Why Shadowbane failed

-Zeno-

The old Shadowbane developers used OpenGL in their game engine.  They also used Commodore 64's in their server cluster.  Their server cluster was powered by hamsters.

Another thing that cause Shadowbane to fail may of been something that the average player or outsider could not see.  Money.  The original Shadowbane developers were gamers that wanted to do something amazing.  However look at it this way.  Look at yourself right now (yes, you).  Can you stop what you are doing right now and start developing a game?  Including finances, programming, design, art, music, etc etc etc?  Most likely not. 

Lets look at another game that had a real plan in place for its game: Darkfall.  It was developed for 10 years.  The company used other projects to fund itself and continues to do so.  Darkfalls finances are so good that, even with its flaws (being FPS in a MMORPG market, its biggest flaw) and low sub count they are expanding their development team and have been working on a relaunch of the game for almost two years.  That is a solid financial plan in the background.  They are making the game they want in a really niche market and being successful at it.

If a development company had a good solid financial plan I bet they could make tons of money off of a Shadowbane 2, maybe even more so than Darkfall.  Darkfall is in a different but similar niche market than Shadowbane (most MMO players have limited FPS skills, like myself).  So why not try?

Henchdwarf

welcome to the party

 

http://www.embersofcaerus.com/forum/forum.php

 

-Zeno-

Originally posted by Cruoris

welcome to the party

 

http://www.embersofcaerus.com/forum/forum.php

 

I did say the developers need a solid financal plan in the background, hidden from players.  Not one that includes player donations and wishful thinking.

Yamota

Beaten dead horse is...dead.

kitarad

I recall this post once on the VN boards. I myself only betaed Shadowbane and being basically not into PvP I never bought it but this guy was talking about how he joined this guild and spend all his time farming gold to build the walls. Then they got attacked and the whole town got burnt down or destroyed and he was back farming again. He said he was sick of doing it and quit.

-Zeno-

Originally posted by kitarad

I recall this post once on the VN boards. I myself only betaed Shadowbane and being basically not into PvP I never bought it but this guy was talking about how he joined this guild and spend all his time farming gold to build the walls. Then they got attacked and the whole town got burnt down or destroyed and he was back farming again. He said he was sick of doing it and quit.

Plenty of things needed adjustment and were adjusted.  City structure prices went down and walls became invulnerable so randoms couldn't just destroy them at any given time.  Lessons learned that are lost forever. 

Another couple of things learned was people love building cities and people love making the most crazy spec's possible with their characters.  No games currently come close to those two things.

kasta

Just thought I would add that one of the original designers of Shadowbane started another company called KingsIsle and they produce a game called Wizard101.  That game seems to be real healthy at the moment so I guess lessons were learned.

Zippy

I don't thinkmoney was the problem for Shadowbane. Unlike Darkfall it had a decent budget while Darkfall was started by 4 guys ina basement that grew into a following, Shadowbane did run a beta that lasted 3+ years.  The longest MMO  beta  I have seen fro any MMO.  The problem was the game was so buuged up and down it became unplayable. While the games design was well done the underlying architecture and code appears to have been the problem,

VirusDancer

There were two betas taking place at the same time:

Shadowbane: Throne of Oblivion

World of Warcraft

That's all she wrote... unfortunately.  Almost everybody that played on my server left for WoW because of how much they hated the ToO beta.

Arawnite

Originally posted by -Zeno-

The old Shadowbane developers used OpenGL in their game engine.  They also used Commodore 64's in their server cluster.  Their server cluster was powered by hamsters.

Another thing that cause Shadowbane to fail may of been something that the average player or outsider could not see.  Money.  The original Shadowbane developers were gamers that wanted to do something amazing.  However look at it this way.  Look at yourself right now (yes, you).  Can you stop what you are doing right now and start developing a game?  Including finances, programming, design, art, music, etc etc etc?  Most likely not. 

Lets look at another game that had a real plan in place for its game: Darkfall.  It was developed for 10 years.  The company used other projects to fund itself and continues to do so.  Darkfalls finances are so good that, even with its flaws (being FPS in a MMORPG market, its biggest flaw) and low sub count they are expanding their development team and have been working on a relaunch of the game for almost two years.  That is a solid financial plan in the background.  They are making the game they want in a really niche market and being successful at it.

If a development company had a good solid financial plan I bet they could make tons of money off of a Shadowbane 2, maybe even more so than Darkfall.  Darkfall is in a different but similar niche market than Shadowbane (most MMO players have limited FPS skills, like myself).  So why not try?

Why not try? Because Tasos is still in charge.