Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Guild Wars 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...