Age of Wushu Cash Shop Review

A thread popped up in the MMORPG Request section of the MMOHuts/OnRPG Forums, where people can request help with finding games for themselves to play, earlier today. In this thread, the user asked for a game that is pay-to-win (meaning they could pay money to get good at the game) as they didn't want to/couldn't spend a lot of time in the game to get good and would rather pay money to be a top player. So, after thinking a moment, I replied with a suggestion for Age of Wushu. It's one of my all-time favorite games but there's no denying that it has become incredibly pay-to-win. Heck, you can even purchase unbound Liang (the currency used to sell items between players) from Snail USA now, completely bypassing the need for gold sellers. Though the gold seller do still exist and are still spamming the game horribly... Seems I can't walk through Chengdu without having to block at least six gold spammers.

That's what got me started on this idea to review the Cash Shop of Age of Wushu. Back when I last reviewed the game, I didn't really mention the Cash Shop. And, even if I had, the cash shop wasn't nearly as broken as it is now. Back then, you would have to pay a tops of $15 per month to easily stay on par with the rest of the player base. To me, that is a fair price as you could still be on par with some hard work and dedication and not spend a dime of real money.

But now it's different. Now you have the subscription ($10 a month, but you can upgrade to a more advanced form of premium account for another $5), mounts, Windrider's Potion, powerful skill sets that can only be gained through the Cash Shop, special lore items that range in cost from $30 all the way up to $300, bag expansions... It all adds up quickly. If you wanted to stay on par now, you would need to spend a minimum of $25 per month, or at least make enough in-game effort to be able to purchase $15 worth of cash shop items from players each month (as, so far as I know, you cannot trade any items that give premium subscription or send gold to other players, so it's impossible for non-payers to get premium).

• $10 Subscription - allows you to have access to VIP-only content and the much-needed ability to cultivate skills while offline. 
• $10 Mount - Needed for travel
• $15 Windrider -  Potion that gives you a big bonus to run speed, but is only useable out of combat. Very convenient and necessary to stay on top during the "Script Stealing" events.
• $9 18-Slot Bags - As the name suggest. It used to be that you could only get good bags from crafting.
• (Optional)$9 Gathering Manuals - Vastly increases your gains from gathering, required to stay on par with bots when selling raw materials or for crafting if that's your thing.

So you would need to pay roughly $53 a month just to stay on par with the rest of the playbase. If you are a high-end player, you might be able to reduce the cost by buying things like your mount and Windrider's from players using Unbound Liang. But when you're saving up your your Liang/Ding, it's usually to purchase skill sets instead. Then there's the catch-22 where you will need a combination of high-end Mount, Windrider's Potion, AND Subscription to be able to Script Steal just so you can make money, otherwise veterans will catch you and completely wreck you. So you have to spend real money to make unreal money, so you don't have to spend your real money.

But that's not all. There are hundreds of dollars worth of items on the cash shop that can give you an advantage. And if that wasn't enough, Snail implemented the ability for players to purchase unbound Liang directly from them. However, I recently tried to click the "Silver Purchase" button and it brought me to a 404 page so I have to wonder if they are removing that service or if it's just a temporary error. I remember the price came out to a few dollars per hundred Liang, with one-thousand Liang making one Ding. The most rare items and skills cost several Ding.

Keep in mind that, as Snail only sells gold in packages, I am giving these prices in the closest package worth. For example, 50 Cash Shop Gold cost $15. So, while Windrider only costs 45 Gold, I put down $15. This causes you to put more money into the game than you need, though it does eventually sort of "even out" as you can accumulate enough 'extra' gold to purchase premium for a month or get yourself a month or something.

There you have it, a small break-down of the Age of Wushu (Snail USA) Cash shop. It's really disappointing, too. Back in the day, when the game was just just coming out of beta and was still fairly new in the West, at most you would need to pay $15 - a price that most people can deal with and accept. Occasionally they would come out with something expensive like a ferret that cost a couple hundred dollars- which I suppose was the first indicator. In the end, the amount of time and money I would have to invest to just to have a chance in PVP against those who have put hundreds or thousands of dollars into the game makes it unplayable for me.

I still enjoy logging on from time to time, doing a bit here and there, but I can't justify spending money on it nor spending any decent amount of time. Especially when the Customer Support is universally regarded as non-existent and when it does show up, it's usually in the form of broken or impossible to understand English. Unfortunately, I'm sure I'm not alone in this and that has lead to Age of Wushu suffering a population problem. It makes me wonder how long Age of Wushu will last. Maybe SnailUSA will pull off a miracle and save the game from itself? I can hope.

Quit Age of Wushu (again) + My recent games

So, once again, I have quit Age of Wushu. This was actually a few weeks ago but I haven't made a post recently. The reason I quit was that, after the initial wave of returnees left the game, things got a bit dead. I got bored trying to catch up and I wasn't really doing anything except for logging on for Script Stealing and a few other activities that I didn't particularly enjoy. I still have a friend, ThommyHubbub, who is playing and streams the game. If you want to check him out (and I suggest you do) here's the link to his stream.


Since quitting Age of Wushu, I've been jumping around from game to game. I've only been playing MMOs for the purpose of review on OnRPG/MMOhuts. February was a very busy month where I did a decent amount of work. I did a Sevencore re-review, a handful of Early/First Looks for games like the Russian SkyForge (I've also finished a First Look for the North American SkyForge), Life is Feudal, Druids Duel, and Cronix. I also did a couple of interviews for Galactic Inheritors and Duelyst (both very interesting games). I also did a Preview for the most recent Nosgoth class, the Vanguard.

Reign of Kings

This month has been a bit less busy, but I still got a decent amount done. Heroes of Rune, Reign of Kings (Incredibly fun game), Windward (Amazing for those of us that enjoy Age of Sail games), an Early Look for The Repopulation, and an Early Look at Prismata. Like I said in the above paragraph, I did I'll be updating my other blog pages with links to everything I've done the past two months, so if you're interested you can check there.

In my free time I've been playing mostly Reign of Kings and Crusader Kings 2. Crusader Kings 2 has been fun to delve into. I've been apprehensive about playing it, as I played Europa Universalis last year and I ended up putting in over fourty hours into EU4 within three days which wasn't healthy. They're fantastic games, what can I say. But with CK2, I've been able to play with moderation and have only put in about thirty five hours over the past couple of weeks.

In Reign of Kings, I've only just hit over twenty hours in the game. It's only been out for a week now, so I think that's impressive. It's a really fun game and despite the history of the developers (they created StarForge, which a lot of people are upset about), it's been mostly a pleasing experience. The only real issue is the frequent wipes due to frequent updates, plus the performance still needs a lot of tweaking. Immediately after this post, I'll be posting one of my most recent adventures (not the most in-depth, unfortunately).

That's about been my gaming since my last post. I'll hopefully be updating this more frequently. Not that I expect many (or any) people to actually read, but it's nice to keep a log of what I done so I can come back and look at it from time to time. Very nostalgic, if nothing else. Thanks for reading (if you have).

Age of Wushu update

So, as I said in the last update (I think) I was giving Age of Wushu another shot. So far, I've kept with the game, tho I'm not playing nearly as often as I once did. Part of that is because I'm way behind, part of that is I am working on a few personal projects plus stuff for OnRPG. I am having fun, though, and if they give out some information about up-coming expansions soon, I may even consider maintaining a subscription. We'll see, though.


Truth be told, probably the only reason I am currently playing is that I could afford VIP thanks to 80 gold I had left on my account before quitting. That allows me to get the VIP and a Windrider, which is essentially required for Script Stealing. The game is still a pay-to-win mess in a lot of cases - that is evident by the Mount Hua competition. Really, it should just be called "Cash Shop Mountain" as the only people that won, or even had a chance, were those that sank hundreds or thousands of dollars into the game.

It honestly makes me feel bad about my own character. It's already extremely far behind. My meridians are weak and clogged, my internals are of a low level, I barely make the time to get on for Script Stealing, let alone do the instances and such I need to start doing. My reputation was even reset (or degraded over time, I'm not sure) so I have to work to regain my blue star.

I'm making slow progress on both my 4th and 5th inner. My 4th inner requires an item that only drops in small quantities from what are known as "School Instances." So far, I've only done one school instance and it was a hassle.I've only unlocked to level 9 of the 4th inner. My 5th inner is about the same, except the slow progress is due to the limited nature of the activity that is required to gain the Martial Merits to buy more pages for the inner.

On top of the 4th and 5th inner, I'm also working towards raising my school skill sets level caps. So far I've only raised a few skills to level 6. It takes about 10-15 minutes to raise one to level 6. 7 will probably be a tad harder. They go up to level 11 now, though, so a lot of work ahead of me there, too. I almost feel like I would have a better time if I just bought an account from someone that was already at a decent level. It seems it's a fairly common practice nowadays.


Anyways, I also talked about Blade and Soul last time. Well, I quit that for now. It was fun, but like I said I have other stuff to do. That other stuff is, of course, work for OnRPG. Right now I am reviewing a game called Cronix from Game and Game, also Sevencore from Webzen. Cronix is alright, though I ran into some technical issues. Sevencore reminds me a lot of a lower-quality Black Gold, as both games have a strong mount aspect with a nature vs steampunk theme. But Sevencore is a lot older and the gameplay reflects that - it was born in the "F2P Golden Age."

The other thing that is taking my time is a personal writing project. I'm taking my love for sci-fi, fantasy, Wuxia, MMOs, and gaming and rolling into one big ball. Of course, as I have not had much experience with writing fiction, I don't feel that it will turn out great. I've released the first few chapters online, and it got alright responses. However, the place I released it is known for the kind of fiction I'm writing (VR MMO, Eastern themes). I'm still trying to decide if I want to do a web serial type deal (releasing one chapter at a time on blogs/websites) or if I want to do a traditional novel format. Maybe I'll end up doing both.

That's it for now. I will probably release another update here concerning the fiction. I have a writing blog, but it would probably be a hassle to do two separate blogs. So I'll probably just release all the chapters on my "Apoca's gaming Blog" (This one). Thanks for reading, see ya.

Giving Blade & Soul a Go + An Update

So my friend recently pointed out that you can play Blade N Soul on a Russian server and it's partially translated into English. The link, for those interested. I'm not really interested in the game, but I've been kinda lost since I quit ArcheAge, so I figure I'll give it a try. My knowledge about the game is extremely limited, but I remember it being pretty popular (at least for a bit) a year or two ago.

Who doesn't like big boobs and cool guys?

The two things that stand out to me are the great graphics and the awesome-looking combat. My friend (who I will link to in a moment) says a lot of nice things about how the combat 'feels,' too. Which is great because we've both been searching for a game that can provide combat that felt as good as Age of Wushu (where we met). Perhaps this will sate that want. 

One of my favorite streamers, ThommyHubbub.

And speaking of that, I have officially quit ArcheAge. I just can't bring myself to pay for the subscription as I'm simply not enjoying the game anymore. Partially because my server seems to be dying, partially because no new blood is appearing, partially because of the ways Trion has messed up. So, I've decided that in five days when my sub runs out, I wont be re-subbing. I've left Amitabha in the hands of my vice-leader and have turned my eyes to other games like Life is Feudal, The Repopulation, Black Desert, and even the future versions of Age of Wushu.

Anyone that has read the blog or knows me probably has figured out my love-hate affair with Age of Wushu again. However, I got an email today that convinced me to come play the game (with promises of awesome goodie bags and very easy re-entry into the game). That got me interested in checking up on the Chinese version of the game (both on the actual Chinese version website and my favorite foreign MMO website, MMOCulture).

I'm looking forward to the Player Housing the most.

Back in August the Chinese version of Age of Wushu got a major expansion. This expansion included things like Player Housing, a lot of new factions/schools, and survival features. I've not been able to find to much information on how the housing exactly works, just a video that previews it. Apparently the new survival features include a more detailed hunger system, a new thirst system, and even a temperature system that requires you to dress in thicker clothing in cold climates and lighter in hot climates. Pretty interesting stuff, honestly. 

Anyways, that's it for now. I'll probably write a new entry in a few days talking about my experiences in Blade N Soul. In concerns to my writing, I recently wrote a 2015 Predictions article and it should be up in a few days or so. I'm currently reviewing a mobile game called Combat Monsters, too. Thanks for reading and see ya next time.

Quit Age of Wushu, Playing Dragon's Prophet, and more

So, I recently quit Age of Wushu (again). This time, it was due to getting bored with the game and not wanting to invest much more into it, as the plan was to quit once ArcheAge was available from the start. It still has most of the issues - poor customer support, bad translations, bugs, lag, etc... However, Earthquake, one of the community managers, has begun taking player input to help improve the translations of the game. I even helped contribute by posting the correct translations for some of the Shen Family Golden Needle faction. So, that is a step in the right direction!

Since then, I've been playing a few games I got from the Steam Summer Sale, as well as Dragon's Prophet to pass the time. I've also been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 here and there. However, a bulk of my time has been spent playing games for OnRPG.com. This week that was Skara - The Blade Remains and HEX: Shards of Fate. Of the two, I've got to say HEX was the more fun. I enjoyed Skara, but I've been getting my fighting fix from Chivalry: Medieval Combat/Deadliest Warrior.


Steam Summer Sale
Oddly enough, I've only bought a few games from this years Summer Sale (so far). Usually I end up buying a lot more than I would ever play, like most normal people. It's not so much because there was nothing more I wanted, just that I've forced myself to realize I probably wouldn't play most of what I got and the money is better saved for when ArcheAge rolls around. Anyways, the games I got were Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, Contagion, and one other I can't remember the name of at the moment.

I've been spending a lot of time in Deadliest Warrior - about ten hours since I got it the other day. It's been quite refreshing and is a great way to recharge my batteries when I'm starting to get bored of other games. So far, my favorite classes to play are the ninja and Samurai (hey, I may not be a super Japanophile, but  still love it). I've been getting quite frustrated the past day or so, though. It seems like a majority of the servers are full (and stay full), forcing me to play on a server with only 5-6 other people which often time leads to stacked teams. I much prefer playing on a full or almost full server, where it's a lot harder for the teams to become stacked.

Contagion I got because my cousin (who has been staying with me) has become addicted to L4D2 and I figured he would enjoy it. Surprisingly I was right and now I'm lucky if I can go half an hour without him asking to get on my computer. I've played the game myself a few times, and it's quite decent. I enjoy how it looks and feels a bit more realistic than the L4D series. The only negative I've found is that, in some of the servers/game modes, both the survivors and zombies are trying to kill you. I much prefer the modes where you're working with others to accomplish a goal, rather than trying to backstab each other.


Dragon's Prophet
The day before yesterday I decided to check out Dragon's Prophet after a thread on OnRPG made me feel a bit of nostalgia for the game. I enjoyed the game a decent amount, and the only reason I quit last year (about 7-8 months ago) is because the game is definitely a bit pay-to-win. Trying to play the game without investing at least a few hundred dollars to unlock more inventory/bank/dragon slots and help you along with improving your gear and whatnot is akin to playing Entropia Universe with nothing but sweating for income. Simply click on the link to see how fun that can be.

I do love the dragons in the game, though. And the housing. Heck, I even enjoy the combat a decent bit. I grew up on point-and-click for MMOs and Dragon's Prophet has the perfect (in my opinion) blend of point-and-click and action for its combat. However, the grindy nature of the game ended up making me bored of the game and so I quit. But now I'm back and I'm having some fun trying to re-figure everything and doing my best to make sure I don't screw up anything progress I made before I quit.

My main character, Jizzybell - a level 65 (now 66) mage.

So far, I've been sticking to Wintertide, doing the public events and soloing dungeons. I also joined a new level 100 guild, and I've been working on getting guild points in there so I can get into the guild base and start using some of the flutes I have saved up. It's bearable, but it's not quite as fun as when I was playing with a couple of friends. I'm hoping I can pull one of them back into the game and play with me for a while, but most of them are busy with other games so I doubt they'll feel like it. Oh well.

I've also been taking part in a couple of the festival events. One of the things I enjoyed the most in my time with Dragon's Prophet are the various events. The content is usually fun, rewarding (if you have a house or like costumes), and it gives you a bit of experience. The Halloween event has been my favorite to date, partially because I started the game right as it was starting but also because I feel like it had the best content and rewards without being to grindy. My Chaotic Terror is still my favorite dragon and I got it from the Halloween Pack (along with my pumpkin house and a bunch of decorations). 

In the screenshot above, I'm fighting Pinatas with a special sword that has "Dragon's Prophet" written along the blade. I thought that was pretty neat. Basically, each time you hit the Pinata, it spews candy which you then collect. Each piece you collect gives a satisfying "Ding!" as well (if you played the Sonic games as a kid, you'll feel nostalgic as it's almost exactly the same as the sound from collecting rings). The event is quite grindy, however. You need 100 candy to get just one candy coin. And the furniture stuff costs in the hundreds of coins and the weapon skins costs 1,500 coins (I think). Which is 150,000 candy you have to collect. That takes a hell of a long time, unless there's a better way to collect candy that I haven't found. Apparently there's also a dragon you can capture, too, but I haven't figured it out yet. And there's a dance event that happens every couple of hours, too. 

There's a few new features that have been added since I last played. Like the Dragon's Compendium, which is almost like a dragon pokedex and achievement system rolled into one. You get various rewards by collecting eight of a dragon or winning a certain number of fights in the arena using it. The rewards are Dragon Runes and Dragon Elements, which are used in another new feature - Dragon Skill Evolution. I honestly have no idea how that works yet, but plan to do some research tomorrow. Looks pretty neat, though.

That's about all I have to talk about for now. I am thinking about investing in getting a new house, but don't know how well that will work for me. Last I remember, house spots costs a few million gold and I have just over 800,000 to my name. Plus, the items used to purchase house slots on the Marketplace/cash shop don't seem to be there anymore. I could just be looking in the wrong places, though. Anyways, thanks for reading.

Oh, and I'm planning to start up another blog where I talk about anime and manga. It can be found here if you're interested.

Back to Age of Wushu

I failed to make a post about it, although I felt I should have, but about a month ago I came back to Age of Wushu. If any of you know me, or have seen my past posts about Age of Wushu, you'll know I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love the game (for the most part), but I hate the way Snail USA has been running it. The game has infinite possibilities, but Snail has no Customer Support, issues with hacking, bots, etc...

Now, as for the reason I came back to Age of wushu. I decided it was time to play again for two reasons. First, is that ArcheAge is not yet out of Alpha/Beta testing in NA. If ArcheAge had been available to me as a permenent game that wouldn't be wiped, I would not have given Age of Wushu a thought. However, due to that not being the case, I was on the out look for a game to play to occupy my time til ArcheAge was ready.

The second reason is that Age of Wushu got its Tempest of Strife expansion, which expanded upon the "Vagrant" path a lot, and added new factions to the game that you could join and participate in. There were also a handful of other neat features that caught my eye, such as events that occur only during certain weather conditions. This is one of Wushu's biggest content updates (if not the biggest). I figured it would be worth it to play the game again and try out all this new content.

The last reason, though not a major one, was that a new server was starting up. Silver Viper offered a unique opportunity to partake in the fun that always happen at the launch of  new in any game, to try out the new Vagrant content, and to join one or more of the new Factions added to the game. All that combined sounded like a good time to me. However, I was still quite weary of Snail after having played the game in 2012-2013.


At first I figured I wouldn't spend much time in the game, and decided I would not spend any money. However, I found myself changing my tune quite fast. I decided to purchase a months subscription within the first 24hrs of playing. I figured that nine dollars wasn't much, so why not? And now, here I am a month later, and I've got to admit I've enjoyed my time so far.

Of course, Snail is still an issue. There Customer Support is still nearly non-existent and the support you do get is questionable at best. Bots seem like they're still an issue, though not nearly as much. Gold-spammers are everywhere, just like before. And they've instituted a bunch of changes that has made it quite hard for Non-VIP/Premium players to make unbound-currency within the game. Oh, and they've made the game more pay-to-win in plenty of ways, such as making it possible for you to directly purchase in-game unbound currency with real-world money, with a conversion of $3 per 100 liang.

Needless to say, the game is still "pay to win." If you've got money, you're going to have an easy time of things. If you don't, you'll have to scrounge up $9 for the monthly VIP fee in order to even have a chance of keeping up. But, other than those problems, the game is still a ton of fun. I think a major reason I love this game is because of my love for this type of fiction. 2008's Legend of the Condor Heroes is still one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I love The Breaker and The Breaker: New Waves - which are set in the modern Korean version of the fictional Chinese Jianghu/Wuxia. I eat this stuff up constantly, and that contribued a lot to my love for Age of Wushu.


Anyways, that's enough for now. Over the next few days I plan to post more on my time in Age of Wushu on this blog. My next post will be about my time in the Shen Family Golden Needle sect faction. After that I'll probably post about my plans for the future within Wushu. Thanks for reading!

EVE Online + What I'm Currently Reviewing

So, I've recently separated myself from Age of Wushu/Wulin completely. It was hard after playing the game so hardcore for those few months, but well worth it in the end, I feel. The game was just poison in its current iteration and I've gained a whole new weariness towards foreign-developed MMOs. It felt like no issues would ever be fixed and that the companies running them just couldn't do anything right - be it due to lack of know-how and experience, or just a lack of numbers to do anything effective. It's even had me second-guessing my hype towards ArcheAge in fear that I'll come across the same issues when it comes to NA, however my experience with both the Korean ArcheAge and Turbine have been able to put that feat to rest, for the most part.

Anyways, EVE Online has filled the void that AoW left behind. I'm a bit torn about the game, actually. I love it and the setting a lot, but leaving AoW has caused me to leave behind the guild I built, as no one seems to be interested in coming with me to EVE, either because they do not think they will like it, are to embroiled in AoW, or just don't want to pay the monthly fee. I haven't had an issue with the fee, as I've always been a pay-to-play player and dropping the monthly fee for one or two accounts isn't much of an issue for me, and it even instills a sense of fairness in me for some odd reason, even though it's quite possible to essentially "buy" ISK in EVE via the PLEX system.

So far I've been focusing mainly on industry. I had previously attempted EVE sometime last year, so I came back to the game with a character that had somewhere around 800,000 SP for industry, as well as a Retriever a friend had donated to me. This time around I had no other games to distract me, so I was able to dive into it right away and I've spent the last two weeks doing non-stop reading about EVE (even while playing thanks to the in-game browser). This game has an insane learning curve - there's been several books with 400+ pages of info published, and countless wikis, guides, and more. It's a lot to take in, but the overwhelming amount of data is a bit nice compared to the shallowness of most MMORPGs these days.

My friend, Nihilanth, has been helping me out quite a bit. He's even given me access to his 34M SP industry character which has helped a great deal. Coming back to the game with the possibility of giving myself Orca support, or flying both a Retriever and a Mackinaw has given me a large increase in possible profits from mining. As a side project and a way to have a bit of fun, we've decided to give ship production a go with a plan to feed off the Factional Warfare market. Today was an exceptionally good day for mining, as I woke up earlier than usual and found that the belts in my home system were completely replinished and I ended up mining somewhere around 35M Isk worth of minerals with the Retriever + Mackinaw, primarily going after Pyroxeres and Scordite as a secondary.

The only issue I've run into is that I have no way to transfer large amounts of ore and minerals to systems that they would sell well in. Currently working on fixing that (a Badger just doesn't cut it, but I'm working on an upgrade), but for now I've had to rely on the kindness of others and courier contracts to move my cargo to the correct systems. Part of the issue is that I'm practically drowning Tritanium half the time, and I need to sell it to keep up with the money required to purchase resources that I just can't easily get in or near my home system. Although, that cost only comes out to around 13M isk for every couple of ships produced.

I've been enjoying the industry side of things quite a lot, but I felt a need for PVP and decided to set up a second account using the "Sidekick" program that allows you to make a new account for only $24 (which includes the first three months of subscription, it's a great deal and I'm even thinking of getting another account to go with it). I decided to make this guy a Gallente ship pilot as, from what I can gather from talking to people and reading on the net, they tend to have the "better" PVP ships. And holy shit does the Megathron look badass, kinda like some sort of 1950's muscle car-tank hybrid.

We started an Amitabha corporation called Amitabha Industries, but that honestly hasn't been going as well as I had hoped. I just don't know much about the game yet and I don't want to spend half my time spamming recruitment only to come across a question, inquiry, or whatnot that I don't understand or can't answer. Unfortunately, Nihilanth doesn't have the time to get on and recruit or much else due to work + DOTA 2 addiction. I plan to keep at it, and have even gotten two members, although they seem to have disappeared the past couple of days. Anyways, here is the new Amitabha logo I created for EVE Online (Yes it is a copy of the EVE logo)

Besides EVE, I've been spending a lot of time in League of Legends. I find it more calming that DOTA 2, where I feel like I've got to be completely on top of my game every time I play. Plus, similar to EVE, DOTA 2 has a lot to learn compared to most other games and that's just not something that interest me right now since I have EVE. I've found that I enjoy playing supports quite a lot - Soraka, Blitzcrank, and Sona being my favorites.

I recently bought Sona, and I do fairly well with her. The bad thing is that I usually end up becoming more of a carry than a support in most of my games. I just can't seem to help it, as my Q just stacks up the kills unintentionally. Right now I only know how to play her well enough where I either do damage or I don't do damage and it's extremely hard for me to notice when I should just sit back and let my ADC do the damage instead of trying to hurt the enemy as much as possible. Most of my games end up with me getting insane K/D for a support, which one of the guildies I usually play with doesn't like at all and he seemed quite pissed about it. It's ended up with me deciding not to play with him (or any of my guild, probably) for the foreseeable future as I can't put up with them being generally low-skilled and assholes at the same time. It's one or the other for me.

Currently I am reviewing Aika Online and I've got to say I'm not to thrilled. I was originally excited because I love games with a strong PVP component, but it was almost completely unbearable to play it. I've come less and less tolerable of generic grinders in recent years, and Aika is definition of generic (quest) grinder. The only saving graces it has are the Prans (which are pretty nice, actually) and the PVP, which has been suffering due to people grouping into one nation and leaving the others severely outnumbered and an overall low population for all nations. I'm almost done with that review and will be re-reviewing Tera Online for MMOHut afterwards.

That's all for now. Back to EVE for me. I'm about one hour away from being able to use Modulated Strip Miner II's with crystals on my main, plus Nihilanth will be moving the BPO that he purchased soon and that will hopefully mean that we can start producing today or tomorrow and a bit more income will come in. Thanks for reading.

Age of Wulin and Wurm Online

So, after a lot of thinking and planning, I have decided that Amitabha will be playing three games at the same time now. First is Age of Wushu, which we are currently playing. Second is Age of Wulin (technically the same game). The third is Wurm Online. I decided on Wulin because Snail sucks, but we're going to continue playing Wushu despite this because people have invested a lot of time in their characters and it'll be a good source of info for the future of Wulin.

We are going to play Wurm Online because it is still the most amazing sandbox experience out. Maybe in a year two that will be different, but for now it still holds true. We will be playing in conjunction with with the gaming community Duchy of Wessex, who will have their own religiously themed expedition into the game. This will mean we will have a close ally to trade and fight with, which is great.

We will also be having the help from my friends at Ordo Lucius, who has been playing Wurm Online for years now. They will help provide us with some starting tools, some highly skilled labor, and maybe some seeds and animals. Overall it should be a smooth start and an all-around fun time. I'm really looking forward to it. Feel free to register at our website and join us in any of the games we plan to play (including ArcheAge in the future)!

Age of Wushu Blues

So, I've been leading my guild (Amitabha) for a while now. We are finally about to get our first base. It's late, way late. We're behind, unfortunately. I blame my lack of knowledge about the game when I created the guild. And to be honest, it probably would have been better if I had not made the guild with the tiny bit of experience I had with the game when I started it. But, then again, I probably would have quit a long time ago if I didn't have Amitabha to keep me motivated.

To be honest, we're in a pretty good spot right now. Even though one of my Vice Leaders split from the guild and took a decent chunk of our members with him. We are in a good alliance, and that first base is just a day away. We are fighting wars pretty frequently, which is great fun. We are rebuilding our list of active members, too. Partially because the initial hype of a new server is over, and partially because of the split, we aren't able to produce as many numbers as we were a month ago. A month ago we would have had a full raid part instantly. It would have been 90% new characters, admittedly, but that number of people is formidable.

Now, we struggle to achieve half a raid party, even with a week advance notice. The upside to this is, even though we struggle to get a raid party half the size of our initial numbers, we now have many more higher levels than we did back when we could field a 48-man raid group easily. So, in reality, we are much stronger. It's hard to realize that without thinking it through like this.

One issue I've been having lately (and it seems a majority of US-based guilds have), is keeping everyone organized. There are in-game means (Daily message that flashes whenever you log in on your screen), and out of game methods (website frontpage event calender with countdowns, and a massive news feed that is updated almost daily), but people seem to be oblivious to it. We're slowly getting people to realize we have a website and VOIP program (which at war times will almost nearly reach capacity... but that capacity is 25 people).

Everyone in my guild, minus two people who players on Blue Dragon for a short time before White Tiger released, started playing the game at or after the release of White Tiger. We've had to learn a lot the hard way. We are just now finally getting our act together when it comes to instances. We are getting better, but have a bit of a way to go. We've basically mastered GCC normal, but have yet to try GCC hard with just our own guild members. It's embarrassing to admit we're so late to the party, but I've never been one to be secretive, especially when it's a game.

Unfortunately, I've recently had several bad run-ins with Snail USA. And I'm not the only one. But, I will speak of my incidents. First, when I was participating in a guild war. Right towards the end of the war, when everything was starting to come to a close, a GM logged into my account. I did not know this as I had no prior warning, and I immediately assumed I was being hacked. So, while I was reloading an new client and logging back into my character, on my other screen I was quickly changing my Snail account password. I was told immediately upon logging in that the GM understood this was a guild war but it would only take a minute (a friend watched my character and the GM was on my account for at least 5 minutes, not counting the 40 seconds or so it would take my character to log out), and that if I kicked him off the account again he would change my password.

I complied and allowed him to do whatever it was he needed to do. I didn't understand why I had to let a GM rummage around my account when an extremely important event for my guild was happening. I had not been contacted by PM or email before this happened. It simply did. While this was going on, a guildie informed that something similar had happened to him a day earlier, and that the GM had sent a COD from another account (his GM account, I assumed) and took liang off his account because there was supposedly a mix-up during an event and Snail had somehow sent gold out to a few thousand accounts by accident.

To be honest, I'm completely mind blown by how unprofessional this war. First, you screwed up, not the players. If you send a player gold and he uses it, it's your fault not his and he should not have VIP time, liang, or items removed from his account for it. How was he to know that the gold sent to his account was not supposed to be there? And why would you have to log into their account and send a COD (Cash on delivery for an item sent) to their account to retrieve it? Do you really lack GM tools?

And the kicker? The kicker is that I didn't even receive any of this gold. So this GM blindly guessed that my account might have some of this misplaced gold on my account, logs into it during a guild war time THAT THE GAME FORCES AT THE SAME TIME EVERY SINGLE DAY, and then send me this incredibly rude email.

"Greetings,

Recently, this account received some gold that it had not purchased.
This was aside from any gold purchases the account performed through
our top-up systems.

In some cases, a portion of the gold was spent before it could be
reclaimed. In all cases, Snail Games reclaimed enough Gold, Unbound
Silver (Taels) and VIP time from the account to equal the amount of
gold that was mistakenly sent. We apologize if any of these figures
are different than prior to the incident, however we were careful to
remove only the appropriate equivalent, and will be unable to provide
further exchange between these different currency types.

At this time, we have determined your account to have been fully
addressed with regard to this matter, and no further action is
necessary on your part or on Snail's. We thank you for your patience
as we worked to resolve this matter, and we are taking appropriate
steps to ensure such an incident does not occur again."

The above email tells me that they seem to think this was an issue caused by two parties. It also tells me that Snail is oblivious. Because, like I said there was NO GOLD on my account. I do not buy gold except when it is to reapply my VIP. Yet they send me this blind mass email that states that I did receive gold (when I did NOT). They then go on to say that they reclaimed gold/taels/VIP time to what they probably guess (knowing how professional Snail is) is enough to cover the gold that THEY sent, and if they happen to be wrong that you're screwed and there is nothing that they will do to fix it. They finish up by telling us that they will be doing nothing more, even if they happened to have wronged you, and that they will take " appropriate steps to ensure such an incident does not occur again."

I am honestly surprised that Snail China would allow this kind of horribly outrageous nonsense to go on, dirtying their name. Is this really how they want to be seen? As the people that screw up and then punish the players in very unprofessional methods because of it? Really Snail? Are you being serious with this bullshit?

And that's not the end of it. My account was recently hacked and 39 gold plus several hundred taels were stolen from it. Luckily, the character that got stripped was my Blue Dragon alt that I do not play often enough to be affected. But, none-the-less, I paid over $9 for that gold and I do not want my money to be going to waste like that. So I reported the issue. I carefully explained just how my account had been stripped and provided proof that it wasn't I that had done it. To begin with, this hacking was extremely strange because I had have never in all my years of gaming had any of my accounts hacked. I find it weird that I suddenly, after starting to play this game, find my account hacked.

After I reported this issue, this is the email I got in response.

"

Greetings,

Thank you for reporting your account to us. We are having our security team re-verify the integrity of our systems to ensure that they have not been breached. It appears your account has been compromised by a third party. As account security is the responsibility of the player who holds the password, Snail Games is unable to give items/currency to any account that is reported as compromised.

We are currently investigating these reports, however there is currently no indication that Snail's systems have been compromised. We can understand your frustration at someone gaining access to your account. We are continually monitoring our systems for any potential or actual breach, and have not found such an event to have taken place. The most common causes of compromise are phishing sites, trojan keyloggers, and account sharing. For information on how to protect against these threats, please visit us at http://www.ageofwushu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4537.

Regards,

Snail Games Support"

Again with another canned mass response that everyone gets. They start off by assuring me that their "security team" (which, if I guess based off how professional Snail has been so far, is probably some poorly paid angry 21 year old) is verifying that their account system hadn't been infiltrated. They tell me that it's my responsibility to keep my account data safe (even if I'm not the one that leaked it), and that they cannot reimburse me for any items lost, even though they have all the tools they need (I assume) to track where the money went (considering the CODs that hacker used to strip my account were still in my inbox and all the sent money was visible in my outbox).

What's funny is that MANY, MANY accounts are being hacked. There is obviously no other explanation other than that Snail had their account system hacked/compromised. You do not get that many hacked accounts without that happening. One person I know, who is the most diligent user I have ever met where passwords and account safety is concerned, got his account "hacked" a few days after starting the game. Funny enough, it was right after he had gotten VIP for the first time and had bought a bit of extra gold for a few hundred liang to help start him out. This is basically the same story that hundreds of other users are telling. They are fine, then they buy VIP and BAM they get hacked. It's fishy, to say the least.

I wrote an article not to long ago titled, "Has Snail Messed Up?" As an answer to that article, I have titled this article, "Snailed Has Messed Up." Because that's just what they've done. They've provided shoddy server connections, a buggy and poorly translated mess, mass banning that has ruined thousands of players experience, zero customer service (I have yet to talk to someone who has had a ticket answer, even during the hours that customer service is supposed to be available) that will not help you if you are hacked and will log into your account during important events, and to top it all off they will punish YOU, even if THEY are the ones that messed up. GG Snail. Good game.

Addicted to Age of Wushu

So, originally I had planned to make Darkfall: Unholy Wars my "main MMO" that I play when I'm not playing something to write about it. Unfortunately, at the last minute (a few days before launch :/)the guild I was in fell thru and decided not to play Darkfall. I ended up joining another guild, but having to play with a bunch of guys you aren't familiar with, especially in a game like Darkfall kinda kills your will to play a game.

I had previously made the decision not to play Age of Wushu at launch, as the last time I played, I got sucked into it heavily and I ended up spending way to much of my time on there. And then after that, due to lack of participation in the guild I didn't get my character very far, though I did get up to 33 on my first internal. I ended up quitting.

Well, since Darkfall didn't work out I decided to go ahead and give Age of Wushu another go. I played for a few days, developed my character rapidly, did very well on instances and ended up making my own guild, Amitabha. Just like in Closed Beta, I made a Shaolin and I love it just as much as I did back then. I'm not sure what I will do with Amitabha, I am thinking about handing it off to one of the more dedicated members, as I am not cut out for leading a guild. I much prefer following and helping than leading.

Since the start of the server, nine days ago today, I have poured a lot of my day into the game. So far it hasn't gotten boring, and I'm kind of afraid. Normally I would get bored at this point, but I've been hooked. Between doing spy missions, Team Practice, gathering, crafting, and instance running, I'm constantly busy while in the game. When I log out I'll throw up a stall and hope to sell my ares for the day.

And my guild is working towards getting to a point where we can upgrade to guild level 2. This will allow us to take a guild HQ and we have our eyes on one of the two in Shaolin. Since we are a primarily Shaolin guild, it makes sense.