...as a long time member that plays this game for PvP I'm honestly baffled at how people that developed Shadowbane could be utterly ambivalent bout the PvP community. By now you should have developed enough revenue streams from your different Crown content to afford to actually do some game dev.
This game was predicated on it being a game different from the other MMORPG's out in the market in that you had:
1) Free Content 2) Limited Time Sinks
The leveling process was relatively painless, a determined player with some skill and a partner or two could get through the entire leveling process in 2-3 weeks and then move on to the social aspects or pvp aspects of the game. For me that is PvP. With the new pet release for me to maintain a competetive level I am forced to sink mindless time into your game. So you've forced me to do the one thing I have no interest in, and beyond that have failed to truly address the following issues:
1) Matching System where a skilled level 25 player will be matches with a Grandmaster, without a big enough deck, or strong enough spells to effectively kill him. System where a Warlord with 1600 rank will wait for over an hour for a match, only to finally get a match, and have the opponent ranking down and discard his spells, forcing you to queue up once again. Probably to re-match with the same down ranker....time and time again. 2) Chain stunning. You made a half hearted effort to fix it, but I read solutions to bypass the stun shield that were effective within hours of it being released. 3) Minus 1 bug that forces matchups between lower level players and fully geared Arena Warlords. 4) A ranking system that has been promised a reset for over a year. My goodness, even if you don't really do any game dev you could at least do this and allow the Warlords out there to get some matches in. I don't believe you should cap the rank at 1000, but once a wizard reaches 1200-1400 then he should be considered by the matching system to be a valid match with someone having 2500 rank. Past that number there are no new tricks to learn in pvp.
Right now my read is you've decided to milk this cash cow as long as she'll produce and have lost the desire to improve gameplay. I'm not the only person out here that is seriously considering their gaming options based on the new time and money sinks. You could get some of my money by taking pride in your PvP product, but you won't get any of my money if you just don't care.
