Shadowbane is a PvP game where players create their own cities and attack the cities held by others. There were no quests and PvE content was just sufficient for leveling up. While grouped everyone gets the same experience for a monster kill as they would if they killed it solo and groups can be very large. This encourages people to group both in order to gain experience as quickly as possible and to protect themselves from other players who can attack at any time.
The siege side of the game was somewhat controlled. In order to attack another city you had to state when you were going to attack. The time had to be a certain amount of time in the future (24 hours I think) and didn't have to be exact so that the defenders wouldn't know exactly when the attack would happen.
Beyond PvP the main focus of the game was to accumulate enough money to fund your cities. Every building in the town drains money from the guild coffers at a specific rate. If you cannot maintain your city it shuts down so that you cannot use any of the buildings and eventually is removed.
If you are really into PvP and are looking for a game where players truly impact the world than Shadowbane should be one of your first choices. The systems they have constructed for giving importance to PvP and the outcomes of the battles are very elaborate. However the game has never really caught on.
The game launched in March of 2003 and has had two expansions. In March 2006 Ubisoft announced that Shadowbane was being taken off the subscription model and made free to play1. They also then shut down Wolfpack, the development studio that created the game. Some former members of Wolfpack started the studio called Stray Bullet and now manage the game for Ubisoft while they work on another MMO. To play Shadowbane you only need to have the game installed and log on if you already own it or download the '15-day trial' if you do not.
