I'm not finished but this is my first rough draft. It's definitely too long (782 words), and I even left out one of the causes I was going to write about (player exploits and cheating).


Quote:

In March 2003, after 3 years in development the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) Shadowbane went live on ten servers. Highly anticipated by many in the online gaming community, Shadowbane (SB) offered unique experience for players: a dynamic player-driven world, where the story and environment was primarily shaped by the participants. Featuring unrestricted PvP—the Holy Grail to the hardcore gamer—SB promised a “game of crowns” where player–run kingdoms could be built and destroyed by the players themselves. A city siege in SB could consist of battles between hundreds of players and last hours. Shadowbane’s concept was truly grand in scale, and a radical departure from the trend of MMOs.

However, by March 2006 with only 3 remaining servers Shadowbane’s publisher Ubisoft announced that is was shutting down Wolfpack Studios, the game’s original developer, and that it was ending monthly SB’s monthly subscription fee: clear signs to the remaining player community that game was entering its twilight. How did this game with its ground-breaking concept fail to endure?

The first factor contributing the ultimate demise of Shadowbane was the quality of the software upon release. While it has been common for MMO games to have unresolved issues related to game design and balance when released, SB was notorious for the number of bugs which caused the both the game client and game servers to crash or lock up. Even as some of the more serious problems were patched over the first few months of the game, the game continued to have performance issues such as “lag” when large number of player congregated in the same area of the game world at the same time. Furthermore, the game client contained noticeable memory leaks where one’s computer exhibited substantially decreased performance over time during a gaming session. While there may have been substantial pressure to release the game due to its long development cycle, the low quality of the product at the beginning certainly turned away large number of players who did not have the patience for the bugs to be resolved in subsequent patches.

While Shadowbane’s concept was certainly revolutionary, the game looked old. When the development began on SB in 1999 it’s graphics engine may have been on par with similar games on the market such as Everquest, but after 3 years, graphics technology and expectations had surpassed what SB offered. Since the graphics are the first thing one notices in a game, it the second-class visual interface became a hindrance to achieving immersion in the world, or to even attract other players.

Shadowbane also faced competition from other MMOs. Many players who tried out SB returned to successful established games such as Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot. Only 3 months after SB went live, Sony released StarWars Galaxies based on the wildly popular franchise. Later Blizzard launched its first foray into the MMO market with World of Warcraft, which has broken all sales and subscription records. While it may be possible to maintain a MMO as a niche game, these subsequent games (and others) certainly competed for many of the same players and ultimately cut into SB’s subscriber base.

Another factor is player burnout. Shadowbane’s unflinching gameplay, “Play to Crush” as it was marketed, did not lend itself to casual gaming. While leveling one’s character in SB was relatively easy in comparison to other games, it took hundreds or thousands of game hours to amass the in game resources necessary to erect and maintain the buildings and other structures that make up the various player-run cities. Building these “assets” required significant cooperation, coalition building and diplomacy among the players not only to build, but to defend, as city assets remained vulnerable to attack from opposing players and alliances. Because of the persistent nature of the virtual world, these attacks could happen 24 hours a day, not just when the owners were logged in. Ultimately, one’s investment of weeks or months could be destroyed in a matter of hours by a determined group of opposing players—regardless of whether you were at work, school or sleeping. The time commitment often becomes a burden to players of any MMO, however, with SB the loss of accumulated wealth, items, or city could be a crushing blow to both individuals or guilds ultimately turning them away from the game.

The last problem was that CCR Mindworm was a douche.

Shadowbane may prove to survive in some form in the future, possibly on player-run servers as a niche for the truly hardcore, but it clearly has failed to survive as a profitable MMO for Ubisoft. However, its original concepts of open PvP and a dynamic player-driven environment may find a place in some future game which manages to execute them without as many problems.





When your King calls you to action, will you hear the call?