Being Saleh: Proceeding into Legion, You are (not) prepared

So at the end of patch 7.0, what have I found out about legion?

"Gating" Content
Apparently this was a big deal, as I mention before in order to unlock world quests you need to be friendly with all five major faction in Broken Isle, but it's just rep grind by questing, every faction story quest can give you up until at least honored, but since world quest is considered major content Blizz changed it so you will just have to go to Dad Khadgar and talk to unlock it.

Suramar world quest is still "gated" behind the story campaign, but the (optional) mythic only dungeons (Arcway and Court of Stars) are now account wide, if you have attuned to them in the past it will now accessible to all your characters, the Good Suramaritan achievements needed to unlock the Broken Isle flying (part 1) is still "gated" behind reputation, you'll need a little before exalted to unlock the final quest. 

But rep grind is good, I still like to take things slow and I don't think it was a gated content at all, I guess grinding 9.898.983.245-ish Ketra Orc in Lineage 2 really build your character :P




Social Life
Okay here's the thing, I mostly stayed far away from writing about social interaction in WOW, because my social interaction with random people ranged from "git gud, go kill yourself" to "LOL LOL LOL". I joined a guild in the end of WOLTK, a small one with only five active (extremely casual) members (and a very drunk guy), I never came back after we take a very long Christmas break, after that when I started a warrior I'm basically guildless on my playtime through the three expansion.

Actually not, I did joined a guild at the end of MOP, it's started with a conversation with a friend in a different server about how he might came back and need a raid partner, so I leveled a horde monk as a healer, but he never came back so I decided to join a local (almost casual) guild, stayed for like a month, take another long break (6 months), login, and found out the guild has been moved to another server in order to raid mythic (looks like PVP server had their own disadvantages)

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

In legion I asked my friend to let me join his guild, a decent raiders guild although it has many members, my motivation to join a guild is to expand my WOW social experience, a project that I have been cultivating from the end of MOP (since I want to see how the community has changed since Blizz made everything more accessible and guild an incentive) and  then it goes down with my former guild, but Warlords of Draenor is not exactly a good expansion so.. that's that, and I started from scratch again.

Being a person with erratic online time (and unpredictable logout time) My guild raid experience is consisted only in three Emerald nightmare boss kill, but it was a good run, I also noticed that normal group experience is somewhat a rarity among talks in guild, aside from my friends abandoned the normal runs and being a strict "only above heroic" content-- usually it was mythic (with at least +1 mythic keystone), I was once asked I have a mythic keystone which is somewhat hilarious since I never entered any mythic dungeon (unless you count my experience checking in the arcway entrance, the one with the blobs) but in his experience it's probably me who is  an old creep odd since I never tried out mythic while so many talks in guild revolving on that and the content was out months ago (although mostly looking for tank and healer and I'm neither both) but I guess it was better than say... being called "lol where have you been that you didn't even touched months worth of content" (which is also hilarous since i don't need to be somewhere to "not doing this old content" but I probably playing Candy Crush Soda at those time), also I got kicked from my FFXIV guild by being offline for four months (was playing Tales of Zestiria, good game, don't watch the anime)

I still want my room back....

Anyway, back to running months ago content: PUG-ing always an option though, with those premade group options (and now: quick join) it becomes clear why people burn through content quickly, but to me being in a guild now is a part of my continuous experience in WOW and to complement the LFG and LFR system, so I won't premade with random stranger unless I'm playing an alt. I'm also glad that ele shaman is one of the worst neglected class in WOW which --combined with my lazy-ass playstyle-- contradict everything people expected of me. But I won't expect anything from MMO people, my days of two hours alone in Jin'do the PUGbreaker taught me that people in MMOs are impatient dicks drogbars, and it's fine because hey, after two hours I finally downed that guy (with the 10th-ish PUG group) and live to see another day of one hour queueing plus two hours waiting, that's something worth writing and talked about rather than "oh we downed this boss, move along" -kind-of-social-relationships, if people can be comitted to such things as 15 hours raiding a week (which is IMO an equivalent of a part time job) I can commit to being an arrogant toerag waiting for guild people to fill my "obsolete content" groups

And also gaze at the greatest Hydaelyn crystal impersonator

Ok, let's continue this oddly satisfying rant on the next patch

Being Saleh: Legion!!!

So at the end of Warlords of Draenor, the alternate reality Gul'dan escaped to the main timeline and begin the third (fourth??) invasion of the burning legion demons, and to be honest he started off pretty nicely, summoning every demon WOW player have vanquished during this 15 years, destroying both the Horde and Alliance head squads and seemed to have endless supply of energy and portals to finally summon the big ol' Sargeras himself,

So as I started questing my first demon hunter on the new Broken isles zone something bugged me, why didn't he, you know, just did it? There's literally nothing in his way now as The Alliance and Horde are both retreating

The answer is this:

BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY.... oh nevermind

That's my troll warlock holding his artifact weapon: Scepter of Sargeras, in this new expansion every class and spec got their one and only weapon, which can be obtained via a story quest, it will level up as you do and as the expansion progress. All 36 spec has their own story, for example: demon hunters sent to retrieve their mighty warblades/warglaives from traitorous ones, while warlock (destruction specifically) was sent to coax Gul'dan and stole the scepter which apparently is the key to summoning more demons, so yeah the reason why Gul'dan didn't do what he's supposed to do is because I stole his boomstick, ruin the summoning rituals and use the scepter to summon multiple chaotic unstable portals which destroy some of his army, I was hoping there's a scene where Sargeras scold him for his failure, it'll be priceless.

Welcome to Legion, the newest expansion of World of Warcraft, and guess what: I'm not lagging behind :D

As I mention on my previous post that I will return to WOW only for friends, they're just recently started playing so i joined them, but this expansion was so refreshing and liberating that my mostly solo experience was so good, in this xpac I decided to retire my Warrior (since I don't like the look of their artifact weapons) and have a hard time choosing between my warlock, create my long time dream shaman, or starting a demon hunter. In the end I did them all mostly because the pre-expansion event -- the demon invasion was a good way to level up, I ended up leveling my shaman to 100 solely with demon invasion, that's 90 level straight in a week, so at the beginning of the expansion I have three level 100.

Stories!!

 
The new legion questing zones are Aszuna, Highmountain, Val'sarah, and Stormheim, they scaled with your level (100-110) so you can choose which zone you want to pursue first, the last zone: Suramar was solely for level 110, the story begins with the pre expansion broken shore scenario where Alliance and Horde fleet tried to prevent Gul'dan from summoning his army, they failed, like really failed, and in that mess people died, important people (not Thrall though: spoiler) even with this Game Of Thrones-que events I was still shocked about how ugly their death is, it's like watching Sean Bean died, twice, or three times and then watch a Fel Reaver teabagging his corpse. After choosing your artifact weapon and obtain it you'll gain access to your order hall based on your class, this is where everyone with the same class as you hang out, Shaman got the maelstorm from Cataclysm as their home base. In this not-garrison place you can research your weapon, powered it up, unlock new traits, and send champions to do some mission which will yield artifact powers, xp, and quest items.

Although saving Go'el feels a bit of a chore now (spoiler: he's retired)

So back to the zones, don't worry about class halls, they can be managed through the new android/ios application so you can run around helping people, logout and manage them in your bed before sleep (like I did), the premise of the Legion story is simple: Find pillars of Azeroth (artifact forged by Titans) to thwart Gul'dan once and for all, but then as you quest throghout the zones you'll realize that it wasn't so simple to the point when you gather some of them you'll realize what you have lost and the legion was still going strong and maybe just maybe this is the expansion where the hero will screwed up because all the bad guys seems like doing their job so goddamn well (even after you stole Sargeras' boomstick). To make matter worse you'll realize that every step you take is only opened up more questions.

Suramar is a home of the nightborne, a faction of night elves recently allied themselves with the Burning Legion, in order to help some of the exiled resistances (called the Nightfallen) you have to infiltrate it, walking in disguises, avoiding demons patrol, killing some of their leaders discreetly and so on, it's assassin's creed style gameplay (combined with the instinct to quickly find a getaway route before the guards overwhelm you) the nightfallen themselves are mana addicted so each day you'll have to gave their mana fix (gathered around Suramar), it's heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time, and as Suramar is connected with all the previous zones there are denizens around it that will need your help too, from a tauren shaman tried to calm the raging elements around Suramar to the lone druid fighting a hundred years war against army of arachnids, their story are also well written to the point I want to do more for them even when the questline is ended.

World, Class, and Profession Quests!!

 
World Quests is the new daily, after got friendly with all the faction on Broken Isles it will open up and will be shown on your map, it's a dynamic event tied to factions, you got into the area you'll get the quest, finish it and you'll get repuatation for one or several factions, they also yield you equipments, order hall resources for missions, and/or artifact powers. Every day you'll get an emissary quest, finish five specific faction world quests and you got additional reward and reputations

Professions are getting better, every material is harvestable on any level, plus you'll get profession quests from your trainer, some item you found during gathering process will nab you another quests. On crafting process you'll get legion recipes from your trainer's quests, the things you can create also upgradable, cutting the materials needed to make it, this way you will never go back to low level area just to gather materials to level up your professions so you can create something or depending on your garrison to level it up but the quests sometimes take you to old zones for a bit of nostalgia (if you're a veteran player)

Umm.. no, he's not in this expansion, get back to your own obsolete content!!!

Endgame and Verdict (for now)

 
There's only one raid right now: The Emerald Nightmare, unfortunately no LFR wings has opened yet, but in two days I have finished all the heroics on my shammy, they're not that hard anyway, I haven't tried mythic dungeons yet since my friends are currently swept away by normal/heroic/mythic raid (and by wives) :P, but I love how encounter was designed, Maw of Souls is my favorite since it's taken place in a ghost ship with some familiar Lich King characters, dungeons also can be tied to world quests and have some rare monsters among the mobs which will yield you additional loots, relics, and artifact powers. I just recently finished my shaman order hall campaign quests (which made me travel to old cataclysm zones, another welcomed nostalgia).

For short it was a blast, a real blast, I never found myself so invested and never look at the XP bar since the age I stopped my xp gained to experience the whole burning crusade quests, and I definitely never found plot twists so good since the day Putress bombed both the Horde and Alliance in WOLTK, Warlords of Draenor was so bad in everything (except garrison) some of them are have to be tied in nicely in Legion, but yeah I guess we can just leave alternate reality Draenor to rot.

Although I love this toy

Foreclosure: Getting Married (and my summarized opinion)

A little flashback.....

My gaming activity in 2015 are mostly divided between lagging behind expansion where I finally played and reviewed newest feature/ expansion of a certain game for one or two months before jumping to another game, and JRPGs, especially the final fantasy franchises and tales of zestiria (my last rpg before I broke my arm in a traffic accident)

oh yeah nevermind the title, this post is all bout my summarized opinion about MMORPGs nowadays :D

2015 was also my best solo experience, I was kinda surprised there how easy it is now, although some solo rewards are becoming more and more aesthetically abysmal (WOW's LFR) or in a whole different case you can solo the whole thing (SWTOR's KOTFE), FFXIV gave me a whole soloing project for my relic weapon while ESO gave me a whole time downloading their (already downloaded but undetectable) client......
 

The big score is I finally got my legendary ring on WOW, yay!! My first legendary item on a MMORPG!!! well that wasn't big deal actually since you can do it in two months or less if you're really lucky and don't mind a little grind, and it's soloable from start to finish, and also since you can have a bodyguard it becomes so much easier. The legendary questline's story is not that deep, interesting at the very least, and yes it's foreshadowing about what will come on the next expansion

But 2016 is also where I didn't see anything new about new MMORPGs, there are few localized selection like Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online, and Tree of Saviour but as far as Korean grinder go, they're still... well.. grindy, but at least they have good graphic, I've already covered Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online have one of the best character looks and customization which enables you to create a more distinct character from anyone else while Tree of Savior is a welcomed comeback to old hardcore Ragnarok players (not me, never played it) :)

The other trend I see is how devs marketed their games which contains RPG elements, have online modes, but never said that it's an MMORPG, check out Destiny, this online shooter games lets you customize your character and weapons so they suit your (shooter) playstyle, and it's an MMO, it has raid, it lets you join people to take down big things by shooting it until it falls, also you will have a role, titan is the tank, warlock is the spellcaster, hunters are dpser, but Destiny never marketed as MMORPG, it was more like called... shooter... with friends

Destiny isn't the first shooter with friends, many years ago Trion released Defiance, a crossover action shooter game and TV shows, it doesn't fare well and the TV show got cancelled (although I liked it) and the game wasn't very good since it lack contents and story, it also have weird level up and character customization

But still the trend continues, enter The Division from Ubisoft where you shoot things (with friends) in chaotic virus-ridden New York, the game was hyped to the max, Dark Souls 3 lets you invite people to get help with bosses and mobs fight, GTA V has online modes where you can play with (or kill) other people in the city of Los Santos, Meh, even hack and slash like diablo already did that. MMORPG was stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and yet nowadays games are so much diverse and combined much genres, none of the game I said above are marketed as MMORPG, and yet you play with number of people and have roles (even if it only "shoot everything"), yes it's probably not massive enough but there's no denial that games becomes more about sharing experience why? Because playing game with other people (including friends) (apparently) is (more) fun =))

Soooo I probably won't cover much about MMORPG or gaming in the future, partially because of my outdated rig, and also: I'm getting married, but mostly it's the rig. I probably will post some of my gaming activities as shared experience, if player 2 is willing and we both have the time :D

So here I am, thanks to all of you who is willing to read my rants to this day, especially my guildmates and online friends, and bye for now

/bow

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.

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Warlords of Draenor)

Yes I know, the latest World of Warcraft expansion announced called Legion, but it just proved this article's title here :D

"The Shadow Council Thank You"
In the Warcraft Universe the Shadow Council are the agents of the main antagonist: The Burning Legion, they exist solely to serve their demonic master, so it is the most unusual words came from them, in the World Of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh Hellscream got the timeline messed up, resulting an uncorrupted orc horde to pour through the Dark Portal into Azeroth, they called themselves the Iron Horde and invading Azeroth because... umm... well... yeah... things, so as you crush their first wave, enter the dark portal, fight a throng of them alongside Khadgar, Go'El and a forgettable Draenei Vindicator (Maraad), things got exciting, as you encounter the shadow council and planned your retreat things got more interesting

The Story:
But apparently, things stopped being interesting.
After your first introductory questline, I (as an alliance) found myself in Shadowmoon Valley, Khadgar's opened a brief portal and thus begin my garrison's construction, then I met alternate reality Velen which much more battle hardened than his original self, the draenei has mounted a significant defense but still overruned by the orcs. Shadowmoon Valley's story is great and the closing is awesome, but after that I was bummed, the other zone story is not as strong as the previous, yes you met Rexxar, learned the divided origins of Draenor, used by the arrakoa up until you arrived at the max area level: Nagrand the story seems disjointed and disconnected, along the way you thought where's Grommash? Where's Garrosh? Where're the big guys? where is everything I've encountered in the prologue??!!!

Not to mention the most insulting storyline assigned to Orgrim Doomhammer, I'm not gonna spoil it for you go read or play it, After the scene at Nagrand (if that can be called a scene) I'm ready for the 'final assault' then the story catapulted me to Tanaan Jungle, then I construct a base (as I did in every other zone), then it's dailies time. Okay but I still don't know how Tanaan becomes oozie and suddenly there's someone else in charge. Strangely enough some QUEST yellow exclamation mark begins to pop up every now and then both in my garrison and the Tanaan base.

The whole storyline of Warlords of Draenor (save the Shadowmoon Valley storyline) is chock full of holes with things disconnected from other things, how's Gul'dan there? What is he doing? Where's Grom in all of this scene? How the hell did this happened? Remember the yellow exclamation mark that begins to appear? That's scenarios, the bridge that somewhat connected all this, for example: How is an arrakoa ended up under Gul'dan's command? I think I knew that guy, well after I played several days a quest suddenly appeared, it explain why the guy I used to know ended up a big bad elite boss, the rest? Oh they told it on the Legendary Questline story... They've even NAMED THE ACHIEVEMENTS AS CHAPTER!!!

I was baffled, the whole storyline is a mess, the whole heads and tails are nonsensical, and I still missing things, until I watched the introductory cutscene on youtube, patch 4.1 (Fury of The Hellfire) which explains A LOT, why didn't I got this thing on game? I knew it happened on previous patch, but come on they didn't even put it in the game, In mist of pandaria's last patch when my monk opened the Valley of Eternal Blossom I got an opening, pop up quest, and there's a scenario regarding Garrosh corrupting the Vale so it's not really confusing. On WOD, I was forced to open wowpedia to untangle those overlapped stories

So there it is, Warlords of Draenor stories, a disjointed heap of mess just because you played 8 months late.

The Gameplay:
On the other hand, I liked garrison, I know the whole WOW community divided by it, some love here, hate there, the usual stuff. It's basically a Warcraft RTS base, where you can build reource-generating buildings like lumbermill and Herb Gardens, you can upgrade these things too, like Herb gardens tier 3 provided like 20 plants a day and you can randomize or select what they will plant the next day, it's really convenient for a hoarder like me, albeit a bit lonely.   

So with garrison you can assign followers to do things for you, whether to search for resources, reclaiming rare items, equipment tokens, legendary materials, or even another follower (rare), as my real life workload piles up -- so I could only play WOW on night and early days -- garrison was great, it made me feel like that it fits my time, it doesn't feel like all those timed self-replenishing MMO games (yes I'm looking at you Archeage) because all their generated resource can be obtained through other meaning if I have more time, While in the meantime I can set up garrison missions on mornings and check back on the afternoon, assigning them again, and do some raiding/dungeons at night, so yeah, it's fun, albeit as you amass resource more than you can spend it it'll grow tedious.

Blizz implement WOW token some months ago so you can use ingame gold to pay for 30 days of game time, the value hovers between 25-27 thousand gold nowadays and it gave me an idea, so at the end of my first week of returning I tried to gain enough gold for my game time token, so I did what all lazy people did, selling all those obsolete equipment and some common materials, combined with what I make from my dailies I raked enough at 10 days left on my sub, although I gained three thousands from selling an epic BOE item, but yeah... if I play the auction house and do some crafting as I did at Cataclysm I'll probably have enough gold for some months, Blizz has some really cool mounts on Pandaria so I ended up spending all on them =)).

No new class and new races in WOD but I have one level boost to 90 feature, it will be upgraded to 100 when Legion hits so I'll probably saved it since I have a hard time deciding what class I want to boost, I'm respecced my warrior from Fury to Arms though, just to experience a different playstyle (and because everyone is Fury right now, just like every rogue is Combat).

Ashran!!! Oh Ashran!!! Oh yeah, welcome to WvsWvsW a la World of Warcraft, well actually Ashran is more like Arathi Basin part 2 combined with a little Guild Wars 2 borderland where 25 people frome each faction tried to control more outpost and completing events, but unfortunately I will say that it sucks, yes they provide a nice boost to my honor points, but there's just not enough room and events, in WWW on ONE borderland I can build a little team, caprunning every towers and outposts clockwise, perhaps slay a handful of stragglers, In Ashran I'm just following the zergtrain and go out of the base whenever an event occured, it feel so cramped that I actually screamed because of the repetition, good idea copying WWW, abysmal implementation, and don't play horde after 09.00 PM, they'll always lose.

There are three raids in this expansion, unfortunately I never really liked their armor and weapon design, fortunately I have a dwarven bunker on my garrison which sold awesome Blackrock armor for transmog only, after I complete my horriby designed LFR set I'll transmog everything.

Extras and Final Words:  
Blizz should never make those weekly scenario, whole story shouldn't be divided by randomly appeared quests, yes they're kind of fillers, but still I shouldn't be presented by them randomly, FFXIV has story progress divided by patch but still you have to complete one before you can move on, stories unlock dungeons and trials while the other features unlocked by sidequests, while in WOW: followers, toys, and areas unlocked by random quests which appeared once every week, I kinda confused why Yrel as my dailies NPC suddenly an exarch now? Did I miss something? I finally got that story quest in the third week, yes it's slightly proved that Blizzard don't want player to rush the expansions but still those randoms made me grit my teeth, and since Legendary Ring Quest IS the 'main' quest now I think I can accept that the grind will be a long one but why? Why split them up?

The shiphand mission, a garrison type mission where you assign ship to collect things for you is.... weird, ships are customizable although you need to collect blueprints from rare chests and enemies on the final area: Tanaan Jungle, since you can only select max two ships for each mission, the percentage of successive mission are realtively low, making you gambling on each other components to raise the success percentage, but in the end since components and ships are relatively cheap, they're all expendable since ship's sometimes destroyed when mission failed, you can just buy a new one on your dockyard. I still wondered why such mechanic exist in this game? It was not fun, not profitable (except the legendary missions), overall... it shouldn't even be there.

There's no gating content on WOD except one: Heroic Dungeon, where you must complete a time trial on silver achievement on your role (healer/tank/DPS) in order to enter them, The catch is... you don't have to do heroic dungeons at all!! Since Blizzard implement timewalking dungeon and LFR you can skip them at all, there's only two reason to do heroic dungeons: Some Garrison Resources and Heirloom upgrades for your alts, so yeah, it's really weird

Everything in Warlords of Draenor is weird, a jumbling mess of things, everything feels like an experiment and incomplete ones. I can't say that I hate it, I know how development job works, I don't love it either, gone is the feeling of becoming a true warrior of light guided by spiritual benefactor on Mist of Pandaria, replaced by hollow things as I read all the main quest text (yes I still doing that), my progress as character is... no, there's nothing progressive about my character, yes I got the title as lord commander of a garrison and gain purple-dressed orc warlocks and arrakoa metal construct as my followers but still I don't think I really progressed, maybe because all of my journey and encounters from Shadowmoon Valley onward was forgettable.

Is this an expansion? I don't think so, I think it was just an interlude, a big experimental patch containing features solely purposed for player's convenience but ended up being tedious and created ridiculuous storyline (and ending) at the end.

I'm not satisfied, that is all, hopefully Legion will be better, I was thinking I should return with friends

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (prologue)

Expansions are one of my main problems on MMORPGs, that beside laziness which is becomes so bad that I withdrew myself from MMORPG world completely for several months after finishing FFXIV main story, after that the flood of expansions get off, Guild Wars 2 will have Heart of Thorns, their storyline seems to pick up on Living Story Season 2. Warlords of Draenor is already on patch 6.2 which let player had their own ship, or several ships. Heavensward for FFXIV is out (and everyone is a dark knight now). Pay to play (they're not free) Star Wars The Old Republic will have Knights of The Old Republic 3 as their expansion pack, they just renamed it to Knights of The Fallen Empire. Archeage, Defiance, The Secret World, everything else.has new (paid) content

So I'm starting a new series of writing to catch up of being saleh (whenever he is) the first one will be my return to Nexus on Wildstar, I know I have a lot of hate/love about the game (uninstalling/reinstalling for like 9 times) so as they're going free to play they chipped a bargain on the last humblebundle E3 sale, I grabbed it and started over, now I'm officially an Exile, ready to (re)live my dying days as incompetent tank

Coming soon!!

my original blog name

Being Saleh: From Astral To Umbral a.k.a it's getting easier

Since my initial plan to upgrade to Warlords of Draenor is blown to bits by several... circumstances (like my social life and Guild Wars 2) I finally have time to get back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, It's not without several planning though, for one: FFXIV has been the most improved MMORPG I've ever played, and since I'm a filthy casual what I meant by "most improved" is "it's getting easier"

Except those pants, which made me hate ninjas

Since it's initial release on September 30th 2010, Final Fantasy has transformed from a total wreck into one of the most polished MMORPG ever created, at least that was all the review you can get from numerous website, I don't really care about it all, I played since A realm reborn beta (pre patch 2.0) and I can tell you from my own experience FFXIV has been most approachable, even than WOW, since I don't really raid and have a real piece of work internet connection from patch 2.0 to patch 2.5 FFXIV has been a great journey in term of casual gameplaying and story

The Story so far.... 

Final Fantasy XIV has numerous story quests, which it's names (like the F.A.T.Es) are homage to almost everything in pop culture, names like "Sudul Eht Nioj" or "Life is a Syrcus" almost get me chuckled every time, the writing (and translation, hello, it's a japanese game) work to this day was incredibly tidy and astonishing, if you're not into reading quests text like me you might skip them into oblivion, but really, slow down and read them all even when there are no voice acting (with sometimes regretfully awful, minor, nvm) I came across a line of dialogue which can or can't be tailored to my selection of race, it could be my imagination and since I'm too stupid to take a screenshot I just continue in hope to find another one, alas I never did.... maybe I'll ask around sometimes.

Please enjoy this Minfillia screenshot to ease your pain

So, in every patch (from 2.0 to the latest 2.5) there are at least five story arc in FFXIV, one is the main story arc where you as the good hero of Eorzea faced and confront threats from every not-so-good fellas, (minor spoiler) the latest patch offered a major plot twist which served as an opening into what we might expect in patch 3.0: Heavensward (yes it's an expansion). 

With Batman

Number two is the Hildibrand arc which we embarked in a gag journey (hey, what a hero without it's sense of humours) with Hildibrand Manderville: self-titled agent of inquiry and Inspector Extraordinaire Gentleman, which actually just a private detective with a penchant for disastrous and hyperbolic solution which (surprise) not always right, combined with numerous luck and colorful allies Hildibrand arc probably the most extraordinary (har har) arc Final Fantasy XIV has ever created simply because it get me laughing every single time =))

I'm so sorry for posting this

 Number three is the moogle courier stories, it puts up us as a mail courier for the good (and again, not-so-good) people of Eorzea, to deliver them letters which lead us to know more about their problems and woes, and --of course as a hero -- helps them, it's a short episodic goodness which the NPCs are described as more than just a quest giver, but also have life of their own.

A very GOOD life

Four is the Crystal Tower arc, where you embarked with a group of researchers known as NOAH to unlock the secret(and raiding) of crystal tower, as I said before the bosses are homage to Final Fantasy III
 

Five is another raid story: the Coil of Bahamut story act where we accompanied by Alisaie Leveilleur, the twin sister of Alphinaud Leveilleur which is a major story character, Allisaie takes us into a research facility which studies the impact of Bahamut's prison from the last era, it served as a hardcore raid instance but since the story is so good (I don't know, I don't raid) there are talks about to make it a soloable arc for casual players, I'm looking forward to this.

Even with such numerous story arc apparently Square knows where to stop and overshadowing people with what might be expected on Heavensward, the stories are not yet over, my eternal question is whether they will be continued or not, WOW has so much unfinished story arc and only a few of them has ever continued, things like Koltira's last stand to Sylvanas and Abyssal Maw has been scrapped and considered finished, no it's not finished, I refused to acknowledge that. Hopefully with much overshadowing here and there Square will actually resumed it

The (lazy) gearing and gameplay

Take a look at my post here, here, here, and here oh also here

As you can see from my numerous posts about 'dem gameplay on FFXIV you might see that I'm not too hot about it, I stopped playing in the beginning of patch 2.3 and as I came back gradually I just realized how I might be wrong, on the verge of patch 2.3 my chosen first class is a monk, a punch drunk dps guy, I have a sphairai which is a relic weapon a.k.a the strongest weapon on patch 2.0, with the help of the -then added chimera and hydra encounter on duty finder on patch 2.1(yes in case you forget it's a LFG tool)I zoomed through the steps of it and with my saved mythology tomes which I farmed from my days as paladin I obtained it in days, not weeks, not months, days, boom.

As square has numerous free weekend I mostly farmed the next upgrade of my weapon, atma (obtained by the old fashioned FATE grinding) on those days, sometimes it's going good, sometimes it's friggin frustrating (RNG sucks) I hit the jackpot on September free weekend.

So there's me and my atma weapon, as I renewed my sub I set myself another goal, another upgrade, the animus, which is another grindfest, yes bloodying my atma weapon with blood from numerous creatures is kind of sadistic way to upgrade a weapon but hey I need 9 books to be completed, each has at least 20 challenges ranged from killing X things and running dungeons (don't die on the last boss or it won't be count, blah), I decided that I will solo this thing, using DF and old-fashioned waiting game for fates, I got into 1/3 on the last books so it'll be awhile but the thing is, it's only takes three weeks to get into this phase and I don't even focus on it with numerous story arc to finish,

Animus is a level 100 weapon, you know another way to obtain 100 weapons on FFXIV on patch 2.5? Here's what I do on my Paladin: Run Crystal Tower --> upgrade gear with tomes --> run Syrcus Tower --> buy level 100 weapon with tomes --> run some more syrcus tower --> upgrade them to lvl 110 with tomes and stuffs found inside.

Yes it's easier, yes it's faster, but it just happened that I skipped patch 2.3 and 2.4 entirely!!! which means every good stuff of them is now available on vendors, so if I leveled another class now, on this patch, take it four weeks if you're a slow leveler (which can't be, because duty roulette bonus which will zoom you) add days for relic, run CT, buy weapons and armors, run ST, upgrades, voila, boom you're now decked in ilvl 110 in matter of weeks (probably one) if you skipped the entire leveling process entirely, on this ilvl you can access almost every single content on FFXIV, the first and second coil bahamut, the extreme primals, the odin, the hard and expert dungeons, The Hunt, world of darkness, latest PVP, anything, you see where this going? Yes FFXIV has become more approachable tiered-progress-based MMORPGs and that's VERY VERY GOOD

But what can I do on those content? I'm not fast enough to dodge things, or breaking things with heavy rotation, well just the point I want to make, Square tone down almost EVERYTHING in the latest patch, well not everything, hard still means hard and old dungeon can be irritating (yes I'm looking at you Aurum Vale) but the effort you pulled plus the gear you're wearing helped, the hardmode of Amdapor, Halatali and expert Wanderer's palace has a difficulty setting somewhere between sleeping in dungeon and breaking a keyboard, patch 2.0 Ultima battle was over the top and exceed all my expectation about how fun and engaging a dungeon battle is just because a) it's not too hard and b) it has a good song, the two latest trial and dungeon: The Chrysalis and Lake Keeper tops it, the balance was perfect, the boss battles are fun, last boss battle are somewhere between intimidating and brutally satisfying, there's no perfect way to win this, the one hit kill skillz was so few but if you don't entertain your footwork, you can still wipe, for a melee dps it's fun, for tanks and probably healer it's fun, yeah, that's only it, it's fun :D

Here's another SS to reward you, and no I don't even know what that is

Onward to 3.0

Well, I've written so much, so here's something, by scrapping everything that was on patch 1.0 FFXIV finally got a second chance and they used it well to gain acknowledgement from a solo (casually zerging in raid) player like me, by simplifying means and upping the rewards for activities FFXIV can continue to grow, but here's the thing, as you can see it's only the main game I'm talking about, come the expansion how approachable the state will be? Will the leveling process simplified? Up until now the main story arc requires you to get into dungeons and beat it but to be honest it's extremely worth it since the story is well written and enjoyable, For the story I think new player wants the whole experience too (Blizz cut the Undercity Siege story arc on Cataclysm, /rude), but LFG tool will probably without old players running around it (even if it's synced), so the fact that new players must open it all just to unlock high level dungeon can be.... discouraging, especially for new hardcores which tend to grind everything just to get into max level, and since max level dungeon in FFXIV tied to quests and main story quests and not the level, this can be a problem, at least for the powerleveler

Well there are solution, Blizz now sold instant level 90 on their website, it's also bundled with Warlords of Draenor expansion, but it's because they have 5 expansion pack and cataclysm rendered the old lore continuity useless for the sake of new graphics and eye candy, FFXIV still has a way to go, it's only the second expansion and since the main game bundled with patch 2.0 so it can be counted for a first expansion, it will be interesting if Square will go the same road as Blizzard (a.k.a make everything on the previous expansion obsolete, excluding Pandaria, they still have more content than all WOW combined)

But for now, I'll enjoy a little crystal action

Phantasy Star Online 2: First Look

Apparently the space is not always a star ocean.... It's full of PHANTASY!!! (whatever it is)

The English Version of Phantasy Star Online 2 probably will never see the light on western hemisphere, although you can play the Japanese version with a third party english patch but grouping with random player probably can be a hassle, but anyway let me told you about my first few days on PSO 2 English Version (South East Asia only)

Before I played I never read any review, description, or anything about PSO2, not even a beta, so when I first zoomed in to the server I got quite stunned that it has Gameguard.... okay move along, PSO2 has only three basic class: Hunter (melee based), Ranger (ranged based), and Force (healer/magic type), they can 'evolve' on level 30 to become Fighter, Gunner, and Techer, also apparently there's a tech tree which you can mix and match with skill from another class (cross class skill) but I don't know how deep the system is, I'll keep it up in mind for my next post. So anyway PSO2 has three races, Human, Newman (elves), and Cast (androids). each race can be of any class, there's some basic and deep appearance customization for each race, for Cast however you can only change your body tipe and head, there's also several human head options that you can customize but it's kinda put me off because putting it on a robot body... it looks like a disembodied emotionless head being put in a robotic body. so I go with the ordinary robot head, and this is the 'final form'

now all that's left is to find a young boy to pilot me and we can go save the universe!!

Okay, let's go to gameplay, as a Hunter I sported a really big two-handed power sword which kinda encumbered my character, the battle in PSO2 occured in real time, you have two kind of attack, left mouse is your ordinary attack, you can combo it with another timed left mouse, if perfectly timed (indicated by orange aura around your character like Legend of Dragoon) you can stagger or even stun enemies (called perfect strike), enemy performance can't be interrupted with any other way... so here's the thing: looking at a big giant monkey raising and then throwing a big boulder while I spin around creating a cyclone of blade around him --while he is doing that without a single hint on his perturbed face that I caused big numbers by hitting him repeatedly -- is kinda... odd. Anyway my cyclone of death is called photon arts and it's my super attack initaited by right mouse button, it needs resource called PP so it's kinda have to be reserved, oh yeah you can also dash by double tapping your arrow button, and attack while you're jumping (now every new MMO has it!!!) :P

Not Pictured: I stumbled

Beside the big sword I also have a gunslash which literally is my ranged attack weapon, I can also press shift to change it's mode into a fast-attack one hand sword, if the Shift button is used while you're using the big sword you'll defend against an attack, you can also customize weapons to change it's combo and foton arts, a regular and foton arts combo usually initiated by two perfectly timed push of a button, sometimes photon blast occured, an environmental anomaly triggered by defeating enemies perfectly and enhancing your attribute, making you an unstoppable engine of death, not always though, and when you become unstoppable usually the enemy's already down before you know it, this can change on higher level though, probably. One more thing: I can also press 'Z' to change my view into those third party shooter mode like those like Mass Effect.or Gears of Wars

Just shoot it Shepard!!

PSO2 is instance based, meaning like Guild Wars you have one central hub, you can meet anyone in this city hub (or in case in PSO2: Mothership), everytime you entered a mission (quest) instance you'll be assigned a 'room', you can name this room and recruit people for it, the number is varied on each missions, you can also solo it or bring an NPC party member that you'll recruit as the main story progress, don't want to wait? Just find and open room with people on it and join the fray (just like Diablo 3), before the mission begins there's also a 'preparation' room for you to strategize and buy/sell buffs and items, when you're in an instance your HP/PP/MP won't be replenished unless you found a replenishments (contained in destroyable objects) or a healing station (on instance intermissions), consumables like HP potions are a kind of big point in here, (just like Diablo 3/Path Of Exile all over again) so make sure you're prepared to bring a bunch of instant health potion before you go dive into a mission

In the mothership there's a lot you can do, first there's the main story, yes it's kinda just slapped there with a sprinkle of dramatic moments here and there, some fancy magic scenes, some pony summoning... (yes, they exists). Apparently some bug creature called D-arkers are destroying planets and it's up to us to prevent it... and so on.  There are daily quests, and some special missions which provides tutorial, mailbox, crafting, there are furnitures, one thing I like about PSO2 is that like guild wars 2 I'm free to deposit my item wherever, unfortunately my storage is limited on slots, and like all free to play titles I can expand it for a little cash. Playpark is kind enough to give me a bonus of points every time I did consecutive day logging.

Pictured: A representative  from a p2w game

The thing I dislike very much about PSO2 is how BLAND the interface is, all the good thing came in from combat, but that interface, my God, always a white courier font text on blue background, yes I know it's in space, but come on!!

It killed your soul, quickly

 also, when you're disconnected your instance will be reset... noooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Well, despite the tedious combat, PSO2 has something... shiny, apparently for me it's just too boring to go on and the shiny thing died inside, but since it's free to play it's a perfect place to spent times shooting, hacking and slashing with friends, there's probably a better game for that, but hey at least they have ponies...

Wanna be friends?

Being Saleh: Trading Places with Patch 2.2

Patch 2.2 won't be news again when I publish this, but it's still worth mentioning, beside making everything worthy again by implementing challenge log, patch 2.2 is a turning point where everything becomes less chore and more fun

FUN??!! BLASHPEMY!!! Well okay, enough of jokes, you know what? What's the point of leveling my chocobo to level 50? Nothing, but with challenge log everytime you defeat a foe with him/her (i'm not picky) it'll be counted towards your progress of the challenge log, and if you complete that challenge you'll be granted significant amount of xp and money. And yeah, what about grinding those rep for the new sahagin faction? Boring! Well ok how about if it also counted towards your progress on this challenge log? Well ok, two bird in a stone I guess.

Challenge Log is a series of work order that can be completed which rewards titles, money, and xp. It lessened but not eliminated a series of 'useless grinding' chores on Final Fantasy XIV like running hests and leveling your crafting, they resets once a week so you can complete your five hests run on five days or less, oh yeah there's a challenge for dungeon too, that way you get your xp, mytho, soldiery tome, and much more money, all in one run, can i have an instant gratification, please?

Well for altholic challenge log is a blessing since it gave major boost to leveling process, for casual dungeoneers it gave more reason to run multiple dungeon a day, for gatherer and crafter it gives you money for each and every challenge completed for rare and plain items, and you do know that gil is everything a crafter can dream of, so yeah challenge log is for everyone, except maybe coil-dwelling hardcores. They have five more turn of no-ability-lag-dramafest implemented in this patch

Also i decided to move on from being a tank, the patch has created more group content benefits that the dps on duty finder only got several minutes of queue times, convenient. Also leviathan has interesting mechanic and it was more fun to dps than to tank

Amazing Spiderman 2: Reviewed

Since my previous review, life's been good to Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), finishing both high school and armed street thugs, it's probably one of his golden days of youth, beside his on-off relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) there's seemed nothing that can stop his pretty beautiful days.from go on.

Of course there is always a but, while life's been good with both Spidey and Peter, it's not really had it going on with Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), he's practically invisible, his boss stole his credit for his work, his colleauges doesn't even know about him, he's a nobody and he accepted that while at the same time harboring the growing need to be seen by the world, a really really unhealthy need. so it begins: The Amazing Spiderman 2

Being a sequel sucks, you must make sure you overshadow the first and deliver things that makes the audience said: "it's not a rehash of the first one", being a remake is even more sucks because you also have to make sure it's better in ALL things than the predecessors. So in this remake we've already knew that Spidey is a delinquent that enjoys spouting funny and catchy lines to the bad guys, and in this movie he also liked being in the spotlight and thrilled at every negative stigma of vigilantes labeled at him, Spidey made fun of the world while saving it, and that's cool, this movie is extremely optimistic and melancholic at the same time, Peter and Gwen has their share of optimistic love story, they're young, they're in love, and yes they can do anything....

Meanwhile: Max Dillon got into accident partially caused by the ignorance of his colleagues, while previously he has his issues with his obsession of Spiderman (after he got saved by Peter) when he finally returned as Electro he carried this unhealthy dose of his complex, so if you're bullied by almost everyone you met for God knows how long, what will you first do when you finally obtained a nearly unlimited power? revenge? unfortunately it's just a small prize, he's aiming beyond revenge, he developed a new obsession, obsession for his own power, and for that Spiderman must die since he's the only thing stand between him and his ultimate goal.

Spiderman and Electro are antithesis, it's the other theme of this movie, Spidey reject the statement of "the strong wins" while Electro accepted that, Spidey's aim is to protect while Electro is to rule, it's just like when the goblin said to Raimi's spiderman on the first movie: "they will hate you no matter what you do" Electro is that Spiderman if he accepted the offer to rule, and we can't really blamed him since Max was a broken man for far too long as the result of those who are strong, one more thing: the description of him in this movie never made the audience sympathizes with him, it's a perfect balance to split Max and Electro, when Electro lives Max is no more, while on the other hand just like the first movie we can't really split Spidey with Peter, with or without mask.

I know there are two other villain in this movie, The Goblin/Harry Osborn (Dan DeHaan) and Rhino (Paul Giamatti) but their appearance here is only a prelude for what is coming on the next sequel, and to be honest I'm afraid that it won't deliver, Amazing Spiderman 2 is a decent sequel and deliver a progress of both on Peter and Spiderman's life, it prepared him to face the next level with these baddies (and others) but I really don't think next level can be described in two hours length of movie because it can only focus so much on some character, Avangers did it with six heroes but each of them has their own prequel movie, what about six villain? I know there wll be spin off about them, but it will come after Amazing Spiderman 3, so what will spidey do on the third? Another Venom thing? I really hope it won't become another Venom-Carnage comic relief like in the cartoon series where only one of them is the villain and the other is just stand there to deliver Strascream's-minion-like cheesy monologue.

For this sequel, despite the review I'm gonna give it an eight since it's optimistic and light-hearted

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