Dual Wield: 'Corrupted'

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)

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

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