Slashdot points out (by way of GamaSutra) that the MMO Shadowbane is now apparently subscription free.

Ubisoft, publisher of the Wolfpack Studios-developed MMORPG Shadowbane, has announced, via the site's official news page, that the title is now available to play for free without subscription fees. The game joins a growing number of MMORPGs that are experimenting with alternate revenue streams.

Anyone interested can nab the client locally from AusGamers and jump on to give it a go. I believe that all you need is a trial key which you can get from the official site. We've also got a few screenshots if you want to check out the goods.

Play at no cost for 15 days, then pony up.

Pfft...

The game joins a growing number of MMORPGs that are experimenting with alternate revenue streams.

i think the companies behind these half arsed mmos should just forget making games and farm in wow full time

even free is too much for shadowbane.

Is it just me or do all MMORPGs look chunky and like dongs?

Is it just me or do all MMORPGs look chunky and like dongs?

It's to lower the load on the render engine.

it's just you

One thing I actually liked about WOW is that it didn't feel empty...even when there was no one around even the Barrens actually looked good, there was always something there, and the ground was textured well.

Some of those screenshots just look so bland, dull and boring! YUCK!

Look at that lush grass in pic 3

It's to lower the load on the render engine

So why don't id, Epic and Valve modify their graphics engines to show just wireframes to "lower the load"?

It's like a trip back to 1998.

MMOs are the new coloured lighting

So why don't id, Epic and Valve modify their graphics engines to show just wireframes to "lower the load"?

1. Id, Epic and Valve use their games as a marketing platform for other game developers to purchase their engine to develop on.

2. Id. Epic and Valve haven't designed their game to have dozens, perhaps hundreds of objects interacting with each other.

1. Id, Epic and Valve use their games as a marketing platform for other game developers to purchase their engine to develop on.

That's irrelevant to my question, since MMORPG developers have to market the game to sell to consumers.

2. Id. Epic and Valve haven't designed their game to have dozens, perhaps hundreds of objects interacting with each other

Object interaction is also irrelevant. Why?

1. Many people have systems fast enough to render a large number of characters on screen at once.
2. "Interaction" is CPU-bound and is not affected by the graphical representation of a character.
3. The interaction is done on the developer's servers anyway, not on your home PC.

People with beefy systems can try to crank up the graphics all they like and their game will run freaking fast but still look like s***. Obviously there is plenty of room for more graphical detail with today's graphics cards.

Then again, I know that people will get addicted to MMORPGs regardless of the graphical quality, so my comments make no difference. It still doesn't change the fact that the games look like crap and have room for improvement.

I'm not the kind of person who would go out and buy a game by Epic just for more eye-candy, but I also don't find it appealing to go backwards with graphics technology either.

I've made my point and I'm done here.

last edited by parabol at 14:56:35 18/Mar/06

i dont think people realise this game is 3 years old now, it has had its time.

At least it had better PvP than the s*** in WoW. battlegrounds lol!

Lets see, MMO games have several thousand square meter to build objects on, texture and detail, a map for doom, half life 2 and unreal have much less area to cover, that probably has something to do with it..

Lets see, MMO games have several thousand square meter to build objects on, texture and detail, a map for doom, half life 2 and unreal have much less area to cover, that probably has something to do with it..

Flawed comment.

1. MMO games have significantly less detail per square metre than FPS games. They almost have a console-game-like simplification of geometric detail, when there is plenty of unused graphics card power to utilise. They don't even have to waste man-hours hand-crafting terrain detail. Procedural detail generation works.

2. Secondly MMO's do seemless loading/LOD on the fly, which some outdoor FPSs actually do too, hence not limited to your precious MMOs.

As an example, look at Farcry. Some of the islands in that game are freaking HUGE and they have an enormous amount of detail when you look at the terrain up close. It wouldn't be difficult chaining islands together and loading them progressively to mimick what an MMO would do.

So stop pretending that MMOs have some special quality that justifies the fact that they look like s***.