Some interesting stuff going on with the game - new world maps, new servers, and old servers being killed off.
On December 4, the Carnage, Death, Deception, and Dread servers will vanish from the Shadowbane universe to be made ready for the new Vorringia ice world launch currently scheduled for January. Further details concerning the re-launch of these four servers will be made in an official press release announcement from Ubisoft in early December.
The Fear world will also be taken down and immediately replaced with a new server called Cataclysm. This new server will offer an intense challenge to all Shadowbane nations, guilds, and players - a never ending world of constant battle and strife! The new Cataclysm server will use the new Dalgoth strategic map, and like the Corruption world will have its own unique ruleset.
The players that already exist on Carnage, Death, Deception, Dread, and Fear will be allowed to migrate their characters to one of four servers: Vengeance, Chaos, Mourning, or War. As with previous migrations, transferring characters can only cross worlds with the items they have equipped. So over the next week, players should carefully consider what gear they will equip for the transition.
When Migration begins on December 4, the new Cataclysm world will also appear. This new server will operate very differently than other Shadowbane worlds as it has a revolving life cycle of three months. This means that every three months the world will destroy itself and restart anew. However, after each “Cataclysm” and re-birth, one of the Freeholds will be renamed to give tribute to the winning guild of its previous cycle. On the fragment of Cataclysm, your Guild can not only change the world, they can conquer it!
The rules of Cataclysm will also differ in other ways. Experience will be gained twice as quickly as other servers, and gold will be more plentiful. Furthermore, Cataclysm will use the Maintenance and Upgrade System currently found on the Corruption server. This means that city maintenance costs will be very inexpensive, but upgrading costs will be more so.
Cataclysm will not be using the faction based Guild Experience system currently in place on the Corruption server.
One question that remains is how we will determine which guild wins after a three month life cycle ends? We are still engineering a system that will automatically calculate Victory points for each city during a three month life cycle and more details will be announced on this system very soon. Some of the things we will say at this point is that Victory Points will be awarded based upon many aspects of a Guild city itself: population, longevity (based upon the date the city was founded), and the Creation and Ranking of the structures within the city. Different structures will yield different point values: for instance, Barracks award no points while Forges will be worth five points apiece and Citadels ten. There will be many other factors in the point system and we will announce those soon.
And what prize do the victors claim? As mentioned before, when Cataclysm restarts one of the Safeholds on the world map will be renamed after the victors’ city, and its emblems will shift to their Guild crest. Individual structures within that Safehold may also be renamed to commemorate the achievements of the winning Guild, or its officers. Finally, the deeds and conquests of the winning city will be added to the Chronicle of Strife, with exclusive interviews and detailed accounts that will ensure that their glory will endure forever.
Four of my five characters are on servers that are closing. This is actually good news for me because I can now migrate them to a busier server, probably Vengeance. Of course, I don’t have a city or stuff like that. For those players and guilds, it kind of sucks. Of course, they may welcome getting to move to a new server as well.
The new Cataclysm server sounds interesting. With the 2X XP gain, you’ll be able to level a character in a week or two. Of course, your character will disappear every three months. Heh. Still, it will be a server with something to fight over and the incentive to get busy about conquering the world right away.
Also, Gamestop was giving away Shadowbane for free. After you entered some code, it was free except for the shipping. The new expansion should be out in December as well.