Broken Toys

methinks this would alienate what little loyal player base they have left. or am i missing something.

It will alienate people, however, the silver lining would be they could potentially pick up some new players who would have otherwise avoided getting in late on a game’s life cycle.

I’d imagine the game would have to be pretty messed up for them to do this, as the middle of the road approach would be to consolidate servers then launch one new one to attract new players or folks who want a clean start.

This is certainly an interesting move and definitely not one that you see often. This has the potential of alienating the subscription base… but, at the same time if that player-base has been this loyal so far, it is entirely possible that a majority of them will stick around. The amount of people they draw in could well make up for it.

Of course, there’s no telling how many people will actually give the game a go after this either. It is a pretty big gamble, for sure. Only time will tell on how this goes.

Shadowbane is still running live servers?

Well, learn something new every day. Still not playing.

Shadowbane is not your typical mmorpg focused on getting levels and loot.

SB right now is like a StarCraft map that just keep going and going and going… at some point you want to get fresh start so people get a chance to see something else but battlecruiser/carrier armada rushes from few *very* established sides.

One of the things I was actually a little happy about was that we didn’t get any of the save files for M59. It was actually nice to be able to make some changes to the game that were necessary and that would have “broken” existing characters. I can imagine that after a few years of “huh, that didn’t work out right” they might want the same chance.

Honestly, their subscriber numbers are probably as low as M59’s at this point, so it’s probably not like they don’t have a lot to lose. The people still playing are probably the die-hardest of the die-hards. It’s going to take a lot more than a game wipe to make them go away at this point.

I always thought the idea of planned periodic resets would be perfect for a world-consequences PvP game like Shadowbane. When you really can ‘win’ and dominate the whole map, it’d be good to have ’seasons’ of three to six months, after which everyone gets wiped. There should be some token, non-game-affecting persistence in the next season for the ‘winners’ if a win condition is measurable, such as statues in all the major cities bearing their likeness.

“The plaque inscription reads, ‘Here lies LongDongSchlong, mighty conqueror of ages past.”

I might actually give it a shot now, I tried a long while ago but their crappy website wouldn’t even let me make an account and I think the patcher didn’t work either. They would have something like that fixed by now I suppose, I’d hope so.

It makes sense. According to the press release, there are cities formed during bugs that can’t be captured at all.

Now, what would be cool is if ROCKS FALL, EVERYONE DIES!

I got to admit, I think this is cool but of course, if my favorite MMOG did that and I had been a loyal customer for 5+ years, I would be PISSED! Although that anger would be mixed with excitement again. I mean starting over and trying to race to max level and get the cool late level gear sounds fun to do again. Not only that, if the company also did a big revamp of the game at that point, say to the level of removing or adding classes, changing stats all together or just a big bug fix revamp, I might actually praise them for it. You got to think, the company might not ever get a chance to do a Shadowbane 2. How close can you get to a sequel then a world restart!

Still, If I was an SB player, I might be too pissed to want to start over again.

This should give hope to all the SWG refugees that have been calling for a reversion to the pre-CU game

Man. I feel sorry for the CSR-critters. Okay, sorrier (it must already suck pretty bad). No matter how carefully they try to warn their users, a significant portion will log on the day after reset and wonder where the hell their characters went.

As far as the invincible cities go… I would just delete them from the database. Buildings, NPCs, equipment, characters, everything. Mutter something about comets and replace them with a smoking crater if you want to maintain the illusion of roleplaying (HA!). If I were feeling particularly charitable, I would spawn some astrologers and have them wander around the towns warning them of the impending comet strikes so the players could evacuate.

“Although that anger would be mixed with excitement again.”

You sir are a masochist.

I’d quit no doubt, then again I can’t imagine hanging around a single MMOG that long.

This actually might be the thing to get me to try the game. From what I understand, it’s PvP centric, so being able to go to a new zone and not have to be worried about the highest level characters with all the trimmings coming around and farming the entire populace of said zone is promising. So, well, at least they may get one new customer. It always looked interesting to me..

On a side note, if Jeremy Dalberg is reading, ummm.. Can EA consider doing the same to UO so they can consolidate some servers, adjust the loot tables, and fix the bloomin’ economy?

Yeah, I play a lot of older games.. And WoW too.. I think it’d be great if WoW did this too, though.. Think how many immature players would give up the game over it.. *Dreams*

@ Tony:

You just used “excitement” to describe some of the things about MMOs that suck and hurt the most: grind and “race win”, itemization, respec and constant ruleshift.

Dude, I lost a number of hours of sleep planning how I would try to forestall the riots and bomb threats if we ever did that. UO is NOT Shadowbane – there’s no silver lining there.

The economy is a different story. We could easily just wipe all the gold in the world…

Well, essentially with WoW each expansion pack does this by making all your current gear obsolete. The only things that don’t get affected are special / collectible items like a mount or card collectible item. But in essence, when an expansion comes out, it levels the playing field for everyone every 2 years. I’ve raided in WoW since the first year and since TBC came out so many “nobodies” are now in raiding guilds claiming they know it all. Even though this process screws hard core players it does provide a good boost to the player base overall.

You can get to max level in about a week in Shadowbane if you play with your guild (and you must to have a guild in SB). This is not a big deal.

“The economy is a different story. We should just wipe all the gold in the world…”

Jeremy – I fixed your post for you.

It’s ironic. Every year at GDC Damion Schubert wants me to sit in on one of his MMOG PvE roundtables about how to deal with the fact that some people eventually become uber and other people are stuck being loser noobs. He likes to have me there because WWIIOL is one of the few MMOGs that actually does “resets” to address the winners and losers problem.

“I always thought the idea of planned periodic resets would be perfect for a world-consequences PvP game like Shadowbane. When you really can ‘win’ and dominate the whole map, it’d be good to have ’seasons’ of three to six months, after which everyone gets wiped. There should be some token, non-game-affecting persistence in the next season for the ‘winners’ if a win condition is measurable, such as statues in all the major cities bearing their likeness.”

We did that four years ago. Launch announcement … closure announcement (search for “Cataclysm”).

Actually you can do max level in Shadowbane in about 2 days with a powerleveler. Expect within a week to see entire guilds leveled to max. I have argued for the longest time that Shadowbane needed to drop their PvE portion all together because it absolutely SUCKS ASS. Just give instant max level characters and let the better part of the game get played!

One thing to realize is that Shadowbane is not like most MMOs on the market. While there are going to be individuals who are not fans of the reset, the community as a whole is quite supportive of the idea. Gaining levels and gear is no where near as time consuming as in other games. And the “wild west” feeling of a new server is what some many of Shadowbane Players love.

Shadowbane is very much like an Age of Empires map and once someone has “won” the game, players like to see the map wiped clean so they can try over again with new ideas and tactics. In fact, as Spaz hints on above, we’ve been talking about doing a cyclical server for some time that has a win condition.

NGE.

’nuff said.

I don’t mean to focus this topic on a specific game (Other than Shadowbane, of course.), but just to respond to Jeremy:

“UO is NOT Shadowbane.”

UO is also not any other MMO, yet UO attempts to copy WoW’s interface, created an advanced item property system with AoS, and now includes raid bosses ala WoW and EQ. You can say it’s because it’s what works or what’s popular, but that doesn’t change the fact that UO has made LARGE sacrifices in the past to adopt systems establsihed in other MMO’s.

Just because an idea is applied to one game doesn’t mean it should be completely dismissed from discussion in another. If an idea has merit, it should be discussed, in my opinion. And I, as a UO player, see a LOT of merit in such a wipe, even knowing what I stand to lose.

Ashen:

I know you likely can’t give absolute figures, but I and other “Theoretical MMO Design Warriors” would absolutely love to hear at some point down the line weather or not such a wipe benefited the game at least in terms of active accounts. I’ll likely be downloading it and giving it a try myself.

Blackblade; Obviously that isn’t something that will be known in the long run but I can say this: The Test Server has been hitting all time population highs with this patch. Not only has a large portion of our current community been helping out but a lot of veterans who left in the past have jumped on it (due to the elevated XP and Gold rates) to see what has changed over the last year or so and if it still has that crazy, wild fun factor or not.

Thank you for the follow-up comment, Ashen. That’s very encouraging to hear. Maybe M59 did it first, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of an MMO intentionally resetting itself. You guys definitely get an A for effort from me, if for nothing else, trying something this far outside the normal conventions and risky.

Blackblade, I don’t see how wiping the servers would address any of the problems that you originally brought up any better than less drastic methods, and it certainly would change any of the fundamental game design choices that have been made over the past ten years.

PvP games, in my experience, are a little different because the accumulated value tends to lie in reputation, rather than pixels. The accomplishments of the uber leet lie in what their fellow players think of them, whereas in a PvE game, the accomplishments tend to be much more material – houses, rares, highly-developed characters, etc.

Plus there’s the complication that we’ve been selling advanced characters and items for cash for years, and I have no idea if it would even be possible to figure out how to restore that kind of stuff, given that many of those items end up in transferable token form.

Er, wouldn’t change, rather. My kingdom for an edit button!

“Man. I feel sorry for the CSR-critters. Okay, sorrier (it must already suck pretty bad). No matter how carefully they try to warn their users, a significant portion will log on the day after reset and wonder where the hell their characters went.”

When you’re forced to assume that a large percentage of your population are cartoon characters, you know you’re working in the MMO industry.

“And there was that two weeks we all spent at area code camp…”

“Plus there’s the complication that we’ve been selling advanced characters and items for cash for years”

The wages of sin….

Again, sorry, just to respond to Jeremy. And keep in mind, I’m not trying to call you out, or anything like that, ma’am. Just trying to point out facts or opinions as I see them.

1) I wasn’t referring to those issues as what the change would affect. I was simply pointing out that UO has never had a problem in the past adopting systems or techniques used in other games, so why stop here, if it proves successful? Why should “Because UO =/= XXX” be valid now?

But, because you asked, here’s the advantages I see for a decade old game, just off the top of my head. I am also aware of the cons to these pros (as there are with every decision, no matter what), but just referring to what a total wipe can do that nothing else will.

- An opportunity to consolidate servers, condensing a (from my perspective, obviously, not with your factual numbers) a declining population and potentially saving upkeep and operation costs. A denser population can help form stronger communities, which as any UO player can tell you, is the backbone of your subscriptions. (More on this soon.) Start with 3 regular servers, and 1 “Siege” server, and expand as needed. It’ll be nice to see so many players online at one time again.

- A housing wipe so that land can be occupied with houses that are actually USED rather than simply owned by seemingly inactive, but paying accounts, would be a welcome change for existing players. Although I can see how doing so may hurt the bottom line since these zombie accounts are likely not insignificant. This would allow communities to restructure, relocate, and refocus in a way that simply isn’t possible without a server wipe.

- Wiping out all the resources, gold, and items stockpiled by scripters would have an immediate impact on their bottom line, potentially preventing them from revamping operation. And if nothing else, slowing them down so that those who had never seen UO before rampant scripting was so blatantly obvious can see what older players remember couldn’t hurt, since it’s apparently very hard to impossible to outright stop.

- Wipe clean the mistakes of the past that even the UO team doesn’t want in the game in harsh, but even handed fashion with no exceptions. By this, I mean things that were so out of place for UO, they ability to obtain or perform such things was outright removed, but those that have it are grandfathered in, such as the Tok Neon Dye set, and houses placed in illegal locations.

2) Every online game ultimately comes down to community. I’ve seen just as many people earn a rep parallel to that of a PvP’er in PvE games. Some for material, some for prowess. And every game contains pixels people value in different ways.. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a point in playing, now would there? Suggest to Xbox Live fans you’re going to wipe Achievement Points. I double dog dare ya.

As for UO, it’s not the graphics, the open skill system (Which I love, of course, and is rare enough), the PvP or the PvE that keeps players, it’s the community, and the ways you can interact with the world around you. Would the community still be a community without the pixel crack, or their well developed characters? Would the way you interact with the world change?

And for that matter aren’t we, the readers of Broken Toys, a community? Even if we don’t play the same game? We share no pixels here. We know each other by name, and there’s no PvE or PvP involved (Well, the PvP of words, maybe, if you’re cheeky about it). And when Scott wipes it or outright changes it, we all come back anyway

I don’t think UO or Shadowbane are any different. If not, well.. It’s not much of a community, in my opinion, and it’s destined to fail. And one day, all games will have their plug pulled. The community will endure or it won’t.

3) Well, everyone who bought one gets one back for their account.. You guys DO keep track of who buys what from your own store, right?… Right?

Oops! My kingdom for an Edit button as well.. In regards to point 1, just realized you were referring to my first post, not my follow up response. My bad! But I think the point is still valid.

“But what does this have to do with Shadowbane?”

My apologies. I thought I was being tangentially on topic, even if I did focus on UO too much.. Even though I think that if you strip out UO-specific aspects of my post, and substitute them with any MMO, including Shadowbane, the same points arise.

The way I see it, Shadowbane is trying something new in the MMO world (Again, at least the first I’ve heard of it being done intentionally). If Shadowbane can pull this off, and see an increase in active accounts, could that set a precedence for other MMO games?

Tell you what – take the argument to UO stratics, and we can continue it there – although I suspect you’ll soon see my point about the torches and pitchforks.

To return to the actual topic – I just find this a fascinating experiment in the nature of “persistence” as it refers to MMOs. Is it not what we think it is?

Excuse me ma’am, but your job is UO. You may not talk about anything else. Ever.

The big challenge comes in perception. Truth be told, half of what we are doing is no different than bringing up a new server in any other MMO. The contention is in what happens to all of the existing data. The debate mostly seems between those who are there for a good fight and those who are “pixel lovers” (that seems to be the term I have seen most thrown around).

Cities are the major focal point in Shadowbane but the thing is, players can already have their cities taken over and even burned to the ground by other players via siege mechanics. So the big loss is characters and their items. And yet, building a new character in Shadowbane is not that difficult; items for the most part are easy to obtain and, outside of Disciplines (multi-classing), character building is quite easy.

Now, in regards to other MMOs, the realization that Shadowbane is quite different than other MMOs has to come into consideration.

Oh I never doubted there’d be pitchforks and torches from players, as no doubt Shadowbane is now encountering. That was my intention behind the Xbox Live comment. But as you say, back on the topic..

“I just find this a fascinating experiment in the nature of “persistence” as it refers to MMOs. Is it not what we think it is?”

And this is the heart of my point, and my apologies to you personally, Jeremy, for focusing so much on UO. I know you can’t answer, and I should have thought it through better before posting.

But my point, to really condense it is:

What is REALLY persistent about an MMO? I think it’s the community. And is the COMMUNITY of a game important enough or strong enough to sacrifice the very world it inhabits for it’s own survival? Only if you think it’s what matters most.

I don’t think it’s the games, it’s items and pixel crack, or even servers themselves. Servers die, and games eventually get the plug pulled. And thats a tough question that Shadowbane is REALLY going to answer for every MMO.

The community is behind this just like they were behind new servers, but they all ended the same way. Now they’re down to two servers, and those two will end just like all the rest.

The bottom line is that SB’s city and siege mechanics alienate the medium sized guilds, and you always end up with a few superpower zerg nations. When that happens large scale PVP grinds to a halt so that none of the remaining big nations get destroyed, and PVP ends up being a lot of hit and run small skirmishes that don’t mean crap. If a big nation is taken out, most of their people leave and the rest are absorbed into the survivors. Ultimately there’s almost no one left, and the server dies.

In the summer of 2002’s SB beta, the game mechanics were such that a medium sized guild could create, support, and rebuild a city without it being so crushing that they left the game. The mobile trebuchets and unscheduled sieges also made it so that PVP was unpredictable, so people had to be on their toes. So you had a lot of participants and being crushed didn’t make you want to quit the game.

They made city building and city crushing too painful, made it hard for a medium sized guild to survive as anything other than a vassal to a larger nation, got rid of mobile trebuchets, and put sieging on a timer. The scheduled sieging IMHO was very boring, and a lot of the time the city being sieged set their siege window at BUMF**K A.M. in the morning. Since city sieging could only happen on a set schedule, people spent all their time rolling exp groups for shits and giggles.

So this reset does nothing but further the decline unless there have been changes to make medium sized guilds more viable IMHO.

“Servers die, and games eventually get the plug pulled.”

Have we actually seen this yet? Every cancelled MMO I can think of died fast, if it wasn’t outright stillborn. I can’t think of any offhand that have died of old age.

Clearly the only way to improve on this innovation is 2 bringz b@ck 0l sk00l UO bizzatches!!!!

Jeremy,

Well, Anarchy Online’s deat was somewhat slow, if you consider going from subscriptio to a free-play model as death. But they still have premium subscriptions, so I guess it’s not really did. You’re right that most MMOGs that have actually closed down actually did so within about 3 years.

There were rumors that Turbine was going to shut down Asheron’s Call last year once they launched LotRO, but that never happened. I expect either AC or UO will be the first to be shut down due to “old age”, if you will, sometime in the next few years.

It’s true, we do not yet know what the life cycle of a long running MMOG looks like, because we have yet to see one actually die. Well, and stay dead. *coughs meaningfully in Brian’s direction* Even if UO, to pick on grampa, were to be shut down by EA tomorrow, the community would keep servers running for years.

With regards to Shadowbane, I would certainly highlight the concerns of Hades before bringing up a new server. If there haven’t been changes to ranking of towns, then the end result will be a paralyzed server, where one or more large guilds have “won teh gaem!!!”

This kinda makes me want to try out SB again, I know I quit ages ago once I got tired of SB.exe staring me in the face time and again.

Just a note for Blackblade to, UO have adopted conventions from other games but I wouldn’t say succefully. Everytime it came in seemed people quit in droves. I know AoS broke the final straw for me and I had played for 7 years (although it had been hanging on a thread since the trammel/felucia split). I didn’t get the reasoning either, people who wanted gameplay of other games were already playing them, thoose who were in UO actully liked the game and played it despite aged graphics. I guess the number crunchers like saw a slight rise overall since expansions sells boxes, but the retention can’t have been as good if you compare a new player starting to a 3 year player quitting (since bonds is what keeps people in the game).

I beta tested Shadowbane years ago, and really enjoyed it. Never had a chance to play the live version because real life got in the way. Just found out that it’s free, so hell yah I’m gonna download it!