Companions, Friends, A Scenic Route, and A Bunch of Posts

Don't mind my random rabbling at the title, sometimes I just juggling words in my mind
So I did some rare thing on the past couple of months: I did more playing than writing, in fact all of the accumulated data i've been collected probably will be thrown away carelessly on this post, but i'll try to sort it out now, and at this time I'm posting, some of it probably got old


1. World of Warcraft, patch 4.3: Death to All Trolls Deathwing!!

Surprisingly patch 4.3 pulled off a refreshing change from the troll dungeon from 4.1, or even the hardcore aspect of Fireland Raid, The Zandalari and Amanis probably sulking in their den right now. The new dungeon and the new raid performed a continuous storyline where Deathwing is finally fallen by our hands and right now it's not just the 1% of the community who saw him fall, the new Raid Finder tool make sure everyone will get an equal chance to punch Deathwing's metal jaw.

The new 'trilogy' dungeons are nicely done, the fight is not so much as punishing as ZG/ZA (where on a very bad day Jindo will throw shadow explosion on you three consecutive times) but they still required some timely interruptions and move away from the fire thing, IMO the fight is surprisingly fun, interrupting and moving never been as fun as of right now, the fight had it's moment escpecially on Well of Eternity where you face Mannoroth The Defiler (pretty nostalgic since we didn't have chance to fight him head on at Warcraft 3 and Grom hogging all the hero title), most of the bosses required pretty decent amount of teamwork and when you're going the achievement run, things get more even challenging.

Raid Finder is a tool for even more possibility, the Raid on RF tool is tuned down into an acceptable mode of challenge from the normal mode, giving anyone with no fixed playing schedule (with an average team) could beat Deathwing in a mere 60 minutes, thus giving the chance for a tunnel visioner like me to adapt myself (and my comp) to the nature of 25 man raid. Unfortunately there's only one Raid on it right now: the Dragon soul (split into two separate raid) but as Blizz said they'll add more later as the tool evolves, after RF released there's a post praising it, and it's 142 pages long, Blizzard pulled this one off nicely and they deserves my (and most of the comuunity) a thanks.

There's also new Darkmoon Faire, I only visited them once at the beginning of this month, I stopped playing WOW on December to get my hand on City of Heroes (post is coming up) it's more festive than the old one, latest addition of Transmogrify spices things up a bit, it made me a sad panda and gives so much disappoinment though since my saved Field Marshall armor is untransmogrifiable, but well that's how Blizz want to play it, time to hunt armor on Darkmoon Faire again then...

And I sorta want to start tanking... again =))

 
2. Freedom at City of Heroes

Yes, CoH is now free to play, although the restriction kinda make the community split into subscribers and free players, but I'll talk about it later, I started as a free player and surprisingy many aspects are already cut off for me, thankfully NC made a sweet Black Friday VIP Deal with only $0.99 so I grabbed it.
after spent an hour designing my character and selecting an archetype (class) and selecting the Villain/Hero starting area I was launched into the fray, the general idea of City of Heroes gameplay is instance based where every mission had randomly generated dungeon everytime you enter it, the number of enemy also spawned based on your team size and difficulty setting (yes you CAN adjust the difficulty setting up to fighting mobs 7 level above you and they hits like a truck)

The delicious aspect of City Of Heroes is that your level is insignificant, as you team with another person that had more level you're automatically rises to their level or if you're the party leader they'll automatically follow your level, the restriction is the power they gain on above your level can't be used, this is called exemplar/sidekick system and can be used on almost every mission except some story arc or special mission. this system is beneficial to the casual player who just want to play together with another hi/low level (yep, it's me), tired of mission I can tinkered on crafting system and spend some hard earned cash on the unique auction house or maybe MAKE my own missions through the Mission Architect system and shared it to the community and earned credits from them.

A large chain of missions on CoH is called a Task Force (or Strike Force for Villains), usually had minimum level for the participant and a minimum team size, it's usually ended up on a major character of a story, whether we protect them or defeat them, or maybe a Giant Monster, most TFs are harder than ordinary missions and such missions often yield an achievement (called badges), another mission that requires more members are called trials, it didn't have much mission like TFs but often take place on a large instanced dungeon where thousands of enemies could be running at you at the same time =))

But unfortunately shiniest spot of City of Heroes comes with the paid expansion Going Rogue , although free for subscribers, this expansion contains most of the interesting story arc of CoH, this is where you can cross the line between good and evil (and if you want you can stay there between the lines), Heroes can be Vigilantes as they ripped their enemies new one in the name of justice, or even overdo it until they fall into the dark depth of Villainity, Villains can use their brains a bit and become Rogues and even go through with their heart until they become Heroes, the morally ambiguous Rogues and Vigilantes can stay that way and earn bonuses which can't be normally achieved by staying on one side and also some unique powers. Moreover you can start your character on an alternative Earth Praetoria where humanity lives on fascist utopia and Superpowered characters are not divided between good and evil but a more greyed area of Loyalists and Resistances, this is where choices matters for the sake of the stories, pretending to be Loyalist where you actually worked for Resistances? or an opened one where you gunned down loyalists in the street? It's all your choices, it become your own personal story but unfortunately it comes with a price for free players

.... my subscriptions ended a couple of days ago and I'm starting to miss my resistance-pretender-to-be-not-so-loyalist-but-overall-morally-good character


3. Lineage 2 without the grinding.... well not really


Yes yes, let's continue, I made some notes on the latest expansion of Lineage 2: God Of Destruction and their move to free to play thing, since it's my first serious MMO and stuffs, let's get started: first of all the leveling experience on 10-40 has been completely revamped, there's a single cohesive questline which sadly ended in 40, after that it's back to our favorite thing: Grinding millions of mobs....
....
.....
.......................
Okay I give up, first of all I hate the discontinued questline, the daily quests (yes there are those) aren't even close to closing the gaps between levels, Kamaloka and the Labyrinth gets old after a week, after doing dailies (about half an hour) I usually just push the exit button and pretending that I never knew Lineage 2. There's so much revamp on endgame and such (including new instances) and in order to get that I must smite one billions two hundred thousand and sixty one monster? why NC? I'm not interested in PVP and then you made this game 'casual' friendly but then you stopped abruptly on level 40 and it's old content all the way to 90, well at least us healer isn't broken anymore since you made our inquisitor skills accessable and yeah mana regen is still sucks, I was wondering abou Aeore Healer with their number of skills, WTB a legion of Kookabura

............... I'm out of words, Lineage 2 probably won't be for me anymore, I don't know, if someone who dedicatedly grinding for a year found themselves in a max level and wonder... why I can't paid 10 mils to an NPC to change my class? Yes in old time it's 15 millions to gain subclass but since it's optional it didn't matter, class changing should be a reward for gaining level on Lineage 2 and then again this statement can be expanded to: "Why the hell I'm unable to buy a standard DN set when I hit level 80?"

The community is probably better than my local server (or WOW) but I must admit the abundance of non-english speaker spamming shout channel is annoying, and the bots is still on the roll. I probably will touch this thing again in 5 or 6 months (if I have the time)


4. Star Wars The Old Republic Beta Impression

This one's a little aged, I was ecstatic when got into the last beta testing (well they invited all their long term forum troll... i mean... registered user) but immediately flunked down really hard because apparently I somehow reverting back to my old VGA driver (which caused the GPU to be so much overheated) and hindering my overall gameplay, I didn't have time to address this problem because I was kinda late to join the massive beta test, all I want to say is Bioware did a great job to make my character lifelike through all the dialogue and such but I really wonder about the replayability value of this MMO (i.e alting) I'm good with sitting with the same dialogue 100 times, but... other player could bang their keyboard due to the unskippable dialogue.

The graphic is beautiful, I started as a Jedi Consular and Tython's scenery is breathtaking, the story unfold dramatically, changing as I choose my own path (yeah it's the darker one because I choose to avenge my fallen comrades and didn't even try to be neutral on the Twilek's refugee situation), as I told before I don't have time to jiggle around the gameplay system but the combat system seems fluid enough, at least for a consular, the feeling of danger is there and you'll strive to get out of it before it's get worse with using ALMOST all your abilities (dancing finger again) =))

I need a bath...

The First Time

RDF (Random Dungeon Finder) of WOW is sometimes dubbed the source of all things point to WOW going downside (or whatever doomsday comment that are), when you pop up in random group on a random dungeon which relays heavily on communication and (for melee) dancing around the fire, many things can happens, from the pleasantry of humiliating wipe ever to the drama caused by the speed of typing, and fire standing, also Jan'alai and Jin'do hates my computer, but that's another story (FPS rant to be continued)

My usual Cataclysm dungeon time will see at least one rude player every ten or so run, which always sparked hilarious situation from the slur words trading up until the midpull-group drop and votekicking, yes I'm borderline masochist for not quitting a deemed 'fail' group but since I knew the seeds of discord always started with the word 'failed' and 'bad' from a person, I tend to see things until the end whether it's bad or (not so) good, which sometimes left me standing alone in a dungeon, emoting roar

In short I never directly involving myself in a 'drama' situation of PUG groups, up until last night which made me realized: there's always a first time

I was in my rogue, zoned into Vortex Pinnacle, no big deal until the the healer start calling the tank fail because the paladin didn't see the mob attacking him, after that the healer explain why he's being rude and the tank's jeopardizing the whole group, and initiate a votekick, it didn't go through because I think it's too early.

At first I didn't paid any attention until the tank flips out and start attacking random mobs without CC (and including CC-ed ones), and in like 10 mins or so between pulls, the tank and the healer involved in a heated debate about how healing/tanking is the easiest jobs around and so on. I'm not getting in my nerve (never did), the two other DPS-er probably the same as me, silent and kinda just go with the flow, but everything gone awry when the tank didn't retreat into Asaad static field... deliberately.

I think it's going too far, so for the first time of my life I initiated a votekick for the tank, and it passed, the healer was ecstatic, blood and thunder that was hard... but if someone is deliberately being a jerk... I can't help it, and this is the first time the "i can't help it" occurs 

But the fun was just started, come new tank, everyone's cheers, and he's new, no problem, we explained the fight, pulling, looks good, until the new tanks stand fixated at the boss when everyone else run to the static field, the healer lifegripped him, success... until the disoriented tanks... RUNS OUT OF THE FIELD and get smashed, no prob, the hunter switches pets, gets aggro, we continues on until some ill-fated critical attack clobbered him, then it was just me, the mage, and the priest, guess who's tanking?

It was quite a situation, I must admit the healer did great and my always on recuperate (combat specced) kinda did the trick, the mage was careful not to draw any aggro, it was going good (and really-really slow) until my killing spree floored the boss, I can bet everyone slumped down their chair and said 'whew', I was kinda dazed and can't said anything except praising the healer, that night I can count at least another three hilarious 'first time', first time votekicking, first time tanking in a leather armor, and first time meeting an awesome healer, I'm not the one easily threw compliments but I think everyone agree, at that moment the real star is the Priest.

And he said to me: "Tell that previous tank about my epic healing and that you tanked better than him"

I couldn't agree more... =))

Gundam Age First Look

Kids and Gundams? What can go wrong?

For real? Everything....

Enter Flit Asuno, one day some Unknown Enemy (UE) razed his home colony and killed his mother, at her last breath she gave Flint something: A plan to build war machine called Gundam, after that Flit is quickly taken under the wing of the Human Defense Forces and when he discovered genius they told him to build Gundams deemed capable to eradicate the aliens, after seven years Flit finally got his chance of revenge, by pwning every aliens and lead an army of Gundam to their homeworld thus wiped it off the galactic chart....

Above: Savior of mankind.... in different series

No, it's not the story of the newest Gundam show, but I think it's more interesting than the original which here's the breakdown of it:

Flit escaped the UE, moved on to new colony and grew up normally, yes he's a genius and built Gundam with the help of a funny-bearded professor, ... for.... ummm... pah, who cares, oh hey didn't I told you that the humans didn't manage to keep these UE in check? because apparently they're not smart enough to built Gundams for the last SEVEN YEARS and got pwned over and over again by the UE. Okay, now we looked at Flit again and there's a flashback of him with funny-moustached butler who explained that his family only have one job: to be Gundam riding heroes, and by listening to the latest attack location of the UE he drew a (genius) conclusion that his colony will be next, of course his teacher treat him like a boy who cried wolf, and when the wolf suddenly attacks the adults is nowhere to be seen except just to prevent Flit to activate Gundam by scolding him and said "It's too dangerous"

I built the Gundam and this series' goddamn hero, screw all of you

I've only watched five Gundam series (Wings, Turn A, Seed, Destiny, and OO), never bought their merchandise so I don't deserved the Gundam otaku title, but every Gundam's first episode is always gripped the theme: War, let me give you some explaining

Gundam Wings: "We hate you Earthling, DIE! For the Colonies!!!"
Gundam Seed: "Why are you siding with them? you belong to us!!"
Gundam S Destiny: "I'm Gundam, war machine!"
Gundam OO: "We're above you and our goal is world peace, so now if you started a war we'll kill all of you"
Gundam Turn A:  "I haz nekkid buttz and my employers are sorta killing my new friends"

Then we came to this:

Gundam Age: YOU'RE A F***IN HERO FLIT!!! FIGHT!!! FIGHT!!! FIGHT!!!

Gundam Age was... I don't know, is....wrong, the original theme of Gundam is gone, the attacking UE scene (which KILLED a lot of humans) seemed awkward, the death of the unknown first prototype rider wasn't even on the screen, and clashing of twisted subjective justice from characters is nowhere to be seen, there's only one side: Human, and the other is as the name suggest: Unknown, but even the unknown origin of the UE didn't feel strong enough to give this first episode an appeal and the battle has been reduced to something no more than Human vs Genocidal Alien, there's only one hero and it's Flit Asuno, the maker and rider of the awesomest robot in the universe: Gundam, Hell Yeah!!!

The A stands for Awesome, 

now go watch 'Easy A' to find out what awesome really means

Hell no, this is not Mazinger or Voltes V, this is Gundam FFS!!!! Can't you get enough alien and kiddies with Zegapain and the latest Gundam OO yet???!!! -- I actually said it

But I'm always tried to keep an open mind, there are probably some cool plot twists in the future episodes like all Sunrise series, it'll probably cooler that if Flit somehow revealed never escaped the UE and instead he's planted to walk among humans to accelerate UE's galactic domination plan by destroying humans from the inside.... 

Hopefully....

Night Song

Just gonna put it in here

The song is called Night Song, it's probably the most beautiful tune ever created in this game (IMO of course), the song has a strong Celtic feeling and somehow remind me to some of Yasunori Mitsuda's work (Chrono series and Xenosaga)  very glad to finally found it

In other note the song also said to be the Night Elf counterpart of Lament of the Highborne -- a song triggered by a Horde quest on WOW Burning Crusade

Nice song, nuff said

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Aaaand, vacation is over

A day before, me and a friend talked about how human succesfully made life becomes more complex by inventing too much distraction, idle talk but since I always based my idea on how you can greet a stranger on a road without getting a suspicious stare and a "whaddaya want" answer.... I must agree with him :))

On a completely unrelated note Star Wars The Old Republic finally get a release date, it's 20 December for US and 22nd for Europe, the news keep me alive all night last night (aside from that new Nescafe Menu), but seriously if you take a closer look release date means US$ 60 for new game (YAY) and the fact that they released it before Christmas that people can use it as a present (rather than gift cards from Best Buy) is a good business move. Now the next step that Lucasarts should make is inventing a real Lightsaber

 Or a flying skateboard

But for me release date means one thing: as a freebie lover I expected... TRIAL version, which I can do stress test with my old gaming gear with overclocked settings, I guess too much distraction made me unable to buy a new gear :D

So, if you'll excuse me I'm gonna continue watching Higurashi, bloody sick anime series (in both ways) I'll review it when my brain stopped racking (hopefully it's still up there after I watched the final season)

Shilen's Lineage: Breath of Life to the Grind?

Drained from work, and with a couple of unsorted materials, I resorted to take a walk at the new pages of the latest Lineage 2 expansion

Lineage 2 was/is a grinder's galore (and in my local server: a botfest), I spent two years of my life on it (not all of course, just the night ones :p), despite it's old unreal 2 engine this 10-years-old game has brought an awesome environment, but after 10 years with no major things going on (in my case: two years, damn man it's LONG) the game lags behind all the waves of newer MMOs

But it seems like NCsoft wasn't prepare to put a lid on Lineage 2 yet, on 2010 they announced new expansions which upgrades and revamps almost all aspects of the gameplay called Goddess of Destruction/GOD (let's milk this cash cow once more, we're sure there's still plenty of it!!!: NCSOFT stockholders), one of them is managing the grind for EXP which dreaded almost all would-be-players (at least they said it would be manageable), the gameplay and cinematics (yep they have in-game cinematics now) looked solid enough in their demo, and of course the expansion itself followed the path almost all MMO had walked upon: caters to the casuals :))

One thing that always bugged me is the course that Lineage 2 will take: Will it be PVP or PVE-based, because Lineage 2 initially PVP based at it's heart, you grind to craft armor and weapons to take on opponents on world PVP, you defeat raid bosses to.. again won a siege, you gather 44 of your friend to downed a reall epic bosses for a very phat and kewl loot (which you can sell for real currency and your clan will conquer the gold market on that server and.... okay that's enough information...).

What I'm trying to tell is, as a PVE player: Lineage 2 patches/updates up until the latest (High 5) is making it's easier to new DPS players to blast through the low/mid content (by selling grades armor at shop which in the past can't be obtained normally except thru crafting), and made the high level grinding more humanly possible (by instancing some zones, made some high grade armor/weapon craftable, and brings some solo/group epic quest that rewards tons of XP and SP, but it's usually so frakkin' hard) but at the end there's not a lot of endgame content for casual PVE-ers such a solid 7 or 10 mans dungeons or old contents where you can grind to gain reputation and/or gear, instead with 7 people you're forced to take on Aenkinel again and again just to get your weapon to +16, God, I hate pluses, why not giving us NEW WEAPON INSTEAD???!!! although I'm pretty sure Aenkinel dropped a new dual sword in the latest patch.

Hey NCSOFT, I'm too easy, BUFF ME!!!

Ah yeah, you don't even listen to players.... I'm just an ordinary regular boss here

Back to GOD, as the features said: they're gonna revamp the world but the question is: are they gonna revamp the old contents? or are they gonna made this a quest-based MMORPG rather than a ferocious grindfest? (they added daily quests on High 5 you know), will there EVEN BE A LORE? (okay, I guess I'm asking too much) and in this whole new era of gaming I don't think grinder have a chance whatsoever (unless they're free to play MMOs, and E.V.E, yes E.V.E is OP), Aion is a pretty example on how's a cool looking game turns into laughable grindstock because of the lack of contents. I think it's time for Lineage 2 to redefine their course

 Don't worry guys, it's only 1789 more of this guy to kill, this game is FUN!!!

source: http://jute.dreamhosters.com

But in the end it's always returned to the community, and since my local community is a hell on earth coupling with the unreliable license holder which in return employs unreliable GMs which doesn't give a s&%@ about their own company which in return doesn't give a damn about the game which then caused the server swarmed with ADHD kids. I'm sure I won't go back to GOD except all of my old clannies back together again, well I don't even count that GOD will be released here although I must say the premise of that is very interesting.

Pictured above: a local GM 

(damn, that suit cost a fortune you know)

source: http://jute.dreamhosters.com

Hyperspeedist (Initial)

The good thing about coffee before sleep is that they will always keep me up when typing, although waking up late is never a good thing :))

Well, it seems like The Secret World delayed their beta test to add some spices to their beta event, it's now integrated with Facebook app, still not active yet though but I was looking forward playing an Illuminati Agent :D

The Secret World (TSW) never stuck in my brain before because it's already on maximum hype with Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR, IMO Funcom's games are good, in fact their Anarchy Online was my first online game but since it's like really complex (for me at least) it quickly wears me off. TSW has classless system, urban legends type lore combined with modern secret conspiracies stuff, so yeah it's kinda grow on me especially after they release(d) the Secret War beta event.

Although hype is also easily wears off, after registering and got a message like: "We'll contact you by email when the event started" after a week and no mail in your inbox I can bet a good chunk of the hype will fall, nevertheless TSW looks good on their early stage, I'm especially interested by the Secret Wars beta event, at least will-be players will enjoy tearing each other apart in this Facebook game until the actual game came out :))

Yes, the tentacles are coming, thank you H.P Lovecraft!!