Being Saleh: A Space For The Undaunted Future and Things To Come and Why oh Why I don't Blog Often? (A Space For The Unbound review)

There seemed to be a lot riding on A Space For The unbound (ASFTU), a narrative driven game seven years in the making from Indonesian Studio Mojiken, the wave started about three/two years ago when they're announcing "a game with a Indonesian 90s setting" (or more precise: A game with Indonesian 90s high school scenes, which means no greatest sin of mankind a.k.a cellphone yet) they had a demo on Steam so I played it, one year later after two days of playing the full game I sat and write this post because I deemed that game is worth enough reviving this blog (and changed the font).

Dun dun dun dun

I'm not familiar with Indonesian indie games scene, as a matter of fact the announced ASFTU is the one thing intriguing me enough to search around about them (growing in 90s and stuffs) and bumped me with Coffee Talk (another slice of life retro graphic game set on a fantasy futuristic town) published by Toge Productions who has been around since some eleven years ago which means I've been under the rock enough for not noticing them... Anyway so after playing Coffee Talk enough to see the 'weird' creativity of this game I put ASTFU on my wishlist because being an Indonesian but spent so much time playing MMORPGs with people of the world make me a little... homesick, mind you I retired from the local's MMORPGs scene because of it's notorious toxicity (No I'm not talking about Genshin Impact, I'm talking way way further back when I grind those 1909145732896543 Ketra orc's heads), Coffee talk: a little game that only span 6 hours or so is weirdly powerful on writing and narrating, it's basically a compilation of short stories, a GOOD compilation of short stories.

Anyway back to ASFTU this game is a visual novel at heart but with some side scrolling adventure game type and some mild puzzle-solving, there's also elements of Quick Time Event (QTE), For me these elements can be a hindrace sometimes, I know they're trying to spice things up (and testing some engine) and most of the puzzle are easily solved but trying to get a door combination in later game with little hints and lots of numbers can be a little frustrating because sometimes it broke the immersion of the narrative, if there's a paid DLC button to skip all the puzzles I'll gladly bought it. The game design was breathtakingly nostalgic, with some of the house and generic 90s school visual design, soothing music followed by familiar environmental sound, and the NPCs are just as bizzare and quirky as I expected too, in short the whole visual and sound design is a warm welcome for my soul, almost like a sweet, smooth therapy session (uh no, I'm not talking about weeds)

The story: Atma and Raya is a childhood sweetheart couple, fall in love in high school, unsure of their future, planned to ran away together, creating a list of what to do before they finish high school and so and so but plot twist: they both have superpowers, Atma can dive into other people's heart (dubbed spacedive, later crossdive) while Raya can manipulate reality to some extent (and require some price), in their last days of high school there's a crisis looming in the horizon and they both are in the center of it. WARNING: If you could read the fine print at the game description you might realized that the story dealt with mostly negative emotion, Raya and Atma's power are tied to their psyche and the story unfolded as their powers and hearts grow, you'll mostly control Atma so the story was presented in his point of view to reserve some of the clever twist of it, not to spoil anything: This is a sad game, and some scene can make you a tad bit uncomfortable, some of the expected seriousness is one of the fine point of why I bought the game, it's brave and Mojiken presenting such a story without gerrymandering it is an achievement to itself. Psych disorder is not something to be taking lightly of, and sometimes it requires professional help. I Also  played the game with Bahasa as language and I can see some of the English statements, jokes, curses and proverb are somewhat translated as is which is a bit... weird? Indonesian don't told others to go hide on their mother's skirt, they told them to shut up and die while swinging things (HALAH BACOT), they got better at the end where the narrative is heavy and pack some great impact.

Although The pace of the game is uneven (sometimes it's like a speeding truck crashing every wall and in some chapters slowed down to a crawl) but Mojiken also did well blending it to the game design, the visual novel take make a really compelling case of secrets and hidden objects hide and seek minigame, it's fun and well placed, there's a side quests where you must collect bubble gum wrappers with the letters which ultimately form the words "YOMAN" which is a reference to a 90s local bubble gum promotion where my brothers and I hunted the word S of YOSAN bubble gum (we never found it, and we suspect it was never even made hahaha) plot twist: THEY'RE STILL EXISTED!!! anyway as promised the world of ASFTU is jam-packed with 80s and 90s nostalgia, furthermore: even some of Mojiken's previous game character is act as a secret puzzle. Pet all the cats, the dogs, the... other animals... just go wild with those interaction bubbles. The game also loaded with references to other pop culture such as the "Cobra Kai"show and "Kung-Fu Boy a.k.a Tekken Chinmi" comic book which is a huge hit here in their 90s day, and you want to know the price of one bowl of noodle in the 90s? yes, it's also (slightly) accurate, on story side: you can see the influence of other 'existential' video game, movies, and anime in ASFTU, from "Nier Automata" to "Neon Genesis Evangelion" it's not just the show, the music of ASFTU also show slight references to it, I also think this entire game's music deserved a separate recognition of their own (the penultimate song was A++). I'm not a musician but I know a good tune when I heard it, especially one of these weeks FFXIV and Tales Of Arise music's was the only thing I heard every day.

yes atma, Woah indeed

 

Also it's probably one of the free-bug game i was ever played, if there's any it was never triggered or occured, anyway technical thing aside: Mojiken Studio as developers and Toge Production as publisher is probably a big time winner in a little corner of this country's emerging (or stagnating? Or even declining? Told you I'm not familiar with this scene) game storytelling and marketing scene and deserved every praise because of it, ASFTU ticks all the right thing, brought a full course meal to a small community while still hold a bigger and finer standard, although the theme was dark and dealing with delicate social issues this game succesfully navigating those issue with care and gentle handling, (down to their New year Poster which score a high points from me). But I'm not a point guy, I'm just an old player, I had my share of suspicious glance, self-destructing, and a bunch of unanswered phone, text, and emails. I enjoyed ASFTU wholly, even with their frustrating door combination puzzle (Thank God there's no mandatory jumping puzzle or I might throw out this game immediately) I believe this game can be something more, but it was also up to their devs (and publisher), and other devs and publisher, and also other people involved in this industry, when you finished this game and tried to contemplating the relatable elements of it you'll met with the fact that this one game took seven years to make, that alone can be a consideration for anyone involved (or anyone who wants to be involved), I'm expecting great things from this scene but for some illogical... reason even great things can be a mere dust in the wind when it failed to capture hearts, but I also believe great things also come from little things. Anyway as Atma's said (as cheesy as he can be) the perfect world is the imperfect one (which is obvious) I really don't dig him but I like it.

Spoiler: This is what you got after petting all the cats in the game!!

Being Saleh: Enders Game (FFXIV Endwalker Review)

It’s so hard to write about the FFXIV’s latest expansion without spoiling the story, that’s why this post came late, called Endwalker: the season finale of the first story arc from FFXIV, it’s the culmination of the eorzea chapter that first started 10 years ago.

 

old guy!!! (wait, I sprouted?)

 

Storywise: Since Shadowbringers the Scion of seventh dawn has been taking a huge undertaking in their role, from negotiator and spies to spawning the Trust system to help players navigate the dungeons and now they can participate in a Trial (there are two in the initial release and even their name is a spoiler). After a stint in the First (a glorious one) the Warrior of Light and the scion prepares for their advance to the seat of the empire: The Garlean territory, only it’s a little different from our imagining in Heavensward or even Stormblood, this plot twist is a major spoiler, heck even their zone is a spoiler, their trek there, you guess it: spoiler but here’s something: your favorite (and maybe forgotten) characters since the ARR age will be there since it’s the ultimate Avengers team up from the first quest to the last, hilariously some characters will even berate you if you forget them

Nothing changed much from the combat and crafting system, there are two new class: The Reaper is a new melee dps that outdps every class initially (so much that they buff all dps class in the first major patch to catch up), The aerods wielding Sage is a healer that heal people by shooting at things and IMHO it’s the fun one, I leveled a total of five jobs only from the main story quest (plus a bit of fate grinding in ‘that place’) There are some experimental quest sprinkled here and there including a story stealth mission starring Thancred which spawned the “This is Thancred” meme, speaking of stealth quest there is a long mission that somehow is both frustrating and awesome at the same time, frustrating because there’s time limit albeit a long one and awesome because it contains some light puzzle element( which answers I accidentally stumbled upon) and in the end it evolved into a small resource management game.

 

oooo, guiding hooome, oh wait we're already home

But the special mention goes to the music, I’m not a musician, I played instruments abysmally but I love sounds and in Endwalker it’s clear that Masayoshi Soken is finally getting comfortable putting his rock in almost everything, Endwalker theme follows the Shadowbringer theme with distortion guitars intersped by orchestral rock sound, the dungeon boss theme is another beautiful composition, almost all theme in the expansion are some form of the main theme, and they’re all good. The new songs including a promotional version of “Fly me to the moon” by Sia, a new ending song “Flow Together” another rendition of “Answer” which is the song of the first FFXIV expansion, and it’s other iteration: “Your Answer” to complete the ensemble. The expansion theme itself is a mirror image of Shadowbringers which applied a more intense sound and visual, Endwalker brought the light back with more emotional and mellow themes

Zenos return as the main villain because psycopath is hard to kill, also respecced as the new Reaper class, the new Ascian Fandaniel is now act as the mysterious gleeful crazy person/immortal being and yes minor spoiler there are bigger villain, with their own plot twist and unusual circumstances. You see: the theme of Endwalker is everybody deserves a second chance and since it’s Final Fantasy where the last quest is usually: KILL GODS, yes even That GOD deserves a second chance and that my friends makes this the best Final Fantasy because inbetween the tear-jerker and smiley moments, the difficult fights and struggles, those past, present, and future things mashed together you still in the end get your greatest wish that is KICK ZENOS’ ASS, although as spoiler goes: it might not the way you’re thinking of. But we’ll kick his ass, I can guarantee that.

 

A test for your reflexes!!!

Being Saleh: Optional Ending

Major spoiler for Dragon Age, Final Fantasy Tactics,  and Final Fantasy XIV

Dragon Age
Bioware's rpg megahit Dragon Age franchise has compelling storyline and combat system, it also featured ending(s) which shaped by the player's choices during the gameplay, alas it also featured something I called 'optional but essential' ending, namely: the dlc

When the third major title Dragon Age Inquisition came out I was excited that I can import my character's vital decision in Dragon Age 1 and 2 via the website (saving me the hassle to install them again) but I stumbled at the end of the dragon quest origin timeline, frowning upon a choice which I'm pretty sure I was never came upon to (I remembered my decisions) not until I read the explanation that it was supposed to be made in the last DAO's dlc: the witch hunt

I mostly turn blind eye on dlc but unfortunately it was essential in DA universe, fortunately I have DA 2 attached with all the dlc. After contemplating that 'last' DLC will be important to the last Dragon Age Inquisition I decided to wait for the GOTY version, bought it and surprised that it wasn't even optional, it was required because in that DLC i lost two party member and (also optional) dismantling my team, if this decision was going to the next dragon age (if there is one) and I didn't play the dlc I probably wondered what happened to them? Then when I was told that they did this and that and this, I will be like: what? When?  If they're alive they will probably said things that contradict my old game decision, the whole thing can be so confusing without the dlc.

Final Fantasy Tactics No, i never finished Final Fantasy Tactics, also I used gameshark and save state to cheese out many of the game's mission. I stopped playing in the early 2000 because I probably just got bored and wonder if human beings are more interesting (they're not), I left and never came back until the latest Return to Ivalice raid in Final Fantasy XIV.

Return to Ivalice, like the previous Crystal Tower raid brought major references from earlier Final Fantasy series to FFXIV, precisely FFIII for CT and FF tactics for RTI raid, not until I beat the last wing of the raid that I realized that it was not just a reference object, it's a conclusion of Final Fantasy Tactics if you connect the dots

With names like Ramza, Delita, and Alma headlining the casts you will probably think the similarities was only in the name, it's not until clearing the second raid wing (if you don't finish Final Fantasy Tactics) you'll realized that something else happened long ago but you can't put your finger to it because FFXIV doesn't offer explanation (because it was explained in FF tactics game) then you go and beat the last wing and something happened, again if you never finished FF tactics like me you'll just staring and trying to understand things as the characters mumbling about something that happened in the past, for half an hour.

Well something did happen in the past, Final Fantasy Tactics happens

Here's the major breakdown, from here on it's the MAJOR spoiler for both game, so here goes nothing

In Final Fantasy Tactics Ramza and his band of mercenary found out that their country was built on lies, that the saint they revered is a demon god called ultima, that a race of demon called Lucavi is pulling strings and manipulate the church to resurrect Ultima by initiating war between countries for sacrifices. Ramza cs stopped the demon but after that their fate remains unknown, while the church (now free from Lucavis) labeled them as heretics (which is an idiot move) because they 'desecrated' the saint's faith. Delita becomes king and because of the distrust spread in his royal court got stabbed and die, frustrated, calling Ramza's name and wonder whether he actually changed anything, Oran Durai (another key character) wrote a book claiming Ramza and companions are heroes and detailing the Lucavis plot, he got arrested, branded heretics, burned at stake, and his book locked in the church's vault for years. The cliffhanger ending shows Arazlam Durai: his descendants promised that he will clear his ancestor's name based on the book.

In Final Fantasy 14 we're introduced to the bas Lexentales (Alma and Ramza) which claimed that Oran Durai is not a heretic, based on the book he wrote years ago, they were searching for their father, Jenomis bas Lexentales which rescued after the player cleared the first raid wing (which contains text and references from Final Fantasy Tactics story) and revealed that his true name is Arazlam Durai, as the story goes they found out that Ultima is still alive and still searching for suitable vessel for his resurrection through a special crystal called auracite, the echo granted the warrior of light a vision that long ago it was Alma, Delita, and Oran Durai that planned that Ramza cs will be branded heretics as per Ramza request, apparently Ramza and his companions are also warriors of light but failed to stop Ultima completely, to avoid major roadblock on Delita's ascension to the throne so he can restore order and prepare the next generation to fight ultima after he got complete support from the church the four friends staged the branding while Oran's book will be kept safely in the church's vault, waiting as evidence for the future, unfortunately as the last scene of the final fantasy tactics told us Delita's failed, Oran burned at stake, but his descendants with Alma lives on. As the time goes by Ivalice and Rabanastre are occupied by Garlean empire.

The story continues: The warrior of light is finally beaten all Lucavis (revealed as major characters from Final Fantasy Tactics) and Ultima as well, in the last cutscene Ramza Beoulve (Ramza from FF tactics) and his companions appeared in spirit form and thanks the warrior of light for finishing the job, Delita also appeared and question him whether he's done enough for their sake (reference from both the FF tactics when he died from the strife and when he agreed to be king to clear his friend's name eventually which he failed miserably)  they both shake hand and return to the light.

So long story short: in Final Fantasy Tactics Ramza and friends failed to permanently ended Ultima, his remaining friend transpired to support Delita's ascend to the throne by making him denounce Ramza's heroism to vouch for the church's vote in hope he will restore order to the kingdom and diminishing the church's role, he was killed by his court before realizing it and the kingdom razed to the ground and assimilated by the Garlean Empire, many years later the Warrior of Light (a.k.a us) finished the job.

Special Ending: in Final Fantasy Tactics Oran Durai  publicly claimed that after fighting ultima Ramza and Alma ride to the sunset, finally free from their disowned noble names as they took up new names, this false claim was brought in the FFXIV story, realizing that proving ultima's existence wasn't going to change anything for their family names due to Garlean occupation (and beside they're already changed it and live as travelling performer)  the Bas Lexentales decided to incorporate this claim for their Zodiac Brave Story theatrical act, adding a happy ending to the story.

You see... with this optional ending I can finally brag to my friends which ONLY played Final Fantasy Tactics =))

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

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 (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 (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