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 Dual Wield: A Game for XX

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

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

The Group

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

I want in and I want out

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

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

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

Life in a cup of coffee

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

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

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