Being Saleh: Alt Invaders

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

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!!!

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)

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

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