Comments

1. 

   Snogripple (Archmage) on 05/28/2012 4:35 p.m.

   Today is a bittersweet day. A day of memories that force me to smile behind my sadness. I remember the thrill of meeting people from all over the world while playing a game at the same time as them. I remember jumping to a beacon in Italy summoned by a great Mage from there named Marcomec. He had a gold realm and was an amazing warrior. His account has been terminated. I remember jumping to a beacon in France. There was a great Mage there named Liloufence. She was an amazing spider hunter. Her account has been terminated. I remember jumping to a war where greens were trying to suppress a top scorer in the NEBG. I was stunned by a vast almost immeasurable list of collected realms. His name was tommasso. His account has been terminated. I remember jumping around beacons and warping around orbs in my original hometown of Singapore. I have gotten to know many mages there, and helped defend many bases including one owned by WhiteWizard. His account has been terminated. I remember spending 40 pots defending a base in the NEBG owned by a Mage named Limbus. Dozens of warriors battling each other for almost four hours. His account has been terminated. Today, on the anniversary of this game, I am at a loss for the wonderful memories. But all good thing apparently do come to an end. And if these wonderful and beautiful people have been denied access to their accounts by a broken system then I must put myself in their place and deny myself as well. I remember being so impressed by this game early on. I thought it was too good to be true. I'm sad to have been proven right. I was naive to assume that a gaming company was really in business to make the world a better place through positive real world human connections. Now that fewer players are playing, the game is apparently much smoother with less crashes and spirits give more pots. The game is now more important to the company that designed it than the people that play it. I continue to hope that the future of this game is bright. The concept behind it is bigger than those that currently police it. So cheers to all who have played, continue to play and to those that feel they have been let down, I stand with you. May you see justice. Mortimer Snogripple
2. 

   ZeraJade (Master) on 05/28/2012 4:44 p.m.

   "Shadow Cities celebrates this week, the one year anniversary of its official launch!" What are you celebrating? Your players of all that time are unhappy. We aren't celebrating. We aren't being acknowledged. Everyone deserves to have their concerns acknowledged. Give US something worth celebrating. This isn't a shadow world. This is a real world where companies care more about profits and lose sight of the main concept that started it all. Shame on you. Celebrate away.
3. 

   Anvar (Archmage) on 05/28/2012 6:29 p.m.

   Copied from my post on FB: As SC's anniversary of release in the US comes about, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on my experience: When I started, SC was like the Wild West---gunslingers everywhere and an atmosphere of individualism. Slowly, though, our academies garnered their strength and became true teams. My battlegroup, situated in Louisiana, was fun, onery, and sometimes downright dirty. Battle centered on my hometown of New Orleans, often bringing the world to my doorstep. There were mages based at just about every gateway in town. I had rivals surrounding me. It was a constant uproar of raids, counter-raids, and battles. Then, things began to change. Beacon lists got jacked when the friend list was expanded. Lag and crashing became worse as the player population expanded. Still, there were new spirits and contests to keep us distracted. Spiders, though heavily bugged and glitched, were a huge jump in how the game was played, and it increased team interaction. Then, there came what I'll call "The Consolidation". Battlegroups in the US were by state in the past. This worked well for mid-to-large player populations in an area (not necessarily tied to state population, as LA had a large group though it's a small population state IRL). GA threw us all together as a number of national BGs, based on login time. This completely destroyed many local communities, including my own, and many just quit. New Orleans is now a wasteland in-game. I farm quietly alone when I do login. I understand the smaller BGs were hurting, but the change really did the large groups in for the benefit of a minute fraction of players. Regionals are only marginally better. And, still the bugs and glitches, along with regular app crashes, exist. One fix has led to other fixes to fix the fix. I've even read where GA is now blaming our devices for app instability. On top of all this, arbitrary (from the players' viewpoint) account banning has started. I fought for a long time to get rid of cheats in-game with other players, only to see the vast majority of those cheaters slide by these bans. And, we players have no definitive clue what will initiate a ban, outside of spoofing or mana potion hacking. Still, the trolls and potential criminals exist, threatening people. Why haven't they been banned? I long for the time when I could PM Khamos or chadj and get a response the same day. When bug reports were replied to within a day. When the devs still posted in the forums. When the mods didn't just throw out canned responses that are vague and full of jargon. When updates and fixes were more common. When I felt that GA still cared about SC. I can only speculate, as I have previously, that SC has been "put on the back burner" for other projects GA's CEO has hinted about.
4. 

   RiverRigz (Archmage) on 06/05/2012 10:07 p.m.

   Good posts, both Anvar and Snog. There's really nothing left to be said except that quite a sizeable portion of top players are migrating to Please Stay Calm, a structurally inferior game, IMO. As it is not nherently "as good" as SC, you devs gotta wonder: what has gone wrong? The above posts answer that, but allow me to review: 1: regional battlegroups kill overall player participation. Scores matter, and it sucks to be a 1500 per round player in a top 100 that requires at least 2000. One's contribution appears not to matter. Casual players are left behind in large bg's. 2: as Anvar mentioned, when the game was "young", we could expect Chad or Khamos in comments quite frequently. And with real content. Now we get a truckload of compost when it comes to information. "we are excited about [random nonsense] that we will be unveiling [at arbitrary point n the future]". You guys can do better, because you have. 3: your content, frankly, sucks. I remember updates and awesome missions, like the Academies mssions. That is what drew me to the game: a vibrant community and a dynamic game that the devs obviously cared about. I don't want to say I think you're sitting back and collecting your paychecks, largely because I doubt people are paying for this landfill of ruins. For the record: i am playing PSC, not because it is awesome compared to SC. It isn't, doesn't even come close. But it does have two things that SC used to, but has lost: a community that is vibrant and i teresting; and devs who give a toss about their game. I have spent thirty bucks on PSC in the last week. Take a guess where I would have rather spent it, if I didn't feel like it was money wasted. And that's an odd qualification for a phone game.
5. 

   blm4097 (Disciple) on 11/29/2012 7:17 p.m.

   I guess this makes me number five! Joined yesterday...I almost wrecked a hundred times playing while driving home from work.