Shadowbane

[Dead End]

Anyone here that has played Shadowbane?

This is basically the same idea of Joey's Lineage 2 thread, but for Shadowbane, since it is also a PvP game and had mass PvP available.

I played mainly on the Mourning server. I had an Aelfborn Warrior, an Aelfborn Priest, a Barbarian Ranger, a Shade Warlock. I had an Irekei on another server (don't recall which though), but didn't play it too long. I quit a few months after the game released, before any of the expansions were out, so everything below is based on the game pre-expansions, so things very well could be different.

I also played in the closed beta. I played an Aelborn Wizard for most of the beta, but with how badly they nerfed Wizard pets after beta (they might have been a bit too strong, but I think they over did the nerf) I didn't want to play one at retail.

I quit mainly because I was on dial-up at the time, which made mass-PvP pretty much impossible, so all I could do during raids was summon people with my Priest. By the time I got cable, most (if not all) of my guild and the guild my guild was subguilded to were gone from the game, so that is why I never renewed, although I have been thinking about it every so often.

My Aelfborn Warrior was my favorite character. I was a dexterity based warrior, using Elf Chain (Aelfborn are Half Elves) armor. I mainly used dual daggers, but would switch to a shield when necessary. I also had sort of a wolf theme as I had Werewolf and Huntsman (gives a wolf summon) as my disciplines. I could do good damage or tank well depending on if I was dual wielding or using a shield. I could even tank better than the other warriors I played with who were higher level than me but were more standard builds since they were mostly Minotaurs or Barbarians, although they did do a bit more damage than me (I think, definatly had better burst damage than me, but DPS was probably similar).

For those who don't know (since Shadowbane was never a very popular game), Shadowbane is a PvP based game. It used a free for all PvP system, except for what was known as "Newbie Island" which was where you spent the first 20 (or less) levels, which had no PvP. The basic idea behind the game was the ability to form guilds (which could also have smaller guilds pledge their alliegance and become a subguild of the bigger one) who could create their own cities as well as attack the cities of other guilds.

For a PvP game, I think it did an excellent job with PvE. PvE wasn't that bad of a grind, at least not until a certain point since there weren't many camps of the highest rank enemies (pre-expansions at least). PvE was also very fun to do, IMO, even when just grinding money for a city.

Another strong point of Shadowbane, in my opinion, was the heavy RP involvement. The game has a pretty good backstory and the devs (when I played) would do the occassional GM event to not only further the story, but also RP directly with the guilds who RPed, which made the events even more fun. Ofcourse not everyone RPed, although it seemed to be a pretty good amount that did.

The game did have its bad points, lag being the main one. There were also some bugs, but I never experienced anything that bad. Another downside was all of the politics that happened. Although without them my guild probably wouldn't have done as well as it did, it did sort of mess up with the chaotic evil theme in certain situations since we couldn't just attack anyone who was a race that was an enemy.

Overall I thought was a very fun game, but one that required you to join a guild to really be able to enjoy it properly. I know this is sort of long, but I wanted to inform people about the game who aren't familiar with it.