Ecliptical White Moon

Being Saleh: The Revivals

2026-09-14T11:10:46.763+07:00

After four years of my absence from World of Warcraft and missing three expansions somehow Blizzcon is back, yes Actiblizz got bought by Microsoft and they kind of revive or remake, or just update everything, WOW retail server got some roguelite action RPG style dungeon, WOW classic got updated, and there's a new server called WOW Forever which basically WOW classic+ with wanted things that people jokes about like 20 years ago, Flying Elfs, Undead Paladins, and they're probably'll get that scrapped undersea raid as well.

And speaking of undead paladins Warcraft 3 got it's first mission pack after 20 years which labeled Forsaken Kingsom which will tell how Sylvanas conquers Lordaeron after Arthas sacked it and how she'll ally with the Horde years before WOW begins, anyway Starcraft got revived as narrative-driven FPS (yes, it's Starcraft: Ghost remake or just.. made), Hearthstone got the monk class and that talking knife Xal'atath will be on Heroes of The Storm.

Will I come back? Before I get to that I must tell you something because Blizzard just made everything that they think will appease 40 years-ish people who still plays WOW or any MMOs, and they're not the only one, Guild Wars 3 is still on development which said will implement Guild Wars 1 hub system, Runescape is still updating, ESO made several life quality change for free and paid players, Final Fantasy XIV albeit slowing down and have mixed reviews about their latest expansion they're still made top notch storytelling and still going on strong, even though several titles have come and go I think MMORPGs still refuses to die. Oh yeah, that weird RPG from Ncsoft: Aion, they got a sequel.

Which brought us into the fact: Will people play it? Or more specific: What kind of people will play it? Or in the sense of marketing: Who's the target market? World of Warcraft came on 2001 and it's still on after 25 years, they have strong presence in the North America and Europe if not, some of the Asia as well, although they came when |Runescape, Dark Age Of Camelot, and Ultima online still share the markets they quickly gain players and become a gaming culture, some subculture sprang from it: The Guild webseries, Blizzcon, Chuck Norris Barren talk, and so on, numerous Youtubers and streamers started theirl life career here. The gaming culture was so strong at that time that people form friendship in game, going on 40 man raids and then brought it to real world through cons and festivals, devs become celebs and have fans (and haters), when you have played a game for 10 years or more, some of your life will be on it.

I'm tempting, very tempting to just come back, but sometimes if there's just a piece of your life's memories on it, it won't be enough, you see I was a solo player, I played WOW when the community started to become unruly and there's more content for solo players, it was a really good time for me despite the toxic community, then after like 10 years class and guild hopping I got burnout and left after Shadowland ends, At that time I just don't have any motivation to login although at that time I hardly have the energy to do anything either. i think at that time I was in peace with the fact that MMORPGs has died

So MMORPGs probably heading for their second coming but I still don't have the same urge to dive into them, after 10 years of WOW and FFXIV I don't think I found my rock there, so unless something really awesome happened I'll be still on the fence.

Being Saleh: A Space For The Undaunted Future and Things To Come and Why oh Why I don't Blog Often? (A Space For The Unbound review)

2023-01-23T11:48:00.000+07:00

There seemed to be a lot riding on A Space For The unbound (ASFTU), a narrative driven game seven years in the making from Indonesian Studio Mojiken, the wave started about three/two years ago when they're announcing "a game with a Indonesian 90s setting" (or more precise: A game with Indonesian 90s high school scenes, which means no greatest sin of mankind a.k.a cellphone yet) they had a demo on Steam so I played it, one year later after two days of playing the full game I sat and write this post because I deemed that game is worth enough reviving this blog (and changed the font).

Dun dun dun dun

I'm not familiar with Indonesian indie games scene, as a matter of fact the announced ASFTU is the one thing intriguing me enough to search around about them (growing in 90s and stuffs) and bumped me with Coffee Talk (another slice of life retro graphic game set on a fantasy futuristic town) published by Toge Productions who has been around since some eleven years ago which means I've been under the rock enough for not noticing them... Anyway so after playing Coffee Talk enough to see the 'weird' creativity of this game I put ASTFU on my wishlist because being an Indonesian but spent so much time playing MMORPGs with people of the world make me a little... homesick, mind you I retired from the local's MMORPGs scene because of it's notorious toxicity (No I'm not talking about Genshin Impact, I'm talking way way further back when I grind those 1909145732896543 Ketra orc's heads), Coffee talk: a little game that only span 6 hours or so is weirdly powerful on writing and narrating, it's basically a compilation of short stories, a GOOD compilation of short stories.

Anyway back to ASFTU this game is a visual novel at heart but with some side scrolling adventure game type and some mild puzzle-solving, there's also elements of Quick Time Event (QTE), For me these elements can be a hindrace sometimes, I know they're trying to spice things up (and testing some engine) and most of the puzzle are easily solved but trying to get a door combination in later game with little hints and lots of numbers can be a little frustrating because sometimes it broke the immersion of the narrative, if there's a paid DLC button to skip all the puzzles I'll gladly bought it. The game design was breathtakingly nostalgic, with some of the house and generic 90s school visual design, soothing music followed by familiar environmental sound, and the NPCs are just as bizzare and quirky as I expected too, in short the whole visual and sound design is a warm welcome for my soul, almost like a sweet, smooth therapy session (uh no, I'm not talking about weeds)

The story: Atma and Raya is a childhood sweetheart couple, fall in love in high school, unsure of their future, planned to ran away together, creating a list of what to do before they finish high school and so and so but plot twist: they both have superpowers, Atma can dive into other people's heart (dubbed spacedive, later crossdive) while Raya can manipulate reality to some extent (and require some price), in their last days of high school there's a crisis looming in the horizon and they both are in the center of it. WARNING: If you could read the fine print at the game description you might realized that the story dealt with mostly negative emotion, Raya and Atma's power are tied to their psyche and the story unfolded as their powers and hearts grow, you'll mostly control Atma so the story was presented in his point of view to reserve some of the clever twist of it, not to spoil anything: This is a sad game, and some scene can make you a tad bit uncomfortable, some of the expected seriousness is one of the fine point of why I bought the game, it's brave and Mojiken presenting such a story without gerrymandering it is an achievement to itself. Psych disorder is not something to be taking lightly of, and sometimes it requires professional help. I Also played the game with Bahasa as language and I can see some of the English statements, jokes, curses and proverb are somewhat translated as is which is a bit... weird? Indonesian don't told others to go hide on their mother's skirt, they told them to shut up and die while swinging things (HALAH BACOT), they got better at the end where the narrative is heavy and pack some great impact.

Although The pace of the game is uneven (sometimes it's like a speeding truck crashing every wall and in some chapters slowed down to a crawl) but Mojiken also did well blending it to the game design, the visual novel take make a really compelling case of secrets and hidden objects hide and seek minigame, it's fun and well placed, there's a side quests where you must collect bubble gum wrappers with the letters which ultimately form the words "YOMAN" which is a reference to a 90s local bubble gum promotion where my brothers and I hunted the word S of YOSAN bubble gum (we never found it, and we suspect it was never even made hahaha) plot twist: THEY'RE STILL EXISTED!!! anyway as promised the world of ASFTU is jam-packed with 80s and 90s nostalgia, furthermore: even some of Mojiken's previous game character is act as a secret puzzle. Pet all the cats, the dogs, the... other animals... just go wild with those interaction bubbles. The game also loaded with references to other pop culture such as the "Cobra Kai"show and "Kung-Fu Boy a.k.a Tekken Chinmi" comic book which is a huge hit here in their 90s day, and you want to know the price of one bowl of noodle in the 90s? yes, it's also (slightly) accurate, on story side: you can see the influence of other 'existential' video game, movies, and anime in ASFTU, from "Nier Automata" to "Neon Genesis Evangelion" it's not just the show, the music of ASFTU also show slight references to it, I also think this entire game's music deserved a separate recognition of their own (the penultimate song was A++). I'm not a musician but I know a good tune when I heard it, especially one of these weeks FFXIV and Tales Of Arise music's was the only thing I heard every day.

yes atma, Woah indeed

Also it's probably one of the free-bug game i was ever played, if there's any it was never triggered or occured, anyway technical thing aside: Mojiken Studio as developers and Toge Production as publisher is probably a big time winner in a little corner of this country's emerging (or stagnating? Or even declining? Told you I'm not familiar with this scene) game storytelling and marketing scene and deserved every praise because of it, ASFTU ticks all the right thing, brought a full course meal to a small community while still hold a bigger and finer standard, although the theme was dark and dealing with delicate social issues this game succesfully navigating those issue with care and gentle handling, (down to their New year Poster which score a high points from me). But I'm not a point guy, I'm just an old player, I had my share of suspicious glance, self-destructing, and a bunch of unanswered phone, text, and emails. I enjoyed ASFTU wholly, even with their frustrating door combination puzzle (Thank God there's no mandatory jumping puzzle or I might throw out this game immediately) I believe this game can be something more, but it was also up to their devs (and publisher), and other devs and publisher, and also other people involved in this industry, when you finished this game and tried to contemplating the relatable elements of it you'll met with the fact that this one game took seven years to make, that alone can be a consideration for anyone involved (or anyone who wants to be involved), I'm expecting great things from this scene but for some illogical... reason even great things can be a mere dust in the wind when it failed to capture hearts, but I also believe great things also come from little things. Anyway as Atma's said (as cheesy as he can be) the perfect world is the imperfect one (which is obvious) I really don't dig him but I like it.

Spoiler: This is what you got after petting all the cats in the game!!

Being Saleh: Enders Game (FFXIV Endwalker Review)

2022-05-13T10:03:00.002+07:00

It’s so hard to write about the FFXIV’s latest expansion without spoiling the story, that’s why this post came late, called Endwalker: the season finale of the first story arc from FFXIV, it’s the culmination of the eorzea chapter that first started 10 years ago.

old guy!!! (wait, I sprouted?)

Storywise: Since Shadowbringers the Scion of seventh dawn has been taking a huge undertaking in their role, from negotiator and spies to spawning the Trust system to help players navigate the dungeons and now they can participate in a Trial (there are two in the initial release and even their name is a spoiler). After a stint in the First (a glorious one) the Warrior of Light and the scion prepares for their advance to the seat of the empire: The Garlean territory, only it’s a little different from our imagining in Heavensward or even Stormblood, this plot twist is a major spoiler, heck even their zone is a spoiler, their trek there, you guess it: spoiler but here’s something: your favorite (and maybe forgotten) characters since the ARR age will be there since it’s the ultimate Avengers team up from the first quest to the last, hilariously some characters will even berate you if you forget them

Nothing changed much from the combat and crafting system, there are two new class: The Reaper is a new melee dps that outdps every class initially (so much that they buff all dps class in the first major patch to catch up), The aerods wielding Sage is a healer that heal people by shooting at things and IMHO it’s the fun one, I leveled a total of five jobs only from the main story quest (plus a bit of fate grinding in ‘that place’) There are some experimental quest sprinkled here and there including a story stealth mission starring Thancred which spawned the “This is Thancred” meme, speaking of stealth quest there is a long mission that somehow is both frustrating and awesome at the same time, frustrating because there’s time limit albeit a long one and awesome because it contains some light puzzle element( which answers I accidentally stumbled upon) and in the end it evolved into a small resource management game.

oooo, guiding hooome, oh wait we're already home

But the special mention goes to the music, I’m not a musician, I played instruments abysmally but I love sounds and in Endwalker it’s clear that Masayoshi Soken is finally getting comfortable putting his rock in almost everything, Endwalker theme follows the Shadowbringer theme with distortion guitars intersped by orchestral rock sound, the dungeon boss theme is another beautiful composition, almost all theme in the expansion are some form of the main theme, and they’re all good. The new songs including a promotional version of “Fly me to the moon” by Sia, a new ending song “Flow Together” another rendition of “Answer” which is the song of the first FFXIV expansion, and it’s other iteration: “Your Answer” to complete the ensemble. The expansion theme itself is a mirror image of Shadowbringers which applied a more intense sound and visual, Endwalker brought the light back with more emotional and mellow themes

Zenos return as the main villain because psycopath is hard to kill, also respecced as the new Reaper class, the new Ascian Fandaniel is now act as the mysterious gleeful crazy person/immortal being and yes minor spoiler there are bigger villain, with their own plot twist and unusual circumstances. You see: the theme of Endwalker is everybody deserves a second chance and since it’s Final Fantasy where the last quest is usually: KILL GODS, yes even That GOD deserves a second chance and that my friends makes this the best Final Fantasy because inbetween the tear-jerker and smiley moments, the difficult fights and struggles, those past, present, and future things mashed together you still in the end get your greatest wish that is KICK ZENOS’ ASS, although as spoiler goes: it might not the way you’re thinking of. But we’ll kick his ass, I can guarantee that.

A test for your reflexes!!!

Being Saleh: He Who Spiritwalk behind The Maw (Shadowlands Early review)

2020-12-11T15:38:00.001+07:00

I see dead people... everywhere, because I broke my promise and return to WOW

As the living and undead denizen pondering how many times they will be dying again in order to stop the Jailer from whatever deadly crusade he's planning in, I once again realize that undead death knights in WOW probably the most confused since they have two headstart death among them heroes.

Welcome to Shadowlands, Wow's artsy afterlife

The Story (and visual)

After acquiring heart of Azeroth and infusing millions of azerite shard in there just to down the last of the Old Gods plaguing azeroth we are forced to stow it away in our banks, because Sylvanas gone head to head with Bolvar a.k.a the Lich King, broke his helmet, shattered the veil between the world of the living and the afterlife, and unleash undead plague v 2.0 in Azeroth (fun pre patch, I killed much more people in this event compared to battlegrounds) and now we again venture into the unknown, saving souls, and killing zombie dogs

At least we can use that overgrown amulet for this

The first trip brought us to the Maw, a hellish landscape filled with killable iron skeleton knights, apparently all dead people soul are now sucked to this debuffing plane, after escaping it (by mysterious means) and dubbed the name Maw Walker we arrived in Oribos and learned that deadites soul should be divided into other four planes (Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and Rivendreth) apparently this engine of the dead is somewhat broken and so we ventured to the remaining planes to learn of the cause and to fix it.

The visual of the planes are somewhat awesome, the bluish elysian design of Bastion, sickly greenish skeletal wasteland of Maldraxxus, eternal purple night of Ardenweald, and the sanguinic bloody red hue of Rivendreth are the proof that the art team of WOW is finally found their mojo again since Mists of Pandaria, the visual upgrade (I played in ultra) is the most refreshing, and now there are more cutscenes than ever, as WOW tried to dub FFXIV's 'visual storylines'. They made the initial scenario a lenghty ones, designed to introduce you to Maw, Oribos, and the four planes plus the way of life in each zone. As you venture to the planes you're introduced to denizens and their leaders, sometimes you get a little cutscenes, some plot twist, some action sequence, and some big happening. But most often you're just treated to voiced dialogue of NPCs forming a 'skippable sequence' where you can sit around and listening to them or just move on to the next exclamation mark, and oh yeah it's LONG!!

Sing it!!!

The lengthy storyline's probably a shock to most of WOW players who expected some sequential kill ten rats quest in the area then move on, but most of the campaign storyline required you to sit and listen to NPCs, watch cutscenes, fetch little things, play some mini games, or participate in a series of action culminated on fighting a single or group of enemies, the kill ten rats quests are now relegated to the 'side quests' designed to add some xp to your belt and/or give you some equipment upgrades, but it's not like the main storyline free from these quests, I was rather perplexed that Maldraxxus storyline quests including these thing although Maldraxxus is where the big lore things are dumped to you (oh sorry, minor spoiler)

At the end of the campaign (well, to be continued more like) you are ~~forced~~ eligible to join a covenant, the Kyrian of Bastion, Necrolord of Maldraxxus, Night Faes of Ardenweald, and Venthyr of Rivendreth, each gave you uniques set of armor, class abilities, global abilities, and soulbinds which is an unique way to make your usual class abilities become more useful, visually appealed or just plain weird/complex (I don't see why do I want to teleport to a group of enemies as a warlock just to fear them, although there are several soulbind options that I haven't tried before), there are three NPC you can soulbind with although in the time I was writing this there's only two available and just two or three path unlocked (each NPCs have several) so yeah maybe some day I can meet my one true useful soul~~mate~~ bind

Be my soulbind, coming valentine 2021

Because of the lengthy-ness of the storyline campaign Blizzard made a second alt-friendly leveling system called Threads of Fate where you can just jump into the action (after you completed the Maw scenario) and complete world and side quests to level up, it's fairly straightforward and gave you more freedom, is it faster? Depends, I complete the storyline campaign (up to choosing a covenant) in seven days on my Demon hunter, just 4 days on my warlock's threads of fate but it was me being lazy and just played for like one hour a day? Falling asleep while campaigning are just one of the factor, but it's not because the story of Shadowlands is boring, It's just a tiring month, well honestly it's been like that every month since Covid-19.

~~The System~~ (bah, too long)

So there are several new currency right now, let me shout it out for you, ANIMA!!! PHANTASMA!!! STYGIA!!! SOUL ASH!!! SINSTONE!! GRATEFUL OFFERING!!! SOULS!! GRATEFUL OFFERINGS!!! did I just said it twice? well it's because i love GRATEFUL OFFERINGS!!!

Give me an offering of 245.754.888 flies and I'll let you ride me

- Sanctum

Okay, here's the thing, after you pick a covenant you'll start building your Sanctum by collecting Anima, it's used to make your journey more wonderful in your selected planes, also gold rewards, and mounts and stuffs like armor set, and the continuity of the story campaign, later on you can collect GRATEFUL OFFERINGS!!! which can be used to purchase shinier stuffs, there's also mission table here and you're familiar with what mission table does, it have some variation but the basic is the same: Send troops, collect loots. But as anima is used for ALL of these activities you'll want to manage it carefully or you might ran out your primary resources (world quests). You'll also gain renown from weekly quests, renown is used to advance storyline and to open more upgrade options. and soulbinds, don't forget soulbinds.

-The Maw/Ve'nari

You'll met Ve'nari, a mysterious cartel member currently residing in the maw, they got some pretty stuff and you'll get rep for them by killing some Maw's rare spawn and daily quests, the maw's currency called Stygia are dropped from everything in the maw and Venari will trade their shiny stuff (and secrets) for it

The maw itself is hell, as you continue to slay it's denizen the jailer's eye will be fixed upon you, at tier 1 he'll just sent his eye to come after you to apply a debuff, at tier 5 however he'll send bullet-sponge assassins, his tower will bombard you with high-damaging projectiles which also chained you for some damage over time effects, and then the maw itself will apply dots to you until you die, and when you die you drop off some your hard-earned stygia, feel free to respawn and collect it a la dark soul style if you have the chance to, oh also ve'nari will stop giving reps to you at jailer's eye tier 5, so when you're masochist enough to get into that tier there'll be no more things to do at the maw ~~except dancing in front of Ve'nari~~, just get out and come back in 24 hrs and it'll all reset

Pictured: The Maw

-Torghast

Ahh... Torghast, the new source of dividing community, some hate it, some love it, others like me is just like 'eh there's no timer? Let's run it' and then come out an hour later after get two shotted by the last boss and get kicked out without receiving any rewards, after that I'll proceed to continue Trails of Cold Steel 2 in easiest difficulty just to blow off some steam

Torghast is the all-new, ever-changing roguelike solo/group dungeon in WOW, it's a tower with six wings, every weeks two wings are open, each wings have 9 layers/difficulties and every layers have six floor with a final boss in the sixth floor, as you traverse the tower you'll find powerups called anima power which sometimes gave you significant stat and ability boost (but only for that particular layer journey), soul to save, followers to collect, and phantasma to collect, you can spend them in brokers at floor 3 and 6 since nothing in the tower will be brought outside (except new followers), feel free to bring friends if you can handle the mob scaling

So what's the purpose to run Torghast anyway, well... legendaries of course, when you clear each layer you'll get Soul Ash for crafting your legendaries and also for adding stats to it, but only and only if you defeat the sixth floor boss on each layer which sometimes overtuned and have annoying difficulties, like healing, and healing and healing themselves goddamit!! But on the brighter side if you think you're already strong enough to challenge previous layer don't worry the weekly soul ash reward will be brought to the next layer, so if you think you're strong enough to defeat layer 6 of each wings the weekly soul ash rewards from layer 1-5 will be brought to you when you finished layer 6, so yeah, there's still weekly caps, Bolvar also gave 200 ash per week just to clear a layer.

I'm also grateful that storyline campaign happened in their own Torghast instance because if Thrall is locked behind layer 6 Torghast with elites that have 10x HP and deal 35x damage with an affix that creates a damaging puddle on mob's corpse (and revive them) I'll uninstall WOW (again)

More time for Giant Robots!!!

The World Quests and Misc

The newly revamped world quests are no more like 7 seconds kill mobs and done, instead you'll get some slow and steady kill ten rats and collect their teeth quests with some follow up requests (kill big rat) and also they mostly reward anima in droplet quantities, which is really in-lore accurate, but still a grindfest. Treasure hunt is fun, some chests appeared on map on weekly basis, some required puzzle solving so get ready to read Wowhead a lot

Early Verdict

The story is an interesting one, the title of Maw Walker is similar to Warrior of Light/Darkness from FFXIV, in earliest moment it was showed that our past old-gods-vanquishing-world-eater-legion slaying effort was nothing compared to this new threat, we're so powerless in the Maw that even to escape it we're sort of winging it, the spotlight of this story is the player, how do we escaped the maw? Why the unnatural interest to us, not just from the jailer but also from another party? The story so far put the mystery on us the player, branded us, giving it a strong early standing because I really don't want to hear everyone cried SYLVANAS again. Yes, put spotlight on us, not those NPCs

The time gating and the amount of currencies of this expansion is also interesting, for the first time after mists I don't feel like WOW is one big experiments, (yes, Legion however great it was, it's still an experiment) the time gate is intentional, it's designed to keep player engaged in limited activity to collect resources and getting stronger, and it's also to keep player subbing because each week something new opens up and we can continue there. When you keep subbing you can feel your journey continues in a way that you progressing in storyline, sanctum, torghast, dungeon, world boss, even if it feels miniscule, but when you stop subbing and came back like 10 months later you will be attacked by a bunch of lore dump and currency catch up that your progress won't be as cohesive anymore.

Here's an example, my daily life on week 1 in shadowlands on Necrolord covenant

Week 1

1. Run sanctum daily callings/world quests, this will fill up some of my anima and chest weekly quests

2. Run daily Theater of Pain for some anima

3. Run daily random dungeon, it probably a weekly cartel reps dungeon or some satchels, also might be a weapon/equipment upgrades

4. Run Maw dailies, killing rares until tier 5 jailer eyes, if I got lucky I might get a rep boost item

5. Run torghast for the week

6. Any leftover weeklies can be grinded in day 6 or 7

Week 2

1. New renown weeklies means new story progress

2. Rinse and repeat

Sounds Repetitive? Well I can do all that in two hours, three counting Torghast, so it's enough for me (more TOCS 2 YAY!!!). Blizzard will continue to remove gating in new patches, adding new ilvl weapon on WQ and dungeons, making the Maw more accessible, they'll probably remove some of renown gating for some campaign quests plus adding some side quests to your sanctum which formerly tied to a locked upgrades, uneven lore bomb like this can be confusing up to the level where I once thinks: wait, it's that the priest legion dagger? How it ended up on Nathanos? That's what you got after 12 months of hiatus, with such a strong story headstart to whet the appetite Blizz bets itself with content time gating, will they succeeded? Well time will tell, gating is a tricky matter, too long waiting and sub will drop because of boredom, too short and too little new things subs will also dropped due to 'not enough content'

I personally enjoyed Shadowlands to this moment, my casual a.k.a lazy playstyle was just right for this expansion, the beautiful art style, the voice over, the storyline progress, but one question still linger: up to this second I'm convinced Blizz won't answer all the mysteries building up with a casual three sentence, but will the story hold up until the end? Will everything will be wrapped up nicely? ~~Is Torghast carry really necessary~~? As I said before only time will tell but one thing is sure: I never once glanced to my EXP bar when I first journeyed through Shadowlands, and I would like that feelings repeated on the future expansions.

Oh dear god, not again!!!

Being Saleh: FFXIV Shadowbringer review

2020-03-11T09:58:00.001+07:00

WARNING: Contains story spoiler for past expansions of Final Fantasy XIV, minor spoiler for Shadowbringers

So, who thinks that the light can be used to hurt? Well, I'm a fantasy gamer so I'm pretty much have wield every aspect of elements and unleash them to my enemies, light included, and as the name of the latest expansion from FFXIV suggests, yes this time the light is the enemy.

FFXIV brings our Warrior of Light to the First, a doppleganger world created in the image of the original planet (called The Source), as I mention in the past post there are several, each with an affinity to an arcane element (light, dark, fire, etc, etc), in here a flood of light almost wiped the entire world, making it unhabitable, save one continent called Norvrandt, apparently somenoe stopped the flood, and another someone wants to restore the first to it's former state and that's why they need us and oh, and the Scion of the Seventh Dawn are all here too.

Alisaie could use a haircut though

New Gameplay

The gameplay of Shadowbringers are much simpler now, thanks to ability prunes my Dark Knight (which is now a mainstream job) no longer have two set of combos for enmity and self healing, they got merged, my darkness (which I used between combo steps and before unleashing high powered attack) is now merged to a new attack both for single and multi target, it took me a while for cleaning up my shortcuts and macro not to mention trying new combos but it worked, and it's still fun, paladin however have mana-based new attack and defense skills which I never figured it out when or where I should use it, I'll get to it somehow, or SE can get to it, that's it, I'm gonna call it, fix paladin, it's not fun, yes it's easy to stay alive, but it's not fun

everything can be better with MORE FIRE!!

F.A.T.E (ah crap, will just call it FATE now) have two benefits now, for leveling and you can get a nice jewels in the end for stuff trading in every area, there are also FATE levels now indicating how an area is 'safer' now after you cull those kobolds, the more you level your FATE, the more stuff you can trade for those jewels, every area is different so yes more useless junk to collect, if you level them all enough, you'll get access to a vendor in the main city hub

The new classes are gun~~blader~~breaker and dancer, gunbreaker wield gunblades and have a long combo depending how many ammos you can store and your third skill cooldown, so yeah, it have several combos and utilities which can be fun for tanking (yes, it's a tank) since you're shooting for shielding now :D. Dancer as the third physical ranged DPS is not that different at all from the Machinist, but now you can 'store' combos and it's awesome, because not everytime a skill triggered the next skill, so it's a bit of gambling but you can also dance to buff you and a party member (dubbed: dance partner) for a significant increase in attack, so imagine you store those finisher and unleash them when your dance buff still up, it's glorifyngly satifying, there are also a def buff, a skill buff, which you can mix and match in a boss fight or trials.

New Story

Well, after I kicked Zenos' butt and got kicked myself in the in-between-xpac storyline, the story hinted that we will be brought to Garlean, the seat of the empire itself, but well... things happen and now we're in a whole another planet ourself, the new character is the Crystal Exarch, the dude that brought you in, Norvrandt is besieged by a horde of pale monsters called the sin-eaters which can infect living creatures to become monsters as they are, and of course there are zombies, pale zombies, but anyway we're also introduced to an Ascian called Emet-Selch which is more... sightful than the usual Ascian like evil-laugh Lahabrea and his friends, he is as cryptic as Elidibus though and his actions are sometimes questionable, but's he's breathtakingly fresh when compared to Zenos and since the story of Shadowbringers are long and intertwining you might questioning if he is really the big bad here.

Well, this pixie hater is definitely the big bad

Even if the story is a bit convoluted at first it's slowly unravel as it's progressing forward, but what I like is that the main story never strays from The First, there're no back and forth jogs between the two worlds, the allies and enemies are all from the first (except your Scion friends), and you'll meet new friends along the main story which come and go in a satisfying way (and some who wasn't probably was saved for the in-between-xpac stories, or a side quest). Everything is from the First and for The First, The First is a different world, with different culture, but same looking races although the names are different, elezen becomes elves, Hrothgar is Ronso (sounds familiar?), Lalafell are dwarves and they put on white-bearded-yellow-eyes-and-horned helmets like a generic FF dwarves, ho ho ho. uh wait, that's not right, Lali-Ho!!

There's something like a 'main side story' (What..?) it is a continuation from a post-main Heavensward expac and a new form of job quest, mainly focused in the members of the First' Warriors of Light (Adbert and friends), even if it's a side quest it is needed to complete the main story so you can get some picture about these ex-Source' Warriors of Darkness life before and after they moved on (or by), there are four of them each focused on a member and divided by jobs: Tank, Ranged/melee Physical DPS, magical DPS, and Healer, I played Dark Knight and the Tank Job quest focused on the other tank in the band, the Roegadyn Paladin and yes the story is as sad as ever. It was so good that I decided to level one from each jobs, which included leveling my Monk that i have sweared would never touch again, see now, a good story can even make you broke your promise right? (update: I did that and surprisingly there is another side story quest opened up, just call that that a closure, or epilogue, it's good)

It always ended with a GF, always

Features

Ability Prune aside, the ability of Dark knight to clone myself and lots of visual upgrade is appealing, oh yeah there are trust system now in which you run dungeons with your fellow Scions as bots so yeah no more long queue if you leveled as DPS, although Roulette still exists on max level to farm the tomestones, companion has level too and achievements attached to them so I'm still trying to max them out by playing as several jobs and combining them with the role jobs it is an AWESOME way to level grinding since trust dungeons grants you a HUGE chunk of XP, combine them with FATE jewel grinding and you'll level FASTER than your main, moreso the bosses drop loots for you and you only so yeah, FREE LOOT, they are just leveling gears though no tomestones are granted in Trust dungeon.

The Crafting and gathering Jobs are also revamped, started with the so-called restoration of Ishgard the crafting jobs were given a new instanced area which grows along with player's contribution, the gathering profession also will be given a new feature in the next patch in a form of a beast tribe reputation, and to be honest this is another thing I swore off not to touch again because crafting and gathering up to Heavensward were so exhausting and unfun I stopped leveling them on Stormblood, and when Stormblood gave us the Eureka Island rather to a revamped gather-craft things instead I just flipped and never bothered with them again. But to be honest with these addition I probably will just have to broke my promise again (update: I did, and they add new beast tribe dailies for gathering)

Verdict:

Well the for the story itself I gave FFXIV a solid nine, it's long, clocking me at three weeks of gameplay (4-5 hours a day), but it's so great, if heavensward main story gives a 'journey to the west' vibe, and Stormblood is about 'tactical war (part 1) and tragic redemption/consolidation (part 2), Shadowbringer is mostly about limitation of self and how to deal with it since the main villain is continuously engaged with our warrior of light/darkness beyond taunt and threats. The side quests are weirdly more about you knowing more about the world rather than just simply for leveling up or gained money, some can be tiresome and there are lot of them but in the end you'll realize that you learned just a little bit more.

The gameplay is wow, I must say: I can never find myself running around town figuring out what to do next, there is always something to do, even leveling can be combined to other activities like farming jewels and hunting marks (just like the old days, but more varied, also there is a gigantic coeurl with great horns, but she rarely spawned, I tried to take her down solo only to be be quickly floored)

Eden is the new raid (featuring alternate version of past primals fight) and Yorha (collaboration with an android dating sim game called Nier: Automata...wait, what?) is the new Alliance Raid, both are complex and featuring longer fights that drains your brain cell since one encounter can have 10-20 movesets and you are compelled to memorize them all or you (like me) can just lie facedown for two- third of the fight :D

I just got rejected, didn't I?

It's fun that crafting and gathering jobs got some love although they mainly just upped the xp from quests and levequests below level 70 until you zoomed through them, fishing got new fishing boat instances where you and other people can engange in ocean fishing together, you can catches special fish that can buff everyone in the ship, the level 60-70 daily crafting beast tribe quests from stormblood is still relevant in term of XP and reputation grinding, new beast tribe quests featuring the Qiqirn version of The First called the Qitari is a welcomed feature.

A bunch of lore story dump, plot twists, and a lot of can be/could be situation is the meat of this expansion, it's well-written to the details, although sometimes suffered from 'too much explanation' but seeing the Scions are now more battle ready and more involved on the fighting are refreshing takes, we're still the hero and they are the companions and in the end we still win big (although not a complete one).

Yes, the traveling merchant is now on credits, we win BIG

Little post E3... posts

2019-06-25T12:30:00.000+07:00

E3 has some interesting games on display, including Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 (yeah long name) in which I hope ranged weapons will do some damage compared to it's predecessor (It's called Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, just FYI)

The moustache itself is a reason for playing

But no, I'm not preordering anything, not even Keanu Reeves can sway me (no, he's not in a vampire game, but a game about robot hands... or legs... or half a head), even if I preordered I still have to wait a year to play it, I only prordered something if (1) my friends are preordering, and (2) .... uh no, I have no reason for number 2.

On second thought... I DO have reason number 2

Also there's a Final Fantasy VII remake, which is a grim reminder for humanity that they're twenty two years older and will finally see Aerith died again in a glorious expensive 3d animation, and when the scene ends there will be another reminder that they don't have to insert disc 2 but they have to WAIT for the disc to be released, and they're (probably) have to buy it.

I'm not going into any character controversy, please add a story DLC about this meteor, it IS IN THE LOGO!!

Options Matters

2019-03-21T04:52:00.000+07:00

Minor Spoiler for Detroit Becomes Human demo and Dragon Age Inquisition

For the first time Epic Games is bringing Quantic Dreams Titles (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Soul, and Detroit Becomes Human) to PC, Originally exclusives to Playstation and they skipped Steam Store, which makes me wonder will other exclusive PS4 like God of War (Sony) or Spider-Man (Insomniac) will make way to PC too. All titles are on sale on Playstation Spring Store right now and I already took out Detroit Becomes Human from my basket (I like having options), I played Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls already, for some 'next generation point and click adventure' their story was great.

Speaking of options the demos will probably come out in near time, I played the Detroit demo on PS4 two days ago and although it was Quantic Dream's fastest selling title because they boast 'CHOICES MATTER' in their card title and constantly reminding me throughout the demo that all my action would shape the story, I found myself perturbed by the appearance of 'probability success' in the demo mission.

If my choices matter why the probability success? It's a hostage situation and I have a choice to investigate the crime scene first or just to confront the perpetrator, I did the first and although my success probability spiked up to 99% I decided to off the guy (after I got close and calmed him down) and then apparently my brain start destabilizing.

If choice matters, IMO there's a good chance there are 'bad endings' and 'good endings', in Dragon Age: Inquisition I did some terrible choice for the sake of a mission and ended up losing a party member (although it happened IN THE DLC) but I can accept that, there's also credit title cards and stuffs about that decision and the aftermath consequence, that makes me feel that my choices did matter.

But probability success? for what? good endings? am I pushed towards good? most game which offered 'choices' often have half-assed situation for 'bad ending' (ex: your character died, your friend died, something blew up, everyone died) and they sometimes have cutscenes... SHORTER cutscenes compared to the 'good ending' cutscenes, plus they often have action or bonus mission for the good ones (Spec Ops The Line: I'm talking about you), after I finished the Detroit demo there's a flow chart page, which show me my progression, and apparently yes, there are longer cutscenes attributed to the 'good ending'

My choice matters, but apparently my playtime will be shorter if I just turn violent for the sake of a mission =)) =))

Being Saleh: Optional Ending

2019-03-07T17:58:00.001+07:00

Major spoiler for Dragon Age, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XIV

Dragon Age
Bioware's rpg megahit Dragon Age franchise has compelling storyline and combat system, it also featured ending(s) which shaped by the player's choices during the gameplay, alas it also featured something I called 'optional but essential' ending, namely: the dlc

When the third major title Dragon Age Inquisition came out I was excited that I can import my character's vital decision in Dragon Age 1 and 2 via the website (saving me the hassle to install them again) but I stumbled at the end of the dragon quest origin timeline, frowning upon a choice which I'm pretty sure I was never came upon to (I remembered my decisions) not until I read the explanation that it was supposed to be made in the last DAO's dlc: the witch hunt

I mostly turn blind eye on dlc but unfortunately it was essential in DA universe, fortunately I have DA 2 attached with all the dlc. After contemplating that 'last' DLC will be important to the last Dragon Age Inquisition I decided to wait for the GOTY version, bought it and surprised that it wasn't even optional, it was required because in that DLC i lost two party member and (also optional) dismantling my team, if this decision was going to the next dragon age (if there is one) and I didn't play the dlc I probably wondered what happened to them? Then when I was told that they did this and that and this, I will be like: what? When? If they're alive they will probably said things that contradict my old game decision, the whole thing can be so confusing without the dlc.

Final Fantasy Tactics No, i never finished Final Fantasy Tactics, also I used gameshark and save state to cheese out many of the game's mission. I stopped playing in the early 2000 because I probably just got bored and wonder if human beings are more interesting (they're not), I left and never came back until the latest Return to Ivalice raid in Final Fantasy XIV.

Return to Ivalice, like the previous Crystal Tower raid brought major references from earlier Final Fantasy series to FFXIV, precisely FFIII for CT and FF tactics for RTI raid, not until I beat the last wing of the raid that I realized that it was not just a reference object, it's a conclusion of Final Fantasy Tactics if you connect the dots

With names like Ramza, Delita, and Alma headlining the casts you will probably think the similarities was only in the name, it's not until clearing the second raid wing (if you don't finish Final Fantasy Tactics) you'll realized that something else happened long ago but you can't put your finger to it because FFXIV doesn't offer explanation (because it was explained in FF tactics game) then you go and beat the last wing and something happened, again if you never finished FF tactics like me you'll just staring and trying to understand things as the characters mumbling about something that happened in the past, for half an hour.

Well something did happen in the past, Final Fantasy Tactics happens

Here's the major breakdown, from here on it's the MAJOR spoiler for both game, so here goes nothing

In Final Fantasy Tactics Ramza and his band of mercenary found out that their country was built on lies, that the saint they revered is a demon god called ultima, that a race of demon called Lucavi is pulling strings and manipulate the church to resurrect Ultima by initiating war between countries for sacrifices. Ramza cs stopped the demon but after that their fate remains unknown, while the church (now free from Lucavis) labeled them as heretics (which is an idiot move) because they 'desecrated' the saint's faith. Delita becomes king and because of the distrust spread in his royal court got stabbed and die, frustrated, calling Ramza's name and wonder whether he actually changed anything, Oran Durai (another key character) wrote a book claiming Ramza and companions are heroes and detailing the Lucavis plot, he got arrested, branded heretics, burned at stake, and his book locked in the church's vault for years. The cliffhanger ending shows Arazlam Durai: his descendants promised that he will clear his ancestor's name based on the book.

In Final Fantasy 14 we're introduced to the bas Lexentales (Alma and Ramza) which claimed that Oran Durai is not a heretic, based on the book he wrote years ago, they were searching for their father, Jenomis bas Lexentales which rescued after the player cleared the first raid wing (which contains text and references from Final Fantasy Tactics story) and revealed that his true name is Arazlam Durai, as the story goes they found out that Ultima is still alive and still searching for suitable vessel for his resurrection through a special crystal called auracite, the echo granted the warrior of light a vision that long ago it was Alma, Delita, and Oran Durai that planned that Ramza cs will be branded heretics as per Ramza request, apparently Ramza and his companions are also warriors of light but failed to stop Ultima completely, to avoid major roadblock on Delita's ascension to the throne so he can restore order and prepare the next generation to fight ultima after he got complete support from the church the four friends staged the branding while Oran's book will be kept safely in the church's vault, waiting as evidence for the future, unfortunately as the last scene of the final fantasy tactics told us Delita's failed, Oran burned at stake, but his descendants with Alma lives on. As the time goes by Ivalice and Rabanastre are occupied by Garlean empire.

The story continues: The warrior of light is finally beaten all Lucavis (revealed as major characters from Final Fantasy Tactics) and Ultima as well, in the last cutscene Ramza Beoulve (Ramza from FF tactics) and his companions appeared in spirit form and thanks the warrior of light for finishing the job, Delita also appeared and question him whether he's done enough for their sake (reference from both the FF tactics when he died from the strife and when he agreed to be king to clear his friend's name eventually which he failed miserably) they both shake hand and return to the light.

So long story short: in Final Fantasy Tactics Ramza and friends failed to permanently ended Ultima, his remaining friend transpired to support Delita's ascend to the throne by making him denounce Ramza's heroism to vouch for the church's vote in hope he will restore order to the kingdom and diminishing the church's role, he was killed by his court before realizing it and the kingdom razed to the ground and assimilated by the Garlean Empire, many years later the Warrior of Light (a.k.a us) finished the job.

Special Ending: in Final Fantasy Tactics Oran Durai publicly claimed that after fighting ultima Ramza and Alma ride to the sunset, finally free from their disowned noble names as they took up new names, this false claim was brought in the FFXIV story, realizing that proving ultima's existence wasn't going to change anything for their family names due to Garlean occupation (and beside they're already changed it and live as travelling performer) the Bas Lexentales decided to incorporate this claim for their Zodiac Brave Story theatrical act, adding a happy ending to the story.

You see... with this optional ending I can finally brag to my friends which ONLY played Final Fantasy Tactics =))

Persona 5: The 100th hour review

2019-02-26T18:04:00.000+07:00

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILER FOR PERSONA 3, 4, and 5!!!

My palms are sweaty, it's been hours since I first started running around the furthermost floor on Tartarus, reached the penultimate level and back again, grinding every enemy into dust while collecting their items through stealing and/or by the grace of RNG dropping them, since the fatigue system was removed I can do some infinite powerleveling and farming in here without wasting my SP, I don't know about my personas, will they be enough for tomorrow? I know tomorrow in-game I will be facing some serious battle, probably a phase-chained one without the chance of saving and/or recovering between them, I don't know, I'm just stockpiling things and leveling everyone before I got sleepy in real world, one thing I know that tomorrow is the last boss time

In persona 3, the first entry in the franchise who utilizes the social-life-simulation (or by japanese standard: dating simulation a.k.a dating sim) you are a highschooler with double life as a demon hunter at night, aided by personas a.k.a your 'real selves' you punch through days splitting your time between studies, hanging out with friends, dating, polishing your social skill and destroying forces of evil (or take them to aid you in the process), tied with the story every month there are foreshadowing about your next big baddie, giving you 'deadlines' to be considered in your time juggling between romancing a girl or collecting drop money for that fine battle axe.

Neat,

The formula proved success, persona 4 and 5 followed that roadmap while polishing it to be more rewarding and satisfying in every other way. The latest entry, persona 5 make it so it was more rewarding on every activity you choose to 'build' your character, your hierarchical social links now have traits that can help you in battle and/or activities although your friend characters wasn't go as explored deep in persona 3 and 4 (except Morgana) but they just quirky enough to add to your emotions. The battle tailored with the same strategy used in persona games which revolved around enemy weaknesses and how much you can exploit it, the boss battle in persona 5 however is not another turn based hack and slash but utilizes some special moves and strategy, like sending one of your teammates to weaken a boss or a minion. Unfortunately it wasn't fully explored in later bosses because whether you're too overleveled for them or the strategy was just another waiting games, and then you just beat the boss to death before it did the same to you anyway, harder difficulty is easily circumvented by cultivating your teammates and cheesing and grinding your way through encounters

Persona series as a spin off from Megaten series is essentially always a dungeon crawler so the battle have to be interesting enough to keep you looking forward to it, all the activities you do beside dungeon deep diving is solely purposed to help you in that area (beating enemy to pulp or extorting money/items from them) persona 5 took one thing right by keep SP restoring items a rarity and available as crafted goods so even when you're cheesing your way through a dungeon (or a palace in their terms) you're still in danger of running out SP and limiting your moves, guns now have bullets which only replenished when you exit the said palaces and since you can't survive with physical attacks alone the feeling of dread is always with you, until a certain point on the story anyway, similar to the lifting of fatigue system on the later days of persona 3, fortunately the tracks still composed by Shoji Meguro which is provide great tunes during dungeon exploring and battles. Story in persona series are always revolving around the player character, about their close friends, enemies, rivals, local government and business, and just ordinary folks trying to live their way from day to day basis (pictured in day to day activities on the game), the main story was complemented by side stories about the player's companions adding depth to emotional scenes and reveal some unexpected twist (usually dark) that made you want to think, perhaps the real enemy is not a shady-ass government/global business venture/questionable research megacorp, but the way ordinary people treat other ordinary people, daily, weekly, until it break down others and culminating in conflict and submission, or make an unexpected twist towards scarred adaptability and partial acceptance. The push'n pull of human emotion which can not be solved just by dungeon delving and defeating monsters.


We're dealing with societal issues while accompanied by anthromorphic cats, awesome!

Speaking of dread feelings, Persona 5 probably good enough to feed your fear of too much dungeon delving, however, they failed to infuse that fear to you for the endgame story, you see in persona 3 a month from the endgame the story revealed itself and cast you that dreaded feelings over the next in-game month while you still schooling and shooting arcades, at the night before the D-day (and every other night if you prefer it) you will be out there in the dungeons recruting personas, fusing, stealing items, look for rare monsters, amassing wealth and stockpiling recovery item, and leveling things up, all for the sake because you know, tomorrow (probably) will not last. I apparently made mistake by playing persona 4 golden rather than the original version which cast similar feeling to persona 3 towards endgame (persona 4 original however is not, based on what I read). In persona 5 the dreaded feelings is lost towards endgame because the story forced you, unexpectedly, thrust your ass to the last dungeon because of some (bleh) 'circumstances' in the real world, suddenly you have no closure at all for your all activities and social links because you lost sense of time due to simultaneous cutscenes that push you towards this circumstances, worst of all these cutscenes sometimes took all your free day leaving you without nothing to do at night (except sleep and advances your day). I have several loose ends in my soc link before the 'dreaded cutscene marathons' (haha) leaving several my buddy's persona unevolved and one memento request (which will be a breeze in my current level). When I suddenly thrusted in the 'final' dungeon I got so angry because I don't know which save I can load to make up for this day to day fiasco, then I just powered through it for a whole real world day, just grinding and fusing, and collecting things, back to entrance, refresh, repeat and as a result I bagged the final boss battle in two tries (one didn't go through because I misclick during a crucial moment, talk about sweaty hand), however epic the boss fight is and the tear-jerking end, the game add salt to my wounds by adding personal cutscenes after the boss fight, it's like a kinda 'haha you failed to raise this guy persona so he didn't appear on this scene' I ONLY NEED ONE MORE STAR AND ONE MORE DAY YOU JERK )(&(^%^%%!^&#$!*^!!!!!!!

Pictured: Jerk

I fell asleep during the end credits, fortunately at the day of my dungeon marathon my two year old is sleeping early so I have more time to finish the game

Oh look, now there's a new game+ which carried your initial persona, level, social and traits level, and items so I planned to do just so just to complete my social links loose ends (after I finished FFXIV's final story arc) , but it still a dick move Atlus/Sega, wasting days by adding cutscenes after a cool penultimate job, culminating in shoving everyone to a no exit dungeon, it's not okay, very very not okay.

Dual Wield: 'Corrupted'

2018-10-12T22:39:00.001+07:00

Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft worlds and lore can sometimes be interesting enough for me to dissect (since both are easy enough to read and play) Light vs Darkness is no stranger in every story albeit with some variety of degree, good vs evil (not so good), not so good vs evil, good, not so good, neutral, ambiguous, and evil locked in combat of wits and fists/ swords and/or a giant rocket launcher disguised as a suitcase (what?) But in the end it's still light and darkness and their interaction is not always at each other throats.

WARNING: MAJOR/MINOR SPOILER FOR FFXIV AND WARCRAFT LORE

Final Fantasy XIV

The player character in FFXIV is called the Warrior of Light which in the first phase of the game are combating the Darkness representatives: the body-snatching Ascian, however in the second phase of the story it was revealed that the game world itself is split into multiple (13?) parallel world with it's own affinity for Light and Darkness, the last world is revealed to have been swallowed by Darkness and becomes Void, birthing only summonable monsters called Voidsent. The first world however is also in the verge of swallowed up by Light due to their version of Warriors of Light grown so strong that no evil can defeat them, these Warrior of Light becomes so miserable that they seek to bring back darkness into their world by cooperating with the Ascian and becoming the warrior of darkness in the player's world, from here the plot becomes so convoluted that I can't really understand anything and give myself up to the internet's wiki. This whole Light/Darkness balance seemed to be poorly conceived by the writers that it was never revealed in the future chapters, small exclusions in some short storylines though. After that the FFXIV story is returned to the lighter evil empire vs noble rebel stuff.

World of Warcraft

While FFXIV decided to adapt more grounded basic storylines of good vs evil after Warriors of Darkness event, WOW seemed to do the opposite, after establishing the light as the pinnacle of 'good' power in Wrath of The Lich King expansion, they decided to tone down the light vs dark tone by choosing the more neutral villain in the Cataclysm, they upped the conflict of dark vs light in Pandaria where player must battle the embodiment of negative emotion, and tone it down again in Warlord of Draenor expansion where players travelled to the parallel world to once again combat the invasive Draenor version 2' orcs.
After that WOW released the picture book Chronicle vol 1 as setup for their newest expansion with some new/retconned storyline: The Burning Legion a.k.a Greatest threat of the WOW universe apparently was created by their leader: The Fallen Titan Sargeras as a countermeasure for battle with another bigger threat: The ever-hungry-devourer-of-all void gods with Azeroth's old gods as one of their regiment, Sargeras think that only fel magics and enough chaos to fuel it can be enough to counter them, while the Naaru as the embodiment of Light and order also tried to counter both The Burning Legion and The Void, in this storyline both The Light and The Fel used extreme measure to convert sentient beings to become their warriors, including instill zealotry and forced obedience on their army, WOW seemed wanting to place these two powers in the same danger zone by especially placing the order of light as bad as the chaotic fel, culminating in the destruction of the Naaru leader as it tried to convert the hardcore demon hunter and fel magic user Illidan Stormrage into the light while he believe that fire must be fight with fire (fel with fel) in the end by combining powers of every kind Sargeras is beaten and sealed.
Apparently WOW is not finished yet with this new light thing, after it was used to resurrect the freshly dead Talia Menethil (Arthas Menethil's sister) making her the first 'light-undead' in WOW (and open up possibilities for undead paladins), in the new Mag'har Orc storyline which required player to travel once again to parallel world Draenor to recruit Mag'har Orcs (uncorrupted version of orcs) it was revealed that after Sargeras is sealed and his army diminished and scattered in the (space) wind, the Draenor version 2' Draenei as the innate follower of light begin to enforce their way of light to the more shamanic neutral orcs (another excuse for orc paladins) sparking new war, in short: Draenei become the light nazi.

while the storyline is cut short it was clear that WOW tried to establish that every power can be corrupt: including the initial good powers like Nature and Light, or Neutral as in Arcane and the Elements. They also want to establish that the all devouring powerhouse of chaos like the Fel and Void can be wield by beings to fight the more... evil... dark, version of them.. darker... darkest, darkesest (yeah I know it's confusing, my head is already gone, it exploded two paragraph earlier)

So yeah I'm gonna stop here and wait until I can make an evil undead paladin, hey I already have a paradoxal undead monk, chi is not fussy about manifesting in a rotting, jawless body apparently

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansion (Warframe)

2018-06-30T12:48:00.000+07:00

Warframe and me got in the wrong foot, for years I always thought that Warframe is a team based shooter, not a co op shooter (a.k.a shooting aliens with friends -- ~~and/or other people who might left you alone to die in a mission~~), a month ago I rectify that mistake by actually playing it. That's why it falls into lagging behind expansion category, warframe as it now is on update 23 and some people said it's a different game than two years ago.

Warframe is actually quite simple, it's an instance based shooter where every mission is take place in a random/scripted (huge) instance, you are called Tenno, a superpowered being clad in a superpowered armor called warframe, you also equipped with superpowered guns and melee weapons, in some case you are accompanied by superpowered pets and can put a superpowered wingsuit that made you fly in the void of space and take down capital ship with a big final fantasy styled superpowered swords. The story of warframe is also simple at best, the entire milky way galaxy is warring on each other and it's up to the Tenno to restore peace (by shooting aliens, mutants, altered humans, magical beings, and other Tennos).

Yeah!!! SUPERPOWER!!

THE GAMEPLAY

There are total of 57 warframes for you to decide how to wreak havoc on them, it's like your class, some warframe uses pure strength to destroy things, while others uses elemental or psychic powers, some can summon allies and mirages, buff friends, going invisible and backstabbing things, also fly and raining destruction from above, for short:it is an equivalent of a space ninja, you can run, shoot, wall running, double jump, slide, glide, performing melee combos, and in some cases stick to the wall, combined with wide variety of guns and melee weapons you'll have a good times choosing your way to kill things IF you can bypass the reality that Warframe is a free to play title and microtransactions is bound coming for you sooner or later.

You'll start with choosing from three initial warframes, the Excalibur is the melee type with decent shield and armor, the Mag uses crowd control and pick enemies off from afar, the Volt is the assault type with it's electrical and shield powers. After you complete the initial story you'll begin jumping planets (from mercury to void beyonds) if you follow the story you'll be decked with initial guns and melee weapons, also an auto turret at the end. Whatever you choose you can obtain the other two on a later time.

Yep, most people picked it first

On every planet there are nodes, on each node: a mission, you'll begin unlocking nodes one by one, each node have a set path and level, when you complete the mission on that node the next one unlocks, there are branching path sometimes, at the end of planets there are junctions guarded by a shadow warframe, you can only access this junction if you complete the planet's requirements (what level are you, how many enemies killed, how much resource you have, etc) then you can access the junction, kill the guard warframe and open the next planet (with it's own set of nodes and requirements), Story quests are scarce and sometimes it requires you to unlock several planets or areas

Your warframe, weapons, pets, and other combat tools have levels, every mission and almost everything you do on a mission will contribute experience to your arsenal, leveling them up, you can slot mods (cards contained stat modifier) to everything making them stronger, the higher your weapons/warframe/tool level the more mods you can slot them although equipments are capped at level 30, mods also have levels where the higher their level, the more capacity they will take, thus experimenting with mods and arsenal is a fun thing to do between missions.

Your operator level is called rank, it determines what warframe and weapons you can wield, for example Lex Prime, a very good pistol requires you to be rank 8, you don't automatically level rank, instead when you raise an equipment level to max you gain something called affinity, you can also farm affinity from missions, when you die on a mission you have a chance to revive 4 times, each cost 10% affinity. When your affinity is high enough there will be a popup message said you can take a test to level up your rank, you can only take this test once a day, upping a rank also gain some benefit, like increased mod cap, reputation gain cap per day, and how many resource extractor you can place at a time.

Enemies on Warframe never dropped a warframe or weapons, instead they dropped resources, mods, and equipment blueprints, missions also reward blueprints and components, you can then craft your own equipment provided you have enough resource and components, crafting on warframe is both extensive and vital, every warframe requires components and every components required abundant resources, crafting a warframe takes days and each components take half a day, it makes gaining new warframe or weapons a significant achievement...

Or not...

THE MONEY

You see, every warframe and weapons in this game can be instantly purchased by platinum ( the real money currency), so there I dropped the bomb, Your Oberon Prime warframe? gained by months of extensive random mission farming for resource and opened random relics until you have those components blueprints? Your friend can just shell 20 dollars and he's all set (they even gave you bonus mod for each purchase), you can also subscribe to twitch prime and they gave you prime warframes each months, running out of inventory slot for warframes (default is two)? Just purchase them from the plat shop, tired waiting for your Bronco Prime to finish at your foundry (crafting table) just finish them for a little plat.

I'm not going to the pay to win debate here but I'll tell you something for a little taste of warframe: your max leveled Volt warframe is not on par with say: a max leveled Volt Prime warframe, while you can craft the Volt Prime you probably won't survive to see it's blueprint drops, which is from opening high level relics, which can be found from running a high level missions, which can be accessed if you already unlocked the high level planet nodes, which is almost impossible to solo on your initial and story-gained warframes.

I crafted Limbo, Oberon, Nyx and none of them, my weapons, and my collection of mods can survive a level 25-30 mission with ease, I limped through Planet Neptune but then I failed repeatedly on a main quest because I can't kill fast enough. I returned to earth to farm my Gara warframe components in order to gain an edge on Neptune (it probably won't). It's still have three days to complete as I wrote this, but still... crafting warframes, guns, melee weapons, pets, and combat tools provided on each rank should give you a feeling of becoming more powerful each rank gained, instead it's just changed your playstyle with miniscule power level change. Why solo? Well I am a solo player and since not much group will help on just a random node unlock you pretty much did the story quests solo, unless the nodes have special traits like 20% increased drops or whatever.

Gold can't buy anything, platinum can!!

I love free/freemium/b2p to play titles because I can point exactly what made me stopped playing (work points on Archeage, hard dungeons on Wildstar, my inability to jump on the right time on Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2), in warframe going from the initial pre-playing feeling of "I want to be a xxxx warframe" to "Yeah I only got a Nyx component at the moment, it's probably cool too" should be enough for me to uninstall this game, going from "what you want to be" to "you can only be this for now" is a major irony of this game, especially when combined with the statement "you can be anything if you pay". But the fact is I'm still playing warframe because the side missions are fun enough and always crowded with people queueing, the void missions are also fun provided you have a relic which in my case -- almost depleted (I'm dying on missions), invasions are always good for farming resource and components, also seeing other people with their colorful warframe and devastating skills/ techniques are always fun (since they did all the work and I just picked up after them) =))

THE VERDICT

In short: if you're not picky of what you want to be in a multiplayer game warframe is a good fast paced stylish third person shooter, although it does have unhelpful tutorial and most knowledge you gain from this game came from asking people on general chat and wiki articles. On the contrary if you do want to be a specific thing in game I recommend you to buy them (warframe, weapon, etc) since the farming can be quite tedious. Also bring a friend or two, I'm not calling them shooting with friends for no reason.

It also made me regret buying this

Being Saleh: Longer and Harder

2018-03-03T18:58:00.001+07:00

Oh, hi!!

So it's been a long time since my last post, being a dad is one of the cause but I'm kinda jumping between games this past year, most of them are JRPGs, several FFXIV, WOW, and ESO sessions and on some month: not playing anything at all.

But enough all that, today I want to talk about WOW, you know, yes it's still exists :D

As Legion expansion entered it's final chapter as of the release of patch 7.3.5, and the end of the third invasion of the burning crusade: I finally leveled up my paladin, my sixth level 110 toon

The most controversiaI thing in this patch and subject to most debate on online forums is probably the world zone scaling, it basically a guild wars 2 type of character syncing only this time it's the world that leveled up with you instead of you leveled down to match the zone's recommended level. Blizz initially did this for the Legion expansion area but now it's live for all WOW area: So what's this thing did for the players?

Basically it gives freedom for new characters to choose where they want to go to level up, the wow vanilla zone (Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor) is designed for player level 1-60, the Outland and Northrend is now a level 60-80 zones, Cataclysm and Pandaland is 80-90 zones, while the dreaded Draenor is still a level 90-100 zone. The scaling also means the level 1-100 dungeons are now also scaled to player's level, making them more challenging a.k.a as my lazy self said (without any body part references): longer and harder, making players leveling is now a return to the classic way: questing.

As I read the patch notes I realized this is the thing that I can get behind to, but I still wonder... so I decided to tackle them out, I started a mage, the class that I avoid like a plague, decked him with full heirloom gears, I rolled a goblin which can't leave their initial area until the storyline is completed (btw this is my third goblin) my goal is of course: max level -- with this much handicap

I (finally and blisfully) left lost isle when my mage reached level 20, then I browsed the war board on ogrimmar, the usual route for goblins on this level is aszhara but since I have the quest achievement I decided to go to stonetalon instead, skipping ashenvale (which I completed on my warlock many many years ago). From Stonetalon i continued to Desolace, completed them both, then I hightailed to Feralas, Felwood, and a bit of Winterspring, after I dinged 60 with some help from dungeon quests (they gave decent exp but the dungeon itself is not) I decided to quit... at least for now

So what did I get to level the worst class (for me at least) on the worst looking race from 1 to 60? The leveling process itself is a mixed bag, but remember that those area is from cataclysm era so the story felt a little outdated, I mean I still love them and find the forgotten little bit of the story, like uniting the centaur on desolace is great, but still... it's somewhat off... I can't really put my finger on what's wrong, it just feel... odd, could be because I'm playing a mage though.

But nevertheless i dinged 60 so let's mix things a bit, I have a level 60 pally from... I can't remember actually, on this level I can choose outland or northrend content, and because outland kinda sucks i decided to go to northrend, so Howling Fjord is next and the next thing happened I blew my way to level 75 completing it and lo!! it feels great, but then I made a mistake by choosing Icecrown as my next leveling field, it was exhausting since the quests required you to fly back and forth across those walls, although it feels epic but it was tiring, i dinged 80 without completing it and decided to go to Pandaria instead of Cata zones.

I have all the loremaster title for the xpacs started from cataclysm, so I'm completely familiar with them, my 80 to 90 is spent most in Jade Forest and some Valley of Four Winds, my 90 to 100 is spent on the dreaded Frostfire Ridge and a little bit of Gorgrond, garrison helped out a bit. From this experience I saw that 80 to 100 is faster than my other leveling process, and it's not too bad after all, all the nostalgia is strong within this process.

I also decided that my not-to-feel-good leveling process from 1-60 is because I'm not good with ranged casters :D

So what's the overall conclusion from all this all-new-butsomewhatold leveling process thingie? I honestly don't have one, but I'd like to try again on my all new fresh void elf/zandalari troll toon when Battle for Azeroth rolls in, that might be a proof that this patch is good enough for me.

And yes I dinged max level on my pally, I already told you on the first lines of this post :P

Being Saleh: Alt Invaders

2016-11-27T23:18:00.000+07:00

As my friends are knee-deep in mythic progression and my online time become less and less dedicated. I found myself veered once more into my altholicism, at first I max leveled my troll warlock, as I realized many people specced destruction I quickly swapped my artifact to affliction but then blizz changed how unstable affliction works, which doesn't bode well to long time warlocks, but as I only played affliction like two days I can adapt to that, got into heroics in several days then I moved on.

And have a sweet scythe as a souvenir

For me Mists of Pandaria will always be the most memorable expansion ever (proved by my Wakener title) and monk still become my greatest failure of class (due to their drastic rehaul on Warlords of Draenor) but I have a sudden urge to tried out the class once more, and so armed with my renewed determination (but still zero skill-playing, and zero f*** about me as an abysmally bad tank) my Mistweaver becomes a Brewmaster

The keg comes for free

Cruising through Draenor (and Garrison) once again for leveling 90 through 100 is not a welcomed throwback thursday (or in my case: monday) but somehow I did it in mere 10 hour-ish, by spamming dungeons, questing, mining, and (beyond my belief): pet battling.

Brewmastering in legion is radically different from other tanks, while warriors and paladins rely on damage mitigation, druids on dodging and reflecting damages, Death Knights and Demon Hunters on repleneshing lost HP, Monks are all about managing the stagger stack and a little bit of everything else, every damage dealt on the Brewmaster was mitigated by 40% but with a catch that the mitigated damage will be dealt slowly over time, more damage received means more will be transferred to the stagger stack, there are several skill built on the brewmaster to manage this stack, from delaying the damage for some seconds, or even cut it up to 50% of the damage still on the stagger stack, all these skills are brew-based making a brewmaster the real drunken fist class, Monk also deploying dodge as their mastery increasing their haste for the cooldown of those brew-based skills, or (depending on your talent) relying on their mastery gift ot the ox to a chance of self heal. In my case I choose to rely on brew skills, relying on the ox brew talent to instantly refilling any brew and my energy, which means my HP is goes slowly and steadily down when I'm tanking a dungeon, making some healer probably struggling to keep my HP full, you can't do that I'm sorry, I'm not speccing that talent :D

In like a week my brewmaster already entered the heroic dungeons, while learning my class I found the fact above and somewhat giggling, most people made monk to become a windwalker which is one of the highest damaging melee dps class at this moment, playing a windwalker somewhat reminding me of rogues (without daggers) and it's also one of the fun melee dps class (with their shoryukens and hadokens if you specced those), mistweaving is also fun but requiring more concentration than before (MOP xpac) as I lost most of my hugging AOE healing (healing spinning crane kick is no longer available), also my new area healing requires me to consume more MP with random targets but at least they also apply heal over time

Legion expansion still draws me in but as I one class away from my quintessential quintet achievement I decided to take a short break and return to (again to my surprise) Guild Wars 2, why? Because of my friends (again). So I'm looking forward to bash them (and the game) in my next blog post :P

Also: I'm in hell, plants hell

Being Saleh: Proceeding into Legion, You are (not) prepared

2016-10-26T14:26:00.000+07:00

So at the end of patch 7.0, what have I found out about legion?

"Gating" Content
Apparently this was a big deal, as I mention before in order to unlock world quests you need to be friendly with all five major faction in Broken Isle, but it's just rep grind by questing, every faction story quest can give you up until at least honored, but since world quest is considered major content Blizz changed it so you will just have to go to ~~Dad~~ Khadgar and talk to unlock it.

Suramar world quest is still "gated" behind the story campaign, but the (optional) mythic only dungeons (Arcway and Court of Stars) are now account wide, if you have attuned to them in the past it will now accessible to all your characters, the Good Suramaritan achievements needed to unlock the Broken Isle flying (part 1) is still "gated" behind reputation, you'll need a little before exalted to unlock the final quest.

But rep grind is good, I still like to take things slow and I don't think it was a gated content at all, I guess grinding 9.898.983.245-ish Ketra Orc in Lineage 2 really build your character :P

Social Life
Okay here's the thing, I mostly stayed far away from writing about social interaction in WOW, because my social interaction with random people ranged from "git gud, go kill yourself" to "LOL LOL LOL". I joined a guild in the end of WOLTK, a small one with only five active (extremely casual) members (and a very drunk guy), I never came back after we take a very long Christmas break, after that when I started a warrior I'm basically guildless on my playtime through the three expansion.

Actually not, I did joined a guild at the end of MOP, it's started with a conversation with a friend in a different server about how he might came back and need a raid partner, so I leveled a horde monk as a healer, but he never came back so I decided to join a local (almost casual) guild, stayed for like a month, take another long break (6 months), login, and found out the guild has been moved to another server in order to raid mythic (looks like PVP server had their own disadvantages)

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

In legion I asked my friend to let me join his guild, a decent raiders guild although it has many members, my motivation to join a guild is to expand my WOW social experience, a project that I have been cultivating from the end of MOP (since I want to see how the community has changed since Blizz made everything more accessible and guild an incentive) and then it goes down with my former guild, but Warlords of Draenor is not exactly a good expansion so.. that's that, and I started from scratch again.

Being a person with erratic online time (and unpredictable logout time) My guild raid experience is consisted only in three Emerald nightmare boss kill, but it was a good run, I also noticed that normal group experience is somewhat a rarity among talks in guild, aside from my friends abandoned the normal runs and being a strict "only above heroic" content-- usually it was mythic (with at least +1 mythic keystone), I was once asked I have a mythic keystone which is somewhat hilarious since I never entered any mythic dungeon (unless you count my experience checking in the arcway entrance, the one with the blobs) but in his experience it's probably me who is ~~an old creep~~ odd since I never tried out mythic while so many talks in guild revolving on that and the content was out months ago (although mostly looking for tank and healer and I'm neither both) but I guess it was better than say... being called "lol where have you been that you didn't even touched months worth of content" (which is also hilarous since i don't need to be somewhere to "not doing this old content" but I probably playing Candy Crush Soda at those time), also I got kicked from my FFXIV guild by being offline for four months (was playing Tales of Zestiria, good game, don't watch the anime)

I still want my room back....

Anyway, back to running months ago content: PUG-ing always an option though, with those premade group options (and now: quick join) it becomes clear why people burn through content quickly, but to me being in a guild now is a part of my continuous experience in WOW and to complement the LFG and LFR system, so I won't premade with random stranger unless I'm playing an alt. I'm also glad that ele shaman is one of the worst neglected class in WOW which --combined with my lazy-ass playstyle-- contradict everything people expected of me. But I won't expect anything from MMO people, my days of two hours alone in Jin'do the PUGbreaker taught me that people in MMOs are impatient ~~dicks~~ drogbars, and it's fine because hey, after two hours I finally downed that guy (with the 10th-ish PUG group) and live to see another day of one hour queueing plus two hours waiting, that's something worth writing and talked about rather than "oh we downed this boss, move along" -kind-of-social-relationships, if people can be comitted to such things as 15 hours raiding a week (which is IMO an equivalent of a part time job) I can commit to ~~being an arrogant toerag~~ waiting for guild people to fill my "obsolete content" groups


And also gaze at the greatest Hydaelyn crystal impersonator

Ok, let's continue this oddly satisfying rant on the next patch

Being Saleh: Legion!!!

2016-09-24T05:49:00.001+07:00

So at the end of Warlords of Draenor, the alternate reality Gul'dan escaped to the main timeline and begin the third (fourth??) invasion of the burning legion demons, and to be honest he started off pretty nicely, summoning every demon WOW player have vanquished during this 15 years, destroying both the Horde and Alliance head squads and seemed to have endless supply of energy and portals to finally summon the big ol' Sargeras himself,

So as I started questing my first demon hunter on the new Broken isles zone something bugged me, why didn't he, you know, just did it? There's literally nothing in his way now as The Alliance and Horde are both retreating

The answer is this:

BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY.... oh nevermind

That's my troll warlock holding his artifact weapon: Scepter of Sargeras, in this new expansion every class and spec got their one and only weapon, which can be obtained via a story quest, it will level up as you do and as the expansion progress. All 36 spec has their own story, for example: demon hunters sent to retrieve their mighty warblades/warglaives from traitorous ones, while warlock (destruction specifically) was sent to coax Gul'dan and stole the scepter which apparently is the key to summoning more demons, so yeah the reason why Gul'dan didn't do what he's supposed to do is because I stole his boomstick, ruin the summoning rituals and use the scepter to summon multiple chaotic unstable portals which destroy some of his army, I was hoping there's a scene where Sargeras scold him for his failure, it'll be priceless.

Welcome to Legion, the newest expansion of World of Warcraft, and guess what: I'm not lagging behind :D

As I mention on my previous post that I will return to WOW only for friends, they're just recently started playing so i joined them, but this expansion was so refreshing and liberating that my mostly solo experience was so good, in this xpac I decided to retire my Warrior (since I don't like the look of their artifact weapons) and have a hard time choosing between my warlock, create my long time dream shaman, or starting a demon hunter. In the end I did them all mostly because the pre-expansion event -- the demon invasion was a good way to level up, I ended up leveling my shaman to 100 solely with demon invasion, that's 90 level straight in a week, so at the beginning of the expansion I have three level 100.

Stories!!

The new legion questing zones are Aszuna, Highmountain, Val'sarah, and Stormheim, they scaled with your level (100-110) so you can choose which zone you want to pursue first, the last zone: Suramar was solely for level 110, the story begins with the pre expansion broken shore scenario where Alliance and Horde fleet tried to prevent Gul'dan from summoning his army, they failed, like really failed, and in that mess people died, important people (not Thrall though: spoiler) even with this Game Of Thrones-que events I was still shocked about how ugly their death is, it's like watching Sean Bean died, twice, or three times and then watch a Fel Reaver teabagging his corpse. After choosing your artifact weapon and obtain it you'll gain access to your order hall based on your class, this is where everyone with the same class as you hang out, Shaman got the maelstorm from Cataclysm as their home base. In this not-garrison place you can research your weapon, powered it up, unlock new traits, and send champions to do some mission which will yield artifact powers, xp, and quest items.

Although saving Go'el feels a bit of a chore now (spoiler: he's retired)

So back to the zones, don't worry about class halls, they can be managed through the new android/ios application so you can run around helping people, logout and manage them in your bed before sleep (like I did), the premise of the Legion story is simple: Find pillars of Azeroth (artifact forged by Titans) to thwart Gul'dan once and for all, but then as you quest throghout the zones you'll realize that it wasn't so simple to the point when you gather some of them you'll realize what you have lost and the legion was still going strong and maybe just maybe this is the expansion where the hero will screwed up because all the bad guys seems like doing their job so goddamn well (even after you stole Sargeras' boomstick). To make matter worse you'll realize that every step you take is only opened up more questions.

Suramar is a home of the nightborne, a faction of night elves recently allied themselves with the Burning Legion, in order to help some of the exiled resistances (called the Nightfallen) you have to infiltrate it, walking in disguises, avoiding demons patrol, killing some of their leaders discreetly and so on, it's assassin's creed style gameplay (combined with the instinct to quickly find a getaway route before the guards overwhelm you) the nightfallen themselves are mana addicted so each day you'll have to gave their mana fix (gathered around Suramar), it's heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time, and as Suramar is connected with all the previous zones there are denizens around it that will need your help too, from a tauren shaman tried to calm the raging elements around Suramar to the lone druid fighting a hundred years war against army of arachnids, their story are also well written to the point I want to do more for them even when the questline is ended.

World, Class, and Profession Quests!!

World Quests is the new daily, after got friendly with all the faction on Broken Isles it will open up and will be shown on your map, it's a dynamic event tied to factions, you got into the area you'll get the quest, finish it and you'll get repuatation for one or several factions, they also yield you equipments, order hall resources for missions, and/or artifact powers. Every day you'll get an emissary quest, finish five specific faction world quests and you got additional reward and reputations

Professions are getting better, every material is harvestable on any level, plus you'll get profession quests from your trainer, some item you found during gathering process will nab you another quests. On crafting process you'll get legion recipes from your trainer's quests, the things you can create also upgradable, cutting the materials needed to make it, this way you will never go back to low level area just to gather materials to level up your professions so you can create something or depending on your garrison to level it up but the quests sometimes take you to old zones for a bit of nostalgia (if you're a veteran player)

Umm.. no, he's not in this expansion, get back to your own obsolete content!!!

Endgame and Verdict (for now)

There's only one raid right now: The Emerald Nightmare, unfortunately no LFR wings has opened yet, but in two days I have finished all the heroics on my shammy, they're not that hard anyway, I haven't tried mythic dungeons yet since my friends are currently swept away by normal/heroic/mythic raid (and by wives) :P, but I love how encounter was designed, Maw of Souls is my favorite since it's taken place in a ghost ship with some familiar Lich King characters, dungeons also can be tied to world quests and have some rare monsters among the mobs which will yield you additional loots, relics, and artifact powers. I just recently finished my shaman order hall campaign quests (which made me travel to old cataclysm zones, another welcomed nostalgia).

For short it was a blast, a real blast, I never found myself so invested and never look at the XP bar since the age I stopped my xp gained to experience the whole burning crusade quests, and I definitely never found plot twists so good since the day Putress bombed both the Horde and Alliance in WOLTK, Warlords of Draenor was so bad in everything (except garrison) some of them are have to be tied in nicely in Legion, but yeah I guess we can just leave alternate reality Draenor to rot.

Although I love this toy

Foreclosure: Getting Married (and my summarized opinion)

2016-04-27T17:15:00.000+07:00

A little flashback.....

My gaming activity in 2015 are mostly divided between lagging behind expansion where I finally played and reviewed newest feature/ expansion of a certain game for one or two months before jumping to another game, and JRPGs, especially the final fantasy franchises and tales of zestiria (my last rpg before I broke my arm in a traffic accident)

oh yeah nevermind the title, this post is all bout my summarized opinion about MMORPGs nowadays :D

2015 was also my best solo experience, I was kinda surprised there how easy it is now, although some solo rewards are becoming more and more aesthetically abysmal (WOW's LFR) or in a whole different case you can solo the whole thing (SWTOR's KOTFE), FFXIV gave me a whole soloing project for my relic weapon while ESO gave me a whole time downloading their (already downloaded but undetectable) client......

The big score is I finally got my legendary ring on WOW, yay!! My first legendary item on a MMORPG!!! well that wasn't big deal actually since you can do it in two months or less if you're really lucky and don't mind a little grind, and it's soloable from start to finish, and also since you can have a bodyguard it becomes so much easier. The legendary questline's story is not that deep, interesting at the very least, and yes it's foreshadowing about what will come on the next expansion

But 2016 is also where I didn't see anything new about new MMORPGs, there are few localized selection like Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online, and Tree of Saviour but as far as Korean grinder go, they're still... well.. grindy, but at least they have good graphic, I've already covered Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online have one of the best character looks and customization which enables you to create a more distinct character from anyone else while Tree of Savior is a welcomed comeback to old hardcore Ragnarok players (not me, never played it) :)

The other trend I see is how devs marketed their games which contains RPG elements, have online modes, but never said that it's an MMORPG, check out Destiny, this online shooter games lets you customize your character and weapons so they suit your (shooter) playstyle, and it's an MMO, it has raid, it lets you join people to take down big things by shooting it until it falls, also you will have a role, titan is the tank, warlock is the spellcaster, hunters are dpser, but Destiny never marketed as MMORPG, it was more like called... shooter... with friends

Destiny isn't the first shooter with friends, many years ago Trion released Defiance, a crossover action shooter game and TV shows, it doesn't fare well and the TV show got cancelled (although I liked it) and the game wasn't very good since it lack contents and story, it also have weird level up and character customization

But still the trend continues, enter The Division from Ubisoft where you shoot things (with friends) in chaotic virus-ridden New York, the game was hyped to the max, Dark Souls 3 lets you invite people to get help with bosses and mobs fight, GTA V has online modes where you can play with (or kill) other people in the city of Los Santos, Meh, even hack and slash like diablo already did that. MMORPG was stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and yet nowadays games are so much diverse and combined much genres, none of the game I said above are marketed as MMORPG, and yet you play with number of people and have roles (even if it only "shoot everything"), yes it's probably not massive enough but there's no denial that games becomes more about sharing experience why? Because playing game with other people (including friends) (apparently) is (more) fun =))

Soooo I probably won't cover much about MMORPG or gaming in the future, partially because of my outdated rig, and also: I'm getting married, but mostly it's the rig. I probably will post some of my gaming activities as shared experience, if player 2 is willing and we both have the time :D

So here I am, thanks to all of you who is willing to read my rants to this day, especially my guildmates and online friends, and bye for now

/bow

Blade and Soul: A Latency-based Delayed Action Review

2016-02-10T22:44:00.000+07:00

I actually have a weird feeling that NCSOFT only released it's 2012 martial arts MMORPG Blade and Soul in the west to counter Pearl Abyss/Daum's Black Desert, since it's four years past it's prime, and since NC has games with similar gameplay (action based) like Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 their difference becomes aesthetic only, and since Black Desert was restricted to US only players Blade and Soul gave access to worldwide, with one problem of course: latency...

Latency is the weird factor in action based MMORPG, In Guild Wars 2 the problem was diminished by the dynamic combat while in Wildstar and Blade n Soul your survival and dps depends on every button you hit and the exact time you hit it since many skills triggered by enemy's (both PVP and PVE) action. So yeah in blade and soul you'll dash around enemies, countering their interrupts, interrupts their deadly moves, grabbing them and throwing them around, mount them and lock them. So when your internet is so blashpemously late on receiving/sending the interrupt/counter data because of the high latency you might ended up very very dead.

Minor spoiler: They'll also be dead in the next few minutes

Babes and cats

Blade n soul has four races: the normally human (Jin), the half giant barbarians (Gon), the little fox-cat-other cute fluffy furry things-midget-hybrid (Lyn) and the oversexualized nymphs (Yun), and since it's Korean you'll find breast slider on your female characters customization and yes they'll also jiggling when your character moves ~~so make sure to take a lots of screenshots and videos~~.... anyway, the classes are Blademaster (shiny swordsman!!), The Destroyer is a Gon-only axe wielder with slow but devastating skills, Force Master utilizes ranged attacks with flashy finishers, Kung Fu Master has long unbroken (depends on your latency) combo attacks, Assassins has incredible (again depends on your latency) timing-based skills, Summoners are Lyn only and have cats (which makes them easily the superior race and class), and Blade dancer is a chibi version Lyn only Blademaster. As you can see all the classes are damage dealers so it's another game without the holy trinity

My story
In Blade and Soul --just like any other action games -- your main attack is your left mouse button which is a resource generator while your right is usually a resource spender -- more devastating -- attack, your other alphabet skills ranged from crowd control to combo finisher, for example as a Destroyer I can press E to lift my enemy, press E again to wedge them against my axe to replenish my HP, press X to slam them towards the ground, and finally delivering the final blow with my right button skill, It's weirdly satisfying because the animation is so smooth and oh so so bloody :D. When i was knocked down by an enemy my X skill becomes a counter skill which whirlwind the entire enemy but if for some reason the enemy can follow the knockdown with say: a legbreaker lock (latency matters here) I will sustain a heavy damage or even KO'd, fortunately during the time my HP depleted I can do things like crawling out of the reach of enemies and then meditate until I was revived, unfortunately It only filled half of my HP so consumables like HP potions are vital in combat, also getting hit when you're on a downed state means insta-KO

As a solo player I met almost zero obstacle during my questing (at least until level 20), Unfortunately on higher level my unupgraded axe started to kill me faster than the mobs, so I'll have to go back to lower level dailies. The stat of my character are given by weapons, accessories, and soul wheel (piece of cakewheel), clothes are purely cosmetics so I kinda liked it since I like playing transmog/transmute with armors, You can 'feed' some weapons with another weapon to raise it's stats, most weapons you obtained as drops are sealed and you can unseal them with unsealing charms, but if you feed them to another weapon you won't need to unseal them, later in game you'll be introduced to lockboxes which can be opened with keys, there are two kind of keys: the brilliant and regular, regular will unlock the box but you'll get random weapons, brilliant will always give you your class-specific weapon, which sometimes can be used as a precursor to evolve an epic weapon, one thing though: brilliants are sold in the cash shop, they can be bought by specific in game currency but only if you're a premium member, so you know where I'm going with this, fortunately they're also drops from dailies and dungeons, although it's rare, the reason why I came back to low level area, gambling my lockboxes away to just find the precursor

I also met a lots of Hildibrands along the way

Big Bosses and losing your cash
Group play against world/dungeon bosses added some perks to the already interesting battle as you can execute a joint attack to break big boss' immunities against crowd control skills, Dungeons are usually basic milk run, plow everything until you get to the big boss at the end. Lack of pure healer class remedied by dragon blood system where you basically doubled or tripled your HP bar to withstand devastating attacks, sometimes it's just DPS race but the dungeons after level 20 have bosses that required some kind of tactics like killing adds, stun things, and stop hitting when something becomes immune.

There's a thing that caught my mind in the dungeon runs, the loot auction system that replaces the need and greed system for heroic and superior items, in other MMORPGs you roll numbered dice and hope RNG gets you that epic item, in BnS if you really want that item you place a bid on it, people will outbid you or pass, if you get the item your hard-earned money will be divided among the rest of your group, IMO it's a win-win solution EXCEPT when the untradable heroic weapon precursor drops and someone decided to ransom it by placing high bid right from the start, if you're patient you can get the money and run for another dungeon, if you're impatient... you can outbid them and lost your money.... so...well... you should be patient :P

In picture: Your daily life in dungeons

Verdict:
Overall Blade and Soul is a fun experience, nothing impress me much but somehow I still playing it just because of the story (and also wondering each level up whether I can pull off another crazy combos), Group play opened opportunities for joint eye-catching combo skills so make sure you play with friends because even if the story is rather interesting, the questing is horribly boring and money making are abysmally nonexistent (you'll lose money faster by purchasing brilliant keys). The hunt for precursors are 99% RNG and dealing with ransoms on dungeons is somewhat frustrating, I also heard that endgame dungeons are ridiculously hard, so get this: Bring a friend, you can solo almost everything and world bosses are always crowded but trust me partying for killing 20 mobs is faster and more fun, especially when the mobs are somewhat scarce. If I can get to endgame I might write something about it but now I'll just grind those precursors away, I found the hard way that NOT UPGRADING YOUR WEAPON THROUGH THE RNG SYSTEMS (Wheel of fate, lockboxes, and dungeon drops) will make your character considerably weaker on the next few levels.

I have six of this outfit before finding that axe

Review: Star Wars the Force Awakens

2015-12-21T18:55:00.001+07:00

Yes this post contains spoilers so stay away from this post if you don't want to get damaged in the process, you have been warned

So here's the thing: I grew up with Star Wars Expanded Universe which means I have close connection with stories before and after the six movies, especially the Jedi Knight series which tells a story about Kyle Katarn, second in command to Luke Skywalker in his Jedi Academy as well as his best friend, as a reformed Dark Jedi and former smuggler Kyle has colorful stories from both light and dark side

Star Wars Episode 7 throws every stories after episode 6 out of the windows, which means i have to put aside every connection to Jedi Knight series, in episode 7 Luke did train young potential Jedis but suddenly disappears due to some treachery of one of his student named Kylo Ren, which now commands remnants of the empire called The First Order, which the ultimate goal is to resurrect the iron-fisted galactic empire, to counter this the New Republic founded remains of the Rebel Alliance, now dubbed The Resistance, commanded by General Leia Organa

I like the way the characters are introduced, Finn is a former stormtrooper which grow conscience after saw the brutality of the first order, Rey is a scavenger stumbled into the BB8 carried a map location of Luke Skywalker, this map is the focus of the story which ping ponged between factions. Han Solo as the 'old guard' guide this new heroes as well as trying to bring Kylo Ren (a.k.a Ben Solo, his son) back to the light

Unfortunately the dark side is in trouble in this movie because of Kylo Ren, he's not a Sith, just an unstable and obsessed brat, the portrayal is perfect on cast but fall weak on the story, because we never knew what his story is to be fallen, his rage and fear reflect anakin's feature on episode 3 (which is the weakest on the prequel trilogy) and yet he keeps pushing until the end without clear explanation of what was he's truly seeking. He's a character meant to be defeated in the end, too easy, yet too clouded to garner interest, perhaps on episode 8 he'll be made more interesting

What a star wars movie without superweapons? as Death Star on episode 4, this one has the Starkiller, an interplanetary laser turret which capable of annihillating an entire star system, which again fall flat into the Old Republic fans' mind since Sith Lord of this non canonical age is capable of destroying a planet with just utilizing the Force, but hey!! we need a capable adversary for those newly designed Resistance fleet right? Fortunately the space/aerial battles are good enough with a popcorn.

Apparently, even by putting those years of Expanded Universe aside I still ended up comparing this movie to them throughout those two hours, hoping that a slight hint of a character as interesting as Kyle Katarn or rooting for Kylo Ren's to abandon his spoiled-brattyness unfortunately yielded me none of them, even the twist in the final lightsaber battle is..... not too good, if only Finn and Rey can fight together, the Force-summoning scene of Rey also has a weak effect but i was relieved that midichlorians wasn"t mentioned

A Force Awaken is both good and refreshing movie but only as a new continuation story built by the previous movies, or for fans who were disillusioned by the prequel trilogy, or for the 'only movies' fans. For fans who have trouble letting go the non canonical universe it might be a little disappointing, as for me I have mixed feelings about it, as a movie I liked it and look forward for the sequels, as an expanded universe fanboy i'd rather stick to the old republic stuffs at least until they made a movie character as good as Kyle Katarn.

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Guild Wars 2)

2015-09-05T10:35:00.003+07:00

Guild Wars 2 upcoming expansion is called Heart of Thorns, but I'm not here to talk about it, I'm here to discuss the state of this game, especially about their publisher: NCSOFT.

A week ago Arenanet people announced that the core game of Guild Wars 2 is now free, which means go ahead and play it now, it's awesome, Guild Wars 2 is still maintain the originality of an MMORPG with their action based battle system and ditched the holy trinity role out of the window (well...not really) and most of all it's the game where I met new friends, something that I rarely did since my usual connection with people were based on confrontation and/or highly volatile conversations.

Of course not everything was sunshine on Guild Wars 2, after the first phase of Living Story there was a long drought of content before Living Story phase 2 wraps up and prepares us for the expansion, and yes after all of us accepted the fact that Guild Wars 2 probably won't have an expansion pack, that the updates will be small timed patches in which over the time will carry on to the gem store, that PVP and e-sport competitions will be their main focus just like Guild Wars 1, and that will never be a raid.

And then, Heart Of Thorns happened, Raid happened, hell even flight (kinda) happened, the basic game goes free to play, from Divinity's Reach to the gates of Arah will cost no dime to be explored by new players, and it's all right, it's awesome, what bugged me is the fact that years ago the core game of City of Heroes was also gone free to play along with it's next expansion (City of Villain) although Going Rogue, Praetoria, crafting, and Who Will Die episodes still required subscription or can be bought at cash shop, updates (and as they called it: issues) is small and affecting the game world and both free and sub players, although sub players reap the most benefit.

I'm pretty much believed Guild Wars 2 is walking along the initial path as City of Heroes was, and I also think that it will goes on up until old obsolete expansions merged with the free core game, and goes on until content and past/present episodes are sold at gem store, until the final day NCSOFT get tired of juggling services for these free to play games (Blade & Soul, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, and Lineage 2) and decided to shutdown one of them, it happened before, City of Heroes was on the verge of releasing new issue and (as their players said) was always crowded until the last day, NC decided to pull the plug simply because they won't afford the development studio (Paragon is their full subsidiary, solely formed to maintain and develop COH after Cryptic leaves) and Guild Wars 2 is their new cashing machine.

Of course all of this is just my wild speculation, but to be honest I was so hurted by the closing of City of Heroes three years ago as it happened so quickly and waves of fan protests and supports can't stop their game from shutting down, they did everything from plea for closing delays to the community inviting the devs for a dinner, in the end it was all useless, and the best community I've ever met in-game vanished just like that. Arenanet is also a full subsidiary of NCSOFT, in which if NC/Nexon decided that it won't worth a s**it they will immediately close it along with guild wars 1 and 2, speaking of which: Guild wars 1 is still buy to play, all three of them, one core game, two expansions. So why Guild Wars 2 core game become f2p?

That my friends, we'll find out in years to come, I'm taking off from Guild Wars 2, just because I can feel their future is uncertain, but it was just me, some people can enjoy things even as they knew it was doomed to oblivion, I guess I still have a lot to learn.

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Warlords of Draenor)

2015-08-20T14:53:00.000+07:00

Yes I know, the latest World of Warcraft expansion announced called Legion, but it just proved this article's title here :D

"The Shadow Council Thank You"
In the Warcraft Universe the Shadow Council are the agents of the main antagonist: The Burning Legion, they exist solely to serve their demonic master, so it is the most unusual words came from them, in the World Of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh Hellscream got the timeline messed up, resulting an uncorrupted orc horde to pour through the Dark Portal into Azeroth, they called themselves the Iron Horde and invading Azeroth because... umm... well... yeah... things, so as you crush their first wave, enter the dark portal, fight a throng of them alongside Khadgar, Go'El and a forgettable Draenei Vindicator (Maraad), things got exciting, as you encounter the shadow council and planned your retreat things got more interesting

The Story:
But apparently, things stopped being interesting.
After your first introductory questline, I (as an alliance) found myself in Shadowmoon Valley, Khadgar's opened a brief portal and thus begin my garrison's construction, then I met alternate reality Velen which much more battle hardened than his original self, the draenei has mounted a significant defense but still overruned by the orcs. Shadowmoon Valley's story is great and the closing is awesome, but after that I was bummed, the other zone story is not as strong as the previous, yes you met Rexxar, learned the divided origins of Draenor, used by the arrakoa up until you arrived at the max area level: Nagrand the story seems disjointed and disconnected, along the way you thought where's Grommash? Where's Garrosh? Where're the big guys? where is everything I've encountered in the prologue??!!!

Not to mention the most insulting storyline assigned to Orgrim Doomhammer, I'm not gonna spoil it for you go read or play it, After the scene at Nagrand (if that can be called a scene) I'm ready for the 'final assault' then the story catapulted me to Tanaan Jungle, then I construct a base (as I did in every other zone), then it's dailies time. Okay but I still don't know how Tanaan becomes oozie and suddenly there's someone else in charge. Strangely enough some QUEST yellow exclamation mark begins to pop up every now and then both in my garrison and the Tanaan base.

The whole storyline of Warlords of Draenor (save the Shadowmoon Valley storyline) is chock full of holes with things disconnected from other things, how's Gul'dan there? What is he doing? Where's Grom in all of this scene? How the hell did this happened? Remember the yellow exclamation mark that begins to appear? That's scenarios, the bridge that somewhat connected all this, for example: How is an arrakoa ended up under Gul'dan's command? I think I knew that guy, well after I played several days a quest suddenly appeared, it explain why the guy I used to know ended up a big bad elite boss, the rest? Oh they told it on the Legendary Questline story... They've even NAMED THE ACHIEVEMENTS AS CHAPTER!!!

I was baffled, the whole storyline is a mess, the whole heads and tails are nonsensical, and I still missing things, until I watched the introductory cutscene on youtube, patch 4.1 (Fury of The Hellfire) which explains A LOT, why didn't I got this thing on game? I knew it happened on previous patch, but come on they didn't even put it in the game, In mist of pandaria's last patch when my monk opened the Valley of Eternal Blossom I got an opening, pop up quest, and there's a scenario regarding Garrosh corrupting the Vale so it's not really confusing. On WOD, I was forced to open wowpedia to untangle those overlapped stories

So there it is, Warlords of Draenor stories, a disjointed heap of mess just because you played 8 months late.

The Gameplay:
On the other hand, I liked garrison, I know the whole WOW community divided by it, some love here, hate there, the usual stuff. It's basically a Warcraft RTS base, where you can build reource-generating buildings like lumbermill and Herb Gardens, you can upgrade these things too, like Herb gardens tier 3 provided like 20 plants a day and you can randomize or select what they will plant the next day, it's really convenient for a hoarder like me, albeit a bit lonely.

So with garrison you can assign followers to do things for you, whether to search for resources, reclaiming rare items, equipment tokens, legendary materials, or even another follower (rare), as my real life workload piles up -- so I could only play WOW on night and early days -- garrison was great, it made me feel like that it fits my time, it doesn't feel like all those timed self-replenishing MMO games (yes I'm looking at you Archeage) because all their generated resource can be obtained through other meaning if I have more time, While in the meantime I can set up garrison missions on mornings and check back on the afternoon, assigning them again, and do some raiding/dungeons at night, so yeah, it's fun, albeit as you amass resource more than you can spend it it'll grow tedious.

Blizz implement WOW token some months ago so you can use ingame gold to pay for 30 days of game time, the value hovers between 25-27 thousand gold nowadays and it gave me an idea, so at the end of my first week of returning I tried to gain enough gold for my game time token, so I did what all lazy people did, selling all those obsolete equipment and some common materials, combined with what I make from my dailies I raked enough at 10 days left on my sub, although I gained three thousands from selling an epic BOE item, but yeah... if I play the auction house and do some crafting as I did at Cataclysm I'll probably have enough gold for some months, Blizz has some really cool mounts on Pandaria so I ended up spending all on them =)).

No new class and new races in WOD but I have one level boost to 90 feature, it will be upgraded to 100 when Legion hits so I'll probably saved it since I have a hard time deciding what class I want to boost, I'm respecced my warrior from Fury to Arms though, just to experience a different playstyle (and because everyone is Fury right now, just like every rogue is Combat).

Ashran!!! Oh Ashran!!! Oh yeah, welcome to WvsWvsW a la World of Warcraft, well actually Ashran is more like Arathi Basin part 2 combined with a little Guild Wars 2 borderland where 25 people frome each faction tried to control more outpost and completing events, but unfortunately I will say that it sucks, yes they provide a nice boost to my honor points, but there's just not enough room and events, in WWW on ONE borderland I can build a little team, caprunning every towers and outposts clockwise, perhaps slay a handful of stragglers, In Ashran I'm just following the zergtrain and go out of the base whenever an event occured, it feel so cramped that I actually screamed because of the repetition, good idea copying WWW, abysmal implementation, and don't play horde after 09.00 PM, they'll always lose.

There are three raids in this expansion, unfortunately I never really liked their armor and weapon design, fortunately I have a dwarven bunker on my garrison which sold awesome Blackrock armor for transmog only, after I complete my horriby designed LFR set I'll transmog everything.

Extras and Final Words:
Blizz should never make those weekly scenario, whole story shouldn't be divided by randomly appeared quests, yes they're kind of fillers, but still I shouldn't be presented by them randomly, FFXIV has story progress divided by patch but still you have to complete one before you can move on, stories unlock dungeons and trials while the other features unlocked by sidequests, while in WOW: followers, toys, and areas unlocked by random quests which appeared once every week, I kinda confused why Yrel as my dailies NPC suddenly an exarch now? Did I miss something? I finally got that story quest in the third week, yes it's slightly proved that Blizzard don't want player to rush the expansions but still those randoms made me grit my teeth, and since Legendary Ring Quest IS the 'main' quest now I think I can accept that the grind will be a long one but why? Why split them up?

The shiphand mission, a garrison type mission where you assign ship to collect things for you is.... weird, ships are customizable although you need to collect blueprints from rare chests and enemies on the final area: Tanaan Jungle, since you can only select max two ships for each mission, the percentage of successive mission are realtively low, making you gambling on each other components to raise the success percentage, but in the end since components and ships are relatively cheap, they're all expendable since ship's sometimes destroyed when mission failed, you can just buy a new one on your dockyard. I still wondered why such mechanic exist in this game? It was not fun, not profitable (except the legendary missions), overall... it shouldn't even be there.

There's no gating content on WOD except one: Heroic Dungeon, where you must complete a time trial on silver achievement on your role (healer/tank/DPS) in order to enter them, The catch is... you don't have to do heroic dungeons at all!! Since Blizzard implement timewalking dungeon and LFR you can skip them at all, there's only two reason to do heroic dungeons: Some Garrison Resources and Heirloom upgrades for your alts, so yeah, it's really weird

Everything in Warlords of Draenor is weird, a jumbling mess of things, everything feels like an experiment and incomplete ones. I can't say that I hate it, I know how development job works, I don't love it either, gone is the feeling of becoming a true warrior of light guided by spiritual benefactor on Mist of Pandaria, replaced by hollow things as I read all the main quest text (yes I still doing that), my progress as character is... no, there's nothing progressive about my character, yes I got the title as lord commander of a garrison and gain purple-dressed orc warlocks and arrakoa metal construct as my followers but still I don't think I really progressed, maybe because all of my journey and encounters from Shadowmoon Valley onward was forgettable.

Is this an expansion? I don't think so, I think it was just an interlude, a big experimental patch containing features solely purposed for player's convenience but ended up being tedious and created ridiculuous storyline (and ending) at the end.

I'm not satisfied, that is all, hopefully Legion will be better, I was thinking I should return with friends

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Wildstar)

2015-08-09T16:46:00.000+07:00

Oh Wildstar, I despise you so much, but I also loved you enough to play in 10++ session through a year on numerous trial account and get the loop of install-uninstalling to the point Thayd and Auroria become so easily navigated. Then one year came and the verdicts are in, the world didn't like you, even your publisher despise you, your company lost so many talented men and women, so then you're going free to play, but not before you put yourself as a part of E3 charity bundle, which I bought and play through last month, so before you've gone and throw yourself to the evil called f2p community, here's my second review of you my dear sci-fi-once-hyped MMORPG

The separation between the EU and US version are confusing, so I thought I was upgrading my old account, as a matter of fact I didn't so I ended up leveling my Draken Warrior into level 16, unknowing that I still played my trial account, only when I leveled up my crafting I found out that I didn't go to the next level that's when i found out, 5 days wasted of my free game time. So then I'm going fast, changed the region and roll a Stalker because they can go invisible and hit hard.

Story:
Wildstar tells a story about two warring faction, The Exile and The Dominion, once there's only one human Dominion until one technocratic race called the Eldan demands human's greatest warrior to accompany them to their homeland (with a threat of course), years later her offspiring came back, brings another race of mechanical origin called Mechari and start leading them to subjugate another races and planet, this doesn't bode well to some human and aliens which bonded together to become the Exile. One day a planet called Nexus, known as the last Eldan tinkering laboratory suddenly popped up, and both faction are on a race to claim it.

Taxis already provided

The whole story about Wildstar main storyline are revolving on finding a new home and a weapon race, because The Exile and Dominion are not the only ones who've arrived in Nexus, there are also other alien races ranged from the fluffy furry things to the tech-advanced oceanic species, not to mention the Protostar Corp, an intergalactic corporation which sold almost everything and anything also think the planet is a gold mine (both literally and figuratively) not to mention since Nexus itself a big Eldan lab which the Eldan fools around with the original natives and plants resulting in some hideous monstrosities and cool-looking giant robots.

The game itself had some cohesive lore on the Eldan and Nexus which scattered all around the world in form of notes, relics, and datacubes, finding them are not always easy and sometimes required player to navigate some jumping puzzle to reach them, contrary to them the quest NPCs offered a really tiny bit of it, this is a bit turn off since you probably have to scour some interesting area (i.e a giant unidentified skeleton in a middle of the desert) to know a bit more of it. Eventually you'll heard much about the Genesis Prime, and (spoiler), ahem... so yeah.

In a matter of aesthetics, the cartoony style of Wildstar fits their image story, space cowboys for hire, gun (sword) toting undead interstellar mercenary looking for home, every 10 level you're treated to some really cool leveling place, two bio domes, each contains opposite environment and biology to each other, a dark side of the moon where you can jump higher and discover more about the Eldan which is... disturbing, a contested areas which both faction wage an all out war against a nation of winged creatures, but unfortunately the design turns bleak on the max daily hub area, up until Carbine drops an update called strain which contains an awesome-looking (and hard) area, it's like Icecrown in WOW where you feel that you won't be save anywehere, even the sky.

Except in the taxis

Gameplay:
Let me emphasis this one once again: WILDSTAR IS HARD, yes, not only the difficulty, but your computer spec also decided it, you need minimal 30-40 FPS to survive an encounter, because as I said on my first review: YOU WILL DIE, AGAIN, AND AGAIN, and the game will sneer at you for dying again and again like a noob, oh yeah, count your latency, because anything above 200 will kill you, lag spike will smack you down, and in a dungeon it will ruined your entire life.

Unfortunately my life revolved around riding a hoverbike

Wildstar employed action-based battle, where all your attacks do area of damage attacks and also the mobs which you must dodge or interrupt with some skills, interrupting enemies are highly valuable because then your next attacks will deal extra damage to them. I'm a stalker and a melee damage dealer which means I will go toe to toe with enemies and I must killed them ASAP because of my medium armor, The Stalker can also become a tank which based on evasive manuouvre and skills to weaken the enemy's attacks but I'm not go into that light since I'm experimenting with my dps spec.

My first headscratch came on the skill selection, Stalker has like twenty five skills (plus five unlockables) and can only put 7 of them on the shortcut, you'll essentially played with shortcut because of the nature of the fast paced battle (no time for clicks), and each of them has levels which powers up their damage or debuff effects, I've been there on guild wars 1 but never have been so confused, so In the end I just selected the first five of them and roll two from the utilities section, because I've been so used to rotating them (final slot opened at level 30, so in 29 level I've been using the same skill set over and over again)

Did I mention all of them are active skills? So where's the passive? Welcome to my second headache, the AMP bar, it has dot things, and these passive dot things on some level unlocked new active skill, but here's a catch some AMP dots are locked and must be unlocked with the corresponding item, I got some from fighting the enemies in the world, but then at max level I realized I have too many locked dots, but then I remembered there's a vendor called imported AMP vendor (or something) so I bought a bunch of my class AMP, I still have some locked and really have no idea how to obtain them. They really need to work on this to ensure player got the full picture about how this thing worked since I reset them twice

DOTS!!

I followed my main quest and never left an area up until I exhausted all soloable quests, which sometimes racked my reputation to that area's faction to the max, it also helped my builder path, you know that one thing that makes wildstar awesome and made you interested on interacting with the world as my first review said. On a quest-following player Wildstar has a special final quest (but sometimes separate) that usually involved you to obtain an artifact of the scene to display on your city's museum, you can click them for more info, I personally liked this, but I would like it more if it can be displayed in my own house, what's the point of owning a house without your personal achievement?

Extras & Final Words:
I reached my max level three days short of my free game time expiry date, so I used the remaining time to gear up and queue at the group finder, unfortunately it seldom works, there are two PVE group instances: Adventures and Dungeons, Raid is on a whole another level and you can't queue randoms for them, they're also have attunements in form of gear levels and required quests, I've been queued for adventures and dungeons on my leveling progress (they're both level-synced) but it seldom pops even on higher level where it finally has the option random adventure/dungeon, thus it can also become a measuring tool about how many people actually played this game, and I must said: not so much, there are only two servers on Europe, one for PVE and the other for PVP, so comparing it to WOW or even Final Fantasy XIV won't work

Although FFXIV and WOW need more tied up giant robots

I love how Wildstar explored the sci-fi niche of a story, even when the story itself is mediocre at best, I love how the world was designed, although it's kinda empty, I adore the crafting and path system, my complaint was technical, some bugs here and there, the DF that seldom works (or probably dont have players queueing), If only my machine is a little better I probably will return here someday when it's going f2p as I have max level now. It's sad such good game qith so much potential wasted, I don't know what cause it, it's probably because it was initially aimed for hardcore players, as it was designed to follow the exact same path as Vanilla WOW, as they realized and added some content for casual players (like contracts and bounties) it was already too late, many people both players and key developers has already left the game. When wildstar haven't released the devs are all open and laughs, after the release however communication becomes scarce, the updates initially came fast (they said once a month) but halted at the third month, after that it was zero comms from them. I don't bought it at the time because it was too hard for me and I have FFXIV

Free to play is one final way for NCSOFT games to regain players, as exhibited by City of Heroes but they're eventually get the hatchet and shut down when Guild Wars 2 came out, Wildstar is the only subbed MMO NCSOFT has and now as they'll gone f2p they have numerous games to contend to like Skyforge which has similar theme but grindy content (no I won't count SWTOR as they're p2p), the question remains: will Wildstar finally buried when Blade and Soul (which has similar battle gameplay) came out to the west? As usual I'll just wait and see

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (prologue)

2015-06-26T17:01:00.002+07:00

Expansions are one of my main problems on MMORPGs, that beside laziness which is becomes so bad that I withdrew myself from MMORPG world completely for several months after finishing FFXIV main story, after that the flood of expansions get off, Guild Wars 2 will have Heart of Thorns, their storyline seems to pick up on Living Story Season 2. Warlords of Draenor is already on patch 6.2 which let player had their own ship, or several ships. Heavensward for FFXIV is out (and everyone is a dark knight now). Pay to play (they're not free) Star Wars The Old Republic will have Knights of The Old Republic 3 as their expansion pack, they just renamed it to Knights of The Fallen Empire. Archeage, Defiance, The Secret World, everything else.has new (paid) content

So I'm starting a new series of writing to catch up of being saleh (whenever he is) the first one will be my return to Nexus on Wildstar, I know I have a lot of hate/love about the game (uninstalling/reinstalling for like 9 times) so as they're going free to play they chipped a bargain on the last humblebundle E3 sale, I grabbed it and started over, now I'm officially an Exile, ready to (re)live my dying days as incompetent tank

Coming soon!!

my original blog name

Being Saleh: End of A Book

2015-05-24T16:56:00.001+07:00

The final arc of the main story quest of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn has come full circle with the release of patch 2.5.7, without spoiling anything I can safely say it ended with a bang, not the happy-ending kind one, but maybe for the best for the hero of Eorzea, after the crazy road trip and surprise acidic trip (minor spoiler, an awesome trial against another one of the Ascian), it gave us a very large picture.


Sometimes the very large picture put you as a spectator :D

Eorzea is just a continent, the story's shift to Ishgard not only to prove there are larger scheme at play, but also there are wars bigger than just on the continent, and characters that we always thought as a minor dismissable ones are suddenly show their true colors whether it's good or... Well .. Not so good, and it was revealed like "oh I know this will end like this, but s**t why isat guy become (spoiler)" kinda like in WOW if we suddenly discovered that Haris Pilton is a Titan. and I was thrilled to see there are some minor character that (hopefully) will take the center stage

My wind-up airship pet is actually the villain after all
look at it... on the back... always stalking... always scheming

It's good, it's deliciously good, not the best on story terms but yes, I'm satisfied, everything that has been overshadowed fall in nicely, there are some cast replacements, good twists, although it's too bad I wasn't there at the end of patch 1 so there's nothing to compare to the end of patch 2 in term of the story, I know they completely rebuild the world from scratch on patch 2.0 but still it'll be nice if I was there. On the other hand: Heavensward looks good,

So after a story act ended, where to go next until gates of Ishgard opened? Apparently I'm unsubbing, although there are tons of things I haven't done, like my Zodiac Gloves, but I decided to left some unfinished things from A Realm Reborn arc to see how's Square Enix deal with past contents, will they integrate them with all those level syncing things? Or just left them as it is

Being Kurogakure: An Obituary

2015-04-19T20:17:00.000+07:00

I've lost a friend today, we've been gaming together since seven years ago.

2008 is the year I started to got into online gaming, my first game was Perfect World from PWE, local server of course and has really really screwed up community, so I began searching for another way to a more civilized talk with people, I found a forum called gozine (defunct), that's where I met Kurogakure, a moderator and regular contributor

As of 2009 there's a new game opened up on our local server, Lineage 2, we discussed the possibility to make a clan together, we did, the three of us, Kuro has a way with people, he's smart and authorative as clan leader, even as I discovered that he's three years younger than me. Our family quickly grows (he always used that term: family), we're succesfully maintained a casual type of play although Lineage 2 is labeled a hardcore grinding game, we had our first fight about PVP and I left for year, when I came back we enjoyed a moment before server politics, bad publisher, bots, exploits, cheats, and hardcore grind halted our progress. We had our first real meeting though, it's the first time I met him on solid ground, a year since it was all begin

I quickly jumped to WOW, while he relentlessly tried to find another game, 'to create a new family' as he again said, He never liked WOW as he deemed it as 'too mainstream', we tried some games, like Guild Wars, Aion and City of Heroes, but it didn't last, I came back to WOW while he tried some beat em up online. When he heard that a revolutionary game called Guild Wars 2 is coming, he ecstaticedly call me, 'it's awesome' he said 'it'll be great' he said again, 'we'll invite local players to our guild' and I was like 'a guild?' I'm always sceptical about locals in online games since they pretty much destroyed the 'social aspect' on online games, and as I just get off a really failed IRL relationship (which he helped me got through somehow) I really didn't trust local people both online or real at all. But in the end I said okay, 'let's get 10 people, raid size, we're already got three so let's find seven more' I laughed at that time, so he set up a thread on a local forum

In the end we got a hundred member, well more or less, but definitely more than ten =))

Some of my finest gaming moment was in Guild Wars 2, the PVE was great, the WWW was awesome, and even I started to enjoy PVP, our voice chat channel was always a party on Friday nights, unfortunately lack of content grow on us, we started to login less and less, my work and family matters started to tried my time, in the end I stopped playing, I influenced people to try FFXIV though, one thing he always indefferent towards me 'How the hell you pulled people for new game and then the first to bail out, idiot Blizz fanboy" I grinned all the time, can't help it, I'm always a game jumper.

We have several RL meetings with guild people, it was fun, but over a year we grew distant, it could be our works, it could be private, Our last conversation was bitter to the most, I never really knew his personal life, maybe we discuss it on occasion, but most of the time it was games, and when we have no similar game to talk about, it quiets down, then he got hospitalized, I tried to go (we live on distant cities) but sickness, accident, and works killed my time again

And six month later he was gone, just like that

I actually have no right to talk about him, since I knew very little about him outside of MMORPGs, but I recognized his passion on building a good community, although at the end he was indifferent towards it, I should be more tactful about it, he always said Guild Wars 2 will be his last game, not in term last MMORPG, last game, final, 'I always joked about it, why the hell fixed on a game when there are hundreds of them out there' I think it was a sign and I dismiss it casually, I just hoped he find peace on his final moment, and hope he forgives me for not at his side

Rest In Peace my brother, Kurogakure, thank you for all the good times

Being Saleh: From Astral To Umbral a.k.a it's getting easier

2015-02-09T22:15:00.000+07:00

Since my initial plan to upgrade to Warlords of Draenor is blown to bits by several... circumstances (~~like my social life and Guild Wars 2~~) I finally have time to get back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, It's not without several planning though, for one: FFXIV has been the most improved MMORPG I've ever played, and since I'm a filthy casual what I meant by "most improved" is "it's getting easier"

Except those pants, which made me hate ninjas

Since it's initial release on September 30th 2010, Final Fantasy has transformed from a total wreck into one of the most polished MMORPG ever created, at least that was all the review you can get from numerous website, I don't really care about it all, I played since A realm reborn beta (pre patch 2.0) and I can tell you from my own experience FFXIV has been most approachable, even than WOW, since I don't really raid and have a real piece of work internet connection from patch 2.0 to patch 2.5 FFXIV has been a great journey in term of casual gameplaying and story

The Story so far....

Final Fantasy XIV has numerous story quests, which it's names (like the F.A.T.Es) are homage to almost everything in pop culture, names like "Sudul Eht Nioj" or "Life is a Syrcus" almost get me chuckled every time, the writing (and translation, hello, it's a japanese game) work to this day was incredibly tidy and astonishing, if you're not into reading quests text like me you might skip them into oblivion, but really, slow down and read them all even when there are no voice acting (with sometimes regretfully awful, minor, nvm) I came across a line of dialogue which can or can't be tailored to my selection of race, it could be my imagination and since I'm too stupid to take a screenshot I just continue in hope to find another one, alas I never did.... maybe I'll ask around sometimes.

Please enjoy this Minfillia screenshot to ease your pain

So, in every patch (from 2.0 to the latest 2.5) there are at least five story arc in FFXIV, one is the main story arc where you as the good hero of Eorzea faced and confront threats from every not-so-good fellas, (minor spoiler) the latest patch offered a major plot twist which served as an opening into what we might expect in patch 3.0: Heavensward (yes it's an expansion).

With Batman

Number two is the Hildibrand arc which we embarked in a gag journey (hey, what a hero without it's sense of humours) with Hildibrand Manderville: self-titled agent of inquiry and Inspector Extraordinaire Gentleman, which actually just a private detective with a penchant for disastrous and hyperbolic solution which (surprise) not always right, combined with numerous luck and colorful allies Hildibrand arc probably the most extraordinary (har har) arc Final Fantasy XIV has ever created simply because it get me laughing every single time =))

I'm so sorry for posting this

Number three is the moogle courier stories, it puts up us as a mail courier for the good (and again, not-so-good) people of Eorzea, to deliver them letters which lead us to know more about their problems and woes, and --of course as a hero -- helps them, it's a short episodic goodness which the NPCs are described as more than just a quest giver, but also have life of their own.

A very GOOD life

Four is the Crystal Tower arc, where you embarked with a group of researchers known as NOAH to unlock the secret(and raiding) of crystal tower, as I said before the bosses are homage to Final Fantasy III

Five is another raid story: the Coil of Bahamut story act where we accompanied by Alisaie Leveilleur, the twin sister of Alphinaud Leveilleur which is a major story character, Allisaie takes us into a research facility which studies the impact of Bahamut's prison from the last era, it served as a hardcore raid instance but since the story is so good (I don't know, I don't raid) there are talks about to make it a soloable arc for casual players, I'm looking forward to this.

Even with such numerous story arc apparently Square knows where to stop and overshadowing people with what might be expected on Heavensward, the stories are not yet over, my eternal question is whether they will be continued or not, WOW has so much unfinished story arc and only a few of them has ever continued, things like Koltira's last stand to Sylvanas and Abyssal Maw has been scrapped and considered finished, no it's not finished, I refused to acknowledge that. Hopefully with much overshadowing here and there Square will actually resumed it

The (lazy) gearing and gameplay

Take a look at my post here, here, here, and here oh also here

As you can see from my numerous posts about 'dem gameplay on FFXIV you might see that I'm not too hot about it, I stopped playing in the beginning of patch 2.3 and as I came back gradually I just realized how I might be wrong, on the verge of patch 2.3 my chosen first class is a monk, a punch drunk dps guy, I have a sphairai which is a relic weapon a.k.a the strongest weapon on patch 2.0, with the help of the -then added chimera and hydra encounter on duty finder on patch 2.1(yes in case you forget it's a LFG tool)I zoomed through the steps of it and with my saved mythology tomes which I farmed from my days as paladin I obtained it in days, not weeks, not months, days, boom.

As square has numerous free weekend I mostly farmed the next upgrade of my weapon, atma (obtained by the old fashioned FATE grinding) on those days, sometimes it's going good, sometimes it's friggin frustrating (RNG sucks) I hit the jackpot on September free weekend.

So there's me and my atma weapon, as I renewed my sub I set myself another goal, another upgrade, the animus, which is another grindfest, yes bloodying my atma weapon with blood from numerous creatures is kind of sadistic way to upgrade a weapon but hey I need 9 books to be completed, each has at least 20 challenges ranged from killing X things and running dungeons (don't die on the last boss or it won't be count, blah), I decided that I will solo this thing, using DF and old-fashioned waiting game for fates, I got into 1/3 on the last books so it'll be awhile but the thing is, it's only takes three weeks to get into this phase and I don't even focus on it with numerous story arc to finish,

Animus is a level 100 weapon, you know another way to obtain 100 weapons on FFXIV on patch 2.5? Here's what I do on my Paladin: Run Crystal Tower --> upgrade gear with tomes --> run Syrcus Tower --> buy level 100 weapon with tomes --> run some more syrcus tower --> upgrade them to lvl 110 with tomes and stuffs found inside.

Yes it's easier, yes it's faster, but it just happened that I skipped patch 2.3 and 2.4 entirely!!! which means every good stuff of them is now available on vendors, so if I leveled another class now, on this patch, take it four weeks if you're a slow leveler (which can't be, because duty roulette bonus which will zoom you) add days for relic, run CT, buy weapons and armors, run ST, upgrades, voila, boom you're now decked in ilvl 110 in matter of weeks (probably one) if you skipped the entire leveling process entirely, on this ilvl you can access almost every single content on FFXIV, the first and second coil bahamut, the extreme primals, the odin, the hard and expert dungeons, The Hunt, world of darkness, latest PVP, anything, you see where this going? Yes FFXIV has become more approachable tiered-progress-based MMORPGs and that's VERY VERY GOOD

But what can I do on those content? I'm not fast enough to dodge things, or breaking things with heavy rotation, well just the point I want to make, Square tone down almost EVERYTHING in the latest patch, well not everything, hard still means hard and old dungeon can be irritating (yes I'm looking at you Aurum Vale) but the effort you pulled plus the gear you're wearing helped, the hardmode of Amdapor, Halatali and expert Wanderer's palace has a difficulty setting somewhere between sleeping in dungeon and breaking a keyboard, patch 2.0 Ultima battle was over the top and exceed all my expectation about how fun and engaging a dungeon battle is just because a) it's not too hard and b) it has a good song, the two latest trial and dungeon: The Chrysalis and Lake Keeper tops it, the balance was perfect, the boss battles are fun, last boss battle are somewhere between intimidating and brutally satisfying, there's no perfect way to win this, the one hit kill skillz was so few but if you don't entertain your footwork, you can still wipe, for a melee dps it's fun, for tanks and probably healer it's fun, yeah, that's only it, it's fun :D

Here's another SS to reward you, and no I don't even know what that is

Onward to 3.0

Well, I've written so much, so here's something, by scrapping everything that was on patch 1.0 FFXIV finally got a second chance and they used it well to gain acknowledgement from a solo (casually zerging in raid) player like me, by simplifying means and upping the rewards for activities FFXIV can continue to grow, but here's the thing, as you can see it's only the main game I'm talking about, come the expansion how approachable the state will be? Will the leveling process simplified? Up until now the main story arc requires you to get into dungeons and beat it but to be honest it's extremely worth it since the story is well written and enjoyable, For the story I think new player wants the whole experience too (Blizz cut the Undercity Siege story arc on Cataclysm, /rude), but LFG tool will probably without old players running around it (even if it's synced), so the fact that new players must open it all just to unlock high level dungeon can be.... discouraging, especially for new hardcores which tend to grind everything just to get into max level, and since max level dungeon in FFXIV tied to quests and main story quests and not the level, this can be a problem, at least for the powerleveler

Well there are solution, Blizz now sold instant level 90 on their website, it's also bundled with Warlords of Draenor expansion, but it's because they have 5 expansion pack and cataclysm rendered the old lore continuity useless for the sake of new graphics and eye candy, FFXIV still has a way to go, it's only the second expansion and since the main game bundled with patch 2.0 so it can be counted for a first expansion, it will be interesting if Square will go the same road as Blizzard (a.k.a make everything on the previous expansion obsolete, excluding Pandaria, they still have more content than all WOW combined)

But for now, I'll enjoy a little crystal action