Shadowbane PC

On 1 July 2009, the game servers were shut down, and Ubisoft announced the termination of their support for the game.

Plot

The story takes place in a fantastical realm engulfed by chaos resulting from a treacherous assassination of King Cambruin. Developers decided to put a strong emphasis not only on fighting evil beasts that inhabit the lands surrounding the realm but also on duels between players themselves. The PC release of Shadowbane offers a number of interesting quests generated automatically by the ‘Game Masters’.

Mechanics

Players get to create their own character by selecting one of ten diverse races – seven are available from the start, while the remaining three become available to more advanced players after some time. When creating a character, the player can select from four unique classes (fighter, mage, healer, rogue). After a proper training, these characters can level up and unlock 18 additional classes (assassin, barbarian, bard, channeler, confessor, crusader, druid, fury, huntress, prelate, priest, ranger, scout, templar, thief, warrior, warlock, and wizard). Players can reach a certain level of initiation starting from different character settings – even though two separate characters share the same level they can exhibit completely different features and abilities.

Moreover, heroes featured in Shadowbane can exercise 27 so-called disciplines, which, with proper training and obeying certain rules, might give them even more rare abilities. One of the base aspects of the game is the guild system allows players to form groups – after reaching certain reputation and fame levels, a player can obtain a piece of land, on which he can build defensive structures, and even entire cities. This creates new possibilities enabling clans to take hostile territories over.

Technical aspects

The well-balanced experience loss system is worth noticing, as it is enabled whenever a player reaches his demise or is defeated by another player. Moreover, whenever a player wins a duel he is rewarded adequately to the level difference between the dueling opponents.

Last updated on 10 December 2007