Being Saleh: Alt Invaders

As my friends are knee-deep in mythic progression and my online time become less and less dedicated. I found myself veered once more into my altholicism, at first I max leveled my troll warlock, as I realized many people specced destruction I quickly swapped my artifact to affliction but then blizz changed how unstable affliction works, which doesn't bode well to long time warlocks, but as I only played affliction like two days I can adapt to that, got into heroics in several days then I moved on.

And have a sweet scythe as a souvenir

For me Mists of Pandaria will always be the most memorable expansion ever (proved by my Wakener title) and monk still become my greatest failure of class (due to their drastic rehaul on Warlords of Draenor) but I have a sudden urge to tried out the class once more, and so armed with my renewed determination (but still zero skill-playing, and zero f*** about me as an abysmally bad tank) my Mistweaver becomes a Brewmaster

The keg comes for free

Cruising through Draenor (and Garrison) once again for leveling 90 through 100 is  not a welcomed throwback thursday (or in my case: monday) but somehow I did it in mere 10 hour-ish, by spamming dungeons, questing, mining, and (beyond my belief): pet battling.

Brewmastering in legion is radically different from other tanks, while warriors and paladins rely on damage mitigation, druids on dodging and reflecting damages, Death Knights and Demon Hunters on repleneshing lost HP, Monks are all about managing the stagger stack and a little bit of everything else, every damage dealt on the Brewmaster was mitigated by 40% but with a catch that the mitigated damage will be dealt slowly over time, more damage received means more will be transferred to the stagger stack, there are several skill built on the brewmaster to manage this stack, from delaying the damage for some seconds, or even cut it up to 50% of the damage still on the stagger stack, all these skills are brew-based making a brewmaster the real drunken fist class, Monk also deploying dodge as their mastery increasing their haste for the cooldown of those brew-based skills, or (depending on your talent) relying on their mastery gift ot the ox to a chance of self heal. In my case I choose to rely on brew skills, relying on the ox brew talent to instantly refilling any brew and my energy, which means my HP is goes slowly and steadily down when I'm tanking a dungeon, making some healer probably struggling to keep my HP full, you can't do that I'm sorry, I'm not speccing that talent :D

In like a week my brewmaster already entered the heroic dungeons, while learning my class I found the fact above and somewhat giggling, most people made monk to become a windwalker which is one of the highest damaging melee dps class at this moment, playing a windwalker somewhat reminding me of rogues (without daggers) and it's also one of the fun melee dps class (with their shoryukens and hadokens if you specced those), mistweaving is also fun but requiring more concentration than before (MOP xpac) as I lost most of my hugging AOE healing (healing spinning crane kick is no longer available), also my new area healing requires me to consume more MP with random targets but at least they also apply heal over time

Legion expansion still draws me in but as I one class away from my quintessential quintet achievement I decided to take a short break and return to (again to my surprise) Guild Wars 2, why? Because of my friends (again). So I'm looking forward to bash them (and the game) in my next blog post :P

Also: I'm in hell, plants hell

Blade and Soul: A Latency-based Delayed Action Review

I actually have a weird feeling that NCSOFT only released it's 2012 martial arts MMORPG Blade and Soul in the west to counter Pearl Abyss/Daum's Black Desert, since it's four years past it's prime, and since NC has games with similar gameplay (action based) like Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 their difference becomes aesthetic only, and since Black Desert was restricted to US only players Blade and Soul gave access to worldwide, with one problem of course: latency...

Latency is the weird factor in action based MMORPG, In Guild Wars 2 the problem was diminished by the dynamic combat while in Wildstar and Blade n Soul your survival and dps depends on every button you hit and the exact time you hit it since many skills triggered by enemy's (both PVP and PVE) action. So yeah in blade and soul you'll dash around enemies, countering their interrupts, interrupts their deadly moves, grabbing them and throwing them around, mount them and lock them. So when your internet is so blashpemously late on receiving/sending the interrupt/counter data because of the high latency you might ended up very very dead.

Minor spoiler: They'll also be dead in the next few minutes

Babes and cats

Blade n soul has four races: the normally human (Jin), the half giant barbarians (Gon), the little fox-cat-other cute fluffy furry things-midget-hybrid (Lyn) and the oversexualized nymphs (Yun), and since it's Korean you'll find breast slider on your female characters customization and yes they'll also jiggling when your character moves so make sure to take a lots of screenshots and videos.... anyway, the classes are Blademaster (shiny swordsman!!), The Destroyer is a Gon-only axe wielder with slow but devastating skills, Force Master utilizes ranged attacks with flashy finishers, Kung Fu Master has long unbroken (depends on your latency) combo attacks, Assassins has incredible (again depends on your latency) timing-based skills, Summoners are Lyn only and have cats (which makes them easily the superior race and class), and Blade dancer is a chibi version Lyn only Blademaster. As you can see all the classes are damage dealers so it's another game without the holy trinity

My story
In Blade and Soul --just like any other action games -- your main attack is your left mouse button which is a resource generator while your right is usually a resource spender -- more devastating -- attack, your other alphabet skills ranged from crowd control to combo finisher, for example as a Destroyer I can press E to lift my enemy, press E again to wedge them against my axe to replenish my HP, press X to slam them towards the ground, and finally delivering the final blow with my right button skill, It's weirdly satisfying because the animation is so smooth and oh so so bloody :D. When i was knocked down by an enemy my X skill becomes a counter skill which whirlwind the entire enemy but if for some reason the enemy can follow the knockdown with say: a legbreaker lock (latency matters here) I will sustain a heavy damage or even KO'd, fortunately during the time my HP depleted I can do things like crawling out of the reach of enemies and then meditate until I was revived, unfortunately It only filled half of my HP so consumables like HP potions are vital in combat, also getting hit when you're on a downed state means insta-KO

As a solo player I met almost zero obstacle during my questing (at least until level 20), Unfortunately on higher level my unupgraded axe started to kill me faster than the mobs, so I'll have to go back to lower level dailies. The stat of my character are given by weapons, accessories, and soul wheel (piece of cakewheel), clothes are purely cosmetics so I kinda liked it since I like playing transmog/transmute with armors, You can 'feed' some weapons with another weapon to raise it's stats, most weapons you obtained as drops are sealed and you can unseal them with unsealing charms, but if you feed them to another weapon you won't need to unseal them, later in game you'll be introduced to lockboxes which can be opened with keys, there are two kind of keys: the brilliant and regular, regular will unlock the box but you'll get random weapons, brilliant will always give you your class-specific weapon, which sometimes can be used as a precursor to evolve an epic weapon, one thing though: brilliants are sold in the cash shop, they can be bought by specific in game currency but only if you're a premium member, so you know where I'm going with this, fortunately they're also drops from dailies and dungeons, although it's rare, the reason why I came back to low level area, gambling my lockboxes away to just find the precursor

I also met a lots of Hildibrands along the way

Big Bosses and losing your cash
Group play against world/dungeon bosses added some perks to the already interesting battle as you can execute a joint attack to break big boss' immunities against crowd control skills, Dungeons are usually basic milk run, plow everything until you get to the big boss at the end. Lack of pure healer class remedied by dragon blood system where you basically doubled or tripled your HP bar to withstand devastating attacks, sometimes it's just DPS race but the dungeons after level 20 have bosses that required some kind of tactics like killing adds, stun things, and stop hitting when something becomes immune.

There's a thing that caught my mind in the dungeon runs, the loot auction system that replaces the need and greed system for heroic and superior items, in other MMORPGs you roll numbered dice and hope RNG gets you that epic item, in BnS if you really want that item you place a bid on it, people will outbid you or pass, if you get the item your hard-earned money will be divided among the rest of your group, IMO it's a win-win solution EXCEPT when the untradable heroic weapon precursor drops and someone decided to ransom it by placing high bid right from the start, if you're patient you can get the money and run for another dungeon, if you're impatient... you can outbid them and lost your money.... so...well... you should be patient :P

In picture: Your daily life in dungeons

Verdict:
Overall Blade and Soul is a fun experience, nothing impress me much but somehow I still playing it just because of the story (and also wondering each level up whether I can pull off another crazy combos), Group play opened opportunities for joint eye-catching combo skills so make sure you play with friends because even if the story is rather interesting, the questing is horribly boring and money making are abysmally nonexistent (you'll lose money faster by purchasing brilliant keys). The hunt for precursors are 99% RNG and dealing with ransoms on dungeons is somewhat frustrating, I also heard that endgame dungeons are ridiculously hard, so get this: Bring a friend, you can solo almost everything and world bosses are always crowded but trust me partying for killing 20 mobs is faster and more fun, especially when the mobs are somewhat scarce. If I can get to endgame I might write something about it but now I'll just grind those precursors away, I found the hard way that NOT UPGRADING YOUR WEAPON THROUGH THE RNG SYSTEMS (Wheel of fate, lockboxes, and dungeon drops) will make your character considerably weaker on the next few levels.

I have six of this outfit before finding that axe

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.

On The Road

Since Archeage never really lived my expectation (as a free player) I decided to step back for a while from the world of MMOs, I still played some of them that's generous enough to gave me free login time (WoW, Wildstar, FFXIV) or continue updating their free content (Rift, Guild Wars 2), or just plain shield bash everything in Diablo's Torment III. But mainly I just burned through my list of (unplayed) steam games, thankfully, it's getting thinner

But my collection also grew with some of the newer (old) JRPG release like Final Fantasy XIII and Valkyria Chronicle, It was thoughtful for Sega and Square Enix to port their older games to PC, as I never owned Playstation 3 and also craving for them JRPGS, and yes it's mostly nostalgia but still they're good ports, Final Fantasy XIII will also have it's sequels ported to PC so I think I'm good for a while, I really think other JRPGS should follow their steps. For the MMOs I also have several long term plans with Warlords of Draenor it'll have to wait until Black Friday sale started =))

Shingeki No Kyojin opening spoofs

Since the good people at Blizzard taking down WOW for their usual maintenance (after a suspicious ddos attack) I take my time on writing about Aldnoah Zero, apparently I was distracted by a youtube link sent to me, another spoof of Shingeki No Kyojin opening

Shingeki No Kyojin a.k.a Attack on Titan was the most hyped anime this year, when I read the source manga about two years ago I never imagined that it will be the most spoofed anime because the opening theme is so good it's stuck to your ear and eyes after watching it the first time, it's not only prove that an opening can become so influential that everyone wants to be on it (or make anything with it), it also proves that Link Horizon's song Guren No Yumiya (which is only sounds good when paired with the anime opening) is also a perfect fit for everything that exists in this universe =))

First of all let's watch the original version first

You might want to watch it several times if it didn't stuck on your mind the first time. Now LET THE MADNESS BEGINS!!

-  First of all, let's visit another anime :D

- Let's spice things up a bit with girls!!

 - Not a fan of anime? Oh ok let's bring up the games!!

- You wouldn't think this one will fly...
 

- But THEY DID, and this one is my favorite

- Let's step up a bit, whoa

- Okay, that was weird... STAY AWAY FROM ME KOJIMA!!

- Well... this one is a proof that it's going global

- ................................................

Well that's it, you can scrounge youtube for more

EDIT: I forgot this, it's so subtle that it can be another original opening

EXTREMELY HARDCORE, HIDEOUSLY FUN, SUPER AWESOME ROLLER COASTER WILDSTAR PREVIEW!!!!

Take a look at this Youtube video:

This is a trailer for Wildstar, it came in 2011, this is a side dish for NC's big launch of Guild Wars 2, Wildstar is not overlooked at that time but they haven't give any promises yet, just a funny trailer.

Three years later, it blow the f*&^% out my mind, with this

and this

also this:

s***, right?

Never before i saw so much snarky and snazzy trailers on MMOs, so how about gameplay? trailers will go so far as to make you play them, but in-game gameplay is everything right? well fortunately I secured three chances to play in beta weekends, so let me just summarized everything:

The Beta Client Fiasco

Before I used my mind/guns/swords/claws/weaponized defibrillator to destroy everything in my path, first I'll have use my wits, guts, patience, and little chit chat to install the client right? And it turns to the first post I wrote at wildstar forum is that I can't install the client, Wildstar has the WORST beta client ever in my history with MMOs and betas, I tried everything suggested on dev's posts and everything else the player said, NOTHING WORKS WHATSOEVER, that my best efforts is to tried the -retries command which makes my client continuously tried to search for internet connection for downloading the client, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it's a roulette anyway, still beta, whatever, I hate your client, Carbine.

Yes!!

 After the dust from my rage settles down, the client is finished downloading and I'm ready to play, and... it runs smoothly, surprise, well okay, time to select a class... since I had totally zero knowledge on Wildstar Class (yes i've seen trailers and gameplays but that's not the same) I consulted a friend and ultimately selecting a medic, it looks awesome anyway with those Resonator, Mordesh is my first choice, who didn't like space zombies anyway?

Ah yeah, here's the story: Nexus is a recently found lost planet, it house the ancient civilization of Eldan, the most advanced beings on the universe and it will be a battleground for two faction: The Dominion is an alliance of interstellar creature which claimed Nexus as their birthright since their ancestors handpicked by the Eldan themeselves (before they disappear, why the hell is a ridiculuously advanced life-shaping ancient civilization have to disappear anyway?) to govern the universe. On the other side we have The Exiles: A band of labeled enemies of the Dominion (apparently you can't rule the universe without making a few enemies) so up their go in their respective spaceships, blow away each other in the planet's atmosphere and crash landing their refugees a.k.a us

The Fights and Paths

Did you just tired of auto attacks? well, Wildstar doesn't have that, for most parts Wildstar plays like Guild Wars 2 and some part: The Secret World, you've only got one type of weapon and your action bar has limited slot, it's up to you to mix and match your combo from your learned skills, Wildstar doesn't have global cooldowns and unless you've got CCed you're free to throw everything at the mobs, oh yeah and ALL your skills are AOE, you won't find auto target here, if a mob rolls out of your AOE field (a.k.a telegraphs, funny, some GW2 people are starting to use this word too) before you shoot them then you'll miss, and he/she/it can counter with devastating attacks, and they're smart, see that red area? get the f*** of it immediately!!! You can roll, dodge, blink, or sprint yourself out of it, and watch that you didn't run into another red, think there's only one type of telegraph? think again, think AGAIN!! GET OUT!! GET OUT!!! Combat in Wildstar is so fresh, dynamic and satisfying I have a hard time holding myself back to not engage some big a** elite mob alone

Mob also came in packs and after level 10 the fights can be exhausting, I got to tried engineer and esper too and IMO Espers is so so underpowered on solo PVE, it came close on playing warlocks on WOW cata age that I have to push probably every button available just to survive, I died a hundred times too and since Wildstar is unusual in every way the game TAUNTS me everytime I died with some snarky comments like "Somebody just doesn't know when to stay dead" or something like that, it can be frustrating sometimes, but I understand the path of the game will go the distance to, anyway everyone can ress you, just like Guild Wars 2, just hope that they will put some dead icon on the map since it's so hard to distinguish dead people from dead mobs

Speaking of paths you will be selecting your character Path on the creation screen, there are four: The Settler, Scientist, Explorer, and Soldier. What is path? well since I only tried scientist, soldier and settler I can tell you this: Path is the best thing that happens in MMO today, and I'm not exaggerating, Path enriches your experience (literally and figuratively) in the gaming world, with a soldier path you can start a holdout in some place, holdout means there will be swarms of big mother(&*^^*% trying to eat you alive, all you have to do is kill them all, sometimes the holdout contains NPC that must be defended and/or they contain experimental weapons with neat killing effects that you got to try, free EXp, free loot, free killing spree!!! OK, enough, let's talk about the scientist, they have numerous probe that can scan things to provide effects, buffs, lore, exp, and loots, remember the soldier? ok, there are some scan site near the holdout points, when a soldier started a holdout the scientist can scan the thing and it can provide buff to the holdout, exp, hp regen, might, damage, everything, and everyone can participate on the holdout, again, exp, reputation, lore, loot, and path EXP

The Settler can build everything all over the place, most of them are buff stations on some town and hubs for exp and reputation, hey, remember the scientist and the soldier? well okay, let's imagine a settler, a scientist, and a soldier stumbled upon a big holdout points, which means bigger monsters, there are build site all around it and a scan site, the soldier started the holdout, scientist provide buffs, and the setllers will build a nasty laser cannon to provide support, after that it's FUN TIME, settlers also can repair some ancient Eldan structures littered all over Nexus which the scientist and explorer can activate to provide loots, ancient mining droid is one of them they provide resources for settlers and path EXP for scientists. What is path EXPs? it's a separated exp that leveled up your path, at some point it provide you with special skills, Settler for example: can build a bonfire that will provide HP regen buff for everyone who used it and since battle in Wildstar is exhausted it's nice to relax and gained some buff from it

The Lore and Conclusion

I mostly love Wildstar for their free-spirited attitude and funny (although some of it are dark humour) moments, the Dominion are ruthless psychopats and the Exiles are backstabbing bastards, but some of Exiles early campaigns hit my soft side since it was so bittersweet and makes me want to kill every Dominion in front of me, including a big mecha that vomits laser on me, Dominion campaigns have an interesting side (in a very sychopantic POV) where you escort a noble-celebrities for her quest of glory on nexus, including massacred a whole village of natives. The whole idea of Nexus settlement project is pictured so perfect all over the place and if you made a settler you'll get the gist of it as if you really helped the settlement project

I probably will preorder Wildstar if it's not because of a fatal flaw on my country's internet connection, Wildstar is so dynamic where in a battle you must dodge and sprint that a slight lag will kill you and hinder your role, I'm sure Carbine can fix bad FPS spike, client issues, nametag bugs, disappearing NPCs, and bugged events but when it's on your side (unlike FF ability lag which is a server side issue) I have nothing to say, it's a grat game, it's fun, it's guild wars 2 where you don't lose senses of role since tanking, healing, and DPSing like mad still exists, it could be greater than Guild Wars 2 if not many people getting put off by Wildstar cartoony-superdeformed design,I'll probably  will played some Open Beta to see whether this issue continues to be a hindrance or not

Being Saleh: Why this thing even here?

So I just found out that a private ISP has a more interesting offer on a monthly fee, but apparently they're not even covered my city? There's like twenty different cable provider out there but nothing touched my city, So what's their ad running up and down in some corner of my town? Why they're even there? I was wondered they have some kind of ISP mafia in here in this town (Spoiler: Yes there are)

In Final Fantasy XIV you got attribute points for leveling up, you can spent it on every major attribute (STR, VIT, etc), anything you like, the question is: How viable are they? If I'm as a tank can spent every attribute on INT (spell power for mages) why can I do that? It's not a question of what would I do, the choice is there, even the 'wrong' ones, if I can be scolded by my group for spending my 30 points on MND (healing spell power) why the game gave me a choice to do that, and if the attribute points are not viable, why it was even there? And there's also abilities you can import from another class, like cure from conjurer can be exported to my Paladin, but it didn't scale up, because apparently there are Cure 2 and Cure 3 (which can't be imported) so a 40 HP cure against 1200 minimum physical damage from an enemy is ridiculuous, if I can slot this thing in my ability slot, why this thing even here? I'm a paladin, I should be able to self heal in some amount, also why the hell there are ROLES if I can spend 50 points STR on my pally, and still won't be able to outdamage DPSer, yes because I'm a tank, good answer, thank you, so, why do I need INT again?

On some other game however it was meant to be a trap, in an F2P MMO called Perfect World (yes, from that Perfect World company) you can spend your attribute points wrongly because of the unclear description of each attribute, it will make your character so underpowered that you must reset it, and in order to reset it you must buy an item on their cash shop, well since it's an f2p game, what do you expect? Even in Guild Wars 2 they can avoid this by retuning their double stat skill trees over and over again

Of course it's a different thing from Final fantasy XIV, but still i have a feeling that the dev tested me, 'oh okay you spent everything on your vit, you're cool, the one that spent eveything in MND are fails'... what? Yes it was me daydreaming but still why the wrong ones is even there? It was another matter with rotation, there's a clear instruction of that. You see: WOW takes 7 years to keep class on their tracks by eliminating rolling need on a gear that wasn't meant for the class, segregating the attributes by labeling it: "this stat is not useful for your class", reducing the weapon types so now hunters can't wield everything (monks can :P), why can't Final Fantasy XIV just... you know... being better than it by eliminating the bonus numbers and giving us something more... I don't know, innovative? Awesome? I really want some cool talent tree though that can suited my tanking style (which is bottom rock).

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 :)

The Edge of the Mists

I've told you that politics changed people to be the worst of them, you know what didn't get worse? World of Warcraft, What have Blizz done to WoW? I can list a few things, don't worry, just follow the number
 

1. Maturing the talent tree
   Talent tree are a bunch of passive and active skills your character will unlock in his/her progress, in the first incarnation each class have three talent tree with a bunch of skill without clear meaning how you can play your class, you can put it so you become so OP or so weak that your character is not needed in every bunch of unforgiving massess of Vanilla WOW, then it become clearer on cataclysm that you supposed to fill this role-based talent tree then you can go to other, which makes cookie cutter talents (if I did this combination of talents this bleeding passive skills will raised my DPS to 100 points) so they scrapped it.
   On the latest talent tree gone is the 50 or some-of-it passive and active skills, instead now you have three choices every 20 level, it become more like: how you want to play your character? favoring single target devastating instant attack or the AOE effect? do you want to make a shielded stand against big dungeon bosses or just received every attack but you can mitigate it by repeated regen? your choice. it's like fiddling your thumb or your other finger in your keyboard, it becomes more of your... playstyle.
2. Polishing the encounters
   It's bad when you have the talents but you don't need it in an encounter/dungeon/raids/stuffs or the mobs has an immunity to it, or the encounter is so punishing you can't actually use your active talents, WoW is making all encounters met the requirements of players of all talents without losing it's originality
3. Scalable content
   Flex Raid, nuff said, hello Guild Wars 2
4. Daily quests vs Encounter-based Timeless Isle
   on the first patches of Mist Blizz made removed the caps of daily quests and added so much of it on every new NPC factions, this become somewhat a put-off for some people, so Blizz (again copied from the Guild Wars 2) make 'dynamic events' in an area which 'combined encounters and discovery', Timeless Isle has one NPC faction: Emperor Shaohao which reputation can be gained in some other ways, whether slaying beasts, NPCs, do dynamic events, slay world bosses (champion events), trading coins which can be gained by almost everything you do at the island, you can also explore the map which sometimes yield treasure chests contained some epics, pets, vanity items, tradable items for NPCs, or just Timeless coins.
   Yes, basically it's just a rip-off from hearts renown and dynamic events on Guild Wars 2 but people like it, and sadly some people will call it an 'innovation', poor them, but nevertheless: Blizz did it and will implement it on their next Xpac: Warlords of Draenor
5. The Lore
   Mists of Pandaria is probably the most optimist and shiny of all expansion, it didn't have such heroic moment like Wrath (Bolvar) or Cata (Thrall) so I called this the best lore of WOW expansion so far but don't take it for me, WOWinsider have it all

Well, my character is now asleep in his 'prototype instanced housing' content (The Tiller faction) in Pandaria, I think I'll wake him up in seven or eight months to kill some orcs :D

Being Saleh: The Sunless, Garuda, and Accessibility

I finally downed Tequatl last night, thanks to TTL for it. Tequatl the Sunless (level 56) is one of the hardest content in Guild Wars 2 now, this dragon requires coordination from numerous people to be defeated,  it's not hard, only need some rythm, even if you screw up you can always be the cleanup crew, you're even get rewarded even when he's not defeated based on how much HP you chipped from him. The one thing I liked about Tequatl (and Guild wars 2) is it's accessibility, even when Tequatl isn't defeated the area itself will still be accessible, you can also skipped Tequatl entirety when you're still leveling on Guild Wars 2, and skipped all the dungeons although some of their stories are pretty interesting and can give you some insight about how the main story unfolds.


 

Now let's talk about Garuda, Garuda is a four-man mid level trial instance on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, she's apparently a real b*tch and like to wipe you in a matter of seconds, she's also  have a habit of spouting crazy murderous lines, one of the harshest I ever saw on FFXIV. The thing is: you are required to defeat her if you want to continue your questline, and she's not easy, my first try with max leveled people with relic weapons takes abut five tries, my second attempt however (when helping a friend and a PUG) takes 20 or so, since so many can go wrong with her, there are even phases where if you don't stand in a right place you'll be defeated instantly. Her max level endgame incarnation is even more deadly and requires more coordination from group members. 

Access

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have tiered content, no endgame, run vanity-based events, have dynamic combat, and freedom from your usual trinity roles. While FFXIV is gear-based, trinity-based combat and have more social interconnecting roles, it won't be right to compare those two, but I want to talk about accessibility, at least my point on accessibility:

I spent two years on Lineage 2, my first 'serious' MMORPG, where grind is daily and daily online means kill 9,809,876,454,789,432 mob just to level up, there's no significant quest, no means to obtain stronger weapons and armors, everyday you will calculate is this a lose-money day or gain day since you must make a living there by selling and buying stuff from players, you can participate on a raid which requires you to have weapon and armors... dropped on those raids. Come unprepared and pretend you're not there since you'll be stare on an empty HP bar in a matter of minutes, you will work your way slowly to the top and when you make a single mistake and/or RNG hates you you'll lose money, weapons, armors, even guild, and must start from the scratch, character deletion due to failed crafting are a common, it's one thing to level up, the other thing is how you're gonna survive and be better at endgame content after you've leveled up.

Six years has passed and Lineage 2 is becoming more and more accessible to players, they've gone f2p, improving quality of life of classes (healer have their offensive skillset on the same page as their healing skills, before that they can only heal and/or attack at a different mode), provides more means to gain money, even sells some powerful weapon on NPC in exchange of daily tokens or golds, low level character granted immunity from player killers, also: They're just announced their new expansion that brings dynamic combats to the game

Then I came to WoW, even in vanilla days I never found it to be so grindy as Lineage 2, on WOLTK days it become easier, on Cataclysm quality of life of character is improved that when I started a new character I ended up zoomed out so fast on level that I stopped my exp just to get into all Burning Crusade content, although Cataclysm heroic dungeons is not a faceroll and I'm content with not seeing Fireland Bliz gave me LFR and I can pummel Deathwing in the face :P. I have my brief fling with RIFT and CoH before Guild Wars 2, on RIFT dungeons are fun, on CoH the accesiibilty was so great I can go anywhere I want, do anything i want no matter it kills me or not. After I feel at home on Guild wars 2, I tried a couple of alternatives like Tera and The Secret World, they have their own strength and weakness, but nothing turns me off, I just decided that i'll stay on GW2

Easy

If you get where I'm heading, you'll see that all the MMO is becoming easier, in terms of soloing the content, quality of life on classes, special perks, and even ease the restriction on some endgame content, I won't have any saying on endgame content whether they should be hard or not, but putting a big roadblock prerequisite on a leveling content can be considered... unnecessary (at least for western players), and can be a real turn off for some people, GW2 have more accessibility for players, doesn't have monthly sub, and the rate of their content is more rapid, WoW has access for every kind of players with their ripping every other good feature off other MMOs, Lineage 2 still have one of the best massive PVP content out there, The Secret World has unique kriss-crossing their online world with real world, they're also DLC based and with their own gearing requirements

Final Fantasy XIV as I said before: have enticing world and story and a fresh return of the 'old-school' RPG, also great soundtracks but unfortunately their endgame battle content is the weakest link of all,  Eliot Lefebvre from Massively wrote it better than me, so I'm just gonna quote him

"Final Fantasy XIV's endgame is sometimes like a club. Once you're in, you're golden, but getting in can be really rough. 

AK, for instance, is not all that hard. You can do it in full AF with white accessories. But you'll really want to have some party members who are better geared than you are to help make up the difference. Your upgrades from AK will be substantial, but getting them the first time is rough, especially when you're learning the fights. WP is the same way to a lesser degree, as is the Ifrit fight.
While all of these fights are designed to be done at that level of gear, most people don't actually want that challenge; they want a farm. You're not doing Ifrit because you want the thrill of fighting a Primal; you're doing him because you've got full Demagogue and want your staff to match. Consequently, you get a lot more ragequitting than is strictly necessary, and the net result is that it's easy for newer players to feel as if they're not up to snuff. The other problem, really, is weapons. Getting a Level 55 weapon isn't hard; Grand Companies and WP fill that gap. But getting anything better requires slay-and-pray on either Ifrit or Garuda or spending a whole lot of money on an HQ Level 70 weapon. Considering a given Primal has only a 11% chance of dropping the weapon you want, and that's assuming no classes are doubled up... there's an uncomfortable weapon gap between Level 55 and Relics. Hopefully 2.1's dungeons address that.
Also you might get bored of doing the same few things over and over, but I'll take 40 minutes of AK over a slow slog through a raid any day of the week."

source: Massively

My free month ended several days ago, since I got sick and got some exhaustion after that I will be resubbed when patch 2.1 hits (sometimes around December) it's also a part of an experiment of mine about the pacing of the gearing process and observation of the player markets

And, my post about FFXIV aesthetics... it'll probably have to wait, but this pic can say some of it :D

Being Saleh: A year In Tyria (Story Mode)

Being Saleh in Tyria is a year now, In this article I really want to summarize the lore content of Guild wars 2, I'll try not to be lazy and write as many information as I can, so here we go, warning: spoiler ahead

Personal Story on Guild Wars 2 takes place in a personal instance, the story revolved around how Tyria united into a force to take down Zhaitan, the undead elder dragon on his base, the Corrupted Island of Orr. On these stories players will meet Tyria's armed factions, The Destiny's Edge, and Trahearne, the hero of this story. Personal story ended with players take out Zhaitan in the level 80 dungeon Arah, after that it's the end of the real main lore in Guild Wars 2.

After a month of bug fixes Anet finally released it's first update: Shadow of the Mad King is a halloween event build around in an interesting storyline spanned on a month, new armor skins, new weapon skins, one time event where the Mad King burst the Lion Statue of Lion's Arch just to taunt us, everything was breathtaking, even the jumping puzzle (Mad King clock tower) is challenging enough to dubbed it the most interesting jumping puzzle ever created. The showdown with the Mad King is also a fun dungeon with a little of spiced jumping puzzle and emote playing.

But after that came the next update: The Lost Shores which was unfortunately the lowest of all updates, thousand of players got slaughtered in Lion's Arch not only because of the new enemy: The Karkas is extremely powerful but also because the event produces the most dreaded lag of Guild Wars' history. The final event which players encounter the Karka King (or Queen) in a new opened area: Southsun Cove is so messed up that Arenanet has to make compensation of free exotic weapons for everyone which is online and disconnected during the event. The story introduces the Consortium as the capitalist faction on Guild Wars 2 and also introduces the scaling dungeon Fractal of The Mists

The Living Story so far...

Wintersday come and go, I didn't get to enjoy much of the festivities since I returned to WoW to get my hand on Mists of Pandaria, but after that came the mixed bag of love and hate in Guild Wars 2: The Living Story, the first one (Flame and Frost) spanned four month introduces us to Braham and Rox as we sped through Ascalon and Shiverpeaks area fighting invasions of the ragtag forces of Molten forces consists of the flame legion and Shiverpeaks dredges, the Molten Front is also the most fun dungeon I've ever played, The Story of Braham and Rox ended abruptly but the content itself has a gradual "grow-on-me" factor because of it's boring start and slow pace on the first two parts, we were given the hints but no completion, not even after we blow the Molten Facility sky high.

Rox and Braham goes their own way and so are we, things have been brewing on Southsun, The Consortium settlement project didn't really work and we are thrown into chaos once more, but this time the Living Story content was so little it hardly can be called a story, it's more like a side dish in an unveiled main course and we never got the main course, The villain is now Canach, a begrudged ex-Consortium, the dungeon mechanic is also baffling that I refused to play it and instead rally my guild to lay waste on Karka's invasion on the Southsun Cove, including taking down the Karka Queen itself, while searching for hints of dragons in there, we didn't find it

After Canach it is clear that Anet tried to raise the spotlight on Ellen Kiel, a captain of the Lionguard in charge of Southsun, in the next installment: Dragon Bash which introduce hologram-grinding and Anet's two weeks living story content Kiel was in another spotlight, also enter Marjory Delaqua as a noir-character (which promptly disappear after the update ended), the festivities ended with the introduction of the Aetherblade: sky pirates of Tyria.

The Bazaar of the four winds is the most dreaded update for some people, it introduces the Zephyr Sanctum: an airship operated by the zephyrites, a bunch of people who didn't ever set foot on land, Kiel --again-- is on the story, Anet also introduces Evon Gnashblade as her rival on the election to be the next leader of Lion's Arch which will settle trading with the zephyrite. The execution of the update is revolving around jumping puzzle content (which I found is a dread). This time Anet also had player to vote for their candidate, the election tied itself into a content of Fractal where Ellen will have the Thaumanova reactor incident fractal and Evon will have the Fall of Abaddon fractal, the community is quick to respond in this, the forum has never been so vocal before, the content has become divisive point which split the community into two, Evon was considered the missing link between Guild Wars 1 and 2, while Ellen Kiel is considered the Anet's golden girl and the female Trahearne.

Ellen wins and rage ensues, the forum was flamed over and over again but quickly stopped by Anet as we moved into Queen's Jubilee which I love very very dearly: it's not only because Rox and Braham's back but it's also introduces new group PVE arena, the queen's pavilion where the enemies are the malfunctioned clockwork guards created by the human Queen Jennah. There's also the Queen's challenge: a one-on-one timed battle between a player and a queen's champion (which I sucked at), the last part introduces us to Scarlet Briar, the villain that Tyria needs beside the dragon, although the comunity split of whether she's a Wesley Crusher kind of Mary Sue or a perfectly built character -- Scarlet is a success because although one of her purpose is to re-introduce the past faction like the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades she's perfectly modeled to lead them all.

....after a year, my opinion is...

I want to say something to Anet: Stop retconned everything.

On the Flame and Frost the image on our mind is that Jormag and Primordus are finally on the move after the death of Zhaitan, and guess what: there's no hint or glimpse of them throughout the content. The mighty Karkas are to be believed as minion of the unnamed deep sea dragon and all we got now is a deserted Southsun Cove because nothing about the dragon as well although we got a piece of Lore from Ree Soesby's book: The Sea of Sorrow. The Aetherblade brings us far far away from the dragon but the sheer number of them is also a question: where the hell they're hiding all this time? It's like the Twilight Cult enigma all over again.

How about Scarlet? She's a pure evil genius, able to unite the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades under her command, she have the perfect army to even lay waste to a city and she didn't do that, of course she's also crazy and likes to play (fatally), and after that she escapes, poof... just like that.

The Crown Pavilion was built on top of a sunken area called the great collapse where a sinkhole suddenly appears in a west area of Divinity's Reach. The sinkhole has been erased from the wiki page and redirected into the Crown Pavilion wiki page as a proof that Anet has retconned the area which in the past spawned numerous speculation that's something is beneath Divinity's Reach.

I want to tell you something, right now I'm furious that the next update is the Super Adventure Box again, an update that's been released on April, it focuses heavily on Jumping Puzzle content and definetely not for me, so I considered to actually buy Final Fantasy XIV and joined some of my friend there but they're already closed the sales. The reason of my furious-ness is not because it's another JP-oriented content but because it brings so little lore content in the update.

Anet should considered this: Sometimes it's story that made people like me stay (hell I stay on WoW just to saw Varian morphed into Super Saiya and Garrosh becomes Cell), although Wow's story content has improved greatly after the Cataclysm's third grade content they're still so slow with the patches. IMO Anet has so much potential to turn Tyria into a more living world by throwing small story content event here and there, but please STICK CLOSE TO THE DRAGONS!!! they're the main villains after all. Also on this point all the member of Destiny's edge have their cameo into the Living Story as well except Zojja and Caithe, stick close to them, develop their story and stop throwing more one-time character into that story.

The point is: I like being teased more than retconned so please stop introducing new and forgettable characters and focus on the old ones.

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!!!

Being Saleh: The Bounty Gambling

A month ago Guild Wars 2 upgraded it's guild system, fitted it with guild missions, which is (sounded) awesome and (almost) ridiculuously expensive, but since we have almost 300.000 unspent influence on a guild we quickly unlocked the first guild mission: The Guild Bounty

Represented by a drunk 300 spawn points Asura

Guild Bounty will have you hunt down and capture 2-6 (Tier 1-Tier 3) wanted criminals spreads all across Tyria, most of them wandering around a certain zone and have fixed paths, some of them like the dreaded Sotzz the Scallywag spawned in a barrel on one of 300 spawn points in Gendarran Field, sweeping the area often won't yield anything due it's vastness, if it was not enough you only have 7 minutes to defeat one target and 15 minutes time limit to find and defeat all the bounty (two, four, and six targets on each tier) if you succeed your guilds are awarded merits that can be used to unlock next guild missions (Trek, Challenge, Puzzle, and Rush) and some neat new banners. You also get rewards when you helped defeat a bounty, on a form of guild commendation (also some neat rares and a 0.000000000000<insert zeroes here>1% of a precursor) that can be traded with ascended accessories, influence for guild and some cosmetic items.

My guild was... training (yes, we're that hardcore) to beat Tier 3 bounty hunting, we did it at the second week, until the fourth, faster than the week before, but it looks like Arenanet noticed our (I'm being a narcissist now) progress and decided to fix something to slow the progress, on the latest patch: The Razing they fixed some randomly spawned bounty like Scallywag, Anders and the newly added Yanonka and Mayana to become active and can be found only by a guild member who have that bounty active on their mission list, thus avoid target camping, they also fixed some bounty targets with higher DPS, can't be stalled on a waypoint by talking to it, and new fighting system

It's kinda annoying and engaging at the same time, annoying because our home-made system for bounty camping blew away by the new patch, when Scallywag and Mayana appeared on your bounty list you'll know that it'll become a gambling because you still have four other target, if three or four appeared then you'll know that RNG trolled you :D

It's also engaging because it adds to the flavor, new bounty now have new abilities that can seriously injured your attempt by becoming a wall that receive only 1% of your attacks, swallowed you whole and force you to play a little whack-a-mole game inside it's stomach, Evades and running away, kill you with 24 bleed stack, kill you with rapid attacks, and many more 'kill you fast' tricks

Well it's only costs 300 inf, totaled like 1000-2500 (I can't count) to speed up bounty tiers if it's needed, I think Anet's done well enough by inventing new ways to kill us the bounty system, a little rough now, but still enjoyable after a month.

Note: Dulfy has a great guide for the bounty and other guild missions

A Brief Look at the Living Story

I love game stories, started with Adventures, RPGs, and now MMORPGs, well some RTS has good stories to like War/Starcraft, nevertheless it's really good to actually play in the stories rather than watching it (Xenosaga Episode 1 included, go away haters). And I also really tempted for The Secret World since the subs gone.... I still contemplating about it though, Funcom is still my number one storytelling game company (The Longest Journey FTW)

7 hours of cutscenes is the proof

 

Since last January Guild Wars 2 released updates called Flame & Frost and tied-in quests called Living Story, which tells how a whole new enemy activities threaten Tyria after Zhaitan's defeat, it started with lots of earthquakes and portals opening, Dredges and Flame Legions combining force, refugees from Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Hills flooded the Charr and Norn's capital, and lastly on March Anet introduces new main characters: Brahm from Norn and Rox of Charr

On the first update, there's only vague clues about the events, you have to help refugees on some way (lots of it, including mend their legs and repair signs), you'll get your volunteer title for it, on the next update portals are spawned throughout the area, and stream of flame legion and dredges pour out, the next update there's an all out attack on some settlements of Tyria, and Brahm and Rox come to the picture

What I think is.... it's SLOW and borderline boring, only the last story update keep me hoping for more and I almost overlooked it because of the boredom of the last two living story updates. But I think overall Living story is a good idea, it didn't require player to do it and yet it creeps into something larger and can be felt gradually for players (the last update at least), instead adding new dailies like WoW they're just added new short cutscenes, several achievement-based quests, and two short instances, but then again... it's TOO SLOW for me and it keep me wondering whether it can ended like Karka event (forgotten and dead and buried 5000 feet under) or ended in a new content that can be enjoyed by all players (a large part of it hopefully)

The Five Temples of Orr: Temple of Melandru & Temple of Grenth

Since Temple of Melandru is the most straightforward event (and a very bugged one) I'll post it with Temple of Grenth's strategy

Temple of Melandru

Melandru: Goddess of nature, earth, and growth worshipped by her Orrian's follower on the Cathdral of Verdance, the events leading to the cleansing of her temple is probably the most bugged events in Guild Wars 2

a. Escort Magister Izzmek to the site of the first signal beacon
Magister Izzmek resides on Gavbeorn's landing, and it has to be reclaimed before he can move out (though due to some bugs he won't budge), it's straightforward, just escort him through three beacons and you're set, though sometimes he's bugged and will halt halfway

b. Legendary Fight: Destroy the Risen Priest of Melandru
he's though, but his attacks aren't deadly, the most annoying thing when his HP is depleted he'll turn everyone near him into animals and summon five acolytes to regenerate his health (he's invulnerable to attacks at this state), you must quickly dispatch these acloytes in your animal form to prevent his HP to go out to full
BUG: sometimes he won't turn you into an animal and you can continue to hit him until he's down

c. Defend the Pact interrupter device while it charges to cleanse the temple
Another straightforward mission, just defend the device, it has some HP and can withstand some blows, get ready to kite the Champion Abomination around due to it's stacking frenzy, kill the Champion Risen Spider before it can spawn smaller spiders

After the device is online Lightbringer Surefoot will light up his karma store for you

Note: every now and then the risen will tried to destroy the pact interruptor with the event Defend the Pact interruptor from Risen attacks, it's Risen Priest again combined with Champion Spiders, Abominations, and Gorillas

Temple of Grenth

Grenth the God of Ice and Death, his temple is the Cathedral of Silence on an island in the southwest corner of Cursed Shore, and it's cleansing event is the most engaging event ever. first and foremost you must escort the pact from the northernmost tip of the island until it reaches the first event below

a. Protect Tactician Footi as she sets up her cannon
Simple, straightforward mission

b. See Keeper Jonez Deadrun safely to Death's Gaze Torch

c. Ensure that Keeper Jonez Deadrun reaches the Cathedral of Silence
This is where the fun begins, Jonez has a small amount of HP and by the number of people joining the event it can scale up into where the mobs can one hit Jonez, keep them away from him at all costs, especially those bow guardian that can inflict confused condition

d. Legendary Fight: Protect Keeper Jonez Deadrun and destroy the Champion Risen Priest of Grenth
Welcome to hell! there's a LOT of things that you have to remember and DO at this fight

1. Champion Risen Priest of Grenth will one shot Jonez most of the time so keep him at the back of all cost, far away from Jonez, his attack are deadly, it'll spawn AOE brown whirlpools that will throw player up to the air where they'll receive falling damage (on slow connection it'll inflict MULTIPLE falling damage and you'll be defeated instantly), another is spawning ice fields that WILL kill you and inflict chill if you're somehow survived, this is the main problem, dying on this fight is dangerous and annoying since it'll push your ressurrectors to the limit while evading those attacks

2. Shades is your number two number one problem, it has much HP but it didn't do much damage but again it'll give you a stacking corruption when they hit you, after you gain 25 of it you'll be downed instantly. The Shades cant be damaged through a normal means though, there are two brown whirlpools on the left and right corner of the room you must step on it to gain "Entered Grenth Realm" debuff which will give you deathshroud-like appearance, now you can damage the shades but be careful they will inflict more damage to you and stack more corruption when you're in this form, also the brown whirlpool can be re-entered, effectively removing you from the "Entered" debuff which can be annoying when you're shooting shades from afar, since it can't be re-entered again immediately, when you're down you're losing the corruption stacks and the entered debuff. in the past patch you can't ress someone in this state, now you can, thank you Anet, although no thanks for you for giving us endless waves of shades, yes endless, they won't stop spawning although the last wave has not been dispatched, giving you a black nightmare

3. Mobs: there can be hundreds of them, spawning around Grenth's Priest and on the corner of the room, spectral, shades, risen, everything, be sure to get rid of them before they fill your screen (literally)

4. There's no waypoint near this area, the nearest is Anchorage Waypoint which sometimes contested due to bug or assault to Arah, so when you're defeated don't wait for ress because it'll be a long walk for you 

e. Cover Keeper Jonez Deadrun as he performs the cleansing ritual
No, all the chaos hasn't over yet, now come the finale, ress everyone, take any buffs, since hundreds of mobs will spawn from every corner of the temple and tried to take out Jonez, kill them, kill them immediately, sometimes they'll spawn RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIM which will give you a headache, just interrupt them, launch, knocdown, or whatever your arsenal can do, watch for Champion Risen Spiders and Wraiths that can summons reinforcement, well actually the true enemy in this fight is the lag and the culling which can hinder your performance on this fight

Note: If Jonez defeated on any event he'll come back to his tent on Death's Gaze Touch and sleep for approximately 15 minutes before the event restarted from point a. again

Congratulations! wipe your sweat while enjoying Karma items from Jonez, it's practically the same with the other temples but since you've beaten the most difficult of them you deserved an achievement, there's one? No, let's petition Anet for one =))