Customer Reviews

Shadowbane

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

1. Log-In server instability and responses: As a large fan of MMORPG's (EQ, DAOC, AC, etc.) i do not believe that getting in the "front door" should be such a tedious procedure. The wait time can range from instantaneous (during off-peak hours) to the mind numbing click, wait, repeat process i have unfortunately become accustomed to, some lasting 20 minutes or more. Many times i have encountered the 'invalid' password screen - forcing me to reset my password a handful of times, further delaying my playing time by minutes or hours waiting for the reset to take place. Perhaps cookies could be established to reduce this issue - perhaps not. If the login server takes more than a couple minutes to start up now, i usually find something else to do - my play time is limited some nights.

2. Server population: While it is becoming apparent that the current servers cannot handle the current population load, the server population in Shadowbane is that of a poor DAOC server or a barren EQ server. The game world is far too large for so few people. The servers would be much more exciting if they were more densely packed. I realize that you have many other online games competing with you and thus diluting your customer base, but 10 servers is too many for such a new game. It reminds me of the "console" feel of Asheron's Call 2.

3. Guild war is stagnant: While this does not hold true on all servers, it unfortunately happened on many of mine. The 'endgame' of any MMORPG is a trick matter - what do you do when you've stopped leveling? Unfortunately in Shadowbane the leveling process is rather quick (kind of a double-edged sword, i know) and the endgame consists of pounding on other guilds until one of you is defeated and one or two strong 'empires' remain. Then what? Am I supposed to keep making enemies although they have no town? Am i supposed to turn on my allies? For what gain? What happens if you actually get along with the neighbors you have left?

4. No test server?: I don't know how you 'test' your patches but i find it hard to believe they can successfully be tested without large-scale, human feedback. The last patch arguably made the game worse. An honest example of my weekend's playing session was Saturday night - unplayable due to lag, Sunday - login servers were down (this is the day we all received credit for), Monday - forced to change my password because my current one was "invalid". You may wish to consider smaller patches more frequently than the huge "hope this fixes everything" carpet bombing that is currently underway. Check out Mythic's DAOC for how to patch - they have it down.

5. No quests? No "dungeons"? Combat is very shallow in my opinion. Creature control spells are almost unnecessary as a "bad pull" consists of 3-5 creatures - which most groups of 10 can reasonable handle. Loot is random for the most part and all of the best "dropped" items can be found in a decent r7 sage shop for a minimal sum. The only thing that vaguely resembles going out of your way to do something different is getting disciplines - and many of the unique, enjoyable races in your game (Minotaur, Centaur, etc.) are extremely limited in the ones they can select. I do appreciate not having to wait 24 hours for a rune spawn though - kudos on that.

My above statements were made on the Shadowbane forums in an attempt to provide feedback. The thread was subsequently locked and silenced - apparently i hit on a nerve.

I'll make this quick. I have played about 10 morgs to date and this is my read on Shadowbane.

1. Very old graphics. If you have played Daoc or AC2 you will be very disappointed in the graphics.

2. Leveling is faster than any morg I have played which is good. I'm not sure what the end game is and I'm not sure they know what it is. Once you hit 60+ you are left to farming gold.

3. Housing is a joke. The cost is high and the upkeep is absurd only to have it burned down a week after u put it up.

4. Small cities don't stand a chance. If you have a group of 40 buddies from another game and u want to start a city gooood luck. The costs are very high and the upkeep is even worse. You will spend all ur time farming gold to keep the city going and eventually one of the uber guilds will burn it down.

5. If you get in a guild and don't like it past lvl 35 your banished to the ruins for ur bind spot until you find another guild. They force you into a guild and leave no room for the smaller guilds to go but to subguild to a larger uber guild.

6. Lastly travel is very very difficult. U end up hunting the same spots around your city because getting anywhere takes forever. Once the big pvp battles start you spend most of the time frozen from lag.

This game could be very good but in two months I have not seen any improvement in the game at all. I would consider buying it but I would wait to see if they can fix the lag issues first.

I started playing Shadowbane on launch day. It had its problems but I figured hey, it's new, there will be some rough spots -- give it time and it will get better. I was wrong: the game has gotten progressively worse. Every patch that's supposed to fix things breaks more than it fixes. The developers have been struggling with a constant server-side lag problem and seem no closer to fixing it than they were two months ago. Many features listed in the manual were never actually implemented. Players' accounts get locked out for no apparent reason and they have to wait days or weeks for them to be fixed. There is now a huge problem with item and gold duping, which has wrecked the game economy. People are quitting in droves. UbiSoft has blocked access to the general discussion forum to non-players because players were posting complaints faster than the moderators could delete them, and the company has been insisting to everyone from reviewers to the Better Business Bureau that there are no problems. They responded to an excessive number of in-game trouble reports by severely limiting the ability to report problems. Player counts have dropped by 30-50% in the past month and the company's stonewalling, evasiveness, and flat-out lying is driving the remaining players away as fast as their subscriptions expire.

I waited a long time for Shadowbane. It was the game I'd dreamed of playing. It has some really ground-breaking concepts and some incredible ideas behind it, but the design is fatally flawed in a number of ways, the implementation is bug-ridden beyond belief, and the company doesn't seem to care if it actually has any customers.

In short, two thumbs and a big toe down.

Sup folks thanks for reading.. Have to say I was turned off from this game by beta testers for months. They said the point and click movement was horrible and the game was lag infested beyond belief. I almost Kept the game un-opened and sold it on E-bay woulda been a mistake.
GOOD POINTS.. Leveling in this game is like no other and Ive played every MMPORG that has ever been released. You wont spend hours in Shadowbane to gain a single level . The graphics are awesome and the gameplay and interface are unique.
BAD POINTS.. Each server in this game is Dominated by 1 or 2 guilds dont buy this game and expect your going to be some great ruler of your own City . 90% of all new cities are taken down quickly or evaporate in a few weeks. I've had a problem myself getting into a guild. The good guilds are either not inviting or its near impossible to get in. Guilds are essential for you to level after 40 I have now made 6 characters level 35-43 on 2 accounts and have Yet to get into a good guild. Another major problem with being unguilded is everytime you log into the game you will find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Healers can summon you to a town but expect to pay a pretty penny for this service.
The Concept of Wars over Towns was nice but try one and you will be extemely disappointed I couldnt do anything with all my graphics turned all way down, and 1.0 GIG ram. I was getting 2-9 Fbs. (frames per second) Ever try to play a game at 2 fps? LOL
CONCLUSION: Personally Im more a pve fan that likes to dabble in pvp but my final conclusion of this game is this. The pve concept they came up with is awesome which has kept me loving the game for 4 weeks now, but once you reach the point where your Pve is over this game loses more then I expected and im disappointed for that . Thanks for reading I hope this helps.

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.

The developers of the game simply don't have the knowledge to keep the game running and continue with the updates it desperatly needs.

The graphics engine is way out of date, using openGL. The graphics are poor, yet the lag is horrible and it gets worse with every patch.

The only compensation customers recieved for all the downtime and the problems was a free 3 days. My characters disappeared right before this "free time" began, so I couldn't play during the time I was compensated for the problems before.

When I got my characters back, I played for a few more weeks until he lag was unbearable, I noticed there was very little end game content. A seige once or twice a week is all you will every do after you reach high levels.

Uber guilds from beta dominate some of the servers. Server travel is a pain, you have to beg people for summons every time you want to go anywhere...

The game needs a lot of work. However, the devs never comment whenever they break something, they never give an ETA of when it will be fixed and they lock forum topics complaining about problems. They feel if they ignore their customers concerns, the concerns must really not exist. The customer support is non-existent.

This game has no future, save yourself a headache and don't buy it.

When this game came out in beta I was having the time of my life. Sure there were crashes from time to time but it was fun. Once the game went "gold" and as time has progressed I've become less tolerant to the many bug exploits that happen during major battles. Not to mention other choice bugs and "features" that are most prevalent. I'm all for a good battle but when up against an opposing force that uses every tactic to "avoid" an outright battle....the point of the game seems to loose all meaning to me. From my experience and the server I was on your "ruling" guilds seem to be made up of the personality dysfunctional that live out their lives online so they can feel somehow victorious because they do not function in real life. Then of course you have the sheep that give in and follow the ruling leader rather then just try another game. I did wonder while in beta if the concept of this game would attract the type of person you didn't wish to spend hours of your free time "hanging out with".

First the positive aspects:

1. Great multi-classing.
2. Political impact of guilds is seriously great
3 Economy and higher level training must be done in player cities - great for p ushing ppl into guilds.

The negatives:

1. Client: It crash's on both mac and windows often, it has had severe memory leakage problems, and continues to have small memory leakage problems. Put simply, the client does not perform up to par with other MMORPG's on the market5

2. LAG: Quite frankly on both platforms, the lag caused by more than 15 people in an area is horrid. Worst on the mac as it drops you to unplayable, 0fps.

3. Sieges are very badly laggy and cause crashes. Again the people problem - 100 ppl on screen? The lag makes it unplayable for most. we're talking 20 sec lag.

4. GVG is too laggy to be highly feasible. For instance, your in a grp of 10, exp'n, and another group comes to attack you. You end up with lag of 10 seconds, so you can respond/cast spells, etc with a 10 sec lag...

5. Log in servers: tons of issues here, so when you want to play, especially on weekends, you'll find the login servers giving you problems. So if it's raelly busy on a saturday night, and you're in but go LD - it may take 20 minutes to log back in!

I'm on the mac - and it is slightly better on PC but not much.

Overview: The game is based on War, gvg battle. The game is rather moot if its so laggy that this can't be done too often.

The whole point of this game is guild vs. guild warfare, mass sieges and epic battles with hundreds of participants.

Unfortunately, the engine just can't support that many players. Server side lag is simply far too high, even compared to other games. The result is unplayable. There are also frequent client crashes, world crashes, and login server problems. In fact, the first sieges in the game were marred by these to the point where some guilds feel their cities fell solely because of bugs in the game.

It's a pity. They got a great deal right with this game. The gameplay is fun. The levelling pace is brisk. Guild and city politics are interesting. And at first I was quite impressed. But when you get to "the real game" of epic sieges, the game is just not capable of delivering. There are also issues of play balance, particularly with huge "beta guilds" (guilds that came to the game from other games and have extensive experience from beta testing the game) dominating servers.

Check back in Fall of 03 and see whether they've fixed things. There's some good stuff here being smothered by a bad laggy game engine.

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.