author: Adrian Werner
Fans Keep Alive Last Realistic Rainbow Six Game
Ubisoft abandoned Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield long ago, but fans are not giving up and are still keeping the game's multiplayer mode alive with mods.
The Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series began life as realistic tactical shooter. The last installment to follow this path, however, was 2003's Raven Shield. After that, the series took a turn toward more arcade-based FPS. This strongly contributed to its popularity, the best proof of which is the success of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege. However, many PC gamers miss the series' roots, so it's no special surprise that a bunch of them are keeping the online mode in Raven Shield alive.
The game's official servers were shut down in 2016. Since then fans have been creating projects that maintain the unofficial new network architecture, enabling the community to continue enjoying the multiplayer mode. The latest of these has just been released, simply called 2023 Multiplayer Hotfix.
The mod implements an updated server browser into Raven Shield, put up by fans, The project works with all versions of the game - both the original boxed release and digital editions available on Steam or in Ubisoft store.
2023 Multiplayer Hotfix was built on the foundations of another fan project in the form of OpenRvS, which you must install first. In addition to numerous fixes, it implements support for fan servers and expands modding capabilities. It has not been updated for several years and its server browser stopped working properly some time ago. Therefore, it was necessary to release 2023 Multiplayer Hotfix.
Finally, it is worth warning that the group of fans still playing Raven Shield is not large, so don't count on finding servers full of people willing to play at any time of the day. It's best to have your own group of friends (especially since the game has great co-op, so you can have fun even with just two people). Otherwise, it's worth looking into the popular Discord server Tactical Gaming, where players arrange matches in various old tactical shooters.
