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"Reborn" may not quite be the correct word choice...I wonder how many people remember the catastrophe that the initial launch of Final Fantasy XIV was. It coincided with the launch of the World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion pack, and man, was I ever glad I chose to play WoW instead of switching over to Final Fantasy XIV.
The lure was there, absolutely, especially since I had always wanted to play FFXI Online but didn't have a capable computer or internet for my PS2. By the time it launched on the Xbox 360, the servers had dwindled and the initial thrill and novelty of the experience was gone; plus, I was already playing games like the World of Warcraft, Aion, Tera, which contained newer concepts and a wider fan-base at that moment in time. I later heard from my friends and coworkers that they could not pass level 20 in FFXIV; not due to any lack of skill or effort on their part, but because the quests simply ran out! Hard to believe in a game where the level cap was to be 60! Free time was given to paying customers, and some more quests were added. My friends could now progress to level 25, hooray! Yet here they languished yet again, forced to indiscriminately slaughter monsters in a vain attempt to gain new skills and abilities. Needless to say, Square had to create some major changes to the game. FFXIV: A Realm Reborn takes place five years after the initial "campaign", yet the launch for this game is fraught with nearly as many issues. There is no queue system to enter into a server, many North American servers are unavailable to create new characters on, and those who do have characters find themselves getting errors that boot them from the game and are then unable to log back in. There are even rumours spreading of players logging their characters in during the morning in order to play at night, as there is currently no removal of idle characters from the realms. I was finally able to create a character at around 12 a.m. on August 29 on the same realm as my friends (I previously made version of her and others on first a Japan Realm which had some lag, and later an EU Realm when they opened the, but it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to log in when I return home after work tonight. My Falafell awaits!
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TPA Orianna Skin on the PBESo far, I like it. I think it's a cute Orianna skin, and I really do love the ponytail. TPA Mundo Skin on the PBE"MUNDO GO WHERE HE PLEASES!" Seriously. What Happened?I am getting exceedingly frustrated now when I go to play ARAM. I don't know what has happened with my MMR or if it even applies, but I am consistently getting paired up with people who did very well in Season 2 of LoL; gold and platinum players. This sounds like a fantastic thing! After all, these players are clearly more skilled than the rest of the player base, and should be able to continue my winning streak.
How I wish that was the case. These players are so bad at ARAM, it almost makes me want to quit playing. They're treating it like it's a regular Summoner's Rift map, sitting back, and farming under the turret. They rarely engage with the enemy, who is able to completely dominate and control the lane the entire game. When they do eventually decide to engage, it happens one at a time or they engage on the wrong target. Here's an example: our tank, Maoki, goes into engage on the Miss Fortune who strayed too close to our turret. An enemy Olaf runs in, and the other four members of the team engage on Olaf instead of Miss Fortune despite them being quite close together (MF was perhaps a step or two behind Olaf, Olaf being closer to the turret now). Our team dies, as they are being freely attacked by Miss Fortune, and Olaf also winds up living. I was under the impression that players who had attained a certain level of skill knew who to focus in a team fight and who not to. Why they can't transfer this knowledge over to ARAM, which is pure team fights, I will never understand. All I can do, I suppose, is to keep playing and hope I get a team that is capable of engaging as a team and that can focus the appropriate target at the appropriate time. -KS Lissandra is available after all!The good news is that Lissandra released with today's patch, despite the initial fear that she would not due to a post by Riot. However, people have been attempting to learn how to play her in an ARAM queue to little avail; here's a quick hint, she needs a ton of cooldown reduction items to be viable and helpful in general, and especially in an environment like ARAM. Some items that have helped me land my combo magic in an ARAM:
These are great, as they have the CDR, plus some extra bonuses without loading you with mana regen, which really isn't needed in the ARAM map due to the passive mana regen and Lissandra's passive. If I were to play her in a regular map, I would definitely pick up at least one mana regen item though. I've also found that while her Q (Iceshard) has the lowest cooldown for all of her spells, it also has a very short range that makes harassing people with it nigh impossible. As a result, I found that maxing out her W(Ring of Frost) and then balancing the remaining points between her Q (Iceshard) and her E(Glacial Path) garnered the best results.
In an ARAM, I did find myself maxing Glacial Path first, mostly as a harass tool, depending on the enemy team composition. When both teams had equal poke without the ability to engage, I found it to be a viable way to contribute, instead of sitting on my hands in a bush. The Howling Abyss on the PBEOne of my shorter games on the PBE in the new ARAM map. They finally fixed the towers (they don't spawn as being broken anymore) and everything seems to be working out great. Watch out for the Poro!
I feel guilty for neglecting my other titles...I'm not quite sure what to do about this. I've purchased a few games lately that I was very excited to play at the moment that I purchased them, titles such as: Pandora's Tower, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, Defiance, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. The only trouble is, I've barely played any of them! All I have been playing lately is the new ARAM mode on the League of Legends Public Beta Environment and I've been trying to be more active on the League of Legends forums as well. ... however, the new ARAM on the LoL PBE is fantastically epic.I'm most likely going to FRAPS a game or two soon, just for fun and to show my friends the updates on the PBE. I would be playing more PSO 2, except that it currently is not compatible with FRAPS; that, and I have to do my quest for my second class (Hunter going into the option to be a Fighter) and it seems like a lot more effort than I am currently willing to put into it. So, the League of Legends PBE has attracted all of my attention lately. Not only does it have the new champion, Lissandra, and the updated models for Trundle and Sejuani, but the ARAM matchmaking is a very satisfying experience, and can have games of varying time frames, though usually they are relatively short which means more games in a shorter period of time. The average game that I have played lately has been 20-30 minutes, as the PBE has unlocked all champions for all players, with a 20% IP boost enabled as well. It's still in Beta for a reason.This has caused some interesting glitches for me, however. The most noticeable one was my getting Morgana four games in a row; this was an unusually odd occurrence, for though my PBE account has quite a few champions unlocked (at least 30) I have yet to received a champion so many times in such a short period when I have my regular champions available. Now that all champions have been made available to me, I receive only a small selection of this availability with regularity. The strangest part is that every player on the PBE has all of the champions marked as playable/available, so it isn't as though Morgana is the only champion that I do not share in common with the other 9 players in the game. The one positive thing that has come of this, however, is that I have once and for all (until a new skin comes out) decided which Morgana skin is my favorite; Sinful Succulence Morgana. Note: The extra champions are currently disabled on the PBE. Links:
Games I'm not playing splash:
All Champions Unlocked
ARAM Collage:
Getting kicked off the servers makes me a sad panda.I've had a lot of people complaining about the lag and connection issues in Defiance, especially on the Xbox 360; to them, I counsel patience. Even the best developers create new content that has some glitches in it, and this game in particular is a relatively new concept in the world of consoles.
I'm personally giving the game about a month or so to work out the connection issues, and we'll see how I feel about it from there. Although to be honest, since there aren't any subscription fees, I'll probably keep playing and just change games every time it disconnects me. Tonight's a perfect example of that; I got disconnected from the servers while working on a Hellbug event, so I went to go play League of Legends and won both of my games. All in all, a solid night, as I gained two levels in Defiance prior to getting disconnected. Defiance on the Xbox 360Started up Defiance on my Xbox 360 a few days ago, and I must say, despite the lag and being unable to connect 30% of the time, I am really enjoying my time in the game. The story is a lot of fun, and you get such a plethora of weapons that you may think you're back in Borderlands 2. I also really enjoy the third-person standard view, as I tend to shoot from the hip regardless of what game I play, and this allows for a bit more freedom when it comes to recoil. I'm currently wielding a modded pistol and an automatic shotgun~ You get to customize your character, who doesn't really speak aside from the few emotes the game gives you, which is totally fine by me. Got the same treatment from Master Chief back in the day, and the other characters more than make up for your silence. The multiplayer is probably one of my favorite parts, though I am pretty awful at the team deathmatches. King of the Hill, though, I'm pretty damn decent. I think it probably has to do with there being less opportunities for consistent camping, as the map is much larger and much more obstructed than those in the deathmatches. The Arkfalls are one of the largest multiplayer experiences I've ever had, as anyone who is currently logged into the game is able to join in the event. Space Debris crashes into the planet, which naturally attracts some of the less desirable elements on the planet, namely the Hellbugs. Your job, as an Arkhunter, is to break open the space debris to try and retrieve the technology located inside. You do so by allowing the smaller Hellbugs to attack the debris, opening up weak points while defending against the larger swarming ones. Eventually, you may end up fighting a gigantic monster, which you can only defeat when the fully grown Hellbug emerges from hiding within. Overall, a ton of fun, though the lag I experience during my last Arkfall was absolutely insane! I could barely move, never mind actually switch out my weapons to something with some ammo. ArkfallsHowever, the Arkfall prior to that, I had next to no lag with the same amount of people present; I suppose it just all depends on timing and luck. As such, here's my score from the event, woo! While the game is currently very laggy and glitchy when it comes to logging in and staying logged in, it is definitely a game worth checking out. One part that I'm very excited for (looking into the future) is how the players will wind up impacting the TV show, Defiance, launching April 15. I'm willing to ride out the bugs, because honestly, I haven't had this much fun in a shooter since Perfect Dark 64 (and yes, I do also play Halo; the combat here just suits me much better). Links:
Defiance: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Defiance2.jpg Hellbug Picture 1: http://cdn0.sbnation.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/9669721/defiance.0_cinema_640.0.jpg Hellbug Picture 2: http://i2.cdnds.net/12/49/618x347/gaming-defiance-6.jpg Finally uploaded my PSO 2 White Day Emergency Quest video!Hooray, I finally got around to uploading my PSO 2 White Day Emergency Quest video! This one is basically just me running around to show all the different types of encounters you could have in a similar event-style emergency quest, plus the music is pretty awesome. I'm going to upload another video that shows the same quest on a harder difficulty, as the boss fights and crazyness that ensued on Hard was ridiculous, but epic. That one will most likely not feature a running audio commentary, since I want to post at least one video of each where you (and I) can enjoy the hilarious music that is playing in the background.
I do explain a little of what the Emergency Quest for this style of quest entails, as I know I was fairly confused in the beginning of playing PSO 2 (I do not use the English patch, way too paranoid for that!). Absolutely love this game to pieces! Remember, if you're interested in playing PSO 2, create your character on Ship 2, and join the English community on floors 10 and 20. You can also get pretty good with google translate, and join the Japanese players as well; that's what I've been working on lately. 4 days where I'm busier than I am on days where I'm not off...It was super awesome seeing my family this Easter weekend, we had tons of food and it was happy go fun times! I also got a chance to *finally* play the new Metal Gear game, Metal Gear Rising Revengeance on my Xbox 360! So far, absolutely loving it, Raiden is awesome. The only thing I wish that they had done (probably because I've never played a Metal Gear game in my life prior to this, excepting Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, which was AWFUL) was made a tutorial explaining a little bit more about Raiden's combat skills. However, my lack of talent with it was most likely entirely my fault, and not the game for not holding my hand enough. I wound up playing about an hour of the game, then did some VR missions, which definitely helped me out in learning some of Raiden's skills, though I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get close to getting some of those times. Hopefully by the time I beat the game, I'll have improved... maybe? I managed to remember one of my favorite songs of all time, and one that I was always pretty decent at singing, as it fits pretty much perfectly into my range, Kaze ni Naru (Become the Wind) from The Cat Returns. I'm working on a piece of artwork to sit there while the Youtube video is playing, so I'll hopefully have that finished by Monday evening, so I can post the video. My version is obviously a little different, as my voice sounds quite different, but I'm pretty happy with it. I will also be posting my PSO 2 White Day video tomorrow night, as I simply keep forgetting to do anything about it until it's roughly this time of night (3 am, whoops!). I guess that's everything... Oh! I downloaded the demo for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, and it is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. I chose to look like a Pikachu, and just the way the Pokemon reacts to things and how I run make me super happy. It isn't very challenging at this point, but I will most likely pick up the game to go with my new Pikachu 3DS XL. |
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