The Two Raids

It's funny how things can quickly change on the Internet, first of all by now if you type The Raid on google, the topmost is a link to the IMDB database of an Indonesian movie called The Raid (Redemption), an international award-winning movie from director Gareth Evans, and also my topmost must see movie when it hits the theater

But now let's get back in time, seven months ago when you type the same words the topmost could be an MMORPG documentary called The Raid, which atrracts me because at that time I was on the beginning of my journey to the larger world of MMO beyond my local servers, so I watched it and yeah it's a good documentary, I wrote a review about it ....and because of the hype of Redemption I might as well post it side to side


The Raid

(This is a review I wrote about nine months ago, after watching The Raid which was premiered on gamebreaker.tv on August 6th 2011)

Several months ago I made a 'revolutionary' approach on my own Lineage 2 experience, installed RaidCall, fixed my sucky sound card driver so I can talk to my clan members, and head dive into 'clan first' raidcalled fortress battle (one of the fastest FB ever), that once set my brain on fire and drunk with experience, well I always thought it'll progress from there, I dreamed of my first true 'Raidcalled' Raid

.......unfortunately it never happened............ but hey, here's a story about some guys on different game which it happens :))

 The Raid basically is a short World of Warcraft documentary about how MMORPG raiders 'life' in game, when it was announced a year ago I was immediately pulled out topics about MMORPG community, to be honest the plan of The Raid itself was one of the things that gotten me into World of Warcraft (beside warlocks and yeah I'm a fanboy) :D

 The Raid followed raid progress of raid guild 'Months Behind' on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion as they progressed on their own Ice Crown Citadel Raid up to the Lich King, the movies tarted up by defining the 'MMORPG' genre, and some of its jargons like: 'dungeons', 'avatar' and 'Raid', interspeded by cutscenes of the raid progress itself, and the men (and women) behind the avatars of Months Behind and their own reason of playing and ultimately: raiding

 One of the strong points of The Raid that it covered almost the vital aspect of MMORPG but the downside is the movie wasn't build up quickly, if you're not a gamer (and also not digging the first rant about 'Achievements and guilds') the first minute you treated into a cutscene of Lord Marrowgar (first boss of Icecrown Citadel) yelling: BOOOOOONNEE STTTOOORRRMMM!!! and followed by the whole guild members talking about their reason to raid you'll quickly feel out of space and say like 'huh'? but after 15 minutes the raid progressed and the conversation is also leveled as there are more and more interaction between guild members and then you'll start thinking along the lines: "Yeah these guys are weirdos, but they're kinda cool" of course when you're not into computer games and MMORPG specifically you'll push the stop button.

...and then Garrosh and Darnell will tag team you

 The stigmas of MMORPG players are always the hottest topics on every MMO documentary, The Raid wasn't my first MMORPG documentary, before it came out I watched at least two independent documentaries (which alas I can't remember their names), and the stigmas always the same: computer gamers a.k.a nerds is the one playing games 24/7 on their home basement and live their life IN the game. There's no denying it that some of them DID it but NOT everyone, One of the finer point of The Raid that it brings these people involved into the spotlight without being judgmental about their REAL life, being a gamer is fine, socially acceptable is fine too but that's not the point here because we all knew games will always be games and beside, your parents won't understand why you collect stamps :))

 Guild dramas also got their own portion here, picturized by Sindragosa and Putricide boss mechanics which can lead to brief dispute on party members, I personally like the analogy here, it kinda reminds me when I was once my first heroic Tol'vir where everyone got ZERO experience about the fight and after several wipes people start leaving, but in the end we downed the boss (I was dead and didn't get credited... sad). The conflict get a nice resolved result where everyone gained their morale back, and face the last boss: The Lich King himself

Ice to meet you

 My conclusion is: The movie is short, yes, it contains issues that has been on topic for several years, yes, worst of: It will appeal gamers quickly but baffles non gamers but The Raid made a different approach: It's specialized and not generalized. It's a story about a guild, about the people in it, about their motivation, reason, connection, friendship, and group achievement, the last minutes of the movie is probably the highlight of everything The Raid is all about, the personal satisfaction, and at that moment: you're a hero

 Many cynic will said: why the hell made movies about this? It's about a bunch of nerds playing videogames and recording themselves with webcams, I will just said to them in my 'personal' reference: Haters will hate :))


The Raid: Redemption preview

EDIT: I forgot to reveal one single vital thing, I only know about The Raid: Redemption when someone on gamebreaker.TV comment page asked if it's the move from the Sundance festival (or something along that line) I googled it and found out a movie from my country which apparently very good at staying under my radar
 
Anyway, now take a look at this trailer, 

now worship it :D

Two years ago Gareth Evans made a low budget Indonesian martial arts movie called 'Merantau' a story about a justicar country bumpkin that travels to town in search of a job but ended up rescuing a girl and her brother from the clutches of a human-trafficking Triad, sporting a martial arts theme equivalent to a B-Grade Hollywood movie at that time doesn't help Merantau on my local theater (which contains more sucky movies), I even didn't paid attention to it at first, watching it once when a TV station runs it and...

It.. was... AWESOME

The story are predictable but being a martial arts movie the choreographed martial arts is over the top, the main star Iko Uwais is a pencak silat practicioner and he fluidly moving in front of camera as a natural, it somewhat reminds me of Ong Bak (another martial arts title from Thailand) but not exactly the same, Merantau runs in a medium pace but somewhat dragged at the climax, the movie itself was good but disregard some of the few common things (i.e. not one cop was seen) but it's all for the sake of good adrenaline-pumping fights and I'm down with that

Apparently Merantau is only the first story of a trilogy martial arts movie by Evans, the second is called "Serbuan Maut" a.k.a The Raid, i really have no idea why seven months later it become The Raid: Redemption, coincidence with The Raid documentary? /shrug but anyways moving on, apparently Evans learned from his previous mistakes about releasing local martial arts movie to local audience, instead he slapped this movie in front of Sundance 2011 audience and every other movie festival audience since them, the results? The movie won awards from Berlin and Toronto film festival and now released officially on US theaters (and the rest of the world) after Sony Picture Classic bought the distribution

The movie itself gained a solid rating of 8.3 on IMDB (March 2012), so yeah it automatically made it to my must see movies, hopefully, it'll be worth the hype

Socially Acceptable

Yesterday, Massively's Karen Bryan posted an article about revisiting anonimity on MMO games, she started about Blizzard's RealID fiasco that happens about two years ago, you can read the entirety of the scene here, followed by some news that old players from an Everquest server started a new Facebook group for their server, apparently even when people wants to retain their anonimity in the Internet, some of them are willing to remove their veil

On the second part of the post Karen addressed some of the issues regarding MMOs isn't socially accepted yet, and yes I think this hits the mark, if I want to work on some of the local company I won't be putting "MMO gaming" on my hobby list, I probably will go through with reading and music since I'm adept at some literature and have background formal study about music, but not MMO gaming --or even gaming. The consequences when you removing the veil on these overly sensitive field is that someone will use them against you, I'm gonna take Karen's example further: In this case imagine a big company, full of continuous rivalry and you are one of the middle management system and played a blood elf female healer, suddenly one time there's a facebook plug-in that allowed you to post your character progression and you forgot just to share it to some of your close friends and instead put it to everyone's page, the next morning your office will be buzzed with gossips about your female avatar, and some of the old head will even questioned your sexuality, you rival just found a new weapon and since people prejudiced a lot something as trivial as playing an MMO game become a big deal and the next is you probably lose your job because someone assured some of the big head that he's better at doing yur job just because he's not spending majority of time choosing armor for female pixel avatars. In my case I only put MMO as my general facebook profile because I don't work on a public company, my friend are already knew my hobbies and I don't give a particular care about Facebook, new friends or people might be a little bit taken aback though (more on part 2)

Someone (I can't remember who) once said: there's no anonimity on the internet nowadays so deal with it, it's not entirely true though, the anonimity on internet is the greatest blessing for some people (fully described in Gabe's pic :D) it allowed you to become almost everything, troll on a heated debate, caring person on a motivational forum, even an androgynous enigma on a dating site, you can even BE multiple persons at once!!! But everything become useless in front of the indisputable fact that when you posted your real name (or even nickname) on the world wide web you might as well lost some or even all of your anonimity.

Taking it one step further out

Let's take on the social media, Zuckerberg himself said he'll make a website that will connect everyone in the world and by connecting it means pouring much information on yourself that has something in common on someone else, in my country Facebook probably become some of the (not so) new hype, since it connects people easily and can be accessed via little gadgets like smartphones, but apparently people here are not so well versed on Facebook which has become more complex than 4 years ago. Let me tell you a story, some times ago I met a particular person, and I added her on my friend list, the twisted thing is I added her with just her real name, give or takes a few letters in and out and voila I found her, I did this on my pocket Facebook right in front of her in just a matter of minutes, normal people would actually asked for her email adresses but since I'm not exactly normal and 'socially accepted'(and I might have some brief superiority complex outburst) I probably did something that is so repulsive and might scared (or probably disgusted) her, I don't know since I never talked about it and we're not actually 'close friends'(no pun intended) this is an example of the power of a Facebook tool called friend finder. Facebook even have something called the subscribe button which probably more like 'stalking' button. Hell I even stalked WOW general discussion for years before I truly subscribing, that's why I'm not even remotely surprised I met so much much MUCH jerks on troll heroics before the Dragon Soul Heroic somehow fixed it

Social Media: Yes it's good to for keeping in touch with friends and families, I always considered my old Lineage 2 Clan as a second family, even when we bickers A LOT I think one thing that keeps us 'close' is because we are all an avid Facebook user and MMO gamers, on the other hand I have many people on my friend list which I probably won't poke or even talked to for the rest of my life just because the only thing we have in common is we share the same high school or something like that, it'll probably come in handy when we want to started a reunion but I can't see anything beyond that, I think the bigger question is: Am I socially accepted just because I'm adept at using social media and have good and useful comments on someone else's thread? We probably have to define the term 'socially accepted' first 'the field' and then we define social skills and the division of real world versus (real) virtual world, and in the end we'll debating about the terms 'friends' and 'families' or even 'feelings' and there's where everything become complicated like the real world =)) =)) =))

Gundam AGE: Second Look (with half closed eyes)

--WARNING--
This post contains spoiler, in fact the whole thing in this post is a spoiler about Gundam Age, so you've been warned, go ahead at your own risk or you might want to visit this awesome website :D

Just a little reminder

So
...
Gundam Age
...
Arc Two

Well, the UE has new name, they called Vegans (or Vagans since we already knew vegetarians everywhere won't be appreciated their way of life slapped on aliens) but let's just call them V, like those aliens from the discontinued serial. Long story short apparently these V guy were once part of the Mars establishment project (which is failed) and abandoned by earth so in their rage they apparently developed superhuman abilities and capable of building mean killing machines, sent them into good guys colonies and destroying them, so yeah, they're probably communists

they also developed a bad sense of fashion

On the last episode of arc one we knew these V guy want to take over the Earth for some reason (there must be a reason right?) and apparently one of them is gone ballistic and kidnapped the "least screen time girl" Yurin (which Flit is head over heel for her), put her on a mobile suit and force her to attack the good guys, the battle ended with predictable scene

pretty close to this, but with blood, 

lots of blood....

After that Flit, which apparently embraced the dark side (and woke his own superhuman abilities, making him a Sith Lord) began his crusade to eradicate all Vagan from the universe, unfortunately we didn't got to see Flit on his Hallelujah type rampage because apparently the story 30 years later is more interesting, Flit now has a son with the most screen time girl (forgot her name, Flit probably too, but they also said the cure of lost love is bedding the nearest available girl, or something) and since he's also a genius and capable of Gundam-ing he become the head honcho of human's military, and apparently he once again failed to mass produced Gundams because I really have no idea if he's busy or so smart that he could make a bunch of V exploded on their own, but don't worry there are plenty of pretty-colored Genoace now, and who dares question a Sith Lord?

Above: Picture of 40 year old Flit Asuno,
taken a second before the cameraman got force choked

Story of Asemu so far: A mobile suit maniac, saved a girl (yes he'll have kids with her in a few years), and best friend of a V spy Zeheart Gallette, and a new Gundam Pilot, it's nepotism all over again, damn. Well after Zeheart reveal his own agenda they ended up fighting each other, apparently Zeheart have some sort of excess of superhuman abilities (dubbed: emo) so he's forced to wear a glasses just to look cool and Bandai can sell more of them. Asemu on the other hand have zero superhuman thingie because apparently her girlfriend hasn't been killed yet

...or he's probably Luke Skywalker

Well, watching Gundam sort of removed my writer's block, somehow... 

My prediction: The last Battle will be a staring contest

Singing and Dancing Throughout Time

For me, music is a delicate thing, if something fits in my ear it'll stay in my brain for days, the sole reason I only listened to J-music while keep an open eye of good pieces from the Western and others, apparently it's been months and I haven't heard any single new tune that made me hum, so in desperate in a new (or perhaps old) sounds I turn to youtube (instead of playing WOW), apparently I discovered a few things:

No, not this one, I already know Darth Vader is a member of NKOTB

I started with my old relationship, when I was young the TV constantly streamed with animes so needless to say I grow with it, that's why at my early age I always think that the opening of Saint Seiya is the best song in the world.

"Yep"

and 20 something years later....

Apparently rock star don't live fast & die young,

they haunt you for the rest of your life

The singer still exists and the anime/manga are being remade or sequeled, or spin-off-ed, Japanese are die hard =))

Macross

This used to be a separate writing, but I included this because there's a relation, and because they're animes that breathed good songs and story. Started at 1982 the original series tells a story about a giant spaceship colony called Macross which hurled into uncharted space by some unknown stuff and tried desperately to get back home, inside this spaceship the people started again to live their daily life, it's a slice-of-life soap opera sprinkled with war action and giant robots, running close to 100 50 episode, and also intertwined with musical numbers sang by Linn Minmay

There is a God

Minmay (voiced by actress Mari Ijima) quickly gained momentum that started the franchise, Macross get a retelling OVA (which contains new song and the original ones) and Ijima herself become instant celebrity, 

Probably one of the best song I ever heard, and no I'm not joking

Apparently the franchise are plummeted down when the true sequel Macross 7 experimented with the sound of Slow/Glam Rock and set the fictious Fire Bomber Band as the next star, the story is completely scrapped although it was once set into the wandering space cowboy plus mariachi theme , changing the true spacefighter robots into giant speaker carrier that shoots lights and sound instead rockets and lasers, the pilots themself equipped with mock musical instruments used to 'shoot', as cheesy as it can be there is one memorable song

Please don't try this concept again, MBS

The franchise get back to it's feet when the next sequel Macross Frontier get it right, included two songstress, Sheryl Nome (voiced by singer May'n) and newcomer artist Ranka Lee (voiced by set-to-be-idol Megumi Nakajima), the unique thing is May'n song are R&B stuffs while Nakajima sang Easy Listening ones, the songs are decent, the duets are good, the story is not groundbreaking but still enjoyable, like all Macross Franchise Frontier also got a retelling OAV which in my opinion contains more action, better storyline, and smoother animation, especially when the show scene of the singers, it's also the first Macross that used CGI to animate combat scenes, the opening song also sang by already famous anime singer Maaya Sakamoto

Catchy, catchy tunes (otaku mode on)

Folder

I stumbled across Folder when rummaging on anime songs and have nostalgic reunion with Dream, apparently my clicking ability brought me into the girl/boyband territory from the late 90s era, one of them is Folder, although they never sang a song that became an anime song, but I'll get back to it later, here they are on 1999

Yep, they're S Club 7 clone, but this song damn catches my ears (yes, it was a song by two brats but hey, I'm at the same age as them at that time, okay maybe a few years older) also this song reminds me of the R&B fusion genre from the late 90s Japan, most of them are dorama songs though, sang by famous Japanese  singer like Ken Hirai

Okay, let's get back to Folder, here they are one year later, 2000

Whoa!

So, the boys left the group because of their changing voices (puberty sucks) and the girls has.... well...grown :P this is the second opening of anime One Piece, a flagship anime/manga title from Jump and Toei, Folder become Folder 5, apparently they dance better now, and now I know where Suzumiya Haruhi's dance is from

I have two additional songs for my mp3 player now, yay, happy happy me, after some browsing I also found some dance group AAA's songs are decent enough to enter my collection, anyway Folder 5 was disbanded like 6 years ago and their members pursued solo career, one of them even starred on some famous movie like Death Note, but their solo singles are nothing good enough to enter my ears

Reverse S Club 7 (in all aspects, including quality of songs)

AKB48

Well now, I was once promised myself never venture into deep otaku territory but I'm already knee deep within girl/boyband swamp, might as well checked out the latest ones, so I hold onto my nose and dive. This one is a major stuff, AKB48 (formed 2006, but I just found out about them last year, silly me) was short from Akihabara 48, sporting tagline: "Idols you can meet" (yes, otaku things, watch your step), they performed dance and sing act in a theater every day on Akihabara region, their total members exceeded the number 48, almost close like 157 teenage girl!! But they're the top selling Japanese artist last year on their region, here's one of their hit single:

Apparently I now hummed it.... damn you Akihabara

AKB48 wasn't the first, there are already similar group called Morning Musume (formed 1998) which held the record for the japan's highest record seller on girl group, they swapped members every year (a method which also embraced by AKB48), I never followed them since at that time rock band such as L'arc en Ciel, Luna sea, and Glay grew in me, and at that teen angst moments, who needs a bunch of dancing pre-teen girl? >:)), Morning Musume and AKB48 also toured and performed on Anime Expo held on US or Europe

Anywaaaaaaay, who wants to see another one from my regional area? HERE THEY ARE!!!

THEY'RE INVADING!!

Apparently AKB48 chooses Jakarta as their sister girlband city, dubbed JKT48, the reason of it... is... I don't know, people in here knows nothing about good songs and the culture is different, I might put their song in my mp3 player but I'm not glorifying them or anything like that, they sang decent song and probably practiced that choreography like hell, but it become a question, who're they targeting here? I probably knew the answer, but apparently it's so out of this world (or this country) that it's probably not true

Well, come what may, at least I have some new/old songs, time to research some more catchy tunes tonight (yep, it's WOW maintenance night)

Hello, Instrument

UPDATE: MAX

Okay, this probably the most exciting discovery: MAX is a Japanese four member vocal group, they excel in voice's quality and sang upbeat tempo song, eurobeat, and some speed techno things, they're also has different image from other Idol Group, more mature theme. Apparently they're once the rival of Morning Musume in term of selling singles.

Max's song ranged from their initial R&B to upbeat ballad, most of them are not my kind but this one is awesome

The song called Issho Ni, I don't know why it can be so appealing in my ear, some secret organization could brainwash me or something, but it's good stuff, it's so different from other MAX's song (you can browse the rest of them on Youtube) and the music brings a sense of smoothness, I personally liked that brief acoustic guitar at the end.

Max has one more ballad song, this one is not as impacting as Issho Ni, it's called Spring Rain, but it's still good enough to enter my collection, it has the same upbeat element from the thing that made Issho Ni good but the execution of vocals are not quite good as the other, oh yeah, the PV is good to watch too

With MAX's song I concluded my search for skipped tunes and j-music from groups between early 90s and now, it's been a wondrous and colorful journey

(Now, back to LFR, dammit Gurthalak Y U NO DROP!!!)

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....