Bane is right. This game is killing me. It’s driving my blood pressure through the roof and making me all around angry and irritable. Why? Because the damn thing is BROKEN, that’s why! The servers are so sluggish and laggy as to be unplayable!!
But a glimmer of hope…there’s supposed to be a big patch tomorrow to address lag and such. We’ll see. For now, here’s my pro’s and cons of Shadowbane:
CONS:
1) Monsters all in camps, which means once we get into the PvP areas, we’re gonna get ganked constantly. We’ll have to be at the camps to level, so the ganksquads will know right where to find us.
2) Monsters all in camps, which is, imo, boring. I hate sitting in one place killing the same thing over and over and over
3) Very casual player un-friendly. At this point it takes about 10 minutes of running to get to a good camp for exp’ing, and that’s at level 6. This would be no big deal except that when you return to the game the next day, you’re back in town. Like, with other MMRPGs I’ve been hooked on, I’d play for 10-20 minutes in the morning before work. Here, it’ll take me that long just to get to where the monsters are.
4) Lots of attention given to a part of the game that’ll only be available to a tiny number of players: that’s the whole town building aspect. Granted I guess anyone could buy a house if they found a guild that would let them build in their town. But no guild is going to want you to build a store near their town (and siphon off their profits) so if you build one, they’re just going to destroy it. Ditto a house in the wild, or a roadside inn. With no protection, the gank squads will just destroy your hard-earned building. So, unless you’re running a big guild, you’ll never get a chance to play the city-building game.
5) Melee unfriendly. Goes back to the camps problem. As a meleer with no ability to pull a single mob from a camp, you’re pretty much screwed unless you’re grouped with someone who is a puller.
6) Stability issues, lag, and what seems to me like a lack of respect for the customer on the part of Wolf Pack and Ubi Soft. (Though on this latter point, they seem to be doing better).
7) No chat filters. It’s really hard to see how well you’re doing when the combat results chat is being spammed with the combat results, and the healing spells, and the sprinting spells, of everyone else within half a mile! Argh!!
PROS:
1) Character development is rich and very cool, if confusing as hell since there’s no decent documentation. 4 base classes branch out into…13(?) professions built out of 7 races, and then you add in various ‘disciplines’ to flesh out your character even more. Disciplines include both mundane (axe mastery) and exotic (become a werewolf) bonuses.
2) Richness of the world. At the same time that I hate that I won’t ever be able to take part in building a town, I’d love to just be able to tour towns and see what players come up with.
3) High-end, Guild vs Guild w/siege warfare game has the potential to be -very- cool. DAoC’s RvR with a purpose.
4) Graphics, even tho the still shots look poor, when the game is alive and in motion it all looks very cool to me. The engine isn’t as polished as, say, AC2, but it feels more like a living, breathing fantasy world to me.
5) Grouping system really encourages groups. Now I actually like to play solo, but if I have to group, at least make it this much of a no-brainer. Everyone gets full experience in a group, at least at low levels.
My account is cancelled but I have a few weeks before it shuts off. If they start to make some changes, I may re-up. The game drips with potential but right now, its flat out broken.