Quadruple Game Action Woo

Metal Gear Solid V

We’re not Diamond Dogs anymore. We’re Pink Octopus.

And Snake’s having a rest, and I’ve replaced him with Frantic Wolf, a prisoner I rescued a while back. Badass lady!

MGSV is a remarkable game. It’s light on the nonsensical story, which is usually half the reason to buy a Metal Gear Solid game in the first place, but it instead gives you these gigantic sandboxes to wreak havoc in. My favourite tactic is to go in sneaky with my tranquilizer pistol, then if things get hairy? Silenced assault rifle and a rocket launcher. Boom.

Things tend to get hairy now that the enemies seem to all be wearing helmets. Bastards.

I love games that are open world. Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, GTA and now MGS. There are some aspects of the game I’m not a huge fan of (Quiet’s an AWESOME character, but her skimpiness and the loose, silly reason for it are a bit of an err, especially when you unlock an outfit for her that COVERS HER UP. Kojima, just admit you wanted sexy T&A, it’s fine, we’ve had the cameras rolling over Snake’s sculpted ass for years and it was fine then), but the game as a whole is just an abolute masterpiece.

And I’m only 14% done, what the actual frig.

Street Fighter V

I’m very excited for R. Mika. She was one of my favourites from Alpha 3, and her return is a massive source of happiness for me.

One of my other favourites has been announced today too, Karin!

She’s looking grown up! She looks all business like, and of course the OHOHOHO laugh is back. Her older appearance gives me hope that we’ll see a Sakura who’s dressed appropriately for her age (i.e. not in school uniform. Unless her story is that she’s abominably stupid and has been held back until her mid 20’s?), and means the game itself is slightly less of a sausage-fest.

Not that I’m opposed to sausage-fests, per se, but I do like badass ladies in my fighting games too.

World of Warcraft

Any Legion news yet? Nope? Okay then.

I get that they’re probably waiting for Blizzcon, but leaving 3 months between the reveal and follow-up information risks people just not caring when the news actually DOES roll in.

I’m dangerously close to that precipice. I have MGSV, FFXIV and various other games to play, Disgaea 5 and Street Fighter V to look forward to. I don’t foresee me doing much in WoW bar Thursday raiding for the foreseeable, and having nothing to look forward to bar minimal details from Gamescom (that may not even feature in Legion, let’s be honest, because it’s sometimes easy to confuse ambition with ability; just look at how garrisons turned out, look at the lack of Path of the Titans, dance studio, or even the Abyssal Maw instance which would have resolved the Neptulon storyline) isn’t giving me much hope.

I still love my Pandaren though. They are amazing. They may be the only thing keeping me there, frankly.

Final Fantasy XIV

I’ve hit level 46, I have no more storyline quests until I hit level 49, so I’d better bugger off and grind some levequests and FATEs.

Got me some ninja-specific gear though, so that’s nice.

GOTTA GO NOW. GOTTA GRIND.

Dragon Girls, Ninjitsu and Multiclassing: Why I’m Loving FFXIV

What have I been doing recently? Why, levelling Ikralla Adnap in Final Fantasy XIV, of course! She finally hit level 30 in Rogue, and I immediately set about getting the Ninja job unlocked.

It’s an interesting character concept. You have 3 core abilities called Mudras, special ninja hand signs, and you use these in various combinations to make attacks happen. The Mudras are Ten (the first one you get), Chi and Jin, and a 4th ability called Ninjitsu is what you activate to unleash the attack.

Using 1 mudra on its own sees you throw a massive shuriken, using Chi then Ten makes an enemy explode and deal fire damage to it and enemies around it, Chi > Jin > Ten increases your attack speed, and so on and so forth. Mess up a combination? You temporarily wear a bunny hat so everyone can laugh at you.

 

 

I like this about FFXIV. It has interesting class mechanics (at least, Ninjas do. Not played with other classes much yet). Rogues do too, in that they have certain attacks do double damage when executed after other specific attacks. You use Spinning Edge, which doubles the damage of Shadow Fang or Gust Slash, the latter of which also doubles the damage of Dancing Edge (which does even MORE damage when you attack an enemy’s flank) or Aeolian Edge (which deals further damage when you use it behind your enemy). Rogues are about positioning, or at least about knowing how your ENEMY is positioned, and using the appropriate attacks.

Also, my character is not a cat girl anymore, but a dragon girl! The Au Ra race were introduced with the Heavensward expansion, and I used the Fantasia potion I receieved for being subbed a certain amount of time on changing her! No regrets. Never looked back.

Dragons are fuckin’ RAD.

That girl on the right is an NPC called V’Kebbe, and she’s pretty cool herself.

I will one day be clad in the most garishly-coloured armour I can find, but until then, she’s wearing unflattering greens and manky browns.

Another concept I like about FFXIV is that 1 character can be every class. I levelled Ikralla initially as a Pugilist, then switched to Rogue when the opportunity arose. She’s currently sitting in Limsa Lominsa as a Culinarian, a non-combat class that creates buff foods, but I can switch to a gathering class, magic class, a combat class or another crafting class merely by going to their “guild” location, completing a quest, then equipping that class’s weapon!

There’s a benefit to levelling like this too. Some abilities are marked as being cross-class ones, meaning that you can use that as ANY class. When she was fighting as a Rogue, I can’t even begin to fathom how many battles I might have lost without the Pugilist healing ability.

Anyway, enough gushing. Here’s a Cactuar from Final Fantasy 8. Have a nice day, kids.

Token

The downfall of the game WoW Token is apparently available in the US as of today, allowing you to purchase a token for 30 days of game time and sell it in the auction house for a princely sum of gold. Initial gold price will be 30k, which seems… well. $20 netting you 30k. Naturally it’s possible for the price to rise. $20 getting you 50k would be nice, but… what if it went the other way? $20 gets you 5k, oops. Better luck next time.

I’m curious as to what the EU or UK price will be. Still at a 20? £20 or Euros?

I hope not. £20 is nearly $30. £13.50 would achieve parity but I doubt that’d happen.

Anyway, that’s a thing. I’m curious how far the price of the token falls in these first days and weeks. Or rises, I suppose.

IN OTHER NEWS: #WoW

Sunbuer hit level 100 the other day, and I sorted out a transmog for her! Well, apart from the staff. I’ll try and find something pretty at some point. I was thinking the Frostscythe of Ahune, but that’s a random drop from a seasonal boss, so I’ll have to cross my fingers I guess.

#FFXIV

Ikralla Adnap hit level 20 in Rogue! Time to go do the class quest! As part of the main questline, I did my first 3 dungeons too! Sastasha, Tam-Tara Deepcroft, and Copperbell Mines. I tell you, dungeon queues are the same as WoW! 20 minutes as a DPS, but that’s where the similarities end. The people seem way more… well, nice. I announced I was a bit of a newbie to dungeons and FFXIV in general, and people were nice, and explained fights, how to use the Limit Break attack, and generally helped me through it! I even got 2 player commendations, whatever they are. I guess people like my stabbing.

It’s vastly different from Warcraft, where one time I announced I hadn’t done a dungeon before (Heroic Stonecore, way back when) and I got kicked from the group for it. Groups in WoW nowadays for some reason seem to flit from entirely silent, to outright hostile, with no middle ground and no deviation. On the contrary, people in FFXIV have been helpful, chatty, humourous.

Obviously your mileage may vary. I’ve no doubt that WoW has its saints and FFXIV its sinners, but thankfully I’ve not run into them yet.

Completion

WoW Blog 30 Challenge

Back at the start of March, I decided to take part in this little challenge. Could I blog every day for 30 days in a row?

Turns out yes, I certainly can! Today marks 30 out of 30! It’s not something I can keep up I think, I certainly struggled for things to write some days! Still, I’d like to thank The Pink Pally for organising it, and everyone who supported me, directly or indirectly, over the last month! This has helped me get firmly back in the blogging saddle after a month where I couldn’t write anything, which is fantastic!

A happy ending!

Final Fantasy XIV

Ikralla is level 14. So close to 15, when I can ditch Pugilist and take up Rogue!

The armor sets in this game amuse me slightly. They’re either hilariously skimpy, or overly layered. Take this set:

 

A few quests got me this set, and it looks like she’s wearing some sort of kung-fu bikini. Several quests later, and Ikralla looks like:

Basically Anneka Rice from Challenge Anneka or Treasure Hunt. I feel compelled to ride in a helicopter and solve riddles whenever I look at her.

World of Warcraft

Any WoW developments?

No?

Oh.

Lunchi is now toting an item level of 631, thanks to a few upgrades from Highmaul! She’s also sitting on 84 Abrowhatever Stones. Only got 1 Cluster! Bah!

A word of advice for people doing LFR, particularly Mar’gok. KILL THE FUCKING ADDS, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GREEN AND FEL.

In Other News

• I’d freaking love another series of Challenge Anneka or Treasure Hunt. Bring back Anneka!
• I’m 29 on Friday. Eeeek. Going to a restaurant that day called Viva Brazil! Gotta be home early, I have work at 4am the next day. Screw you, Easter.
• I’m a massive bundle of negativity at the moment. I keep seeing things and hearing things that make me overwhelmingly angry. I rant about things on Twitter every so often, maybe you’ve seen it. I’m also getting steadily angrier with things going on at work, but I’m not really going to put too much focus on that because it’s just infuriating.

Gonna do my garrison missions. Play some FF14. Maybe do a bit of combo practice in Street Fighter. Things like that tend to relax me. It’s not even a “taking my anger out on things” sorta thing. Combo practice is repetitive. It’s almost… numbing. Focus on that, not on the irritation.

It’s why, when I rant on Twitter about injustices and whatnot, I then state that I’m gonna do some sort of repetitive activity, whether that’s practicing EX Senkugoshoha combos, organising garrison missions, or questing in Eorzea. It helps me relax, it helps me calm down. I don’t like being angry. I’m an incredibly unpleasant person when I’m angry. I mean, sure, most people are, but me particularly so. I shout. I swear. I lash out inwardly, if that makes sense. Anything I can do to stop me doing that is a help.

I guess what I’m trying to say is THANKS VIDEO GAMES, YOU KEEP ME SANE!

I have the Challenge Anneka theme in my head. Send help.

Relax

It’s Sunday, which means a day of chilling out! Barring the fact my back is in agony, I was awake at 4am because I had work, and the TERRIBLE weather, it’s going pretty good so far.

World of Warcraft

People are speculating that patch 6.2 will go on the PTR sometime soon. That’d be nice. News. Details. The game moving forward, rather than sitting where it is now. We’d all like that, wouldn’t we?

What news will it bring for Warlocks and Monks? Warriors and Priests? Will we see Ember generation attached to Rain of Fire again? Will Gladiator see further nerfs? Will Monk see some sort of change that knocks them off the pedestal of “Best Tank 2015”? I wait with bated breath!

Something something Priests?

Final Fantasy XIV

Having joined the Greysky Armada, Ikralla finds herself in Horizon’s Edge, looking to get to level 15 at some point.

Trouble is, she keeps getting distracted by amusing conversations, filling in her hunting log, reading up on non-combat things like crafting and gathering, and general faffing. It’s that general faffing that’ll get you! PROcrastination.

Here’s how Ikralla looks at the moment. She’s a catgirl with claws! Mreow!

Mortal Kombat X

It’s my birthday on Friday the 3rd! I asked the boyfriend to pre-order MKX for my birthday for me on the PS4. This means we’re finally getting a PS4 soon! Roll on the 14th, I say. Gotta get my Kung Lao fix!

Here’s the character select screen so far. See those 4 empty boxes? That probably means we have 4 more characters left to see, unless one of those boxes is dedicated to some sort of radial DLC character select menu.

Now, two of those spaces will be filled with Jax (he was recently confirmed as playable accidentally when a Carl Weathers skin was revealed for him) and his daughter Jacqui, but who will the other 2 spaces be filled with? New characters? Returning ones? I can’t wait to find out!

I have my fingers and toes crossed for Cyrax, I really do. If each character has 3 variants, then have Cyrax’s first variation be classic Cyrax, with nets and bombs. Have the second be based more on Sektor, with missiles and flamethrowers, and the third more based on… I dunno, Smoke? Teleports, invisibilty shenanigans, that sorta thing.

Oh, I can hope. I can hope so hard.

Reappearance

The internet is fixed! Turns out it got disconnected by a careless maintenance man and not reported, or fixed, or anything like that. Just a cable left in the grass. Mr Sky Man came, he fixed, he left, and here I am online again! Able to play WoW (my LFR day will be tomorrow instead of Thursday now), and FFXIV (I had JUST got Ikralla to level 10!).

THIS MEANS I CAN CHANGE CLASSES. I need to get Pugilist to level 15, stop me if you’ve heard this before, then I can switch to ROGUE.

ALL EORZEA’S ITEMS WILL BE MINE.

Yesterday, while I was internetless, I did a bit of combo practice with Gouken and Poison in Ultra Street Fighter 4. The idea is, you do something, then you repeat it endlessly until you can do it at the drop of a hat. I can’t just yet, but I can combo into Poison Kiss from a red-focus-attack-dash-cancelled Whip of Love, and I can FADC Gouken’s Tatsumaki Gorasen into his EX Tatsumaki Gorasen, which seems kinda pointless but looks WONDERFULLY flashy.

In case you forgot, this is part of Poison Kiss. Yes indeed.

I need to practice comboing out of Gouken’s Denjin Hadoken. It causes a wall bounce which, if you’re fast, you can follow up with an attack. I can do a follow-up when he does a partially or fully charged Denjin Hadoken, but not on an uncharged one. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s possible.

One interesting thing from the Street Fighter wiki is that Gouken’s Denjin Hadoken, when fully charged, is the MOST POWERFUL ULTRA IN THE GAME.

Yeah, I like my characters strong.

IN OTHER NEWS

• I may do solo guides for the other Cataclysm raids, then make a start on Mists ones. Gonna focus on Warlock and Monk strategies, but may branch out. Who knows?
• That’s about it really.

Progress

It’s important to feel like you’re making progress in a game. In Final Fantasy 14, my progress is constant, as I have a new character. I level up every so often, instant progression! A quest reward may give me a new piece of armor, or a weapon, or just some experience and gil, and the effect is that it moves me forward.

I’m progressing in Warcraft too, though not in a similar fashion, considering I’m at max level. I’m only an LFR player so my progress will likely be slower than most, but my warlock is slowly gearing up. She’s got the first of 3 Elemental Tablets (made from 300 Elemental Runes! 9 or 27 of them drop from bosses, plus there’s missions for 18 of them and you can get them in work orders too), she’s got a couple new pieces of gear too. Progress.

Working towards things, striding ever onward, but what happens when you’ve progressed as far as you feel you can? Numerous people seem to be quitting the game, citing “nothing to do.”

I can sit here and say “YES THERE IS THERE’S SO MUCH!” but what I have an interest in (LFR, collecting things, levelling alts, etc) may not pique the interest of someone who’s a hardcore raider done with progression, or someone who’s collected all the battle pets and beaten all the trainers, or someone who may have just hit a stumbling block (seeing you have to collect 900 Elemental Runes is EXTREMELY daunting, considering how long it’s taken some to just get 125 Abrogator Stones).

So, I guess what I’m saying is it’s important to instill a sense of “I’m making PROGRESS!” in players, lest they feel like they’re done and move on, potentially never returning.

A tough ask, to be sure.

 

In Other News!

Today is LFR day, the day I spam LFRs on my characters for legendary quest items. To prevent a sort of LFR burnout, I’m only queuing for the instance relevant to the stage of the legendary quest I’m on. Raenah is collecting Elemental Runes, so I will queue her for Blackrock Forge, and ignore Highmaul. Lillorigga and Lunchi are still collecting Abrogator Stones, so I am ignoring Blackrock Forge in favour of Highmaul.

Lunchi has the added incentive of not having the item level for BRF yet, so there’s that.

I will do Lillorigga and Lunchi’s runs later. For now, I’m gonna have a shower and go out to lunch.

FFXIV and WoW and Terrible Weather

Final Fantasy XIV

Say hello to Ikralla Adnap (yes that’s “panda” backwards), a Pugilist. I resubbed to FFXIV the day before yesterday, and finished updating it last night. I plan to get her to level 15 in Pugilist, then make her a Rogue! I was slightly confused when I couldn’t make her a Rogue straight off the bat, but apparently you can’t choose it as a starting class! You have to make another class, get it to level 10, do the special class quest at that level, THEN you can make a Rogue.

A site I read advised getting the Pugilist to 15, as this is one of the prerequisites for the Ninja class, which is just too badass to NOT be.

So yes, while WoW!Ikralla is a chunky Pandaren monk, FF14!Ikralla is a scrappy catgirl that’s probably gonna steal anything not nailed down.

World of Warcraft

Maintenance today for NA servers! Maintenance tomorrow for us EU folk! It’s introducing the 6.1.2 patch, which brings in the WoW Token! It’ll cost $20 (or some equivalent in other currency), but gold prices for it haven’t been specified yet. There’s more information here, so check it out!

Let’s all jump on that slippery slope to WoW going Free to Play! (no I’m not being serious, I went over this a while ago, GOSH)

In Other News

• What the actual frig it’s HAILING out there
• This is my 24th blog post in a row!
• No seriously it’s 8 degrees out there why the fuck is it hailing
• I have a pack of 5 Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. The whole furore over how the chocolate is different and they’re ruined forever? THEY TASTE THE SAME AS THEY ALWAYS DID.
• Maybe I just have an unrefined palate?
• Maybe all the spicy food over the years has killed my taste buds.

#ffxiv #wow I