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 (Wildstar)

Oh Wildstar, I despise you so much, but I also loved you enough to play in 10++ session through a year on numerous trial account and get the loop of install-uninstalling to the point Thayd and Auroria become so easily navigated. Then one year came and the verdicts are in, the world didn't like you, even your publisher despise you, your company lost so many talented men and women, so then you're going free to play, but not before you put yourself as a part of E3 charity bundle, which I bought and play through last month, so before you've gone and throw yourself to the evil called f2p community, here's my second review of you my dear sci-fi-once-hyped MMORPG

The separation between the EU and US version are confusing, so I thought I was upgrading my old account, as a matter of fact I didn't so I ended up leveling my Draken Warrior into level 16, unknowing that I still played my trial account, only when I leveled up my crafting I found out that I didn't go to the next level that's when i found out, 5 days wasted of my free game time. So then I'm going fast, changed the region and roll a Stalker because they can go invisible and hit hard.

Story:
Wildstar tells a story about two warring faction, The Exile and The Dominion, once there's only one human Dominion until one technocratic race called the Eldan demands human's greatest warrior to accompany them to their homeland (with a threat of course), years later her offspiring came back, brings another race of mechanical origin called Mechari and start leading them to subjugate another races and planet, this doesn't bode well to some human and aliens which bonded together to become the Exile. One day a planet called Nexus, known as the last Eldan tinkering laboratory suddenly popped up, and both faction are on a race to claim it.

Taxis already provided

The whole story about Wildstar main storyline are revolving on finding a new home and a weapon race, because The Exile and Dominion are not the only ones who've arrived in Nexus, there are also other alien races ranged from the fluffy furry things to the tech-advanced oceanic species, not to mention the Protostar Corp, an intergalactic corporation which sold almost everything and anything also think the planet is a gold mine (both literally and figuratively) not to mention since Nexus itself a big Eldan lab which the Eldan fools around with the original natives and plants resulting in some hideous monstrosities and cool-looking giant robots.

The game itself had some cohesive lore on the Eldan and Nexus which scattered all around the world in form of notes, relics, and datacubes, finding them are not always easy and sometimes required player to navigate some jumping puzzle to reach them, contrary to them the quest NPCs offered a really tiny bit of it, this is a bit turn off since you probably have to scour some interesting area (i.e a giant unidentified skeleton in a middle of the desert) to know a bit more of it. Eventually you'll heard much about the Genesis Prime, and (spoiler), ahem... so yeah.

In a matter of aesthetics, the cartoony style of Wildstar fits their image story, space cowboys for hire, gun (sword) toting undead interstellar mercenary looking for home, every 10 level you're treated to some really cool leveling place, two bio domes, each contains opposite environment and biology to each other, a dark side of the moon where you can jump higher and discover more about the Eldan which is... disturbing, a contested areas which both faction wage an all out war against a nation of winged creatures, but unfortunately the design turns bleak on the max daily hub area, up until Carbine drops an update called strain which contains an awesome-looking (and hard) area, it's like Icecrown in WOW where you feel that you won't be save anywehere, even the sky.

Except in the taxis

Gameplay:
Let me emphasis this one once again: WILDSTAR IS HARD, yes, not only the difficulty, but your computer spec also decided it, you need minimal 30-40 FPS to survive an encounter, because as I said on my first review: YOU WILL DIE, AGAIN, AND AGAIN, and the game will sneer at you for dying again and again like a noob, oh yeah, count your latency, because anything above 200 will kill you, lag spike will smack you down, and in a dungeon it will ruined your entire life.

Unfortunately my life revolved around riding a hoverbike

Wildstar employed action-based battle, where all your attacks do area of damage attacks and also the mobs which you must dodge or interrupt with some skills, interrupting enemies are highly valuable because then your next attacks will deal extra damage to them. I'm a stalker and a melee damage dealer which means I will go toe to toe with enemies and I must killed them ASAP because of my medium armor, The Stalker can also become a tank which based on evasive manuouvre and skills to weaken the enemy's attacks but I'm not go into that light since I'm experimenting with my dps spec.

My first headscratch came on the skill selection, Stalker has like twenty five skills (plus five unlockables) and can only put 7 of them on the shortcut, you'll essentially played with shortcut because of the nature of the fast paced battle (no time for clicks), and each of them has levels which powers up their damage or debuff effects, I've been there on guild wars 1 but never have been so confused, so In the end I just selected the first five of them and roll two from the utilities section, because I've been so used to rotating them (final slot opened at level 30, so in 29 level I've been using the same skill set over and over again)

Did I mention all of them are active skills? So where's the passive? Welcome to my second headache, the AMP bar, it has dot things, and these passive dot things on some level unlocked new active skill, but here's a catch some AMP dots are locked and must be unlocked with the corresponding item, I got some from fighting the enemies in the world, but then at max level I realized I have too many locked dots, but then I remembered there's a vendor called imported AMP vendor (or something) so I bought a bunch of my class AMP, I still have some locked and really have no idea how to obtain them. They really need to work on this to ensure player got the full picture about how this thing worked since I reset them twice

DOTS!!

I followed my main quest and never left an area up until I exhausted all soloable quests, which sometimes racked my reputation to that area's faction to the max, it also helped my builder path, you know that one thing that makes wildstar awesome and made you interested on interacting with the world as my first review said. On a quest-following player Wildstar has a special final quest (but sometimes separate) that usually involved you to obtain an artifact of the scene to display on your city's museum, you can click them for more info, I personally liked this, but I would like it more if it can be displayed in my own house, what's the point of owning a house without your personal achievement?

Extras & Final Words:
I reached my max level three days short of my free game time expiry date, so I used the remaining time to gear up and queue at the group finder, unfortunately it seldom works, there are two PVE group instances: Adventures and Dungeons, Raid is on a whole another level and you can't queue randoms for them, they're also have attunements in form of gear levels and required quests, I've been queued for adventures and dungeons on my leveling progress (they're both level-synced) but it seldom pops even on higher level where it finally has the option random adventure/dungeon, thus it can also become a measuring tool about how many people actually played this game, and I must said: not so much, there are only two servers on Europe, one for PVE and the other for PVP, so comparing it to WOW or even Final Fantasy XIV won't work

Although FFXIV and WOW need more tied up giant robots

I love how Wildstar explored the sci-fi niche of a story, even when the story itself is mediocre at best, I love how the world was designed, although it's kinda empty, I adore the crafting and path system, my complaint was technical, some bugs here and there, the DF that seldom works (or probably dont have players queueing), If only my machine is a little better I probably will return here someday when it's going f2p as I have max level now. It's sad such good game qith so much potential wasted, I don't know what cause it, it's probably because it was initially aimed for hardcore players, as it was designed to follow the exact same path as Vanilla WOW, as they realized and added some content for casual players (like contracts and bounties) it was already too late, many people both players and key developers has already left the game. When wildstar haven't released the devs are all open and laughs, after the release however communication becomes scarce, the updates initially came fast (they said once a month) but halted at the third month, after that it was zero comms from them. I don't bought it at the time because it was too hard for me and I have FFXIV

Free to play is one final way for NCSOFT games to regain players, as exhibited by City of Heroes but they're eventually get the hatchet and shut down when Guild Wars 2 came out, Wildstar is the only subbed MMO NCSOFT has and now as they'll gone f2p they have numerous games to contend to like Skyforge which has similar theme but grindy content (no I won't count SWTOR as they're p2p), the question remains: will Wildstar finally buried when Blade and Soul (which has similar battle gameplay) came out to the west? As usual I'll just wait and see

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

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 =))

Being Saleh: (Not) One Left

My MMO shortlist only has one name left: Phantasy Star Online 2 which will have their english version-south east asia only beta on the end of the month, sure there will be Archeage on upcoming month, I also (mildly) interested in Elite: Dangerous but since one of them is a sandbox (open PVP) and the other is a space sim, I'll probably will be there just to try things out. Also PSO 2 is developed for console so probably  it'll be more action oriented like DCUO, the free to play is the perfect bait though.

With two MMOs crossed off my list is a real relieve. My latest encounter with ESO didn't really working, to be honest as i played the last beta months ago I can't seemed to understand the game, I can't even write a decent, coherent post about it, some of the player said that now the game has matured a bit despite all the fuss (especially about the free month fiasco), but still it didn't even piqued my interest yet. With Wildstar however I found a short-timed joy, before it got into the phase where internet connection become your biggest problem and I quit tanking, oh and also healing, how people can heal through those messed up telegraph amidst those jumping and dodging is still amazed me, I probably just sucked though

With only a week left in my sub on FFXIV I once again contemplating about my stand on MMORPGs, I burned out once three months ago because of all the things i must try at least once, including my steam games, and until now I still haven't finished any of it yet, I guess maybe MMOs has evolved into the next best thing and I'm just too lazy to keep up, or probably just too lazy to play

Update: I accidentally renewed my FFXIV sub, damn you auto payment

Now the smirk seems haunting...

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