Looking for something different in the MMORPG genre?  Wolfpack Studios enters the field with its PvP (player vs player) based game, Shadowbane.  Even though it’s not much to look at, Shadowbane’s unique characters, skills, and take on city ownership make this a stand out title.

            Like all games in this genre, the character creation is important.  Shadowbane gives a lot of different races and a few different starter classes to choose from.  Referring to the instruction book to see which starter class leads to which profession later on in the game is a good idea.  Having a better understanding of the classes and professions will also help in deciding what runestones to choose.  Before you should begin picking out runestones and deciding stats, a race for your character needs to be picked.  Shadowbane provides a variety of different races each with its own bonuses and penalties to characters stats.  There are the races, Human, Elf, and Dwarf.  But Shadowbane also has some original races like the Irekei and Shades.  At first all of these elements involved in making a character can be overwhelming, but with a little bit of in-game time will allow for the making of the ideal character.

Movement is based on pointing and clicking with the mouse.  Unfortunately, this is one of Shadowbane’s biggest flaws.  Enjoying the game won’t be so much getting used to this style, but coming to terms with it.  In fact, most of the games functions involve pointing and clicking the mouse.  Most of the actions can be performed through the use of hotkeys, but figuring them out takes time, especially when the Alt and Ctrl keys are involved.  However, all of these hotkeys are customizable and come in handy and will make things easier later in the game. 

             The early level portion of Shadowbane is the most fun.  Maybe this is just me, but I love developing my characters.  Leveling up a character takes no time at all.  20 hours of play should be enough to get a character to level 30 or even higher.  Combat is a lot like Asheron’s Call 2.  The player begins attacking its target and then can chose to use skills or spells depending on the type of character.  The higher end portion of is based around CvC (clan vs clan) combat and city control.  So if PKing isn’t your thing, then your definitely won’t have fun when you get this far.  During my travels I’ve encountered peaceful cities where the guild wasn’t after everyone’s blood.  Of course after a couple day hiatus, I’ve logged on to see these peaceful cities gone from the map. 

            Aside from the monster slaying and the player killing, there isn’t much to do in Shadowbane.  The map has almost nowhere to explore.  Sure there are a few spots that look interesting, but there’s a long travel ahead of you.  There’s only a few ways to get around the map.  Either you use the Runemaster (higher levels won’t want to use these guys, they force you to leave your guild), a player summon (great if you know someone who is where you want to go), Runegates (only warp to other gates and there’s not many of them), or running.  Running sounds like a nice idea, especially if you want to see the terrain.  But if you’ve run from one city to another, then you’ve already seen the different environments.  It all looks the same.  There are large sections of the map that contain nothing, no monster or anything worth the time to explore.  Shadowbane also contains zero side quests.  I’ve never been a big quester in the past, but not having any is just unacceptable.  With this lack of quest comes the severe lack of lore. 

            Shadowbane had been in development and beta for a long time (couple years I believe) and this really shows with how dated the graphics look.  The only good spots in the graphics are the effects the spells have on the caster.  For this one bright spot, there are a ton of tarnishes.  The character models all look blocky.  Keeping the camera zoomed out is a nice way to get around this, but who wants to play with everything that small.  The graphics can just be summed up with the word dated.  If the game was released when it was originally planned to be, then these graphics still would have been dated looking.  Developers have probably giving the reason for these graphics being this way is so Shadowbane has the ability to have large groups of players on the screen at once for sieges.  But I can’t imagine the sieges experiencing anymore lag then I have running with a group to some hunting grounds. 

            The music works well with the mood of the game.  While just roaming around the music has an eerie feel to it.  Sort of peaceful ambiance to it, but in the background you can here a faint menacing sound giving an evil feel.  Just entering an area that has monsters changes the music.  It’s definitely preparing the player for combat.  The sound effects of slashing into your enemy are pretty decent.  Gives a nice feeling that you’re dealing pain.  When using my mage, I found it better to turn the sound effects off then to listen to my character chant each spell.  It also seemed to increase the lag when multiple spell casters where around.

            While it might not be the most in-depth game around, Shadowbane does succeed in being fun.  But a lack of things to do besides fight other players will make many people pass on this experience.  Throughout the rest of the year, several more MMORPGs will get released.  These might be more fitting for the casual fan of this genre.  A decent attempt on the part of Wolfpack Studios, it’s just a few years too late.