Review: Shadowbane: Throne of Oblivion
by Marian Rudzynski

Shadowbane all started a few years ago with the promise of the ultimate PVP MMORPG. That promise was being held, but at a price.

The new expansion, ToO (Throne of Oblivion), is attempting to fix some of the gaping holes that were never patched in the original design. The most obvious features are the addition of vampires, a realm system and resources.

When you shove the ToO disc into your computer fervently, after waiting half an hour for it to install, you'll beback to the same old shadowbane patcher. It now has a displaced Throne of Oblivion picture as its background, though. After the obligatory launch day patch, you will finally enter the game.

The first and foremost obvious change is the loading screen and the new main menu. In their ultimate wisdom Wolfpack decided that there has to be a 3D backdrop for the character selection that makes my computer lag. If my computer is lagging before I even get into the world, something is wrong. I overlooked it however, afterall Shadowbane has never had a firm graphics engine - so off I went to make my brand new vampire!

The Vampire

Vampires have an interesting element added to them: any power they use costs health. If you wonder why every other game that attempts to implement a race based on the myth of the immortal vampire modifies it to their likings: imagine a correct implementation, which would mean that you could never enter the sunlight with your character, and need blood to survive. So the Wolfpack Vampire drains health instead of blood, from itself, when using a skill.

Their base stats are nicely balanced (45/120 50/120 45/120 50/120 30/65) allowing them to play any of the classes available without sinking too deep into stat runes. For those of you that don't play shadowbane, stat runes are applied at creation or in game and increase the maximum a statistic can be raised to. Granted to vampires, are three skills: a non-player health drain, a player-only health drain, and a "Personal Combat Fortitude" buff. All of the skills are based on the bloodcraft focus, so if you intend to make any use of them you will have to dump an inordinate amount of training into it. For those of you not in the know focus skills affect the power of the skills based on them. Throne of Oblivion brings to the table a decent number of new vampire disciples, they range from granting a rogue the ability to summon (Theif summon chains? The pain, the pain!) to ghoul form. More of the same old, just built into a new race. I'm sure vampires are flooding the live servers right now. A number of decent templates (templates being a "plan" for how to develop your character) have been spawned from them, the most common seems to be the godly vampire scout (despite the lore conflicts). Between a summon (the new Belgosch discipline), decent base stats, the ability to maintain stamina (they use health remember) and some powerfull drains (the ones granted to all vampires) no other scouts can stand up to them.

The Nightstalker

Two new classes were also added with Throne of Oblivion. The first being The Nightstalker, also refered to as the anti-vampire. These guys aren't really getting any attention. Why you may ask? Mostly because the anti-vampires can't kill vampires. This all seems very backwards and a stream of nerfs, re-nerfs, and un-nerfs are going to rain down on the few that choose to play this class, I'm sure. Limited PVP application and fairly sub-par abilities all around promise to make this class uncommon.

The Necromancer

The other new class that was added is The Necromancer. The Necromancer is, in the end, the wizard's evil brother (pets, semi-decent nukes, and a few utility spells) with all the fixes wizards have been begging for since release. This class promises to get alot of play from people wanting to try out vampires. Sadly wizards apparently will not be recieving what they asked for, and I imagine a number of wizards will roll necromancers. Necromancers get a number of undead minions to command. All of us PVPers now also have another holy resistance buff available (Dim the Light). I would have to chalk necromancers up to just another addition to the already large list of mage classes available. Nothing new is being added here, they appear to have been added for novelty.

The Realm System

With the adition of the realm system, players will now have the newfound ability to actually 'own' land. Realms are chunks of land that a particular guild can own. To ascend the throne and claim a realm as your own the leader of a guild will have to devote a large number of resources to upgrade their level 7 ToL (Tree of Life) to the newly available level 8 ToL: A Palace. After your ToL is upgraded you will be able to select a realm charter. The realm charters have effects on building health, upgrade time, maintenance cost, and taxation rate (more on this later). To officially finish, the guild leader will have to visit three hermits and gain their blessings. Each hermit's blessing takes away some of the guild leaders abilities (mostly travel abilities it appears, although I haven't personally tested this). Because of the hermit's debuffs, the guild leader will have to bring atleast a small guard along on the quest.

After you finally own your realm, you can begin taxing the other cities within, but first you are going to need a warehouse that allows you to store resources in a city. There are now resource mines placed on the map, that once claimed produce resources once an hour. Taxing allows the realm owner to appoint a tax collector and tax the resources of any city within a realm they own. Resources can be used to roll specific items and are also required for the upkeep of a palace. This all appears to be a long drawn out attempt to add more conflict to the game.

Conclusion

In the end, Shadowbane: Throne of Oblivion comes off as a last attempt to save a dying game. The new race is a classic gimmick all of us from Everquest will recognize. If you are in a smaller guild on Shadowbane you will now be subject to a tyrant sapping your resources, if you are in a large guild your life will remain unchanged and if you are the leader of a large guild you will have new things to sink your cash into. Most of us will remain unaffected, as it makes no difference to me if the guild leader is having me attack a mine or a city, it's the same thing.

The user interface is still clunky, sieges will still make you lag, PVE is still boring, customer service is still in the pit, Entropy players still don't have the resolution they want, and your server is still empty. The important issues have been completely overlooked. I personally won't be paying for Throne of Oblivion.

If you are a die hard Shadowbane fan, and have been able to put up with the ongoing incompetence and all other issues, you should of course get Throne of Oblivion as it adds a good share of new toys. For everyone else, nothing has changed. If you are a mastermind of player versus player combat, and want to bash heads on a massive scale, Shadowbane might be your game. Despite the high appeal of the story of Shadowbane - you will have to look very hard to find any of it, as there clearly is no focus on story in this game. So if you're after slaying dragons, or anything that does not involve player versus player combat, Shadowbane is only second, third, or actually fourth choice.