April 30, 2009
Goodbye, Shadowbane
By:
Michael Lafferty
After six years, PvP-centric MMO closes
The bell was tolling its demise for
years, but Shadowbane never listened to it. The massively multiplayer online
game went through several changes, but the dev teams kept the game going – and
that, more than anything else – is a tribute to not only the developers, to the
publisher but also to the community that made the land of Aerynth both an
exciting and deadly place.
The game launched on March 25, 2003.
It was developed by Wolfpack Studios and published by UbiSoft. Wolfpack was sold
to Ubi a year later and a new live team and dev team was brought on board.
Though the game was a regular target of the media as hovering on the edge of its
demise, it persevered.
Shadowbane was notable for several
reasons. First, it was one of the first massively multiplayer online games that
was mostly player-versus-player based. Second, players could actually affect the
world – meaning that rather than a static world, the land of Aerynth was
constantly being affected by the players and changed.
It could be a harsh place, but for
the hardcore faithful, it was indeed a world worth fighting for. On the fifth
anniversary of the game, Shadowbane was relaunched as Shadowbane Reboot,
originally with two servers but it expanded to three due to the size of the
population. The ‘reboot’ was intended to address many issues, with client
stability at the forefront.
Why the retrospective? On May 1st
Shadowbane will be closing, and the sun will set for the final time on the
community and world.
While there is certainly sadness
associated with the closure of the game, there should also be a time to joyfully
remember the world, the adventures and the camaraderie of its community.
As an MMOer who has seen games much
enjoyed closed, it is hard to say goodbye to a game where a lot of time has been
invested. But the MMO market is a business – a business marketing one product,
and when the product begins to wane, companies – who have payrolls to meet and
stockholders to satisfy – have to make hard decisions.
Still, there must be a tip of the
hat to the development teams who labored long and hard to create a sustainable
product. It’s not easy to create an MMO in the first place, nor is it a cakewalk
to counter player hacks, keep the content lively and fresh and counter problems
as they arise. Sometimes, when fixing one problem, you break something else.
There was an instance in Lineage II once where the dev team worked hard to fix a
bug that allowed players to duplicate everything in their inventories. The idea,
of course, was to dup everything, then sell off the dups and earn coin faster.
On one particular night, the dev team thought they had the solution and brought
down the servers for a short time period. As the promised time, the servers were
rebooted with the tiny patch in place. Within five minutes, players were
broadcasting in global chat how to get around the fix and still dup inventory
items.
That is an example of what dev teams
and live teams contend with. Many players don’t look for hacks, but there are
those that do.
The fact that Shadowbane lasted six
years is also noteworthy. Some MMOs don’t last that long. One of my favorite
MMOs, the one that really hooked me in the genre, Asheron’s Call 2, was closed
just after it’s third anniversary. Tabula Rasa lasted 15 months.
So don’t really mourn the passing of
Shadowbane, but rather celebrate the fact that it was, and cherish the times
spent in battle, adventures, and with online friends.
