Shadowbane launched two decades ago!

Has it really been 20 years?! Apparently,  it has. Back on March 25, 2003, we launched Shadowbane.

For many, Shadowbane has a lot of great game memories. And, yes, some terrible ones, too! I mean, who remembers how sb.exe was a meme before memes were cool? Or when someone used GM commands to teleport players to the bottom of the ocean. Good times.

For me, though, Shadowbane was so much more. And yes, I’m about to wear my rose-tinted glasses and walk down memory lane a little bit…

I started at Wolfpack Studios in 2000, but I was just a fanboi before then. I actually learned about Shadowbane in the Carnage.net days. I was playing Ultima Online on the Pacific Shard with some friends and we were looking for something that had a bigger world impact on the game world. I did a few crazy things back then; ran a “local newspaper” called Pacific Shard Times as Crypt. I also ran a variety of in-game tournaments. Towards the end, I was also Ldy Death of the Town of the Endless Graveyard, RP PvPing as one of the evil factions of the world. And while we could create buildings (although space was limited!) and have guild wars, I was looking for something that could actually change the game a bit. To leave my mark on its history as a player. And then I learned about Shadowbane and its “Play 2 Crush” mentality. I couldn’t find the original banner, but here’s one I made after starting at Wolfpack:

I eventually joined SBVault, which would later join IGN’s Vault Network and would be joined by one of my guildies from Pacific, Chris. Funny enough, Chris would later join me on Shadowbane as Ubisoft’s Community Manager known as Vosx. I also had a friend who went by the online handle of Chewie, who did some fan art and later joined Wolfpack Studios. In fact, while rummaging around looking for the banner ad, I found this mockup he did when we were looking at redesigning SBVault.

Then E3 2000 happened. I was discharged (yes, honorably!) from the Marine Corps a few years back but I was still living in California as a website developer for a company called Catalyst Development (which is still around today). E3 was right up the road and I had my press badge (for working at Vault Network), so Chewie, myself, and a few others descended upon the GoD (Gathering of Developers — anyone remember them?) area that was just outside of E3 prime and found the Shadowbane area. I met people I would start working with later that year; Jeff, Todd, James, and so many others. I want to say it was just before this point when Jeff (aka Ashton Kai) realized I was male (this was around the time I was doing all the “Ldy Death” stuff in Ultima Online). Remember, back then; the art released that we knew about looked like this:

While it shows its age today, back then, this looked pretty good when looking at other online games. Remember, this is around the time of Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Ages of Camelot. And Star Wars Galaxies was just about to launch if memory serves me right.

Anyways, I talked to the team and made it very clear I would be interested in working there. Not only was I following the game (a bit rabidly, I must admit), I was looking to move to Texas for family reasons. I planned on moving to San Marcos, which is maybe 30 minutes from Austin, where Wolfpack was based. E3 2000 was May 11-13th. I received an offer letter from Josef Hall on May 18th for the position of “Internet Relations” as community management was not a well-known career path then. And thus started my career in game development. I ended up holding various positions while at Wolfpack; Community Manager, Events Team Manager (remember the Feature Characters?), Game Designer, and then lastly, Lead Designer for Shadowbane.

One of my first memories was my first day at the office. I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to get to work! They showed me around the office and to my work area… which was a pool table. I then received a budget to get my own system… which ended up being an eMachine (anyone remember those?). Once I had it all set up, pulled my chair up to the pool tab… err, working area; more than a few times that day, I wondered to myself, “What did I just get myself into?!”  Looking back, I am extremely glad I stuck with it, though.

I could continue down memory lane for a while as I lived, breathed, and put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and love into Shadowbane for almost a decade. And while the Shadowbane codebase was a hot mess, it touched a lot of lives and gave many of us so many fond memories. And, to be honest, that is what sticks with me the most, even a decade later — the memories I made with friends and fans.

Even crazier, Shadowbane is still being played today! Not only is there the fan-run Shadowbane Reforged project, but there is also actually an officially released version on Steam many players refer to as Steambane that is published by CHANGYOU. Even crazier than that, I’ve not only had veteran players reach out to me to talk about Shadowbane, but people who have only learned about and played Shadowbane recently in the last few years. It boggles my mind a bit that an MMORPG that was launched 20 years ago today, was officially shut down in 2009 (then relaunched in 2021), is still touching so many people right now.

If you’re looking for a bit more nostalgia, check out my Shadowbane Playlist on YouTube, where I have some of the old interviews and videos. Including some from Swing! Entertainment which was going to be our publisher at one point in time.

For those of you who made it this far, I just wanted to say thank you. Shadowbane is still near and dear to my heart, and if I go really crazy someday, I will jump back into the industry and try to do my version of a spiritual successor. Thanks for the memories!

And, just for the fun of it, here are a few more nostalgic images.

UPDATE: Just a quick update as Chris posted a link to this on LinkedIn and I will not find it again if I don’t add it here:

https://gamerifts.com/gallery/shadowbane-magcon/