I never followed SB as I had zero desire to play in a full PvP world.

It might be of some comfort to those who did play and care about the dev team that being in Austin means that they now have opportunity to work with Bioware in thier new Austin studio which was specifically created to produce an MMORPG.

Drev

I guess now this is a post i need to comment on too.

Played SB quite some time, quit, tested WOW, and returned to SB again. Nothing can match with the thrill of open PVP.

Cant really understand all the crybabys and carebears playing WOW and similar games. If you cant loose anything its not fun. So... Ashen & co i wish you good luck and i hope Ubi doesnt pull the plug on SB. You can be pretty proud of the game you created.

All the others... cry me a river!

:)

its to bad, while not a huge fan of the game, it was one of the few that made PvP interesting.

I hope Wolfpacks employees find success where ever they end up, hopefully they can get back into the MMO side of things.

As a shadowbane player of 3 years. It is sad news. Been playing MMO's for over 10+ years now. I can say without a doubt that Shadowbane was a truly unique game. It may not have the graphical flash or smooth coding that newers products have. It was a game hat was originally made by people who had little experience in the MMO realm. They did however have a hell of a concept.

The shadowbane experience is the truly open world PvP, and the strategic/political element the game brings with its ability to declare war and destroy your enemies cities. Fighting in Shadowbane had some of the most rewarding PvP experiences I have yet to see in MMo's. Instead of fighting in some instanced battleground, or just pvping in tourneyment games (gw) Sb had fighting for not just your pride but your land and your right to live in whatever terrority you wished.

For me Shadowbane is, was, and will always be freedom. The game truly let you do what you wish, being able to affect the entire server as a whole and shape its future. Instead of going though dungeons trying to figure out how to beat some boss mob, or going through instances where you have no other player inaction you had guilds meeting, fighting, and preparing on their next steps. The political aspect of the game combined with the PvP made for an always changing persistant world. How your guild acted, and fought could literally affect hundreds of player overnight. Causing alliances and grudges to form which in turn led to more PvP.

If you never played SB or only played at it buggy release you never got to fully appreciate what the game had to offer. If you enjoyed Player vs Player there is no other game out there that could offer on the same level what SB offered.

I can not put into words what my 3 years of Shadowbane has meant to me, because no words will do. I can say i have played almost every MMO on the market that offers PvP and none can fill the shoes that this game has made.

As far as people saying SB players are a--holes or whatever I could care less. Every mmo has it griefers, the difference was in SB you could fight back and had to fight back. The weak were cast aside, there is no safe place for the weak of heart to hide. If you wished to be good you had to fight the evils of the land. If getting pked, or looted, or griefed made you not like the game then go back to the single player games or single player with who chat rooms mmo's that are out there. SB forced players to interact with one other, something I can say most MMO's out there really don't try to accomplish.

Hope some company picks up SB, great game, always will be!

isnt shadowbane going to be free to play or will it completely shut down?

honestly once i heard the news that shadowbane was in trouble once i heard the news that shadowbane was going to be free to play.

well, when wolfpack shuts their doors someone is going to have to pay for the server upkeep to keep the game going at all. It's possible that someone could purchase the rights to the game but i would bet that they aren't going to do that and offer the game as a free service as well.

awhile back they had stated that it was going to go to a free play service much like anarchy online where you can play the basic game free but have to pay if you want to enjoy any of the expansions. I don't know if this is not going to happen now or what. if I had to guess, i'd say it won't . In fact, i'd say the game is probably just going to go away completly. anything can happen though.

Only true succesor to SB and even better is DARKFALL if it will be released only truely open pvp mmorpg to play.

So all who wanne play a FFA PVP MMORPG and dont wanne see carebears go to DARKFALL FORUMS it will be one of best FFA pvp mmorpgs ever released!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the anticipated death of Shadowbane, I find myself at a loss.  I suppose that Eve is the closest I can come to the open pvp environment, but it's a poor substitute at best.

No game out there gave cause for guilds to grow closer.  Threats against city and ally caused people to pull together like in SB.  For example...any reason to have a guild in WoW?  You can go through 59 levels without one and not even notice the loss.

Somewhat to my surprise, it's also the most political game out there.  Smack talk on the forums can result in destruction of assets in game, and the maneuverings that I've seen made (or partially seen, the behind the scenes stuff will remain unknown to all uninvolved parties) are quite fascinating.

I'll never see anything like that again, I don't think, and that saddens me greatly.

IMO it was inevitable.

There is NO way a MMO game can survive catering to just a small, niche market as Open PvP.

It's just not possible.

When SB first came out, I knew this was going to happen. Full on open PvP? Yea riiight! It will attract and keep 10%, maybe 20% of the population compared to other  MMO games, then go belly up. Thats what I said then, and it looks like I was proved right.

To those looking forward to another game taking its place, maybe one will pop up, but my prediction will be the same of what happened to SB.

---

Originally posted by Silversaber

IMO it was inevitable.

There is NO way a MMO game can survive catering to just a small, niche market as Open PvP.

It's just not possible.

When SB first came out, I knew this was going to happen. Full on open PvP? Yea riiight! It will attract and keep 10%, maybe 20% of the population compared to other  MMO games, then go belly up. Thats what I said then, and it looks like I was proved right.

To those looking forward to another game taking its place, maybe one will pop up, but my prediction will be the same of what happened to SB.

---

Full and open PvP was not the reason for the problems that faced SB at launch. Technical issues had been the true problem, not the game design systems. Those that stuck with the game for 3 years I might add, not a short time, found that they did enjoy the environment that was created.

The industry and more importently, the genre can indeed market games to a niche playerbase. Something that WP has/had no control over.

Who knows what will happen to WP and SB, we are working hard for our fans to do all we can.

I am glad to see this and I wish more older MMOGs would shut down, as they are draining too many people from supporting new upcoming worthwhile MMOGs.

Nothing against Shadowbane per say, but it's outdated and outlived it's usefulness.

Sorry to see you go Wolfpack, you made a great game that will go down in MMO history and I wish you every success in the future!

ps. In response to the post above: there is very little or nothing to fill the shoes of Shadowbane currently, so I don't really understand your logic at all. A great game that is 10 years old still has a right to exist and be successful, and this success should be measured on the substance of the game and not the subscriber numbers...not everything is meant to be appeal to the masses

Well apparently the moderator swept through the grifing topic posters with a heavy hand. On the topic of griefing within Shadowbane and how that no doubt led to the games demise however, there certainly is room for factual comment. As was mentioned before , "griefers" exist in every game that has forced PvP and always will. I fully understand and agree that's true. However, no other game that I can think of  had a /who and filter command that gave name, level and location of every player as soon as they logged in and locked those players out of save zone cities after a certain level that was set way too low for that player to defend himself. Don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. Every high level "griefer" in game came spawning down on you within minutes of logging in unless you were in a safe player city (and you better stay there too). Not to mention the tells sent to port capable low levels to "Help! Please port me. " and as soon as you did they killed you. This is "fun"? Ya .. for the griefer it is. Oh .. excuse me .. was.