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A big disappointment - wasted potential

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: June 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Despite the pitiful stability, server issues, and substandard graphics, I had high hopes for this game in the early stages of release. The original concept - a hardcore, massively merciless game of guild vs. guild warfare - was well implemented at release. The classes were balanced and interesting. Character development was involved but didn't require months on the leveling treadmill.

I expected the bugs to be ironed out. They never were. The developers maintain a poor relationship with thier customers by keeping them in the dark as if, by not acknowledging the servers are down a lot, the players wouldn't know they can't log in.

To make matters worse, they started down the path of "nerfing" classes and abilities in a attempt to appease those who weren't ready for "massively merciless."

The game rotates around siege warfare, but siege warfare is near impossible due to the stability problems.

This was a great concept. I had not liked PvP much until I played this game where it would have been so well implemented. They had it right, but ended up ruining their own product.

Worth your money, worth leaving other MMPORGS.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 21
Date: April 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First, I've read many reviews here and elswhere... I tend to ignore the ones where a person trashes a game when they cannot spell or write a sentence. This usually means they need to stick to their playstation and a mindless shoot em up. Shadowbane is a thinking game. The interface, options, and possible selections are huge which makes the learning curve quite high but the eventual rewards of the game engine great and very adaptable to your own playstyle.

I have played The Realm, UO since beta (and go back every incarnation.... with hope that is dashed quickly), EQ, DAOC, Earth and Beyond, Neverwinter Nights, and AC2 and am a beta tester for Eve Online. First, be sure to not place too much heed on beta tester reviews since beta versions are DRASTICALLY different than the published version. It is surprising when a beta ends a few weeks prior to release the difference when you install the full version.

I find the lag in Shadowbane the best of all the above games. Part of this I believe is due to the tailored down character graphics. I do not believe they are as good as AC2 or DaOC but are entirely adequate and fitting of this generation (and decisively better than EQ or UO). The environment graphics are considerably better. ... though again AC2 wins. Although I do not know the motive I know that a) Shadowbane has been in production for a long time and b) guess that gameplay took the longest and also most recent innovations. As well due to the lower abilities of macs (this is the first mac and PC MMPORG) it could not take full advantage of a PC and the upside is that with lower graphics demands the lag improves. AC2 though the prettiest game of all BY FAR is also extremely laggy due to system demands unless you have a great system (and I have a Geforce 4 MX440 with 64 MB DDR Ram and 768 MB of DDR333 system RAM).

Shadowbane's world is expansive, I would equate it with EQ. AC2 world has three continents that really are based by level... and it has an endgame. Get to the last continent and finish the last vault and there is no more reason to play nor go back to the first continent ever. DaOC traps you on a rather small continent and you can never really move... the expansion has opened up some new area. However, because of its expansivness and low level of characters, and no transportation system yet... expect long boring journeys... though not like the dreaded EQ boat rides. This generation of games with their huge worlds are so far doing a POOR job of transportation... UO is the best here... though perhaps too easy.

Gameplay is fine. I feel like DaOC... with more options. PvP is going to be nasty in this game... and perhaps dreaded.... but it makes the climate Wolfpack wants. Good guild system, good city system. Gameplay will be fine.... particularly if they get rid of the right click -right click -right click.... just make it hold down (at least) Wolfpack. Gameplay is similar to NWN in view and play.

This game will grow like any. I don't know a game thats got it perfect on release. Not in the MMPORG world. Too many variables. It'll take a couple patches at least. However this game is closer to where it needs to be than most.

Grouping and guilding is almost forced but great. Finally I feel involved again. This element was lacking from AC2 somehow. Soloing by a character will be a surprise. The group system is the best I've found. There is good socialization. No trades... which means no more crafting (you employ a crafter to make things). Good idea. The monotony of other games' crafting systems that you had to live with were terribly draining. You could never play a game part time because of it.

Shadowbane will be huge. It has all the elements of success in this genre and it is finally allowing mac users to take part in MMPORGing simultaneously with PC users. This will increase the player population which is already huge.

Worth your money... will be your new home. I've been searching EVERY MMPORG for this type of game. I'm sold.

Shadowbane is a waste

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: April 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've played Shadowbane since beta. It's a game with great potential, but its developers and programmers strive to fail in every aspect possible.

Shadowbane has been on the open market for over 1 year and it still performs worse than some games that are in beta1. For example, the engine has been running on pure cpu power. The software engineers failed to utilize graphics cards or sound cards.

SB.EXE instant crash errors, line of sight errors, pathing that doesnt even pretend to work properly, severe class balance issues that should've been addressed in beta, siege warfare on player build cities is a joke and only just recently have they implimented any sort of modification to it, constant class changes that keep you continuously rerolling characters because when UBI swings the "nerf bat"... they swing it hard, CCR/CSR's that fly by the seat of their pants without any regard for the players, nearly a complete lack of customer support, map casting, gold duping, blaytont favortism by the "Featured Character" GM's at "FC events" that distributed "phat lewt" to a very small handful of people on multiple occassions.

They released an expansion pack for Shadowbane while the main program itself was filled with bugs. They've opened several new servers and migrated characteres over with promises of "new and exciting adventure"... then executed an expert "cut and paste" job.

The quality of the graphics are very, very sad.

This game, and everything associated with it, is a waste of time and money. I'm never buying anything that involves Ubi Soft or Wolfpack Studios again.

Shadowbane is soooo buggy, no customer support

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: March 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Do yourself a favor and stay away from this game. I have been unable to register the CD key and therfor cannot even play this game. Also to agree to the terms of agreement I had to change the resolution of my computer just to reach the button.

Ubi will probably sucker more people in though.

Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 17
Date: January 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing the game on beta and I've just got to say... My social life is throughly destroyed. :P This game even in its unfinished state has all the addictive properties of EQ, the Graphics of AC2 and the PvP and skills specialazation of DAoC.
I'm totally convinced this game is gonna be a HUGE success and might just finally be the game to Give EQ the competition us gamers have been looking for.
I dont know why people are complaining about the graphics. Of Course there gonna be a little behind on the power curve... Its not released yet people.... All the polish and fine tuned pretty things arent added in yet cause Wolfpack is still working on more important issuses... Like gameplay, items, Quests, PvP. which , I might add, are AWESOME as of this review.
My opinion is this. If you got 40-50 bucks to spend order this game and order it early cause the shelves WILL be bare on relase due to the demand this game will generate. See you in game :)

Still unfinished

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: April 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Just fair warning for any who dont have the patience to put up with the new launch of a MMORPG.
The game is still very very unstable as of this date 4/21/03. Frequent crashes and severe lag, memory leaks are all to be expected if you try playing this game now. Can spend more time trying to actually log into game then playing.

This is the most bug-ridden, frustrating game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is referring to the released version...not beta. Look at the date of this post....All I have to say is go to the Ubi/Shadowbane forums...this game is rife with crashes, bugs, horrible customer support...people losing their characters. I have lost 2 characters and haven't been able to log in for days. There are serious crashes that a LOT of people are experiencing. Just go to the forums before you buy this. And even with a nice system and fast connection, expect lag...when you can actually play.
And once you get past that, expect tons of PKing...training and losing lots of loot because of it.

So much better stuff out there

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: April 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Shadowbane, sadly, is a complete letdown. The graphics are poor, the sound is generic, and the gameplay is dull. When you start playing, you'll be pretty engrossed in the game as you quickly level-up your character. However, the problem is that there's little variety in the monsters you must kill, so it gets boring spending your time hacking spiders and snakes.
The idea is, at some point you'll level up enough to join/start a guild, and begin guild wars against other players, and lay siege to their cities. Problem? Nobody bothers with this at all, they just keep leveling up. After a full month of playing, I never once saw a seige, nor heard rumor of one.

Then there's the servers, which are rarely functional. You'll frequently have to jump between cities to find one that's up and running, and I recall and entire week where it was simply impossible to log in. Lag gets horrendous, even on broadband.

Stick with Dark Age of Camelot or anything else.

Ignore the Negative Reviews ...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: March 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sure, Shadowbane had a bad rough start. So did allot of other MMORPGs. The pressure was on Wolfpack (The developers) from not only Ubi (The distributor) but the public to release the game.
They not only released a PC version but also a Mac version for those sorry souls that dont have any games on their system anyway. (lol).

The games graphics arent spectacular because the game is solely CPU dependant. Its 3D hardware acceleration was not implemented at the time it was being created.

People with slow CPUs were able to run the game however the CPU was left to handle the graphics, the physics, the animations, everything!

Just recently in patch 2.0 Wolfpack is now moving into 3D acceleration and are now introducing the first update to their graphics.

heres a snippet:

"One of the performance problems we found with Shadowbane was that our client was solely CPU bound. To improve overall game performance, we are slowly moving some graphical features and processes to utilize the user's video card / GPU instead of the CPU. These moves will improve Shadowbane's overall performance and experience quality, especially for users with higher-end video cards.

The Shadowbane team is still working on these changes, so more and more graphical features and processes will begin taking advantage of the GPU instead of the CPU exclusively. In the end this will drastically improve game client performance."

Should you buy the game now? Why not? its only $4.99.
if you dont want to then goto shadowbane.com and download a trial version.

Give it a go. You'll like it.

By the way, the 2.0 patch isnt live on the regular servers just yet so if you want to see it you have to logon to the test server.

Supposedly it will be a hyrbid CD

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 15
Date: January 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

According to the official website this game should be released as a hybrid CD that will work with either a Mac or Windows computer.

On-line gaming will cost you a per month fee, but the game comes with one month free.

Given that NWN has dropped the Mac toolset, this game looks like the only option of a decent MMORPG where Mac and Windows people can play together (EQ is coming out for Mac but that will be a Mac-only world).

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