Being Saleh: Legion!!!

So at the end of Warlords of Draenor, the alternate reality Gul'dan escaped to the main timeline and begin the third (fourth??) invasion of the burning legion demons, and to be honest he started off pretty nicely, summoning every demon WOW player have vanquished during this 15 years, destroying both the Horde and Alliance head squads and seemed to have endless supply of energy and portals to finally summon the big ol' Sargeras himself,

So as I started questing my first demon hunter on the new Broken isles zone something bugged me, why didn't he, you know, just did it? There's literally nothing in his way now as The Alliance and Horde are both retreating

The answer is this:

BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY.... oh nevermind

That's my troll warlock holding his artifact weapon: Scepter of Sargeras, in this new expansion every class and spec got their one and only weapon, which can be obtained via a story quest, it will level up as you do and as the expansion progress. All 36 spec has their own story, for example: demon hunters sent to retrieve their mighty warblades/warglaives from traitorous ones, while warlock (destruction specifically) was sent to coax Gul'dan and stole the scepter which apparently is the key to summoning more demons, so yeah the reason why Gul'dan didn't do what he's supposed to do is because I stole his boomstick, ruin the summoning rituals and use the scepter to summon multiple chaotic unstable portals which destroy some of his army, I was hoping there's a scene where Sargeras scold him for his failure, it'll be priceless.

Welcome to Legion, the newest expansion of World of Warcraft, and guess what: I'm not lagging behind :D

As I mention on my previous post that I will return to WOW only for friends, they're just recently started playing so i joined them, but this expansion was so refreshing and liberating that my mostly solo experience was so good, in this xpac I decided to retire my Warrior (since I don't like the look of their artifact weapons) and have a hard time choosing between my warlock, create my long time dream shaman, or starting a demon hunter. In the end I did them all mostly because the pre-expansion event -- the demon invasion was a good way to level up, I ended up leveling my shaman to 100 solely with demon invasion, that's 90 level straight in a week, so at the beginning of the expansion I have three level 100.

Stories!!

 
The new legion questing zones are Aszuna, Highmountain, Val'sarah, and Stormheim, they scaled with your level (100-110) so you can choose which zone you want to pursue first, the last zone: Suramar was solely for level 110, the story begins with the pre expansion broken shore scenario where Alliance and Horde fleet tried to prevent Gul'dan from summoning his army, they failed, like really failed, and in that mess people died, important people (not Thrall though: spoiler) even with this Game Of Thrones-que events I was still shocked about how ugly their death is, it's like watching Sean Bean died, twice, or three times and then watch a Fel Reaver teabagging his corpse. After choosing your artifact weapon and obtain it you'll gain access to your order hall based on your class, this is where everyone with the same class as you hang out, Shaman got the maelstorm from Cataclysm as their home base. In this not-garrison place you can research your weapon, powered it up, unlock new traits, and send champions to do some mission which will yield artifact powers, xp, and quest items.

Although saving Go'el feels a bit of a chore now (spoiler: he's retired)

So back to the zones, don't worry about class halls, they can be managed through the new android/ios application so you can run around helping people, logout and manage them in your bed before sleep (like I did), the premise of the Legion story is simple: Find pillars of Azeroth (artifact forged by Titans) to thwart Gul'dan once and for all, but then as you quest throghout the zones you'll realize that it wasn't so simple to the point when you gather some of them you'll realize what you have lost and the legion was still going strong and maybe just maybe this is the expansion where the hero will screwed up because all the bad guys seems like doing their job so goddamn well (even after you stole Sargeras' boomstick). To make matter worse you'll realize that every step you take is only opened up more questions.

Suramar is a home of the nightborne, a faction of night elves recently allied themselves with the Burning Legion, in order to help some of the exiled resistances (called the Nightfallen) you have to infiltrate it, walking in disguises, avoiding demons patrol, killing some of their leaders discreetly and so on, it's assassin's creed style gameplay (combined with the instinct to quickly find a getaway route before the guards overwhelm you) the nightfallen themselves are mana addicted so each day you'll have to gave their mana fix (gathered around Suramar), it's heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time, and as Suramar is connected with all the previous zones there are denizens around it that will need your help too, from a tauren shaman tried to calm the raging elements around Suramar to the lone druid fighting a hundred years war against army of arachnids, their story are also well written to the point I want to do more for them even when the questline is ended.

World, Class, and Profession Quests!!

 
World Quests is the new daily, after got friendly with all the faction on Broken Isles it will open up and will be shown on your map, it's a dynamic event tied to factions, you got into the area you'll get the quest, finish it and you'll get repuatation for one or several factions, they also yield you equipments, order hall resources for missions, and/or artifact powers. Every day you'll get an emissary quest, finish five specific faction world quests and you got additional reward and reputations

Professions are getting better, every material is harvestable on any level, plus you'll get profession quests from your trainer, some item you found during gathering process will nab you another quests. On crafting process you'll get legion recipes from your trainer's quests, the things you can create also upgradable, cutting the materials needed to make it, this way you will never go back to low level area just to gather materials to level up your professions so you can create something or depending on your garrison to level it up but the quests sometimes take you to old zones for a bit of nostalgia (if you're a veteran player)

Umm.. no, he's not in this expansion, get back to your own obsolete content!!!

Endgame and Verdict (for now)

 
There's only one raid right now: The Emerald Nightmare, unfortunately no LFR wings has opened yet, but in two days I have finished all the heroics on my shammy, they're not that hard anyway, I haven't tried mythic dungeons yet since my friends are currently swept away by normal/heroic/mythic raid (and by wives) :P, but I love how encounter was designed, Maw of Souls is my favorite since it's taken place in a ghost ship with some familiar Lich King characters, dungeons also can be tied to world quests and have some rare monsters among the mobs which will yield you additional loots, relics, and artifact powers. I just recently finished my shaman order hall campaign quests (which made me travel to old cataclysm zones, another welcomed nostalgia).

For short it was a blast, a real blast, I never found myself so invested and never look at the XP bar since the age I stopped my xp gained to experience the whole burning crusade quests, and I definitely never found plot twists so good since the day Putress bombed both the Horde and Alliance in WOLTK, Warlords of Draenor was so bad in everything (except garrison) some of them are have to be tied in nicely in Legion, but yeah I guess we can just leave alternate reality Draenor to rot.

Although I love this toy

Foreclosure: Getting Married (and my summarized opinion)

A little flashback.....

My gaming activity in 2015 are mostly divided between lagging behind expansion where I finally played and reviewed newest feature/ expansion of a certain game for one or two months before jumping to another game, and JRPGs, especially the final fantasy franchises and tales of zestiria (my last rpg before I broke my arm in a traffic accident)

oh yeah nevermind the title, this post is all bout my summarized opinion about MMORPGs nowadays :D

2015 was also my best solo experience, I was kinda surprised there how easy it is now, although some solo rewards are becoming more and more aesthetically abysmal (WOW's LFR) or in a whole different case you can solo the whole thing (SWTOR's KOTFE), FFXIV gave me a whole soloing project for my relic weapon while ESO gave me a whole time downloading their (already downloaded but undetectable) client......
 

The big score is I finally got my legendary ring on WOW, yay!! My first legendary item on a MMORPG!!! well that wasn't big deal actually since you can do it in two months or less if you're really lucky and don't mind a little grind, and it's soloable from start to finish, and also since you can have a bodyguard it becomes so much easier. The legendary questline's story is not that deep, interesting at the very least, and yes it's foreshadowing about what will come on the next expansion

But 2016 is also where I didn't see anything new about new MMORPGs, there are few localized selection like Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online, and Tree of Saviour but as far as Korean grinder go, they're still... well.. grindy, but at least they have good graphic, I've already covered Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online have one of the best character looks and customization which enables you to create a more distinct character from anyone else while Tree of Savior is a welcomed comeback to old hardcore Ragnarok players (not me, never played it) :)

The other trend I see is how devs marketed their games which contains RPG elements, have online modes, but never said that it's an MMORPG, check out Destiny, this online shooter games lets you customize your character and weapons so they suit your (shooter) playstyle, and it's an MMO, it has raid, it lets you join people to take down big things by shooting it until it falls, also you will have a role, titan is the tank, warlock is the spellcaster, hunters are dpser, but Destiny never marketed as MMORPG, it was more like called... shooter... with friends

Destiny isn't the first shooter with friends, many years ago Trion released Defiance, a crossover action shooter game and TV shows, it doesn't fare well and the TV show got cancelled (although I liked it) and the game wasn't very good since it lack contents and story, it also have weird level up and character customization

But still the trend continues, enter The Division from Ubisoft where you shoot things (with friends) in chaotic virus-ridden New York, the game was hyped to the max, Dark Souls 3 lets you invite people to get help with bosses and mobs fight, GTA V has online modes where you can play with (or kill) other people in the city of Los Santos, Meh, even hack and slash like diablo already did that. MMORPG was stand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and yet nowadays games are so much diverse and combined much genres, none of the game I said above are marketed as MMORPG, and yet you play with number of people and have roles (even if it only "shoot everything"), yes it's probably not massive enough but there's no denial that games becomes more about sharing experience why? Because playing game with other people (including friends) (apparently) is (more) fun =))

Soooo I probably won't cover much about MMORPG or gaming in the future, partially because of my outdated rig, and also: I'm getting married, but mostly it's the rig. I probably will post some of my gaming activities as shared experience, if player 2 is willing and we both have the time :D

So here I am, thanks to all of you who is willing to read my rants to this day, especially my guildmates and online friends, and bye for now

/bow

Blade and Soul: A Latency-based Delayed Action Review

I actually have a weird feeling that NCSOFT only released it's 2012 martial arts MMORPG Blade and Soul in the west to counter Pearl Abyss/Daum's Black Desert, since it's four years past it's prime, and since NC has games with similar gameplay (action based) like Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 their difference becomes aesthetic only, and since Black Desert was restricted to US only players Blade and Soul gave access to worldwide, with one problem of course: latency...

Latency is the weird factor in action based MMORPG, In Guild Wars 2 the problem was diminished by the dynamic combat while in Wildstar and Blade n Soul your survival and dps depends on every button you hit and the exact time you hit it since many skills triggered by enemy's (both PVP and PVE) action. So yeah in blade and soul you'll dash around enemies, countering their interrupts, interrupts their deadly moves, grabbing them and throwing them around, mount them and lock them. So when your internet is so blashpemously late on receiving/sending the interrupt/counter data because of the high latency you might ended up very very dead.

Minor spoiler: They'll also be dead in the next few minutes

Babes and cats

Blade n soul has four races: the normally human (Jin), the half giant barbarians (Gon), the little fox-cat-other cute fluffy furry things-midget-hybrid (Lyn) and the oversexualized nymphs (Yun), and since it's Korean you'll find breast slider on your female characters customization and yes they'll also jiggling when your character moves so make sure to take a lots of screenshots and videos.... anyway, the classes are Blademaster (shiny swordsman!!), The Destroyer is a Gon-only axe wielder with slow but devastating skills, Force Master utilizes ranged attacks with flashy finishers, Kung Fu Master has long unbroken (depends on your latency) combo attacks, Assassins has incredible (again depends on your latency) timing-based skills, Summoners are Lyn only and have cats (which makes them easily the superior race and class), and Blade dancer is a chibi version Lyn only Blademaster. As you can see all the classes are damage dealers so it's another game without the holy trinity

My story
In Blade and Soul --just like any other action games -- your main attack is your left mouse button which is a resource generator while your right is usually a resource spender -- more devastating -- attack, your other alphabet skills ranged from crowd control to combo finisher, for example as a Destroyer I can press E to lift my enemy, press E again to wedge them against my axe to replenish my HP, press X to slam them towards the ground, and finally delivering the final blow with my right button skill, It's weirdly satisfying because the animation is so smooth and oh so so bloody :D. When i was knocked down by an enemy my X skill becomes a counter skill which whirlwind the entire enemy but if for some reason the enemy can follow the knockdown with say: a legbreaker lock (latency matters here) I will sustain a heavy damage or even KO'd, fortunately during the time my HP depleted I can do things like crawling out of the reach of enemies and then meditate until I was revived, unfortunately It only filled half of my HP so consumables like HP potions are vital in combat, also getting hit when you're on a downed state means insta-KO

As a solo player I met almost zero obstacle during my questing (at least until level 20), Unfortunately on higher level my unupgraded axe started to kill me faster than the mobs, so I'll have to go back to lower level dailies. The stat of my character are given by weapons, accessories, and soul wheel (piece of cakewheel), clothes are purely cosmetics so I kinda liked it since I like playing transmog/transmute with armors, You can 'feed' some weapons with another weapon to raise it's stats, most weapons you obtained as drops are sealed and you can unseal them with unsealing charms, but if you feed them to another weapon you won't need to unseal them, later in game you'll be introduced to lockboxes which can be opened with keys, there are two kind of keys: the brilliant and regular, regular will unlock the box but you'll get random weapons, brilliant will always give you your class-specific weapon, which sometimes can be used as a precursor to evolve an epic weapon, one thing though: brilliants are sold in the cash shop, they can be bought by specific in game currency but only if you're a premium member, so you know where I'm going with this, fortunately they're also drops from dailies and dungeons, although it's rare, the reason why I came back to low level area, gambling my lockboxes away to just find the precursor

I also met a lots of Hildibrands along the way

Big Bosses and losing your cash
Group play against world/dungeon bosses added some perks to the already interesting battle as you can execute a joint attack to break big boss' immunities against crowd control skills, Dungeons are usually basic milk run, plow everything until you get to the big boss at the end. Lack of pure healer class remedied by dragon blood system where you basically doubled or tripled your HP bar to withstand devastating attacks, sometimes it's just DPS race but the dungeons after level 20 have bosses that required some kind of tactics like killing adds, stun things, and stop hitting when something becomes immune.

There's a thing that caught my mind in the dungeon runs, the loot auction system that replaces the need and greed system for heroic and superior items, in other MMORPGs you roll numbered dice and hope RNG gets you that epic item, in BnS if you really want that item you place a bid on it, people will outbid you or pass, if you get the item your hard-earned money will be divided among the rest of your group, IMO it's a win-win solution EXCEPT when the untradable heroic weapon precursor drops and someone decided to ransom it by placing high bid right from the start, if you're patient you can get the money and run for another dungeon, if you're impatient... you can outbid them and lost your money.... so...well... you should be patient :P

In picture: Your daily life in dungeons

Verdict:
Overall Blade and Soul is a fun experience, nothing impress me much but somehow I still playing it just because of the story (and also wondering each level up whether I can pull off another crazy combos), Group play opened opportunities for joint eye-catching combo skills so make sure you play with friends because even if the story is rather interesting, the questing is horribly boring and money making are abysmally nonexistent (you'll lose money faster by purchasing brilliant keys). The hunt for precursors are 99% RNG and dealing with ransoms on dungeons is somewhat frustrating, I also heard that endgame dungeons are ridiculously hard, so get this: Bring a friend, you can solo almost everything and world bosses are always crowded but trust me partying for killing 20 mobs is faster and more fun, especially when the mobs are somewhat scarce. If I can get to endgame I might write something about it but now I'll just grind those precursors away, I found the hard way that NOT UPGRADING YOUR WEAPON THROUGH THE RNG SYSTEMS (Wheel of fate, lockboxes, and dungeon drops) will make your character considerably weaker on the next few levels.

I have six of this outfit before finding that axe

Review: Star Wars the Force Awakens

Yes this post contains spoilers so stay away from this post if you don't want to get damaged in the process, you have been warned

So here's the thing: I grew up with Star Wars Expanded Universe which means I have close connection with stories before and after the six movies, especially the Jedi Knight series which tells a story about Kyle Katarn, second in command to Luke Skywalker in his Jedi Academy as well as his best friend, as a reformed Dark Jedi and former smuggler Kyle has colorful stories from both light and dark side

Star Wars Episode 7 throws every stories after episode 6 out of the windows, which means i have to put aside every connection to Jedi Knight series, in episode 7 Luke did train young potential Jedis but suddenly disappears due to some treachery of one of his student named Kylo Ren, which now commands remnants of the empire called The First Order, which the ultimate goal is to resurrect the iron-fisted galactic empire, to counter this the New Republic founded remains of the Rebel Alliance, now dubbed The Resistance, commanded by General Leia Organa

I like the way the characters are introduced, Finn is a former stormtrooper which grow conscience after saw the brutality of the first order, Rey is a scavenger stumbled into the BB8 carried a map location of Luke Skywalker, this map is the focus of the story which ping ponged between factions. Han Solo as the 'old guard' guide this new heroes as well as trying to bring Kylo Ren (a.k.a Ben Solo, his son) back to the light

Unfortunately the dark side is in trouble in this movie because of Kylo Ren, he's not a Sith, just an unstable and obsessed brat, the portrayal is perfect on cast but fall weak on the story, because we never knew what his story is to be fallen, his rage and fear reflect anakin's feature on episode 3 (which is the weakest on the prequel trilogy) and yet he keeps pushing until the end without clear explanation of what was he's truly seeking. He's a character meant to be defeated in the end, too easy, yet too clouded to garner interest, perhaps on episode 8 he'll be made more interesting

What a star wars movie without superweapons? as Death Star on episode 4, this one has the Starkiller, an  interplanetary laser turret which capable of annihillating an entire star system, which again fall flat into the Old Republic fans' mind since Sith Lord of this non canonical age is capable of destroying a planet with just utilizing the Force, but hey!! we need a capable adversary for those newly designed Resistance fleet right? Fortunately the space/aerial battles are good enough with a popcorn.

Apparently, even by putting those years of Expanded Universe aside I still ended up comparing this movie to them throughout those two hours, hoping that a slight hint of a character as interesting as Kyle Katarn or rooting for Kylo Ren's to abandon his spoiled-brattyness unfortunately yielded me none of them, even the twist in the final lightsaber battle is..... not too good, if only Finn and Rey can fight together, the Force-summoning scene of Rey also has a weak effect but i was relieved that midichlorians wasn"t mentioned

A Force Awaken is both good and refreshing movie but only as a new continuation story built by the previous movies, or for fans who were disillusioned by the prequel trilogy, or for the 'only movies' fans. For fans who have trouble letting go the non canonical universe it might be a little disappointing, as for me I have mixed feelings about it, as a movie I liked it and look forward for the sequels, as an expanded universe fanboy i'd rather stick to the old republic stuffs at least until they made a movie character as good as Kyle Katarn.

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 upcoming expansion is called Heart of Thorns, but I'm not here to talk about it, I'm here to discuss the state of this game, especially about their publisher: NCSOFT.

A week ago Arenanet people announced that the core game of Guild Wars 2 is now free, which means go ahead and play it now, it's awesome, Guild Wars 2 is still maintain the originality of an MMORPG with their action based battle system and ditched the holy trinity role out of the window (well...not really) and most of all it's the game where I met new friends, something that I rarely did since my usual connection with people were based on confrontation and/or highly volatile conversations.

Of course not everything was sunshine on Guild Wars 2, after the first phase of Living Story there was a long drought of content before Living Story phase 2 wraps up and prepares us for the expansion, and yes after all of us accepted the fact that Guild Wars 2 probably won't have an expansion pack, that the updates will be small timed patches in which over the time will carry on to the gem store, that PVP and e-sport competitions will be their main focus just like Guild Wars 1, and that will never be a raid.

And then, Heart Of Thorns happened, Raid happened, hell even flight (kinda) happened, the basic game goes free to play, from Divinity's Reach to the gates of Arah will cost no dime to be explored by new players, and it's all right, it's awesome, what bugged me is the fact that years ago the core game of City of Heroes was also gone free to play along with it's next expansion (City of Villain) although Going Rogue, Praetoria, crafting, and Who Will Die episodes still required subscription or can be bought at cash shop, updates (and as they called it: issues) is small and affecting the game world and both free and sub players, although sub players reap the most benefit. 

I'm pretty much believed Guild Wars 2 is walking along the initial path as City of Heroes was, and I also think that it will goes on up until old obsolete expansions merged with the free core game, and goes on until content and past/present episodes are sold at gem store, until the final day NCSOFT get tired of juggling services for these free to play games (Blade & Soul, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, and Lineage 2) and decided to shutdown one of them, it happened before, City of Heroes was on the verge of releasing new issue and (as their players said) was always crowded until the last day, NC decided to pull the plug simply because they won't afford the development studio (Paragon is their full subsidiary, solely formed to maintain and develop COH after Cryptic leaves) and Guild Wars 2 is their new cashing machine.

Of course all of this is just my wild speculation, but to be honest I was so hurted by the closing of City of Heroes three years ago as it happened so quickly and waves of fan protests and supports can't stop their game from shutting down, they did everything from plea for closing delays to the community inviting the devs for a dinner, in the end it was all useless, and the best community I've ever met in-game vanished just like that. Arenanet is also a full subsidiary of NCSOFT, in which if NC/Nexon decided that it won't worth a s**it they will immediately close it along with guild wars 1 and 2, speaking of which: Guild wars 1 is still buy to play, all three of them, one core game, two expansions. So why Guild Wars 2 core game become f2p?

That my friends, we'll find out in years to come, I'm taking off from Guild Wars 2, just because I can feel their future is uncertain, but it was just me, some people can enjoy things even as they knew it was doomed to oblivion, I guess I still have a lot to learn.

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Warlords of Draenor)

Yes I know, the latest World of Warcraft expansion announced called Legion, but it just proved this article's title here :D

"The Shadow Council Thank You"
In the Warcraft Universe the Shadow Council are the agents of the main antagonist: The Burning Legion, they exist solely to serve their demonic master, so it is the most unusual words came from them, in the World Of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh Hellscream got the timeline messed up, resulting an uncorrupted orc horde to pour through the Dark Portal into Azeroth, they called themselves the Iron Horde and invading Azeroth because... umm... well... yeah... things, so as you crush their first wave, enter the dark portal, fight a throng of them alongside Khadgar, Go'El and a forgettable Draenei Vindicator (Maraad), things got exciting, as you encounter the shadow council and planned your retreat things got more interesting

The Story:
But apparently, things stopped being interesting.
After your first introductory questline, I (as an alliance) found myself in Shadowmoon Valley, Khadgar's opened a brief portal and thus begin my garrison's construction, then I met alternate reality Velen which much more battle hardened than his original self, the draenei has mounted a significant defense but still overruned by the orcs. Shadowmoon Valley's story is great and the closing is awesome, but after that I was bummed, the other zone story is not as strong as the previous, yes you met Rexxar, learned the divided origins of Draenor, used by the arrakoa up until you arrived at the max area level: Nagrand the story seems disjointed and disconnected, along the way you thought where's Grommash? Where's Garrosh? Where're the big guys? where is everything I've encountered in the prologue??!!!

Not to mention the most insulting storyline assigned to Orgrim Doomhammer, I'm not gonna spoil it for you go read or play it, After the scene at Nagrand (if that can be called a scene) I'm ready for the 'final assault' then the story catapulted me to Tanaan Jungle, then I construct a base (as I did in every other zone), then it's dailies time. Okay but I still don't know how Tanaan becomes oozie and suddenly there's someone else in charge. Strangely enough some QUEST yellow exclamation mark begins to pop up every now and then both in my garrison and the Tanaan base.

The whole storyline of Warlords of Draenor (save the Shadowmoon Valley storyline) is chock full of holes with things disconnected from other things, how's Gul'dan there? What is he doing? Where's Grom in all of this scene? How the hell did this happened? Remember the yellow exclamation mark that begins to appear? That's scenarios, the bridge that somewhat connected all this, for example: How is an arrakoa ended up under Gul'dan's command? I think I knew that guy, well after I played several days a quest suddenly appeared, it explain why the guy I used to know ended up a big bad elite boss, the rest? Oh they told it on the Legendary Questline story... They've even NAMED THE ACHIEVEMENTS AS CHAPTER!!!

I was baffled, the whole storyline is a mess, the whole heads and tails are nonsensical, and I still missing things, until I watched the introductory cutscene on youtube, patch 4.1 (Fury of The Hellfire) which explains A LOT, why didn't I got this thing on game? I knew it happened on previous patch, but come on they didn't even put it in the game, In mist of pandaria's last patch when my monk opened the Valley of Eternal Blossom I got an opening, pop up quest, and there's a scenario regarding Garrosh corrupting the Vale so it's not really confusing. On WOD, I was forced to open wowpedia to untangle those overlapped stories

So there it is, Warlords of Draenor stories, a disjointed heap of mess just because you played 8 months late.

The Gameplay:
On the other hand, I liked garrison, I know the whole WOW community divided by it, some love here, hate there, the usual stuff. It's basically a Warcraft RTS base, where you can build reource-generating buildings like lumbermill and Herb Gardens, you can upgrade these things too, like Herb gardens tier 3 provided like 20 plants a day and you can randomize or select what they will plant the next day, it's really convenient for a hoarder like me, albeit a bit lonely.   

So with garrison you can assign followers to do things for you, whether to search for resources, reclaiming rare items, equipment tokens, legendary materials, or even another follower (rare), as my real life workload piles up -- so I could only play WOW on night and early days -- garrison was great, it made me feel like that it fits my time, it doesn't feel like all those timed self-replenishing MMO games (yes I'm looking at you Archeage) because all their generated resource can be obtained through other meaning if I have more time, While in the meantime I can set up garrison missions on mornings and check back on the afternoon, assigning them again, and do some raiding/dungeons at night, so yeah, it's fun, albeit as you amass resource more than you can spend it it'll grow tedious.

Blizz implement WOW token some months ago so you can use ingame gold to pay for 30 days of game time, the value hovers between 25-27 thousand gold nowadays and it gave me an idea, so at the end of my first week of returning I tried to gain enough gold for my game time token, so I did what all lazy people did, selling all those obsolete equipment and some common materials, combined with what I make from my dailies I raked enough at 10 days left on my sub, although I gained three thousands from selling an epic BOE item, but yeah... if I play the auction house and do some crafting as I did at Cataclysm I'll probably have enough gold for some months, Blizz has some really cool mounts on Pandaria so I ended up spending all on them =)).

No new class and new races in WOD but I have one level boost to 90 feature, it will be upgraded to 100 when Legion hits so I'll probably saved it since I have a hard time deciding what class I want to boost, I'm respecced my warrior from Fury to Arms though, just to experience a different playstyle (and because everyone is Fury right now, just like every rogue is Combat).

Ashran!!! Oh Ashran!!! Oh yeah, welcome to WvsWvsW a la World of Warcraft, well actually Ashran is more like Arathi Basin part 2 combined with a little Guild Wars 2 borderland where 25 people frome each faction tried to control more outpost and completing events, but unfortunately I will say that it sucks, yes they provide a nice boost to my honor points, but there's just not enough room and events, in WWW on ONE borderland I can build a little team, caprunning every towers and outposts clockwise, perhaps slay a handful of stragglers, In Ashran I'm just following the zergtrain and go out of the base whenever an event occured, it feel so cramped that I actually screamed because of the repetition, good idea copying WWW, abysmal implementation, and don't play horde after 09.00 PM, they'll always lose.

There are three raids in this expansion, unfortunately I never really liked their armor and weapon design, fortunately I have a dwarven bunker on my garrison which sold awesome Blackrock armor for transmog only, after I complete my horriby designed LFR set I'll transmog everything.

Extras and Final Words:  
Blizz should never make those weekly scenario, whole story shouldn't be divided by randomly appeared quests, yes they're kind of fillers, but still I shouldn't be presented by them randomly, FFXIV has story progress divided by patch but still you have to complete one before you can move on, stories unlock dungeons and trials while the other features unlocked by sidequests, while in WOW: followers, toys, and areas unlocked by random quests which appeared once every week, I kinda confused why Yrel as my dailies NPC suddenly an exarch now? Did I miss something? I finally got that story quest in the third week, yes it's slightly proved that Blizzard don't want player to rush the expansions but still those randoms made me grit my teeth, and since Legendary Ring Quest IS the 'main' quest now I think I can accept that the grind will be a long one but why? Why split them up?

The shiphand mission, a garrison type mission where you assign ship to collect things for you is.... weird, ships are customizable although you need to collect blueprints from rare chests and enemies on the final area: Tanaan Jungle, since you can only select max two ships for each mission, the percentage of successive mission are realtively low, making you gambling on each other components to raise the success percentage, but in the end since components and ships are relatively cheap, they're all expendable since ship's sometimes destroyed when mission failed, you can just buy a new one on your dockyard. I still wondered why such mechanic exist in this game? It was not fun, not profitable (except the legendary missions), overall... it shouldn't even be there.

There's no gating content on WOD except one: Heroic Dungeon, where you must complete a time trial on silver achievement on your role (healer/tank/DPS) in order to enter them, The catch is... you don't have to do heroic dungeons at all!! Since Blizzard implement timewalking dungeon and LFR you can skip them at all, there's only two reason to do heroic dungeons: Some Garrison Resources and Heirloom upgrades for your alts, so yeah, it's really weird

Everything in Warlords of Draenor is weird, a jumbling mess of things, everything feels like an experiment and incomplete ones. I can't say that I hate it, I know how development job works, I don't love it either, gone is the feeling of becoming a true warrior of light guided by spiritual benefactor on Mist of Pandaria, replaced by hollow things as I read all the main quest text (yes I still doing that), my progress as character is... no, there's nothing progressive about my character, yes I got the title as lord commander of a garrison and gain purple-dressed orc warlocks and arrakoa metal construct as my followers but still I don't think I really progressed, maybe because all of my journey and encounters from Shadowmoon Valley onward was forgettable.

Is this an expansion? I don't think so, I think it was just an interlude, a big experimental patch containing features solely purposed for player's convenience but ended up being tedious and created ridiculuous storyline (and ending) at the end.

I'm not satisfied, that is all, hopefully Legion will be better, I was thinking I should return with friends

Being Saleh: Lagging Behind Expansions (Wildstar)

Oh Wildstar, I despise you so much, but I also loved you enough to play in 10++ session through a year on numerous trial account and get the loop of install-uninstalling to the point Thayd and Auroria become so easily navigated. Then one year came and the verdicts are in, the world didn't like you, even your publisher despise you, your company lost so many talented men and women, so then you're going free to play, but not before you put yourself as a part of E3 charity bundle, which I bought and play through last month, so before you've gone and throw yourself to the evil called f2p community, here's my second review of you my dear sci-fi-once-hyped MMORPG

The separation between the EU and US version are confusing, so I thought I was upgrading my old account, as a matter of fact I didn't so I ended up leveling my Draken Warrior into level 16, unknowing that I still played my trial account, only when I leveled up my crafting I found out that I didn't go to the next level that's when i found out, 5 days wasted of my free game time. So then I'm going fast, changed the region and roll a Stalker because they can go invisible and hit hard.

Story:
Wildstar tells a story about two warring faction, The Exile and The Dominion, once there's only one human Dominion until one technocratic race called the Eldan demands human's greatest warrior to accompany them to their homeland (with a threat of course), years later her offspiring came back, brings another race of mechanical origin called Mechari and start leading them to subjugate another races and planet, this doesn't bode well to some human and aliens which bonded together to become the Exile. One day a planet called Nexus, known as the last Eldan tinkering laboratory suddenly popped up, and both faction are on a race to claim it.

Taxis already provided

The whole story about Wildstar main storyline are revolving on finding a new home and a weapon race, because The Exile and Dominion are not the only ones who've arrived in Nexus, there are also other alien races ranged from the fluffy furry things to the tech-advanced oceanic species, not to mention the Protostar Corp, an intergalactic corporation which sold almost everything and anything also think the planet is a gold mine (both literally and figuratively) not to mention since Nexus itself a big Eldan lab which the Eldan fools around with the original natives and plants resulting in some hideous monstrosities and cool-looking giant robots.

The game itself had some cohesive lore on the Eldan and Nexus which scattered all around the world in form of notes, relics, and datacubes, finding them are not always easy and sometimes required player to navigate some jumping puzzle to reach them, contrary to them the quest NPCs offered a really tiny bit of it, this is a bit turn off since you probably have to scour some interesting area (i.e a giant unidentified skeleton in a middle of the desert) to know a bit more of it. Eventually you'll heard much about the Genesis Prime, and (spoiler), ahem... so yeah.

In a matter of aesthetics, the cartoony style of Wildstar fits their image story, space cowboys for hire, gun (sword) toting undead interstellar mercenary looking for home, every 10 level you're treated to some really cool leveling place, two bio domes, each contains opposite environment and biology to each other, a dark side of the moon where you can jump higher and discover more about the Eldan which is... disturbing, a contested areas which both faction wage an all out war against a nation of winged creatures, but unfortunately the design turns bleak on the max daily hub area, up until Carbine drops an update called strain which contains an awesome-looking (and hard) area, it's like Icecrown in WOW where you feel that you won't be save anywehere, even the sky.

Except in the taxis

Gameplay:
Let me emphasis this one once again: WILDSTAR IS HARD, yes, not only the difficulty, but your computer spec also decided it, you need minimal 30-40 FPS to survive an encounter, because as I said on my first review: YOU WILL DIE, AGAIN, AND AGAIN, and the game will sneer at you for dying again and again like a noob, oh yeah, count your latency, because anything above 200 will kill you, lag spike will smack you down, and in a dungeon it will ruined your entire life.

Unfortunately my life revolved around riding a hoverbike

Wildstar employed action-based battle, where all your attacks do area of damage attacks and also the mobs which you must dodge or interrupt with some skills, interrupting enemies are highly valuable because then your next attacks will deal extra damage to them. I'm a stalker and a melee damage dealer which means I will go toe to toe with enemies and I must killed them ASAP because of my medium armor, The Stalker can also become a tank which based on evasive manuouvre and skills to weaken the enemy's attacks but I'm not go into that light since I'm experimenting with my dps spec.

My first headscratch came on the skill selection, Stalker has like twenty five skills (plus five unlockables) and can only put 7 of them on the shortcut, you'll essentially played with shortcut because of the nature of the fast paced battle (no time for clicks), and each of them has levels which powers up their damage or debuff effects, I've been there on guild wars 1 but never have been so confused, so In the end I just selected the first five of them and roll two from the utilities section, because I've been so used to rotating them (final slot opened at level 30, so in 29 level I've been using the same skill set over and over again)

Did I mention all of them are active skills? So where's the passive? Welcome to my second headache, the AMP bar, it has dot things, and these passive dot things on some level unlocked new active skill, but here's a catch some AMP dots are locked and must be unlocked with the corresponding item, I got some from fighting the enemies in the world, but then at max level I realized I have too many locked dots, but then I remembered there's a vendor called imported AMP vendor (or something) so I bought a bunch of my class AMP, I still have some locked and really have no idea how to obtain them. They really need to work on this to ensure player got the full picture about how this thing worked since I reset them twice

DOTS!!

I followed my main quest and never left an area up until I exhausted all soloable quests, which sometimes racked my reputation to that area's faction to the max, it also helped my builder path, you know that one thing that makes wildstar awesome and made you interested on interacting with the world as my first review said. On a quest-following player Wildstar has a special final quest (but sometimes separate) that usually involved you to obtain an artifact of the scene to display on your city's museum, you can click them for more info, I personally liked this, but I would like it more if it can be displayed in my own house, what's the point of owning a house without your personal achievement?

Extras & Final Words:
I reached my max level three days short of my free game time expiry date, so I used the remaining time to gear up and queue at the group finder, unfortunately it seldom works, there are two PVE group instances: Adventures and Dungeons, Raid is on a whole another level and you can't queue randoms for them, they're also have attunements in form of gear levels and required quests, I've been queued for adventures and dungeons on my leveling progress (they're both level-synced) but it seldom pops even on higher level where it finally has the option random adventure/dungeon, thus it can also become a measuring tool about how many people actually played this game, and I must said: not so much, there are only two servers on Europe, one for PVE and the other for PVP, so comparing it to WOW or even Final Fantasy XIV won't work

Although FFXIV and WOW need more tied up giant robots

I love how Wildstar explored the sci-fi niche of a story, even when the story itself is mediocre at best, I love how the world was designed, although it's kinda empty, I adore the crafting and path system, my complaint was technical, some bugs here and there, the DF that seldom works (or probably dont have players queueing), If only my machine is a little better I probably will return here someday when it's going f2p as I have max level now. It's sad such good game qith so much potential wasted, I don't know what cause it, it's probably because it was initially aimed for hardcore players, as it was designed to follow the exact same path as Vanilla WOW, as they realized and added some content for casual players (like contracts and bounties) it was already too late, many people both players and key developers has already left the game. When wildstar haven't released the devs are all open and laughs, after the release however communication becomes scarce, the updates initially came fast (they said once a month) but halted at the third month, after that it was zero comms from them. I don't bought it at the time because it was too hard for me and I have FFXIV

Free to play is one final way for NCSOFT games to regain players, as exhibited by City of Heroes but they're eventually get the hatchet and shut down when Guild Wars 2 came out, Wildstar is the only subbed MMO NCSOFT has and now as they'll gone f2p they have numerous games to contend to like Skyforge which has similar theme but grindy content (no I won't count SWTOR as they're p2p), the question remains: will Wildstar finally buried when Blade and Soul (which has similar battle gameplay) came out to the west? As usual I'll just wait and see