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

Dual Wield: The things that are not on line

The thing on the right picture is a patch of begonia sp, if you're not familiar with begonia you might want to look at your sixth grade biology textbook, it's one of the most complex flower family, also a common one (and yes, a nightmarish version of them exist on all fantasy media, like those man-eater plants). this flowershrub on the picture have nautilus style, pretty slick and awesome IMO. So anyway what's a picture of flower doing in my blog?

Let me get back a bit, a few weeks ago I stared at my Steam folder and found out that I have like ten unplayable games, and a quick look at my folder reminds me that I just bought The Secret World and have no time to play it alongside Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV, I have a project on SWTOR to ensure whether their f2p style is a trap or just a plain hindrance, apparently I only racked three days worth of my game time to it to reach level 30, (I finished it yesterday), not to mention I also have to sacrifice FFXIV for it, long story short: what happened? PS: I just remembered that I also had Defiance and only played it for like 5 hours

I guess I was burnt out, more likely I was burnt out not because of the games, but of my activity around it, like hunting news, beta testing, give some feedback to devs, forum trolling, blogging, and so on, I have done this since three years ago with occasional game-jumping and sub-continuing (on WOW), I took a break on WOW and other games for a year due to real life situation, but this one is different since i have so many things to do, so many games to play and review that I don't even know where to start, or ends, or whatever. Also i noticed that I can only stay awake for two hour at nght, probably from work or I'm just not that fit anymore.

So as we continue, last week I met a friend, I don't usually make new one since my job and all gaming stuff prevent me from meeting people (which doen't have anything to do with work) and I was asked: "When was the last time you go out?", I hopelessly tried to rack my brain to find that information, I know that I must go out at a time, and embarrasingly: the only thing that I can remember is that a year ago, our Guild Wars 2 guild met offline (an annual event), after that everything was like work-related or something similar, family affairs and such.

I'm embarrased to say that I'm a complete shut in

Playing all MMORPGs was my very goal, it won't matter if I like it or not, just play them all, review them all, see them all, follow them all, it gives me something to do beside work which I also have several similar set of goals, MMORPGs is a life that I discovered and build from scratch when I was still a lone beach wanderer on Anarchy Online six years ago. Building a gaming community is also a nice touch, although it will be constantly changing by trends, some people stay, some people go, I still believe a good gaming community transcends the game itself but what happens when the game itself wear you out? I'm not expecting this, I though the constant stream of MMORPGs can prevent something trivial like boredom, but what happened wasn't boredom, it was "too much of a good thing".

So, the flower picture was sent for me, per request, The other picture is a photo I took on my trip to Bali several years ago (see? I did go out) I think it's time to take a break from gaming, I don't know what I'll do though, before I met MMORPGs I have nothing to talk about except works, and probably hobbies I never did anymore but I think I found that the outside's getting more and more interesting...You know, I met a lot of nice people online, I also a witness of how anonymity can bring the worst of mankind, ingame it's nice to see guildies pulling their weight for you. It was just like someone offgame that barely knows you, spent five hours on each and every day going to and from work, and still found some time to meet you, it was wonderful act and deserves your outmost gratitude, why? Because they're good people, that's all.

Being Saleh Dual Wield: A Game for XX

My mic is still busted and I'm too lazy to get a new one on the nearest (next door) audio store, so instead I'm just sitting on my linkshell's Teamspeak channel and become a mute (interspersed with broken voices from my internal, unreliable microphone), but last night there's an interesting chat with my friends there, one of them said: that in just a few patches, the only ones progressing into the next tier of PVE is just the eight of them, in term of progressing means they're decked in fully melded AF2/Allagan, have a few 50s in like every class, and blasted Binding Coil of Bahamut up until Twintania, and also: Defeating the Garuda Extreme Mode (and for some of them: Extreme Titan)

The statement could become a delicious debate of Casual vs Hardcore, or Old Guard vs New Guard, Noob vs Elitists, and some more of it, but I'll try not to get there since it's been debated from like the dawn of men, instead I'm going to talk about the root of all of it: Life (yes, like I have one) :D

The Group

My Ilvl is 61, which means I'm decked in my class quest armor with a little Darklight tier sprinkled here and there, and since I'm not online every night I only have like two hundred mythology token (after making my zenith shield), last week was like the busiest week of my life and I've just returned a few days ago, exhausted, and only want to sleep until two days afterwards, I'll get back to it later but for now If I'm (and no I am not) a main tank in a dedicated eight man group there will be consequences: Either I'm replaced by someone else (and if I got into extended hiatus: not needed anymore) or they won't progress since they waited for me. Was it a lose - lose situation? It depends on how you and everyone in your group take a look at the game and how fast you and everyone else want to progress, which also means when everyone feels good together they will stick, thus brought us to the next one

I want in and I want out

Most of the endgame instance in Final Fantasy XIV are eight man locked, you can substract a few, like one tank, or one healer, or just threee DPS, but unfortunately, you can't add anyone. The recent Nightmare Tower content from Guild Wars 2 brought in 'the more the merrier' stuff to a big instance,but they failed to implement it into a permanent content and since GW2 is not progression based the rewards were felt inadequate due to sheer difficulty of the tower since it's all a 'chance' (chance of precursor, chance of acended, and so on)

World of Warcraft however planned to push their flexible raid content further on the next expansion, creating more choices on progression and terms of endgame content, flex raid will scale the mobs on a raid based on the player numbers (5-10) and they reapproached holy trinity in a different way: the all-in-one armor eliminating the grinding for offspec, when you change role your armor also changed stat, it makes roles on raids extremely flexible, the plan sounds viable but it hasn't here yet.

So what happened when you picked a new member for the guild/FC which has some quality of raiding and he/she wants in? Of course in a locked group it means he/she are either rejected, or must find seven more people, or just plain running a 'mandatory' runs where he/she replaced one of the core group members. And when some of the core members wants out because of things happened you have to find new ones, recruiting, otherwise: you won't progress.

Life in a cup of coffee

The Old Guard vs New Guard debacle rotated around the demonic circle of how the new members can't keep up with the old members in terms of grouping endgame content so when old one leaves and new ones comes, both will struggle to adapt, especially when endgame content takes up much skills from the player, and when no new ones comes or both sides are failing to comprehend each other it will break the group eventually often creating bad taste afterwards and also some drama.

I understand one thing: Life happened, sooner or later life can either take us away from gaming and it can also brought us back, even when you dedicated your life to gaming sometimes something will happened to you (ex: Youtube), why? Simple: You're connected with people, in real and in gaming, the former will definitely did something to you (and if you said I'm wrong tell that to your government tax and electric service), the latter CAN'T happened unless the former happened. People come and go, and in gaming they will effect something if they're in your dedicated group, especially if they're a game jumper (like me). I once wrote something on my old blog (it's deleted now since Multiply shuts down and I'm again too lazy to back it up) that a guild/community is like a coffee shop, I have my preferred flavor, everyone has one too of course, sometimes we ordered the same one, sometimes we hang out and chat together, sometimes there's a little friction, sometimes there are indifference, sometimes new people came, sometimes old people left without saying anything, but in the end of the day I had a good coffee, good chat, and good experience as I walk home

What I want to say is: you can't limit on an MMO, people come and go so it's your cue to do something or not to do something about it, there are no wrong answer, because eventually you can't force people to stay, you can force them to leave though, it's easier =)), or change yourself a game, or a playstyle, or role play, whatever, however the dynamic life of an MMO is always the things that attracts me to it, even when there are repeated events here and there, it's so dynamic that you can't focus to game content alone, you will be forced to dealt with happenings if you want to progress in a group content, some games eliminated it with LFG/LFR tools and left the social aspect to a guild, you can choose to be in it or just solo your progress all the way, it's up to you, it's all there, but however you choose it you will still be dealing with people, human beings, so remember to always say hello :)

Dual Wield: Normality

Yes, I've been busy with works and games, there are several comeback I want to write about including the f2p conversion of RIFT (which happens like a loooooooong time ago), patch 5.3 of WoW's Escalation (while now 5.4 is hovering above), several old beta like FFXIV (i think I'll write it when I finished OB), and the continuity of Guild Wars 2 short story updates (which I missed like twenty of them, umm no, it was more like six) :D

but for now: I want to talk about the other world, again

No, not this one

I met a couple of my homies several days ago (yes, I still used that term for my non MMO player friends). One of our topic was branching, it was about our childhood friend, a really close one, we used to hang out of our youth until a year ago and then he abruptly disappeared, not really gone, but our contacts have been... disconnected, usually revolves around works and projects until I saw 'uncommon' act from him on his social media account statuses, occasionally leading and deliberately affiliated to some movement and party-like organization, not to mention some hormones....

Not to say on a big day of one of our friend there are no response from him and on his own big day he never said a word while his social media statuses are more vague than ever.

I had my share of youthful angst, hikikomori, and other terms of closing myself from the (real) world, I had my days of game and stuff addictions, but even in that time I never left my 'human terms'. Since gaming was never and won't be a long time accepted as a hobby on my country I'm sill considered a nerd, childish, or just plain weird and the least of them:'not normal', and I accepted that

And there we are, me and my homies (if you don't want to see this term again you can close your eyes and make more appropriate term) :P. Just talk about life and other lives, and we came to "Why he's not here with us?"

I replied: "Let's picture this: It is us, now, on a fancy (cheap) restaurant talking about stuffs, I'm talking with your wife, and playing toy car with your kids, I came onall of your big day, we catch up stories and work plans, and all this while there are no words from him? He deliberately dumped us and cut off all contacts, while there are lots of means when he wants to be here or even join the conversations. And you said I was the weird - not normal closet-basement online gamer?"

Of course he said yes and we get a good laugh together.

So let me tell you: Game doesn't change people, it doesn't make people weird and cut off from the real world, MMO doesn't, broken heart doesn't, politics are :)

Just look at Ellen Kiel, look at what cutthroat politics have done to her, CURSE YOU ANET!!!

Dual Wield: The Ultimatum of Moving Forward

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, cynical words, and hyperbolic sentences, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

So, just several hours ago someone from one of the largest telecommunication company admits a few things, My city is way behind on the Internet things (we only got a couple of broadband provider here and all of them are sucks) not because internet has a few interest, but there is NO network at all, limited DSL (yes we still use it), no FO at all (yes, nada), no Wimax (what are they anyway? :P) the cause of this is unknown and I'm not stepping into that area where politics involved, but fortunately they started working because they've been given ultimatum from the stakeholders that my city has to be covered in Fiber Optics on next year.

IMO this is interesting since I'm a long-term subscriber for them and repeatedly complained about how their service sucks and their price are crap, about how connections SHOULD NOT BE limited on Facebook and twitter, about internet is evolved into a much more than MIRC and Friendster  (we have Google hangout now!!!) about how the prices and speed of foreign internet connection is much much lower and much much faster, now they give me some compensation by lowering their price and extending their networks, so I think I'm not the only one who complains every month. They're still slow on their tracks though but since their main office is just a walk away from my office I guess it'll still be a long and wonderful relationship  =))

Dual Wield: (Ir)Rationality

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

I found myself as a non-grasper, wasn't quite able to distinguish something for it's literal meaning and tends to dig in order to find the meaning of that something to it's origin, like trying to determined who owns a dog from just looking at the dog, apparently I also quite bad at doing that since my mind wanders off a lot =))

This writing was begun when I found that from the initial 150-ish local gamer who already pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 are all males, for some reason I can't quite remember seeing 150 people gathered in a space and all of them are males (except in an army display), What happened here? I asked for opinion from them and apparently it was ended in vain (after 300 lines of opinions) since I can only found one valid answer and forced to accept the truth (local female gamer is a myth) :P :P :P

So I changed the question, and asked different circles of my friends "are you a gamer?" of course the answer is no, the strange thing is: When they're asked if they will come in an official game convention (like a local E3 or game convention, they said they would go and play games, they don;t mind being called a gamer in those events)

The Stigma

My local community can accept cat lovers, skateboarders, even face tattoo and piercing as a hobby, apparently when they said game as a hobby, some of them won't admit it.

Why? Because gaming is a nerd hobby and a deep dark hole toward rejection of society

That's not true!! Oh Yeah? try putting MMO on your resume/CV and replace music I know you can't play drums

You won't do it, ah yeah I guess you understand my meaning.

In US, Europe, most gamer said gaming stopped being a stigma years ago when Blizzard propels World of Warcraft into important pop culture

Important Pop Culture there, not here

I say: In here, locally, people follow majority, apparently majority said the most important western pop culture in my country is Lady Gaga

So yeah, I reject society and a nerd, I also have zero social life *bleep* (puts a thick glasses)

The Sad Truth

Even by saying "game as a hobby" you will always still stuck in a second gear here, why? Because the majority doesn't play, and can't appreciate why colored pixel sticks you good in front of your screen. "Painting can appeal more people" said the 'rational' guy

Apparently hobby can't be measured by rationality, but it can be blocked by skepticism which hide behind rationality

The most popular sport on my country is Soccer (or Footbal in EU), I wonder why stay up night for 90 minutes just to see someone scored a goal? I can always read the results tomorrow, this probably will become a chaotic argument where the pro will said about the beauty of every kicks, the adrenaline, the heart pumping saves, and after those the anti will said: "Hey, guess what: it's s the same thing on <insert hobby here>

But when you said "hey that's what I saw in an MMO game" the argument will continue about thousand other things better other pixels on screen until it washed out down the drain a.k.a rationality wins

And FYI I like soccer, I just dont follow it that much, Collina still has to be the next UN secretary general though

Try look up in the local streetshops, is there even a cloth with your favorite game logo in there? No? That's how stigmatized you are

Rationality wins again

Dual Wield : Stay away from my sweatshop

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

My birth country, Indonesia is a haven for gold sellers and all forms of MMO or internet exploitation, the community are total hell since it's dominated by 15 year old kids and adults who exploited them to sell or buy in game currency, or sweatshop runner, ruining the community for profit, the sole reason why I used to never played an international MMO with my fellow countrymen (or women, which is still a myth)

But thanks to the internet, like-minded people have it so much easy to gather, from a thread created by my friend Kurogakure, Guild Wars 2 probably will mark the beginning of a new fresh and clean gamers from my country (even if it's just a fraction of the total hell).

Of course, like-minded is still like-minded and most of the local old-school gamer (which I prefer to call sweatshop employees) can never understand the urgency the community needs to stay clean, playing the game like it should, to pass time, to meet people, to gather for an event, or something without REAL CASH involved (unless they have cash shops). A few weeks ago my friend come into a clash with a hardcore sweatshopper, the sweatshop listed some of the most ridiculuous argument like: "How the hell should I pay for a game, if I can gather gold from it and sell it for REAL CASH PROFIT???"

Me: "Selling currency is illegal"
Sweatshopper: "Other people in other country do it too"

From the two lines of argument most people, even non-gamer can understand it was going nowhere, when people break the accepted law, they probably won't have a problem break anything else

I played MMO as a hobby, one of my hobby actually, something that defined by online dictionary as something that I did in my leisure time, outside of work, My friend also describing something like: "A chef can play online games for a hobby while professional game tester can cook at his spare time"

It was a completely different matter.

Apparently gold seller can't understand that, if a game is not profitable anymore they will quickly packs, sell out, and move into another one, they're not gamers, never was

So a gamer and a  gold seller is not even on the same boat, one wants a community, while the other wants community to buy from them (and they don't even own the game)

Sweatshopper: "Why can't I? The big company's making millions, why can't I make my own dough?"

In my country pedestrian walks on street, because the side pavements is used for personal shops, the analogy fits

All they want to say is: "Stay away from my sweatshop"

So Arenanet, please make your game free of gold seller and exploiter okay?