Cuz frequent short updates is what it's about this week

So just spend the day reading this manga, it has been a while since I found a manga captivating enough that I read it start to finish with no break.

Onemanga, (for the couple days left before it dies) or Mangafox.

Has mature content warning but nearly no nudity. Dunno how it got flaged but meh. It isn't complete but it is a chapter or 2 from finishing and how can you say no to Yandere characters XD

Either way it's good, go read it now.

Stealth Edit (July 31st):
Oh Since this post was so short anyways, I'll stealth edit in more. Onemanga dies in a couple more hours T_T


O how I love you Yandere characters. Don't recognize the Top right and bottom left animes but meh.

Lesson of the (School) Day: Harem's don't usually end well (remembered cause just been reading cage of eden and the main char was considering making his own harem country in recent chapters lulz)

Now back to reading more manga before onemanga dies and life as we know it will end.

Stealth Edit 2: Official shutdown date has been posted to be tommorow O NOEZ!!11!!!!!

~Pearz

God another post INSANITY

Think since the blog started, I have yet to update it this frequently but I think I figured out how to play my priest. Instead of focusing on my hero like many others do, as a priest I focus on my units. As such The +s in my gear let me fast tech the 2nd tier of units giving me an advantage over the first tier stuff. With my gear now I can fast tech out Tier 2 stuff in time they take to get their first tier. Then focus on buffing and healing, I can let my army do the work.

Alas the weakness of priest lack of AOE feels almost remedied. My priest finally hit level 30 so today I decided to finish my Allod char to 42 too. I was sitting at 5% from 42 for over a week. Now both characters are kinda - complete.

As of now I love my new fast teching build, seems to work wonders. Probably try out the other 2 classes since I got bugged money in game anyways.

So some notes about Soul Master:
Jap Soul Master - Apparently it is run in JP by an Aeria games hmmmmm........ guess they expanded a branch into the JP market too. Makes me wonder why you would publish a game in 1 market but not in the other. Doesn't seem like were even far behind them in content too. Their CB was in April (4 month gap) but our CB actually includes all the content up to what they have.

Another interesting note is the game SHOULD use game guard. If you look in your folder where Soul Master is installed, their is a sub folder named gameguard that is unused in the booting of the game. So did they disable it for the CB? Makes me wonder.

So I have semi-faith the hackers might be gone by open beta which is a pretty big deal. The big grueling Gameplay issues left is :

Lack of classes, a horried text limit on chat box, and an abundance of bugs that hopefully will be fixed.

At least we know more classes come later right?

Side note: updated the links on side of blog that were horribly outta date.

~Pearz

Soul Master Hiatus over

Been a long time since I made so many posts in such a short time but here goes.

Probably shortest break from a game I ever taken. With Rho playing with me now too, I can bounce ideas for builds and strategies with her, makes a big difference.

Though atm she sucks, I'm sure she will improve quickly :O Though I still despite being a Priest but I will probably finish leveling to 30 before trying another class. Probably Bearcat. It is more fun to fail with someone else then all alone XD

So I was intending to move the blog to wordpress. I even had like 1/3 of the work done, but then I hit a brick wall. Apparently wordpress.com does not support Java script, what this means is I can't upload either of my shoutboxes to this site. I would need to register with a Web hoster for my own domain to be able to. The advertised site for 2 years at 2 dollars a month isn't bad but not sure if I want to commit real money to it. Main problem is I would want to just keep using my my own DNS (the .co.cc page I use here) and Shiki can't seem to retrieve the login info.

Maybe I'll consider wordpress again in the future, but at this point I'm cheap and lazy. It is still alot of work to convert everything I want. I can live with blogspot for now, though I did like the editor for wordpress even though I sucked with it.

As for Allods, I feel less drive to even run heroics for Allods anymore. I have only up to Blight unlocked but don't really feel like unlocking last 2 heroics. Just feel my character is finally "complete" (even though I'm still 5% from hitting 42 for the pass like week lulz)

~Pearz

So close yet so far


So today I decided to stop playing Soul Master. I reached Level 27, still could have made it to be first 10 to 30 but alas today was an aweful day to play. My Win-lose Ratio went from around 70% to 60%. Winning only 1/7 of my matches today.



So these are reasons why I will take a Hiatus:
1. Kinda hits you when you realize everyone else running matches with set teams, and your stuck alone. Leaves you at a huge disadvantage.

2. Bugs bugs bugs. I know it is a CB, but their are so many issues, that I don't think it will be fixed by the time they want to release it.

3. The gender locking and lack of classes. The lack of Variety starting to really turn me off

4. Me being a Priest. As everyone gears up to the high end gear, you got Bearcats and knights aoeing all your souls instantly, while priests can't. Leaves you at sever disadvantage. I don't want to roll the other classes due to gender locking either.

5. Same thing again and again. Like FPS or dota like games, each match starts exactly the same. Due to this, it gets boring fast.

It could be cause I got owned today but still. After the New game shine wears off, the problems seem to be more glaring and unignoreable. I also hate being a support class. Still reliant on the team to pull me through. Rho is gonna start trying it tonight, see what she thinks. Might be different if I got someone else to play with.

To bad still don't see any other MMOs worth playing.

Side note: the over-hyped Black Rock shooter OVA seemed to be kinda a flop. The animation was amazing, to bad the story was Disjunct.

Also Onemanga.com seems to be shutting down soon. I hate using Mangafox but guess I'll have to live with it D:

~Pearz

First Look at Soul Master

I'll add in some screenshots tonight when I'm online (since I'm doing this post at work). Currently, I'm a level 15 Priest, which, if not the highest level, is one of the top. Since I have work and sleep, this is probably not the case anymore. D: I wanted to go melee, but because of gender lock, I am forced to play a magic class.

So, in Soul Master (dubbed SM from now on, 'cause I'm lazy), it walks you through the tutorials. The tutorials are reasonably paced, to slowly teach you everything that you need to know about the game. The basics of the game seem to be pretty intuitive and can be grasped fairly quickly. Obviously, like any other game, there is more than just the basic stuff. XD

It's the first time people have recognized me so much, in this game. PVPing last night, there were four people from different games who called me out on previous games I'd played, with one of them being LLLLnstinct (named Fang in SM), who came to my game, got owned a couple of times, and left. XD

Anyway, that has nothing to do with gameplay. So, PVE-wise, it starts off REALLY promising. The way this game works is that you get a "lobby" area. It's a map with shops and such, and you talk to the NPC to start an instanced dungeon to do your missions.

Channel 1 Lobby, beside the Mission Giver. It actually isn't laggy, despite the number of people.

Now, the interesting thing is that the maps all have different objectives to give you the full range of the different gameplays with this engine. You have a missions to tower defend, standard RTS (build buildings, spawn units, conquer), and adventure (more or less with the main character running around, getting some units, and owning mobs in the path).

The storyline seems solid, with an NPC that follows you on missions telling you the story in chat bubbles, which makes me read it. XD I'm pretty sure that no one read those lengthy boxes of text in Allods, but I'm sure that most people took time to read it in a chat bubble here. XD

Lastly, and most importantly, the PVP. I played a couple of rounds so far. I believe I'm around 13-0 at this point. It seems that you can only play it under the same format of an RTS-ish game, with your main character as the hero. The thing that makes it different is that you don't need to destroy the enemy base to win. There is a second win condition of destroying an enemy hero three times. This gives you an alternate way to win when you're struggling resource-wise.

So, anyway, enough of the overview of the game. It's time to get down to the Pros and Cons:

Pros:
Nice CB events. The first event was that the first 10 people to login were rewarded 100 dollars to stress test their server. Suffice it to say, with so many people rushing the server, we blew up the login server. The events generally give out Item Mall cash, which is good since it carries over to Open Beta. It's not a bad thing to have so many people that you overflow the server. It's better than having too little. XD (That is what the beta test is for anyway, to test servers.)

Unique gameplay. Now, this is a toss-up if you like the blend, but I enjoy it. It gives you a nice mix of RTS and Dota. It also removes most of the micro-managing, which I suck at, so maybe that's why I like it. XD

Graphics. This is yet another toss-up, but I LOVE THE GRAPHICS. I'll post a pick of my toon. There is some nice detail in the armours and, of course, chibi = win.


PVP. After level 9 or so (for better or worse), there are no more missions. You can choose to repeat the missions for half the EXP from running it the first time, or PVP for decent EXP. Now, if you're like me and win every match, the EXP is better than running the same instance over and over again until your face goes blue. Assuming you're around 60-70% win rate, the EXP is still comparable to grinding. It's a good way to force more people to PVP. *thumbs up*

Cons:
Limited Classes. Due to gender-locking and only three classes overall, it is clear there isn't much variety. However, a game like this is more about skill than character build, so I can overlook it a bit. (That, and they have a post about new classes coming later.)

Server load. Right now, the servers are overloaded and that causes some issues in-game, like random DCs. Hopefully, that gets fixed or it'll be a serious hindrance.

Lack of PVE content. Getting people to PVP is nice, but I wouldn't mind more missions to progress the story. The second map you go to is literally all grind with no story.

The unforeseen:
Item Mall Impact. How big of an impact the Item Mall will have in the game is obviously a huge factor that has yet to be determined.

End notes:
For now, SM seems pretty interesting and the unique gameplay fits my strengths. I'll be trying to grind to lv30 to get one of the First to 30 CB prizes. The backbone of the game seems solid; it just need some more fluff (missions, more classes, etc).

~Pearz

Rune Costs

Since I was bored in class, I was falling asleep so I decided to find out the cost to make a level 10 rune. Since runes are so influential now, I'll post this for other people to look at, though it is mainly for my own reference.




BTW, another 3 days for Soul Master, can't wait

Edit: Additional Info -
lvl 1 = Increases damage and healing by 3.33% or decreases damage taken bye 3.03%
lvl 2 = Increases damage and healing by 6.67% or decreases damage taken bye 5.56%
lvl 3 = Increases damage and healing by 10% or decreases damage taken bye 7.69%
lvl 4 = Increases damage and healing by 13.3% or decreases damage taken bye 9.52%
lvl 5 = Increases damage and healing by 16.7% or decreases damage taken bye 11.1%
lvl 6 = Increases damage and healing by 20% or decreases damage taken bye 12.5%
lvl 7 = Increases damage and healing by 23.3% or decreases damage taken bye 13.7%
lvl 8 = Increases damage and healing by 26.7% or decreases damage taken bye 14.8%
lvl 9 = Increases damage and healing by 30% or decreases damage taken bye 15.8%
lvl 10 = Increases damage and healing by 33.3% or decreases damage taken bye 16.7%

~Pearz

Pearz, reporting in?

So with the new patch Allods forums went into a frenzy. A week later, finally forms starting to quiet down a bit. So the new Giveaway I think is a great idea. In contrast to Megaten, when stuff happens they did nothing( I guess locking threads and banning is doing somthing) . At least Aeria quickly lowered prices on cashop and the Giveaway is insane. Even if you exclude the cashop prices that doesn't really cost them money, the other prizes added together is pretty substantial. I mean if a company willing to fork out the big bucks to keep their customers (not just some gimmick of a giveaway) I think they deserve some credit.

At first when I was starting Allods I was skeptical about Gpotato due to pass experiences in Flyff, but as a gaming company I really applaud the work their doing. I mean working to try and fix what they do have control over (item mall) or scheme up new promotions to make you spend more. You decide.

Either way, I learned it is impossible to satisfy the people on Allod Forums. you give them a dollar (the giveaway, item mall price drop) and they yell and curse at you for not giving a million. I mean compared to other F2P games Allods is still by far the cheapiest I seen. These people complaining have not played other F2P games.

~C'est la vie!

Though still, my opinion matters very little. If people believe it really is blasphemy, they will still quit. As such we got a large amount of players quitting, thus beginning the chain reaction. As people quit, you get less player base making game less fun for everyone else and then more people quit completing a vicious cycle.Thus leads me to my next topic.

Me (and some others in guild) is finding Allods less fun lately. Both sides seem to not wanna PVP, and with most of us finished gearing, their isn't much else to do. Also makes me glad I made the PVP videos before the patch even though the quality sucks.

Rho, being the most pissed with new patch, set out to find a new suitable MMO to try. Didn't need to be long term, just bridge the gap between now and FF14 release. Rho has sampled quite a few but they seem even worse then Allods.

Of the games so far left with 2 that seem decent.
1. Loong (it's actual the Pin yin of dragon, the background character in their logo). This game SAYS OB starts Summer 2010, but still no set release date. Seems intersting as it uses the MT system of no classes (so I assume your skill/build determines your class)

2. Soul Master. The NA version is set to be released July 22nd, while the EU version has no release date yet. Now normally I wouldn't care about the EU version, but since Rho is still in China, the NA version blocks IPs from their. Either way I will try this game out when CB starts (the NA version) to see how it is. Your welcome to join me if you wish. Seemed like interesting combat system combined with Chibi characters = win?

Though hard to judge the games yet without getting a hands on first. I'll see how it goes, and on off chance you think you found some amazing MMO that we overlooked, you can post it (not likely though, but you can try ^_^)

On final long post note, finally decided on Animes to watch this season. Going to keep up with Amagami SS (Though Eps 3 just came out today and made me go WTF so much I watched to drop it) and Ookami-san (AKA Grown up Taiga XD. The real name is much more lengthy but first part is enough to find it. Haven't been able to pin all the fairy tales to the characters yet though, but seems solid /end ramble)

Finally thanks for Bern recommending Denpa Teki Na Kanojo (their are only 2 OVAs so far). First eps a bit more gory then I would prefer but overall still a really good anime and worth the watch. (nothing like the crappy Aaro reccomendations :O)

Side note: Latest Eps of Katanagatari (7) was awesumz. Makes me really look forward to more episodes.

Also I fail at Dragon Quest 9, currently on hold due to my own failure D:

Haven't made a long post like this in a while *poofs*

~Pearz

New patch after thoughts

Well seems just as much QQing on forums lately even though charm prices dropped. That's Allod forums for you. I said when I first started I don't know how the GMs stay sane with this many retards on the forums. ~sigh sigh

Well main reason for post is I do wanna retract something incorrect in my last post. The fresh 40s may have a slower time then before gearing up, but it was not as bad as it first seemed. Blown outta proportion by forum QQers like always.

All the Heroics are alot easier now. You got players able to solo Heroics now. Even I can tank for the red rings no problem. Oreshek is just a joke now. Much more friendly for lvl 40s in blues then it used to be. Not to mention most of the time 2 epics drop now from final boss, add on lots of new blues (good ones :O) dropping from trash mobs too. Really helps cushion the blow for new level 40s better then it used to when players first hit the heroics.

Only real issue is players won't be able to full legendary anywhere as easily as it used to be but meh. At least you can get those epics to be able to compete a bit.

Also I started playing Dragon Quest 9 for DS. Seems decent so far though it does feel a bit grindy.

Edit: Forgot to mention I'm sure glad I made PVP videos before the patch, seems much less PVP action. Might be cause I haven't been to temple often either......

~Pearz



Day 2 of new patch

So this patch has some pretty significant changes. For 1 thing, Asa Teph, generally the most populated map, was near desolate yesterday. I saw a total of like 3 lvl 40s doing same quest as me and only 1 level 27 doing rep quest. So it seems a majority of players have disappeared. Seems every map, even Novograd seems empty. The only map bustling with people is Gipat.


Also judging by quick response by GMs to lower prices, the server must have been much less populated. If it wasn't a a big difference they would have just waited a bit for things to settle first.

So here is my Take on the new patch. For previous level 40s, it doesn't change a whole lot. New death system just paying my money into a different item instead of incense. Gear wise, being done most the gear already how it is changed doesn't have a large effect either.
Taking longer to level also just grindy, not insane bad either, it is the last 2 levels of the game. Still no where close to the kind of grind of MT.

The problem hits for the players not yet 40 extremely hard which is why every map other then Gipat is empty. Here is the Issues:
Pre-patch: after hitting 40, dedicated players could be full epic geared in a matter of 2 weeks, now it would take close to a month minimum (if your lucky) more likely 2 months to get the same kinda stuff.
Exp rates are much higher, leading people to take longer to hit 40.
Death penalty, from 1-35 no one even bothered incensing, now regardless of level you will need blessed charms every time you die.
Astral is back to way it SHOULD be, not flooded with a billion allods, problem is drop rate is still low I presume.
Same goes for quests, it used to be small range you had to be in to get the share of kill. It was increased across map which was a bit ridiculous.

So see how Allod goes, truthfully I still wonder how Allod makes money with such low pricing. Also wonder how RU server lasted against this patch.

Lastly, see how this patch sets in. Hoped I woulda stayed in Allods till FF14(which is speculated to come out Sep 22 :O) came out but if their is no player base, you lose the flare of being an MMO.

~Pearz

PVP Videos

Not like anyone cares(or reads) about my promises, but here are the 2 PVP videos I promised a couple posts back:



So now the 12 hour maintenance for our new patch. Should be decent I hope. So far of 4 new series this anime season, I like none of them, maybe my standards are getting to high..........


Finally note, Here is to rooting for Germany since the start (since their the favorites to win now) Spain by far played better, extremely disappointed in Germany's performance.
~Pearz