Play2Crush - Post Mortem on Wolfpack & the Future of Shadowbane

Ara (Warcry)- What is your name and what do you go by in the gaming world?

Haliit(TSG)- My name is Jake Simon, but gaming name is Haliit.

Tasital(TSG)- Richard Waelde. I go by the name Tasital.

Frosty(TSG)- My name is James Williams. In game I am Frosty Thundertrod.

Spydraxxx(TSG)- Alex ** Spydraxxx ** Moreaux.

Ara (Warcry)- When did you start Shadowbane?

Tasital(TSG)- I began playing from the last couple of weeks in the beta up until now. I first started on the Mourning server and eventually moved over to one of the recently created servers called Vindication. I'll be here when they finally retire the hamsters that power the servers.

Frosty(TSG)- I first got into Shadowbane beta about two weeks before live.

Haliit(TSG)- I began following Shadowbane quite early, but actually started playing in beta about a year to a year and a half before release.

Spydraxxx(TSG)- Playing since near beta.

Ara (Warcry)- What attracted you to Shadowbane?

Tasital(TSG)- First thing that pulled me into Shadowbane was the deep and extensive lore. No other game out there on the market today has a backstory with multiple factions that are in constant conflict with each other. Even within each of these factions are sub-factions that have similar goals but don't agree on how to reach them. It had the potential to create an incredibly complex political atmosphere.

Second, the game revolves around PvP conflict as its primary focus. Fighting computer-controlled monsters loses its appeal in about 30 seconds. Even though the majority of the players did not follow the lore, the political element still thrived. Alliances were formed and broken. Some of the board wars (forum fights) were things of legend. I don't think I've ever seen so many locked threads on any forum as I've seen in Shadowbane.

Third, there was a program that the developers, Wolfpack, created called Feature Character (FC) events. Basically, the developers had a team that would take a character from the lore of the game and control it in the game world. That FC character would then recruit a guild of similar alignment to perform a task of some sort. This, of course, would bring the opposing faction or factions to fight both the guild and the FC character itself. The fights at those types of events were some of the most fun I've ever had. You and your guild became part of the backstory. Even now we still reminisce about those days and tell stories about them. Ask any old Mourning player about the time Morloch, known as the Maimed God, appeared on the server and they'll tell you the same thing. Unfortunately, they couldn't keep that program running consistently due to funding problems.

Frosty(TSG)- What drew me to Shadowbane was the promise of a wide open world where the players made the rules. Shadowbane was my first MMORPG so I had some very unrealistic expectations of what the game was going to be like. But in the main idea of a world that the players can shape through guild effort did survive all the delays and technical letdowns. It is this same reason that I still play Shadowbane to this day.

Ara (Warcry)- Tell me about the start of The Sundered Guard (TSG) in Shadowbane.

Haliit(TSG)- At first we only had a small number of members in the beta. We all just played solo or in other guilds, but around half a year to a year before release we let the TSG flag fly as a subguild of Lex Talonis. When release came, TSG decieded to play on Mourning as a member of the former SBRPA (I believe that was the acroym, something to the effect of Shadowbane Roleplayers Association). We founded our city, Aldalonde, just south of the Paudrill Plain, and I believe it was the 4th city on the server.

Tasital(TSG)- Well I didn't join TSG at the beginning. Shadowbane essentially forces you to join a guild in order to survive and I was still weighing my options when the game went live. TSG itself was formed in the pre-beta days of SB. By the time I had joined up about a month after the game went gold, a large portion of the founding members had already left or were hardly playing due to a lot of the technical problems. The capital city of Aldalonde was one of the first cities built on Mourning (the third or fourth oldest). In fact, Aldalonde still stands today in the same spot that it was founded. Even though it fell to her enemies once, it was retaken soon after.

Frosty(TSG)- The early days were a mad rush to raise money for the guild seed. We were one of the very first trees planted, I believe we hit number 3. About two weeks in, though, we had a disaster where our TOL went poof. CCR did replace the tree but not the gold that was on it. This lead to another mad scrabble for cash, as we were using the TOL to store the guild treasury.

Ara (Warcry)- You are a RolePlay guild. Can you briefly tell me about your guild's backstory as it applies to Shadowbane?

Spydraxxx(TSG)- Rangers faction, protectors of the land, and its people.

Tasital(TSG)- The lore is very extensive. Brief is not a word that goes well with the backstory, but I'll try. We are a Ranger's Brotherhood. In the Shadowbane lore, we are the servants of Braialla, goddess of Nature, mother of the Elven race, and creator of the world. A wandering god, known as the All-Father, came to the world of Aerynth. He breathed his power into Braialla, waking her. As a result of her "birth," a great oak tree, the World Tree, grew from the ground where the All-Father found her and the world was born. We worship her and honor her husband.

Now I'm going to skip a great deal of the backstory and get to the current age in which Shadowbane takes place. It's still a long tale, but it'll give you an idea of how deep this story truly is.

The greatest Human king, Cambruin, began a war against the evil and hated Elves. Yes, I said evil Elves. They had enslaved Humanity many years before. In this war, a legendary but cursed sword, the Shadowbane, was recovered by Cambruin's greatest champion, Caeric Blackhammer. With the Shadowbane, Cambruin is nearly unstoppable. He invades the Elven lands and begins slaughtering their people without mercy. Outside the Elven city of Kierhaven, the Elves' final stronghold, Cambruin is slain by one of his own champions, whose identity is still unknown. The Traitor leads him to glade where Elvish assassins wait to ambush them. As a result of the struggle, Cambruin drops the Shadowbane to the ground. The Traitor picks it up and runs it through the High King's heart, pinning him to an ancient oak tree. That oak tree is the World Tree. At that moment, called The Turning, the world is "sundered" into fragments or shards (i.e. different servers). From the lore itself: "The skies darkened, the World trembled, and all was sundered. The doors of Heaven and Hell closed fast, the Sun turned a sickly crimson, and even Shadowbane's hilt shone no longer." The World Tree turns to stone and now no one can die. The gates of Heaven and Hell are closed. The spirits of those who die wander the land as undead. The gods fall silent and our contact with Braialla is severed.

Even after 99 years, the Druids can still hear Braialla's anguished screams. As Rangers and Druids, we seek to reverse the damage done by The Turning, heal the Sundered World, and restore our sacred mother, Braialla. We protect the people from the wandering undead, orcs, and all those who would do evil even though they fear and despise us. We are Nature's Sword. We are the People's Shield. We are The Sundered Guard.

OK, those last lines are a tad corny, but it fits with the guild's backstory.

Ara (Warcry)- What made Shadowbane a fun game for you and your guild?

Frosty(TSG)- What made Shadowbane fun was the sense of community that guilds formed. The city-building gave everyone a common touch point in the game world. TSG had a no-recruitment policy, so any new members that found their way to us did so because they shared a common mindset in gaming. Since we did have the one common city that meant everything to each member. We developed a solid identity as a guild. And the fact that even though we had a serious charter and goals, the guild was very freewheeling and funny. We have a great many odd personalities. And an overall upbeat fun-loving wacky attitude.

Haliit(TSG)- The freedom. That is what makes Shadowbane the greatest MMORPG I have ever played. I can pretty much do whatever I want, and TSG is free to make our image whatever we believe it should be.

Tasital(TSG)- The FC events, both the dev-supported ones and the player-run ones, were a lot of fun. But the most fun happened when we started making PvP spec groups, groups that were made so that each member complemented the others. This was around the summer of 2004. We became an excellent fighting force that could stand toe to toe with some of the best PvPers on the server. The best part was that we did not allow every race or class in the game into the guild. We placed lore-specific restrictions on our guild that reflected our role as Rangers. We were defeating guilds that allowed All Races, All Classes (known as ARAC) because of our skill as a team.

Ara (Warcry)- What memory stands out in your mind of TSG in Shadowbane?

Spydraxxx(TSG)- The battle where we lost our capital to UDL, and being one of the largest PvP forces in the game.

Haliit(TSG)- There are quite a few. TSG supporting the allied attacked on Xanten in the early days of the server has to be one of my greatest memories. Then our part in the first rise of Morloch's Throne. However, the darkest memory is from the Undead War, when after unrelenting sieges Aldalonde finally fell for the first time. It was a hard time for us, as the guild outside of the game was falling apart at the same time. However, we reorganized and Aldalonde is still standing in the same spot in did in the first days of Shadowbane.

Tasital(TSG)- Definitely the summer of 2004. Prior to that in October of 2003, when the first Mourning server war ended with the fall of our capital, Aldalonde. Due to a great deal of internal strife, I was promoted from a junior member of the Inner Council directly to Guild Leader. The guild was in shambles and we spent months trying to rebuild. Finally in the summer of '04, we climbed out of the cellar and became a pillar of the Mourning community, both as a PvP nation and as an RP nation. There are some who would probably disagree with this, but we had the respect of most of the major guilds on the server. We even earned the respect of our former enemy, the Undead Lords, who briefly captured our city. Of all the guilds they had destroyed in the server war of '03, we were the only ones to rebuild. All the others had either quit SB or disbanded and scattered to join other guilds.

Ara (Warcry)- An IGN reporter in an article called "The Mourning Report" had this to say about TSG back in 2003: "The Sundered Guard is an aggressive guild with rumors of expansionistic tendencies." http://sbvault.ign.com/articles/421/421658p1.html Although it went on to say this was part of your backstory. Do you have any comment on this, and how it may have affected your time in Shadowbane?

Frosty(TSG)- I remember that article. TSG has never been expansionist. But we have always been very aggressive in hunting lore-based enemies. It is easer to kill the ones that come near our cities and leveling areas than it is wand all over the map looking for some. Many other guilds found our behavior to be confusing. Celesta was our first offensive bane. That city was where black oak is now. Not only did they plant right on our doorstep with out asking first, but they were also quite rude every time we tried to talk to them. On the day the bane went live the login server went down. We only had two people at bane; we killed some members of that guild as we slowly bashed down their building. But they never mounted an organized defense.

Haliit(TSG)- That was an interesting article, written by a disgruntled player. This was during a period when TSG was under the leadership of Wolfhart. We decided to take the lore and RP even more seriously than usual, so we were quite aggressive in defending and cleansing our "territory" (this was long before realms) of any characters that did not fit with our Ranger's Brotherhood.

Ara (Warcry)- How did you and your guild react to Shadowbane being offered for free?

Spydraxxx(TSG)- At first we thought it was to bring back old players. Now we are worried about it being the beginning of the end.

Tasital(TSG)- We'd been hearing rumors of an MMO that Wolfpack was working on using the Unreal 2 engine. Of course, the rumors that SB2 was being developed caught on like wildfire. At first, everyone thought that offering SB for free was a highly aggressive marketing ploy in preparation of the announcement of a sequel. You know, get the old-time players back, bring new players in and get them hooked... that sort of thing. A number of our old-time players who were unable to play for whatever reason were reactivating their accounts. WP even opened up a new server named for the goddess Braialla. Seemed like the population was growing again. I was seeing a lot of new players asking questions in game about the game mechanics. Kind of threw us off when we heard Wolfpack was being fired.

Haliit(TSG)- We were all quite excited. I had recently deactivated my 3 accounts because of other financial needs, but they were immediately back up when I heard the news. We received a lot of returning members to the game.

Ara (Warcry)- By now everyone has heard that Ubisoft is closing the doors on Wolfpack. What has the response been so far from the members of TSG?

Tasital(TSG)- Disappointment mostly. In some cases, there's been outright depression. A lot of people were upset that SB didn't have a lot of support for its own lore. Since PvP is the primary focus of the game, I believe the developers wanted to get that right first before they started on anything else. They did manage to include the lore in their FC events, but not often enough for most people. The massive city siege battles are the stuff of legend. SB players have created hours and hours of videos dedicated to these battles. There are no other games currently on the market like this one. We're gonna miss it.

Haliit(TSG)- Everyone seems a little taken back and upset. This guild was born because of the game Wolfpack put together, and it really is sad to see the chance of Shadowbane dying.

Frosty(TSG)- There is a general sense of foreboding -- most of the guild expects that Shadowbane will shut down right about the same time Wolfpack does.

Ara (Warcry)- Is there anything TSG would like to say to Ubisoft about Shadowbane?

Tasital(TSG)- UBI's making a huge mistake by not keeping Wolfpack around. While the PvP-oriented MMO is a bit of a niche market, SB has absolutely no competitors at this time. I've known many players who have quit and have come back to SB after a short stint in other MMOs. Other games just can't give them the excitement and thrill that SB provided.

Haliit(TSG)- Don't leave us hanging! This game is amazing, and losing it would be a huge blow to the many of us hardcore MMORPG players.

Ara (Warcry)- Any comments for the team at Wolfpack?

Spydraxxx(TSG)- Thanks for all the memories and good times.

Tasital(TSG)- Thanks for all the great memories. While the game had its technical problems, it's the greatest game out there on the market in my opinion. It's not the prettiest or the most stable, but it has the best character creation options out there. Meridian created the most enthralling backstory of any MMO ever. I'd love to see a mini-series made based on his writings. Couldn't fit all that into a 2 hr movie. There are endless combinations of ways to build different characters of the same race and class. Plus SB has the best balanced PvP out there. It took some time to get that worked out, but you guys did it.

Thanks to Ashen, Sachant, Liet, Ben, Dave, Meridian, and anyone else I forgot for making a game with the most refreshing concept I've seen since Ultima Online and also putting up with the oftentimes cranky and insulting playerbase. You guys took our constructive criticism as well as our crap with class and dignity. If you guys get a chance to make another MMO that's like SB only better, I'll be there. Play to crush!

Haliit(TSG)- Thanks for a great game guys. It's had its ups and downs, but in the end, Shadowbane is the single greatest MMORPG I have ever played.

Frosty(TSG)- I would say try again. When Shadowbane was conceived 8 years ago it was really pushing the envelope. Even new titles today have trouble implementing things like working doors. And player-made buildings. With todays improved technology and the experience of Shadowbane, I think you would have a good chance of making a new game as a new company that can fulfill all of the original hopes for Shadowbane.

Ara (Warcry)- Thank you all again for you time, and play to crush.

As TSG put it so clearly, Shadowbane will be missed should it pass with its creators. One thing I can say is loyal fans can keep a game alive as was proven with Horizons. If guilds like TSG are the standard for Shadowbane, its story is far from done and will live on in the gaming industry for years to come.

Ara: Thank you, Ashen, for taking the time out of what must be a busy time for you right now.

Ara: Tell us about your background. What got you into this industry?

Ashen: Hmmm, where to begin. I fear my background isn't very exciting. I was born and raised in Chicago. I've lived most of my life in Texas and California (although I've been around a lot of the world). In school, I read a lot but was more active in sports than anything. Truth be told, I wasn't even introduced to computer gaming until I was in the Marine Corps of all places. That's when I played the Marine Doom mod and a DOS-based RPG that I cannot remember the name of. From there I was hooked and played a wide variety of games... my favorite one being Master of Magic by MicroProse. Then one day I was introduced to Ultima Online.

Ultima Online was my first experience in an MMO and I was quickly drawn to the community side of the game. I ran a small guild called the Spirits of Vengeance, had a community website for the Pacific Shard on XRGaming, did some "news" with UOStratics, was a character (ImaBumpkin) in Tryon's ImaNewbie, and ran a roleplaying scenario with a variety of other guilds such as the Rangers of Skara Brae, The Fallen Lords, the Knights of Glory and Beer, etc. I played that for a little more than 3 years until I left to play Everquest with some of my friends and guildmates. There I joined the Rallos Zek (.net) community and played as Kallystra, the Daughter of Hate as well as the originator of the Elven Guard.

During that time, I was following a game called Carnage.net which later evolved into Shadowbane. I talked with some of the staff at Wolfpack and helped them out by running forums for them as well as becoming the site manager for IGN's Shadowbane website SBVault. After some time, I informed Wolfpack that I would be moving back to Texas after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, and I was offered the job as their Internet Relations Manager.

Ara: What was your concept of Shadowbane when you and the team set out to create one of the first PvP-based MMORPGs?

Ashen: When I first learned about Shadowbane, I was instantly drawn to it. Being a guild leader for some large guilds in Ultima Online and Everquest, I wanted to play a game that gave more attention and tools to these player affiliations. The ability to claim a city as a guild and fighting for our stake on the map and our place in history sounded just like the game I wanted to play. And the Player-vs.-Player aspect was exactly what I wanted (being a former "Dread Lord" and playing on the PvP Server in EQ).

The game had a huge following, too. There was quite a demand at the time for a game that designed with PvP as one of the main points. While other games (at the time) had PvP combat, they were not part of the original goals and philosophies of the game so their balance was more set towards Player-vs.-Environment than PvP.

Ara: The news of Ubisoft closing your offices took many of us by surprise. Did you and the team have any warnings about what was coming?

Ashen: While there were some signs that became more obvious after the internal announcement, many of us were surprised. I remember when Kellion first started telling us about it, I thought he was trying to pull an early April's Fool joke. So yes, it was a surprise to me.

I am very grateful for the advance notice and the care Ubisoft has given us, though. There are a lot of horror stories in the industry of people going to work only to find the doors locked shut and being told that the studio was closed as of that day. Ubisoft has given all of us a fair amount of time to consider other positions within the company or look outside of it.

Ara: What are some of your favorite memories from Shadowbane?

Ashen: Where to even start! For me, this will be about a seven-year ride; my first day working for Wolfpack was June 1, 2000, and I was following the game about a year before that. Over the years there have been some really great times... last-minute crunches before E3 showings, the fan gathering at the Copper Tank in Austin, just playing the game, etc. The best memory would have to be centered on an event we did with a guild called House Lok-ri when I ran the Shadowbane Event Team. My team did their homework on the guild and knew a lot of the history of this player guild before the event started; so much so that it really surprised them when we started bringing up bits and pieces of their guild history. This event was featured on RPGVault after being written by Adarial (http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/424/424390p1.html). That would have to be one of my fondest memories in my time here. Luckily, after having to let go of most of my team, almost every one of them found employment at NCSoft, another Austin-based studio. Aside from that, I'd have to say the day Shadowbane launched... hard to compare to the day a dream becomes reality.

Ara: If you could work on any MMORPG project out there, what one would it be now that your skills are on the market?

Ashen: Hmmm, that is a hard one for a variety of reason; first and foremost being that there are so many great studios and projects out there. That and, of course, I don't want to burn any bridges should I try to accept a position on a title that I did not choose as my "dream" project. (*smirks*) Then again, the designer in me could always say that if I could work on any MMO project, it would be my own, which would be more of a virtual world than a virtual thrill ride (to use the words of Ryan Scott). The game would be more centered on community building, politics, economy, territorial control, and strategic combat.

Ara: From playing Shadowbane, did you play on Mourning and do you have any memories of The Sundered Guard?

Ashen: Mourning is probably the server I have played on the most over the years, although for the last few months it would have to be Vindication (the Loreplay Server). With that said, yes, I have heard of TSG and I believe I have fought against them a few times. Great guild!

Ara: I want to wish you the best of luck in all things, Ashen, and who knows we may yet meet on the field of battle.

 I walk away from this knowing that Shadowbane is a unique game with a rich history and loyal fans. The game has lasted three years through good and bad times, but one thing remains, and that is a player base that feels there is nothing else out there like it. In a gaming world full of "me too" games it is refreshing to find something different. I wish I had discovered Shadowbane sooner, and I hope its time is not drawing to an end.We may never know what will make a truly great game, but I can say this one has set a standard for PvP games to come. The fans of Shadowbane will not settle for the run-of-the-mill RvR or faction-based game. My greatest wish for the game is that the loyal fans of Shadowbane will stay close to it the way the fans of Horizons did, giving them a chance to save the game they love. One thing is for certain, though: should Shadowbane survive the road ahead, things will not be the same without the hands of the Wolfpack team involved.

Play to Crush

Ara