Aside from MUDs, Shadowbane was the first PvP-centric game I had ever played. In spite of numerous bugs and performance issues, Shadowbane delivered some exciting PvP, but the one moment that stands out from all the others is “The Battlefield“.
My T5 confessor was in a random ARAC guild for most of its career. I don’t remember the name of the guild, or much about it aside from the fact that we had a city at the edge of a desert and we were continuously at odds with a guild of “desert folk”, semi-role-players. Why were we constantly at war? Primarily because it was Shadowbane, and in Shadowbane you fight, and they were there. (I always felt that one of the big flaws with most PvP-centric games is the lack of a reason for conflict… aside from just “something to do”, but that is a topic for another article.) Most nights consisted of logging on, finding some spawns to camp and level, and then getting ambushed, or getting a call from our guildmates that they were heading out to hunt our enemy, or were being hunted and needed some help.
One week, after several days of tit-for-tat raiding each other, I think we really pissed them off because there was a large posse of our hated enemy heading toward our city. Now, you can’t just sack a city in Shadowbane; there is a long convoluted process to wiping a town. But they obviously wanted a fight, and perhaps to camp us in for a while, so we had to respond. Our guildies arrived from their PvE camping, a few more logged in and we massed our warband and headed out to the field of battle. What followed was a great, running battle of about 30 on 30. It was glorious chaos. I remember running with a small group searching for the enemy, pursuing a scout and getting ambushed by invisible sorcerers… but getting bailed out when reinforcements came and rolled the mages. I remember all of the various skirmish groups ending up on a large hill, coming together for a gigantic furball with melee and spell effects flying all over the place.
At one point in the fight, I turned and saw one of our fighters battling two enemies at the periphery of the furball. I quickly healed the fighter and tossed a couple of nukes and one of the bad guys fell. The other ran, disappearing over the side of the hill. I think the fighter lost track of him, because he headed back into the main fray. I jumped down and followed the runner. He was hurt pretty badly and so it took only a spell and a couple stiff cracks with my mace to finish him. I quickly turned around, headed back up the hill, hoping to rejoin the battle.
But the battle had moved on…
In the ten seconds it took me to deal the killing blow to the runner and return, the hill that had been awash in fire, lightning and steel was now still and silent. I was alone in a field of corpses. I surveyed the scene for a bit, checking the names of the dead. When it comes to MMOs, I am in no way a role-player, but for that brief moment, I could picture my character stepping over the bodies, accompanied only by the howling wind and the buzzing of flies. It was eerie.
But then chat lit up again with our scouts’ reports. Another enemy group had been spotted south of our city. I was yanked from the moment and thrust back into the game… Time to kill some more desert rats!
Like you said, Shadowbane had its problems. But It did a lot of things right as well. I loved the wide ranging character builds. My friends INT based warrior always comes to mind. He kicked ass. Games like WoW where everyone is almost the exact same bug me.
Shadowbane was better in the early beta when city structures could be built out towards the edge of your “borders” to help reinforce a sense of “nations”. Unfortunately, launch cities in Shadowbane only had control over what they could stick in their 4 walls (once they were built).