Being Saleh: From Astral To Umbral a.k.a it's getting easier

Since my initial plan to upgrade to Warlords of Draenor is blown to bits by several... circumstances (like my social life and Guild Wars 2) I finally have time to get back to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, It's not without several planning though, for one: FFXIV has been the most improved MMORPG I've ever played, and since I'm a filthy casual what I meant by "most improved" is "it's getting easier"

Except those pants, which made me hate ninjas

Since it's initial release on September 30th 2010, Final Fantasy has transformed from a total wreck into one of the most polished MMORPG ever created, at least that was all the review you can get from numerous website, I don't really care about it all, I played since A realm reborn beta (pre patch 2.0) and I can tell you from my own experience FFXIV has been most approachable, even than WOW, since I don't really raid and have a real piece of work internet connection from patch 2.0 to patch 2.5 FFXIV has been a great journey in term of casual gameplaying and story

The Story so far.... 

Final Fantasy XIV has numerous story quests, which it's names (like the F.A.T.Es) are homage to almost everything in pop culture, names like "Sudul Eht Nioj" or "Life is a Syrcus" almost get me chuckled every time, the writing (and translation, hello, it's a japanese game) work to this day was incredibly tidy and astonishing, if you're not into reading quests text like me you might skip them into oblivion, but really, slow down and read them all even when there are no voice acting (with sometimes regretfully awful, minor, nvm) I came across a line of dialogue which can or can't be tailored to my selection of race, it could be my imagination and since I'm too stupid to take a screenshot I just continue in hope to find another one, alas I never did.... maybe I'll ask around sometimes.

Please enjoy this Minfillia screenshot to ease your pain

So, in every patch (from 2.0 to the latest 2.5) there are at least five story arc in FFXIV, one is the main story arc where you as the good hero of Eorzea faced and confront threats from every not-so-good fellas, (minor spoiler) the latest patch offered a major plot twist which served as an opening into what we might expect in patch 3.0: Heavensward (yes it's an expansion). 

With Batman

Number two is the Hildibrand arc which we embarked in a gag journey (hey, what a hero without it's sense of humours) with Hildibrand Manderville: self-titled agent of inquiry and Inspector Extraordinaire Gentleman, which actually just a private detective with a penchant for disastrous and hyperbolic solution which (surprise) not always right, combined with numerous luck and colorful allies Hildibrand arc probably the most extraordinary (har har) arc Final Fantasy XIV has ever created simply because it get me laughing every single time =))

I'm so sorry for posting this

 Number three is the moogle courier stories, it puts up us as a mail courier for the good (and again, not-so-good) people of Eorzea, to deliver them letters which lead us to know more about their problems and woes, and --of course as a hero -- helps them, it's a short episodic goodness which the NPCs are described as more than just a quest giver, but also have life of their own.

A very GOOD life

Four is the Crystal Tower arc, where you embarked with a group of researchers known as NOAH to unlock the secret(and raiding) of crystal tower, as I said before the bosses are homage to Final Fantasy III
 

Five is another raid story: the Coil of Bahamut story act where we accompanied by Alisaie Leveilleur, the twin sister of Alphinaud Leveilleur which is a major story character, Allisaie takes us into a research facility which studies the impact of Bahamut's prison from the last era, it served as a hardcore raid instance but since the story is so good (I don't know, I don't raid) there are talks about to make it a soloable arc for casual players, I'm looking forward to this.

Even with such numerous story arc apparently Square knows where to stop and overshadowing people with what might be expected on Heavensward, the stories are not yet over, my eternal question is whether they will be continued or not, WOW has so much unfinished story arc and only a few of them has ever continued, things like Koltira's last stand to Sylvanas and Abyssal Maw has been scrapped and considered finished, no it's not finished, I refused to acknowledge that. Hopefully with much overshadowing here and there Square will actually resumed it

The (lazy) gearing and gameplay

Take a look at my post here, here, here, and here oh also here

As you can see from my numerous posts about 'dem gameplay on FFXIV you might see that I'm not too hot about it, I stopped playing in the beginning of patch 2.3 and as I came back gradually I just realized how I might be wrong, on the verge of patch 2.3 my chosen first class is a monk, a punch drunk dps guy, I have a sphairai which is a relic weapon a.k.a the strongest weapon on patch 2.0, with the help of the -then added chimera and hydra encounter on duty finder on patch 2.1(yes in case you forget it's a LFG tool)I zoomed through the steps of it and with my saved mythology tomes which I farmed from my days as paladin I obtained it in days, not weeks, not months, days, boom.

As square has numerous free weekend I mostly farmed the next upgrade of my weapon, atma (obtained by the old fashioned FATE grinding) on those days, sometimes it's going good, sometimes it's friggin frustrating (RNG sucks) I hit the jackpot on September free weekend.

So there's me and my atma weapon, as I renewed my sub I set myself another goal, another upgrade, the animus, which is another grindfest, yes bloodying my atma weapon with blood from numerous creatures is kind of sadistic way to upgrade a weapon but hey I need 9 books to be completed, each has at least 20 challenges ranged from killing X things and running dungeons (don't die on the last boss or it won't be count, blah), I decided that I will solo this thing, using DF and old-fashioned waiting game for fates, I got into 1/3 on the last books so it'll be awhile but the thing is, it's only takes three weeks to get into this phase and I don't even focus on it with numerous story arc to finish,

Animus is a level 100 weapon, you know another way to obtain 100 weapons on FFXIV on patch 2.5? Here's what I do on my Paladin: Run Crystal Tower --> upgrade gear with tomes --> run Syrcus Tower --> buy level 100 weapon with tomes --> run some more syrcus tower --> upgrade them to lvl 110 with tomes and stuffs found inside.

Yes it's easier, yes it's faster, but it just happened that I skipped patch 2.3 and 2.4 entirely!!! which means every good stuff of them is now available on vendors, so if I leveled another class now, on this patch, take it four weeks if you're a slow leveler (which can't be, because duty roulette bonus which will zoom you) add days for relic, run CT, buy weapons and armors, run ST, upgrades, voila, boom you're now decked in ilvl 110 in matter of weeks (probably one) if you skipped the entire leveling process entirely, on this ilvl you can access almost every single content on FFXIV, the first and second coil bahamut, the extreme primals, the odin, the hard and expert dungeons, The Hunt, world of darkness, latest PVP, anything, you see where this going? Yes FFXIV has become more approachable tiered-progress-based MMORPGs and that's VERY VERY GOOD

But what can I do on those content? I'm not fast enough to dodge things, or breaking things with heavy rotation, well just the point I want to make, Square tone down almost EVERYTHING in the latest patch, well not everything, hard still means hard and old dungeon can be irritating (yes I'm looking at you Aurum Vale) but the effort you pulled plus the gear you're wearing helped, the hardmode of Amdapor, Halatali and expert Wanderer's palace has a difficulty setting somewhere between sleeping in dungeon and breaking a keyboard, patch 2.0 Ultima battle was over the top and exceed all my expectation about how fun and engaging a dungeon battle is just because a) it's not too hard and b) it has a good song, the two latest trial and dungeon: The Chrysalis and Lake Keeper tops it, the balance was perfect, the boss battles are fun, last boss battle are somewhere between intimidating and brutally satisfying, there's no perfect way to win this, the one hit kill skillz was so few but if you don't entertain your footwork, you can still wipe, for a melee dps it's fun, for tanks and probably healer it's fun, yeah, that's only it, it's fun :D

Here's another SS to reward you, and no I don't even know what that is

Onward to 3.0

Well, I've written so much, so here's something, by scrapping everything that was on patch 1.0 FFXIV finally got a second chance and they used it well to gain acknowledgement from a solo (casually zerging in raid) player like me, by simplifying means and upping the rewards for activities FFXIV can continue to grow, but here's the thing, as you can see it's only the main game I'm talking about, come the expansion how approachable the state will be? Will the leveling process simplified? Up until now the main story arc requires you to get into dungeons and beat it but to be honest it's extremely worth it since the story is well written and enjoyable, For the story I think new player wants the whole experience too (Blizz cut the Undercity Siege story arc on Cataclysm, /rude), but LFG tool will probably without old players running around it (even if it's synced), so the fact that new players must open it all just to unlock high level dungeon can be.... discouraging, especially for new hardcores which tend to grind everything just to get into max level, and since max level dungeon in FFXIV tied to quests and main story quests and not the level, this can be a problem, at least for the powerleveler

Well there are solution, Blizz now sold instant level 90 on their website, it's also bundled with Warlords of Draenor expansion, but it's because they have 5 expansion pack and cataclysm rendered the old lore continuity useless for the sake of new graphics and eye candy, FFXIV still has a way to go, it's only the second expansion and since the main game bundled with patch 2.0 so it can be counted for a first expansion, it will be interesting if Square will go the same road as Blizzard (a.k.a make everything on the previous expansion obsolete, excluding Pandaria, they still have more content than all WOW combined)

But for now, I'll enjoy a little crystal action

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: Second year in Tyria

Happy Second Birthday, Saleh Mistreaver: Mindbender mesmerizer, Pioneer of fashionable purplish outfit, self-proclaimed troll king of Thelemic, and wielder of wide range of sharp (and sometimes big) pointy things, apparently cake gun is all the hype now

Saichotick's story

Yesterday, a fellow WOW player Saichotick post about his "adventures" in World of Warcraft with his wife Cillie, and in a shocking turn of event Cillie was recently diagnosed a rare form of cancer and only got a year to live, the thread got +237 like, one of the most highest rated thread in general discussion forum nowadays, in this post Saichotick describe his thanks for the makers of WOW and the player, the post was so gut-wrenching...

He wrote:

Seeing as how we have millions of players in WoW, I'm fairly positive that like 99.999% of you have no clue who I am. And that's ok, because I don't want to talk about myself.

I wanted to take a little bit of time to thank Blizzard. My wife and I both play WoW, she more so than I do. We've enjoyed this game together since TBC started, and it's been our main hobby and form of entertainment as she has gotten through nursing school. She and I even decided to run our own guild and raid team since Firelands, and we've been really enjoying that aspect of the game together ever since that decision was made. Her toon name is Cillie.

We've had the worst thing in our lives happen just a few weeks ago. Just after graduating school, she was diagnosed with Cholangiacarcinoma, a rare-ish form of cancer, especially for someone in their thirties and in good health to get. It is aggressive, and the initial prognosis from our first doctor was that she would have up to a year to live. Naturally, we weren't satisfied with that result. We're looking into multiple second opinions all over the country.

But she and I have had WoW as the one thing that we share and love together. We raid together (we're just 11/14 heroic, but we're working on the rest of them as hard as we can!), we run the guild together (she does like 99.99% of the work). She has loved meeting everyone she has come across in game, and she's so outgoing and nice, and she's what has kept so many people still playing in our little guild. We've got 3 (maybe a 4th) raid teams, from super casual to our casual heroic team, but really we have a LOT of really great, really nice, really awesome people that can all log on, hop into mumble, guild chat, do stuff, play games together, and it's mainly because she has had this great vision of what a fun guild can be.

We even managed to secure Blizzcon tickets for this year. We danced like 8 year old kids when I was able to hit refresh and enter my credit card info and lock down two tickets. We'd never gone before, just got the virtual tickets, and we were so pumped. Of course now treatments and doctors take precedence over that, but we're still going to try to go.

I wanted to thank Blizzard for their creations. These games, WoW, Starcraft, D3, Hearthstone, HotS (I'm in the alpha, it's amazing!), mainly just WoW but she and I have played them all together from time to time, we love them. You have created these wonderful, fantastic, tantalizing games for us to enjoy together, for us to share our time doing things we really enjoy together. Our relationship has been so strong, so amazing, and a part of that belongs to you guys and gals at Blizzard.

Besides these great games, you've created ways for us to connect to so many people all over the world. We've had people from every part of the planet in our WoW guild at one point or another. We've had people in Canada, South America, Europe, Australia, and even Japan as guildies, and all of that was to play this game we all love and enjoy.

Some of our guildies are throwing a benefit/fundraiser on August 30th. I'm not asking for people to come donate, but if anyone would like to come hang out with us on Eldre'thalas, we'd love to have anyone show up. We're going to be doing flex runs, a level 1 race through Azeroth, and all sorts of silliness like that. You can contact Raidwiper, our host for this event if you need more information.

I can't thank you all enough for giving us so much fun for so long. I'm hoping and praying that she and I will get to enjoy many more years of everything Blizzard. She and I both love WoW immensely, and we're hoping to see each and every expansion together. Please keep up the great work making these fun, enjoyable games for us. We love them, and we love all of you!

Stay strong Saichotick and Cillie, stay strong, I'll be there for the events, probably won't participate, but I will be there

/cried

link to full post

if you want to donate for Cillie, here's the link 

Media coverage: on Venturebeat

Shingeki No Kyojin opening spoofs

Since the good people at Blizzard taking down WOW for their usual maintenance (after a suspicious ddos attack) I take my time on writing about Aldnoah Zero, apparently I was distracted by a youtube link sent to me, another spoof of Shingeki No Kyojin opening

Shingeki No Kyojin a.k.a Attack on Titan was the most hyped anime this year, when I read the source manga about two years ago I never imagined that it will be the most spoofed anime because the opening theme is so good it's stuck to your ear and eyes after watching it the first time, it's not only prove that an opening can become so influential that everyone wants to be on it (or make anything with it), it also proves that Link Horizon's song Guren No Yumiya (which is only sounds good when paired with the anime opening) is also a perfect fit for everything that exists in this universe =))

First of all let's watch the original version first

You might want to watch it several times if it didn't stuck on your mind the first time. Now LET THE MADNESS BEGINS!!

-  First of all, let's visit another anime :D

- Let's spice things up a bit with girls!!

 - Not a fan of anime? Oh ok let's bring up the games!!

- You wouldn't think this one will fly...
 

- But THEY DID, and this one is my favorite

- Let's step up a bit, whoa

- Okay, that was weird... STAY AWAY FROM ME KOJIMA!!

- Well... this one is a proof that it's going global

- ................................................

Well that's it, you can scrounge youtube for more

EDIT: I forgot this, it's so subtle that it can be another original opening

Review: The Labor Age

Let me tell you something about ArcheAge....

It's good and surprisingly enjoyable

Except for one thing: Labor Points, Labor Points is your other resource in Archeage beside your usual MMORPG coins and points, and since EVERY activity like crafting, building, gathering, farming, buliding (did I said that twice? I lost track since economic based things is plenty in this game) and also recover XP when you're dead requires labor points it's quickly becomes a ridiculous gate, for free player it replenish slowly, every 5 minutes the game gave you 5 of it, only if you logged in, if you logged out or disconnected the game gave you nothing, yes nothing, none, nada, ZERO LP baby!!

Wants more LP? Only $15 a month!!! You know other game with time-based-self-replenishing resource like this? No? Let me refresh your mind

This

Also this

I don't remember whether it has it but I'm just gonna leave it here anyway

Please stuff your argument about balancing the economy here, I know Trion needs to make money, but this?

Blow me

Alright now that I let it out from my system, onto the review

Archeage is a sandbox/themepark hybrid MMORPG created by Korean developer XLGAMES two years ago, they localised it on Russia a year later, and then Trion picked it up for North American publishing last year, it's already entered beta phase now, and since it's freemium I treated it as it is, just between hype and anti-hype (or something)

And... I'm quite enjoying it, if I can describe it: Archeage's PVE battle aspect surprisingly played quite like RIFT, I rolled an Occultism mage coupled with Auramancy and Songcraft, and it played surprisingly similar as my Warlock-Pyromancer-Dominator spirit on RIFT (before I got bored and killed everything up close and personal with my Harbinger-Archon-Domi), I have a vivid imagination that two years ago a Trion employee played this game and said to the management, "Hey look, it's looks like our game RIFT, let's bring it to the state", and then magic happened

Spawning a galley in the city is pure magic

I don't know about the main story quest but it kept me intigued and wanting to quickly unfold it, the quests on Archeage is a part of your leveling process where you learn to battle, craft, gather, trade, build, climb, glide, explore, even rowboating (just keep your eye on your Labor Points). It's also quick, in just under 12 hrs I reached level 25, the PVE quests stopped at 30 where the sandbox element begins and you level through those thing you've learned before until you reached the cap (level 55)

Beside those thing I realized that I barely scraped what Archeage has to offer, but I also don't really know how deep it is, it's a good game, and it's free so I can check it out anytime (at least until the community become toxic and PKer started killing newbies, Trion stopped replenishing f2p player's LP, and destroy the population altogether), one of the most memorable thing on Archeage is when I snatched people's crops and raised my larceny level, but hey it was unprotected, and no one's there, and the game allowed me to do that, so I grabbed it (and run), why did I do that? I don't know, I probably just liked potato very much.

My ticket to jail

Read more about Archeage and their sandpark features here

Phantasy Star Online 2: First Look

Apparently the space is not always a star ocean.... It's full of PHANTASY!!! (whatever it is)

The English Version of Phantasy Star Online 2 probably will never see the light on western hemisphere, although you can play the Japanese version with a third party english patch but grouping with random player probably can be a hassle, but anyway let me told you about my first few days on PSO 2 English Version (South East Asia only)

Before I played I never read any review, description, or anything about PSO2, not even a beta, so when I first zoomed in to the server I got quite stunned that it has Gameguard.... okay move along, PSO2 has only three basic class: Hunter (melee based), Ranger (ranged based), and Force (healer/magic type), they can 'evolve' on level 30 to become Fighter, Gunner, and Techer, also apparently there's a tech tree which you can mix and match with skill from another class (cross class skill) but I don't know how deep the system is, I'll keep it up in mind for my next post. So anyway PSO2 has three races, Human, Newman (elves), and Cast (androids). each race can be of any class, there's some basic and deep appearance customization for each race, for Cast however you can only change your body tipe and head, there's also several human head options that you can customize but it's kinda put me off because putting it on a robot body... it looks like a disembodied emotionless head being put in a robotic body. so I go with the ordinary robot head, and this is the 'final form'

now all that's left is to find a young boy to pilot me and we can go save the universe!!

Okay, let's go to gameplay, as a Hunter I sported a really big two-handed power sword which kinda encumbered my character, the battle in PSO2 occured in real time, you have two kind of attack, left mouse is your ordinary attack, you can combo it with another timed left mouse, if perfectly timed (indicated by orange aura around your character like Legend of Dragoon) you can stagger or even stun enemies (called perfect strike), enemy performance can't be interrupted with any other way... so here's the thing: looking at a big giant monkey raising and then throwing a big boulder while I spin around creating a cyclone of blade around him --while he is doing that without a single hint on his perturbed face that I caused big numbers by hitting him repeatedly -- is kinda... odd. Anyway my cyclone of death is called photon arts and it's my super attack initaited by right mouse button, it needs resource called PP so it's kinda have to be reserved, oh yeah you can also dash by double tapping your arrow button, and attack while you're jumping (now every new MMO has it!!!) :P

Not Pictured: I stumbled

Beside the big sword I also have a gunslash which literally is my ranged attack weapon, I can also press shift to change it's mode into a fast-attack one hand sword, if the Shift button is used while you're using the big sword you'll defend against an attack, you can also customize weapons to change it's combo and foton arts, a regular and foton arts combo usually initiated by two perfectly timed push of a button, sometimes photon blast occured, an environmental anomaly triggered by defeating enemies perfectly and enhancing your attribute, making you an unstoppable engine of death, not always though, and when you become unstoppable usually the enemy's already down before you know it, this can change on higher level though, probably. One more thing: I can also press 'Z' to change my view into those third party shooter mode like those like Mass Effect.or Gears of Wars

Just shoot it Shepard!!

PSO2 is instance based, meaning like Guild Wars you have one central hub, you can meet anyone in this city hub (or in case in PSO2: Mothership), everytime you entered a mission (quest) instance you'll be assigned a 'room', you can name this room and recruit people for it, the number is varied on each missions, you can also solo it or bring an NPC party member that you'll recruit as the main story progress, don't want to wait? Just find and open room with people on it and join the fray (just like Diablo 3), before the mission begins there's also a 'preparation' room for you to strategize and buy/sell buffs and items, when you're in an instance your HP/PP/MP won't be replenished unless you found a replenishments (contained in destroyable objects) or a healing station (on instance intermissions), consumables like HP potions are a kind of big point in here, (just like Diablo 3/Path Of Exile all over again) so make sure you're prepared to bring a bunch of instant health potion before you go dive into a mission

In the mothership there's a lot you can do, first there's the main story, yes it's kinda just slapped there with a sprinkle of dramatic moments here and there, some fancy magic scenes, some pony summoning... (yes, they exists). Apparently some bug creature called D-arkers are destroying planets and it's up to us to prevent it... and so on.  There are daily quests, and some special missions which provides tutorial, mailbox, crafting, there are furnitures, one thing I like about PSO2 is that like guild wars 2 I'm free to deposit my item wherever, unfortunately my storage is limited on slots, and like all free to play titles I can expand it for a little cash. Playpark is kind enough to give me a bonus of points every time I did consecutive day logging.

Pictured: A representative  from a p2w game

The thing I dislike very much about PSO2 is how BLAND the interface is, all the good thing came in from combat, but that interface, my God, always a white courier font text on blue background, yes I know it's in space, but come on!!

It killed your soul, quickly

 also, when you're disconnected your instance will be reset... noooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Well, despite the tedious combat, PSO2 has something... shiny, apparently for me it's just too boring to go on and the shiny thing died inside, but since it's free to play it's a perfect place to spent times shooting, hacking and slashing with friends, there's probably a better game for that, but hey at least they have ponies...

Wanna be friends?