Blog Archives
Understanding Guild Wars 2 better. Part 2.
Just to recap, recently I’ve been venturing in #GuildWars2. Now the interesting part is that the more time that you invest into the game and with the right guidance/tutelage the game opens up into so much more. Events in world are 24/7 and storytelling. As of late I have been going through the Living World season 3. But I have been working on so many little things I feel like I’m spreading myself thin, don’t take me wrong. It’s not the games fault, it’s actually mine, meaning in short, there’s so much to do that I almost can’t decide.
Update on gaming and Guild Wars 2 Sale.
For some of my readers may have already know that I had move on from #swtor. It was good for a while but some may argue that it was dead/dying and lack of content etc. This topic has been argued for the longest time, and that’s fine. But I had been playing for 5+ years, close to 6 years give or take. And yes I uninstalled the game already. Maybe one day I’ll come back to it, but not anytime soon. For those that want to try it out, my advice to you is that don’t even waste your time with the free to play. And that if you want to experience the full game, then just subscribe to it and get upto command rank 300.
As in some of my post in the past I have criticized #Bioware for their lack of endgame content, and I still do. And this is why endgame raiders leave/left the game. In the wake of all of this I had a friend ask me to try out #FinalFantasyXIV and I was so relunctant to do so. Well, eventually I gave in and started on the free trial of #FFXIV and I was amazed at how smooth the game runs. If you haven’t already checked out my blog post about the free trial of ffxiv, please do so. The free trial of the game is great so that you can actually get a feel for the game. Now for me, I can say that I am enjoying the endgame of FFXIV, it’s been a blast. And as a reminder remember that you can play just about every job/class on the free trial. In the beginning it’s hand holding but later on it starts to pick up.
Along with FFXIV, I have been playing #GuildWars2 and it’s been a bit different the the typical MMO feel and in comparsion to swtor and ffxiv with the trinity (tanks, dps, and healers) compostion. It’s more like a hybrid-ish of all three into one. The environment and feel for the game is different, what I do like about #GW2 is that you can just go around and level/explore and do you main story line, it doesn’t make you feel like there’s a grind at all. I think that it challenges the player(s) to figure out puzzles. I do like that personally. Arenanet now has the core game as a trial, and if you want to upgrade you can upgrade to either a Deluxe version or buy into ‘Heart of Thorns/Path of Fire’, currently I have Heart of Thorns and it’s been a blast. Though I do have one issue with the game but I think as long as you know that once you hit 80, you have to unlock Mastery points by unlocking them through the first couple of quests of the Main Storyline of Heart of Thorns. Then you can go back to Tyria for further exploration and finding more Mastery points so that you can unlock certain perks (such as gliding). If this can help anyone, great. I learned the hardway. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-path-of-fire-50-off-sale/
So I would say now is a good time to take advantage of the Guild Wars 2 Sale!!! I just literally bought mine today for Path of Fire, cause I missed the last sale. And last but not least, I apologize to those for not posting as often but I should be posting more frequently. I have been streaming on twitch.
Also as of late, I have been playing Star Trek Online, and I’m really enjoying this game too. Crytic removed their sub from the game, so now there is only ‘Free to Play’ or a lifetime sub of $299.99 but I was advised to wait for when Crytic has a $100 off sale or so to take advantage of that. But it doesn’t hurt to check out all the games out there and mix it up a bit.
So stay tuned to The Balance Force.
A bump in the road with the silent treatment
I thought that I would mention that right now going on in SWTOR that unlocking outfits in collections are HALF OFF!!!! For a limited time ONLY!
It was brought up to my attention on Twitter that why hadn’t Bioware announced it? And excellent question, perhaps maybe some sort of backlash from the harassment of one of the Devs? Speculation may arise from the community in regards to further communications from Bioware to the community. It’s sad in a way that a few bad apples ruins the bunch. The behavior of a few does not reflect the whole community. But what can we as the community do to gain the trust back from Bioware to make these small announcements?
Could this be the beginning of what we as the community struggled to get from Bioware? I know personally I don’t want Bioware to turn their backs to the community. It really seemed that we as in Bioware and the community were moving in the right direction and now we’re being put in the corner to think about we’ve done. People need to be respectful, being behind a computer doesn’t give one the right to just say anything that you want regardless of how it will affect the person. A silent treatment is toxic to a relationship.
Your rights end where others rights begins. Food for thought.
Stay tuned to The Balance Force.
PSA… Developer Harassment
Post on May 6th by John J. | Post 2. | Post 3.
Recently a Swtor Dev was harassed for a post on the forums, but to go to the degree of harassing ones family. Unacceptable, many players of Swtor will agree that this should never happen in any way, shape or form. It brings to light that these particular people don’t understand the particulars of communicating on a mature level. It’s shameful. And it affects the entire way we wanted Bioware to be more transparent on communicating with us, the player base.
For us players this is a game, a form of entertainment, a way to relax and have fun with friends. It’s NOT fun to affect a person who is doing their job and/or their family simply because one doesn’t like ‘X, Y, and Z’.
For example: Many of the healers were not happy with the proposed changes for 3.2.1. The Dev team asked for the opinions and feedback in regards to these changes. A majority of players presented a thoughtful and constructive point of views about these changes. And the changes for healers were reevaluated and pulled from 3.2.1.
Now, ofcourse this type of behavior upsets me simply because I feel that NO ONE should ever experience this type of situation.
Posted on May 7th by Eric Musco.
No one has the right to harass a person and/or their family. All the best to John and his family.
Ziost story impression and disappointments
Recently I’ve got to go through the second part of the Ziost story, on my Sage. And so far I like what Bioware did storywise. But I can’t help to feel like it lacked in content. Now, keep in mind that you have to finish your storyline on Yavin in order to get the mission-story arch for Ziost. Once you get to Ziost, you meet up with Lana/Theron (depending on which side you’re playing on), pick up a few missions and evacuate some citizens and fight mind controlled minions of the Emperor and are introduced to “The Sixth Line Jedi Order” (in some cases people are calling ‘The Grey Jedi Order’).
NOTE: May contain spoilers
Ziost, healers and exploiters… oh my.
~ Ziost
So in all honesty, I got to try out the Ziost line on PTS when they announced it for Subs only. I went through it, mostly spacebarring. I didn’t really want to ruin it completely for myself. But taking my time and actually watching the cutscenes, I was impressed with the story content, that I was disappointed when I got to the end cause I really wanted to finish it and know what happened. But I only did it on my Sage on JC pubside, I’ll eventually get to do it on my other characters later on after May 4th.
Ziost storyline, for the little tidbit that they gave us. I look forward to finding out the rest of the storyline. As I said before, I’m impressed so far with the storyarch. What I expect is alot more of history/lore about Ziost. I find it real interesting on the beginning areas of Ziost beautifully done, the vibe is well done.
Cantina event follow up…
Presentation:
The presentation of the event was nicely done with ESL and the host. But essentially it was the ‘Dev Stream 2.0’, on that I was disappointed about that. My speculation is that Bioware wanted to ride the same wave from the March Dev Stream and hype. Bioware could’ve just continued on from the Dev stream and just have ‘recapped’, and could’ve gone into the new information from there. But guessing they wanted to somewhat drag it out to fill space. But I can’t help to say that it still felt like they were falling short in some areas. Now granted there was a few setbacks, and I wasn’t too sure of what happened in regards to the team up of Bioware and ESL. But seeing that ESL streamed the Cantina event confirmed that there’s still a partnership going on. And I speculate that at some point Bioware will do another type of event in conjunction with ESL. Any future ‘Operation: Victory’ event? Or any event to make up for it?
Rise of the Emperor
First off, if you missed the Dev’s stream you can view it here. And there are some spoilers, so if you don’t want any spoilers. Than don’t watch it.
I will say that I personally think that the Dev’s did a good job with this stream, using the presentation that they were going to use for Pax East. Energy was good, the giveaways, nice touch.
Great that they’re building hype for ‘The Rise of the Emperor’, a new storyarch, and yes like the Devs said it did leave a few questions unanswered. I guess we’ll learn more once 3.2 hits the live servers. This stream seemed to cover PvE content, I was noticing in chat a lot of questions as to bug fixes, PvP, class balancing, cross-server, etc. If you can dodge a wrench, you dodge a question.
A tremor in the Force
Well, today Eric Musco announced (finally) that Bioware will have its stream.
March 20th from 3pm-4pm CDT via twitch.tv/swtor with some news of 3.2 update.
So we get 1 hour to hopefully watch something that will hype us up for 3.2 update. Maybe a little insight on ‘the outfitter’?
Maybe a Q&A? What questions do you think will be asked?
- Coratanni and Underlurker bug fix?
- PvP new content?
- Nightmare for new Ops?
- Class balancing? Or Nerfing?
- Operation: Victory, re announced?
Pulling the ears off a Gundark…
I had quite an interesting conversation with a couple of guildies and friends on Teamspeak, the topic… was Bioware and its reputation and where the company is going.
One of the most interesting things about this topic is the fact that Bioware seems to have a ‘running joke’ reputation. And every time that Bioware puts out an update to fix something they break something else. As a guildie said, ‘one step forward, and three steps back’. I mean how bad is that, that we as players of this game see it that way.
The Balance Force 