Back in November I did not totally realize what quitting reading the FF-wiki forums would have.

In truth, they provided a very needed service.  A place to ensure that everyone thinks about the game during the times they are not playing about the game.  I really needed that little bit to make sure that I stayed in the mindset of continual play.

At work, I actually have a WoW support group.  That little bit every day ensures that I think about WoW a few times during my work day.  It keeps me playing for about 5-10 hours per week.

I have a new love interest in my life.  And it is a good thing.  They are trying really hard to get me away from watching TV and playing video games and out into the world.  While this person is a vegetarian, we have an agreement that this belief won’t be forced upon me.  Which is good, because without chicken I’d be in trouble.  We have an agreement that I can play with my photos as much as is needed, which is really good, because I’d go crazy w/o that.

As far as quitting the game goes, I plan on canceling my older account on July 7, 2010.  Which is 6 years to the day after I started playing.  My younger account will probably linger around for a few more months while I give away everything.

If all goes as planned, by September, both Pyra and Atalantia will be no more.  A very bittersweet thing for me to do, but something that was fairly inevitable if you’ve known me well enough for the past few years.

To all the friends I’ve made over the years, on both Diabolos and Caitsith, as both Atalantia and Pyra, I wish you all the best.  In the end, it comes down to the people more than anything else.  Those who are my closest friends are already on my Facebook friends list.  I do consider them friends, no matter how far away they live.  All attempts will be made to keep in touch.  And if we lose contact, I will miss them.  I never forget people I meet, which is actually a huge problem for me in real life.  I never forget a face, but quickly forget a name.  On top of that, I’ll be able to recite the conversation back years after it happened.  One of the negatives of having a photographic memory is that it is hard to forget. 

If I can say nothing else about FFXI, it has one heck of a fun ride.

I will probably not play FFXIV.  And I may not ever play another MMORPG.  But I will never forget the friends I’ve made and the good times I’ve had.  To all of you, I salute and thank you.  I also wish you the best in all of your endeavors.

Happy 200th post to teh Pyra.

-pyra

I had a discussion (well I can’t call it that really) about whether a smn’s auto refresh counted as the first –1 perpet cost or if the lowest you could get the perpet cost was 1, with auto refresh covering the last 1mp/tick.

They even went so far as to say “you’re arguing against an established and provable fact that the minimum perp cost for any avatar is 1”.  I guess the past oh 3 years or so of having a lvl 75 smn to your lvl 40 smn makes you know all of the established and provable facts.  Because, of course, #1, it makes no difference in practice which of us is right, and #2, I can make up ‘facts’, declare them ‘established and provable’ and throw them out there, then edit the wiki to match my point of view too.  The guy even went off onto a rant about FoV refresh and I’m not sure what else just to prove me wrong – when I specifically didn’t mention FoV refresh in my original comment.

This isn’t the first time either.  I know I pick fights when people deserve it or when I’m just really, really, bored, but the number of fights and the quality of posts on that forum, and especially General, have gone down so much lately.  The mods don’t help, but at least charitwo has mostly shut up at this point.  Tahngarthor interjects his opinion into everything, and is usually just wrong.  Sadly my ‘foes’ list keeps growing, but I can’t add Tahn to the ignore list.

If it wasn’t for my overwhelming boredom at work, I’d likely never check those forums again.

Homam Body = MINE!

And just a few days after I managed to get myself a pair of Thief relic gloves +1.

Good week for me.

Also, my friend Gilg got his Homam Pants today.

Overall, it was a fairly good day in FFXI-land.  RL, not so much.

Some people were saying that they have always had the shattered telepoint and the portal, or nothing was there before.

I disagreed, but had nothing to back up this claim.  So I went searching.

Sadly, when CoP was released I was still a newbie.  It has been nearly 5 years since the expansion, and way back then, I didn’t take a lot of screenshots.

What I did find, however, was my earliest screenshots.  Complete with an absence of proof that there ever was ‘something’ where there is now the entrance to sea or the entrance to the hall of transference.

This is the first screenshot I can find.

This is the first image I can find.

Sadly, it from the SE screenshot maker and the quality is low.  The file name suggests Aug 15, 2004, which is a full month before the CoP release.  I think you can faintly see a telecrystal on the pad.  But it is far too difficult to make out.  But there is ‘something’ there.

In the sense of curiosity, I went to find this place.  5 years later.

This is what I found.

Or so I thought.  It is close, but this is the west side of the crag.  I thought this was the right spot due to the ground markings, but I was wrong.

The real spot is here.

And it took me an hour to find this place.

This is the North side of the crag.  Which is still a telepoint today.  Which neither proves, nor disproves what I was going for.

If anything, it just shows how little does change over the years.

-pyra

Today, we’re going to talk about cropping and screen aspect ratios.

If you have an older style monitor, you want to stick with the default of 4:3.

Somewhere around 2004-2005, monitor makers realized that widescreen would give a larger number in inches, while giving a smaller number of pixels (so they can charge more for less).

Generally speaking, these are in a ratio of 16:9 or 16:10.

To figure this out, take your screen’s resolution and divide it out.  For example, my monitor is 1920×1200.  1920/16 = 120.  120 x 10 = 1200, so my monitor is 16:10, and that is what I should be using.

Aspect ratio is hidden in Config –> Misc 2.

Lets look at the effect this has.

16:10 (correct for my screen)

16:9 (close, but not quite right)

4:3 (default)

Hang on, lets take a closer look at the 4:3.

That is an overly fat taru.  Especially considering it should look like this:

Aspect ratio does make a big difference.

The second lesson for today is to crop your screenshots.

There is no excuse.  The GIMP is free and available for every platform, and Paint.NET is free and an excellent light weight photo editor for Windows.  No excuses at all.

For the most part, I don’t care about your chat log or your health bar.  I don’t care about the menu, your TP, the top bar, or the meter that shows up when you are in battle.  This doesn’t include the windower stuff that I mentioned already that I don’t care about.

So please, crop and resize your images (in that order).

The final tip for today is to check your color settings.

Far too often I’ve seen what looks like it must be a monitor out of calibration, that gets compensated for via the video card’s control panel.  What this does is creates an image that is very dark or very light to others, but looks normal to you.

If your video card puts out a dark image, and your monitor is set to display too bright, it looks fine to you, bur dark to everyone else.  And the reverse is true.

Your best bet is really to double check with a factory-installed version of Windows.  These are generally fairly close to good.

When in doubt, reset your video card control panel to default, then adjust your monitor accordingly.  (I am guilty of this sometimes too)

However, this isn’t always bad.  So be careful of ruining something that would be good.

Generally speaking (and this is the photographer in me) a slightly darker image is better than one that is slightly lighter.  There is a reason that many photographers will underexpose their images by 1/3rd-1/2 stops.  It is also easier to recover from an image that is a little too dark than one that has lost detail due to being too light.  Slightly darker looks fine.  In fact, it often produces a more comfortable image (or if you’d prefer, a warmer image).

Part 3 coming at some point shortly.  I’ll finally talk about content.  If it goes long, I’ll make a part 4.

Now, I come at this as a photographer, so in theory, I know a little bit about taking pictures.

The first thing to understand is this – different file types are designed for different things.

It is true, not all image types are intended, or best, for all types of images.

For starters, the .GIF is terrible for photos.  It is.  Thankfully, no one really uses them for photos anymore.  What they are good for is line-art, comics, and yes, screenshots from video games.  .GIF usually has really good results for game screenshots.

JPG is good for only photos.  That is what is was created for.  It sucks for in-game pictures.  Stop using it already.

BMP is an uncompressed format.  It takes a lossless image (depending on bit depth), but uses a lot of disk space.  It also cannot be displayed natively in a web browser.

PNG is a compromise format.  It handles both photos and line-art, but uses more space than either.  A photo saved in jpeg will be smaller than a photo saved to PNG, but will have the same image quality.  If you want proof, go see this link http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20490&start=15#p260848 .  I posted a photo I made saved with different settings in photoshop as a jpeg as well as a png (the reason I am not reposting them here will be mentioned later).  The PNG is more than double the size of the JPG, but equally represents the image I was trying to recreate.

However, for in-game screenshots, PNG is the easiest to work with.  Since most blogs and forums do not get significant enough traffic, it will provide the best results.  In other words, stop using JPG for screenshots.

That’s the first lesson.

The second is very simple – stop showing all of your Windower data on your images.  That’s great, you can see all of the tp of your alliance and about how long until your buffs wear.  Joy.  IF you haven’t already, change this line in your init.txt

bind sysrq screenshot [file type]

to

bind sysrq screenshot png hide

Yeah, I’m saying to use PNG.  Do it.

The third lesson is a bit more subtle.  Resize your image.

That’s wonderful, you play at 1900×1200.  I do too.  If you post an image, I don’t need something huge.

If you pay attention, I generally resize everything to 500px wide max.  It fits this theme well.  Other themes may be more forgiving.  My old theme would look good with a 600px wide image.  Learn your theme, and resize nicely.  If you really need to post a full-sized (or larger than 600px wide image), display a small version and link it to a bigger one.

It started when discussing Quetz and my friend described it as the “Alabama of servers”.  I, being the smartass I am, asked “so what would be the Mississippi of servers?”, and without hesitation, he replied “Fairy”.

Which started a small discussion of which city represents each server.

Odin, it was determined was NYC.  Very popular place to be, lots of people.  Remora was therefore North Jersey.  They so badly want to be Odin (NYC) but, like the real Jersey, is where those not quite good enough for NYC end up.

We had a hard time trying to figure out where that would make Bahamut.  I suggested Boston, which was quickly responded to with “No, I like Boston”.  My friend suggested London.  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so we let it just sit.  London may have been due to my friend’s dislike of both London and the BG crowd.

Diabolos (my original server) is Detroit.  The place sucks like no other, but if that’s the only server you’ve been on, it doesn’t feel so bad.

Caitsith, as I described it, is “vacation”, especially after being on Diabolos for so long.

That wasn’t good enough, and my friend being a Caitsith native asked me why so many people were migrating from Diabolos to Caitsith.  I thought about it and realized that there were quite a few, although as far as I know, I was one of the first to move over.  It is almost trendy to move here now, especially from Diabolos.

So we came up with the best city where it is trendy to want to move to and the people are generally friendlier (than Detroit).  Our answer was Sydney.

As to the others?  Neither of us really had any experience with them, so I invite others to compare your server to a city and give a reason why.  You can even disagree with me, although your chances of changing my mind on Diabolos are small.

-pyra

CoP was great wasn’t it.

So great, we get to play parts of the story again.  Sort of.

Having been away from the game, then on vacation, I’m only getting started on this mini-expansion now (as well as working on the various parts of the kupo desteak).

The opening CS has a lot of things flying around.  From what I’ve seen so far, this crazy title was probably where $1 of my purchase price went.

One thing CoP didn’t have was a gawker who didn’t know when to shut his mouth.

Seriously, go watch it again, he keeps his mouth open and his head shaking for a good 20-30 seconds longer than the rest of the people.

Then for some reason, Aldo is there.

Holy foreshadowing batman.  At least Aldo keeps some of his composure.

We then had another special effect, which I’m also convinced was where $1 went to.

But unlike the first effect, this had a strange kid with too much power and knowledge.  Who pointed at my tail for a while.

Yes yes, it is a very nice tail.  Are you going to send me on some crazy mission like CoP 1-3?  Do I get to climb the inside of the crags in a strange and mysterious level capped zone?  No?  I get to go kill level 20 monsters in 3 widely separated areas for a few hours until I get a few items?

Then I get to the fun stuff?

But who are you?

And probably just as important, how did I figure out your name without you actually telling me?

Overall the ACP has been very easy, but far too much running around.

I really just want the item at the end.

-pyra

My tagline on the blog has been “There’s a lost soul coming down the road, Somewhere between two worlds” which sometimes loses the apostrophe in “There’s” during WordPress upgrades (the original tagline was “Updated Reguarly, Except When It’s Not”).  It comes from a song by “Bruce Hornsby” named “Lost Soul”, and was included on the album I purchased “Greatest Radio Hits”.  It is a very good song, but somewhat depressing (one of the lines is “He said he was a lost soul didn’t fit in anywhere”.

The original reason behind it was the two worlds we all exist in – the real world and the game world – and how we are all divided into two existences, and the balance that must be achieved to do what you want to do and need to do in both.

Or I might have been drunk and thought the song sounded good.

At another point, it may have been to describe being torn between two games, FFXI and WoW.

And now, oddly enough due to some of the people I met in WoW, it describes two servers in FFXI.

As horrible as my original experience was on Diabolos, I’ve always been somewhat torn after leaving the old server.  As much as I love Caitsith, there were a few friends on Diabolos who I still miss, much more so after playing WoW.

I’ll explain.

The group who I joined up with in WoW used to play on Diabolos.  I was briefly in their shell, and I didn’t really know them well at all.

A few of the people I met in this WoW guild went back to Diabolos.  One of them was someone who I really became good friends with.  We had the same classes on WoW and would compare gear/notes/builds.  Ok, so more often than not I was doing the learning.

While playing my 14-day trial for FFXI, this player helped us out, getting our sub-job items.  His THF is very well geared.  It made me miss mine, which is not as geared, but still a lot of fun to play.

After talking with him again, it made me somewhat torn.  There is much I miss from Diabolos (people mostly, and most of those I couldn’t stand have left the game/server).

I said my goodbyes today as my 14-days will be up before I am able to play again.  But it got me back into the game, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.

He did say something interesting though – if he didn’t have so many friends on Diabolos, he’d probably join me on Caitsith.  In a way, I feel the same.  If I didn’t have my friends on Caitsith, I’d at least consider moving back.  My former shell regrouped, and I was basically given an invitation back (not sure I’d join though, but I hadn’t thought about it really).  I know for one thing, I’d miss my Dynamis shell.  They have been around for a while and can get zones cleared and relic to fall.  And its fun.

Not even going to think about how much I’d miss my Limbus group.  Without either group or the people in it, there would probably not be much of a decision.  While I wasn’t playing, it was the people I missed the most.

But, I have not felt this torn between the two servers since I initially left Diabolos.  And all due to some people I met playing WoW.

Whodathunk?

Like when I originally planned my departure, I am presented with opportunity no matter which decision I make, and will (probably) be missing out on good times with whichever group I’m not a part of.  It is kind of sad in a way, but I can’t see me leaving Caitsith anytime soon.

I hate this feeling.

-pyra

Last Saturday while playing on my 14-day trial, I was invited to attend a Dynamis with the group I used to play with on Diabolos, now called LastBoss.  I went as a White Mage and it is the first time I’ve been a White Mage in Dynamis in nearly 2 years.

It really was like riding a bike.  I guess since I’ve been playing White Mage since summer of 2005 it was all muscle memory.  It probably also helps that I had a backup copy of my macros from my old computer and was able to get back to what I was used to quickly.

The group is new, and had some trouble.  They also only had about 20 people in the zone, excluding myself.

At least we got to the Angry Tuna…

At least it wasn’t my fault?

Anyways, after this, I was ready to restart the Pyra.

I logged on to Caitsith just in time to go kill Roc.

ToD was sometime that doesn’t matter anymore because the server was reset.

I then got to go and do Limbus with my old group.  I missed them.  But lets not tell them that, it makes it harder for me to negotiate for more cookies.

I have to admit, losing my Thief and Monk macros made this tough.  I barely remember what gear I had to switch and when (if I remember right, both had significantly more gear swap macros than my White Mage ever did).  I was casting spells and using JAs and WSs from the menus again like a common noob.  I might be somewhat nooby again, but I’m far from ‘common’ .  Limbus was really fun, and it was hardly about the items, it was just about having fun with some old friends.

On Sunday night, I went back into Dynamis with KillerInstinct.  We did a Jeuno.  After I’d spent half the day writing new Thief macros, I ended up going as a Monk.  However…

I was a little disappointed.  The other one only hit me for 700ish.  My monk has ~1600 HPs in Dynamis gear (and I was /WAR)

I noticed a few things after my extended absence –

1. I can’t remember what is ‘good’ for damage anymore.  My asurans were hitting for ~450-500, and I was pulling hate, but I thought they should be double that
2. The economy has gone crazy.  Most ancient currencies have doubled in price while I was away.  I’m sure not complaining though, as I had a bunch on Pyra which I’ve sold to gain some pocket change.
3. Thief evasion is still as amazing as always.  Because I need inventory space, I went and completed the first two Young Griffons quests.  The second requires you to fight a NM with a high counter rate.  Well, he barely hit me on my Thief (ok so I added about +17 evasion skill and wore some of my normal +eva gear).
4. I need to completely rewrite my Thief and Monk macros.  They needed it before, but it feels like such a daunting task.

Anyways, enjoy your Moogle Coup of State and update.  I’m going on vacation in a few days, and so won’t be even starting the 2 mini expansions for about a month.

-pyra

After my last post about being off for a month, temptation got the best of me and I signed up for a 14-day trial.

I can admit that there have been many changes since I last really paid attention, and most of them have been for the better.  In only a few days I’m already level 14 and have my subjob items.  My gear is still total crap, as it took just about all of the money I had managed to accumulate (a vast sum of 7K) to buy the basic armor.  Oh and I accidentally found a check box in the config which will disable your sound.  And then I somehow unchecked this box.

I’m playing with some people who I got to know from WoW.  I have to admit, this is the first time in a while I’ve really said that I need to go reactivate Pyra now.

At the same time, its quite sad that my friend from WoW (who is a THF in FFXI) far outgears my own THF, even though he had stopped playing a year or so before I did.  They are quite a good group of people.  Maybe I can convince them to move to Caitsith.

It is, however, disappointing that the friend to whom I loaned my WHM account to has decided to sell some of my old items and keep the money.  The account was loaned so he could PL himself and run a salvage group with 1 less person.  He was also free to use the crafting skills or use the character to farm with as much as he wanted.  I don’t even mind that he made money in the server transfer (our original deal was that he could transfer the account to his server, but would pay to transfer it to a server of my choosing when I took the account back).  But not to sell the items and keep the money, at least not yet.  Especially when he asked me if he could sell it and I said ‘no’.  At least he didn’t unsign my gear.

It really was my fault.  I knew how he is and I let him use the account anyway.  Oh well, if all I lose out of this is a few items I wasn’t really using even when I still played, I’m doing well, and in reality, all I know for sure that he sold was my Uggalepih Pendant (which is worth 700K on Diabolos and only 480K on Caitsith) and some misc crafting materials that I wasn’t able to sell.

The best word to describe this is Freeing. I started feeling like I had to login every day to work on my character, and upset if I couldn’t make any progress. My feelings on FFXI are fairly clearly posted last August. It is also my most linked to post on this blog. With 2 outside links. Wooo.

The truth is, part of me really misses much of the games. But I do miss FFXI more than WoW. Had I never moved to Caitsith or discovered the AI linkshell on Diabolos, I doubt this would be the case. My experience up until that point, especially end game, was very negative.

But it is true that after a while you really only remember the good times and forget the bad. It was not all good times, and the horrible drop rates in events like Limbus and sky and other non-dynamis things are what really keeps me from coming back right now. Also the somewhat frustrating mistake I made nearly 5 years ago now when I made my first account. I have many times I wish I had all of the gear on just 1 account, but there were times when having 2 accounts also had its advantage. Given the chance, I’d merge them onto Pyra. But I know this would never happen. I could re-level some of the jobs, but the thought of trying to get another yinyang robe just makes me cringe.

Then there are the non-instanced events. It is so insanely idiotic that these haven’t been instanced at this point, I really have no words for it. If I came back, I also don’t look forward to the Nyzul grind for my new WSes and gear. My disk is still on floor 1, and getting help with that would not be fun. I haven’t even purchased the Crystaline Cut Scene yet either. Its not about the gear, just the frustration factor that comes from the huge effort to get anything done in FFXI. It was something I did not miss during my time in WoW.

Not that it matters much for the next few months, my schedule wouldn’t allow me to do much of anything. And my gear and other supplies are spread across several servers at this point, and a friend is abusing my WHM account for farming up a few mil in a few days.

Edit: I put this into “Real Life”, then didn’t include much from my Real Life.

I bought a new camera a few months ago, a Nikon D300 if you care, and have put about 3000 pictures across it already — considering I used to average 1500/year, that’s a lot.

Since I quit FFXI, I’ve lost about 23 lbs. Which is probably only about half way back to my pre-FFXI levels.

I also get a lot more sleep than I used to get, which is never a bad thing .

I’ve started the Merry Mead House blog. I’m going to handle it differently than I handled the Party Place. The biggest difference is that I won’t be self-hosting. Following the WP updates was getting a bit tiresome. I want to have someone else handle it. The second biggest difference will be speed. The WP servers are faster at serving up WP blogs than my shared hosting.

Other than that, and a new theme that I’m still getting some things set up for, the site is ready to go. Please enjoy.

But the good news is that I managed to resuscitate the old computer for a few hours. So I’ve re-gained access to my old screenshots folder. I’ve also set up my laptop to be able to edit images (PhotoShop) and edit/upload posts (Windows Live Writer).

My laptop is quite nice, was a wise purchase.

Other than that, I’m trying a new 15 year old scotch. It is yummy.

As some know, I quit FFXI at the end of December. While I’m sure many will accuse me of quitting due to the so-called ‘blood price nerf’, this is not the case. If you scroll down 2 entries you can see where I basically announced that I would be quitting at the end of December. This was posted in early November, about a month before the nerf in question.

I am, however, glad that I was able to stop playing on my own terms.

Sadly, my computer died a few days before Christmas, and my account ran out before I could log back on, so my characters now have about 2 mil that will go to waste. I am also quite sad that I wasn’t able to say farewell to a few friends. Such is life, I suppose.

I played this game for nearly 4 and a half years. I started July 7, 2004. I don’t regret playing one bit, it was a lot of fun.

The one thing I do regret is that 2 of my 3 most treasured items will not live on. I did have some expensive toys, but they did not have the meaning of two very special items. Since my computer is still dead, I have lost access to my old screenshots, but here is what they are:

A NQ Scorpion Harness, signed by Radool. Radool was a good friend. I managed to come into some money from a lucky Under Observation run, and he was kind enough to sign my Scorp Harness for me. It is one of my favorite items of all time, I only wish I was able to tell him this.

The second item is a NQ Noble’s Tunic, signed by Chumley. Chumley was one of those people who you just wish you were. No, not because he was loaded up with gear or whatnot, but because he was probably one of the most sincere, nice, and honest players you could ever want to know.

The third item will live on. This is a HQ chocobo tunic signed by Ata. I was making some for my mules one time and this accidentally HQ’d. I kept it for a while, but gave it to my old friend Wolfreign before I left Diabolos. As far as I know, he still has it. I really hope he does, as it is one of the few items I ever managed to HQ.

Beyond that, I do wish I had a chance to give away some other items. My Thief’s dagger collection could be put to good use without me, and some of the Monk, White Mage, and Summoner non-ex gear would absolutely be put to better use than sitting on a canceled account.

Do I think I’ll be back? Who knows. As we all know, the future is far from certain. In the mean time, I’m going to place this blog into a read-only mode. It will still be here, but new comments will be shut off shortly and the files and database made read-only. I’m also planning on actually using this domain for what I had intended when I purchased it — a place for my photos.

Other than that, I didn’t quit WoW. They kept giving me free time, so I kept playing, and got re-hooked. I’m having fun, which is what is important. I don’t have a new blog for the WoW character, and I may not make one.

Time will tell.
-pyra

After being corpse camped again in WoW to the point where I had to just log out, that growing hatred of PvP came back. I decided I was done. I can’t bring myself to commit to an alliance character, and there are no good horde guilds on non-PvP worlds, which leaves all of nothing left for me to play. I quit all my guilds and made a corpse out of my main character in the middle of Shatt. I do not intend on logging on except maybe to re-corpse after the servers reset.

Then I went to FF for Dynamis. At this point, I realized that the only game I might hate more than WoW at that moment, is FF. I was there out of a sense of obligation to my friends, more than any sort of desire to be there.

My WoW account expires at the end of this month, and my FF will be canceled before the new year. I’m not deleting anything, as there is always the chance I may return to one or both. I’m just going inactive for a while.

Since I’m not going to be playing anymore, this will be the last post here, aside from a handful of pictures that I intended to post and may still. I’ve been neglecting the rest of my life for far too long.

All that’s left to say is ‘So long, and thanks for all the fish’.

While it is true, FFXI is a lot easier than it used to be, and I don’t feel that it is completely a bad thing, no one thinks about the other way around.

When the news of the 18 hour Pandemonium Warden hit, the FFXI world was mad at SE for making another impossible to kill monster.

The reaction in WoW was a bit different — they viewed it as an epic battle, something that does not exist in WoW, at least not to the same scale.  Most bosses in WoW (that I have seen), you kill in 5-10 minutes or less, or you wipe.  It simply comes down to the way WoW is designed.  While you will always be regening your health and mana (mp) in WoW while you are not fighting, when you are in ‘battle mode’ you do not regen health.  And while you are casting a spell, you do not regen your full magic.  There is also no way to exit battle mode without running far away (unlike FF where you just disengage and run and hide while you kneel for a bit).

So anyways, in an effort to add more storyline to WoW, they have added Cut Scenes.  There is one I heard about for one of the 5-man instances.  Then there is this one (which is not really a Cut Scene, because everyone sees it, and it changes the music for the entire zone too).  Movie!  It is really creepy too, I love it, and it reflects a large amount of lore (story) in one quick event (the models for the characters have been updated since this movie was made).  It also made Sylvanas my favorite NPC in the game (or as I said to some people, she is my ‘Shantotto’ of WoW).

Now they have created this Cut Scene when you hit a certain stage in the next expansion.

[This is a huge spoiler if you play WoW.  If you don't, its just a cool Cut Scene]

Movie!

So it looks like they are trying to add more story and make the feel of WoW more epic.  In FF, you have to save the world in every expansion.  In WoW, you don’t have this.  With the expansion, you actually invade one of the Horde cities for a quest — on both sides.  They handle it through what is being called phasing, where two people can be in the same place (and are on the same server), but they can’t see each other (and may see different NPCs and/or monsters).  It sounds really neat.  It is like instancing in place, and I’m excited for it.

In the end, the mixing of ideas from FFXI and WoW get us an easier FFXI and a more epic WoW.  Doesn’t sound too bad to me, more for me to enjoy.

-pyra

First monster.

Wooot!  It was off of a Kindred Thief too.

Which completes my set, making me 5/5.

Wootness.

Then at the next Xarcabard run, this happened.

So now I have a Shadow Mantle too.  Sweet!  (Maybe I should level a Paladin)

I don’t think this is extremely impressive, but on darksday, with the extra 20 VIT, I had 118 VIT.  As a Monk.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) we had some good luck with Blue Mage hats.

Yeah, I know.  It was crazy, and blue mage is now on free lot status.  I believe we got 5 of them in one run.

At least we are getting lots of drops in Xarcabard now.

On a different note, I found this funny (its from limbus).

Haven’t seen a 999 rolled in a long time.

-pyra

Charitwo, the infamous editor of the Wiki, experienced some odd cut scene after completing WotG Mission 8. He then added this to the Wiki. But, it was wrong information, and at the very least, not complete. He started an edit war with Urthdigger, a newer player who has a great attitude towards the game. It culminated with Charitwo locking the article until January 2009 with the comment for the edit “stoppat”.

Urth then brought this up on the wiki forums, where the consensus is, Urth is right, Charitwo is wrong. Even the talk page shows that people disagree, but the usual “I’m always right, you’re always wrong” attitude continues.

Hell, even on his talk page, you can see his attitude go furthur.

In the future, can you please take a more polite tone with other staff members?

The reply, not an “I’m sorry” or “Didn’t mean that”….

All testing takes place at the xen1 server, not here at the live wiki where the local activity takes place.

While this is possibly true, his reply to being accused of being too curt with an employee of the company which owns ff-wiki is to accuse the employee of being wrong and make curt remark.

I laugh because I love watching train wrecks in progress. Also, I like stirring up trouble. And since it doesn’t look like anyone is going to say anything, and the wiki admins are happy enough to let that post fall off the discussion board, I’m going to say something.

<3
-Pyra

Sydonia is a relative newcomer to the life of politics, a spell caster, who has lived on Crushridge for her entire life.

Sydonia went, in a matter of weeks, from a newbie to an officer of her guild.

For a candidate who has not been corrupted by years of visits from lobbyists and others who want special favors, Sydonia is the candidate for you.

This message brought to you by Sydonia for President. My name is Sydonia and I approve this message.