Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Test: A Hype Reborn

Final Fantasy is the most popular game franchise in the world, it's the only thing that have double digit number in the sequels (as I recall Ultima only got to 9) not to mention every other spinoffs, movies, crossovers, and so on. The latest installment is the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, they actually release it on 2010 after being in development for 5 years, and it flunked, they only live for several months before Square fired the director, revamped the development team and everything in the game and will relaunched it on 27th of August 2013 (If Square was an American company, they will shut it down after 2 months and never looks back), I guess they really don't want it to tarnish the 'Final Fantasy' name, Japanese can be scary determined demons sometimes =))

They also invented this thing

So let's talk about it, Square officially renamed it, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, FFXIV takes place on a crystal covered/attuned/based/everything- revolved-around-it-world called Hydaelyn, the continet is called Eorzea, the original installment takes place in a peaceful era called Astral, the server pre-shutdown event which happens in November 2012 marked the 'transition' into the Realm reborn timeline, which can be called Umbral, marked with the unleashing of Bahamut (the dragon which exist all accross final fantasy series) and the destruction of Eorzea itself (after thet it's server shutdown to give time for development). The existing players are 'teleported' to the future, to the Realm Reborn chaotic Umbral era, while new player will also started here

The Beginning:

I participated on their latest CBT and OBT, due to hype on those MMORPG webs...   Anyway: There are three starting town which house the eight initial classses of FFXIV, first is Ul'dah: the desert area and home to pugilist (roguelike hand to hand specialist), Thaumaturgist (offensive spellweaver), and Gladiator (sword-shield tanker). Next is lush jungle of Gridania for Conjurer (healer), Lancer (spear/polearm DPS), and Archer (umm... archer) :D. The last is Linsa Lominsa the port piratey island of Marauder (melee DPS and off tank axe wielder), and Arcanist (summoner type). Continuing the footstep of Final Fantasy XI every class can be everything else, just equip their weapon and you become that class (axe for marauder, sword for gladiator, etc etc) of course you'll still need EXP to level up those class, not to mention specialized armor and weapons

On my first CBT test I first step up in Ul'dah as a pugilist and for a moment I return to Rabanastre (a place in Final Fantasy XII), as expected from Final Fantasy series the cities are breathtakingly beautiful (Linsa Lominsa could use a polish though), the early quests revolved around classical fetch and go and kill ten rats things, so there's not much to say about it.

The combat is another return to classical MMORPG, with hotbars and trinity system, rotation and don't stand in the fire things, pugilist delivers quick blows and stance change depends on it's condition and playstyle, Marauder just hack things but a good interrupter, magic class is the most boring IMO since they shoot bolts while standing still... (It made me miss my mesmer)

The combat system also doesn't require you to get party, although there's a vague chain kills system that multiplied your EXP every time you killed something, not sure how it works then. The basic is when you see someone punching a mob, join him/her, every hit you land is counted towards the "kill xxx mob" quest, you're also have personal loot which automatically gained after you kill something, so no kill steal and no loot drama (damn, no more popcorn...)   

The End:

What? It ended already? Well, Open beta lasted only three days and I have like 52 hrs downtime because of error 3102 and social time, but here's some highlights and perk of Final Fantasy XIV that started to grow on me at the end:

The Story so Far....
It's good, not really magnificent but I can tell they did it with passion, personal story quests takes place in a solo instance and introduces you to important NPCs, some are memorable than other, story dialogue are short and since our character didn't talk it feels like playing Half Life 2 combined with a little bit of The Sims, cutscenes are many although I prefer them voiced


Non Combat Class (Gathering and Crafting)

There's no gathering and crafting as a side job on Final Fantasy XIV, they have their own class!!! Non combat classes on Final Fantasy XIV are unlockable on level 15, there's gathering professions (Fisher, Botanist and Miner) called Disciples of Land, theres also crafting profession (Alchemist, Armorer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, and Weaver), you can switch back and forth of it anytime, just like switching combat classes, they have their own weapon (tool) and armor though.

Switching to gathering profession will enable you to see resource nodes on world map, although you might want to be careful since you don't have  combat abilities and battle armor and monsters can attack you, gathering from a resource node will display what item can you obtain from the node, along with their percentage, switching to crafting profession enable you to craft weapon/tools/armors/accessory, the crafting process is ... intriguing, it desn't involved RNG but it involved percentage like LOTRO style, you can add some additional materia to add effect on things, I don't manage to fully grasped the concept due to my low playtime on it but I believe Eorzea Reborn has good guide on it

Guildleves

How am I gonna level up my character? I ran out of quest for my level 14 character, fret not, you can grind repeatable quests called levequest or guildleves, unlocked at level 10 through story quests, levequest are bounty-like quests, they rated you based how you finish the quest, whether you're fast enough, have additional monster spawn, enemies have ++ level from you (just like City Of Heroes instance scaling) and many more. It's still a grind though but the reward is plausible enough to go on (it's the only thing there is now, btw) there are limited numbers you can do from it though, like 6 per day or something. Guildleves also have levequest for crafting and gathering professions so instead of grinding on making and gathering items, you can do this kind of grind instead :D

Guildhests and Dungeons

The Guildhests is basically a short (some of them long) instanced scenario created for group party, fortunately Final Fantasy XIV is generous enough to give us.. LFG Tool!!... errr they called it Duty Finder, usually they required one tank, one healer and two DPS, dungeon needs more and has longer time. Unfortunately: I only have time to tested out Guildhest, and it's pretty cool, not too special, not too hard (I guess those time on Ascalonian Catacombs taught me something)

You know the tune that plays everytime combat won, yep, they play when leveled up too

FATE system

It's Dynamic Event on FFXIV!!! a scalable open world event, and I LOVE IT!! YAY!! KILL ALL DODOS!!

Poor Dodos...

Armory

The armory system is revolutionary, it's a separate inventory for putting your armor and weapons, you can also create equipment set for all of your class of your character and shortcut it so they will automatically wear their intended armor and weapon when they switch class

Things To Smooth Over:

• The combat is still feel clunky but the animation has softened during Beta Phase 3 to Phase 4, I think they need to address this just for the sake of aesthetics, Final Fantasy style.
• The Aether Crystal is a waypoint system similar to Guild Wars 2 but you must remember the name of the waypoints because instead of displaying their location on the map they only listing names of the crystal which I found... hassling.
• Teleport Spell and Return Spell should be combined into one single spell, only with different costs, zero cost for home
• PUT...VOICE...ON...MY...CHARACTER...ON CUTSCENES!!!
• PUT...VOICE....ON EVERY OTHER CHARACTERS... ON...CUTSCENES!! (there's some that's been voiced though, they promised it on release it'll be fully voiced)
• Why is my starter armor looks awesome but the rest after it... looks sucks, unmemorable, bland, and bad?
• I really want to see an item icon (hovered for info) and animation of it being put in my bag whenever I received a loot, right now there's only text that tell me that I got something after a battle, it's not a link text too.

Last Words:

It's Final Fantasy after all, expect the lavish buildings, radiant colored worlds, Chocobos, Ifrit, Bahamut, and great soundtracks (it's the greatest thing in this game so far) but anyway let's do something about the hype: I can't really put my finger on Final Fantasy XIV, I don't know, it looks like there's not a thing that can keep me here, I guess it's wait and see since I don't mind buying another subscription MMORPG. It's a good game but there's nothing clicked with me... for now.

Although I'm sure the chocobos will bring me to it

Consecutive Beta Weekend: Part 2: City Of Steam

The world is flat, and it's a bunch of clockwork gear locked in a mechanism in a vast cosmos, and it's called... The Mechanism!! This is the world where the story of City Of Steam revolves, an independent --free to play --alpha stage --browser based MMORPG developed by Mechanist Games.

When I was first grab the alpha key I knew nothing about City Of Steam but have heard some passing news that it's a decent project, there are 4 class in it: Warder (melee fighter), Arcanist (Magic type), Gunner (Ranged type), and Channeler (healer-hybrid type), there's also 4 human races, 2 elven races, and 3 greenskinned races to choose, each with their own story.

Story is the main reason I got hooked at first on City Of Steam, I randomly picked a Stoigmari (rugged, militaristic human) Warder and my story begins on a train to Nexus, the City Of Steam, surprisingly I'm not alone, I traveled with my brother Aleks, and so the story unfold, and it was interesting to see your character progress through it. I didn't realize that the web has an abundant of lore in there until I played for like three hours or something, and they're good, not so original but I can see that the developer got things together with their games

Combat are easy to approach in City of Steam, just click an enemy and use skill 1-5 to pound them, and the thing is they're flashy, all classes carried four weapons in their back and sides, it gives a real feling that your character is an effective fighting machine (and I really don't have to choose between equipping that one handed sword or that two handed axe because I can equip them at the same time), the skills are flashy and explosive enough that it gives vibes of old RPGs, combats are on real time and nothing original, the mobs are... interesting since most of them are clockwork creatures. Skills can be strenghthened by spending skill points on it, the skill tree looks like a bunch of valves and steampipes, but you'll get the hang on it, there's also overclocking oil to double their effects (my guess it can be bought on the cash shop)

The crafting system are somewhat dodgy, most of the items you got from level 1-10 are useless a.k.a weaker than your initial equipment, but all items are upgadeable, start with breaking down some useless items to gain some of their materials and combine them with your own armor to upgrade it, however there's RNG involved (can be supressed with buying catalysts, also dropped by mobs, rarely though), if you succeed your item got stronger, if not your materials gone to waste but not your equipment though thankfully

Well, they're still on alpha stage, I'll be back for more action in their next alpha weekend on August 3th, there are several keys on Gamersbook and MMORPG if the game interest you

Consecutive Beta Weekend, Part 1: Path of Exile

A week ago I took part for the Guild Wars 2's Last Beta Weekend, the last of the two race: Sylvari and Asura is finally playable, I took a time exploring their homeworld and their starting area (risking spoiler, I know), Mesmer's gameplay is still engaging, my sylvari's chosen story still feel quite unappealing though, so I'll switch back to charr for the release. The game itself still need smoothing around the edges, and I love the new feature: vista, unlockable stereoscopic vision of an area in a map, they're quite fun to find and reach to (usually involving some jumping puzzle) and it cures some of my past traumas about jumping puzzles (not gonna tell you about it) :P

And last week i decided to suppress my Guild Wars 2 withdrawal with taking on Path of Exile public stress test and City of Steam public alpha stage, I already followed Path of Exile for a while, it's an action MMORPG in a fixed 3d environment just like Diablo 2, created by Grinding Gear Games (GGG) an independent game studio, it'll be free to play when it came out with 'ethical' cash shop

Path of Exile

Path of Exile tells a story of an exile in the world of Wraeclast , a land filled with the worst of nature and sorcery, undeads, mutated kiwis (yep, the developer are New Zealanders :P), there are six class: Marauder (strength-centric melee class), Ranger (ranged), Witch (Intelligence), Duelist (hybrid strength and dexterity), Templar (hybrid strength and intelligence), and Shadow (dexterity and intelligence), although you have your premade setup you can still mix and match every class to your playstyle, your character can wear any weapon and armor if your stats meet the requirements just like Diablo.

Above: Diablo

The original mechanic is somewhat cool, for example: there's no money in Path of Exile because an undead carrying 1 gold coin is absurd and the story implied that money is worthless in Wraeclast, in return you have two scroll, scrolls of wisdom (identify in Diablo) and scroll of portal (yep, town portal) as a currency, when you sell that yellow rare rugged looking breastplate that somehow dropped from a cthullu-looking boss into an NPC you'll get a piece of scrap that can be combined (10 of them) into one scroll of wisdom, you can also getting an orb piece, that can be combined into an orb which present the second awesome mechanism in Path of Exile:

An orb can be used to level up an item, turn plain items into magic ones, add a magic attribute, reforge their quality, randomized some their properties, reset their slot, add a slot, change slot color, or even REMOVE the entire customization you put into the item. It sound complicated but after spending half an hour experimenting with them it was FUN: take a plain saber, turn it into a magic item, toy around with the properties and slots, and equipped it to meet some crazy miniboss, the result is satisfying (a.k.a exploding corpse)

And exploding floortiles

The character skills are also unique, you're not learning your skill from a spellbook or anything, you got them from skill gem (which dropped from chests and sometimes mobs), gems are then slotted into your equipments, and are placed in your hotkey bars, gems come in three colors, red (str), green (dex), and blue (int), you can slot any gem you want and they'll level up in battles, as they level up so does your skill, there's also attribute gem, a gem that can be linked into a linked slot next to your skill gem (if they;re linked) and add an attribute to the skill ex: fire damage linked with cleave = awesome burning foes, you can swap gems in the fly, bringing you lots of skill combinations and attributes, but the rate of level gems also determined by your build, if your stat doesn't have enough int yet then the blue gems probably won't level, this is where the passive skill tree came up

Everytime you leveled up you gain skill points to be invested into the Passive Skill Tree: A skill tree that looks like a Final Fantasy X sphere grid, here you build your character's stat, if you choose Marauder for example: only one tree is unlocked, the strength skill tree but it breaks down into specialization of weapons such as dual wield, single wield, two handed, shield defense, axe, sword, mace, etc. If you choose duelist two skill tree is unlocked: The strength and the dexterity which governs bows, daggers, dual wield, attack speed, evasion, and so on. Yep I drooled when I first see it, imagine what you can build into those characters with so much to choose

With so much customisation and so much properties, gems, and everything else curiously I don't feel stuck, repulsed, or baffled by it. There's some game with complex custom things that repulse me a lot before, but Path of Exile did just right for the customisation (which is still ABUNDANT), I'm having fun playing it, there's also some things to be smoothed though, like the unclear drop rates for gems, also the public party system that doesn't list an instance reset time (let's kill a boss, OMG he's already dead, who killed it? --silence--) but overall trekking through the land filled with undead, demons, goatmans, and mutated kiwis (yay) into an inland unknown feels so.... good (with a lots of 'o'), as usual for the guaranteed beta access and some cash shop coins you can also prepurchase here, I'll admit Path of Exile is a good game and worth your pennies, for investors there are also a diamond pack worth $1000 there, I think I'll stick with the starter pack though :)

Big pool with bloods and human parts? count me in :D

I'll cover up City of Steam on my next post, and for the meanwhile, let's stare at this picture again:

Cute

Guild Wars 2 Last Beta Key (CLOSED)

So, it's that time again huh?

1. Guild Wars 2 Guru has a 5 day contest for you
2. Alienware has batches of keys left, grab it in the designated hours
3. As usual Boon and Condition has some interesting contest
4. SteelSeries giveaway
5. Tyrian Order, just put your favorite race there
6. I know it's kinda misleading name but Diablo3x has some beta key left
5. Twitter contest from Kill Ten Rats
6. Gamersbook has several too
7. GW2WvsW, made your own weapon and grab a key!!
8. Caption contest from Chronicles Of Tyria
9. Dragon Season
10. Hello PCGAMER
11. No Beta Key, No Problem, The Pale Tree got several
12. Exitializ Guild got some too
13. GuildWars 2 Journal joined the squad
14. GuildMag
15. You can follow GuildWars2live for some key too
16. Nvidia joined the list
17. Guild Wars 2 Guru replaced GW2WvsW in weapon making contest (EDIT: this is a part of their 5 days giveaway)
18.  Fragcast has some of them left, grab it while you can!
19. An intriguing contest from The Border House

As usual, always see the giveaway/contest closing time, rules, and where to go if you got your key, anyway those sites have respectable rep, I won something from Gamersbook the other day =D

Gamebreaker.TV take a few step forward, rather than beta keys they're giving away one Guild Wars 2 Collector Edition, too bad it's open for US Citizen only, but as I checked out the latest entries it counts 21 thousand entries!! well if you want to test your luck, it's the ultimate challenge =)).

UPDATE: All contest has ended, see you in tyria :)

The Secret World third Beta Weekend: Ugly, Shiny, Zombies!!

PS: Yep, I missed beta one and two

You're awake in the middle of the night, sweating and coughing, just like you've just swallowed something, really? In your sleep? Strangely you're also feel so cold so you reach for your coat, as you tried to, it burst into flame, a blue flickering one, you're stunned, you tried to reach it again and the flame dissipated, leaving your coat seems untouched. Three days after that you're sitting in the corner of your room, this new 'power' is getting out of your hand, it ruined your daily life, and also your room, as you tried to suppress your building emotion it burst into life again a form of splash, a burst, also a breeze, it seems growing... and you begin to recognize it. Two days after you're already spinning a ball of the unknown energy into yourself, you're in control now, the newfound power begin to grew again, you feel stronger, and you begin to realize the power it yours alone but (un)fortunately it is not because tomorrow someone will be knocking and your door and you'll be part in something bigger than just juggling a ball of light...

This is what happens when you sleep right after eating

In Funcom latest real world stage MMORPG: The Secret World, you play the role of an agent from one of the three secret societies, the proud Templar, the hedonistic Illuminati and the chaotic-controlled Dragon, in the universe of the secret world all of your urban legends and myths come true: your neighbour is a zombie, real life fire breathing dragon existed and they don't like you, Vampires really sucks your blood dry and they're not even handsome or pretty, that seemed abandoned ship on your coast? No the government didn't seize it, it's filled with spirits that a certain hellspawn is brought to wreak havoc on your city, so yeah above all that secret organizations are trying to get something whether it's pride or profit from these bizzare events, by cover-ups, government infringement, and also media controlling, when you're not part of the secret world you'd better be because you probably won't survive it when you saw it.

Hello :)

Combating Evil

Remember those light balls? They're called anima, and they're your powers on The Secret World, it can be extended by weapons whether it's ranged (Shotgun, Dual Pistols, or Automatic Rifle), Melee (Fists, Blades, and Hammers), or just plain magic symbol (Blood, Chaos, and Elemental), there's no class on The Secret World (although you still have to pick a role on dungeons, trinity is bad, bad, why Funcom?) and also you can mix and match every weapon you want, but you can only carry two at a time, and can only equip seven active and passive abilities at once.

Although The Secret World works on 'no level' jargon you still gained experience when you killed mobs or completes a mission, if the experience bar below you is full you gained Ability Point (AP) and sometimes Skill Points (SP). SP is used to power up or learned new rank of an ability which determine your power on using that weapon/item and also restrict your equipped item level (don't expect with no level you can zoom straight into a flesh golem and taking it down solo), mission and mob difficulties is determined on your equipped weapon and ability's quality, so yeah even there's no level, there's still Ilvl system in this game.

Shotgun and zombies, typical but effective

Ability Point is used to learn new ability of that weapon, the ability system is called ability wheel which describes all of your passive and active abilities for all of your weapon and magic, although there is some misc ability which describes some PVPy stuff, the system works this way: on the outer circle all weapons have two set of abilities, they have different names but the idea is one of them is offensive and the other is defensive/support, you have to learn all abilities in this portion to unlock the next set of inner circle which breaks down into four or five type of ability set (each set contains like seven abilities) so a LOT to learn and only fourteen can be equipped, so...happy mixing

The combat itself works like this, move a lot, yeah it's like Guild Wars 2 but still feels clunky on some portion, you can dodge once everytime your active dodge bar is full to avoid nasty AOE (ground marks) or charged attacks, mobs came on you on groups (like SWTOR), luckily the two foremost of your ability is AOE based so have fun slaughtering horde of zombies (although like Guild Wars 2 you'd best do it with groups), you can heal yourself but it came from an ability in which you have to learn so if you don't learn it prepare to die a lot, most of the mobs are unforgiving and battles can be exhausting if you do it solo, I started with pure blood magic type but later switched to shotgun and feels my AP and SP spent on offensive blood magic are wasted since I ended up using all offensive abilities from the shotgun, wonder what the cost to respec is, probably a cash shop item.... okay, that'll be bad, don't do it Funcom. And I was mistaken, there's no all rezzing type like Guild Wars 2, when you die you just have to corpse run but there are perks from being dead, which I'll be covered below, it is a different world after all.

Questing is Believing

There's only two area open in the BWE, Kingsmouth and Savage Coast, and it crawled with zombies, also the town is covered with strange fog, the coast is filled with icky wet humanoid things, the Innsmouth Academy is infested with ghosts and hellspawns, how's these things connect one another? This is your mission Agent of Pride/Opportunity/Chaos, in The Secret World quest/mission are split into some parts, the story quest is why you're there, in the area, it consists on several chapter and lots of cutscenes, the second one is the Main mission, usually provided by NPC (yeah you still have to talk to NPCs), the third one is the side mission which you can find scattered on the area in form of objects, NPCs, or even dead things, last one is the dungeon mission which can be used to enter an instance dungeon. You can have one story quest, one main quest, one dungeon quest and three side missions at once, when you accept another type of mission while the type of your mission is occupied you'll be prompted if you want to 'pause' the old mission and replace it with the new one, missions are broke down into 'tier' (sub-quest) and when you pause a mission you can take it later in the same state/tier as you previously pause it, so no more cancelling missions when your quest journal is full, HURRAH!!! (Okay, I like dynamic event more though) :D 

Let me tell you something: there are no NORMAL NPC on The Secret World!!! By the power of the ESRB M rating the colorful casts of character made me fall in love with the storyline, for example: Deputy Andy seems normal although when you follow his storyline you'll find out that he has some serious daddy issues (involving a really nasty story), that's just a fraction of Kingsmouth. NPCs offer you quests in form of a color bubble near them and when clicked  start a cutscene that gives you background about the mission (GTA style), there's also regular speech bubble where you asked the NPC about themselves or something else, just an idle talk? No my friends, this is where the fun begins.

I can't remember this guy name but let's call him Dante :P

 There are several type of Main Mission, beside the regular whackjob where you run around collecting items and killing mobs, there's also Stealth Mission where you have to infiltrate a place and you have to avoid guards and traps (which resulted in instant death when triggered), I tried them all in beta, they're aren't too hard IMO unlike some certain game :D. The other one is the Puzzle Mission, yes, all of you Point and Click Adventure Games Veteran behold your future!!! Puzzle Mission is where you will spend all of your time in game running around looking for clues, there's no arrow, there's no area indicator, only cryptic words from the mission itself, so yeah all of you who skipped cutscenes, not reading pop up messages, and didn't do idle talk with NPCs are screwed, this is the shiniest part of The Secret World, for example there's a mission where you have to find a serial killer from several years ago, up until one point you realized that the suspect is already killed himself in the sherrif office cell and leave a will that his ghost will answer all things, so how are you going to communicate with him? He's dead, sure Kingsmouth crawled with ghosts, but how are you going to find him? If you truly are puzzle solver you can find the asnwer at the end of my sixth paragraph :)

If this happens to you it's not my fault!!

Puzzle mission deals with codes but sometimes the clue can't even be found in game, so what are you going to do? Easy, press B, it'll bring up a browser window, a REAL BROWSER, with Google (damn you Google), yes some of the puzzle requires REAL world interaction, since some of the puzzles modeled after the real world, even some symbol and quotations. This brings a new approach to quests, blending real world and the virtual, also your own memory of a scene or words or a place, the quests make you THINK and deduct some of the answers. Well of course there's also some people who choose to asks about them on general chat, and in a few months the wiki will be filled of answers and walkthroughs, but who like spoilers right? Not me, although I admit I have to browse several answers just to cut my game time so I can do something else, it is beta after all but IMO again: Puzzle Missions are awesome.

In addition some of the townsfolk have twitter accounts.... and they're updating....(ominous music)

The answer... to all things...

Polishing Everything Else

The Beta runs smoothly, no random disconnect, stable server, there is still some bugs on the Savage Coast missions and the subtitles disappear from some of the dialogue, but The Secret World is probably the most Resource-Hungry monster that takes away some of my enjoyment of battle and exploring, I can see people also complains about it on their forums and Facebook page, the fps drops, the lags where there's a huge open area with lots of objects that affect the visibility of spawning mobs, but something that didn't appealed to me is the crafting system (called assembly) because I really have no idea how to assemble things, there's no tutorial or quest on that although some of the Innsmouth quests used it,  through trial and error I finally found out that I must lined the ingredients into the shape of a weapon and item... WTH??? I also can upgrade and downgrade several materials on the same assembly window, attaching glyphs which gave some iem and weapon attribute boost, they really should give this thing a decent tutorial of 'what can be done on this window'.

The battle can be a bit sluggish though but the design of the mobs are grotesque enough to feed your own horror lusts, the visual appearance of the game is over the top although your character is probably the ugliest part of it, Funcom needs to add more options on their character creation and fixed their movement so it doesn't feel too 'robotic', voice acting is good, cast of NPCs are colorful enough to gave them a bit of personality. I really can't complain, it's a good game although I must whine... why? why there's still a trinity system???!!

The game has potential, for me it gives a refreshing feeling about the quests, it's been a while since I'm really 'exploring' a game, looking for clues, writing it with a plain pen and paper like my old Myst and Gabriel Knight days, but my big nagging question is whether it can appeal to the crowd, the majority (a.k.a the 'WOW' crowd)  I don't think my friends will pay $15 a month for a combat mission interceded with puzzle, as for me, I won't buy the game even if I give the storyline and the quest 11 from the scale of 1 to 10, because Guild Wars 2 is already taking the spotlight, although I must admit... I want those puzzle mission...  on Guild Wars 2 =))

And there's the last beta weekend this week, Funcom inviting everyone, so grab your key by registering at their site

Guild Wars 2 Second Beta Weekend: Mesmerizing the Thief

I survived my one month Guild Wars 2 diet and let everything loose at it's second Beta Weekend, brought along a superb machine so I can play on high quality graphics without suffering a bad FPS drop (like ONE FPS on my previous notebook), on this beta weekend I narrowed my choices into two classes: the mesmer and the thief, while I still miss bashing enemies with hammers and axes as warrior the elegant combat from both classes drawn me in more, I'm also not a theorycrafter so I don't delve deep into min/maxing things and stats, it's all more like how I connect with the class, also I'm a through and through PVEr so never expect me to talk seriously about PVP

The Melee Scholar

I once called Mesmer a cross between fun and exhausting, not anymore, I really have no idea what the devs do about the class or the environment itself (or maybe the class is just started to grow on me), the thing is the exhausting part is gone and I can quickly get into fray even without remembering that my class is initially a caster class. Mesmer can use a variety of weapon, it can melee with swords and dual wield, it can also use the common magic weapons like staffs and scepters, mesmer depends on illusions and various clones which can be shattered to gain several benefits to the player.

Of course the class who wears a fancy jacket
can't be missed :D

My choice of weapon is to dual wield sword, although mesmer can use the gun in off hand to create some of the coolest debuff and clone effect, but when I take up an enemy I don't melee all the way like warriors or guardians, dodge is my friend and I usually created two clones before slashing enemies, I can also parried some of the enemy attack with a skill. There's a great system for Mesmer called distortion which means you can't be hit when you are on that state, it comes with limited use and must be triggered by some skill and shattering the clones, I choose the dueling and chaos traits to empower my critical strike and toughness to stand more blows. 

The ranged weapon for mesmer is somehow can be used to create chaotic situation on battlefield, the staff shoot chaos bolts with minimal damage but apply stacking debuffs to multiple enemies, it can also creates a huge dome of debuff field that randomly debuff enemies, self protect shields and so on. The scepter also dealt minimal damage but their auto attack skill creates clones that can be shattered to create a huge burst of damage or divert enemy attentions, the off hand weapon such a focus, gun or a torch complement the scepter and the sword although their choose is also depends on playstyle, I once considered sword + torch to accomodate my needs of stealthy business but dropped it, I like to mix and match based on a whim and I saw that mesmer is easy to master with any weapons.

The downside is on the term of soloing a mob that has two or three level above me, that's when I quickly lost the edge, my swords didn't do much damage and my ranged weapons promised a long fight, especially when the mob joined by a ranged or caster I was bitterly reminded that I'm a caster class and quickly bites the dust, but well Guild Wars 2 doesn't even created to be played alone anyway and the penalty of death is never a punishment,I played it through level 20 and found it satisfying.

The Asassin Without the Oh S*it Button

I played a combat rogue on WOW and I found it to be an extremely fun class, the damage, also the survivability, rogues fights dirty and I have no problem with stabbing an enemy then vanish or activates an ability that parries all the attacks, but rogues on WOW have journeyed a long way, through the various nerfs and buffs and controversial decisions, but it came all right and although I only played it like a year I like it very much.

Flashy suit enhanced my anonimity :P

The Thief on Guild Wars 2 probably a reminder that the melee with light armor can be a pain in the a**, on the term of developing or playing, here's the thing: Thief in Guild Wars 2 has some interesting mechanic but none of them stands out in a real fight, they have steal which not a real steal or disarm, it creates a copy of a weapon in form of a skill that can be unleashed ONCE, also it can be saved until later, thief dodge animation is cool but the vanishing effect didn't do anything to block incoming damage, unlike the other class thief's ability doesn't have cooldowns, it depends on initiative points above the skill bar that recharges through time or by activating certain utility skill so it's up to you to queue several same abilities together as long as your initiative permits it.

Because of my fanatical belief for combat rogue I decided I'll go with the sword+dagger combo for weapon, I tried the dagger pistol and sword pistol before but none of them is too appealing, despite my fast paced attack rate I just DIED too much because yes I can dodge and I can shoot'n stab but it never enough when you faced with two or more ranged class, my heal+vanish ability only can do so little in this situation and random downed vanish can do nothing to improve my gameplay, I feel so underpowered in term of attacks and survivability, one of my biggest disappointment is the skill pistol whip is not a ranged skill and the evade + stab skill do nothing to evade attacks (I still got hit, probably a bug), I once explored a cave alone with a skill point inside and whether the enemies are bugged to spawn fast or my utility skill and vanish sucks, I never got the skill point even when I tried with another player, we just wiped all over again. 

I realized something is missing from the thief ability, it's the oh s*it button, WOW rogues have dodge that evades most attacks, combat readiness that parries all incoming attacks,  and the Mesmer have distortion mechanic, Anet pulled the caster into melee zone with everything clicked properly but thief has no such thing, I feel like a naked warrior, died in one or two hit, I supposed to glorify the shadow and dwell in it, but all I have is underpowered three second vanish+heal and blinding smoke bombs, also traps which is not my utility choice, I have a feeling that I was being forced to play ranged with dual pistol or shortbow (which gives me a huge edge) somehow but I want to play melee while stay away from hits and conditions which in turn probably need some REAL evade skill.

Closure

But as they always says: it's beta and anything can change, I really hope they won't change mesmer since I really clicked with it, on the other hand thief.... needs A LOT of imrovement, probably not along the line I said but I just hope they did something to it, I heard on the world chat that many people are kind of disappointed on the class (probably a whole lot more on forum) I'll be back for BWE 3 and hopes for the best from Anet for the class. Mesmer still my first choice though.

It's Raining Beta Keys!!! (Closed)

It's literally downpouring outside since yesterday, lots of gaming site: big or small, even some notable gamer public figure are handing down Guild Wars 2 Beta Key, I'll try to list some of them, most of them has various closing time so grab them before they're gone (crossed means they're closed but I'll update if they're reopening)

- Talk Tyria

- Boons and Conditions

- Gamebreaker.tv

- Gamersbook

- JodyR's and Gamespot (probably it'll be better if you join Gamespot, it's a great game site)

- (Update) Guild Wars 2 Journal

- (Update) Fragworld (they still have some)

- (Update) Dragon Season (they did some riddle based contests.... which I'm bad at) =))
- (Update) GWOnline (they ended in Sunday midnight PDT, grab it quick!)

And many more, really, Use Twitter, Facebook, don't have it? make one then follow them since their sites are kinda interrelated/affiliated or something, hopefully you can grab one :)

**IMPORTANT** 

There's seems to be an increasing numbers of scam about beta key, notably from some site called "gw2beta(dot)org" yes the dot is the real dot, Anet has a post about them here so you might want to be careful about scam sites, always pick a site that is recommended by another trusted fansites. I know the hype can be sweet and blinding :D

Right Side (A Gameless Weekend)

I missed SWTOR, I missed my light-sided Juggernaut, my dark-sided Jedi Shadow, and of course I also missed my  trying-to-be-neutral Commando, I agree this contradict every other 25.678 other posts about how SWTOR sucks, or Bioware sucks, or EA (really) sucks (which is true anyway since I still want my digital download, don't try to tempt me to import it, if players got to hop several loophole just to get a copy and set a subscription that's not good), oh hey check this out, they're only have 1.3 million subscribers!! I really don't care, playing on trial and reporting closed beta texturing bugs doesn't seemed enough for me but the publisher and (the latest bug reports) kinda put me off.

See these fingers? It'll go right up your behind

Also I'm on withdrawal from the last Guild Wars 2 BWE, and I also can't play The Secret World on this beta weekend (my notebook finally joined my 'must be replaced before it takes toll of your life' queue list) so I'm officially single and gameless this weekend. And since I can't put an order to a new game gear for at least a month, I think I'm returning to a normal state of a human :D

There's something I've gotta take from the last GW2 BWE, the feelings of on the same side (Kill Ten Rats have a pretty good article here), you see... partying on MMORPG kinda rough sometimes, the maximum numbers of members, the reluctant feeling when someone sent you random group invite just to kill some big bad... dragon on an unshareable quest, the amount of LF healer or LF tank/DPS or everything else in between, the keyboard facebump moment when you just one mob close into the completion of a mission and the orc that just spawned beside you got tagged by another player. In Guild Wars 2 you just jump in the fray and kill a big bad... mother of a big lizard and her spawns with those hundred other players and you got the credits, you're all on the same side, fighting environment together, you can even ressurect other, heal other, combo attacking with one another, there's no preparation to be made, no pre-requisite moments, gear check, or whatever, everything that other player throws at the enemy become your advantage while everything that the enemy throws at you won't be your 'team' disadvantage because there's so many fighting chance you'll have even in death. So yeah... there won't be any WTF <insert class here> comments (that slowly becomes an unofficial jargon of WOW) in Guild Wars 2

This also won't happen again :D

Kill Steal have been another matter that early players (and in some high level players on some MMORPG now) experienced, it's been softened a bit though on some AAA grade MMORPG, WOW makes it EXP from monsters less impacting on gameplay and even made regular mobs easy to solo (and also make some mobs on Fireland patch non taggable), Rift have Rifting event when you can temporarily joined a public group to crush element plane mobs (even when you don't join you still got the credit and bling blings based on your contribution), SWTOR (especially on early levels) always pits you on fight with group of mobs and sometimes kill stealing is not quite a kill stealing and more like a 'welcomed reinforcements'. I'm pretty sure Guild Wars 2 will made kill stealing so much an ancient thing that every other MMO created after it (if it still sports tag system) will be questionable and bashed, also probably will be cautiously tried (or step away from)

Well, I think that completes my reminiscence for today, Think I'll go out and socialize now, thanks :)

Mind Invading Tyrians (Guild Wars 2 First Beta Weekend hands-on)

It's been a week month since I left Azeroth due to a new work project (again), and also tried to do something different with my daily life (again), but apparently it didn't stop my hype for Guild Wars 2, I feel like I've been shot by a lethal dose of mesmerizing potion, more or less Tyria is invading my mind, long story short... I'm on my laptop on fourth in the morning logging in at the first Beta Weekend

Before I logged in I read the countless twits and forum posts describing the error some of the folks encountered, seems like the login server is broken due the fact that hundreds of thousands drooling mobs tried to login at the same time, I personally waited two hours until Arenanet's team fixed it, after that I logged in and everything's fine, I relog a couple of times just to make sure the problem is fixed, my friends reported they still have login issues so i think I just got lucky


The Weapon Masters

Since it was the first time I will be playing Guild Wars 2 I decided I'll be playing Warrior because I viewed it as an 'easy' class on every MMO I ever played, and it'll be a blasphemy not to roll the most iconic Guild Wars character: the Charr, so there I was, rolling a white furred Charr Warrior.

Because white is the new hype

The first time I zoomed to the starting zone I noticed is the FPS drops (maybe due the obvious fact that everyone rolls charr), got some tutorial on the mechanic and then quickly blast (i mean slash) away mobs with my sword, the control is incredibly easy, the battle system was hectic, yes it was INCREDIBLY HECTIC AND FUN!! The key point is to have you constantly moving while you cut enemy to pieces (or smash them with your hammer, or cleaving, or...) anyway if you think warrior is only a close combat expert think again, Warriors on Guild Wars 2 are weapon masters, they can use every single arms available (except staffs, daggers, and other magicky stuffs) oh yeah, Skills on Guild Wars 2 is weapon based so your skill changed based on what weapon you're using, and Bow/Rifles are equally deadly as a greatsword on Warrior's hand, imagine a ranged weapon on a heavy armored class, blasting everything with long range shots and arrow volleys, experimenting with weapon was my great time on Guild Wars 2

I also get my hand into Mesmer, crazy class in which a crossing between the word fun and exhausting, as a magic user mesmer relied on their illusions and debuff skills, I didn't get my hand on that guy much but I have to say this: Flashy purple skills will make your eyes hurt :))

I like hacking and slashing more, the sole reason I got two weapons

Dying In A Busy World is not a Bad Thing

After a short tutorial and initial quests I got threw into an outpost outside my capital city: The Black Citadel, after that I was deemed free to start my story, there are several quests type on Guild Wars 2, there are heart quests that involved you gathering resources and killing stuffs to reinforce the area, after you complete it the NPC involved turns into a vendor, selling you some good upgrades for your weapons or armors with karma (basically a PVE currencies, just like JP and VP on WOW) you gain Karma as you complete hearts and events. There are also dynamic event which seemed to happens every time your character stepped a foot inside an area, it usually happened when your character is busy gathering resources or slaying a heart quest objective, these dynamic event ranged from defending an outpost raided by a bunch of enemy into a 'raid' situation itself where you have to escort an NPC into the enemy territory and killed the big elite boss there, sometimes it also happened in a chain wehere the first event is a raided outpost, the second is scouting the territory, and the third is a full pledged raid into the heart of the enemy's lair. Everyday is a busy day on Tyria, the NPC on the game is not stationary, they helped you fight mobs, they heals you, they're also smart enough to run away when a bunch of hungry bears invaded a village, they're also defeated and can be ressurected (or rallied on Guild Wars 2 term) some of the dynamic event can be triggered by speaking to an NPC. Last one is the personal story quest, I'll be covered that in the next chapter

When you are faced with a pack of angry mobs, here's a fact: you will DIE, even when you're lucky enough to survive a long time somebody else will take your place dying, and here's another thing: when you die (downed on Guild Wars 2 term) you can still fight with a bunch of downed skill, including tried to build your HP, throwing rocks to enemies, teleporting to a safer place, or even get up to fight once again with a limited time, when the enemy attacking you died (whether it's from your attacks, dots, or somebody else's doing) you'll be back in action and it's called rallied. The second 'death' state is called defeated, which happens when your downed time is up or all the mobs continues to bash you, this is basically where you are truly dead and can't do anything except waiting someone to resuscitate you (a.k.a rallying) and since anyone can do this it's basically a blessing, you're also responsible for keeping your health in check, even when you're a warrior when you rush headlong alone with a sword and a shield into a boulder-throwing elemental you'll get downed pretty fast or even defeated, every profession has unique healing skills, which equipped in the 6th slot of your skill hotkey, so if you want to rush headfirst, rush headfirst with friends and other people, just make sure you keep that 6th shortcut in mind and don't mind dying, it happens, just pray that there are somebody else around :D

You see, 'charge straight into battle' means you do that with your fellows

In short: there are enough things to do to keep you occupied on Tyria, variety of those, and they said there are more, it is the biggest selling point of Guild Wars 2

My Story

Epic stories on a game always an awesome thing, you don't just read it or listening to it, you're IN IT! the levels of involving are varied throughout RPGs though and Guild Wars 2 delivered some good thing, it's all  started at the beginning: when you create your character you will be given some options for your character, for the charr is the legion you belong, your lineage, and your sparring partner, this create a set path where your character embarking on an epic journey on a quest chain, the personal story quests offered great experience, karma, and some equipments upgrades, all personal story takes place in an instanced zone and you can bring other people to help or experience it from the view of your character, to add the flavor some of the personal story quests had choices that'll affect the plot, so even when you following your friend's storyline, his/her choice might not be yours and you can always pick yours when it your turns to do the quest

To be honest In this beta experience some of the quests are... ridiculuously hard while the other is plain flat easy, the decent challenge is somewhat rare, from five of my stories I've only seen it once, the others are involving me dying over and over again where every mobs throws flame bolts at me, or in other case I just facerolling everything. The easy way is always to have friends tagged along and created havoc among the enemies, but this thing confront the very soul of the 'personal' thing. I think Arenanet needs to addresses this issue, whether tweaking with the companion NPCs or scale down/up the ability of the mobs itself, there are also some... disconnected feeling at the plots between chapters from the human's personal story

Overall: Decent story for every lore-lover including me, not too long, can be joined with friends, although some of the hard difficulties are somewhat turns me off, there's a  charr quest that is a reminisce from the old Guild Wars quest on Ascalon it gave me a warm feelings and I really enjoyed that one

Bumps on the road

It's beta, it will have flaws and Guild Wars 2 have quite a lot of it, the login server is posing a problem for some people, the difficulties of instances are spiking ups and downs, the FPS problem is a major disappointment for almost all minimal spec user,

What about me? Well for me nothing is gamebreaking although there seems to be a major hiccup on the guild system, the second day I'm logging in I found my guild is gone! I tried creating it again and it didn't respond, but in the end I just moved on and created a second guild with new name, it's just a beta after all, one other thing is despite the heavy armor I'm wearing I found my survivability is on par as a medium armor wearing classes, I think it's where the traits system started (I'll get it done after I fiddled with it a bit more)

Closing (But there's still more to come...)

It's good so far, Guild Wars 2 representation is almost as I expected, I didn't get my hand into PVP or server battle though (dubbed World Versus World Versus World: WvsWvsW), also I didn't have time to do the crafting, and since gathering requires some gear it still make me frown since they said we can gather without restriction, but well nobody's perfect but since the beta ended I've been died a liitle inside, one month from now, hope they smooth some of the issues (especially the FPS thing) at that time

Companions, Friends, A Scenic Route, and A Bunch of Posts

Don't mind my random rabbling at the title, sometimes I just juggling words in my mind
So I did some rare thing on the past couple of months: I did more playing than writing, in fact all of the accumulated data i've been collected probably will be thrown away carelessly on this post, but i'll try to sort it out now, and at this time I'm posting, some of it probably got old


1. World of Warcraft, patch 4.3: Death to All Trolls Deathwing!!

Surprisingly patch 4.3 pulled off a refreshing change from the troll dungeon from 4.1, or even the hardcore aspect of Fireland Raid, The Zandalari and Amanis probably sulking in their den right now. The new dungeon and the new raid performed a continuous storyline where Deathwing is finally fallen by our hands and right now it's not just the 1% of the community who saw him fall, the new Raid Finder tool make sure everyone will get an equal chance to punch Deathwing's metal jaw.

The new 'trilogy' dungeons are nicely done, the fight is not so much as punishing as ZG/ZA (where on a very bad day Jindo will throw shadow explosion on you three consecutive times) but they still required some timely interruptions and move away from the fire thing, IMO the fight is surprisingly fun, interrupting and moving never been as fun as of right now, the fight had it's moment escpecially on Well of Eternity where you face Mannoroth The Defiler (pretty nostalgic since we didn't have chance to fight him head on at Warcraft 3 and Grom hogging all the hero title), most of the bosses required pretty decent amount of teamwork and when you're going the achievement run, things get more even challenging.

Raid Finder is a tool for even more possibility, the Raid on RF tool is tuned down into an acceptable mode of challenge from the normal mode, giving anyone with no fixed playing schedule (with an average team) could beat Deathwing in a mere 60 minutes, thus giving the chance for a tunnel visioner like me to adapt myself (and my comp) to the nature of 25 man raid. Unfortunately there's only one Raid on it right now: the Dragon soul (split into two separate raid) but as Blizz said they'll add more later as the tool evolves, after RF released there's a post praising it, and it's 142 pages long, Blizzard pulled this one off nicely and they deserves my (and most of the comuunity) a thanks.

There's also new Darkmoon Faire, I only visited them once at the beginning of this month, I stopped playing WOW on December to get my hand on City of Heroes (post is coming up) it's more festive than the old one, latest addition of Transmogrify spices things up a bit, it made me a sad panda and gives so much disappoinment though since my saved Field Marshall armor is untransmogrifiable, but well that's how Blizz want to play it, time to hunt armor on Darkmoon Faire again then...

And I sorta want to start tanking... again =))

 
2. Freedom at City of Heroes

Yes, CoH is now free to play, although the restriction kinda make the community split into subscribers and free players, but I'll talk about it later, I started as a free player and surprisingy many aspects are already cut off for me, thankfully NC made a sweet Black Friday VIP Deal with only $0.99 so I grabbed it.
after spent an hour designing my character and selecting an archetype (class) and selecting the Villain/Hero starting area I was launched into the fray, the general idea of City of Heroes gameplay is instance based where every mission had randomly generated dungeon everytime you enter it, the number of enemy also spawned based on your team size and difficulty setting (yes you CAN adjust the difficulty setting up to fighting mobs 7 level above you and they hits like a truck)

The delicious aspect of City Of Heroes is that your level is insignificant, as you team with another person that had more level you're automatically rises to their level or if you're the party leader they'll automatically follow your level, the restriction is the power they gain on above your level can't be used, this is called exemplar/sidekick system and can be used on almost every mission except some story arc or special mission. this system is beneficial to the casual player who just want to play together with another hi/low level (yep, it's me), tired of mission I can tinkered on crafting system and spend some hard earned cash on the unique auction house or maybe MAKE my own missions through the Mission Architect system and shared it to the community and earned credits from them.

A large chain of missions on CoH is called a Task Force (or Strike Force for Villains), usually had minimum level for the participant and a minimum team size, it's usually ended up on a major character of a story, whether we protect them or defeat them, or maybe a Giant Monster, most TFs are harder than ordinary missions and such missions often yield an achievement (called badges), another mission that requires more members are called trials, it didn't have much mission like TFs but often take place on a large instanced dungeon where thousands of enemies could be running at you at the same time =))

But unfortunately shiniest spot of City of Heroes comes with the paid expansion Going Rogue , although free for subscribers, this expansion contains most of the interesting story arc of CoH, this is where you can cross the line between good and evil (and if you want you can stay there between the lines), Heroes can be Vigilantes as they ripped their enemies new one in the name of justice, or even overdo it until they fall into the dark depth of Villainity, Villains can use their brains a bit and become Rogues and even go through with their heart until they become Heroes, the morally ambiguous Rogues and Vigilantes can stay that way and earn bonuses which can't be normally achieved by staying on one side and also some unique powers. Moreover you can start your character on an alternative Earth Praetoria where humanity lives on fascist utopia and Superpowered characters are not divided between good and evil but a more greyed area of Loyalists and Resistances, this is where choices matters for the sake of the stories, pretending to be Loyalist where you actually worked for Resistances? or an opened one where you gunned down loyalists in the street? It's all your choices, it become your own personal story but unfortunately it comes with a price for free players

.... my subscriptions ended a couple of days ago and I'm starting to miss my resistance-pretender-to-be-not-so-loyalist-but-overall-morally-good character


3. Lineage 2 without the grinding.... well not really


Yes yes, let's continue, I made some notes on the latest expansion of Lineage 2: God Of Destruction and their move to free to play thing, since it's my first serious MMO and stuffs, let's get started: first of all the leveling experience on 10-40 has been completely revamped, there's a single cohesive questline which sadly ended in 40, after that it's back to our favorite thing: Grinding millions of mobs....
....
.....
.......................
Okay I give up, first of all I hate the discontinued questline, the daily quests (yes there are those) aren't even close to closing the gaps between levels, Kamaloka and the Labyrinth gets old after a week, after doing dailies (about half an hour) I usually just push the exit button and pretending that I never knew Lineage 2. There's so much revamp on endgame and such (including new instances) and in order to get that I must smite one billions two hundred thousand and sixty one monster? why NC? I'm not interested in PVP and then you made this game 'casual' friendly but then you stopped abruptly on level 40 and it's old content all the way to 90, well at least us healer isn't broken anymore since you made our inquisitor skills accessable and yeah mana regen is still sucks, I was wondering abou Aeore Healer with their number of skills, WTB a legion of Kookabura

............... I'm out of words, Lineage 2 probably won't be for me anymore, I don't know, if someone who dedicatedly grinding for a year found themselves in a max level and wonder... why I can't paid 10 mils to an NPC to change my class? Yes in old time it's 15 millions to gain subclass but since it's optional it didn't matter, class changing should be a reward for gaining level on Lineage 2 and then again this statement can be expanded to: "Why the hell I'm unable to buy a standard DN set when I hit level 80?"

The community is probably better than my local server (or WOW) but I must admit the abundance of non-english speaker spamming shout channel is annoying, and the bots is still on the roll. I probably will touch this thing again in 5 or 6 months (if I have the time)


4. Star Wars The Old Republic Beta Impression

This one's a little aged, I was ecstatic when got into the last beta testing (well they invited all their long term forum troll... i mean... registered user) but immediately flunked down really hard because apparently I somehow reverting back to my old VGA driver (which caused the GPU to be so much overheated) and hindering my overall gameplay, I didn't have time to address this problem because I was kinda late to join the massive beta test, all I want to say is Bioware did a great job to make my character lifelike through all the dialogue and such but I really wonder about the replayability value of this MMO (i.e alting) I'm good with sitting with the same dialogue 100 times, but... other player could bang their keyboard due to the unskippable dialogue.

The graphic is beautiful, I started as a Jedi Consular and Tython's scenery is breathtaking, the story unfold dramatically, changing as I choose my own path (yeah it's the darker one because I choose to avenge my fallen comrades and didn't even try to be neutral on the Twilek's refugee situation), as I told before I don't have time to jiggle around the gameplay system but the combat system seems fluid enough, at least for a consular, the feeling of danger is there and you'll strive to get out of it before it's get worse with using ALMOST all your abilities (dancing finger again) =))

I need a bath...