View Full Version : SB2? any clue?
Sephiiro
05-07-2005, 03:16 PM
After talking with sinis he was telling me about the legacy TSP left with SB and the interactions you've all had with the GM's. He was also telling me about the offers the guild has gotten to beta other games.
My question is has anyone tried contacting anyone who runs SB regarding a SB2 and if possible beta testing as a guild? I'm sure if the rep is as sinis said, which i dont doubt it is. They would be more then happy to offer it to TSP.
Gnioss
05-07-2005, 03:41 PM
If SB2 is really in development, which I doubt, it would have started very recently. Beta won't be a concern for a very very long time.
I believe they are looking into the idea right now. Gnioss is correct, I would not think they would be offering a beta product for 2 years minimum.
Sephiiro
05-07-2005, 04:02 PM
Thats cool was just curious to see if anyone has contacted them.
A major guild influence such as TSP i would wager they would be interested in knowing what TSP would look for in SB2. Sure designers have a goal in mind regarding what they want. Yet i know even for Beta of EQ2 they were looking for players input on what they liked about EQ and what they did not like so they could improve/cut out what they could to improve gameplay.
Diraker
05-07-2005, 04:07 PM
Well I was an SB beta tester for 8 months and they ignored me. I basically had one goal, to make wereforms viable. Little do they realize that I'M ALWAYS RIGHT!! har har!
After SB beta I sorta got turned off to doing other betas, but for SB2 I'd reconsider. The PvP community (and myself) needs SB2.
We have a couple people working on getting our name out there to hopefully get into Darkfall beta.
Cinnabar
05-07-2005, 04:57 PM
Thats cool was just curious to see if anyone has contacted them.
A major guild influence such as TSP i would wager they would be interested in knowing what TSP would look for in SB2. Sure designers have a goal in mind regarding what they want. Yet i know even for Beta of EQ2 they were looking for players input on what they liked about EQ and what they did not like so they could improve/cut out what they could to improve gameplay.
You can see a thread in the parley forum in which Ashen(the community manager for SB and Wolfpack Studios), posting as Tarrant, tried to toss out the idea of SB2 and get a little feedback.
as well ashen has ongoing discussions at www.ashentemper.com
Unsanctioned or not, it is pooling input from alot of individuals that were involved in SB.
I seriously doubt SB2 will ever be made.
I dont, they have built a playerbase and Im sure Ubi will want to capitolize on that again. Ubi is a large company its not like they are breaking the bank funding Shadowbane1. Hell they have the resoarces already why not use them? Im sure Ubi is looking at the MMO success of Sony, Mythic and now Blizzard and wanting a piece of the money. There are MANY people still looking for that next great PVP MMO.
What evidence do you have that suggest that they wouldnt be working on it? Shadowbane may not have been extremely popular but I wouldnt say it wasnt a success.
It all depends on what kind of numbers and finances they can bring towards investors.
Ill invest my 50$ to buy the game ^_^
I don’t think it’s probable. Here’s why.
While SB’s player base is loyal, it doesn’t consist of that many people – a few hundred perhaps. While more than a drop in the bucket, it’s not more than a cup full.
Ubisoft is a large company, but just because it has the resources doesn’t mean it’s going to make a charity game for it’s loyal fans.
If Ubi is looking to make a commercially successful MMO, they’re going to have to appease the carebear player base. That’s where the money is. PvP servers are popular in WoW, but the consequences and freedom are no where near that of SB. All hardcore PvP servers in other games I’ve played have been significantly lower (DAoC and Asheron’s Call off the top of my head.)
As far as evidence, I don’t have anything more than you do. Don't get me wrong; I'd love to have an SB2 that was like the original but with improvements. However, our niche isn't what makes the money. I would be extremely surprised to see SB2 unless it was a dumbed down version that catered more to the carebear crowd.
right, SB was very dynamic in its politics and play style. As well if your city was crushed it did take the fight out of people which resulted in only the hardcore willing to stick it out. I do think that if SB2 was ever made they would dumb down the consequences somewhat or cater to cities being harder to take down.
I dont think they have to whore themselves out to carebearism to make a go of it, but I do think they need to make it a little more appealing to the fence sitters. The biggest thing imo they need to do is launch a game that isnt buggier than 2 day old shit. Which I believe is something they have learned alot more from their experiances and perhaps a second go at it would bring it back strong.
Gnioss
05-08-2005, 01:46 AM
Ubisoft is a publicly traded corporation. Thier first responsibility is to shareholders to generate a profit. If you have two possible genres of MMO that you can make, one with a huge return on your investment, but little innovation, and one with a smaller return on revenue, but a groundbreaking cult classic in terms of gameplay, they will choose to make the boring, solid, EQ clone every time. It's all about money. Making niche games just isn't possible in today's MMO climate.
Rilit
05-08-2005, 03:07 AM
Like Mutt mentioned SB lost a huge number of players very early on that had been waiting anxiously for years. Mainly due to technical problems. Not all of the people that quit SB quit because the consequences were too serious, that was often just the last straw.
I think an SB2 could do well if it wasn't rushed and was released as polished as possible.
Gnioss
05-08-2005, 03:15 AM
I dont really know of many people who quit shadowbane from the bugs, but i know a lot of people that quit when cornerstone fell.
I dont really know of many people who quit shadowbane from the bugs, but i know a lot of people that quit when cornerstone fell.
Losing city and feeling like you couldnt do anything about it becuase of bugs is a huge downer.
Ubisoft is a publicly traded corporation. Thier first responsibility is to shareholders to generate a profit. If you have two possible genres of MMO that you can make, one with a huge return on your investment, but little innovation, and one with a smaller return on revenue, but a groundbreaking cult classic in terms of gameplay, they will choose to make the boring, solid, EQ clone every time. It's all about money. Making niche games just isn't possible in today's MMO climate.
The thing is though is that the only way you can really capture the modern MMO market, is by finding a niche in which you can corner and excell at. That said, the SB niche is not very friendly to future investors considering what a flop SB was.
HOWEVER
Even small niches can net big $$ as is the nature of the genre. Furthermor, MMO's dont need as large of a playerbase to make profits. For console games all money made is from the box sales. From MMO's you make money off the box sales, and off of the monthly subs. Thus, cornering a small market can be good, especially when you could find that a small market was a goldmine. Hence why you see some of the larger companies going into more innovative games.
EX
SoE - Planetside
UBI- Shadowbane
Then of course there are games targeted at various fanbases
SoE- SWG
Matrix Online
Miach
05-08-2005, 04:01 AM
WoW has proven that PvP isnt a niche market anymore. Look at the popularity of the pvp servers.
SBs problem was financing and bugs and an inablility to properly deliver on the core of its game due to those issues. And because there wasnt anything else to do in SB that created problems keeping subscribers.
Ive seen pleanty of Carebear games Tank and die just like shadowbane did. WOW was so wildly popular because its warcraft and produced by blizzard. Simple as that. Many of my FPS friends wouldnt even dare look at a game like EQ2 were drawn into Warcraft for some reason.
Ubi has the resources put together already with a development team and a server cluster as well as a good concept and pleanty of experience now.
Why wouldnt they make SB2?
Shadowbane is dead and I dont think ANYONE including the devs think that its going to pick back up again. Yet they persist to continue developing new concepts and totally new aspects of the game. Do you think they are releasing this new content for the thousend or so players they have left? I dout it. They are testing new ideas and concepts for their next game. If its all about money then why do they continue funding a game that according to you they are losing money on? Why are they now hireing a NEW programer?
Rilit
05-08-2005, 05:31 AM
Shadowclan lost about 60-70% (like 75 at primetime down to 20-30) of its membership within a month or two of release on Treachery, well before we ever lost a city. Many cited lag, instability, and bugs. Others didn't like how unbalanced the classes/races were. The lore of the game described almost every race as xenophobic but in reality single race guilds were at a severe disadvantage. Server to server travel, the game didn't deliver what it promised on many levels. It was released too soon.
WoW has proven that PvP isnt a niche market anymore. Look at the popularity of the pvp servers.
WoW PvP is nothing compared to the PvP of Shadowbane. If people were held accountable for their actions, there’d be a lot of people playing the PvE servers.
Ubi has the resources put together already with a development team and a server cluster as well as a good concept and pleanty of experience now.
Why wouldnt they make SB2?
Ubi would be more likely to produce a EQ or WoW clone before SB2 due to the money. I highly doubt Ubi would produce a game just because a few people would enjoy it rather than producing a game where they could get more subscribers by appealing to the more popular market.
Shadowbane is dead and I dont think ANYONE including the devs think that its going to pick back up again. Yet they persist to continue developing new concepts and totally new aspects of the game. Do you think they are releasing this new content for the thousend or so players they have left? I dout it. They are testing new ideas and concepts for their next game. If its all about money then why do they continue funding a game that according to you they are losing money on? Why are they now hireing a NEW programer?
They’re developing new content because they’re paid to do that. They’re not releasing new concepts because they’re making a new game – they’d just put that in the new game. No need to do it twice. I don’t see the game being funded too much longer. Soon the profit is going to be nothing and they’ll shut it down. They’re probably hiring a new programmer because another quit to work elsewhere. Smart men jump from ships when they’re sinking. If WP wasn’t hurting, they wouldn’t have had the past layoffs.
Diraker
05-08-2005, 09:18 AM
When SB first came out there were a lot of players. 10 servers with 1,200+ players playing on each. I don't know but if there's 1,200 people playing that's probably at least 4,000+ accounts per server.
Anyway the market IS there. The game just has to be good enough to not make all these people want to quit. SB's problem was bugs and exploiting not that there wasn't enough people who wanted to PvP.
Personally I think the whole old school style grind of leveling and gearing is over. It's like these devs can't think of a better system than the 25 year old D&D model. When people leave WoW en mass because they finally realize it's the same old same old, that next generation game is going to be huge.
I'm sure there is a dev company putting together such a game as we speak. Will it be 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? before it's ready? I don't know.
Aradorn
05-08-2005, 02:21 PM
there are 47 or 48 PVP servers and 50 PVE servers so um the demand is there for PVP
Miach
05-08-2005, 06:10 PM
WoW PvP is nothing compared to the PvP of Shadowbane. If people were held accountable for their actions, there’d be a lot of people playing the PvE servers.
I completely disagree.;)
People are unhappy on the pvp servers and want to move to the pve servers because there is NO accountability. I would have to say if anything...the pvp servers would be even MORE popular with accountability.
I do think that Blizzard has so many players partly because of their name. 1.5 million subscribers is obscene. I don't know what would be defined as a niche market these days. But there is clearly a demand for pvp. And many people on the pvp servers want more pvp....with accountability and penalties...not less pvp.
I agree that there is a demand for watered down PvP. It's not anything like Shadowbane, though. If people had their uber items broken and the cities they invested money into destroyed, a lot of people would leave the PvP servers. I don't think anyone can disagree on that point.
PvP without major accountability just isn't the same.
Oh? Devs wont use previous games to test out new concepts? EQ certainly turned EQ1 into a beta center for EQ2 so I dont see how you can say that.
If you read Ashens posts he obviously realizes exactly that. Spending ungodly amounts of time to contruct a city and losing it quickly is something that could be addressed in SB2. The city building and siege format does not and undoutably will not be a replica of the systems provided in Shadowbane1.
Im in a toss up about what makes PVP fun. Personally I think what made PVP in SB fun was the fact that you could kill anyone you wanted and the fact that each guild had a unique spawn location. I donno about you but I had a blast when we played shadowbane with absolutely no accountability involved in the early days. Everyone knew we dominated the open field PVP scene and that was awesome. It wasnt till very late in our existance as a powerhouse that we actually had accountability involved and many people didnt enjoy that style as much because it required alot of dedication to keep it up.
However I do think accountability had a huge factor on alot of fun aspects of Shadowbane. Accountability helped prevent zerging in my opinion and it also created an awesome political balance on servers.
You indeed do need accountability in the game but it doesnt have to be in the form of city assets. It could simply mean if you talk shit to me I can make your life suck by kicking your ass all day long. You couldnt hide in Shadowbane. If someone from Uberleetguild1 kills you and you got upset you knew exactly where that person lived and could go there and release your anger.
EQ was a commercially successful MMO. I doubt anyone has the go to start a SB2. If they do, I'd be surprised and probably wouldn't invest in Ubisoft any time soon due to their risky decisons.
I think everyone's reading too much into this. All we have is Ashen making a post on our boards and inviting people to his website.
Aradorn
05-08-2005, 08:33 PM
if you make items useful but very easy to obtain and then allow full drops on death pvp would be so much more fun...
Rilit
05-08-2005, 08:37 PM
I think Dong's right when he says people want watered down PvP (compared to SB). The challenge for SB2 will be to find the right balance of accountability and consequence, play to crush doesn't last, they must realize that.
Miach
05-08-2005, 09:24 PM
I think the pvp market that people are starting to see IS one somewhere between WoW and SB.
And I would be very happy to play such a game.
I just want to be able to step on the neck of the people that annoy me and make it hurt. I don't need to wipe out in one night what took them months to build.
Aradorn
05-09-2005, 11:25 AM
awsome game would be
1) Provide good PVE challenges to those who want them, with decent rewards. However these rewards shouldnt really benifit PVP or at the very least make minor changes to PVP fights.
2) Full open PVP, no RvR crap, kill anyone anytime anywhere
3) Make equipment easy to obtain and cheap. A guy with armor and weapons made from a GM smith is only slightly better than someone with vendor bought items. Items found from PVEing would be on par with craftable items. Make obtainingthe materials for crafting also fiarly easy...
4) Sieging needs to mean something and make it fun and not the boring drawn out ordeal it was in SB. I had LOADS of fun in beta sieging with all the trebs and stuff. It was awsome to see a mob of players dragging trebs over the hill to go knock down a city.
5) Reward people that PVP by allowing them to loot items off the other persons body. This will allow people to kill people for equipment and items instead of having the same equipment everyday once their char is done
6) Needs to be skill based instead of lvl based. DOnt make people grind mobs, its boring and repetitous.
You forgot 7.
7) Actually have ships that have a purpose (like trading) so that being a pirate is actually a viable thing to do. :pparty:
Drekor
05-09-2005, 01:51 PM
I think the ability to pull merchants and such out before your city got blown up did a lot for helping people rebuild after getting smacked around. Although I'd like to see the upgrade costs reduced and the building times increased.
Right now I enjoy guild wars because it has awesome pvp and pve. There is no such thing as zerging, the level of complexity in the game is incredible. Once you get shit unlocked you can make anything you want in the blink of an eye which is awesome for me. And the pve has an intresting story line to follow along with minial side quests to get extra exp/gold and such. I'd personally like to see a GW type system expand out of all the instancing and get into city building/sieging, maybe starting on an L2 scale where the castles don't get blown up but just changed hands and get away from instanced stuff and make things a bit more dynamic.
Sephiiro
05-09-2005, 02:20 PM
um drek...... the castles do get blown up. Go look up some videos and watch what happens to the castles it's great lol. You dont have to attack the front gate if you dont want. You can actually attack the walls and break through there. Then once inside you have to break doors/walls down also. Castles get wrecked in those sieges....... please god.... a game with more Full scale wars..... please, please. lol
Diraker
05-09-2005, 02:21 PM
Drek, the last 2 GW beta events had a check box "unlock all skills". It was awesome. But honestly so far I haven't felt handicapped or gimped because I haven't unlocked them all. I can use the prefab templates to get the elite spell I want, then swap out some of the template skills for my own. I just unlocked Hamstring so now my paladin will snare.
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