Shadowbane Review

[Martok]

Imagine getting online and double-clicking your way to a gaming server. As you connect, you think over your plans to lay siege to the town of Sanctum, the only remaining city that stands between you and an unbroken empire, an empire that reaches from dark, lavish caverns to a great ocean, and is populated by some 1,500 live players. Once your conquest of the surrounding land is complete, your horizons broaden further: there are a couple of warring kingdoms on the adjacent world-server, and you could easily overcome them both if you can just manage to establish a steady flow of soldiers into the world.

You reflect on how it all began, how you first created a character, and went off with your buddies, adventuring and killing monsters. You formed a guild and took your first city, and then came the never-ending sieges and battles, in which you always came out on top because of your strong economy: a steady flow of money from the inns, barracks, magic shops, and mercantile stores you owned in your world. The whole world-server began to give way to you, and now you want to finish your conquest in style by wreaking havoc on Sanctum's citizens. The city's defenders know they are doomed, that nothing can stop your forces...

Does any of this sound like a good time to you? If you're interested, you'll want to know more about Shadowbane, a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) set in a dark fantasy world. You might have heard of games like Ultima Online, Ever Quest, and Asheron's Call, incredibly addictive MMORPGs for the PC. Well, hold your breath: Shadowbane promises to be like pure heroin to the Mac and PC gaming communities. Development for both platforms is going on simultaneously, and both versions will be released later this year.

Shadowbane is being developed by WolfPack Studios, an energetic group of professionals, and will be published by different companies in the US, Europe and Asia. US and Asian publishers have not yet been named, though Germany's SWING! Entertainment will cover things in Europe.

The game is set in a post apocalyptic environment, where a cataclysm (the Turning, as its called in the game) has shattered the world into pieces, destroying continents, nations, kingdoms and empires. Players can choose to be Humans, Elfs, Aelfborn (mix of Elfs and Humans), Centaurs, Minotaurs, and many others like Dwarfs and Irekei. Players can also choose base classes such as Fighter, Mage, Priest and Rogue. There are also speciality classes, such as Crusader, Barbarian, Amazon and others - currently more than 15 have been officially announced. But it does not end there; different character traits are available, allowing the player to decide whether he or she is "Raised by Church," "Raised by Barbarians," etc.

When your character steps into the world of Shadowbane, he starts gaining experience. When a character kills monsters, completes quests, etc., he is pushed to higher experience levels. When one advances to a high enough level, he can choose a discipline to follow. A discipline is an advanced set of trait character skills, and each player can study up to three different disciplines. If a player chooses the Knight discipline, for example, his character will gain many defensive skills, one of them being the ability to guard. When guarding another character, a trained Knight automatically intercepts enemy blows, possibly sacrificing his life for another.

There are currently thirty different disciplines, from Wyrmslayer to Rat Catcher, to Alchemist, Traveler, Gladiator, Blade Master, Commander, Bounty Hunter, Werewolf and more. All of these varied skills and characteristics make the chances of two characters of the same race, class, and sets of skills meeting each other on a world-server extremely low. Each player can customize his character's appearance, altering skin and hair color, and it has been speculated that players will be able to customize armor and clothing as well, a la Quake skins.

The character creation process is very complex, and the customization possibilities are virtually endless, adding to the game's replayability. There are also hidden disciplines that will be announced only when they are discovered by the players in the game.

More than fifty different types of monsters have been created to inhabit the Shadowbane world, and there is no telling how many critters will be in the finished game. The current creature list features such critters as Drakes (gigantic dragon-like lizards), Grobolds (the weakest creatures in the game, included so that new players can gain experience and level up), and more. One especially interesting creature is the Efreet. Efreets are fire elementals, and are sure to be a challenge to even high-level characters.

The WolfPack team has often said that they drew a lot of inspiration from such great RPG titles as Diablo II; you can see from several screenshots that the game's inventory screen somewhat resembles the one from Diablo II. Shadowbane boasts many improvements over previous RPGs, in addition to its original features. There are many more pieces in a Shadowbane character outfit than there were in Diablo II, with arm, leg and waist protection, gauntlets and cloaks. Though small, each item adds to the overall "real life" feel of the game. There are other similarities between other RPGs and Shadowbane, such as the skill window that shows your character's Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Inteligence and Spirit. All of this should be very familiar to RPG veterans, and it was added for a very specific purpose, so that the players can get into the juiciest parts of Shadowbane's gameplay as soon as possible.

Shadowbane's visuals benefit from Arcane 3D engine, which is designed to handle huge map environments quickly and efficiently. The Shadowbane play arena itself is one gigantic rendered map, in which each character travels to different portions of the game world without ever having to load a new area. However, the game's graphic engine won't be left stagnant during the development process - the Arcane 3D engine is actively being developed in unison with the rest of the game, in hopes that the best possible eye candy is brought to the game once its shipped.

Just like you can't judge a book by it's cover, it is still too early to really appraise Shadowbane's graphics. However, judging from the screenshots and movies we've had a chance to see so far, Shadowbane's visuals will not crush our high hopes.

The world of Shadowbane is extremly player-dependant - in fact, the player himself is the basic unit in Shadowbane; they keep the world running and perform every routine or unusual function imaginable. Your characters can build cities, towns, buildings; they can wage war, engage in complex political affairs and even cripple enemies through business and economic mediums.

In many MMORPGs the items that a player obtains and uses throughout the world can have very significant effects on their success. In some cases, quests and adventures can be prohibitively difficult without the right gear. Often, players can spend weeks, even months getting certain items to complete specific objectives. When they lose these hard-earned items, it can certainly bring the game's fun to a somber end. WolfPack's development team has been working very hard to eliminate the traditional frustration that results in death and loss of items. A new feature being implemented into the game is player immortality - after death, characters are respawned at the closest city that their guild owns (or a war tent constructed by their guild). However, don't think this will be an easy way to succeed in Shadowbane. The character's actual ability (i.e. level and skills) will be much more important than the items they carry. Regardless of this, players can "bind" items, meaning that once they die and are respawned they can save up to three items - the others items, unfortunately, are lost. Another consequence that is mushroomed from a player's demise is the "death cloud". The "death cloud" spell hovers over the player after he/she is respawned after death. Effectively, it'll make the player's abilities weaker. An even more dire circumstance is met if your character is a Guild Leader. It will make him unable to control the functions of the Tree of Life which is essential during sieges. With that, let us lead into our next paragraph, which covers City building and Sieges.

In Shadowbane players are given the ability to create their own cities, through the acquiring of a seed which they plant thus giving birth to the Tree of Life. Ah, what is a Tree of Life, you ask? Simply put, it is the heart of every city, protecting and repairing damaged buildings and providing a respawning point for killed guild members of the guild that owns the city and the Tree of Life. The Guild Leader has control over the Tree of Life's functions, some of which include the ability to direct the Tree's power to certain buildings, enabling those building to be repaired faster. Players are also given the opportunity to build their own buildings, as well as manage them and the non-player characters (NPCs which are characters which aren't controlled by actual players, but rather by the Shadowbane network) that work in these buildings. Players can have total control over what kinds of goods or services are provided by the buildings they own and the pricing for these goods and services to their clientele.

How does the character begin and manage all of these different attributes throughout the city? A player must get a deed from the architect, an NPC that can be found in Guild halls and several other buildings like inns and taverns. The player then picks a spot for their building - which usually goes into a town or a city - the player then needs to get a contract with the guild that owns the city so that the building will get the support of that city's Tree of Life. Buildings are a good deal like players and NPCs which have levels and ranks - the buildings have stages. Each building has three stages; when a building is first constructed it's at stage one; once upgraded, it reaches level two - at that stage the building's graphics change, it also becomes bigger and more complex to administer. The building will finally reach the third stage, when it is a finished, intricately-designed construction. In Shadowbane buildings are very large compared to the player and the NPCs, even a stage one building looks huge.

In the screenshot sections, check out the stage three building; it does look a lot more impressive than the stage one building, and it's a lot bigger. It also has many more more functions than the stage one building, more NPCs are available to run the building, and many more goods and services can be provided to players. Edifices, for the most part, are entirely automated and run by NPCs, which need to be hired - be they innkeepers, shopkeepers, or blacksmiths - there are a lot of different buildings and NPCs that can run them. While WolfPack provided a brief list of NPCs and Buildings at their website, there is a possibility of more additions being added at the time of the final release. Constructing cities and buildings and upgrading them is a very timely operation that costs a lot of money, and players will most definitely try to hold on to them for as long as they can. There will be many guilds that try to siege and take over those cities. If you thought building cities and buildings was a complex task, imagine commanding a siege, which will swiftly become a very complicated and costly campaign, requiring siegers to construct war tents and siege engines, as well as gathering an army to actually perform the siege.

Another screenshot exhibits a trebuchet with an army of players charging to siege the city - this is what sieges will most definitely look like. A basic strategy for the attackers will be to eliminate the Guild Leader, then try to disable the Tree of Life with offensive magic spells, proceed to break the walls with the siege engines and destroy the city's Tree of Life while replacing it with your own Tree of Life, therefore claiming the city for your guild. Mind you, this will never go as smoothly as it was explained here for one reason - the defenders will obviously try to resist and, naturally, they have the defending advantage. The defending city's strategy will most likely be to protect their Guild Leader from enemy assassins, safeguard their tree of Life from possible attacks by enemy mages, and destroy the attackers' siege engines and war tents. It will take an army, as well as a lot of patience and resources to actually siege a town/city and as WolfPack has stated, will last at least 24 hours.

With sieges being a very costly operation, they will most likely not happen all that often, and it can be seen that WolfPack is concentrating a lot on politics. In fact, it is said, a brilliant man will find a way not to fight a war. This will definitely hold true for Shadowbane, which is even being called "The game of thrones". Rest assured, though, that this world will not be an eternal intrigue between different guilds - there will be lots of room to explore, adventure and perform quests just like any other RPG.

This game looks as solid as a game can possibly get, with great gameplay and depth that is unprecedented in Mac gaming. Needless to say, I won't have many reservations about loading up this MMORPG upon release. My jaundice of massive multiplayer gaming is long gone, thanks to Shadowbane. In conclusion, prepare to be entrenched further and further into the world of Shadowbane.

[special thanks to guest writer Vitaly Naymushin from MacShadowbane.com for this insightful preview.]

[* Editor's note: The % complete bar was based on MacGamez.com speculation. No official source will be cited for these statistics.]