Wolfpack Studios recently announced the opening of a loreplay server for their MMOG Shadowbane, a first for the Austin, TX development house. Many of us have played Shadowbane in the past and are well familiar with it's virtues and shortcomings. In this Q&A, we posed a few questions to Sean "Ashen Temper" Dahlberg about the new server, Shadowbane's growth over the years, and the general state of gameplay today.
Corpnews: Can you describe the new Loreplay Server to those of us that have not followed its development?
Ashen Temper: The Shadowbane Loreplay Server isn’t just a new server; it introduces a new rule set too. On the normal servers, most guilds are comprised of any Race and any Class (commonly referred to as ARAC). While Shadowbane is one of the few massively multiplayer online games that let players actually change the world, the Loreplay Server is the first server we’ve implemented to regulate players' strategic options, limiting the types of characters that can join the various Faction-based Guilds, who may cast beneficial and peaceful powers on each other, and who may even group together. These may seem like harsh restrictions, but these game elements have been requested by a large segment of Shadowbane’s community for some time and it still doesn’t restrict who can fight whom. For the first time, individual guilds will face limits in their power and abilities, and be forced to make strategic decisions to maximize their effectiveness on the battlefield. Shadowbane has long been acclaimed for its rich back-story and in-game history, and the Loreplay Ruleset will create a rich play environment that better mirrors the factionalized fiction. Many players will finally experience Shadowbane as they originally imagined the game would be. Combined with the Realm and kingship system introduced in Shadowbane’s last expansion, Throne of Oblivion, players can now for the first time ever wage war to see which of Shadowbane’s myriad factions is truly the greatest!
Corpnews: How well does the game engine support conflicts of WoW Battleground size?
Ashen Temper: Truth be told, a hard question to answer. Shadowbane and World of Warcraft are, by far, different games. In World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds, players are there for a primary objective (the secondary being getting Kills and Honor) and once that objective is reached, you jump back in queue and start over. In Shadowbane, the entire world is a battleground all the time. There are constant PvP opportunities and you don’t have to wait in a queue to find someone to kill. Since neither the world nor any part of battle is instanced in Shadowbane, performance can degrade somewhat in much larger battles. As with any computer game, a lot of this is determined by the end-users computer. However, we have made immense changes with the server and client architecture since Shadowbane has been released, especially since our acquisition by Ubisoft. Server-crashes are practically non-existent and we have reduced client crashed by over 95%. While we do add features to help enhance the game play and fun factor of the game, our primary concern is always performance.
Corpnews: My friends told me that you can't really bane people anymore because they set it to 6am and call in Korean or Chinese nationalist guilds to defend them. Is anything being done about this? I can't get up that early to play a video game, I have a job/school/life.
Ashen Temper: I would hardly relay this kind of tactic to a particular time zone but rather to a type of player… many of which can be found right here in the United States. The issue is that some players set the siege times to hours where they know they will have little to no resistance. To rectify this issue, we will be implementing a Siege Window of Opportunity in our September Content Patch. These basically set a time-frame where sieges can take place instead of leaving a completely open time-frame. The best part is we can set this on a per server basis so one server might be geared towards a more peak hours play style while others can be geared towards a more off-hours time frame.
Corpnews: Dupes and bugs have consistently plagued the game since launch. If people resubscribe to check out the new server, what can they expect from the service?
Ashen Temper: This is unfortunately a problem for the entire industry. It is elevated to a higher level in Shadowbane because, unlike other games, players use these exploits to build player cities which are the lifeblood of many activities in the game. Since becoming a company of Ubisoft, the Shadowbane Team has been actively hunting down and fixing these issues. The moment we are aware of one, our full resources go to not only fixing the issue but also removing as much of the impact as we can such as removing those ill-gotten gains and banning those users who acted in such a manner. We are very proactive in making the field of battle fair when it comes to exploit issues.
Corpnews: While the leveling curve in Shadowbane is much shorter than other level/class games, the PvE is famously un-good. How much of a time commitment can players look forward to until they are PvP-viable?
Ashen Temper: It is a well-known fact that the main focus of Shadowbane is on Player-vs.-Player and not Player-vs.-Environment. While we feel PvE is still a necessary mechanism for Shadowbane, we have done a variety of things to make this stage of the game easier. For instance, we have drastically reduced the dodge skill on creatures, implemented the Alchemy system to assist in downtime, and increased experience gains. In fact, with our upcoming update, the September Content Patch, we will be drastically reducing the hit points of higher leveled creatures.
Corpnews: With the recent announcement of the new server, subscribers have been returning at a pretty high rate. For those that are still undecided, what sort of population are you expecting for the server?
Ashen Temper: Honestly, we did not expect to get the attention we have been for this. The Loreplay Server has been an idea we’ve had for years. It wasn’t until recently we felt the game was in a state where we could venture out and create a new rule set for one particular server instead of features that impact all servers. We gathered a segment of our current player base would love to try this out but we had no idea that former members of our community would be so excited to see this implemented.
Corpnews: Has Wolfpack made it any easier to find and join a guild?
Ashen Temper: Yes, in a variety of ways. First and foremost, we have implemented a new feature called “Looking for Guild” (we figured to keep the naming conventions simple, heh) that would not only put an identifying icon above the players head but also as part of the Who’s Online listing. In conjunction with that, we have added a “Recruiter” title that the Guild Leader can assign to individuals that helps players looking for a guild to join a point of contact. Then there are always the recruitment boards on the official Shadowbane Forums.
Corpnews: What sort of specific, targeted mechanics will be implemented to encourage loreplay on the new server?
Ashen Temper: Let me make note of the language, this is not a roleplaying server, it is a Loreplay Server. While we do our best to help promote and nurture roleplaying in the Shadowbane Universe (it is a MMMORPG, after all), this server is geared towards players working within the confines of the Shadowbane Lore. Roleplaying is a very subjective term and most players have their own definition. Where as with “loreplay” we can not only enforce through game mechanics but also easily inform the community on what all that entails.
Corpnews: Where can people learn more about the Loreplay Server?
Ashen Temper: To read about it, simply visit the Loreplay Section (http://chronicle.ubi.com/loreplay.php) of the Chronicle of Strife. To check it out yourself, feel free to check out the Shadowbane Free Trial (http://www.mmorpg.com/shadowbane_free_trial.cfm) at MMORPG.com or wait till later this month and use our promotional with FilePlanet. Once you have that done, you can simply jump on the Shadowbane Test Server which is currently running the Loreplay Ruleset.
Big thanks to Sean and the team at Wolfpack. Speaking personally, I'll be giving the game another shot. Hope to see you there.
