Shadowbane Designer Diary

Ubisoft's official Shadowbane website has been updated with a new designer diary from lead designer Damion 'Ubiq' Schubert. In it, Damion shares the top twelve goals the development team has for the future of the MMORPG. A little something to get you started:
3) Ensure that a siege event is about the right duration.

Some have complained about siege events being too long... they start at later hours, and can only be completed by those who don't have real lives (work/school/family etc) or whatever the next day. A few others have complained that siege events can be too short - most notably when a well-orchestrated zerg-strike takes out the bane.

There has to be things that we can do to ensure that more players can take advantage of, and enjoy, the full city sieging experience. We are going to be working on ways to improve this process for all concerned.

4) Make trebuchets and other siege equipment more important to sieging.

When I started at Wolfpack, these puppies were a big factor in me taking the job. Huge wooden arms throwing balls of flaming pitch was just plain cool. Unfortunately, as things are in today's Shadowbane, they are too inefficient to use, compared to zerging with handheld weapons. Some Shadowbane players we have run into don't even know that trebuchets exist! The design team wants these weapons to be the PREFERRED way to take down a city.