Firefox 2 has crashed about 9… whoops, no, 10 times trying to make this blog post. I’m sure some will find that fitting given that this is a post denoting J. Henderson’s post mortem on Shadowbane and\’c2\~Wolfpack Studios. Wolfpack is now Stray Bullet Games. What’s the difference now?
In March, Ubisoft announced that Shadowbane could be played for free, with no monthly fees attached. Dahlberg said that could continue, though “alternate revenue methods” such as in-game advertising or even going back to the classic monthly fee are under consideration. Both present challenges to design as well as business, but Dahlberg said Shadowbane’s upkeep was “not very expensive right now.”
Oh, OK. So like Wolfpack, but without pesky\’c2\~things like “reliable income sources.”
Seriously, given the number of MMOs under development in the Austin area alone (I’ve heard mindboggling estimates like “around 30″) one more studio couldn’t hurt. It sounds like Wolfpack/SBS is moving on and making the MMO they want to make, with no compromises! It’ll be brutal! Only for the hardcore! Maybe they should contact some fansites.
Sorry, I just can’t turn off the snark today. Maybe if I could find a web browser that didn’t give me FIREFOX.EXE errors.
\’c2\~
#1 by Mox on July 24th, 2006
That’s a stable nightly build you snagged yourself there. Glad I stuck with the 1.5.0.4 + extensions now. But what’s that got to do with Shadowbane?
I wonder what “not very expensive” actually is? Does the budget stretch to much CSR, I wonder? Or even pay for off-peak maintenance?
#2 by Vleskoe on July 24th, 2006
I wish you would focus on your hand-holding games instead of trying to fuck-up other games that some people may find enjoyable.
It sounds like you are still having nightmares about Diamond Dog.
#3 by slog on July 24th, 2006
How could you possibly fuck up shadowbane any worse than it already is? It’s got it all
Game stopping Exploits?: Check
Macroing?: Check
Endless Dupe Bug?s: Check
What more could you ask for?
#4 by Amber on July 24th, 2006
What more could you ask for?
Precasting.
#5 by Soulflame on July 24th, 2006
You forgot to mention, “Potential for victory so total that the losers lose interest in playing.”
#6 by J. on July 24th, 2006
Since when did Wolfpack ever have “reliable income sources”? They were owned by Ubisoft for three years, sure, but it’s not like that was a guaranteed pick-up for all time. Now they’re indie again, but under new management with almost a 100-percent turnover since the start. Sean’s the most senior employee in the studio just for the amount of time he’s been there. That’s his entire career in pro game development, working for the Shadowbane people.
Ask him how certain he’s always been that the sun will rise in the morning. Ask off the record.
#7 by Wanderer on July 24th, 2006
I’ve always wondered what happened between Shadowbane as it was described for so long in the development notes, etc., and Shadowbane as it actually came out, a game I feel almost embarassed to have played.
Shadowbane as it might have been … that would have been glorious.
The bug-riddled, unbalanced (and I say that as a healer/channeler!), half-finished, gawdawful mess that they shoved out the door, and the mind-numbing sludge pit of newbie-ganking and gold-grinding that it devolved into within a few months, was a disaster. Exploits, dupes, the Rolling 30’s finding the godmode switch in the client, the constant drain of population as bored players left and there were no new ones to replace them because of the gank squads hanging out by Khar, and the realization that there was nothing worthwhile to actually do in the game, nothing you could accomplish that couldn’t be lost in an instant — not just to other players but to the unholy mess that they called their server code (randomly deranking cities, anyone?) … and at one point I worked out that I was spending at least 3x as much time in PvE to grind gold for repairs, etc., as I was in actual PvP, which was the whole reason I was playing the [i]game[/i].
Absolute Worst Design Decision Evah: Make a PvP game, then force all the PvPers to do the PvE thing for hour upon hour to afford to be able to PvP. Um, if we wanted to grind stupid mobs with mind-blowingly bad AI for hours on end, [i]we wouldn’t have been playing Shadowbane[/i].
sb.exe errors …
a 3D engine that made the original Quake look state-of-the-art …
servers that went up and down like yo-yos, especially during sieges …
Shadowbane: [b]Pay[/b] to [b]crash[/b].
The last straw: When they started shutting down servers, and telling the players that they could transfer their character name and equipped items (only) to a new server. Not their inventory, not their bank, not a single coin … y’know, most games use account wipes as punishment for their troublemakers, not trying to call it a “favor” to their loyal customers.
I’m told it got better. I didn’t go back to find out. Not after they shut down my server. I just didn’t think throwing in vampires and a plethora of ill-assorted and unrelated character races and classes was likely to make an already out-of-balance and unmanageable game any better.
“games that some people might find enjoyable”? The Shadowbane I left was pretty bloody hard to enjoy. I had some fun for a while ganking the newbie-gankers, but that got real old real fast. And there wasn’t a whole lot else to [i]do[/i].
And no, this isn’t sour grapes. I started on launch day. I never had a problem levelling; even my later characters had the protection of my server’s beta uber-guild. I had a 59 priest with all the trimmings (too annoying to get 60, I was sick to death of lizards), and a R5 healer/channeler when they were the uberest of the uber. I was rich. My guild was a part of the ruling nation on our server, and lived happily on Undead Island raiding the ice towns for sport. I had it all, at least until my guild and a lot of my nation (hell, a lot of my server) quit from sheer boredom. I was actually offered an officer slot in a rival guild because most of their leadership had quit the game. So no, I’m not some whining loser. I was one of the winners. And I still say that Shadowbane blew goats.
I quit four or five months after launch. Despite repeated offers of free time that arrived in my mail on a regular basis, I’ve never had the urge to go back.
#8 by Psychochild on July 24th, 2006
As someone that owns one of those old games, you can really drive expenses down. Our biggest expense is salaries. Our other costs, even bandwidth, are tiny. If we had even 2 dozen players we’d make a profit on the game if we weren’t paying anyone.
Of course, we pay very modest salaries for our people, about the minimum you can get away with in the U.S.
So, it can be done if you’re willing to tighten the belt. It’ll be interesting to see what the SB team can do.
#9 by Evangolis on July 25th, 2006
I’d say rather: \’e2\’80\’9cPotential for victory so total that the winners lose interest in playing.\’e2\’80\’9d
It was a better game in beta purely because of the restarts, although the bugs were always pretty bad. Like the build where split got messed up and instead of spiltting the loot for a group of ten 10 ways, it gave everyone a full share. Circles of people standing around dropping money on the ground and then picking it up. A group of ten could be staggeringly wealthy in minutes. Do the math, you’ll probably start giggling.
For all it’s bugs and the terrible cost defeat imposed (and many in beta decried the game as too easy on the losers), it still had some good ideas, even after launch. (resource fights were good, imo). Despite being a failure, Shadowbane showed a lot of people, myself included, the real potential (and the real difficulty) of a well done PvP based game. That’s more than some successful MMOs have accomplished. Although I’m sure that the folks at Wolfpack wouldn’t have sneered at being successful, too.
#10 by Jurrasic on July 25th, 2006
What more could you ask for?
Fetapaults.
#11 by Vleskoe on July 25th, 2006
“and at one point I worked out that I was spending at least 3x as much time in PvE to grind gold for repairs, etc., as I was in actual PvP, which was the whole reason I was playing the [i]game[/i].”
Sounds about like trying to get geared up for PVP in WoW. PVP that isn’t all that great either.
#12 by Aaron on July 25th, 2006
I would suggest Opera 9 to get rid of crashing. (Or IE 7 Beta 3, it doesn’t crash often and honestly has the potential to sink firefox if it can stay secure.)
#13 by Zagum on July 25th, 2006
And I thought I was bitter about SB. Hehe.
Former 57 Level Elf Bladeweaver Crusader. I have to admit the eye candy and character motion was good or better at the time it came out.
RIP SB
#14 by Joe on July 25th, 2006
Yeah, just use opera. Its where all of firefox’s features were done first, and done right. Imagine an actual MDI instead of a broken, half-assed tab implimentation.
And Amber, I hate to be a grammer nazi, but that should be “Precasting, beyotch.”.
#15 by Jessica Mulligan on July 25th, 2006
Considering the roasting I took from the fanbois for my August, 2000 Biting the Hand column regarding Shadowbane’s chances in the market, I wonder if any of them will write to apologize?
OK, who am I kidding?
-Jess
#16 by SirBruce on July 25th, 2006
Bring back doomcasting, beyotch!
(Translation: You should start writing again!)
#17 by J. on July 25th, 2006
The market was ripe for Shadowbane. The execution and support on the part providing it to the market sucked. A lot, lot, lot of people really, really, really wanted it to work, as evidenced by those writing angry screeds in this thread to express their depth of feeling.
No argument that Shadowbane could have done with more experienced oversight, but the arrogance that got it pushed to completion in the first place was the same that would prevent those originally in charge from letting anyone tell them what to do.
And I got conned along with a lot of people. Because I wanted it to work.
#18 by Joe on July 25th, 2006
“Considering the roasting I took from the fanbois for my August, 2000 Biting the Hand column regarding Shadowbane\’e2\’80\’99s chances in the market, I wonder if any of them will write to apologize?”
I would certainly hope not, you were wrong. Yes, shadowbane was a miserable failure. But not because “PvP are gankers and PvP games are for griefers” like you claimed. Lots of people wanted a game like that, and such a game could still do very well. Such a game can’t do well if its horribly broken and never shows any signs of being fixed though. Shadowbane failed in execution, not concept. You failed by thinking PvPers just want to gank and victimize people. Guildwars shows you are very, very wrong.
#19 by Evangolis on July 26th, 2006
One ofther thing that SB showed me about game design is the importance of transparency in guild mechanisms. If your game is going to revolve around voluntarily shared player resources, and SB very much did, then transactoins with the common weal have to be at the very least completely visible to the leadership. The social bonds in SB were more important than in any other game I played in, and I suspect that any persistant PvP game will be the same. It is a design and customer support issue I haven’t seen much discussed, excepting a conversation among Dave Rickey and others on waterthread, back when he was doing Wish. If you only think of PvP oriented players as griefers, you won’t have much hope of seeing anything but grief from PvP.
PvP ‘done right’ will have a lot of design considerations, and will require a very high level of execution. But when it is finally achieved, it will provide a level of involvement and emotion that MMOs fall short of now. For all it’s appalling failures, SB gave me the most powerful and profound emotional moments in what is now almost three decades of pen and paper, email, arcade, video, and computer gaming. Given the degree to which SB could have been improved, the future potential of PvP is as enormous as its pitfalls.
#20 by Jessica Mulligan on July 27th, 2006
Joes said: \’e2\’80\’9cYou failed by thinking PvPers just want to gank and victimize people. Guildwars shows you are very, very wrong.\’e2\’80\’9d
Actually, Joe, if you had read what was written in the two columns pertaining to Shadowbane, I don’t think you’d have made that statement.
From my August 31, 2000 Biting the Hand column:
—
At this point, acknowledging that the game is months away from Beta and serious load and features testing, I\’e2\’80\’99d have to rate Shadowbane:
Chances of being a Big Money Maker: Probably a Loser here. The game appeals to one of the smallest and hardest to please niches of MMOGs, a group of people that tend to drive other players away from the game and has the highest player-to-support cost ratio in the industry.
Cool Game Tools: Possibly a Winner, but we\’e2\’80\’99ll have to wait for public Beta and see how the interface actually handles to change that tone to Definitely, Probably or Loser. If they pull off the interface we see in the screenshots, Wolfpack might develop a cottage industry in licensing the tool set to other developers, and that s a Great Big Win in anybody\’e2\’80\’99s book.
Chances of being a customer service nightmare: Probable. Unless GoD or Wolfpack hires someone with MMOG player relations experience and puts that person in charge of live operations, I suspect the conflict won\’e2\’80\’99t stop at the game level, but will bleed over into public forums.
—
I think I scored fairly high on the predictive scale here.
From my October 6, 2000 column, in response to the same misunderstanding as you exhibit on my feelings about PvP:
—
Part of the problem seems to stem from differing interpretations of the terms “player versus player,” “player killer,” and “grief player,” and their effects on an online multiplayer game. Even among the Shadowbane devotees posting on the boards, the definition of just what constitutes PvP versus PKing versus being a grief player seems to vary from poster to poster. For further reference, here’s my take:
PvPers enjoy combat against others humans, because gray matter can provide an opponent that a silicon chip never could. While they don’t care if it is consensual or non-consensual, for the most part, they would prefer consensual play in the form of duels, and faction-versus-faction or guild-versus-guild conflict–something that gives greater meaning to the slaughter. It is not uncommon for a true PvP devotee to wax a victim and then guard the body so the victim can come back and retrieve the lost inventory.
PKers are looking for victims, pure and simple. If the game allows non-consensual PvP, PKers don’t care who they kill so long as the victim can’t fight back effectively. They are schoolyard bullies; if you turn out to be too good at fighting, they will go find someone else to steal lunch money from.
Grief players could care less about the niceties of PK, PvP, or the game; they are there to cause other people grief, hence the name. If they are successful enough and get banned from the game, they just move on to the next one and repeat the process. Their objectives are varied; the result – pissed-off customers -is not.
There is also a tendency to pass off the grief players as a small number of players unworthy of consideration in the larger scheme of things. While I agree that the overall number of grief players is small, their effect on the landscape is *not* small. The 80-20 rule applies, although maybe we should modify that here as the grief-player 80-1 rule: 80 percent of your problems will be caused by one percent of the player base. Problems take man-hours and staff to resolve. The more grief players, the more man-hours wasted. If your game attracts more grief players, you’ll waste more time resolving the problems they create.
—
Naturally, that was generally ignored, because the theme of \’e2\’80\’9cthe beyotch hates her some PvPers\’e2\’80\’9d plays so much better among the self-martyr crowd. It is all so ironic, since it was playing the PvP-only MMOs 20 years ago on the old proprietary online services that got me into the industry.
Finally, you can\’e2\’80\’99t compare a non-subscription game (Guild Wars) to the rest of the field in the US, which is overwhelmingly subscription-based. It might surprise you to know that Guild Wars tanked in South Korea, which is heavily a PvP market and which was a target market for the game. Why? I posit it was because they charged access fees to the game in Korea; what plays well for no subscription doesn\’e2\’80\’99t necessarily play well *with* a fee, especially in a competitive market. Give me a $10 million budget for a no-fee \’e2\’80\’98A\’e2\’80\’99 series MMO and I\’e2\’80\’99ll sell a million units in the US in the first year, too, assuming that free access doesn\’e2\’80\’99t become the prevailing model in the meantime.
-Jess
#21 by Chris Mancil on July 27th, 2006
#22 by Jessica Mulligan on July 28th, 2006
Chris Mancil Said:” Heehee
“Shadowbane lasted longer than Asheron\’e2\’80\’99s Call 2 Jesse! Hah Hah! We won!”
That it did. However, since I didn’t join the AC2 team until months after the 2002 launch and had no part in the decision to shut it down (I wouldn’t have, for various reasons), I’m not sure what this says. I rather suspect that if Turbine had decided to offer it for free, it would still be alive, too; “no cost” is hard to beat. We’ll see what happens when the team has to charge for access in some manner.
Regardless, SB is still alive and I salute the current team for their valiant efforts.
#23 by Dru on July 31st, 2006
Who is SBS? If you are talking about the new company, it’s called Stray Bullet Games. That would be SBG.
Most of the original programmers of Shadowbane’s main original code aren’t around WP/SBG any longer. The original Wolfpack programmers were gaming enthusiasts with marginal coding skills, hense the infamous sb.exe’s and other bugs. When UBI took over they slowly infused SB with better personnel and then out of nowhere cut them so they could create a competeing gaming company with the money they are getting paid to keep Shadowbane going. Figure out UBI’s logic on that one. o_0 The new company (SBG) was choosy and kept the good folk that were in WP and even brought in a guy from Sony Online Entertainment to run things as CEO/Pres.
http://www.straybulletgames.com/forums/index.php
#24 by TooL on August 1st, 2006
All PvP environment are watered down so much that its just plain boring. EVE online is the BEST pvp concept on the market, and its working. If someone would take that and put it in a world where people have two feet on the ground, and you have that “next big thing”.
Dont we play these ONLINE games to compete against other players? A mmorpg is a mmorpg if it has lots of PVP interaction. I can sell you an item, steal that item from you, or chop your head off. Thats true RPG style, which is something lacking in the games these days. Carebears.
#25 by perianwyr on August 2nd, 2006
are you proud of being a stereotype?