audio-quality.  His plays distracting Bree music in the background when it’s not necessary, and there are occasional glitches in the recording of his guests.  That being said, the audio quality is above the average new podcast.  Sean’s major talent with LotroCast seems to be his ability to get experts on the show and asking them the right questions.

 

Overall LotroCast is worth checking out for anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about Lotro.  I plan on listening to yesterday’s episode (episode 7) the next time I’m grinding out some deeds.

 

EDIT: I probably should include a link….

http://lotrocast.blogspot.com/

Guild Wars – Those Meddling Players

Many players are getting used to the new dailies in Guild Wars, especially the PvP-based daily.  With the two PvE-based dailies, they cannot go on insta-farm mode because of the need to have the mission or explorable area unlocked.  Players cannot just create new characters and attack the mission or boss.  The PvP-based daily allows for insta-farming because players can create new PvP characters in order to redo the quest as many times as they want.

Now the balance lies in the fact that with PvE-based quests, players can complete the daily Zaishen Challenge by using heroes and henchmen and normally PvP-based quests require grouping up with active players, which would feasibly slow down the farming of the PvP-based daily.  The outlier is Hero Battles, which pits one player and three AI-controlled Heroes against another player and three more Heroes, because the only other player needed is the competition.  In a game that touts skill over time played as a banner (and in a perfect world) this would not be a problem… except when devs create “long term” goals that require players to do a lot of dailies, player-driven efficiency kicks in.  (Whether you want to call repeating the varied and different Zaishen Challenges “grind” is too subjective for this post, but the argument is noted.)

Continue reading Guild Wars – Those Meddling Players

Creative Anger

I’m in a rut. I could definitely use some intellectual stimulation, and I also need to work out some deep-seated anger issues through a creative outlet. So I’m going to design a game on paper. Of course, by ‘design a game’ I mean ‘just write down the design’, and by ‘paper’ I mean this very lovely blog of ours.

I’m thinking about dispensing the whole thing in chapters, as the ideas come along, so as to not crash the net with a wall of text. It could also be a good opportunity for our distinguished readership to chime in and express their likes and dislikes about the thing as I go along. Given my history (and luck) I’ll get a ton of bad comments, but the odd thumb up is bound to slip through, which makes it all worthwhile. Somehow. It would also give me a chance to defend “design decisions” against a live audience, and not just the wife whom I suspect is tired of hearing me elaborate about game theory, cuadruple-guessing player motivations and why “Diku” would be an awesome baby girl name in 20 years.

Chapter 1 will come “when it’s done”.

Congratulations, Kendricke

Kendricke, friend of of Kill Ten Rats, guild leader, blogger, and Clockwork Gamer, is now an Associate Producer at Activision. Despite our most popular post of the year, we congratulate him. He is taking a break from the porn star life to see how the other side of the equation shapes up.

Let us know how that works out, especially since that’s the title I’d be aiming for if I ever try to enter the industry.

: Zubon

level haters

People in Star Wars Galaxies today say, “I hate levels.  Remember SWG when it launched?  It didn’t have levels.”

No, they don’t hate levels.  They just hate being told their level is too low.  SWG just hid the levels from them and called them “skill boxes”.  The fact that they called their levels skill boxes isn’t what they liked.  They liked the fact that a newbie character could get a pistol from a friend and join a 20 person group to do what was essentially the “end-game” on the first day they played.  They enjoyed the fact that they could team up with a buddy and take down a master bounty hunter with newbie characters.  They never were told that “your level is too low” and they never felt that they had to level.

As much as people hate levels, they love levels too.  In Lotro, there are class-traits, race traits, virtues, reputation and equipment to all work on when you’re tired of leveling.  But guess what?  All that stuff has levels too.  You have to kill something many times for your character to get a bit stronger.  It’s just packaged in such a way that it doesn’t look like leveling.

The levels are a necessary addition to any MMO.  Without levels, what purpose is there in doing any activity more than once?  If you want me to kill hundreds of trolls in the Misty Mountains, then I need to see my XP bar moving towards the next level, or my deed bar moving up to the next virtue, or silver adding up to the next gold, or my legendary weapon bar moving up to it’s next level, or my reputation bar moving uptowards kindred.