Revelation Online

Note: This post is very heavy with large pictures. Please remember to turn on WiFi before reading. 

After checking again on the email (I was on mobile), there is no notification whatsoever to indicate that I have the access to the game. So I turned to my PC, get the mail, click on it and I got this.

It's under achievements beside my profile and you have to hover over it to get this. So, YAY!! Since it is complete in download and installation, time to jump right into the world of Revelation Online.

Taken from My.com

First and foremost, let me introduce to you the world in Revelation Online called The World of Nuanor. This is an open world basis, MMORPG game which includes mounts and wings for flight and exploration of this huge map. According to the website, The World of Nuanor consists of 10 provinces and 3 great cities. Across this entire map lies 7 strongholds that is not limited to only land but also the sea and sky.
Like any MMORPG, this game relies heavily on its ability to construct a story that could capture players' hearts (for example: Blade & Soul and Wildstar has some interesting stories whereas Phantasy Star Online 2, Skyforge, and Dungeon Fighter Online is a dungeon basis game). So, Revelations Online has story quests, dungeons, raids and of course, bosses for the players to indulge in the world of Nuanor.
This game has open world PvP which means that in certain areas and after a certain level, you will be opened towards attacks from other players. This, in my opinion, has not been something I am very keen about. I avoided these kind of games but so far, I have seen no one in the same map as I am (phew!). HOWEVER, bullying is not tolerated so penalty will be given to those that abuse the PK ability of this game.
This game also has castle sieges where you join a guild and conquer one of the seven strongholds as mentioned above. In the website, they mention literally thousands of players will guard and attack to conquer each so I can imagine the amount of lag I will get if I were to join so heads up, I am not joining.
Not only that, they have arena (for those PvP craze players), aerial combat (if you have flight, you better fight), and battlegrounds (which consists of different kinds of PvP modes such as seizing the flag, classic battleground to test your ability as a PvPer).

As for the closed beta test 3 testers, there is only 2 servers available. And as you can see, both are busy with players but I have not encounter any lag. Yet.

Let us start with the most important part of every MMORPG,

Character Creation.

Pick your class. There is six classes to be picked. Each has both genders, though the body size for each classes are limited (will be explained further with more pictures!). After choosing your class, there will be a small animation played out for each character (fancy moves!).

Occultist class. Specialize in magic attack and healing. This class is an AOE, ranged, support character. The class uses dark magic to attack, and light magic to heal. Great for those that like to hit and run, the stay-at-the-back characters. Decent damage but not a damage dealer. 

Occultist Male

Occultist Female

On the side of each class choice is the gender and body type. On the left is for male and right is female. There is 3 body types but some are locked where if you noticed, the greyed out are locked while the slightly golden ones are choices. You shouldn't bother much about the body type because you can change that in the after choosing your gender.

Spiritshaper class. This can be deceiving for those that think that this class is only for moe girls. Do not fear, you can change everything to be a buffed up, muscly, manly support class. This class is a healing, ranged, support. Unlike the occultist, they conjure animals and plants to aid them in healing and attacking enemies. As you can see on the top right, there is difficulty settings for each class.

Spiritshaper Male

Spiritshaper Female

Vanguard class. The most important person in a dungeon, a raid, a squad, the front liner, the TANK. Wielding a spear and a shield, this tanker is for those chiongster that wishes to LEROY JENKINS all the way to the boss. Highest defense among all classes, this class is the first to CHAAAARGE any mobs, first to get hit, and can take the most hits in a fight. Scared of death? Take the tank.

Vanguard Male (huge ass spear, compensating for something eh?)

Vanguard Female

Blademaster class. Blademaster as it is, is the master of blades. Surprisingly, this is a tank class that specializes in parrying, close combat and crowd control skills. With high damage, the aim for this class is not to tank it but to kill it as fast as possible while taking the hits. 

Blademaster Male

Blademaster Female

Gunslinger class. As the name mention, this class uses guns as their main weapon. Ranged abilities that can crowd control, this class is much feared for being one of the damage dealers in a group. 

Gunslinger Male

Gunslinger Female

Swordmage class. Swordmage is a class that does not use sword but summons astral swords as a ranged weapon for them to throw at mobs. AoE, ranged, damage dealer, this class is almost similar to the gunslinger class.

Swordmage Male

Swordmage Female

Now that you have chosen your class, let's move to,

Character Customization. 

As you can see, this is what you get after choosing your gender and body type. For now, I have chosen a female occultist. On the right are the presets, top right is the save and load buttons for those who have customized and wanted to reuse the same choices, top left is a small video for you to view the flight and apparel, and bottom left is poses, apparel for classes, and wings for flight. 

Each round sub-buttons signifies the area for you to modify. 

Note: There is a slight problem for this part. The right side for each sub-buttons (other than the presets) are very tiny. The sliders, the text, the images are incredibly small. So the images after this are only for the right side. 

Body > Hair

Body > Skin

Body > Torso

Body > Legs

Body > Body

As I have mentioned earlier, there is not much to worry about body type because you can customize to each detail of the human body, 

Face Customization and sub-buttons.

Face > Skin (look, moustache)

Face > Eyebrows

]

Face > Eyes

Face > Makeup (I'm bad at editing images, forgive this noob.) You choose different colour for each eyes (go crazy!).

Face > Lips

Face > Face

Note: Honestly, even the male of this game looks so much more prettier than me. Not forgetting the ladies. This game is killing my self-confidence. More gym! Get slimmer!

You are allowed to have 6 characters. Enough to try each classes. 

Yeah, that is me. Holla, if you see me!

After a few hours, you are finally DONE! Time to get into the game!

Loading screen. I really love the art. 

Story time! It's not translated yet (speaks in Mandarin). Don't bother asking me what the story is about. I don't know too.

This appeared straight as you enter the game. Three types of mode of playing. Lock on target (where your actions will focus on that target), click to move (the classic Ragnarok Online click that area to move to that area) and the free aiming (ever played Tera or Wildstar? Yeah, like that.).

We will jump straight into the next most important part,

The UI (User Interface).

UI Editor

This is something that most MMORPG developers include in their games. The UI Editor. UI is one of the most important part of a player's experience. Based on how clean the UI looks and how user friendly it is, it can be a success or failure area of an MMORPG. The UI for this game is pretty simple. From 12 o clock, you have the mob details and notice, system notice and battle notice, gift notification for beta testers, map, quests details, secondary skills shortcut key, menu icons, main skills shortcut keys, EXP bar (tiny blue bar at the bottom), chat, HP and MP, name, and shortcut keys for settings. The colourful squares are the buffs and debuffs notifications. I like to move all of these to the edges of the screen and keep my human character right in the middle, completely clean from distractions. 

For me, the UI seems very tiny. This is at 100% size. 

This is at max 130% size. 

I made it to 110% size. The text is still quite small but bearable. 

You can click on the underlined text in the quests area to move your character automatically. (Easy for lazy people, a turn off for me.). Additional to that, there is green arrows on the ground pointing towards your target. This may sound quite immature of me but I find it the arrows to be an unnecessary feature. A simple quest indicator on their heads (which they have) would suffice. Markings on the map is also sufficient enough to point me towards the target. I don't need no arrows and auto-move, I ain't no small kid.  

The small icons consists of character/wings/dossier, inventory/auction/shop, skills/action/craft, group/squad, guild, job, friends/proximity characters/chat/camera, battlefield/arena, rating/achievements, events, and esc/settings.

Character window

Class path (still not sure what it does, will tell soon)

Crafting window

Factions Window

Honor window (something like a merit point system)

Inventory with the classic bag extensions (encourages you to play more/spend more).

This game has a few types of currency. 

Gyph Notes : To trade with NPCs

Gythil : To trade with other players. 

Aurum : In-game points bought with real cash. 

Ausgyth Points : Honor certificates earned to exchange rare items.

Combat skills

Special skills (no information about this yet)

Flying skills. 

Mounts will be obtained at early level. At level 69, there will be your own class mounts. Special mounts allowed two players to mount together. Wings will be obtained at level 29. The wings can be upgraded later at level 49. Wings also can be purchased through crafting, dungeon, NPC, quest and of course, cash shop. Wings allow players to have aerial combat (the first I ever had so far). 

Achievement window

Dungeon Queue Hall. This is a norm in modern MMORPG where by players are able to join teams of parties for dungeon runs, raids, battlegrounds without meeting up at the same spot. This makes everything so much easier.

Example of quest acceptance.

One of the many animations during the story quest.

Yes, I would adopt Jibi as a pet too. (That small egg on my feet.)

TL;dR: I can't give an exact rating to this game but so far, I would say I am 8/10 for this game. 

Pros: I love the vibrant colours, the art, the character customization, the UI, mount, wings, the animations, and classes.

Cons: I dislike the PK system and the translation to English is still not done and I really want to know the story, and tiny customization on the right side.

What I hope I can get from Revelation Online is the changes to the customization, translation, PvE only server and hopefully this game will never, ever be a pay2win type of game. 

Note: I will not be able to play this game during this whole week because I will be away for Chinese New Year. The opinions are my own, based on the one hour that I had gone through Revelation Online including reading the website and playing the game. 

All pictures are taken by me as screenshots from the game, Revelation Online unless indicated. 

Happy Chinese New Year!

Zira.

Closed Beta Test 3 Access

So this came in the mail today. It's the closed beta access for test number 3 for Revelation Online! I am downloading it right now and I really can't wait to try it out. More information will be added after I tried out the game. I am beyond excited because I heard so much about it but I never expect myself to be able to get an access. I can't even remember the last time I signed up for it!

Stay tuned!

edit: Alright, I got the news whereby there is a problem with accessing through email and they will be fixing it by tomorrow. At least it's done downloading and installing, which is good.

New keyboard, new life.

Out with the old, in with the new. It has been so long since I have ever been given an opportunity to change anything old of mine until the decision to move my opinion of 'no-mechanical-keyboard-for-life' to 'what-the-heck-just-get-it'. I actually convince myself to change my completely fine and still useful keyboard to a completely new mechanical keyboard.

I choose the Corsair Vengeance K70 LUX Mechanical Keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switch. Why did I choose the brown instead of the red? The red is more popular with most gamers, however I am just a casual gamer, and I use my keyboard mostly, on typing.

Old keyboard (Logitech G510)

New keyboard (Corsair Vengeance K70 LUX)

Contents of keyboard: Manual, warranty, rubber keys for better grip during gaming, keyboard, and wrist rest.

Wrist rest snapped straight into the keyboard easily with the noticeable click. 

Keyboard (unplugged)

Rubber keys and key remover(?)

Manual and warranty

Double USB.

Keyboard (plugged in, lights off))

Keyboard (plugged in, lights settings: soothing)

Keyboard (plugged in, lights setting: acceptable)

Keyboard (plugged in, lights setting: extremely bright)

So, first of all, of course, we should talk about the looks. It is smaller compared to my previous, because it lacks the 18 macro keys which is available in the Corsair Keyboard K95. I realised in the days that I have used that keyboard (which has been 4 years, constantly, everyday), I have only used the macro keys for only one game. And that game uses a lot of the combination of Ctrl + (?), and Alt + (?). But that is the only time i used it. So it started to collect dust, not forgetting the fallen crumbs of goodies that fell through the cracks (I am not ashamed).
Smaller keyboards means more space for me on my table. Most of the time, I will have my meal in front of the monitor so, the bigger the space, the better. I still use a pen and a book at times which is a big plus for that.
However, the only thing that bugs me about this keyboard is the enormous letters on the keys. I understand that this is from the looks of the corsair strafe. But it still bugs me as to why wouldn't it has the looks of the classic old keys. This is due to me being stingy. The Corsair K70 keyboard is still in production but slightly more expensive than the K70 LUX. The supplier that I go to only sells the LUX while the rest of the shops sells at the range of RM 500 to RM 600. I got this for a price of RM 457 which is already the cheapest among the rest. not considering the RGBs in mind.
I love the aluminium frame. I once told my sister that if I were to slap anyone with this keyboard, they may just faint (please don't try this at home, never try, never will). It is incredibly heavy. Which makes it sturdier. It has rubber domes on the bottom left and right of the keyboard to keep it from slipping.
The keyboard comes with a dedicated multimedia controls. Which works even when I am in game. The volume roller feels tighter. Any keyboard that has multimedia controls is a good keyboard for some gamers like me who likes to game while listening to music and I don't have to Alt + Tab out to select other songs.

Let's talk a little about the lighting. Why did I not go for the RGB because I noticed from researching, the RGB for Corsair is very complicated. Yes, I know I can just download but I wouldn't be bothered with it. The settings can be altered with a click of the button located on the top right, beside the window lock button. I find the brightest to be the most uncomfortable and even the lowest is straining my eyes right now. The LED is very bright. It's not very noticeable but the lower part of the key at the second line and the numpad has a slightly lower brightness. This means that the LED is situated directly under the top of the key instead of the middle. This doesn't bothers me much but just a heads up.

Next is the keys. I choose the brown as reasons mentioned above. I have been typing till here which is not something I would call experience, (since it's new and I am biased), I find myself typing much faster and a little lesser mistakes compared to the previous keyboard. A mechanical keyboard does bring a feel of certainty that I am pressing the key. The wrist rest feels a little low (I have short fingers). The height of the top of the wrist rest to the spacebar is surprisingly far. I have to make my fingers fly around the keyboard instead of typing comfortably with my wrist resting on the wrist rest (like DUH!). The bottom key is caressing my bottom palm every time I type which makes it even more uncomfortable.
Other than that, there is no holes or space between the key and the switches which makes it easy to clean. Some keyboards tend to have a hole by the side which makes thing slip in especially when you were absent-mindedly munching something while staring at the screen. With a good duster or a good blower, it will be spick and span in no time, Though having oil stains on an aluminium frame would be the ugliest thing to ever happen to a keyboard this beautiful.
As the picture shows above, the indication to the Shift + (?) keys are located on the bottom of the key. This may not be confusing to some but for a writer, I sometimes could not differentiate the ' and " or the ; and : without looking at the keyboard. This is a small matter that can be overcome one day.

The keyboard comes with one USB port for your mouse or your headphones. Yes, I do have a headphone that uses USB as posted int he earlier post. The keyboard has a BIOS switch(?) which I am afraid I have no clue on the usage yet. I need to dig more.

Let us summarize everything that is written above shall we, in the section called TL;dR.

TL;dR:
Pros: beautiful looking, mechanical, multimedia controls, aluminium frame, rubber dome on the bottom, small size, easy to clean.
Cons: height of key, brightness of key, uneven brightness, visible oil stains, bottom indicator for Shift combination key.

And that is all. Goodnight

Game Review: Dragomon Hunter

Dragomon Hunter is an MMORPG game published by Aeria Games. This game is currently in open beta. Dragomon Hunter has only 2 servers, Aegis and Paradox, with 7 channels and 6 channels respectively. For those who has played games under Aeria Games, Dragomon Hunter has Loyalty Points and Falcon's Fortune the same with Aura Kingdom. I had the opportunity to join the closed beta test, however, I was in China and is unable to try it out. By the time I got back from China, it is already open beta. So, let's get started.

UI

The UI for this game is extremely big. This is to cater the younger kids into playing the game. The game is played in third person with the option of zooming in and out with the scroll button. The UI is almost similar to any other games. Top right is map, underneath the map is quests, bottom centre is your skill bars, health bar, and hotkey bars and bottom left is your chat.

Character Customization

You have very little character customization. There is not much that you can customize other than the hair, face and voice. Both genders are available for all classes.

There is a small rabbit like which is called Hoppalong which will fight for you and the can be customise by the ears, colour, and face only.

Classes

There are currently 4 classes, mercenary, mage, cleric, and rogue. Upon reaching level 20, you can choose to use a different kind of weapon which results to different skills. As you reach level 30, you can choose 2 types of specialization. For example, a mercenary can choose to specialize as a barbarian (high: AoE, burst damage. Low: HP, speed) or a vanguard (high: HP, speed. Low: AoE, burst damage). You can reset the specialization once a day if you are not happy with it.

Gameplay
Currently, my internet is pretty bad so I am able to get a 1 second delay on spells only in the morning. This is due to the North America server part which is unavoidable. I have played all 4 classes and in my opinion, I like the Rogue best. The combat is pretty normal with only 8 skills to spam countless times. During the combat, there are voiceovers that will yell shouts of encouragement which can get pretty annoying at some point. There is an option to mute it, don't worry.

Quests are like the normal kill XX amount of monsters and collect XX items and send to that guy. You can click on the quests to auto run to the area. It is simple and cater for kids.

Hoppalongs, your companion can learn skills from books dropped from Hoppadrome Solo or Party. Each book is only 1 Exp to each classes for your Hoppalong. So imagine farming for 60 books to gain one new class for your companion.
Dragomon Hunter has a system for mounts where you have to kill them countless times till they drop either an egg or a treasure chest which contains the reins, flute, whistle to summon the mount. Only mounts like huge bosses is available in item mall.

Falcon Fortune is a game which requires Fortune Gems. Fortune Gems can be bought using real money or by farming for loyalty points by doing the daily events. Daily, if you are hardworking, you can earn up to 400 Loyalty Points (LP) and 10 Fortune Gems cost you 3450 LP. So, you need 10 complete daily events to buy 10 Fortune Gems which you may or may not get what you want. This is why I have 257 hours in Aura Kingdom (I am not sorry for it).
Dragomon Hunter has a ranch which allows you to breed more dragomons. The highest for a normal dragomon is +40% movement speed. Bosses are +50% movement speed but after breeding, you can use them for attack.
The game has a wonderful system in finding parties for dungeons. There is a special recruitment and all you have to do is click on it and find a suitable group for you. You don't have to talk to them and it is wonderful for players like me who is too shy to ask for parties.

Dragomon Hunter has an archive. Which is to me, a good way to hook on to players. The archive can be used to store the special items such as costumes, mounts, glyph, companions and more. So, for a gamer, we must collect them all or catch them all.
p/s: While auto-running, please look at the screen. Some characters are stuck at certain areas.

Graphics

This game is beautiful. Some may not like the chibi kind of art style but it does have a certain edge for it. I dislike the music, rather repetitive at some point it gets boring.

Currency
Dragomon Hunter has a few currency, Dragomon Point, Coin, Loyalty Points and Aeria Points.
Dragomon Point is received by killing certain rare dragomon, or by completing a certain quests.
Coin is rewards from quests, sale of items and so forth.
Loyalty Point is as explained above.
Aeria Point is by buying with real money.

Special
Dragomon Hunter has a lot of contents. The idea of these contents are rather brilliant, to me. Aeria Games knows just how much they should give to hook onto gamers out there. Falcon's Fortune, Loyalty Point, Archive, Achievements, and Hoppalong's classes are some of those that did. Once I started and I know that this game offers did much of content for me to focus on, I got hooked to it. But doing the same thing over and over again, is not pleasant. I got bored after a while. Not getting mounts drop could be frustrating. Levelling is fun from level 1 to 20 and after that, it is all on you to grind, grind, grind.
A fair warning to players out there, games from Aeria Games tend to have a lot of bots. The popular ones do. Bots will take your kill, make this game laggy and spam a lot.

TL;dR: It is a great game, easily hooked at first. You need to have a stronger will to stay in this game. Not because of bad gamers but the amount of grind that you need is...... wow...
Pros: Good graphics, good but not great gameplay, loads of contents, mount system, Hoppalong.
Cons: Hard to understand ranch system, repetitive music, Aeria Games, grindy.

I give this game a 9/10.

Game Review: Echo of Soul

Echo of Soul is an MMORPG game published by Aeria Games. This game is available in North America and Europe regions only for now. Echo of Soul is recently an Open Beta with more contents to come. For those who has played games under Aeria Games such as Aura Kingdom and Dragomon Hunter, Echo of Soul does not have Loyalty Points. So, let's get started.

UI

The UI for this game is fairly clean. I love how the placements of windows does not disturb my character's view. The game is played in third person with the option of zooming in and out with the scroll. The UI is almost similar to any other games. Top right is map, underneath the map is quests, bottom centre is your skill bars, health bar, and hotkey bars and bottom left is your chat. I give 9/10 for the cleanliness.

Character Customization

You have very little character customization. All classes are gender-locked. It does not have much detailed customization to your character like eyes width or thin/thick lips. But u can customize your head's size. body's length and leg's length.

Classes

There are currently 6 classes. Warlock is the newest class. The classes are further divided into 2 sub classes which you can choose at level 10.

Gameplay
I have played this game for a week just to try it out. The movement is fairly smooth. Although I find the girls running to be a little weird. Almost cross-legged like. I am playing somewhere far from the servers so I receive at least 1 second late for my skills but others where great. The combat is a point and click. Which means you point or tab a nearby monster and click on the skill bar to fight. I have played the guardian, which is a fairly tanky and damaging character and I can solo a boss with a small amount of potions used. This means that for solo players out there, you can survive playing this game alone.

You may also find it annoying that you have to go through a few portals just to get to another map as shown above. These portals are linked within a tunnel and you have to go through at least 6 of them to get to the next map. I assume the developers created these tunnels to avoid people hogging a single area to fight mobs. (The areas all have the same mob, play it and you will get it.) You can only ride your mount when you are not moving and it takes 1 second to equip your mount. (Yes, there is a timer on it.) Which makes it a little more unlikable. I don't like to have to stand still just to ride my mount but that is only my opinion. I like it instant, like how I have to run away from mobs and the mount comes in handy that way.

Quests are fairly simple. The usual kill xx amount of monster and pick up the amount of items. They are guided with a small indication on the head which helps a lot. On the side of the quest tracker there is an arrow showing the direction and no, you can't click on the arrow or the quests to auto-run there like some other games.
This game may be a little bit hard to understand because there is a lot to learn. I suggest reading about it first or google along the way to understand more.

Graphics

This game is beautiful. The game is Korean based and the Koreans do make outstanding games. For example: the upcoming Black Desert. I have been playing at the highest graphics and it still runs very smoothly (8gb Ram, GeForce GTX960).

Though I find some areas to be rather dark and gloomy, some players may like this kind of environment. I dislike the music, rather repetitive at some point it gets boring. I rather turn it off and turn on only the ambient and combat sound, plus my own music to play.

Currency
Echo of Soul has 2 types of currency, AP, silver/gold, and Magic Egg. Ap is the Aeria Points that you can buy with real cash in exchange for cash shop items such as mounts, pets and accessories. Gold and silver can be earned through quests and sale of items. The amount of gold and silver that can be obtained is rather low. Some quests only gives 1 silver or 3 silver maximum as reward. I am level 17 now but the amount of silver i have is only 357. Magic Egg is a special obtainable item by logging in with attendance or special events. Magic Egg is used to purchase special boosts.

Special
This game has a soul system where any mobs that you kill, you will get a chaos soul. The soul can be purified to create special souls that can be used to enhance your character for a period of time. The game does have mounts and pets. You will get a llama mount at the beginning and other mounts and pets are available at the cash shop.

TL;dR: It is a good game but I find myself getting bored of the usual type of quests.
Pros: Good graphics, good but not great gameplay, clean UI, great for solo players.
Cons: Low amount of players atm, hard to understand system, tonnes of portal, repetitive music, Aeria Games.

I give this game a 8/10.

"Imagination" by PermaGrinFilms in 4K

Hey guys! It's been so long since I blogged. Anyway, this is for you guys. See Ya!