Shadowbane Reboot

Shadowbane, the best MMO concept in the history of MMORPGS. Yeah, you heard me. Shadow FUCKING bane! Now, while this may pale in comparison to what the outside world has come to expect from mmos, SB at its purest was always the finest at it's core. No, i'm not talking about the PvP aspect of the game, but the immersiveness of it's world.

Lets face it, these days, MMOs are a dime a dozen. But, while the purists would want you to believe a fantasy mmo's sucess is based upon it's graphics, treadmill and quest number; the truth of the matter is that it is far from that. It is the immersiveness that truely defines a great mmo. This is why UO is still held, to this day, as the standard all mmo's a judged upon. To be fair however, UO's world was only big because of the lack of competition at the time, but that still doesn't detract from it's main selling point. It delved deep into your subconsious, creating a world you've never seen before and skills you've never touched. It was truely amazing to see the hand-held dice be replaced instead with buttons and characters that moved. Like Meridian 59, the world seemed limitless becuase you did not know what to expect and have not seen what had come before.

In leiu of this, Shadowbane was the next step. The world changed, as all great fantasy stories have done. It is not enough to put elves and trolls into a landscape, and hope one falls in love with the world, but one must capture one's mind.

Why is Shadowbane the greatest? Because of the human-player interactions that evolved out of a ruleset that, at it's heart, was limitless. Great kings were formed, holding rule over ENTIRE servers. (Server War) Rebellions formed within their own cadre of members, while factions fought to preserve what little they'd gained over the enormous empire. In other servers, greed populated some men's minds, creating towns who's sole purpose was money. (Money Tree) And still other servers seeded reigns of hope (KgB), desperatly trying to dicatate the rules of war against guilds who would have none of that.

This is the heart of why Shadowbane was the greatest, the fact that players were able to fall into the roles they've only dreamed of. While other games claimed, "You could be the hero", in Shadowbane you really could be. Hell, some guilds like Skyfang fell apart when their leader left for real life personal issues. THAT is a measure of power that other games could never acheive.

But, at the same time, this is also why Shadowbane failed. Faliure was too hard. Defeat was too big. In Shadowbane, if you said the wrong thing, to the wrong person, at the wrong time; (i.e. flaming on the fourms) you could find yourself at the end of a 100 character guild and blacklisted from any guild you tried to join. When you destroyed your enemies, your enemies were so decimated they tended to quit the game.

So, in retrospect, while Shadowbane was the greatest MMO, it was also a one time deal. It could have never survived at it's peak, even if it had fixed it's server-side and tower guard latency issues, it still would have died a premature death because of the toll inflicted on the losers.

Perhaps the Shadowbane Restart is a good thing, and while we may dream of a day when Darkfall becomes a reality, the truth is, whatever they do, it will be a shadow of what we experienced playing Shadowbane. Who know's how long it'll last this time? Is this a true reboot? No. Losses are still huge, and if a guild dominates the server, it's game over. But will that stop me from logging on? Probably not.

So, I guess, the time has come to log in once again, read up on those templates, and grease my axe.

I play to crush, let's hope that's enough for now.