Being Saleh: Twenty Four Days in Tyria

I'm on vacation and typed this on my buddy's Ipad, i'm not going to complain that after i used the thing it makes my smartphone screens looks small and insignificant, damn you Apple!!! =))

Trying to grasp the immensiveness (that a word?) of Tyria can't be achieved by zooming your way to 80, it can be achieved by slowly exploring all nooks and cranny in a zone or just wandering yourself in every random Dynamic Event encounter that might happen in a zone and what the... i just leveled up!!!

If there's something i want to add in Tyria it's the stop experience button, i know, i know the scaling make sure no mob get one shotted on levels below me, but i just can't help feeling something off when i saw my 60ish level wandering around in the 40ish zone, i guess it's the residual habitual experience from my past MMOs. i'm an explorer so I tend to open up all the maps just like what i did on WOW (stop experience ftw!!!)

In Guild Wars 2 you leveled up fast (for a casual) but if you're the person that blinked to your experience bar every three seconds you might thought it's a little slow (btw WWW is your answer). every time i logged in I simply picked a map that several level belows me and run through it, completing dynamic events and heart quests also uncovered some vistas and point of interests, and when i completed that map i just simply run around following people and helped them out in DE or meta events, or just gathering stuffs and by two or three hours I probably leveled up once or two.

For crafting disciplines i picked up artificer and tailoring, leveling a discipline is much easier now since the trading post is up and running. I forgot to add that one of my reason to roam around low level area is to gather tier 2 crafting materials, leveling disciplines are somewhat a bittersweet thing, the problem with the materials is that it's just too much of it and sometimes the drop rate are abysmal, i can grab 15 small claw on a dynamic events but on another DE that features mobs that dropped vial of weak blood i probably only obtained 5 of them, but one thing I like is that loot bag dropped from humanoid mobs can contain random stuff (although they contain mostly butter now), occasionally i just go hunt out there and come back on later day to level up my crafting, still a long way for 400.

My crafting stuffs are way below my level although some of the masterwork items are fine looking and can be used as skin. Thing is: in Tyria I tend to chase vanity items like crazier than ever. I stylized my character by previewing every single armor i came whether it's from crafting or dropped items, and since I rolled a charr it's so tricky to stylized him, and of course being a mesmer makes it a double trouble (especially the pants and shoes that made him look like a skinny cat, and the cloth caps that always turn him into a big hooded walking head). Some of the neater stuffs are in the Personal Story which are littering my bank and using the transmutation stone is somewhat becomes a requirement =P

Of course after runnning around, crafting, and stylizing a character there is nothing more fitting than show it to a group of friends.... In dungeon =))

Being Saleh: 40 hours later...

I catch a cold.... Thankfully I'm not on a tight schedule for work, as I said before my limit is 8 hrs per day =))

The early access are somewhat eventful, there's some serious issue about the interface not working on overflow server, the guild system is somewhat unfinished, still playable though.

I found nothing that can be considered gamebreaking (sPvP and WvsWvsW said to have some serious issues though), unless we count mail system and trading posts are down for half a day

I want to thank ArenaNet for giving their all to fix those issues, some of them probably haven't slept for days fixing everything while some of the community whine and nerdraged at them. Dedicated people are great, nuff said.

Time to rest

Being Saleh: Less than 24 hours...

...And I can't sleep (again), Guild Wars 2 will launch in 12 hours and I still agitated, seems like every cell in my body screams to Anet: "Release it now!" Why? I don't know, probably because it's weekend and I find all my usual hobbies become a stalemate before the launch, so I'm just gonna wait and hope that the three-- hours-- ---earlier-- open-- server is a truth.

So I'm gonna write random things, such as: not many people liked GW2, why? because it's chaotic and different, my friend got thrown off when fighting as an elementalist because he didn't realized that he has no mana and can cast while running, and he SHOULD BE running because ten centaur stampeding towards him is no big joke. As a mesmer I still curious about how my health depleted to zero in seconds because the unpredictability of a battle, and as a melee mesmer my curiosity doubled every time I leveled up, will everyone one shot me when in Orr? Will I'll be forced to play ranged in later time? Will I ever get my Gur'thalak? (wrong game). But my sword has some cool design (drifted off by shiny things), Guild Wars 2 just have too much surprise and some people just really like predictability, like rotations... and trinity system....

I also realized the 'addict' factor on Guild Wars 2 is unusually high even for me, even way beyond my WoW and RIFT experience, WoW did put me off on Patch 4.1 where I must grind troll dungeons, they introduced Raid Finder on 4.3 and I quickly sprung back to life, even when my chance of winning items has gone I ran it almost everyday. I logged on RIFT whenever there are invasions on three top level area for like two-three hours per day. Both of this hype never falters, I just simply stopped playing because there's nothing else to do there except one thing I like, one, and if I keep playing I'll burn out in no time with no new contents on horizon. I stopped played RIFT solely because I want to give myself a break before Guild Wars 2 (Real Life factor actually matters much here when I stopped playing, I just have to get out there)

On Guild Wars 2 my hype factor reinforced by two things: one, my old guildmates coming back, two everything is new on Guild Wars 2, the newness factor can hold on for three months but the guild factor can hold fast (we're casual, so we're kinda like having each other numbers and send dirty text messages...yeah no... ) I wonder how many hours I'll be playing on opening time, my best bet is eight before I collapsed in bed and completely skipped playing the day after =))

The continuity of my Lineage 2 journal, Being Saleh will now become my notebook about Tyria, and about how a Charr sing

Dual Wield: (Ir)Rationality

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

I found myself as a non-grasper, wasn't quite able to distinguish something for it's literal meaning and tends to dig in order to find the meaning of that something to it's origin, like trying to determined who owns a dog from just looking at the dog, apparently I also quite bad at doing that since my mind wanders off a lot =))

This writing was begun when I found that from the initial 150-ish local gamer who already pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 are all males, for some reason I can't quite remember seeing 150 people gathered in a space and all of them are males (except in an army display), What happened here? I asked for opinion from them and apparently it was ended in vain (after 300 lines of opinions) since I can only found one valid answer and forced to accept the truth (local female gamer is a myth) :P :P :P

So I changed the question, and asked different circles of my friends "are you a gamer?" of course the answer is no, the strange thing is: When they're asked if they will come in an official game convention (like a local E3 or game convention, they said they would go and play games, they don;t mind being called a gamer in those events)

The Stigma

My local community can accept cat lovers, skateboarders, even face tattoo and piercing as a hobby, apparently when they said game as a hobby, some of them won't admit it.

Why? Because gaming is a nerd hobby and a deep dark hole toward rejection of society

That's not true!! Oh Yeah? try putting MMO on your resume/CV and replace music I know you can't play drums

You won't do it, ah yeah I guess you understand my meaning.

In US, Europe, most gamer said gaming stopped being a stigma years ago when Blizzard propels World of Warcraft into important pop culture

Important Pop Culture there, not here

I say: In here, locally, people follow majority, apparently majority said the most important western pop culture in my country is Lady Gaga

So yeah, I reject society and a nerd, I also have zero social life *bleep* (puts a thick glasses)

The Sad Truth

Even by saying "game as a hobby" you will always still stuck in a second gear here, why? Because the majority doesn't play, and can't appreciate why colored pixel sticks you good in front of your screen. "Painting can appeal more people" said the 'rational' guy

Apparently hobby can't be measured by rationality, but it can be blocked by skepticism which hide behind rationality

The most popular sport on my country is Soccer (or Footbal in EU), I wonder why stay up night for 90 minutes just to see someone scored a goal? I can always read the results tomorrow, this probably will become a chaotic argument where the pro will said about the beauty of every kicks, the adrenaline, the heart pumping saves, and after those the anti will said: "Hey, guess what: it's s the same thing on <insert hobby here>

But when you said "hey that's what I saw in an MMO game" the argument will continue about thousand other things better other pixels on screen until it washed out down the drain a.k.a rationality wins

And FYI I like soccer, I just dont follow it that much, Collina still has to be the next UN secretary general though

Try look up in the local streetshops, is there even a cloth with your favorite game logo in there? No? That's how stigmatized you are

Rationality wins again

Dual Wield : Stay away from my sweatshop

NOTE: Dual wield is solely my opinion, not my guild, not my parents, girlfriend (don't have one, anyway), not anyone, Sometimes I used quotes, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

My birth country, Indonesia is a haven for gold sellers and all forms of MMO or internet exploitation, the community are total hell since it's dominated by 15 year old kids and adults who exploited them to sell or buy in game currency, or sweatshop runner, ruining the community for profit, the sole reason why I used to never played an international MMO with my fellow countrymen (or women, which is still a myth)

But thanks to the internet, like-minded people have it so much easy to gather, from a thread created by my friend Kurogakure, Guild Wars 2 probably will mark the beginning of a new fresh and clean gamers from my country (even if it's just a fraction of the total hell).

Of course, like-minded is still like-minded and most of the local old-school gamer (which I prefer to call sweatshop employees) can never understand the urgency the community needs to stay clean, playing the game like it should, to pass time, to meet people, to gather for an event, or something without REAL CASH involved (unless they have cash shops). A few weeks ago my friend come into a clash with a hardcore sweatshopper, the sweatshop listed some of the most ridiculuous argument like: "How the hell should I pay for a game, if I can gather gold from it and sell it for REAL CASH PROFIT???"

Me: "Selling currency is illegal"
Sweatshopper: "Other people in other country do it too"

From the two lines of argument most people, even non-gamer can understand it was going nowhere, when people break the accepted law, they probably won't have a problem break anything else

I played MMO as a hobby, one of my hobby actually, something that defined by online dictionary as something that I did in my leisure time, outside of work, My friend also describing something like: "A chef can play online games for a hobby while professional game tester can cook at his spare time"

It was a completely different matter.

Apparently gold seller can't understand that, if a game is not profitable anymore they will quickly packs, sell out, and move into another one, they're not gamers, never was

So a gamer and a  gold seller is not even on the same boat, one wants a community, while the other wants community to buy from them (and they don't even own the game)

Sweatshopper: "Why can't I? The big company's making millions, why can't I make my own dough?"

In my country pedestrian walks on street, because the side pavements is used for personal shops, the analogy fits

All they want to say is: "Stay away from my sweatshop"

So Arenanet, please make your game free of gold seller and exploiter okay?

A test post

I'm checking blogger's mobile application, looks neat enough for now

Cat Day

I found this on massively, just gonna put it in here...

resistance is futile