Shadowbane Lives On

eToyChest is reporting that many of the developers are Wolfpack Studios, closed since May 15th, have banded together to keep Shadowbane running for the players. Now known as 'Stray Bullet Studios', they'll be running the game for Ubisoft while they work on a new MMO for the 'next generation'. Via his Zen of Design blog, it appears Damion Schubert will not be among the Shadowbane handlers.

Is it still free?

Since it's now under new management, is it going to remain free? I looked at the Shadowbane [shadowbane.com] web site, and it says there's a free trial, but nothing about a completely free game.

What is the situation?

I don't understand. Were they not shut down by their producer by not producing any cash flow from that item? Perhaps there were other reason, I am curious about them. Now Ubisoft is giving them money to continue not making money. I guess Ubisoft is betting on their next project. As an investor, if a company came to me asking for money for a project, and they said their last project put another investor in the hole, namely me, I would be weary. Again, there must be more to this story.

Re:What is the situation?

Yeah, it definitely seems odd

1)Game is written by independent studio Wolfpack
2)Ubi agrees to publish (2nd publisher)
3)Game doesn't do as well as hoped, due to really fucking buggy code (the game should have been delayed another 6 months)
4)Ubi buys out Wolfpack
5)Time passes
6)Ubi dumps the monthly fee making it a free game
7)Ubi fires all of Wolfpack
8)Wolfpack reforms as a 3rd party and now runs SB for Ubi, but still free.

I can only see 2 things going on here.

1)A tax ploy of some kind, that requires a 3rd party
2)They have a lot of faith in WP's new MMO. FOr this to be true, it has to be pretty much beta quality and near release. Otherwise, with WP's track record, this makes no sense.

Re:WoW

There will always be a niche market for well formulated PvP games. In fact, look at Guild Wars. While not neccesarily a MMOG; it can be said that a minority of players will line up to kill each other in a static world if given a fair ruleset that allows for some semblance of "skill". Even so, it is not a Free For All (FFA) PvP game like Shadowbane was, and since I have not played since the free period last year I cannot say how GW has panned out. I will tell you that skill based FFA PvP games will garner a lot of attention, as long as thier ruleset is consistent, fair and well forumlated.

Asheron's Call Darktide/Beta World Black was FFA PvP and players loved it. I should say players who were mages, melee characters hated it as there was a "lack of itemization" to use a WoW euphamism. They tried to balance the skills and did a somewhat fine job, but the macroing and duping drove away a lot of the 'honest' players. It was a combination of code and publisher policy issue that drove away the players.

Shadowbane also had a FFA PvP environment, and players loved the game; hated the login bugs, sb.exe errors, rampant duping, and tedium neccesary to recover from a ZERG destroyed city. Lots of people played the game on release, lots of people left the game in 6 months because of the flawed code and building ruleset. Code and ruleset drove the players away.

I hate to bring it up, as it is still looking 'far away', but Darkfall Online is the only real FFA PvP+ game that looks to be coming out. The original developers were supposedly Darktide players, played Shadowbane and other popular MMOG's, and thier rulebase (when I was following it 2 YEARS AGO) looked well thought out and fair a PvP environment. However, it has been in development for a long time. And people aren't really sure if and when it will ever *really* come out. Which is sad.

Ahh well, my point stands that games can be successful, filling the niche market of the PvP crowd. They won't neccesarily be 6 million+ subscribers successful, but they will make thier money.