I mean, with how old the game is and how many modern MMOs there are today, I didn't really expect myself or anyone really playing Shadowbane long, even at the one-time $11 price tag. In one of the Facebook groups I follow, someone pointed out Shadowbane launched on Steam so I figured, what the hell, I'll drop in for about 30 minutes and relive a little nostalgia and then jump back to Dungeons 3 (my current guilty pleasure). But you probably don't have to do too much to see a drastic improvement in performance just by running it on systems built in the last few years. I'm assuming they have done some clean-up and I'm hoping they changed the original flat-file index to a relational database. I believe that is when the first Intel Core i5 and i7 processors were launched and we're now on the 9th Generation of those. You wouldn't have to make too many heavy modifications since both personal computers and servers have progressed in the last, what, almost 12 years since the game shut down. But what I've seen so far looks to be a modified version of that codebase. I stopped being the Lead Designer on Shadowbane when I went to BioWare in 2008 and I know the team made a few more adjustments after I left. Speaking of which, this is, for the most part, that version of Shadowbane. I mean, we launched Shadowbane back in 2003 and it was shut down in July 2009. Not that I believe anyone is expecting massive numbers.

I say 'at least' because I do not believe that counts people who are connecting to the game via other methods. And, according to SteamCharts Opens a new window, there are at least 600 or so concurrent players (via Steam). The rights for Shadowbane were sold back in (or around) 2015 by Ubisoft to Changyou, a company that operates online games, primarily MMOs, in China. No, not an emulator version, an approved version. To add a little more 'WTF' to the world, Shadowbane has relaunched.

But, as we all know all too well, it's been an interesting 12 months or so in the world. Just reposting something I wrote on my blahg in case we have any old SBers here:Ī year ago, I wouldn't have even imagined myself writing an update like this.

Shadowbane free download