Being Saleh: The Sunless, Garuda, and Accessibility

I finally downed Tequatl last night, thanks to TTL for it. Tequatl the Sunless (level 56) is one of the hardest content in Guild Wars 2 now, this dragon requires coordination from numerous people to be defeated,  it's not hard, only need some rythm, even if you screw up you can always be the cleanup crew, you're even get rewarded even when he's not defeated based on how much HP you chipped from him. The one thing I liked about Tequatl (and Guild wars 2) is it's accessibility, even when Tequatl isn't defeated the area itself will still be accessible, you can also skipped Tequatl entirety when you're still leveling on Guild Wars 2, and skipped all the dungeons although some of their stories are pretty interesting and can give you some insight about how the main story unfolds.


 

Now let's talk about Garuda, Garuda is a four-man mid level trial instance on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, she's apparently a real b*tch and like to wipe you in a matter of seconds, she's also  have a habit of spouting crazy murderous lines, one of the harshest I ever saw on FFXIV. The thing is: you are required to defeat her if you want to continue your questline, and she's not easy, my first try with max leveled people with relic weapons takes abut five tries, my second attempt however (when helping a friend and a PUG) takes 20 or so, since so many can go wrong with her, there are even phases where if you don't stand in a right place you'll be defeated instantly. Her max level endgame incarnation is even more deadly and requires more coordination from group members. 

Access

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have tiered content, no endgame, run vanity-based events, have dynamic combat, and freedom from your usual trinity roles. While FFXIV is gear-based, trinity-based combat and have more social interconnecting roles, it won't be right to compare those two, but I want to talk about accessibility, at least my point on accessibility:

I spent two years on Lineage 2, my first 'serious' MMORPG, where grind is daily and daily online means kill 9,809,876,454,789,432 mob just to level up, there's no significant quest, no means to obtain stronger weapons and armors, everyday you will calculate is this a lose-money day or gain day since you must make a living there by selling and buying stuff from players, you can participate on a raid which requires you to have weapon and armors... dropped on those raids. Come unprepared and pretend you're not there since you'll be stare on an empty HP bar in a matter of minutes, you will work your way slowly to the top and when you make a single mistake and/or RNG hates you you'll lose money, weapons, armors, even guild, and must start from the scratch, character deletion due to failed crafting are a common, it's one thing to level up, the other thing is how you're gonna survive and be better at endgame content after you've leveled up.

Six years has passed and Lineage 2 is becoming more and more accessible to players, they've gone f2p, improving quality of life of classes (healer have their offensive skillset on the same page as their healing skills, before that they can only heal and/or attack at a different mode), provides more means to gain money, even sells some powerful weapon on NPC in exchange of daily tokens or golds, low level character granted immunity from player killers, also: They're just announced their new expansion that brings dynamic combats to the game

Then I came to WoW, even in vanilla days I never found it to be so grindy as Lineage 2, on WOLTK days it become easier, on Cataclysm quality of life of character is improved that when I started a new character I ended up zoomed out so fast on level that I stopped my exp just to get into all Burning Crusade content, although Cataclysm heroic dungeons is not a faceroll and I'm content with not seeing Fireland Bliz gave me LFR and I can pummel Deathwing in the face :P. I have my brief fling with RIFT and CoH before Guild Wars 2, on RIFT dungeons are fun, on CoH the accesiibilty was so great I can go anywhere I want, do anything i want no matter it kills me or not. After I feel at home on Guild wars 2, I tried a couple of alternatives like Tera and The Secret World, they have their own strength and weakness, but nothing turns me off, I just decided that i'll stay on GW2

Easy

If you get where I'm heading, you'll see that all the MMO is becoming easier, in terms of soloing the content, quality of life on classes, special perks, and even ease the restriction on some endgame content, I won't have any saying on endgame content whether they should be hard or not, but putting a big roadblock prerequisite on a leveling content can be considered... unnecessary (at least for western players), and can be a real turn off for some people, GW2 have more accessibility for players, doesn't have monthly sub, and the rate of their content is more rapid, WoW has access for every kind of players with their ripping every other good feature off other MMOs, Lineage 2 still have one of the best massive PVP content out there, The Secret World has unique kriss-crossing their online world with real world, they're also DLC based and with their own gearing requirements

Final Fantasy XIV as I said before: have enticing world and story and a fresh return of the 'old-school' RPG, also great soundtracks but unfortunately their endgame battle content is the weakest link of all,  Eliot Lefebvre from Massively wrote it better than me, so I'm just gonna quote him

"Final Fantasy XIV's endgame is sometimes like a club. Once you're in, you're golden, but getting in can be really rough. 

AK, for instance, is not all that hard. You can do it in full AF with white accessories. But you'll really want to have some party members who are better geared than you are to help make up the difference. Your upgrades from AK will be substantial, but getting them the first time is rough, especially when you're learning the fights. WP is the same way to a lesser degree, as is the Ifrit fight.
While all of these fights are designed to be done at that level of gear, most people don't actually want that challenge; they want a farm. You're not doing Ifrit because you want the thrill of fighting a Primal; you're doing him because you've got full Demagogue and want your staff to match. Consequently, you get a lot more ragequitting than is strictly necessary, and the net result is that it's easy for newer players to feel as if they're not up to snuff. The other problem, really, is weapons. Getting a Level 55 weapon isn't hard; Grand Companies and WP fill that gap. But getting anything better requires slay-and-pray on either Ifrit or Garuda or spending a whole lot of money on an HQ Level 70 weapon. Considering a given Primal has only a 11% chance of dropping the weapon you want, and that's assuming no classes are doubled up... there's an uncomfortable weapon gap between Level 55 and Relics. Hopefully 2.1's dungeons address that.
Also you might get bored of doing the same few things over and over, but I'll take 40 minutes of AK over a slow slog through a raid any day of the week."

source: Massively

My free month ended several days ago, since I got sick and got some exhaustion after that I will be resubbed when patch 2.1 hits (sometimes around December) it's also a part of an experiment of mine about the pacing of the gearing process and observation of the player markets

And, my post about FFXIV aesthetics... it'll probably have to wait, but this pic can say some of it :D

Being Saleh: Reborn in Eorzea

Again, works get ahead of me (but this time I actually enjoyed it, maybe I'm getting older, well... whatever)

So yes, I finally got myself a copy of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the chocobos finally did it, or to be specific: my guildmates needs a tank :D.

Here's the thing, Square finally sorted all of their crazy-numbered error message and opened servers as well as resuming their digital sales, so I boot it up and created a gladiator with paladin in mind. Of course first I have a list of what I should do to be on level with my 15-days-earlier friends, so my twelve hours a day powerleveling begins.

this is my place to unwind after being used by my friends

The Quests
As I said before Final Fantasy has a solid story quest and numerous sidequests to choose about at the start, every five level you're also treated to your class ability/skill quest which also can be considered a side story, although ability quest takes place in a solo instance where's your allies are NPC (which sometimes rushes themselves to death) they can be quite hard to ge into if you're on a minimum level required, Square refunded your lost time with a buff that stacked every time you failed these mission which gives you expanded stats until you're finally on a level where mow down your enemies like hot knife through a butter, quite convenient

Apparently the sidequests stopped flowing on the last 10 levels, and the story quest required you on a specific level, this is where the grind begins, you can do FATEs, levequests, dungeons, or hunting logs. Stocked some rested xp under your belt also helps, food buffs aren't significant so you can do without it, there several FATE spots where people are LFG-ing, notably in Mor Dhona and Coerthas

The Grouping Content
Yes, apparently it's true: Sometimes your progress on the main quest storyline are halted on a content where you must find groups to tackle a dungeon, this is where the duty finder (LFG tool) comes in handy, although it's still a curiousity that I have to queue 20 mins on the late mandatory dungeons, side dungeons has more horrible queue time, more like hours, and I'm a tank, my DPS and healer buddies said "you don't want to know my average queue times"

This probably can be traced to the fact that dungeon on Final Fantasy XIV are... difficult, I'm not talking about mindbreaking diffcult, it's just that there are numerous way to screw up on some bosses and even some trash, the difficulties can be compared to early Cataclysm expansion dungeons on WoW (before they nerfed it to the ground) where I sat down to watch more drama than defeating Jin'do =))

Dungeons in FFXIV contains numerous mechanic, and nothing can be facerolled, as a tank you're completely dependent on your healer, the healer also dependent on your DPS ability to take down trash mobs before his/her mana ran out to heal you, AOE skills are almost non-existant on the first few level and since your level scaled down to a dungeon your late level active and passive skills are also locked out. Also: Dungeons have timers, sometimes it's like 60 mins or something and when it ran out you're kicked out of it, so when you wipe you risk your whole dungeon experience although you d get to keep your loot from defeated foes or bosses

Ability lag or sometimes called : "I'M OUT OF THE RED CIRCLE GODDAMIT, WHY AM I STILL GETTING HIT???!!!" is my bane of existence in FFXIV. Yes, the dreaded beta bugged red circles still has it's place on the live version. It's where the animation and the hit or miss situation isn't synhronized perfecctly, the result is you're still getting hit even when you're 100 yards out of the red circle, or cone, or line, whatever. Let's take a peek of Garuda, the primal of air, she has cone-wide slipstream that must be avoided or your healer will have double trouble healing you, when I strafed so I face her side, or her behind I'm still getting hit, it can be frustrated sometimes since the red circle isn't helping at all and all the late dungeon bosses will one shot you.

Taste my rage of Halone!! where you can one shot me while I strafe-gliding with this skill

Trials are where your party faces one of the primals of elements, there are three so far: Ifrit (fire), Titan (earth), and Garuda (air), they made a really awesome group and story content since it requires you to stay at your toes no matter what odds they throw at you (also the soundtracks are great), on the story content they're manageable with PUGs. On the hardmode endgame content however, they will wipe the floor with your face seconds after you engaged them if your full party (2 tanks, 4 DPS, and 2 healer) doesn't know what to do with them, it takes skilled and seasoned well-coordinated players to go toe and toe with them, and also: good gears. I used to against locked content but this thing? This is a wild ride that will keep you glued on your keyboard or flip it with frustration =))

I'm actually Diablo, this is my final form after Blizz took the auction houses down

  

Almost 50
I've only 6 level more from cap but I also found some flaw of Final Fantasy XIV, since there's only one story content and you exhaust it on leveling your first class leveling another class can be a completely tedious job, since there's no more story to follow, the side quest on another town however abundant they're only consist of your average kill ten rats quest, so you're limited to FATE and leve grinding (also hunting log if you prefer it). Leveling a diciple of land/hand is probably more manageable since they have their own leves and ability quests, also high-end crafting will requires you to take up some interesting sidequests

Overall it was a trip, I'm glad I finally bought it, the great soundtracks and story is probably the highlight of this game, I'm still curious of what SE will brought up with this game, the Crystal Tower raid and housing features seems promising for early updates, they still have a long way to go if they want to be on par with WoW and Guild Wars 2 as an AAA High Fantasy MMO

I will write a next post observing the aesthetics of FFXIV, another highlight (If i have time) :D

For now I'm just gonna stare at the fire and hope it yielded exp

Being Saleh: A year In Tyria (Story Mode)

Being Saleh in Tyria is a year now, In this article I really want to summarize the lore content of Guild wars 2, I'll try not to be lazy and write as many information as I can, so here we go, warning: spoiler ahead

Personal Story on Guild Wars 2 takes place in a personal instance, the story revolved around how Tyria united into a force to take down Zhaitan, the undead elder dragon on his base, the Corrupted Island of Orr. On these stories players will meet Tyria's armed factions, The Destiny's Edge, and Trahearne, the hero of this story. Personal story ended with players take out Zhaitan in the level 80 dungeon Arah, after that it's the end of the real main lore in Guild Wars 2.

After a month of bug fixes Anet finally released it's first update: Shadow of the Mad King is a halloween event build around in an interesting storyline spanned on a month, new armor skins, new weapon skins, one time event where the Mad King burst the Lion Statue of Lion's Arch just to taunt us, everything was breathtaking, even the jumping puzzle (Mad King clock tower) is challenging enough to dubbed it the most interesting jumping puzzle ever created. The showdown with the Mad King is also a fun dungeon with a little of spiced jumping puzzle and emote playing.

But after that came the next update: The Lost Shores which was unfortunately the lowest of all updates, thousand of players got slaughtered in Lion's Arch not only because of the new enemy: The Karkas is extremely powerful but also because the event produces the most dreaded lag of Guild Wars' history. The final event which players encounter the Karka King (or Queen) in a new opened area: Southsun Cove is so messed up that Arenanet has to make compensation of free exotic weapons for everyone which is online and disconnected during the event. The story introduces the Consortium as the capitalist faction on Guild Wars 2 and also introduces the scaling dungeon Fractal of The Mists

The Living Story so far...

Wintersday come and go, I didn't get to enjoy much of the festivities since I returned to WoW to get my hand on Mists of Pandaria, but after that came the mixed bag of love and hate in Guild Wars 2: The Living Story, the first one (Flame and Frost) spanned four month introduces us to Braham and Rox as we sped through Ascalon and Shiverpeaks area fighting invasions of the ragtag forces of Molten forces consists of the flame legion and Shiverpeaks dredges, the Molten Front is also the most fun dungeon I've ever played, The Story of Braham and Rox ended abruptly but the content itself has a gradual "grow-on-me" factor because of it's boring start and slow pace on the first two parts, we were given the hints but no completion, not even after we blow the Molten Facility sky high.

Rox and Braham goes their own way and so are we, things have been brewing on Southsun, The Consortium settlement project didn't really work and we are thrown into chaos once more, but this time the Living Story content was so little it hardly can be called a story, it's more like a side dish in an unveiled main course and we never got the main course, The villain is now Canach, a begrudged ex-Consortium, the dungeon mechanic is also baffling that I refused to play it and instead rally my guild to lay waste on Karka's invasion on the Southsun Cove, including taking down the Karka Queen itself, while searching for hints of dragons in there, we didn't find it

After Canach it is clear that Anet tried to raise the spotlight on Ellen Kiel, a captain of the Lionguard in charge of Southsun, in the next installment: Dragon Bash which introduce hologram-grinding and Anet's two weeks living story content Kiel was in another spotlight, also enter Marjory Delaqua as a noir-character (which promptly disappear after the update ended), the festivities ended with the introduction of the Aetherblade: sky pirates of Tyria.

The Bazaar of the four winds is the most dreaded update for some people, it introduces the Zephyr Sanctum: an airship operated by the zephyrites, a bunch of people who didn't ever set foot on land, Kiel --again-- is on the story, Anet also introduces Evon Gnashblade as her rival on the election to be the next leader of Lion's Arch which will settle trading with the zephyrite. The execution of the update is revolving around jumping puzzle content (which I found is a dread). This time Anet also had player to vote for their candidate, the election tied itself into a content of Fractal where Ellen will have the Thaumanova reactor incident fractal and Evon will have the Fall of Abaddon fractal, the community is quick to respond in this, the forum has never been so vocal before, the content has become divisive point which split the community into two, Evon was considered the missing link between Guild Wars 1 and 2, while Ellen Kiel is considered the Anet's golden girl and the female Trahearne.

Ellen wins and rage ensues, the forum was flamed over and over again but quickly stopped by Anet as we moved into Queen's Jubilee which I love very very dearly: it's not only because Rox and Braham's back but it's also introduces new group PVE arena, the queen's pavilion where the enemies are the malfunctioned clockwork guards created by the human Queen Jennah. There's also the Queen's challenge: a one-on-one timed battle between a player and a queen's champion (which I sucked at), the last part introduces us to Scarlet Briar, the villain that Tyria needs beside the dragon, although the comunity split of whether she's a Wesley Crusher kind of Mary Sue or a perfectly built character -- Scarlet is a success because although one of her purpose is to re-introduce the past faction like the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades she's perfectly modeled to lead them all.

....after a year, my opinion is...

I want to say something to Anet: Stop retconned everything.

On the Flame and Frost the image on our mind is that Jormag and Primordus are finally on the move after the death of Zhaitan, and guess what: there's no hint or glimpse of them throughout the content. The mighty Karkas are to be believed as minion of the unnamed deep sea dragon and all we got now is a deserted Southsun Cove because nothing about the dragon as well although we got a piece of Lore from Ree Soesby's book: The Sea of Sorrow. The Aetherblade brings us far far away from the dragon but the sheer number of them is also a question: where the hell they're hiding all this time? It's like the Twilight Cult enigma all over again.

How about Scarlet? She's a pure evil genius, able to unite the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades under her command, she have the perfect army to even lay waste to a city and she didn't do that, of course she's also crazy and likes to play (fatally), and after that she escapes, poof... just like that.

The Crown Pavilion was built on top of a sunken area called the great collapse where a sinkhole suddenly appears in a west area of Divinity's Reach. The sinkhole has been erased from the wiki page and redirected into the Crown Pavilion wiki page as a proof that Anet has retconned the area which in the past spawned numerous speculation that's something is beneath Divinity's Reach.

I want to tell you something, right now I'm furious that the next update is the Super Adventure Box again, an update that's been released on April, it focuses heavily on Jumping Puzzle content and definetely not for me, so I considered to actually buy Final Fantasy XIV and joined some of my friend there but they're already closed the sales. The reason of my furious-ness is not because it's another JP-oriented content but because it brings so little lore content in the update.

Anet should considered this: Sometimes it's story that made people like me stay (hell I stay on WoW just to saw Varian morphed into Super Saiya and Garrosh becomes Cell), although Wow's story content has improved greatly after the Cataclysm's third grade content they're still so slow with the patches. IMO Anet has so much potential to turn Tyria into a more living world by throwing small story content event here and there, but please STICK CLOSE TO THE DRAGONS!!! they're the main villains after all. Also on this point all the member of Destiny's edge have their cameo into the Living Story as well except Zojja and Caithe, stick close to them, develop their story and stop throwing more one-time character into that story.

The point is: I like being teased more than retconned so please stop introducing new and forgettable characters and focus on the old ones.

Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Test: A Hype Reborn

Final Fantasy is the most popular game franchise in the world, it's the only thing that have double digit number in the sequels (as I recall Ultima only got to 9) not to mention every other spinoffs, movies, crossovers, and so on. The latest installment is the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, they actually release it on 2010 after being in development for 5 years, and it flunked, they only live for several months before Square fired the director, revamped the development team and everything in the game and will relaunched it on 27th of August 2013 (If Square was an American company, they will shut it down after 2 months and never looks back), I guess they really don't want it to tarnish the 'Final Fantasy' name, Japanese can be scary determined demons sometimes =))

They also invented this thing

So let's talk about it, Square officially renamed it, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, FFXIV takes place on a crystal covered/attuned/based/everything- revolved-around-it-world called Hydaelyn, the continet is called Eorzea, the original installment takes place in a peaceful era called Astral, the server pre-shutdown event which happens in November 2012 marked the 'transition' into the Realm reborn timeline, which can be called Umbral, marked with the unleashing of Bahamut (the dragon which exist all accross final fantasy series) and the destruction of Eorzea itself (after thet it's server shutdown to give time for development). The existing players are 'teleported' to the future, to the Realm Reborn chaotic Umbral era, while new player will also started here

The Beginning:

I participated on their latest CBT and OBT, due to hype on those MMORPG webs...   Anyway: There are three starting town which house the eight initial classses of FFXIV, first is Ul'dah: the desert area and home to pugilist (roguelike hand to hand specialist), Thaumaturgist (offensive spellweaver), and Gladiator (sword-shield tanker). Next is lush jungle of Gridania for Conjurer (healer), Lancer (spear/polearm DPS), and Archer (umm... archer) :D. The last is Linsa Lominsa the port piratey island of Marauder (melee DPS and off tank axe wielder), and Arcanist (summoner type). Continuing the footstep of Final Fantasy XI every class can be everything else, just equip their weapon and you become that class (axe for marauder, sword for gladiator, etc etc) of course you'll still need EXP to level up those class, not to mention specialized armor and weapons

On my first CBT test I first step up in Ul'dah as a pugilist and for a moment I return to Rabanastre (a place in Final Fantasy XII), as expected from Final Fantasy series the cities are breathtakingly beautiful (Linsa Lominsa could use a polish though), the early quests revolved around classical fetch and go and kill ten rats things, so there's not much to say about it.

The combat is another return to classical MMORPG, with hotbars and trinity system, rotation and don't stand in the fire things, pugilist delivers quick blows and stance change depends on it's condition and playstyle, Marauder just hack things but a good interrupter, magic class is the most boring IMO since they shoot bolts while standing still... (It made me miss my mesmer)

The combat system also doesn't require you to get party, although there's a vague chain kills system that multiplied your EXP every time you killed something, not sure how it works then. The basic is when you see someone punching a mob, join him/her, every hit you land is counted towards the "kill xxx mob" quest, you're also have personal loot which automatically gained after you kill something, so no kill steal and no loot drama (damn, no more popcorn...)   

The End:

What? It ended already? Well, Open beta lasted only three days and I have like 52 hrs downtime because of error 3102 and social time, but here's some highlights and perk of Final Fantasy XIV that started to grow on me at the end:

The Story so Far....
It's good, not really magnificent but I can tell they did it with passion, personal story quests takes place in a solo instance and introduces you to important NPCs, some are memorable than other, story dialogue are short and since our character didn't talk it feels like playing Half Life 2 combined with a little bit of The Sims, cutscenes are many although I prefer them voiced


Non Combat Class (Gathering and Crafting)

There's no gathering and crafting as a side job on Final Fantasy XIV, they have their own class!!! Non combat classes on Final Fantasy XIV are unlockable on level 15, there's gathering professions (Fisher, Botanist and Miner) called Disciples of Land, theres also crafting profession (Alchemist, Armorer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker, and Weaver), you can switch back and forth of it anytime, just like switching combat classes, they have their own weapon (tool) and armor though.

Switching to gathering profession will enable you to see resource nodes on world map, although you might want to be careful since you don't have  combat abilities and battle armor and monsters can attack you, gathering from a resource node will display what item can you obtain from the node, along with their percentage, switching to crafting profession enable you to craft weapon/tools/armors/accessory, the crafting process is ... intriguing, it desn't involved RNG but it involved percentage like LOTRO style, you can add some additional materia to add effect on things, I don't manage to fully grasped the concept due to my low playtime on it but I believe Eorzea Reborn has good guide on it

Guildleves

How am I gonna level up my character? I ran out of quest for my level 14 character, fret not, you can grind repeatable quests called levequest or guildleves, unlocked at level 10 through story quests, levequest are bounty-like quests, they rated you based how you finish the quest, whether you're fast enough, have additional monster spawn, enemies have ++ level from you (just like City Of Heroes instance scaling) and many more. It's still a grind though but the reward is plausible enough to go on (it's the only thing there is now, btw) there are limited numbers you can do from it though, like 6 per day or something. Guildleves also have levequest for crafting and gathering professions so instead of grinding on making and gathering items, you can do this kind of grind instead :D

Guildhests and Dungeons

The Guildhests is basically a short (some of them long) instanced scenario created for group party, fortunately Final Fantasy XIV is generous enough to give us.. LFG Tool!!... errr they called it Duty Finder, usually they required one tank, one healer and two DPS, dungeon needs more and has longer time. Unfortunately: I only have time to tested out Guildhest, and it's pretty cool, not too special, not too hard (I guess those time on Ascalonian Catacombs taught me something)

You know the tune that plays everytime combat won, yep, they play when leveled up too

FATE system

It's Dynamic Event on FFXIV!!! a scalable open world event, and I LOVE IT!! YAY!! KILL ALL DODOS!!

Poor Dodos...

Armory

The armory system is revolutionary, it's a separate inventory for putting your armor and weapons, you can also create equipment set for all of your class of your character and shortcut it so they will automatically wear their intended armor and weapon when they switch class

Things To Smooth Over:

• The combat is still feel clunky but the animation has softened during Beta Phase 3 to Phase 4, I think they need to address this just for the sake of aesthetics, Final Fantasy style.
• The Aether Crystal is a waypoint system similar to Guild Wars 2 but you must remember the name of the waypoints because instead of displaying their location on the map they only listing names of the crystal which I found... hassling.
• Teleport Spell and Return Spell should be combined into one single spell, only with different costs, zero cost for home
• PUT...VOICE...ON...MY...CHARACTER...ON CUTSCENES!!!
• PUT...VOICE....ON EVERY OTHER CHARACTERS... ON...CUTSCENES!! (there's some that's been voiced though, they promised it on release it'll be fully voiced)
• Why is my starter armor looks awesome but the rest after it... looks sucks, unmemorable, bland, and bad?
• I really want to see an item icon (hovered for info) and animation of it being put in my bag whenever I received a loot, right now there's only text that tell me that I got something after a battle, it's not a link text too.

Last Words:

It's Final Fantasy after all, expect the lavish buildings, radiant colored worlds, Chocobos, Ifrit, Bahamut, and great soundtracks (it's the greatest thing in this game so far) but anyway let's do something about the hype: I can't really put my finger on Final Fantasy XIV, I don't know, it looks like there's not a thing that can keep me here, I guess it's wait and see since I don't mind buying another subscription MMORPG. It's a good game but there's nothing clicked with me... for now.

Although I'm sure the chocobos will bring me to it

Dual Wield: Normality

Yes, I've been busy with works and games, there are several comeback I want to write about including the f2p conversion of RIFT (which happens like a loooooooong time ago), patch 5.3 of WoW's Escalation (while now 5.4 is hovering above), several old beta like FFXIV (i think I'll write it when I finished OB), and the continuity of Guild Wars 2 short story updates (which I missed like twenty of them, umm no, it was more like six) :D

but for now: I want to talk about the other world, again

No, not this one

I met a couple of my homies several days ago (yes, I still used that term for my non MMO player friends). One of our topic was branching, it was about our childhood friend, a really close one, we used to hang out of our youth until a year ago and then he abruptly disappeared, not really gone, but our contacts have been... disconnected, usually revolves around works and projects until I saw 'uncommon' act from him on his social media account statuses, occasionally leading and deliberately affiliated to some movement and party-like organization, not to mention some hormones....

Not to say on a big day of one of our friend there are no response from him and on his own big day he never said a word while his social media statuses are more vague than ever.

I had my share of youthful angst, hikikomori, and other terms of closing myself from the (real) world, I had my days of game and stuff addictions, but even in that time I never left my 'human terms'. Since gaming was never and won't be a long time accepted as a hobby on my country I'm sill considered a nerd, childish, or just plain weird and the least of them:'not normal', and I accepted that

And there we are, me and my homies (if you don't want to see this term again you can close your eyes and make more appropriate term) :P. Just talk about life and other lives, and we came to "Why he's not here with us?"

I replied: "Let's picture this: It is us, now, on a fancy (cheap) restaurant talking about stuffs, I'm talking with your wife, and playing toy car with your kids, I came onall of your big day, we catch up stories and work plans, and all this while there are no words from him? He deliberately dumped us and cut off all contacts, while there are lots of means when he wants to be here or even join the conversations. And you said I was the weird - not normal closet-basement online gamer?"

Of course he said yes and we get a good laugh together.

So let me tell you: Game doesn't change people, it doesn't make people weird and cut off from the real world, MMO doesn't, broken heart doesn't, politics are :)

Just look at Ellen Kiel, look at what cutthroat politics have done to her, CURSE YOU ANET!!!

Dual Wield: The Ultimatum of Moving Forward

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, cynical words, and hyperbolic sentences, sometimes I don't, it was simply the just cause of my trolling =))

So, just several hours ago someone from one of the largest telecommunication company admits a few things, My city is way behind on the Internet things (we only got a couple of broadband provider here and all of them are sucks) not because internet has a few interest, but there is NO network at all, limited DSL (yes we still use it), no FO at all (yes, nada), no Wimax (what are they anyway? :P) the cause of this is unknown and I'm not stepping into that area where politics involved, but fortunately they started working because they've been given ultimatum from the stakeholders that my city has to be covered in Fiber Optics on next year.

IMO this is interesting since I'm a long-term subscriber for them and repeatedly complained about how their service sucks and their price are crap, about how connections SHOULD NOT BE limited on Facebook and twitter, about internet is evolved into a much more than MIRC and Friendster  (we have Google hangout now!!!) about how the prices and speed of foreign internet connection is much much lower and much much faster, now they give me some compensation by lowering their price and extending their networks, so I think I'm not the only one who complains every month. They're still slow on their tracks though but since their main office is just a walk away from my office I guess it'll still be a long and wonderful relationship  =))

Being Saleh: The Bounty Gambling

A month ago Guild Wars 2 upgraded it's guild system, fitted it with guild missions, which is (sounded) awesome and (almost) ridiculuously expensive, but since we have almost 300.000 unspent influence on a guild we quickly unlocked the first guild mission: The Guild Bounty

Represented by a drunk 300 spawn points Asura

Guild Bounty will have you hunt down and capture 2-6 (Tier 1-Tier 3) wanted criminals spreads all across Tyria, most of them wandering around a certain zone and have fixed paths, some of them like the dreaded Sotzz the Scallywag spawned in a barrel on one of 300 spawn points in Gendarran Field, sweeping the area often won't yield anything due it's vastness, if it was not enough you only have 7 minutes to defeat one target and 15 minutes time limit to find and defeat all the bounty (two, four, and six targets on each tier) if you succeed your guilds are awarded merits that can be used to unlock next guild missions (Trek, Challenge, Puzzle, and Rush) and some neat new banners. You also get rewards when you helped defeat a bounty, on a form of guild commendation (also some neat rares and a 0.000000000000<insert zeroes here>1% of a precursor) that can be traded with ascended accessories, influence for guild and some cosmetic items.

My guild was... training (yes, we're that hardcore) to beat Tier 3 bounty hunting, we did it at the second week, until the fourth, faster than the week before, but it looks like Arenanet noticed our (I'm being a narcissist now) progress and decided to fix something to slow the progress, on the latest patch: The Razing they fixed some randomly spawned bounty like Scallywag, Anders and the newly added Yanonka and Mayana to become active and can be found only by a guild member who have that bounty active on their mission list, thus avoid target camping, they also fixed some bounty targets with higher DPS, can't be stalled on a waypoint by talking to it, and new fighting system

It's kinda annoying and engaging at the same time, annoying because our home-made system for bounty camping blew away by the new patch, when Scallywag and Mayana appeared on your bounty list you'll know that it'll become a gambling because you still have four other target, if three or four appeared then you'll know that RNG trolled you :D

It's also engaging because it adds to the flavor, new bounty now have new abilities that can seriously injured your attempt by becoming a wall that receive only 1% of your attacks, swallowed you whole and force you to play a little whack-a-mole game inside it's stomach, Evades and running away, kill you with 24 bleed stack, kill you with rapid attacks, and many more 'kill you fast' tricks

Well it's only costs 300 inf, totaled like 1000-2500 (I can't count) to speed up bounty tiers if it's needed, I think Anet's done well enough by inventing new ways to kill us the bounty system, a little rough now, but still enjoyable after a month.

Note: Dulfy has a great guide for the bounty and other guild missions