Anyone still plays SB?

[sinij]

My guild left for WoW so I went with them, that and I got fed up waiting for ranger love. Still I'm curious how new expansion is shaping up and if there is any servers with above-marginal population? *Everyone* I knew left SB, makes me wonder if anyone stayed? I hope SB is still around when I get tired of WoW.

[HaemishM]

SB used up all its "Get out of Bugs Free" cards with me long ago.

[WayAbvPar]

Sb.exe!

[HaemishM]

MOTHERFUCKING CUMGUZZLING BASTARD BITCH OF A PIECE OF SHIT CANDIAN FUCKING SHITGOBBLER!

<The above is a transcript of my TeamSpeak audio during a Shadowbane raid in which I sb.exe'ed no less than 15 times>

[Threash]

WoW and guildwars betas killed any desire i had left to play SB, but until three weeks ago or so i was still playing pretty heavily.  I don't doubt i will be back though, there simply isnt anywhere else to get the kind of pvp experience you get in SB.  I was in the beta for the expansion, some of the changes they are making could actually shape SB into a great game and if this expansion launch had been their original release im pretty sure they would have given WoW and EQ2 a run for their money.  

The new races/classes still needed some balance work the last time i played but the city management/realm/sieging changes where truly amazing.  I'm not sure how much i can say without breaking the NDA but i was certainly looking foward to playing once it launched.  New shiney >>>>>old recycled shiney though, sorry UBI.

[Ardent]

MOTHERFUCKING CUMGUZZLING BASTARD BITCH OF A PIECE OF SHIT CANDIAN FUCKING SHITGOBBLER!

You are SO the father from "A Christmas Story".

[Soukyan]

If you don't have anything nice to say...

[WayAbvPar]

MOTHERFUCKING CUMGUZZLING BASTARD BITCH OF A PIECE OF SHIT CANDIAN FUCKING SHITGOBBLER!

<The above is a transcript of my TeamSpeak audio during a Shadowbane raid in which I sb.exe'ed no less than 15 times>

I just like to poke the bear with a stick.


Sb.exe!

I didn't have near the problems Haemish did, but it was still goddamned annoying, especially considering the fact that he was leading most of our expeditions.

[d4rkj3di]

Too many bad memories from the first month that came with the box sale.  I cancelled and never looked back.  "What do you mean they baned their own tree?  How the fuck are we supposed to be Massively Merciless and Play to Crush?"

SB.exe, lol.

If the Fragdolls fellated me one at a time, I would agree to at least entertain the thought of playing it again.  Even then Ubisoft would have to send me a bucket of cash.

[sinij]

I played up to the point where they started beta for expansion and emptied main server by inviting 1/3d of all player base to beta. At that point most problems were fixed - like sb.exe and open tols...

[doubleplus]

If the Fragdolls fellated me one at a time, I would agree to at least entertain the thought of playing it again.  Even then Ubisoft would have to send me a bucket of cash.

Y'know, I'd do a lot of things if the Fragdolls fellated me one at a time. Like eat at Arby's, or use a Mac. Or date Haemish's mom.

[HaemishM]

You wouldn't want to date my mom. She's a clean Nazi.

[MrHat]

Should even ask what a dirty Nazi is?

[doubleplus]

You wouldn't want to date my mom. She's a clean Nazi.

Your mom is my aunt Beth?

[Moroni]

 New shiney >>>>>old recycled shiney though, sorry UBI.

Is that to say the graphics are bad, or the mechanics are? Or did I miss the point of that completely?

[ahoythematey]

If the graphics were the only bad thing, or even just the main bad thing SB had going against it, a hell of a lot more of us would be playing it.

[Threash]

 New shiney >>>>>old recycled shiney though, sorry UBI.

Is that to say the graphics are bad, or the mechanics are? Or did I miss the point of that completely?

Well i like SBs graphics, though most people don't.  What i meant was that i've already played SB since launch and no matter what new stuff they are adding the burn out is still there, im looking foward to GuildWars and having a blast in WoW.

[sinij]

I don't mind SB graphics - other than my better-than-average computer boggles down with client lag on anything but lowest graphic settings during even medium-sized skirmishes. You can’t really PvP (read play) in SB with any existing machine at maximum detail/resolution but SB can look really nice. There are some problems with art that are inexcusable. For example some terrain tiles do not blend well and have detectable edges, Chaos island sky also does not blend well and harvest moon has very visible edges against moving sky giving it 'square moon' look.

That and SB world is really empty, so most of the time you are looking at nothing but rolling terrain tiles with detectable edges when you travel.

If you want eye candy in SB - swamps areas are really well made and look stunning at highest detail level. Undead/barren areas have few parts that are very well made, new desert zones are also pretty - every time I travel there I get 'Lawrence of Arabia' feel that I really like. Moving sky is also generally well done – with few exceptions like Chaos Island with detectable edges around moon.

[doubleplus]

Are any of the proposed changes (namely the new race/class) being met well by the current players, or is it lots of hemming and hawing?

[Threash]

Are any of the proposed changes (namely the new race/class) being met well by the current players, or is it lots of hemming and hawing?

Vampires are indeed very different from the other races, they also get access to 4 different vampire disciplines that allow them to play their classes very differently than the other races.  Lets just say they easily make up for their lack of a healer base and all they bring.  The two new classes where still being rebalanced last time i checked (along with vampires) but they did bring their own unique style to the table, nightstalkers might just be one of the most desired rogue classes at sieges with their AE debuff abilities.  

They are also adding some new siege based disciplines for each base class that promise to make banes alot more exiting, for example rogues will be able to teleport inside spired cities (with the help of warriors using their siege discipline), disable spires and siege engines and become untrackable for short periods of time.  The one thing i liked about the new siege disciplines was that they have managed to incomporate things into them that make them valuable outside of sieges as well so they dont become a wasted disc slot (like rogue untrackability).

Like ive said, i havent checked in a few weeks but changes where being made in order to balance out the classes before they launched.  It is beta afterall so some thing can be forgiven, although i gotta say whoever thought allowing necros to summon unlimited numbers of uncontrolable pets would actually work in the lag fests banes already are was probably on some very powerfull narcotics.  I've tried to be carefull and not be too specific but i assume some of this stuff is breaking the NDA, in that case my apologies, im not sure if that is frowned upon here.

[sinij]

Considering that UBI letting *everyone* who cancels and then reactivates account to join Beta there isn't much of secrecy to SB beta. Can you tell me how new mines, resources and crafting shapes up – no need to give descriptions or details, just opinions? What about realm control and server travel – can you really travel to different servers or control areas of your own server? What about cheesy stack wars and dropping warks on people - is it fixed yet?

[Moroni]

I suppose I could always resubscribe. Are channelers gimped yet? I seriously hope so.

[Threash]

Can you tell me how new mines, resources and crafting shapes up – no need to give descriptions or details, just opinions?

I didn't own a city during beta but from what i understood each mine produced 3 different kinds of resources apart from gold that you collect in a warehouse, you can tell your vendors to roll specific magic items if you have the required resources.  They also drop from mobs, though at a small rate.  No idea exactly how easy it is to get all you need, but i had no trouble getting any item i could possibly want from our nation and we only owned 2-3 mines, as long as you own at least 1 mine it shouldnt be all that difficult to trade for the resources you need.  High end items (better than what are currently avialable) require resources from the expansion mines in order to create.

What about realm control and server travel – can you really travel to different servers or control areas of your own server? What about cheesy stack wars and dropping warks on people - is it fixed yet?

Realm control looked very promising, you have direct control on how many trees are planted in your realm, you can give benefits (something to do with shrines, the details escape me at the moment) or tax the hell out of unwelcomed cities.  I heard nothing about server travel while i was on the beta, the beta population did split into nations based on their original servers and had a server war though which is probably what you heard about.  They severely limited the number of bullwarks that an attacked can place, as well as made it illegal to drop them on people though im not sure if they actually coded it in so you couldnt.

Channies are still powerfull, but they arent incredibly overpowered like they where before.  Stacks are still around, and they probably cant be helped since the people on top of walls really have no choice but to stack and the ones at the bottom get picked off if the split from the pack, there are plenty of counters to it though, a sentinel group can wreck havok on a stack of casters.

[sinij]

Thanks for the news from the front! Now are templars still overpowered or were they toned down a bit? What about rogues - aside from siege disks do they have any improvments?

[Threash]

Templars are still overpowered according to most people, they got various minor nerfs that didnt really reduce their power that much.  Rogues got a few bones thrown at them, light armor skill is now dex based instead of str based and dodge has a chance to dodge spells.  Their is also a new unarmed weapon line with very cool powers that they can go with.

[sinij]

I'm feeling like discussing SB some more...

I think main flaws of SB are - looser-unfriendliness, forced-grouping, lack of non-PvP content and stability & performance issues.

[Arnold]

I'm feeling like discussing SB some more...

I think main flaws of SB are - looser-unfriendliness, forced-grouping, lack of non-PvP content and stability & performance issues.

My problems with SB were - level treadmill, shitty controls, shitty camera, shitty support for ATI graphics cards, constant crashes.

I didn't play the game very long, so the crashing and ATI support things may have gone away.  The first 3 items are game killers, in my book, for a game that is PvP oriented.

[Threash]

The level treadmill is still the shortest one for any game out there, but like alot of other things in SB it is very dependant on who you play with.  A good guild in a good location can mean 2 days to r6 and less than a week to r7, starting from scratch on your own could take well... as long as it takes you to find a good guild with in a good location.

They did tone down the looser unfriendliness a bit a few patches ago, now you can "evacuate" your vendors if it looks like your city is about to bite it and re use them somewhere else if you rebuild, they do lose one rank when you do this, but that just means a 5 day wait before you have a fully ranked city again.

[Moroni]

Hmm, definitely time to resub. Thank you for the information! :)

[sinij]

With regards to leveling - sure it takes less time to level in SB than in most other games but it also few magnitudes less fun. Leveling in SB is teious to the point of mandatory AFK-age to keep your sanity.

[Threash]

With regards to leveling - sure it takes less time to level in SB than in most other games but it also few magnitudes less fun. Leveling in SB is teious to the point of mandatory AFK-age to keep your sanity.

Yeah i don't remember the last time i was actually at the keyboard while going from levels 10-60.  I guess the overnight macro groups my guild always had going sorta spoiled me.  Exping in SB does blow, find yourself a pl guild asap.

[sinij]

Thing with SB leveling is that PvE is probably the least fun one across all games I played.  Agro management is brain dead easy and mobs never retarget sponges that are almost always your main AOE damage-dealing druids. You generally don't have to worry about BAF since sponges can take and hold almost any amount of mobs even without a healer. Additionally mobs are always spawn in static and predictable spawns and never deviate from set behavior. Monsters also almost never drop anything desirable other than gold and are very hard to kill unless you happen to play one of the PvE builds. Also every mob in the game has way too many hit points, as a result only effective way to PvE is by using AOE on multiple mobs at once. PvE in SB is really a chore and doesn’t have to be.

[HaemishM]

With regards to leveling - sure it takes less time to level in SB than in most other games but it also few magnitudes less fun. Leveling in SB is teious to the point of mandatory AFK-age to keep your sanity.

Yeah i don't remember the last time i was actually at the keyboard while going from levels 10-60.  I guess the overnight macro groups my guild always had going sorta spoiled me.  Exping in SB does blow, find yourself a pl guild asap.

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.

[sinij]

Yeah i don't remember the last time i was actually at the keyboard while going from levels 10-60.  I guess the overnight macro groups my guild always had going sorta spoiled me.  Exping in SB does blow, find yourself a pl guild asap.

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.

If they haven't learned from mandatory macroing in UO to get past training boredom they won't learn from mandatory macro groups in SB.

[stray]

I didn't play the game very long, so the crashing and ATI support things may have gone away. The first 3 items are game killers, in my book, for a game that is PvP oriented.

The ATI guy assigned to help with the graphics card issues was in my guild actually. At the time, he said it was just too much work to fix, and even used NVidia on his private account (I guess he really liked the game). That was a year ago though, so maybe they've gotten around to something since then.