Quote:
Originally Posted by KilyenaMage
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Shadowbane was THE single most Sandbox-Style MMO I've played to date -- basically every city being player-owned/controlled. All of these cities vulnerable to attack/take-over from rival guilds at any point. There are only 3 "safe" and NPC controlled cities - placed in the 3 extremes of the gameworld to offer trading posts etc.
One guild, for example, may have had a MAIN Guild city where only tagged members can pledge (bind). However they may also own an open city full of merchants and trainers for revenue etc.
Thieves can actively pickpocket ANYTHING/EVERYTHING being carried by an enemy - at any time - assuming they're not detected. Etc.
If you're into PvP check out Play to Crush - should be up and running soon. It's very quick to level and gear-up in Shadowbane. The focus is on being able to Pvp, and level/experiment with MANY Hero combinations.
I've never played another game with near the character customization of Shadowbane. Somewhere in the realm of 13 races, 25 classes, and 60 different "disciplines" (each Hero can equip 3 of these) which all offer unique skills. Anywhere from being able to turn into a werewolf or werebear, to being able to teleport to any the world's runegatess and everything in between. Wanna make your dagger-wielding Thief a master tracker and a master of unarmed Combat? Take the Sundancer and Bounty Hunter runes. Wanna turn your Elven Cleric into a dual-katana-wielding lawnmower? Take the Blade Weaver rune.
You'll have a specific number of skill points by the time u reach level 70, and you can place then where you wish -- you may have 5 Elven Theives side-by-side each one with a vastly different skillset.
http://morloch.shadowbaneemulator.co...tegory:Classes A list of classes. Note that many of these have 2 and some 3 variations. For example an Assassin can be of Mage or Rogue archetype; a Channeler can be of Mage or Healer archetype - and their subsequent skillsets and play style will be very different.
http://morloch.shadowbaneemulator.co...ry:Disciplines A list of all the Disciplines (again, each toon can take 3 of these) |
Based on what I put on my first post, I think that Shadowbane would make the grade and you're justified in posting this. So I'll add it to the list.
But I'll add some of my thoughts here. I played Shadowbane in 2003 or 2004 for a month. In fact, I still have the cd and manual for it. When Shadowbane became free in late 2006 I tried it 2 or 3 times between then and the time they shutdown the servers. What I liked about the game was rolling alts. You're right that it was fun to make a new character. I loved the first 20 levels. I think the pre-made areas were higher quality than the PvP areas. I never quite got to the point where I participated in building cities, but I was well on my way to doing that if I had kept to it. It looked fun. Neither did I ever own a house.
Shadowbane was not all fun, though. First of all, it was PvP first, PvE last. It got worse and worse the higher your level was because you had to contest content and you were effectively forced to run or fight other players. If you don't like PvP, tough luck! Compared to other PvE games I've played, Shadowbane is at the bottom of my list. I tend to prefer mmorpgs that're PvE first, PvP second (or last). So as you can see that will impact what I think about Shadowbane and Darkfall. Both of them are PvP games even though I think of them as Sandbox games. I enjoy a well thought out and involved PvE. My last point is that PvP games don't ever seem to do all that well in the market. Showing me a game like WoW that has PvP in the battlegrounds does not change my mind because most of the people playing WoW are not PvPing. Most of the posts i've read are from people leveling up to 80 or making an alt. PvP is restrictive and any implementation of it will have to be watered down in order to have a respectable population. PvP is too hard. (killing someone in real life is never done fairly)
There're a lot of bad things I could say about PvE and other things in Shadowbane.
But I should say that Eve-Online has extensive support for PvP. I haven't tried the game so I can't really comment on the PvE. Most of the games linked here I haven't played so (hard enough just playing one)...
I make it seem like it's all bad (like there were chinese players everywhere or something). But I said not all fun. Shadowbane has pluses and minuses. Ultimately, I would say that for me it falls short. However, I think some people might like it. And versus some games it's a much better tradeoff. I mean, I'd rather play Shadowbane than play a dumb linear story-driven theme park gumball machine mmorpg.