Akakiba's Journey West

Day 11 & 12 - Wedding Bells

2009-03-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

So this week was rather eventful again, as the closed beta continues to draw to a close I've been a little lax on posting day to day, as it's been both very busy outside of the game, and in the game I haven't been doing too too much in anticipation of the open beta to come. One major thing though was, with our free etherbucks Tori and I were able to tie the knot in game! A whopping 30 etherbucks a piece, and I do hope they drop the price by 5 or 10 dollars, but certainly it was an enjoyable experience. The marriage package comes with an outfit for the bride and the groom as well as a certificate that when passed into the matchmaker begins the ceremony.

The Pokari Minister administers the ceremony which culminates in three things, a fireworks display, a system message to the entire server and the accquisition of a title for the bride and groom. The groom get's the title and the bride get's the title , cute! Also, the titles are displayed in purple/pink, as opposed to the usual white titles you get from quests. The video above is a short clip of the end of the fireworks, I didn't realize there were going to be fireworks, so you can't really hear the game sound. And credit goes to whoever's song this is, I was playing Newgrounds radio at the time!
You may have already noticed this, but Tori also got a new haircut, which I actually like better than the original so I'm happy hehe! We had fun, and we went flying around, and of course we had to end the evening at the Peach Blossom Grove for some more fun pictures, it was definitely a lot fun, and I really like the marriage outfits, the red really suits my character, and I'm partial to the dress on Tori as well. And since I have yet to do so, I'm also attaching a clip of the game's carrying system. Note that you can run while carrying someone, I was walking for the video though, also I was moving by clicking which I don't usually do, it just made for less of a jerky video.

The only other thing worth mentioning is I finally hit level 30! I unlocked a variety of new abilities, including one that launches some flaming lances down from the sky. (fun) I also got a new set of armor at 30. I would have got a new weapon as well, but I inadvertently spent all my treasure making embed slots in my armor and didn't have enough to upgrade all my new gear, so my old Glacial Spear upgraded was actually better. I was able to put 2 +15 strength gems in my armor, not bad and since then I've got one more slot and a few imbune levels up, but other than that, that's a wrap. The open beta is closing in!

Until next time, Akakiba, signing out~

Day 09 & 10 - Wheels of Flame

2009-03-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

I'm back! After a regrettably long delay, Akakiba has returned. I did play a little here and there over the weekend but there was nothing of significance to show, I do hope you all enjoyed the short slide show though! I'm going to go with things of note in sort of a circular order here, strange as that seems, as I have some things to share before we get started on what trouble I've been getting into. Firstly, as you may or may not know the closed beta is coming to a close soon on March 16th. I'll continue adventuring until that time and begin anew when the open beta begins. What's particularly worthy of mention though is the development team finally gave us some Etherbucks; the game's cash mall currency, to play around with. Naturally my character being the incarnation of fire I had to grab the Wheels of Flame to fly around on. I've included a little clip of the wheels in action as my character flys over a pond.

Aside from the fun visual the wheels are great because the minor amount of MP they drain over time is less than I regenerate, allowing me to fly indefinitely without drinking huge amounts of mana potions. The pricing has been adjusted now, though it's still not final. Assuming for a moment 1 Etherbuck = 1 USD, the pricing looks something like this: Mounts range from 15-25$ depending on land/air etc, haircuts range from 3-4$, main body fashion 12-15$, masks and boots 2-3$ etc and so on. My only problems with the pricing at the moment is that a wedding requires 30$ from both the bride and groom, which I feel is a bit excessive. Other than that the pricing seems very reasonable. After grabbing the Wheels of Flame I also hoped over to an alternate character to try out some wings, funsies.

So on to what I've actually been up to in my adventures! Last time I checked in, I had just started to move out of Pokari City for the majority of my quest destinations, well I've gone to the next degree in my seperation from Pokari now, almost none of my quests involve Pokari at all, with the exception of those related to the next instance, and of course Chaucy in the town is the girl to go to if you want teleported to an instance. Other than that I've been spending most of my time at Gau's Fazenda, a large Manor owned by an old man named Gau. Aside from the manor itself there's a few buildings located in the vacinity that form a small town. I'm in love with the autumn colors of the surrounding region and the raised feel of this town, the windmills seal the deal.

So with a new quest hub to report back to I set off all over the southern regions, I ran into a wide range of new enemies from the goofy Hihat Beatsmiths who's heads are literally a hihat cymbal and carry around a drum set with them to the ferocious Black Brunieros, a kind of agressive bear monster. I have to say, this wasn't the case early on but I'm actually starting to get killed now and again when I'm not careful now, so there's definitely a ramp up on the difficulty. Overall I did a lot of go here, go there, kill this, kill that quests over the weekend and into this early week. Nothing too mind-numbing though, I managed to put together a Tusko puzzle set and turn it in for a new possesor, as mine had finally worn out, so 3 more days of grind-free goodness.

Oh and of course I can't forget to mention my new pet. He's a huge wooden puppet thing with a boulder in a nest on his head, don't ask me! I picked him from a player selling pets in Pokari for a gold, I wanted a pet with a bright disposition and this guy seemed like an interesting choice. He's a Lumberguard Totemo, and he makes a clicking noise when he walks. So now I've got four pets, and it's a hassle to keep them all up to my level, but I'm trying! Either way my adventures have been and enjoyable and fairly busy as I continue to move on and discover new areas to explore and new enemies to capture and defeat.

Until next time, Akakiba, signing out~

Weekend Slideshow #2

2009-03-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

I had a little time to spend with Tori in Ether Saga on Friday, as I mentioned earlier we opted to go for a nimbus ride tour of the countryside. The following is a collection of random images from the trip, enjoy~

Green trees not far from the haunted lands.

Pine forest on rolling hills.

Mist fills this dusky forest in the south.

A stroll in the beautiful peach blossom grove.

A castle, or a boat? Or a castle boat with feathers apparently.

Are you jealous of my low rider?

Our trip comes to a close back at the Ancient Ruins. See you all after the weekend!

Day 07 & 08 - The Grind

2009-03-06T01:37:00.000-08:00

Ah, the grind, what a familiar feeling. I mashed Thursday and Friday together into one day, because while I probably played more on both these days combined than half the time I've already been playing, not a lot actually happened. The major exception is a little cross-world flying nimbus tour I took with Tori, which I'm saving for a separate sideshow post due to the nature of the trip. I did do a bit of exploring prior to that trip though, on account of the fact that I was starting to wear the resources out of the area surrounding Pokari. I was moving to greener, or in this case browner pastures, as the next place on my training route seems to be a fall themed area, score! (Fall's my favorite season).

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if it was the big goofy bears walking upright, or the large cartoon style plants, but something about this area had me reminiscing back to the days of Banjo Kazooie, which certainly is not a bad thing, it certainly livened up the grinding. There are some other worthwhile things to mention not directly related to my journey though. The information surrounding the switchover from closed to open beta was finally released. The closed beta is to end March the 16th with a full character wipe, which they say will be the last one. The open beta will commence the following day, or at 9 PM on 16th for those who made it as far as Lv40 in the closed beta.

In addition to that reward, the first 25 to reach 65 on each server, along with 75 others chosen at random will receive a free pet that they'll keep even into retail. The "Katsune Kid" pictured above. For those who are wondering, Katsune or "Kitsune" refers to the fox spirits recognized in Japanese Shinto mythology. Some lived in harmony with humans, some caused mischief and more importantly, the number of tails on the fox indicated both its age and wisdom, with nine being the highest amount of tails possible. The above fox will not be available to catch in the wild for other players.

So as I mentioned before my adventures took me through the cave I had chosen not to pass through last time I had seen it almost 10 levels before, and I came to the new autumn area to grind. It seems my new enemies of choice were to be Birds, Tigers and Bears... Oh my? I encountered a new named enemy immediately and then got to work making the local fauna feel the wrath of my genocide. Certainly though, the refreshing change of scenery was a sight for sore eyes, and there was a little outpost not far down the road.

Most importantly, I discovered how useful the possessor is! Now, you're probably either asking what a possessor is, already in love with it, or hate it more than anything in the whole wide world. Reason is, the possessor is basically a tool that lets you put the game on auto-pilot. You give it up to 6 abilities, tell it how often to use them, tell it what ability it should heal with and when you're how low, set potions and mana potions and tell it how long to wait before using them, as well as set pet food and pet potions and tell it when to use them as well.

You can indicate to the possessor what type of enemies to kill, how far to wander from where you left it, and if you have a certain item, you can even have it pick up items and filter out certain items you do or do not want to pick up. Basically what this means is, if you have 5 different quests to kill 50 boars, you can just make sure you have enough potions ahead of time, head to the place turn your possessor on and go make a sandwich, watch TV or in my case write a blog. Some people view it as "lazy" or "cheating." Honestly, Ether Saga for me is a very casual MMO, and the grinding is fairly tedious, I'll be honest, a vast majority of the quests are "Go kill 50 Womp Rats" or something along those lines, and you'll get vast quantities of them at once.

A lot of the people complaining about this feature I believe are young, they don't have a lot of commitments, and are used to playing free to play MMOs with obscene amounts of mindless grinding. For me, while Ether Saga is absolutely fantastic for a free MMO, a majority of the quests don't even come close to scratching the interest of those in Final Fantasy XI or even World of Warcraft for that matter. Their repetitive nature means they will cause even the most seasoned MMO player to become quickly jaded and then bored. The feature is not a replacement for a human player, it can't use combos, it doesn't react to strange situations. For interesting, complicated quests and dungeons its still very imperative that you be the one controlling the game.

It's just an absolute lovely feature that allows you to sideline some of the grinding quests and do work, read a book or watch TV while the game grinds it out for you. I certainly don't miss the tedium of manually killing hundreds of the same thing over and over. Not to mention possessors have time limits, so you'll need to do difficult quests or buy a possessor from someone else when yours runs out. For me, the possessor is one of the greatest mechanics in Ether Saga, and with all the controversy in the community, I really hope they don't sack it. For anyone who really wants to grind, remember, the possesor is an option, not a mandatory thing. I've also used the possesor in the background to deal with tedius things like repeatedly feeding my pet or using potions on myself every few seconds while trying to fight a difficult battle.

Back to my adventures though, I did manage to score some green glowy body armor out of someone's bazaar at the market square in Pokari on one of my many back and forth visits over and under the mountains. My guy got a lot of exercise, turning in and receiving quests in Pokari and then carrying them out in autumn land. I also discovered that the caves I had earlier explored with Tori were sent down from the Heavens to imprison the Monkey King.

I was teleported there to investigate, and things came full circle for my little adventure so far. I visited the Ancient Ruins before heading back to Pokari with my report. Before drawing my adventures to a close for the night I took a little bit of a trip on the transportation service to confirm something for myself, after teleporting to many cities I discovered that there was in fact a whole other world map, a region if you will. I teleported to a suspended little town and opening my map discovered it to be entirely different, a snow covered region. While the world had already been large, I knew there had to be more, and was happy to find this. But that's an end to my adventrues for now, look for the slide show of Tori and my nimbus trip soon!

Until next time, Akakiba, signing out~

Day 06 - Dungeon Hijinks

2009-03-05T01:02:00.000-08:00

A little late on this one I apologize, this is retrospective post, but I did end up getting together a group and tackling the game's first dungeon after all. After a lot of pointless and unanswered spam in Pokari City, I finally managed to get a group together to try things out. Our setup was Dragoon, Conjurer, Ranger, Mystic, Mystic, Dragoon, Dragoon(me). By the time we were done I could take the trash enemies on by myself.

The bosses on the other hand, were a completely different story. They hit hard, they hit fast and they had a hell of a lot of health. For whatever reason, the first time we tried as a group we took the last boss first. We ended up loosing by a slim margin and one of our lower level Mystics left. He's the one that lost out though, we went back for three more runs and won every single fight after that.

As far as spoils go, I got some glowy new shoes, upgraded my accessories and finished a bunch of high EXP quests I had been sitting on for a while for that dungeon. After the group disbanded, I tackled the dungeon a few times trying to get some glowy body armor and other loot, but to no avail. I ground out a few more quests and then called it a night. Looking back, the dungeon itself was rather simple, being the first dungeon and all though I can't discern if this is indicative of the future, it may very well be intentionally simple to serve as a tutorial for greater challenges to come. Catch ya next time for some cave spelunking that I skipped over a few days back!

Until next time, Akakiba, signing out~

Day 05 - Rare Spawns

2009-03-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Today's adventure was rather eventful given it's length! Things started off rather strangely, I logged in to find Pokari City under attack by wave after wave of little Rattero Bandits, and then Weasel people. Some sort of event was under way, like a rat rebellion against the cats. Needless to say I was a bit confused, but found that by participating I netted an obscenely large amount of EXP! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures in my stupor, bad reporting I know! But it definitely set the adventure off on a good start to get a nice boost right at the start.

Not long after I discovered my first rarespawn... Minesweeper! No, not the popular desktop time waster, it was a Jaqisac Arson that walked up and down the trail. (As opposed to wandering in a small area.) He put up more of a fight than the others, but he was no match. He didn't drop anything special, but he did reward about 5 silver, which against the usual 5 bronze the normal guys net, it's a rather nice haul. I also had a little fun with one of the cards I got from the Arsonists, now I too can be a creepy TNT carrying guy with bathing trunks an underbite and tiny glasses.

On I went, and as I continued to quest I discovered my rare spawn eventures were not quite over. I noticed one of the Knocknee Assasin's walking in a straight line, and on approaching sure enough it wasn't a regular old Knocknee Assasin. The Warlord's Wife put up a fight but soon she fell as well. In addition to the additional silver, this one dropped about 5 items for the "Lv20+ Diplomatic Quest." Unfortunately, I have about 0 inventory space left all together, so I had drop all of this junk, because I simply can't hold it to Lv20, but now I know where to find her at least.

Just after that I ended up helping out another traveler with one of their quests, in return they helped me out with one of mine. I also got a chance to see Mystic in action, and though Mystic is the game's dedicated healer, I couldn't tell that was the case for a single second in combat their offensive spells were more than formidable. Soon I had collected all of the items I needed to construct a seal to help the Carp Fisherman get his fortune told. My next task was to dunk the materials in the lotus pool to finalize the creation of the seal.

After all that was taken care of, I was informed by the Mayor of Pokari City that now that the roads to the Post Station had been made safe, I had a delivery to make. I was to head up to Fort Pheonix, gather some stone and lumber and deliver it south to the Post Station. Fort Pheonix was the one starting area I hadn't been to yet, home of the Ren, so it was a chance to explore. Off I went, I gathered up the supplies and took them south to the Post Station. Here I received another quest concerning Bahuu Mageban and his two lackeys.

This quest told me to go to The Hunter's Cavern Instance, so seeing a spot marked "The Hunter's Cavern" on the world map nearby, I naturally assumed he meant there. Of course, I was wrong, as this cave dead ended and wasn't an instance. That said, there was a giant tiger guy NPC at the mouth of the came by the name of Bahuu Mageban. I talked to him and accepted his challenge, it was a grueling fight I would have lost if it weren't for a load of potions and the help of my Assasin's healing spell. He fell hard, but he didn't reward me, and I didn't get the item for the quest.

I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose of him being there is, or what the Hunter's Cavern is supposed to be, but it's safe to assume it's not for that quest. Either way that was the end of my journey for the day. I made my way back to Pokari City, tommorow maybe I'll try to get a group and go into Gnawer's Cavern and see if the Bahuu Mageban in there is the correct one for the item I need.

Until next time, Akakiba, signing out~

Day 04 - Littlest Adventure

2009-03-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a rather short entry compared to last time, as the title suggest I had a tiny little adventure today. It started poorly right off the bat, I got a quest to go defeat some enemies in Gnawer's Cavern, the game's first real "dungeon" so to speak. The easiest way to explain how the dungeons in this game is to compare them to Lineage 2's catacombs. So for those who are now making a whoosh noise, basically they're like public instances that an npc teleports you to. Unlike catacombs, there seem to be timed objectives, and PvP instances. After quickly being destroyed by the first enemy inside, I decided to wait a bit before trying again, a lot a bit.

Next on the agenda I picked up a variety of quests killing Potbelly Bandits, no one seems to like these guys. I guess that comes with the territory though. In the process of doing this, I discovered the pet revivals are not cheap, at 5 silver a pop, which takes about 20-40 kills for me to accumulate at the moment, it was a very laborus task when I ended up accidentally getting both my pets killed.

Eventually I picked up a more promising looking chain of quests. (The name was in green instead of white!) Soon I was lead back up to the shrine on the waterfalls in search of a Love Flower, that apparently drives people mad, and not the good kind of mad. I soon learned that apparently, it was a flower that was tained with the blood of a lover who took her own life when her man betrayed her love, hence the less than savory reputation. So off I go on my trip to find it. There was a lot of killing of green glowbugs and fat bandits, but finally I had finished the quest series. The quest mentioned something about an Ethyr but I came away empty handed, I'm guessing more will unlock in the series as I level.

Next up after having a shouting match that involved What? Nothing! What? Nothing, nothing! With an old man, I got a quest to go kill a big ol' monster outside of town that had killed me last time I tryed to take him on, in fact I think it was my first death, so it was go time for revenge! Having just hit 16 right before this quest I'd also get to test out my new ability "Liger Skitt." So I rolled up with my pet assasin, and we crushed him this time around. The bigger they are, well you get the picture.

So back to town I went to turn in the quest, I had collected enough silver to resurrect my pets and I was done for the night. My Nanscent ability "Flame On" err I mean "Flame Up" is proving to be more useful as I level, it's a signifigant damage boost to my Ethyr ability, so I'm happy to report on that. Hopefully next time I'll try to get a group together and take on the game's first dungeon without getting steam-rolled!

Until next time, this is Akakiba, signing out~

Weekend Slideshow #1

2009-03-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

So I've decided to do a slide show at the end of each week featuring any interesting pictures that didn't make the cut during the week. I'll do this regardless of whether I get a chance to go adventuring or not. This weekend was busy so unfortunately I was unable to leave Pokari City, but here's some scrappy photos to tide you over.

Don't ask me what this guy's doing in a cave with three monkeys, I'm not even sure he knows.

I'm not lost, I was just taking a nap up here, and I'm not really sure where I am.

Outside the walls of Pokari City, a kite flying in the breeze.

A tiny rainbow arcs over the garden beneath the falls.

I visit a small shrine in the Shenzu mountain homeland.

Oop, lost again. I think I'll save the spelunking for another day.

Plant like lamps hang from the tree house at dusk.

Pokari City's central square at midnight.

And that's a wrap for now, see you all after the weekend.

Day 03 - Travel Abroad

2009-02-27T19:18:00.001-08:00

So here's what I was talking about back on day one. Not to begin with a rather abrupt introduction but, this is the embracing feature that allows one player to carry another. Here you can see as I carry Tori; my better half, around the countryside. It may not seem like a major deal to everyone, but believe me, if you ever have that little limpet always following you, you're going to love this! Oh, and the above picture was taken through one of the many picture taking frames located around the world, neat huh?

For starters we set off to explore for a bit. In particular, we scoped out the Ancestral Spring and Shadefall Cavern south of the Yaoh starting area, the Ancestral Ruins. Outside the caverns the springs and waterfalls were beautiful in the evening light, green pools reflecting the moon up against the rocks. Inside we found a crazy cyclops guy with some monkey guards. He didn't have anything of signifigance to tell us, perhaps we'll have to come back later. We did some more exploring and then I took my leave for Pokari City, where destiny was supposedly awaiting me.

The Journey was long, relative to the trips I had been taking, but soon I was standing in the vast city, it's population easily dwarfed the Ancestral Ruins I had come from. Not only is Pokari vast in size, but it's got a lot to do as well. First things first, I found the vocation trainers, and learned mining and guardian craft. Guardian craft is essentially the game's smithing vocation, covering heavy armors useable by Dragoons and Shamans.

Of course while I was here I also picked up a wide breadth of quests, from slaughter all of these monsters, to deliver this item. Seems I was the new go to guy for dirty work. This wasn't strange to me. What was strange to me was some of the available dialog options for a lot of the townsfolk. One told me about Charles Dickenson, the other about Mesoamerican Pyramids, and even another about Mark Twain, the list goes on. One even went on to quiz me about the two brothers who established Rome. I'm not sure if the game is supposed to be educational, or if the original game had "Did you know?" sections about Chinese mythology, which would make sense given the basis of the game's story in Chinese mythology. And in some strange and terrible move instead of simply translating the Chinese mythology, they tried to add facts about American history in the localization. Who knows?

So anywho, off I went out into the areas surrounding town, pickaxe in hand incase I spot any iron veins, and a variety of objectives to complete for my various quests. After completing a reasonable number of quests I finally got something that looked promising. A quest to unseal an old magical cloud. And it payed off, after completing the quest I got a magic cloud! Referred to in the game as a glider, it drains mana while allowing me to fly around, you can also use vigor to speed up the cloud. Either way it's a lot of fun, and really helped to make navigating the game world a heck of a lot easier, especially areas filled with rocky and difficult cliffs.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I found a new pet on my journey, a Baby Homunkitten Imp. The little blue horned dude hits a lot harder than my old fox pet, but he's also got alot less health. My adventures continued onward, using my new magic cloud to get up to areas that had been up until now unaccessible. Though the freedom may have played a large role in me getting lost more than a few times! I traveled to the Shinzu home of Eloquence Peak, and back to the Yaoh home on a few of my quests. Everything seems a lot different from the air.

After some more laborous questing I was level 14 and ready to learn how to capture monsters! So I traveled south, far far down to Lornden's Treehouse, where I was suppose to catch a sheep. Unfortunately, though I did as instructed, I was informed the sheep were too high level... How embarassing! Regardless, the treehouse was a killer view. So anyways, back to questing, and I'll work my way up to 15. Thankfully I've got quite a few things to look forward to at 15. Including a new ability, and a new set of armor and spear I hand crafted myself!

And after finally grinding and squeezing out the last bit of the level, here I am at level 15 with my spiffy new weapon and armor. Woo-hoo!

There are a lot of great things besides armor at 15 though. I learned a new ability sprint, which despite it's namesake does not involve running, it's actually a sweeping forward jump that does not go very high, but lets you close a lot of distance horizontally. At the same time I learned my first Ethyr skill, "Essence of Flame." Aside from the impressive visual, the spell does a reasonable amount of damage and lowers the target's resilience, making them easier to strike. Last but not least, I can now capture my own pets at 15, if it weren't so expensive for a new player like myself, I'd be out there capturing even more monsters. But I'm on a budget unfortunately.

I seem to have... acquired a pet, assassin, somehow... Oh, and yes the pet dialog that was already sketchy just got one hundred times more so. Either way, it's time for me to call it a night, preferably as far away from this crazy lady as possible.

Until next time, Akakiba signing out.

Day 02 - Transformations

2009-02-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

Akakiba's back and it's day two in Ether Saga. I'm playing as I write, a great little advantage of the game's automatic pathing system. Last time was more of a broad game overview, this time I'll really start to get into the adventure itself.

First things first, new duds! After completing a few more quests, I was able to pick up some new equipment, and find out that equipment can be upgraded with spirit (the same currency used to learn new skills.) Additionally, after inspecting the equipment menu, I was happy to find something out. There's two types of equipment; fashion and armor. Of course armor is your standard gear, it's what you're wearing, and what gives you defense and stats. Fashion on the other hand, is equipment you can wear that gives no stat bonuses, but changes your appearance should you choose. Fashion includes all the things you can buy in the online store with real money. So from what I can see of things, all of the items as far as gear on the online store goes are mostly just visual bling. And ironically, the button to display fashion gear instead of armor was literally the bling button, ha! So with an upgraded spear, and new duds I set off on my adventure to learn the art of transformation.

Even with the simple low poly graphics and cartoon like style of Ether Saga, the beauty can often be striking. There were many times where I simply had to stop and take a picture of the countryside. Not far outside of town on a small island I found a fat old pig man who insisted he was going to teach me how to transform. After a requisite number of kill and fetch quests of course. I didn't mind terribly though, there were lots of new things to see.

Finally, I finished his fetch quests and learned a lot about the history of the world. Although the translation is humorously awkward most of the time, the general gist of the dialog always gets across, and it's easy to follow where it's going. Enough about dialog though, my first transformation! A cerulean pixie, a cute blue guy who moves by slithering on a wiggling tail.

So how do transformations work? Well, you hit N then select the creature you want to transform to, or you can set them to hotkeys. Much like many other games, there is a wheel of power for creatures. Certain creature types are strong against others, and inversely weak against others. Transformations are learned from creature cards that can be found in loot, from quests and purchased. Not only do creatures affect your combat stats and abilities, the coolest part is creature size matters! Large creatures won't be able to fit through small gaps, and you'll even need to transform into small creatures to fit through small gaps! I love seeing stuff like this done in an MMO.

After learning my first transformation I returned to my starting area, the Yaoh town not far away. From here I was sent off on a quest, a test of endurance, strength, wisdom, mercy a road of enlightenment. So after completing a quiz, gathering some herbs, traveling and defeating some enemies, I used my return home spell to return to the Ancient Ruins, the Yaoh starting area. Here I spoke with the Goddess of Mercy, and apparently having done even their Buddha proud, I was ready to be an emissary for the Yaoh race.

Off I go, to Pokari city. I was informed that there I'd be able to learn more, as well as form clans and fellowships, and that clans can ally with other clans through rituals. It sounds like there's still a lot to see and learn. Oh and I didn't mention this earlier, but I learned my first Nascent skill, one of what seems to be 8 skills based on my Zodiac and day of birth. The first skill was Blaze up which raises my affinity to Pyr, the game's fire element. But it's been a long adventure this evening and I think it's about time to take a break.

Have a good night, see you on my next adventure!

Day 01 - First Impressions

2009-02-25T01:15:00.000-08:00

Today What They Play sent out their Ether Saga closed beta keys. If you're here you probably already know what Ether Saga is, if by chance you do not I'll attempt a brief explanation.

Ether Saga is a MMORPG developed by Perfect World Entertainment, a Chinese company responsible for the game Perfect World Online. Ether Saga is a aesthetically a strange fusion of Dragon Ball and Pokemon, as far as gameplay goes, it's a very familiar landscape at first. The controls and even many of the hot keys are reminiscent of WoW, no surprise there.

The big draw of Ether Saga for a lot of people, and Perfect World, is that the game itself is free to play. PWE draws their income from the online item shop built into the game. Here players can charge a new costume or perhaps a new hair style or some other item on their credit card or paypal account.

Some people see it as a bad thing; explaining that the player's status is no longer indicative of the amount of time they put into the game.

For me, someone who is always busy and will often be unable to play games for huge chunks at a time, I'm glad that I won't have to pay for the game when I'm not playing it. As long as it is still possible to play the game without using the shop; and it appears it is, I don't mind shelling out a few bucks here and there for some fun aesthetic knick-nacks.

So when we finally got our beta keys today, my roommates my girlfriend and I all booted the game up and dove right in. The initial thing that hits me about this game is its charm. The style is a very timeless and ageless style, and the characters are all very vibrant. The wide array of little details, from the depth of some of the emotes, to the random things you can watch a vendor do when he thinks no one is looking is what really made me notice.

Expect some awkward dialog though, where the game art is incredibly polished, the localization and translation are capable at best, sexually confusing at worst. (It gets a little sketchy when my Baby Fox pet starts making passes on me calling me Princess, and I'm a guy.) Gameplay wise, so far it's been fairly standard fair. There were some interesting things though, pets are an integral part of game play, not just for specific classes but for everyone. The player can fuse with their pets as well as transform and raise various different pets.

One of the more interesting ideas that I found though is that when you first create your character you'll have to give your Chinese sign and date and month of birth. Based on your Zodiac you actually learn different abilities as you progress. Spells and abilities are learned as you level. The other systems include ethyrs that are accquired through various means and equipped up to 4 at a time as abilities; and the combo system that lets you string together moves and standard attacks into a looping or non looping macro.

So looping combos sound pretty useful huh? And they are, it takes out a lot of work. So does path finding quest destinations! I though this was really interesting, say you have a quest that tells you to go talk to Tim the Enchanter in the Forbidden Woods, and you're not sure how to get there. Double tap his name in the quest log, off you go! Your character will find his or her way right to the guy. Now, this is really up to you if this is a good or a bad thing. For me, it fits in this sort of casual MMO, I can go grab a drink while I'm off to my next destination.

The biggest thing for me though? Embracing! What the hell am I talking about? Well, you can embrace other players, which will - should they choose to accept - allow you to pick them up and carry them, even carry them on your mount. To some this may not seem like a big deal. But I play games with my better half all the time, and this sure as heck beats /follow! It's cute and fun and it means she won't get stuck on trees and fences anymore! Unfortunately I was too busy enjoying myself to capture any pictures of it this time, but I'll toss some up soon.

That's a wrap for today, until next time.