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Just got into beta, and... WOW

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 24 / 30
Date: December 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Like the titel say, I got into beta for Shadowbane. The play versus player system, which is actually a guild versus guild and kingdom versus kingdom system, is totally well thought through. It goes beyond the expectations of EverQuest or Asheron's Call 2. EverQuest and AC2 have an incredibly limited guild versus guilds sytem, where as Shadowbane's is very open and you can actually siege other guilds castles.

Some people say that the graphics are terrible. You just haven't taken the time to look at new screenshots with the updated graphics. With my system, 2.26GHZ, 512MB of Rambus... it actually looks better than Dark Age of Camelot and EverQuest: Planes of Power.

There is one downside. It has a problem with framerates. It is currently at about 17 per second on my computer. !0 per second on some minimum requirements users. However, that is why we are testing it. It is being revised and fixed, and soon it should get us 20+ frames per second.

I hope this helps.

Absolutely fantastic endgame

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 27
Date: April 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I see a number of reviewers have attacked the game for lag and problems. I submit that they are using old operating systems and old PC's. Shadowbane has some fairly hefty requirements, but runs smoothly on my machine and my wife's machine.

I beta tested Shadowbane for over a year before it was released, so I have the advantage of knowing what the end-game is like, when everyone has reached the level cap, and the politics come into play.

There is nothing in online computer gaming that compares to the rush of facing another guild in siege warfare. Seeing an army of strangers coming to tear down the town you spent weeks building gives a strong adrenaline rush. There's a real sense of attachment to your guild, and to your city. Players, not the developers, dictate how the game develops. Cities are destroyed and empires fall because of the actions of players, not in monthly events that happen off-screen. Everyone has the chance to change the world. No other game offers this.

That said, you need to join a guild, and have a fair bit of time available to you to enjoy this game to its fullest. The world is not gentle to the solo adventurer, and you can't experience the best parts of the game until you are high level. Fortunately it doesn't take a long time to become high level. I reached lvl 55 (the cap is 60) in a week (and yes, I work full-time).

For people who find the existing online games lacking, Shadowbane is ideal. For novices, Shadowbane can be intimidating.

Not Worth the Money!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: April 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game just is not worth the price of the CD and definitely not worth a monthly subscription.

The graphics are just sad. They are not even good by the standards of 4-years ago when this game fist started developing. There are only a few ways to customize the way your charter looks so they all look alike. I thought this was a problem in DAoC but in Shadowbane it is horrible. The buildings, trees, and grasses are really blocky looking. The monsters (what few they are) are ridiculous looking.

I could get past the sad graphics if the game was fun. It is not! The shadowbane website has tons of lore that you would think would add a depth to this game that has not been seen before. Well the lore makes good reading but thats about it. There is none of it ingame. I guess if you want to create it yourself you can but the game sure provides none of it. What this game is, is a half done product. There are very few spawn sites and the ones there are you have to fun for 10-15 minutes (real time) to get to. Once there its the same thing over and over and over again. The same monsters with the same names you just kill over and over again.

The only thing that wolfpack promised and delivered on was no leveling treadmill. Well they sort of delivered on it. Since there is no quests given by the game you have to kill monsters to level. This can be extremely boring but at least you can level quickly in a group. You can get really high in a month. I'm at level 48 and I have not been on every day. The problem is they added an even worse treadmill. Gold farming! If you belong to a guild, and you have to if you expect to survive, you will sooner or later found a city. This is really nice. But you have to pay for the buildings and walls which is expensive, and the upkeep which is just crazy expensive. So instead of leveling all the time your out 90% of the time (not joking) raising money for the guild. How do you do this? Killing the same monsters over and over again.

As far as Plaver-VS-Player goes if it worked it would be great. The lag is so bad when you get anymore than 100 people in the same spot that the joy of the battle is lost. It just can not be done! They say they are going to fix it but these are the same problems they had in beta and could not fix it. The servers just can not handle anything more than 500 people on at a time. Once you go over this lag is really bad. The servers crash almost everyday. Each patch does nothing. It takes anywhere from 5-45 minutes to log on. There was 3-days nobody could log in. This is a serious problem with their servers that unless they scrap what they have cannot be fixed with a patch. These problems lead to serious system failures (error.sb.exe) that cause you to have to reboot your system.

The last problem, and this really is the most disappointing to me, there just is no game content. There are no quests, no dungeons, no castles, and no real ingame story. The landscape is empty. This was so real life people could build their own cities but there should be something provided by the game. But sadly there is not. Every now and then wolfpack does some event that just seems like a pathetic attempt to draw attention away from the fact that this is an unfinished game.

To sum it up:
1) The worst graphics of any online game
2) No customization of characters
3) Servers just not able to handle the load (bad lag)
4) Long log in times
5) Server Crashes
6) Poor customer support

7) Causes your system to crash
8) No game content
9) Money treadmill thats worst than a leveling one
10) Just not very fun

Just one note on why I gave it a 2 instead of the 1 (or zero) it deserves. The guild system is great. I belong to an awesome guild that I love playing with. They are the only reason I have stayed for the free month. We are currently looking to move to another online game because shadowbane is so disappointing. Many of the guild were in beta and many of the same problems are still there.

UO's Successor

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 24 / 33
Date: March 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The leveling treadmill is relatively painless. You can hit close to, or better than, rank 3 in a days time if you are so inclined.

The graphics are satisfactory to me. I consider graphics secondary to gameplay. If all you want is eye candy, look elsewhere.

Frame rate and lag have recently been improved in beta. The only time lag is a problem is in the midst of a large siege, but even then, it is not a game killer.

The PvP is enjoyable. Each class has its strengths and weaknesses in PvP. One on one battles, on average, are well paced and require some strategy. Similar to UO's combat, but with more options. Large-scale battles and sieges are the highlight of Shadowbane.

Though I prefer the skill-based system, Shadowbane's class-based system is decent. Your characters are given a good amount of disciplines and traits to choose from, allowing diversity.

The world is huge. It took me hours to cross the continent with my scout (fastest character in the game along with the Centaurs) in the beta world. The size of the world will be increased when the game is released due to the larger population present and there will be different worlds (on different servers) of similar size, which are all connected.

Monster AI, which is not that important to me since I prefer human opponents, is adequate. None of the creatures are brain surgeons, but they are intelligent enough.

I cannot comment on the diversity of weapons and equipment since they may add items upon release. In beta, the weapon and armor selection is good. Clothes, on the other hand, are lacking. Hopefully they will be adding a vast array of threads, because, Style is Everything.

In my beta experience, there is always a good war going on. Cities were almost constantly being raided, enemies were being harassed as they hunted or traveled, allies would switch sides, Feature Characters (Gamemasters who create characters to start or further RP story lines) make appearances, and other such events happened often.

To me, UO (before being ruined) was the greatest MMORPG ever made. While Shadowbane is different in many ways, it still offers me the closest game to old UO that I will find. With the game going gold, and thousands of new players gaining entrance, Shadowbane has a chance to surpass UO in my eyes.

Warning- if you cannot handle being killed for no reason, do not play. EQers not wanted.

Sloppy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 26 / 38
Date: March 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Would make a great MUD because of the rich class and skill system. However, it makes a terrible graphical RPG because it appears to built upon a MUD engine, which makes for horrible performance and lag. This is evident of how you see system messages of all the hits of other people in the "room".

They tried to make up for the lag by changing the movement system. You have to click on the ground or map where you want to go, then you have to constantly adjust the camera to find your target. There is no key to move forward or backwards or step sideways or backwards. This makes it very difficult to navigate in doors. You don't want to go inside because you start to have anxiety attacks with not being able to move around freely. The interface is highly customizable, but it takes about 2 days to get everything arranged to where it is usable. It still has problems from there. The immersion experience is completely ruined because you are trying to deal with the interface and not the content of the game.

Graphics are cool because it has a deep view range (which is unusable unless you have 1GB of 1066 RDRAM and a graphics card that doesn't exist) but the performance is poor. 512MB and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro with 4x AA enabled is minimum requirements. The graphics are very ugly unless you have AA enable. On a GF4, you'll have to turn your graphic settings down to get a decent framerate of 10 fps with 4x AA. The system has a large delay when textures and objects are loading when you zone.

Lag is horrible. There are long pauses in the game where you will be jumped back to where you were 10 minutes before the lag started. You can still move around so it is sometimes hard to tell when you are actually lagged. The system also lags from feeding out all the system messages and chat message.

There PvP engine is questionable since after level 20, you are suddenly a target for attack. They have the ability to group with others to really gain experience points quickly. This is questionable because you get the same experience if you were solo when someone in your group kills someone. So you are always in a huge group, standing around, as other people gain your experience points. There is no point in playing the lower levels when this occurs. You just try to max out your player and wait for PvP action to determine who chose to use their skill points correctly.

I've been searching hard for a new MMORPG, this isn't it. Dark Ages of Camelot seems the most promising of what is out there now, along with the new Star Wars game coming out soon.

Too Late the War is Over!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: May 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Unfortunatly this game has been dominated by the Beta Players and guilds. UBI and WolfPack have given all the beta players a grossly unfair advantage. The object of the game is to build nations and guilds to conquer the other nations with siege and war.
The reality is the UBI left the game the same after the beta and allowed the Beta guilds to split up onto every server so they would not have fight each other and could easily dominate each server from the begining.

This game has been out for 1 month and all the serves have been completely over run with players who participated in the beta and have the game figured out. Most new cities are destroyed within days of creation so Nation building will only be possible except for those in the beta.

You will not be able to start your own city, start a guild or do much more than level characters and maybe pk each other for lack of anything else better to do.
This game is a complete waste of time, money and shipping effort if you buy.

PKers Rejoice! Everyone Else Ignore!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 20
Date: June 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

As a fan of Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) I have seen and played countless incarnations of the same basic premise. They all share a lack of story, and boil down to mindless monster bashing for levels and loot.

However, Shadowbane was different, at least in the beginning. At first glance, Shadowbane offers players a wealth of opportunities. Join or create a guild, and then build a city of your own. No longer are players forced to use computer controlled cities as rallying points. Shadowbane allows anyone and everyone to easily create their own city. However, this great feature is also its curse.

Shadowbane is at heart a Player Killers dream. For those who don't know, a Player Killer(PKer) is someone who spends their time searching out and killing other players, instead of monsters and NPCs. Those grand cities that you can create, can also be destroyed by other cities and guilds. PKers tend to group together for protection, and spend time hunting down unsuspecting individuals who only wish to be left alone to build their characters and cities in peace.

Shadowbane not only allows such activity, it promotes it. It does this by unceremoniously dumping low level characters onto the mainland(populated by the afore mentioned PKers) as soon as they reach a certain level. New players can band together, but will still easily be crushed by one or two higher levels ones that wait outside the 3 safe cities.

Having played through the beta, and a couple months worth of the release, I have seen very little of this change. Shadowbane's concept begins as great, but ends up failing in the end as everyone resorts to mindless leveling for loot and experience. Its purpose is slightly different from all the others though. Instead of leveling just to be able to take on bigger and better monsters, you are leveling to take on bigger and better players.

In the end, Shadowbane falls short of its goal of revolutionizing MMORPGs, and ends up where they all do after a month or two. It sits on a shelf collecting dust, and is quickly replaced by newer versions of the same premise. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have not wasted my time with Shadowbane, and I highly suggest you don't either.

Long time Testers (over a year) and Focus Group member.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 22
Date: March 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Shadowbane is not for those that do not like PvP combat. The game is very much centered on player conflict. Leveling is very fast with only about 40 hours of serious "leveling" to get into the mid 30s to upper 40s. The game has a "soft cap" of 50-60 but there is no real upper level limit. However, unlike MMORPGs out there today, 2 level 30s can and do kill level 50s or 60s. Its not a sure thing mind you but, its POSSIBLE. Levels do not have the monsterous effect they have in other games (and I have tested many from Illusia, M59, UO, AC, EQ, DAoC and more).

However the thing that will be the biggest difference in Shadowbane is that the cities of the world are PLAYER MADE and can be DESTROYED. YOUR GUILD can build and own your own city. ALL players can see your OWN, PERSONALLY DESIGNED CREST when they fight you AND on the world map. You can even own MULTIPLE cities. The only limit is other players and your ability to AFFORD to build that empire. As your towns grow stronger, your shield grows larger on the world map. If it weakens..it grows smaller. And should your town fall to the enemy, the shield disappears or is converted into THIER shield..depending on how they won (you can submit to them to save your town if they let you even..heh).

But, some people won't like that you lose items rather quickly as they wear out...no EQ holding onto them forever. But, items are not overly important either. They help..but, again, like levels, are nice but not nessesary.

If you have trouble getting "ganked" or losing things you have worked long hours to get (like towns)...don't get SB.

If you want a world that YOU can make YOURS. Where YOU drive the game and where there is a very thick, rich lore that the game company will work to further with guilds that have power through GM events and the individual can still find a home too...get it.

finally an upgrade to EQ

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 26
Date: March 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I gave this game 5 stars for one reason: I love it. Its not totally finished. There are still plenty of issues. But no worse than mmorpg fans are used to.

So why do I love it so much? End game action. Something to do once done leveling besides megaraid uber mobs. politics. alliances. tactical pvp on many levels.

Its a tough world. There are vile, ruthless people around who will cut your throat for your cash. However my beta experience was filled with honest, loyal adventurers. I met 5 good people who went out of their way to show they were dependable for every 1 griefer/whiner/l33t d00d. You see, Shadowbane is all about grouping- not only for protection, but also for faster leveling ( you get full xp per mob no matter how many in group!!) Soloers and small groups make tempting targets. you can of course solo, and I enjoy it occasionally, but it is risky.

character development makes for unique avatars. There are thousands of possible race/class/profession/discipline combinations. Many people search for power templates, and thats fine, but dont be afraid to experiment, you may discover something new. At the same time, it takes awhile to get used to developing characters "correctly". For example I put skill points into medium armor for a tank character only to find out later I got heavy armor at a later level. Wasted skill points suck hehe. Putting skill points in two different weapon types, or into swords if you dont get sword mastery but do get axe mastery at higher levels also "gimps" you in some ways...maybe the strategy guide will explain this..I had to learn thru trial and error.

Gear and Item drops are very similar to diablo/dungeonsiege. Intricate mace of craftmanship, counts bow of the ages, etc...

Shadowbane gives me a rush like no game since EQ way back in the day. I feel my heart pounding while I sit in stealth mode planning my attack on a small exp group. Im outnumbered so I wait for them to finish a big fight. The healer sits down to med and I tag him with an arrow...bam. bam bam..ut oh that pesky dwarf isnt dying very fast...here comes his scout and crusader buddy after me...run away, run away....hehe

btw, I suggest that you pvp at least some at all levels. Its easy to put on 3-4 levels in an xp group, train/bank, then go pvp for awhile. Makes for a very fun night. Dont think you have to be level 50+ to pvp.

UBI Soft are money hogs!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 26
Date: April 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Now I do enjoy the gameplay and such of this game, but I do not like the fact that the makers of this game, UBI Soft, just want money.

They give extra content to players that pay (and play) more.
There are three special races restricted only to players that pay a years worth of monthly subscriptions for this game.
Not only that but those 3 races are some of the coolest races in the game and players that aren't sure if they want to play for an entire year and order only a one month subscription CAN'T PLAY THESE RACES which makes me furious.

The three races are the Minotaur, Aracoix, and the Centaur. Now the Minotaur is right on the box so it's a shame that players who actually want to just try out the game won't get to play them. Centaurs are half man half horse which is awesome. Aracoix is the most amazing thing ever, they are bird-like creatures that can actually fly! And UBI Soft is only letting the players that order a one year subscription for this game play these races. So if you are positive that you are going to play (and pay) for an entire year and don't mind if UBI Soft spoils the players that pay more and give them free stuff. I am totally 100% against this and if you, like me and many other players, don't feel that it's fair to give the players extra content which leads to more fun because they pay you more than the average player, THEN STAY AWAY!

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