Shadowbane First Look
By Mr. Kenickie - 4:14 PM on Sunday, August 13, 2000
i n t r o d u c t i o n
| Website |
| ShadowBane.com |
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| Projected Requirements: |
Windows 95/98/NT4
Intel Pentium 200+ MHz
Hardware Accelerated 3D Vid Card 6MB
32MB RAM
CD-ROM
Lots of Harddrive Space
28.8 Internet Connection
MacOS 8.1
PCI PowerMac (including iMac)
Hardware Accerlated 32 Vid Card 6MB
CD-ROM
Lots of Harddrive Space
28.8 Connection
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Today's Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games aren't exactly the greatest. Plagued with horrible lag, numerous bugs, and major design flaws, these games should be sacrificed to Wozak, the god of supreme suckassedness. Ultima Online is filled with grief players and dupes; Everquest is too static to be considered a game; and Asheron's Call missed MMORPG Building 101 back at school. With all these problems, you'd think that they'd have less of a following than the Gay Christian Hunter-Trekkie Pygmy Coalition, but, au contraire, these games boast a combined total of half a million active accounts! Why do people submit themselves to games that are less desirable than getting "caught" in your fly? That's simple: people are morons. Wait, I mean: there are no other options. Wolfpack hopes to change this.
Shadowbane is the first product being developed by Wolfpack Studios (if you don't count their catchy line of tapestry), and boy are they being ambitious! With a major focus on Guild vs. Guild conflict, a more than impressive graphics engine, and over fifty unique classes, they aren't cutting any corners. Remarkably, though, this is not what's making Shadowbane the leading cause of ruined keyboards next to pr0n.
p l a y t o c r u s h
From the beginning, Wolfpack has been flashing around Shadowbane's slogan: I don't play games to bake bread, I play them to crush! Being firm believers in the fact that you can't have a truly immersive roleplaying experience without Player vs. Player combat, they are designing the entire game around a PvP system--more specifically a Guild vs. Guild system. Shadowbane's main focus is going to be on guilds, which is an area highly overlooked by all the other games on the market. Whether a game supports guilds/clans or not, these will undoubtedly form and hold the most dedicated players out there. Finally a company realizes this!
As a part of the guild system, players will be able to join or form their own guilds, build cities complete with taverns and weapon halls, conquer nations through sieges that will last real-time days, fall to the hand of their enemies or beg for mercy, and run lemonade stands on all the major roads. Due to being guild-oriented, Wolfpack feels that there will be a lot more accountability and consequence for one's actions because no longer is it "some guy randomly PKed me and ran off". Now it's "some guy from the Lords of Chaos guild PKed me and ran off--let's declare war!". Will this system work? My magic 8-Ball is lost, so I couldn't tell you, but Wolfpack is very confident, though silent, in their game.
The atmosphere of Shadowbane promises to be a lot darker than we're used to in other happy-lovey games. Each of the races have some kind of evil twist to them that prevents them from being cuddly teddybears--even the traditionally peaceful Elves and boisterous Dwarves. There won't be any Halflings or Gnomes either, stated Wolfpack, because they simply don't fit this dark style, but there will be some more exotic and unique races such as Aracoix (flying Elvis's without the Elvis part), Shades (Men that sit on lamps, I presume), and Irekei (Dark Elves with a sunburn). Each race will have an expansive backstory, according to Wolfpack, that will explain their history, religion, and classes. This will give players the tools they need to roleplay, even though they know that many people will choose not to. Personally, I just want to see naked succubi.
f e a t u r e s
Shadowbane, without a doubt, is filled with a whole plethora of features that will make this game stand out from the crowd. Here's a nice, bulleted, formatted list of features in this game for your viewing pleasure:
- One Giant World - Though there will be many worlds within the universe (each with its own unique history, lands, oceans, and drunken bastards), they will be linked together through mystical means so that you can travel from world to world and not worry about which "server" your friends play on. An advanced server-clustering system will allow them to pull this off without worrying about the bandwidth and processor limitations generally associated with large worlds.
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Game Seeds - Shadowbane's netcode works in such a way that the server simply passes some seed values to the client (which are extremely small file sizes), and the client then converts that to all the information it needs. In this way, the entire world is stored server-side, so they will be able to change the world around without patching or large downloads. Did a comet just hit the world? Wow, look at that crater!
- Game Recording - Working in conjunction with the seed system, Shadowbane will allow you to record and save the incoming seeds to your client for recording. What makes this recording unique, though, is that you are actually saving the information your client receives, not what you visually see, so the file sizes could be under 100kb for an hour long recording, and you will be able to change views, filter information, etc. You play these files within the client, as if the server was on your harddrive rather than the Internet. It's brilliant and it's simple. This will be an invaluable tool for guilds and websites.
- Polygon Reduction - For those of us out there without a 7GHz Processor and 32,768 MB of RAM, Shadowbane's client will be able to lower the quality of the visuals on-the-fly to keep your framerate at an acceptable level. In this way, you'll be able to seamlessly go from a beautiful rendition of a desert and then run through a dense forest without any noticeable lag (but a degradation in quality). This will keep the game's graphics up to date for many years since the quality will upgrade as people upgrade their computers. Is Wolfpack a member of MENSA?
- Restricted Races - Some of the more powerful and exotic races will be "restricted", meaning that you won't be able to create one off the bat but will have to earn your way there. Though the details haven't been released, this will certainly make an encounter with a rare species a rare experience--as it should be!
- Random World Generator - Though many people may consider this to be a downside, it can actually be quite a great tool. It will allow Wolfpack to instantly create new and unique worlds with their own taste by simply inputting some values and letting the world generator do the rest. After it is created, they can then go in and edit the world so that it will still have that personalized touch. Better than having 36 identical versions of Freeport, eh?
- Expansive Image Library - You will be able to create guild crests to wear on shields and clothing from a library of Wolfpack members in a variety of provocative poses.
Wolfpack is aiming to start Shadowbane's beta (which is currently closed) this November with a release slated before the summer of 2001 for both Mac and PC. G.O.D. Games is publishing this title and, as is typical with them, is giving them complete artistic freedom regarding Shadowbane. If you would like to get involved with the community, be sure to visit Shadowbane Stratics, sign up for the Shared Message Boards where Wolfpack often posts, and visit #shadowbane in irc.stratics.com to chat it up with others in the community and hope that a developer visits (which they seem to do about once a week).
Shadowbane: Play to Crush! |
