As the moon wanes, Shadowbane is no more

As terrible as the game's client and servers were, the most fun I ever had in an MMO came in the 3 months after release of this game. It is the reason I will give PVP games a chance, it is also the reason I hate factions and RVR now. This game proved that a player driven economy is at least possible, and showed that a factionless PVP game can have just as much excitement and drama as the usual MMO. Alliances, backstabs, politics, resources, this game was deeper than many gave it credit for.

Their character class system is still my favorite of any game before or since. The shear amount of combinations and skill customizations ensured that almost no one was the same. Lets not forget it was a pioneer in flying and such races as half-giants, minotaurs, centaurs, avian bird-men, vampires, and many others.

I came back 2 years ago to see how it had progressed. There were several new things in play, but not much changed. The game was still completely enjoyable IMO. The skills were fun, the classes were still amazing, unfortunately the game had become a English speaking vs. non-english speaking game of war. It was like there was 2 factions in a factionless game, seperated by non-communication just like Hoard vs Alliance. No politics, no alliances, just artificial RVR.

When people talk about Eve and Darkfall, I think Shadowbane should get a mention. Unfortunately when people talk about botched releases of games such as Conan, Shadowbane should be mentioned also.

--AKA Layne Heavenquake of DHL

I recall playing Shadowbane for a while when it first came out. I don't think it had keyboard commands for movement: you had to use the mouse. That alone was enough to sink it, though the stability problems didn't help.

Yet another game that deserved to die a long while back.

I remember when I played this at it's rebooting, quite a lot of people from Darkfall pre-launch fanbase went to play it, was great fun. However, the fun only lasted about a month when people began to leave, and the playability of it quickly re-emurged as not too long lasting.

A other game bit the dust! Woot! sorry but this junk did earn it!

Being a UO fan and wanting something new I was an avid follower of Shadowbane for years before it was released. It was one of the first games I got myself really hyped up for well before it was released. When I finally got into beta, despite it not meeting quite all of my expectations, I was still quite into it. Between the many, many promises that remained unfulfilled and the horrible state of the client (and servers) I quit only a month or so after launch and never looked back.

A few years later I discovered that a couple of my coworkers were hardcore into it but was pretty disappointed to hear that the game had, at least for them, devolved into a battle of who had the best exploits, macros, and bots. Lame.