Shadowbane - Officially back in nearly its original form on Steam!

TL;DR version: MMORPG, but no questing. Just a high character customization and a robust PvP/GvG (even Guild vs Guild) gaming engine all wrapped in exotic 2003 graphics.

For all of you who said you loved Shadowbane… well now you can play it again. I’m not endorsed to promote this in any way… I really just want to get the word out as there has to be more people who want to play it again. Maybe you all are already playing it, maybe not. Still, this thread is to ‘test the water’ and see how much interest there is. There are about 500+ unique steam accounts on average, and going up… lots of guilds on the server are all actively recruiting. If we don’t form something ourselves through OTG then please do check out Shadowbane on Discord. Mine fights are solid, there have been a few banes but not a lot lately, definitely skirmishes for the prime leveling spots and certain runes or gear.

If you don’t know Shadowbane… it can have a tough learning curve. What other game can a high level player kill a low level one without a penalty? The dead player then drops everything they had in their backpack for the killer to pilfer through. There is a starting new player zone free of PvP but that zone does eventually kick players off of it. Be careful going into the PVP zone, which is nearly the whole remaining map. Players can make castle/towns and form armies and literally tear down other peoples castles/towns either as a territory thing… or because of a player dispute grew into a nation war. It happens.

Some background: Ubisoft sold Shadowbane to CHANGYOU, a HK based company, all those years ago. That company ran the game for players in China for all these years. There have been some Emulator spin-offs as discussed in previous topics but they built those servers manually and they could be quite buggy… SBemu exists but they shut the server down to not compete with the re-released version…

Yes, it seems that the company CHANGYOU.COM finally cleared the legal red-tape and has secured a deal through Steam. $10.99 up front… I said “nearly” in the title and that’s because there are in-app purchases BUT they are not required at all (zero even recommended by me, as most are outrageously expensive). Being Steam account based, it does reduce the ability for players to multi-box… but if you run a second PC, and buy a second copy of the game, then you can still do that some of course. No key-cloning thankfully. Some players still macro because leveling is tough… there are other macros like public service buff-bots… it’s crazy but very good to have.

Looking forward to your responses out there and seeing how many people want to play to crush again.
-infinitedraw

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Great writeup! Thanks for posting this!
I loved Shadowbane and played it upon launch. How are you enjoying it so far on Steam? Have you tried any of the Shadowban Emulators?

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Let’s skip the chat about the emulators. The Shadowbane being back is legal. They were legally purchased by this company, which ran it for years in China, and has now released it on Steam. The emulators, not so much.

Thanks!

They took the emulators offline to not compete with Steam. Steambane as it is called is basically just as it was when UBI shut it down… except there is a pay-to-play mall build into the menu. It’s not cheap so a lot of folks just skip those features.
There are many great players still thriving in the game and if you played before and had a guild, odds are there are some remaining players there. Every day the Nation I am in will welcome back new players and the active playerbase seems to be growing. It’s still buggy now and then but the modern era internet has made some processes much faster.
Don’t set your resolution too high else you can’t see the mini-map…

I haven’t tried them. Just curioius. That’s all. Agreed with skipping them though.
Thanks.

Thanks for the response! I hope to hope into the game soon and I’ll look you up!

Thanks for the heads up. I went to the Steam community though, and it’s pretty apparent that it has already descended into madness. Less than 300 people playing and the Chinese have dominated the map already. From what I read of the posts, it’s not much fun and nothing but a cash grab. Too bad, I would have spent the $11 and enjoyed playing. I don’t enjoy being ganked non stop by R6 players as a noob though.

Just saw this thread. I played the hell out of it at original launch. My first real, open world, utterly cutthroat experience.
Running naked builds so there was no loss of gear… Setting up two account so my confessor could summon away my toon as a farmed Commander Runes at server reset…

definitely a lifestyle I can NOT keep up with anymore, but it was a brutal experience I always think about.

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Yup, played the hell out of what I could with the lobotomized version which was release. Sadly the official version shuttered it’s doors again in may 2024 BUT I’m happy to announce that there is a private server up!

Anyone who’s still interested can play Shadowbane here:

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Haha, that’s funny, great way to make an escape though, lol