Computer and console video game publisher Ubi Soft Entertainment has announced that Shadowbane, the long-awaited massively multiplayer online game, has finally gone gold master. It’ll hit retail store shelves on March 25.
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In development for the last four years by Austin, Texas-based Wolfpack Studios, Shadowbane was created simultaneously for the PC and Macintosh — in fact, early demonstrations of the game provided by the Wolfpack team to MacCentral were done on a PowerBook. Shadowbane combines elements of role playing with real time strategy gaming as well.
In Shadowbane as players engage in activities like city management, army creation, siege warfare, and economic development, all in a 3D environment that supports thousands of simultaneous players. Shadowbane also features a vaunted “Dynamic World Model,” in which your actions as a player permanently affect the history, politics and landscape of the Shadowbane world.
Players can create characters from one of 10 different races and more than 20 of different character classes. You can also specialize your game character with dozens of different multi-classing disciplines that lend a unique personality to your in-game counterpart.
Shadowbane’s story line is epic in scope — players shape the nature of an online world with more than five thousand years of history, and are encouraged not only to interact with each other but also Gods, Archons and Heroes of legend — characters played by hired actors from Wolfpack itself.
An in-game “Justice System” helps players track opponents, criminals, spies and guilds, and a movie capture technology enables you to record and share events and battles from your own perspective. Shadowbane also tracks vital statistics and game progress.
Mac system requires for Shadowbane call for a G3/350 or faster with 128MB RAM, 1GB hard drive space, Mac OS X 10.2, CD-ROM drive, 56K modem and Internet connection, and ATI RAGE 128 graphics with 32MB or more video memory.
Look for Shadowbane to hit store shelves on March 25. The game carries a suggested retail price of US$39.99. It’s available for pre-order directly from Ubi Soft’s online e-store and also from select retailers.