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 =))

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: Less than 24 hours...

...And I can't sleep (again), Guild Wars 2 will launch in 12 hours and I still agitated, seems like every cell in my body screams to Anet: "Release it now!" Why? I don't know, probably because it's weekend and I find all my usual hobbies become a stalemate before the launch, so I'm just gonna wait and hope that the three-- hours-- ---earlier-- open-- server is a truth.

So I'm gonna write random things, such as: not many people liked GW2, why? because it's chaotic and different, my friend got thrown off when fighting as an elementalist because he didn't realized that he has no mana and can cast while running, and he SHOULD BE running because ten centaur stampeding towards him is no big joke. As a mesmer I still curious about how my health depleted to zero in seconds because the unpredictability of a battle, and as a melee mesmer my curiosity doubled every time I leveled up, will everyone one shot me when in Orr? Will I'll be forced to play ranged in later time? Will I ever get my Gur'thalak? (wrong game). But my sword has some cool design (drifted off by shiny things), Guild Wars 2 just have too much surprise and some people just really like predictability, like rotations... and trinity system....

I also realized the 'addict' factor on Guild Wars 2 is unusually high even for me, even way beyond my WoW and RIFT experience, WoW did put me off on Patch 4.1 where I must grind troll dungeons, they introduced Raid Finder on 4.3 and I quickly sprung back to life, even when my chance of winning items has gone I ran it almost everyday. I logged on RIFT whenever there are invasions on three top level area for like two-three hours per day. Both of this hype never falters, I just simply stopped playing because there's nothing else to do there except one thing I like, one, and if I keep playing I'll burn out in no time with no new contents on horizon. I stopped played RIFT solely because I want to give myself a break before Guild Wars 2 (Real Life factor actually matters much here when I stopped playing, I just have to get out there)

On Guild Wars 2 my hype factor reinforced by two things: one, my old guildmates coming back, two everything is new on Guild Wars 2, the newness factor can hold on for three months but the guild factor can hold fast (we're casual, so we're kinda like having each other numbers and send dirty text messages...yeah no... ) I wonder how many hours I'll be playing on opening time, my best bet is eight before I collapsed in bed and completely skipped playing the day after =))

The continuity of my Lineage 2 journal, Being Saleh will now become my notebook about Tyria, and about how a Charr sing

Right Side (A Gameless Weekend)

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

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

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

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

This also won't happen again :D

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

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