It might not be the prettiest game, but it certainly was a fun one. Shadowbane launches on March 25, 2008, launched on March 25, 2003, launched, and is being re-launched on March 25, both 2003 and 2008. That’s right. We are rapidly approaching the 5 year anniversary for a classic MMORPG. Well it might not be classic to everyone, but it is for some.

A couple years back, Ubisoft announced that they would no longer be charging for the purchase of, or the play of their MMORPG Shadowbane. I almost considered playing again. Part of my turn off for not playing stems from how the game plays itself. The game is a PVP focussed game that centres around capturing and holding cities. Cities that are created by the guilds.

I should also take this opportunity to mention that I haven’t played this game in 5 years, so my information could no longer be correct.

What made Shadowbane fun for me, was a simple fact - which may or may not still be in the game. I played an AoE caster. Shadowbane was the only game I’ve ever played where AoE hurts both friend and foe. That meant that if I wasn’t careful when playing my Fury, I could blast apart my own group. It involved a lot of strategy, and carried a lot of reward.

The other draw to this game for me originally was that every character was unique. This again probably has been cookie cuttered to high hell and back again by now - but back then you had limited points to spend on your spells (not to mention a large variety of classes). That meant that I was playing, as I said, and AoE caster (the Fury). I never came across other furies that were built for AoE. Some went for single target dmg, while some built for DoTs. It was varied. To complicate things, in order to train the top tiers, you had to be part of a top guild that could afford the top trainers for their cities. It was a very complex system, that also was quite fun.

There were other things you needed to do to finish your character too which I won’t go too much in to.

Your end game was simple. Massive guild vs guild warfare. I truly wonder if this is how the game actually matured.

This brings us back to the relaunch. Why should you be interested? Well for one, it’s free. But more importantly, with the relaunch comes a complete server wipedown. There are no established guilds to grief camp your XP spots. All the original pre-made cities will be around. It’s all back to square one.

I think this is a great opportunity for anyone that felt they missed the boat on SB (afaik not many people played it). Some hated it, some loved it, and some just never got a chance to.. uh.. give it a chance.

Personally I’m going to see about giving this another go. I don’t expect anything hardcore to come from it - but I do hope I end up with a character that I can mess around with when I’m bored.

Anyone else interested in giving this a go?