Record of Motion

Yeah, I know most of the people who read this will be totally uninterested, but maybe someday a gamedev will read it and decide he likes the idea, and create the next shadowbane. Anyway, ShadowBane is a hybrid MMORPG/MMORTS. Guilds can build cities complete with defenses, item shops, spawns, etc. But in order to maintain such expensive structures and allow new expansion (and more cities! My Nation of 5 guilds currently has 3 fully built cities), guilds need to capture mines. Mines produce a stead flow of resources, but cannot have defenses built around them. To make up for this, they can only be attacked during a 1-hour slot each day. Mine fights usually last about 10 minutes, the last 10 minutes of the hour. Why? The defending guild usually has more than one mine, and not enough people to defend all of them. They need time to get there. My guild’s strategy is something like this:

1. Gather around mine and keep away other players.
2. Wait till 30-40 minutes into the hour, then start ‘bashing’ the mine (you need special tools to attack a mine, usually we have 5 ‘bashers’ and everyone else keeps them and the ‘prospector’ (discussed below) alive)
3. Wait for the other guild to show up
4. Pwn other guild in PvP
5. At the 45 minute mark, one of our two ‘prospectors’ (players who have used one of 4 rune slots to allow them to capture mines), will begin capturing the mine, which takes about 10 minutes. One priest keeps the prospector alive, while the other priests keep the defenders alive.
6. The other guild brings in it’s Druids and Furies (who have incredibly powerful Area of Effect spells) and kiters (who drag us into the AoE range) and spam us with 4-5 different AoE spells dealing ~600dmg (for reference, with buffs my Thief has 2658 HP, which is low for a combat player) every 5 seconds (Last night, we had 4 dealing between 400 and 750 damage every 5 seconds. That comes to about 2400 damage every 5 seconds. More than enough to kill me before I had a chance at hitting a caster. These spells have graphics which virtually blind you, making it tough to find the casters in the first place, or even get out of range!). IF the casters are killed the spell stops. The catch is, the casters are at the center of the maelstrom.
7. A ninja cap guild tries to steal the mine by coming in at the last minute, killing our priests and prospector, and prospecting the mine.
8. The Defending guild attacks the Ninja guild, while we are caught in the middle of the AoE stun/damage range.
9. We get prospector #2 on the mine
10. Most of us die now. Those who live sit back in Stealth laughing and watching the Ninja fight the Defenders without realizing we switched prospectors on them, and the Defenders fight back, unable to see through the AoE hailstorm that a new prospector is on the mine.
11. We capture the mine.

That is the gist of it. It’s incredibly fun. Last night almost 120 people got involved in the massive PvP brawl at the end. I landed 4 kills (1/30th of the number of players) and 12 assists (1/10th of the number of players). Those are unusually high numbers for a thief. Normally I show up, scout, and die. For some reason my Guild Leader decided I had done extraordinarily, so he said I could have a favor of him. I haven’t taken that yet. Eventually I will. When WillixShopper the Aracoix Thief shows up again. Then, I have a score to settle.