However, I have notice that occasionally, whether through massive numbers of players or military planning, some nations are able to dominate the map. Naturally, I view this domination of the map as “winning”. The more cities the nation has underneath it, the greater its power and likely hood it will be able to destroy and claim more player cities. Awesome, right?!

Well no… Apparently in the Shadowbane community, a lot of players frown upon the ultimate “winning” of the game. There isn’t a day that goes by were the most powerful guilds are criticized for being skill-less zergs that suck. But if you are in game and hit “M” to bring up your map you will notice that the guild that has no skill basically is “winning” the game.

Now granted, I totally understand that numbers matter, “first with the most wins”. 100 players against 10 players is not fun, but you got to ask why does one side have 100 players and the other side only have 10? 

In a MMO RPG that has open environments for PvP, there are varying levels of “skill”. I break these down into the following:

• Uber PvPer: This guy can Pew Pew anybody, has and will! Every key on his key board is hot keyed/macroed to bring forth the most effiecent means to kill the opposition no matter what. The Uber PvP complains about everyone sucking, if he gets killed its lag, and of course all ways plays the most complex and obscure classes.
•  Normal PvPer: This guy wants to kill people, but doesn’t have the time to read through every forum post or analyize the game mechanics to ensure every point in the build is allocated properly. The normal PvPer runs with groups and is willing to accept defeat from time to time. 
• The Asshat: His PvP skills can range from mediocre to Uber, but he is most known for his constant dragging of virtual genitals or anus across enemy corpses. If you are killed by the Asshat, he will make a big deal about it on the forums.
•  The General: The General usually tends to have poor PvP skills, but has the ability to organize the Uber, Normal, and Asshat PvPers together in an army of destruction. The General has the uncanny ability to resolve differences between gamers. General’s can get the myriad of PvPers to over come their ADD and focus on one target at a time. It’s the General that can recruit and build an army of 100 where the others could not.

To be completely honest, I personally fall on the General side of gaming. In Shadowbane, it’s the General’s that win the game. Without them, you have a bunch of fools running around in small groups fighting over random spawns. In my opinion, it’s the General’s that make PvP on servers interesting and meaningful.

So should we blame the Generals for winning the game? I think that players will always complain and will never truly be happy, whether it’s arguing over game mechanics or who is the better PvPer. I guess they can whine on the boards all they want, but when they are standing in Sea Dog’s Rest without any city’s to go to, they lose.