Rawrz?

Soez~ This is the current ranking page:




The aftermath of a duel with Onatha:




And people wonder why I have such a huge ego. (._.)

~Pearz

Guild : Make~!

So Rain has been made in Cloud 9. Our official date is December 26th - or maybe it was the 27th. I wouldn't know; the guild was made while I was asleep. >_>

Where did the money come from?! After all, as we all know, Rho and Pearz are perenially poor while I only sometimes have that 10M. Well, we picked up a whole bunch of useless (to us) rares on our dungeon run and, after lots and lots of questioning her intents, Pearz finally sold them all. So she went ahead and made the guild. And, for that reason, she's Vice Guild Master? I claimed Guild Master for myself, because Rho didn't care either way and because I will do everything in my power to take everything Pearz holds dear. >)

Guild recruitment isn't really open for now. We just wanted "Rain" above our heads so Ganav (the other faction) would know who exactly was oppressing them. (Ah, look at me talk big when I'm just the support. ><;;) After all, being known as the "fruit gang" was a little unwanted (and, again, I will take everything from Pearz that I can).

Recruitment isn't open because being in Rain right now while levelling in the Kanto area is nothing but a death sentence. The way I see it: Ganav (and, for all intents and purposes, Etenity our archnemesis) is facing humiliation at being hunted by only two people, so they'll go around PKing everyone else to strike fear in their hearts. Finding someone with Rain above their head that they can easily kill is just an awesome ego boost. Maybe I'm wrong, but being Guild Master has made my head swell shamelessly.

That said, Indi somehow managed to horn his/her/its way in. I was against it for the above reason, Rho told me that it would take a long time for him/her/it to reach Kanto, and that was that. I suspect she'll talk me into inviting more people with the same argument. v_v

One final note: Pearz, you're really a bad scout. Using that word to describe you is an attack on the English language. That is all.

~Aaro off

Season's Greetings?

So, it's the 23rd and Christmas is coming up. Some of you might not celebrate, so Season's Greetings. XD The good news is that Aaro lent me a big (and I mean HUGE) laptop to use. I can at least Cloud 9~ ^_^ No news yet, though, when I'll get my own one back. T_T
(Aaro Note~ : Comment 1. "At least", you say. It's a perfectly good laptop, actually better than the one I'm using now. It's just my extra now for various other reasons. That's a nice thank-you. *leer* Comment 2. It was purely selfish so you could Cloud 9. After all, there's levels to be had~!)

In Megaten news: the clan lead has officially been passed off to Lndi. Thus, go bother Lndi for anything guild-related. I will still pop into Megaten occasionally, but I think this move to Cloud 9 is permanent. As for the drama that occurred in Rain not long ago, I did not step in for just one reason: I didn't want to pull a Nakasawa (of Lucid). I'm rarely on, so I don't want to be the one that makes a judgement that affects the guild.

In Cloud 9 news: we agreed to remake Rain there. (But we're all too cheap to fork out the money. XD Aaro Note~ : It's, in reality, the fact that both Pearz and Rho stay around less than 1M while I constantly have about 7-9M. If you remember, the guild-making costs 10M. It is actually Pearz and Rho that can't pull their share. n//n) This is mainly due to the fact that most of the guilds already established lack PVPness. I'm already infamous here on Cloud 9, as a "saviour" for the Primus faction, and a wuss by the other faction. I mean just look here.
(Aaro Note~ : That's a long thread. Mention of Pearz shows up near the end of Page 1, then Page 2 is devoted to Pearz fighting back and Page 3 is basically Rho and Pearz discrediting the other side's arguments. Enjoy.)

Our "archnemesis" is a guild called Eternity. They like to run in huge, huge wolf packs and then wonder why we run when we're obviously grossly outnumbered. The funny thing is that they run whenever they are by themselves. It's pretty funny when someone higher level runs from you, fearing a 1v1.

Eternity boosts my ego so much~ Look. (Yes, indeed, the title of our little group is in reference to me. Who else is named after a fruit? XD) Cloud 9 is full of fun, fun, fun e-drama, and I hope more ensues. E-drama = spice of life.

BTW: I'm still looking for people to take up my Advanced wWrs challenge. It's one of my favourite games of all time, and thus a means of handing off some of my money in Megaten to someone.

~Pearz

Random Rant (Like My Other Ones)

Today marks the first day without my laptop. With my warranty about to expire, I sent it in to get that "s" key fixed. I won't have it back for a week. (O NOEZ.) I own an eeePC (it's a netbook), so I'm doing my blog from that.

Note: I hate netbooks in general. The keyboards are not full-size keyboards and thus are extremely hard to type on.

Megaten-wise: I'm pretty much not even logging in lately to do DFQs. I guess finishing to 150 once already drained me out; don't think I can handle it again. With two content patches recently, we won't see another one for months. There's nothing really holding me in Megaten other than grinding to lv93?

In Cloud 9 news: I'm ranked 3th place for fame (which is, in other words, slaughtering unsuspecting nubs). Owelz. I would post some lovely raging at me, but the screens are on my laptop and, as we know, it's being fixed now. D:

I didn't comment much about the whole Diablocake/Finella thing, but if you haven't seen it: the half assed fake apology was made by Diablocake. Here is summary of post:
Paragraph one - Okay...
Paragraph two - WTF?
Paragraph three - The world revolves around me.
Paragraph four - Here's an attempt at re-interpreting the problem.

So~ According to him, THE WHOLE REASON that her blog is still up is PURELY to give him a chance to apologize. (Wow?) He is not the immature one, as only Finella is. (lulz 'Cause even this post is SO mature.) Posting again, this time saying that you were just trying to apologize, doesn't work after you bash them AGAIN while still pretending it was an apology. Let me have a small re-enactment because it's so funny:

Person B - *standing around*
Person A - Hur hur hur. You SUCK! *punches Person B*
Person B - *leaves*
Person A - *goes to find Person A* You know that it was your fault I punched you in the first place, and you really do suck. If you didn't give me an excuse, it wouldn't have happened.
Person B - *silence*
Person A - Yeah, that last statement was an apology.

Pretty lulz to me.

So, with my laptop gone, I've been picking up some random manga to read, and also beat some DS games that I've been meaning to play (like the new Zelda game).

EDIT: I forgot to add this, the ZOMGZ PEARZ CHALLENGE!1!1!!ONE!11
Since I've got Macca sitting around, I decided to start this challenge. Anyone that beats me in a best 2 out of 3 in Advanced Wars: Day of Ruin (it's a DS game) gets 3mil Macca.
(Royce reminded me of the game about a week or two ago, so blame him.)
We will rotate 3 different maps, with the fog of war, and no cheating. (At least, don't cheat if you want to win the macca. XD)

~Pearz

Story Time With Pearz

So, no update to the Pearified Saga, since that takes a good hour or two of my time and also requires the use of my brain. So, instead, I'll tell you how my morning went. lulz

This morning, I had breakfast (consisting of a bagel) at Tim Hortons. For those that don't know what that is: Wiki here; it is a popular coffee/fast food place in Canada. Literally every other intersection has one. It's more common than McDonalds by far (at least, in Toronto anyway).

So, while enjoying my bagel, this man walked in and headed to the counter where they make your food. (There is a counter where they make it in front of you and then hand it to you when they're finished; kind of like at Subway.)

The man then proceeded to start yelling at the guy working. "I shouldn't need to walk in here. I was in line at that drivethrough for 10 minutes. I shouldn't need to waste my time coming in here. Do you guys know how to do your job? I asked for JAM on my bagel, and you gave me this crap. "

The guy working then responded, "When you order a bagel, it comes with butter, so we include it. When you asked for jam, we added it on top so you don't get any less with your bagel."

The man continued to go, "It should be common sense that if I want jam on my bagel, then I don't want any butter. Do any of you even know what you're doing? God, I don't have time for this."

The guy proceeded to leave, kicking open the door, while saying to himself, "God, my whole day is ruined now."

At this point is where everyone inside the place started laughing at his idiocy, and I finished up my bagel. I found this perfect for my morning. Pretty funny how a bit of butter can ruin a whole day and make someone rage like that. I should have recorded and then youtubed it; would have been a great hit. XD

So, in Megaten news, I finished the Lord of Flies Quest and already made my Lilith. The quest took me a good 2-3 hours, but it was new and exciting. ...too bad that was it for content. I tried to stone the Lilith, but failed. My synthesizer does not break the 5% on her crystallize. T_T
So far: 10 tries with Philosopher Stones (15%) and 17 tries with topaz (5%). I fail.
No, don't ask me to make a stone unless you're providing pretty much everything. (._.)

In Cloud 9 news, they got a content patch EXACTLY at the same time as Megaten got the Lord of Flies patch, thus making me pick which one to try first. D: Thus patch included a new continent and a raised level cap of 50.

The funny news is: the protection on their game is garbage. There were players that were caught hacking. This is what happened (quoted from Cloud 9 forum):
"This maintenance is because of ****s newly published hack, which lets people transform to a level 30-50 monster (including bat and more), and lets people log in to others' accounts if they only know their account name. Also, skills that are disabled/not availible yet could be used. This game is **** unless they fix it now. "
Basically (I may not know the exact hack but generally this is how it worked): the game uses a website to launch their game, except you have to log into their website to launch the game, so then you are already logged in by the time to launch. Now the problem is thus: for your browser to launch the game for you, you need an ActiveX plugin. By monitoring the add-on, you can find out what "key/code" is being sent by the website to boot the game.

Obviously, that key was totally non-secure and just included an account name, which is pure fail. That's how people were logging into other people's accounts. The transformation and unreleased skills was just their client files having zero encryption, which is pretty fail too. I was actually planning on doing same thing too, but just as a way to skip the patcher and website launch step. Probably the one that figured it out was doing that too, and just happened to stumbled into an unlocked door to other people's accounts. XD

So, this is pretty lulz. The good news is that the GMs are out of hiding. They seem to actually appear now to address problems on forums and such. Yay~?

~Pearz

Enter Pearz: Mark Cloud 9

First, some Megaten stuff. The new patch, Lord of Flies, is just around the corner. Judging by the announcement end date, it will come in a week or so. At least I was right about them adding the patch as a "Christmas Present"; just guessed wrong on a patch in between .T_T Oh well. I can't be right all the time. (What!?)

I finally hit 150 DFQ yesterday; going to slowly roll a Ram Zodiac to put in my Yukata to kill the Nightmare Kirin even faster? Though lately, I'm too busy grinding Cloud 9 rather than Megaten.

Tanarin got GS for GF; gratz! Cervios got GS for GF too, which is bleh. Funnier news: Yuki didn't get GS. lulz



Cloud 9 time! So, I just hit max the cap, lv35, an hour ago. Time to expand on some of the stuff I hadn't tampered much with earlier.

Crafting
There are three different types: jewel, metal, and alchemy. You can only specialize in one; I'm a Jewel Crafter. You spam your craft with mats that you mine and those that drop from mobs. Nothing too amazing, but crafting is crafting.

Customization
Since this is important to me, I'll touch up on it. I guess I was overly dulled by the subclass system letting me down. The limitation of skill points doesn't start hitting until you're about lv30, and I presume that it only gets worse as you level further. (There are more skills to choose from when you level up further.) So your character does have some uniqueness in terms of its skills, but the subclass and race subtrees are still pretty bland. You have to level your sub to get points for the subtree though, so that's double the levelling. To offset the zero quests left for your subclass, it receives double EXP when levelling (or so I read; it's untested by me).

All in all, to the customization system I'm pretty indifferent; nothing amazing or horrid.

PVP
The important stuff now. I am, by no means, a "veteran" of PVP in this game; I've just had some small encounters. I haven't PVPed clearly enough to know what class is imba, or such and such specifics about PVP, but here are the basics.

1. Your damage is reduced by around half to 1/3 in PVP.

2. The worst fact is that LEVEL MATTERS TOO MUCH. With only a 2-level difference (33 and 35), I still get slaughtered. (That 'cause every 5-level interval, you get new skills that turn the whole balance.) To elaborate more on this: even in PVE, monsters do double damage if the gap is 2 levels more, and at 3 levels it does around 4x damage. On the flip side, if you fight monsters lower, your crit rate seems to go through the roof to almost pure crits. Levels matter way too much, unlike in Megaten. <.<

3. The Law vs Chaos - I mean, the Primus vs Ganav drama is already in place; just look here. In less than 24 hours, the thread got 5 pages of flame. lulz It's the most active thread on their forums. It's like the Megaten PVP drama on a whole new level. XD

4. You are forced into Open PK dungeon maps for some quests. This is good and bad. Good: players higher level can farm fame. Bad: if you're the one questing, then hope that you're hiding in a corner. D: At least you lose nothing but a bit of fame and maybe some pride/ego by dying. No real substantial loss.

Some other stuff about the game: I love the "cannon" travel system. For an extremely cheap price, you can be shoot out of a cannon to a closer location to where you're levelling. This cuts down your travel time significantly, so it's very much liked. XD (That's the canon in the picture at the top.)

No, neither Rho nor I have started a guild. It costs way too much, and we don't think it gives any real benefit other than a way to chat in-game. lulz

The mount system, as I learned, is interesting. You can have a mount (which has its own HP bar), so you start taking only 50% damage, with the remaining damage transferring to your mount. The consequence is that you do 70% of your normal damage. You get a bit of increased move speed, but is the trade-off worth it? (Aaro Note~ : For a support character, such as the cleric that heals and buffs, being permanently mounted is a must.) At least another layer of choice, be it defensive or offensive. Mounts found later on also boost different attributes; some boost attack, others speed, and so on. Now, if only they actually implemented those less ugly mounts...

I'll stick to the game for a bit longer, see how it goes.

Since the US players seem totally inadequate and retarded on the forums, I won't post it there. For any Megaten people trying it out, there are two Wiki's that have pretty much all the info you need to know. I prefer the first one; seems more complete.

(Aaro Note~ : They're both translated from Japanese.)

~Pearz

Initial Cloud 9 Review

So here is my initial assessment of Cloud 9. So far, I have put in about two days into it and am lv22. Rho hit 14 or so in one day of playing. The level cap atm is 35, although the forums tell me that a big content patch will come and boost it to 50 in about a week or so.

Good news for me, since it's a week of time to catch up to the cap so that I'm not lagging behind.

The good:
Quests. There are tons of quests. So far, in 22 levels, if you do all the quests, you will level up. Some of them may be just kill xx to get yy EXP, but nonetheless the quests will level you up (and there are no repeatable quests). The grind is pretty easy, with pretty fast levelling rates. Compared to GF, you level around the same speed.

Map. WOW. Just WOW. I love it. It's easy to use and it has a pull down list of every mob in the area. It will mark where mobs are, so no more struggling to find where the required mobs are. (This even includes the level of the mob.)

JUMPING. REAL JUMPING, FOLKS. You can jump over rocks and such; it's just that some fences are too high and your jump seems kind of low altitude. It is a real jump system though. :O

Pets and Mounts. You can get both. A pet fights for you. You can evolve it and equip it with skills. A mount is what you ride, and it takes damage for you. Both can be levelled, and they are amazing little side things to enhance the game play.

The bad:
Overhyped customization. Yes, you do have the ability to customize your skill trees, but it was more limited than they made it out to be. The Class subtree only has a bit of skills, and the Subclass subtree supposedly has very few skills (that are not even the skills you would get with that class if it was your main), and thus are very limited. For your main, you follow basically one of two weapon types and just max that, making it two types for each class basically. No real huge customization, as it would be in your best interest to follow your weapon line. Oh yeah: and there are no stats. This was pretty bad for me. T_T

Camera. It suffers the same problem as GF, with using WASD snapping your camera. It's not as brutal as the immediate snap like GF, but it swivels over pretty fast.

Support (and lack there of). Just wow. This game is brutal to get working. Both Rho and I had troubles getting it working. With no technical section on the forums, it was brutal getting our clients to work. The GMs are like ghosts: potentially exist, but impossible to find. Kind of reminds you that, in most MMOs, the GMs are not so there for you...for better or worse.

Browser's Loading. I hate this. You can't skip the patcher and are forced to load the game through their website. Makes me sick.
(Aaro Note~ : This was Pearz' own problem. You need to load the game through the website, but you don't have to patch every time. Just that once.)

The unknown:
PVP. I haven't tried PVP or PKing, so I wouldn't know. From what I read: the second and, later, the third continent will have have Open PK against the other faction (there are two main sides where you pick one at start), whereas now the only way you PK is transforming into a monster. (Aaro Note~ : So this means that you can kill a mob, potentially get a transform item, and then transform into a monster. You can go hit players and they can hit you back; remember that monsters are generally weaker than players of the same level.)

Crafting. From the looks of it, EVERYTHING can be crafted, much like in GF. Whether new and better stuff will be added later is unknown. I haven't had time to tamper with the crafting system due to my need to be a grind whore (and with all these assignments due, too D:). Along this train of thought, I've barely scratched modding weapons either.

Summary:
Overall, I find it decent. It's nothing amazing or horrible...yet, so I'm going to keep going at it for a bit longer. I want to at least get subclasses and tamper a bit with PVP first before I pass the final judgement. Those are two major factors. If you want to join me: IGN is Pearz and I'm of the Primus Faction (blue at the start). If you pick the other, you can't friend or team me, and we will be eternal enemies (all the characters on your account is of the same faction).


On a side note about GF: Apparently, the AP prices are ridiculous. *points to AP drain prediction in my review* HAT TRICK? 3 for 3 so far; how far will I go?


~Pearz

Castlevania Comes to Megaten!

So, if you don't know, the J-Server is getting some huge patch called Chain of Curse. With Fifi gone, there is little information on this patch and its contents. I decided to browse the J-Server's forums, and these seem to be the the relevant posts about what the patch is semi-about.

Side note: My ego is through the roof with 2 different topics, here and here, about me in general, both within a week. Wah? /explodes

(Aaro Note~ : I'm sorry for what is to follow. I don't know the original Japanese to translate any better/coherently, and I don't know how to decipher bad English this way. Suman. T_T)

------------------------
-Story -
Shinjuku Babel. It was held under the name of God
Tokio degree in overcoming the destruction of two large
We hope that people will play as a symbol of
Ground is the name given to the 666-story edifice.

I was a huge building illustrations and writing that seems to be in the building itself or Babel or Babel ...
That site also something to ...

-------------------------------------

Oops --
I was convinced that it is seen from Ikebukuro Metropolitan
(60, Sunshine House Toyotaamurakku Warudoinpotomato left)
Implementation were under the impression that it's beyond doubt Ikebukuro
Unfortunately

Thank you for answers --
------------------------------------
Mumumu
I think that I Ikebukuro --
Babel and building site seems to be different.
The chimney of the incinerator is also visible in the back --
That city has one vote in Ikebukuro

------------------------------------------
What was written as 20XX years Ikebukuro

---------------------
Demonikasutsu the abstract (or Guardian system?) The goods Rashiki
It is likely to be implemented ^ ^
---------

From the looks of it, a map called Ikebrkuro (
イケブクロ in Japanese) is going to be added. The players have some concern about using bikes (or having to use them?) in that area, apparently. Engrish is hard. All I can tell is that it seems to be new Acts, and a lot of people on the forums are asking if xx demon will be implemented with this patch. Seems like there's very little info about the patch - or, at least, on the forums - that seems to be known. A lot of it is just people speculating things.

I posted here rather than on the main forums 'cause I'm forcing you to load this page instead. I'm kool like that.

On a side note: last night, with all the GF talk, I decided to look around and see what other MMOs are out there. I came across this interesting MMO called Cloud 9.

It meets my requirements like so:
1. Customiziation. Six classes that each have their own skill tree, three races that each get their own skill tree, and then you can sub one of the six classes for another skill tree. Sounds promising.

2. New. Open Beta only just began on Nov 25/09.

3. And all that rest of jazz that MMOs should have > PVP!!, Auction House, Mounts, Pets, PVP!!!...and other stuff. Also, there are some features to create your own dungeon; don't know how it works, though.

I haven't tried it yet; I'm going to try it tonight so that I'll have a review about it sometime later. Looks promising.


~Pearz