Wolfpack Studios Closing

After a good long run, Wolfpack Studios is being closed down by publisher Ubisoft. Their recent announcement of free-to-play was apparently not the opening of a new business model, but instead a harbinger of the end times. From the MMORPG.com article: "This according to sources at the development house who were recently informed that their jobs were being terminated. The last day for Wolfpack staff is May 15th. Parent company Ubisoft is said to instead be redirecting their company's focus to next-gen platforms. At this time, there is no word on what this will mean for the future of Shadowbane itself. The game just hit its three-year anniversary and was recently offered free to all users."

Short life

[FadedTimes]

I am suprised Shadowbane lasted this long.

I knew a group of people (roughly 30) who attempted to play Shaadowbane after release. All from different gaming backgrounds, EQ, DAoC, AC, AO, D2, DS, NWN, etc. The game seemed to hit a wall in advancement within the first month of play. Most quit after 30days, only 1 person out of a group of 30 lasted longer than 90 days.

The game was not good when compared to already establshed games in the genre. Then more advanced games like WoW came out and that just made Shadowbane's already bad situation worse.

Re:Short life

[Anonymous Coward]

I played Shadowbane for the first time when it went free... My response: *yawn*

Even as a free game, it didn't hold my interest all that much. There is appears to be very little content other than kill the mob, grind the levels.

I know as a PvP game, part of the design goal is that enemy players are "part of the content", but the game seemed completely void of anything else to do. Even compared to the original EverQuest, its contents fail to appeal. It has no chance against WoW.

Oh, and lastly the lag was ungodly horrible. I'm sure some of this was due to the influx of new players under the "free offer" but when I checked the /who lists, there didn't seem to be that many people... Certianly not enough to have my toon be frozen for almost 2 minutes (True! I couldn't do ANYTHING for 2 minutes... clicking anything in the UI resulted in NO ACTIONS until I got a small break in the lag long enough to move away from the busy area). It was absolutely unplayable, and as I mentioned there weren't *that* many people on the server.