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

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

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

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 .

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

It was becoming too much negative attention, and pulling the feed allows me a bit more freedom without the scrutiny.  I can ramble, and stray from the topic as much as I want.  I can also post every 4-6 hours (if I wanted to) and not get crap for filling up the main page.

This doesn’t, of course, shut off the feed, and any other readers will still work the same as they used to.

For anyone curious, here is how it would have played out.  Most people will be offended.  Don’t read on if you are easily offended.  If you do read on, don’t complain to me .  The whole thing was basically designed to poke fun of the political process, and also (here’s the important part) to offend everyone.

In an effort to keep this from an all out debate in my comments, I will turn them off if they get out of hand.

Pyra would pick Umah as her running mate (Umah is my WoW alt, still low leveled, but been around about as long as Syd).  Syd would pick Ata as her running mate.

All of the FFXI world would have thrown their support behind Pyra, except for the elves.  They would side with Syd “Because they like what she has to say”.  When in reality, they would only vote for her because Syd is an elf, and due to allegations that Pyra doesn’t like elves.  The self-proclaimed king of the Elves — Prince “Rev Al” Trion would have said something like “All true elves must vote for Syd”.

It was designed to highlight that far too many people are voting based on the color of the candidate’s skin.  Here’s a news flash — voting for someone based on the color of their skin is just as bad as voting against someone based on the color of their skin.  Need proof?  Howard Stern (YouTube clip).  “If Obama were to win, would you mind if Sarah Palin became Vice-President?”  “Yeah, I like her.”  Sal went into Harlem and presented McCain’s policies as Obamas, and asked people about it.  Yeah… not voting based on skin color, really.

Continuing the Pyra vs Syd bit, everyone would have jumped on Umah saying how bad, inexperienced, etc she is.  Of course the obvious thing absent is that Syd has basically the same experience as Umah, yet Syd was running for President.  A semi-washed up actor would make a comment about how Umah will probably become president because Pyra is so old she’ll end up dying in office.

The obvious correlation here is that Palin and Obama have basically the same level of experience in government — next to none.  And Obama has been basically running for President since he started in politics.  The thing no one likes to see is that Umah [Palin] is running for VICE President, and Sydonia [Obama] is running for President.

As far as the washed up actor comment.  It is sadly true.  Matt Damon was the washed up actor.  He basically said that McCain is so old he will die in office, leaving someone with basically the same experience as his choice for President in charge.

Pyra and Syd would throw some jabs back and forth.  Anytime Pyra made anything remotely negative, it was torn to pieces on the blogs and internet.  Anytime Syd made any comment remotely negative, it was treated as gospel.  It would get to the point where Pyra would be torn apart for saying anything negative, and not saying anything negative.  A real Catch-22, and the candidate chosen by the media would sadly come out ahead.  Remember, the media chose Obama over Hillary, and now they are trying to chose Obama over McCain.

Also, Obama has accepted millions in foreign money, mostly from George Soros.  He also broke his promise to take public funds for the campaign.  This would have set a cap on how much he could spend.  While Obama and McCain had an agreement to take them, Obama broke the agreement, allowing him to out fund raise, and thus outspend.  So now the media is picking our winner, and foreigners are buying the election.

In addition, Obama’s ‘no tax increase’ is what is called a ‘marginal rate hike‘.  It works out that EVERYONE’s taxes will go up by about 10%, unless you make between 85,000 and 95,000 per year.  I worked damn hard for 3 years to make 10% more.  Now, I’m being told ‘You don’t deserve that money as much as this guy who hasn’t worked in 5 years does’.  If I get a 10% raise in my taxes, it will destroy my quality of life (which is not that staggering already), and will cause me to likely not be able to afford my condo — or I’ll be eating top raman everyday.  Could I afford slightly higher taxes?  Probably.  Could I afford 10%?  Not a chance.  Especially since VA is controlled by the Democrats, who also enjoy raising taxes, even in years of a budget surplus… I already pay too much in taxes (over 50% when you combine the state, federal, social security, etc).  If I wanted to pay 60% taxes, I could just move to Paris.  These tax increases will also hurt the company I work for.  I don’t believe it will go under, but we won’t be able to expand as quickly as we want to, and we might not be able to afford even a cost of living raise every year.

Everyone talks about this mysterious middle class.  Where I live, I’m squarely in the middle.  Maybe even borderline poor.  For my area.  If I lived in other places, I would probably be rich.  It is all based on cost of living, which no one has addressed so far.  Based on what we’ve seen, Obama figures that middle class is those making 85,000-95,000 per year.  McCain tried to define it as anyone making less than 5 million per year, and was torn apart on the news channels as ‘out of touch’.  5 million might be high, but if you define 5 mil or less as middle class, and favor middle class tax cuts, I can see what you are saying, and I can either agree or disagree.  Obama hasn’t defined middle class, yet I just saw an add which says he is for ‘middle class tax cuts’.  And yet, people eat it up.

Obama is also in favor of reinstating the so-called ‘Death Tax’, where you have to pay taxes on money or property that you inherit from a recently deceased relative.  This is that great tax that causes families to have to sell farms that have been in the family for hundreds of years, simply because the family cannot afford to pay the taxes when the farm passes from one generation to the next.

During the final debate, the announcer said that ‘McCain benefits more from keeping people afraid’.  The next day, Obama gave a speech, saying we shouldn’t run a campaign of fear.  30 minutes later, I saw an add that involved a rolling ball of yarn.  I have seen this add probably 200-300 times already.  McCain is constantly accused of running a negative campaign, yet Obama is flooding the airwaves with negativity, everyday.

I live in Virginia, a battleground state.  I have constant visitors from the democrats, and phone calls every 1-2 days.  I get 2 or so a week from McCain too. The difference here is that I asked to be on the McCain call list.  I have in fact asked to not be bothered by the democrats anymore.  They have not respected my request.

I’m not even going to bother talking about either candidate’s health plans — they both suck and are unrealistic. They are both (sadly) just telling people what they want to hear. Neither one will work.

Obama is so out of touch with reality it is amazing. Maybe he is more in touch with the youth, but you need to have more. McCain might be out of touch with the youth, but he is in touch with reality. This is what I would prefer myself.

Then there is the contradiction of a politician who unites rather than divides.  Its funny, we all want to be united, but the only way to differentiate yourself is to take a hard stance on a divisive issue (like abortion, or a social issue), then convince the world that your opponent wants to club baby seals, while you want to shower the world with rainbows and lollipops.  The only way get the power to be a uniter, is to first be a divider.

In the end, it comes down to this.  Obama is an optimist, McCain is a realist.  McCain tells people how it is, Obama tells you how he wants to think the world is, but really isn’t.  Maybe more culturally relevant, McCain is PC, Obama is Mac.  You want to like the Mac, but when it comes down to buying that new computer, 90%+ will buy the PC, even while rooting for the Mac.

Also, this is why I hate politics.

Comment #10 – “so…..low lvls is like WoW now?”

Leading up to this, there are a lot of ‘about time’ and ‘really could have used that 4 years ago’ type comments, but this one stuck out the strongest to me of all of them.

My personal feelings are ‘who cares anymore about leveling up’. Anymore, leveling to 75 is just a chore, especially after the first time. The second, third, fourth, fifth, etc 75 just become a larger chore than the one before it (this comes from someone who has 4 75’s, a 61, and 2 53’s). I welcome anything to make this task go faster.

With that said, there is nothing wrong with having a npc assign a task to (for example) go and kill 20 rabbits, then give you an experience points reward equal to around 1/3rd of that of killing 20 monsters, maybe a small money amount, and perhaps a reward based on what you killed. Actually, such a quest does exist, aside from the experience points part. While you can buy the items from the AH, I think the idea is to go kill a number of monsters in that family, help you learn what they drop, as well as provide guidance to lowbie leveling targets. See the quest The Seamstress, and its follow up quests Lizard Skins, and Black Tiger Skins. The final result of this 3-stage quest is a Tiger Stole. Not an amazing item, but not horrible either.

So the goal of the quest (I assume) is that you kill a few even match monsters, get 500-600 exp per quest, turn it in, get a few items and some money. Now add on the quest giving you a 300 exp per quest bonus too. For quests which are much harder, or more time consuming, like the warp 2 quest, perhaps a 3000-5000 experience points bonus would be appropriate. Something that helps take the edge off of leveling. I also think that as you get higher level, the monsters should give more experience (I do realize this was increased at least once already, I believe it should be increased again, but have the base exp per kill raised instead of the potential exp from a larger level difference). I’m not saying that at 70 every monster should give you 4000 experience and you should level in 10 kills, like at level 1, I’m just saying that maybe 500-600 experience per kill (from the same monsters that now give 150-200) isn’t a bad thing either.

Lets take what would be a higher level quest. In the early 50’s, you get a quest from some npc in Rabao to ‘help clear out kuftal’. It gives a bonus experience of 2000, and 15K money (or maybe an item along the lines of a Jaeger Ring). Suddenly killing a bunch of crabs in Kuftal is a little bit more bearable. Once this became the norm, groups could pick their leveling area based on the quests they could get as well. There would need to be enough quests to match the number of leveling areas — we don’t need even more parties up at Greater Colibri. Maybe a “Go kill 200 weapons in sky, come back for a 10,000 exp bonus”. Sum of experience (assuming 200 exp per weapon no chain) is 40,000, plus the exp bonus, brings the total to 50,000 experience points (approximately). It could get more people into old leveling areas, and make it worthwhile to level there again.

I understand this has the potential to create more ‘high level n00bs’. Well, they will be created anyways, might as well not torture everyone else trying to prevent what cannot be avoided.

The main problem with this is a big one though. There just aren’t enough quests to allow for many level 75 jobs. After 1 or 2, it would be back to grinding for you (depending on how many of these quests were repeatable, and how often they were repeatable). However, since the game is as old as it is, this sort of change would bring new life into quests, and help with the 3rd or 4th 75 job that people would otherwise probably not level.

One of the last messages I have from them (I do not know if they were a guy or girl, and in a way, it doesn’t matter) is this.

11/11/2005, nearly 3 years ago now.  Yes, I have saved this as a new POL message for all of this time.

To say I miss Syd is an understatement.

A long time ago now, the Dosetsu Tree added to the game, complete with a new item — the Raikiri.  Worth over a mil at the time, I actually went out and got the drop for this person, and gave it to them.  This is the only time I can remember that I have solo hunted a monster for someone else.  This raikiri was also the 3rd or 4th on Diabolos.  Syd wanted one so badly, the stats were quite good for its time (remember that not too many people had B01 access at this time, and most mid-50 parties were in the Tree where it has nearly full-time thunder weather) and it was blue (blue blades are something we both liked a lot).

I still have this raikiri on a mule, its value next to nothing now.  I can’t see myself selling it (I have thought about it, but cannot bring myself to list it on the AH), and I may just delete the item from the game when I quit.

Syd leveled samurai after we discussed Rurouni Kenshin, one of the few animes I actually enjoyed watching, on Cartoon Network.  She did so much because she thought it would make me happy.

I have not talked to her in years, but I have not forgotten her.  The name of my WoW character is in honor of her.

If I ever met this person in real life, or in another game, I would be happy to call them a friend once again.

Even just writing this post, and thinking about my friend, makes me so warm inside again.  And sad that I do not know what happened to her.

Wherever you are Syd, come back to us please.

Key things to know — There are two factions, the Alliance and the Horde. While some will describe the Horde as the ‘bad’ side, this really isn’t the case. They are just two groups that don’t like each other, and from my experiences, the Alliance is far more evil (because its full of teenagers playing rogue gnomes).

I did levels 1-64 in under 4 weeks. This is faster than is normally possible for a beginner. This was due to two things — #1 – my friend knows the game and the quests very well and was able to get them done fairly quickly, and #2 – linked accounts give triple experience points for all quests and monster kills.

Since in WoW, the primary way to gain experience is to do quests, we were moving around a lot, which makes easy transportation key.

The primary long distance travel method is the flight path. These cover long distances fairly quickly, but require you to talk to the flightmaster first in order to learn the path. Unlike FF, the flight paths are an on-demand travel system that will take you automatically to your destination. There are also many small settlements around the game world, most of which have flightpaths. Every so often, Blizzard will speed up or otherwise make the flightpaths faster, or add paths to make more connections. This is the opposite of what SE likes to do. SE makes things take longer, Blizzard makes the annoying things take less time.

There are three types of settlements, Friendly, Neutral, and Enemy. The status is somewhat based on your reputation (or fame) with that faction. For example, all Horde cities are ‘friendly’ to all members of the Horde, and ‘enemy’ to all members of the Alliance. Then there are other groups that will be either neutral to you (such as the various goblin cities, unless you do a lot of quests, in which case they turn friendly) or enemy (some groups will consider you an enemy if you side with their opposing group, and questing one group will raise your fame with them, but lower it with the other).

The three statuses are color coded. Green is Friendly, Yellow is Neutral, and Red is Enemy. There is a stage between Neutral and Enemy called ‘Unfriendly’. These monsters have an Orange colored name, but won’t attack unless attacked first (like a yellow).

As I mentioned earlier, the primary way to get experience points is via quests. A quest will also give you some reward (and item or money or both), fame, and experience points. For example, last night I soloed a bunch of quests. It took about 3 hours, and I gained around 400,000 experience points (not as much as it sounds, as 63->64 is around 650,000 experience points, 64->65 is around 680,000 experience points). I also gained around 250 gold (money) during this time, and raised my fame with several factions. Oh, and this was all solo too. With a current level cap of 70, and as an attack magic user (mage class), I was able to solo about 2/3rds of a level in a few hours, near the level cap, that’s just awesome (especially coming from the FF world where you can’t solo much of anything).

For gear, there are several ways to get the best stuff. The first is quests. Once you hit the outlands (starting around level 58), quests give very good items as a reward. And then the next quest gives an even better reward. The second way is instanced dungeons. These are not always easy, but give a lot of the best PvE gear. The third is battleground and arena. This is PvP, and gives PvP-centered gear (mage gear with high defense for example). Some of these items are just amazing, even for PvE events. The final way is to make it. In WoW, there is the concept of a r/ex recipe for an item, and some of these make r/ex items (so you make your own gear via the crafting system, making it so that people will level a craft that compliments their class, and at high levels, can make some really nice stuff for themselves). As a frost mage, I’ve chosen shadoweave tailoring, which will allow me to make the Bind on Pickup (r/ex) Frozen Shadoweave set.

This set can be further upgraded from its awesomeness with sockets (not sure how these work entirely, but I assume its like Diablo II) and enchanting (while my character is an enchanter, it is not high enough to do the enchants I really need, nor does it have the recipes required). The game has included a mechanism for an item to be enchanted via the trade window (and not traded, because it is soulbound). To be honest, I still do not fully understand enchanting, other than it is quite expensive and can be very profitable.

Crafting in general is different in WoW than FF. For starters, you have to buy (or be trained, or find the drop) every item you wish to make. You get an item when you hit the skill required (so if an item is 240, you can learn it at 240). Items will start off ‘red’ meaning you will be guaranteed a skillup for making one, then fall to ‘yellow’, where you will have a 50-75% chance of getting a skillup, then fall to ‘green’ where you have a lower chance of getting the skillup, and finally fall to ‘grey’ where you have no chance of getting skill. Items all have different ranges, and while one item may go from red to grey in 25 skill levels, another may do the same in 10. There also are tiers for everything. For tailoring, you start off with linen cloth from 1-75, then move to wool cloth from 76-150, then mageweave from 151-225, runecloth from 226-300, and finally netherweave from 301-375. These correspond nicely with every 10 levels of the game. Likewise, with enchanting, you gain the items needed by disenchanting other items. For items to get your skill from 1-75, you will need to disenchant items from 1-10 (more or less).

In terms of the rarity of drops, if you level normally, you will not have an issue leveling most tradeskills along as you level. I fully believe I could level tailoring and first aid without issue, just with the items you get from killing monsters, if I had not done the triple exp thing. Enchanting is much harder, especially since we leveled too fast to really get enough items to disenchant as we leveled.

As it stands now, my First Aid is 375 (capped), Tailoring is 351 (cap of 375), and Enchanting is 220 (where you’d expect it to be for about a level 50, it is the most expensive craft to level and will be my focus after I get my flying mounts and shadoweave gear. My cap is 385 on this due to a racial bonus of 10 skill levels).

These are my feelings after 4 weeks of playing. I’m still in the newbie phase, and I still really like the game. I don’t know how I’ll feel after a bit though, once the character is basically completed as far as it can go.

The only thing I can say I really don’t like is that you can only have one class per character (unlike FF where you can freely change between 20 jobs). While not a game ruiner for me, it is a negative point. It also means that to level a different class, you have to start a new character, and do some of the same things all over again. I can understand why they do not let you do more than 1 class per character — since you cannot repeat quests, it would require a redesign of a large portion of the game, or require you to just grind your way up through the levels by killing monsters.

Oh, did I mention that you get rested experience points for logging out in a major city or an inn in a minor city? This gives you double experience points until it wears off (but in my case, it hasn’t worn off in a while, and just keeps growing).

-pyra and syd

This is a rant.

I’m tired of…

…losing exp at 75 when I die
…still farming sky after 3 years and not having everything I can wear
…waiting 3 days before repeating a run of dynamis or limbus because the zone isn’t instanced
…any monster that takes more than 30 minutes to repop
…any monster that takes more than 1 hour to repop, and then DEPOPS when the weather changes
…timed dungeon activities
…having a dungeon-only drop without a questable alternative
…80 million sets of points — Conquest Points x 3, IS, AN, Assault Points x 5, Nyzul tokens, the Ichor from einherjar
…having to choose between Nyzul and Salvage for my assault tags
…waiting more than 6 months for any dynamis/limbus drop
…having to choose between gaining fame, questing, exping, and making money
…instances with a time limit
…quests that give lousy rewards
…quests not giving worthwhile experience points
…chocobo raising not offering a practical alternative to rented chocobos
…the constant and sadistic punishment of the players by Square-Enix
…empty loot pools on any monster that takes more than 10 minutes to get to and repop
…items that take literally years to drop
…killing the same monsters over and over and over because the items just don’t fall
…the best gear in 2005 is the best in 2008
…crafting being a mostly worthless activity, unless you want the 20 gamer points on XBoxLive
…desynthing items being worthless
…critically failing a synth 90 levels below my skill
…the solution to high-level boredom — more merrits
…money being far too important to entering activities like dynamis and limbus
…not having much to look forward to other than another year or two of the same
…knowing there are items I will just never have because the monsters are just botted constantly
…having to plan your runs of certain zones around other groups because it isn’t instanced
…any new non-instanced end-game activity
…all of the old, non-instanced end-game activities
…new events that are designed around punishing the players and taking obscene amounts of time
…monsters that are designed to take more than 4 hours to kill
…losing loot when a monster dies unclaimed to a DoT
…anything that takes more than 20 kills to get your drop
…interrupting my casting because the server decided I took a step forward
…being 2 seconds too late for the airship, then knowing it set me back 12 minutes
…being blocked in my path because my character can’t handle an elevation difference of more than 1 inch
…that which I do for fun causing me more frustration than my job
…the game beginning at 75

In short, I’m tired of FFXI.

This week off has been great, and playing WoW (where you don’t have to think as much, and you do quests, which are fun, to gain exp, decent gear for your level, and money) has been really refreshing: to the point where everyone has commented that I’ve been acting different this past week.

I don’t want to quit, but I’m starting to really get sick of FFXI. I also don’t want to quit because I’m so close to getting all the stuff I’d want, and to quit, then come back and still not have it all would probably ensure I didn’t last long. I really feel stuck, where my only two options are to quit for good, or stay playing something that is just starting to drive me insane.

I’m watching the Parade of Nations, something I usually find far too boring to care about. My parents always turned it off growing up. And truthfully, I didn’t plan on even watching it at first. But then I was curious.

China is not known as a an open place. But this is so fascinating to watch, the 5000 year old culture opening up.

However, the most important thing (in my mind) is this: of the thousands of people who have walked by so far, probably 90% of them could be someone from around the corner. It is times like this that you realize that people around the world are not really all that different from you and I. For one brief moment, me sitting on my couch in Virginia, and everyone all over the world, are connected, watching the same thing at the same time (or close to the same time). We really are the same.

During one of the breaks, a campaign add for both McCain and Obama come on. It brings me back to reality for a minute. While other channels have re-runs on so as not to really compete and just let the ceremony be, politicians are still arguing.

I enjoy the contrast, in one minute, one of the great uniting events (quite possibly a huge turning point for China and how it relates to the world), the next, politicians dividing us again.

All combined, it just shows that we could probably all get along, if it wasn’t for politicians constantly convincing us that we can’t get along. Perhaps it will be our generation, that can spread information faster than ever, that finally breaks down some of those barriers. Or at the very least, leads the way towards making the world a bit smaller, and a lot better.

In a way, FFXI is an interesting uniter as well. We play with people from all over the nation, and the world. We talk with people from all sorts of ethnic, religious, national, financial, regional backgrounds who we would probably never otherwise know. I’ve met some of the most amazing people, a galka SMN from Japan who spoke broken English (and in who’s shell we all spoke a modified version of English with Japanese grammar structure to communicate), to a members of every branch of the US military, and a French-Canadian who barely spoke any English (although who’s English improved significantly over the years we all knew each other). There are players from all over the English speaking world, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, Ireland, and elsewhere. And of course, from across the US. An art student in Texas, a state trooper in Michigan, stay at home moms from various states, a young married couple from Texas, people who work in the Vegas casinos, and people who just live near Vegas.

Perhaps the most fascinating person I ever met was a student from Bahrain. Someone I know for a fact, I would never have known if it wasn’t for FFXI. Some of my talks with her have been the most interesting. She was also the one who made the comment first “we really are not that different”.

So think about it. People around the world are not that different from each other. Placed together, we generally get along, even if we don’t agree with each other about everything, we can almost always be friends.

“People are nicest to random strangers when they want their parking spot”

Discuss.

Yes, yes, I know, PS2 limitations, etc.

However, I play on the PC, which makes the Windower an option. One I’ve generally stayed away from because I feel it is cheating. Yes, I know, I modify some of my .dats, but I don’t find that to be cheating, just making the game easier on the eyes. Changing the .dats also doesn’t give me an advantage over anyone else. Windower would — except that I know most people use it at this point.

Windower also has those nice externally editable macros, which would make everything a lot easier in-game. Right now, for my thf’s WS, I need to hit 6 macros (Sneak Attack, Gear Swap 1, Gear Swap 2, WS, Gear Swap back 1, Gear Swap back 2). Much of the time (especially in dynamis with the lag), I don’t even bother for half of the swaps b/c by the time I’m finished swapping, the monster would be dead. Considering the number of different sets of gear I have for THF, I really need to have its own set of macros (which would put yet another macro in the mix, one macro to switch into my WS macro set, and one to switch back to TP set).

Several years ago I used the early windower for a month or so to keep the game from crashing when I would get those annoying pop ups in the task manager, and also to prevent the game from crashing when I accidentally hit alt-tab or the windows key (I also used an outside program called WinKeyKill which would disable the windows key and alt-tab). It was broken a few patches later and I never bothered to get the latest version. None of the nicities really mattered to me — distance was neat, but meh; tparty was also neat, but meh (I was only a whm at the time); exp watch I liked, etc.

Having my recasts on screen would also eliminate another couple macros I have to check my recasts all the time. Not to mention the BlinkMeNot, which would prevent me from losing my target when I swap visible gear (this one really bugs me a lot, and is why I lost my first Maat fight on mnk).

I also really need to completely rewrite most of my macro sets to take advantage of new gear and new JAs. Since I’ve gotta rewrite them all, I may as well just use the Windower Extended macros. I could write them at work to eliminate a lot of boredom too.

Ah ponderings. I guess this comes from my very strange moral code. For example, I have enough money in real life to buy myself a relic, but I choose not to. Its really hard to spend any amount of time farming when you know that for the same time at work, you could make way more than enough to buy several times the amount you are getting. I’m not saying I’m rich, but I could part with a thousand or two to get a relic and not really miss it.

And I put using windower on the level of buying gil online. I don’t really want to do it, and I would feel bad for using it. At the same time, I don’t really see a good option to my problems other than using something like windower.

Although if someone had an option for something other than windower, and a way to reorganize my macros, I’m all ears.

He received a movie from NetFlix.  Would it be unethical for me to look at the title of the movie?

What about to watch it if it is a movie I would like to see?

The movie is “Dan in Reel Life”.  Does this change your feelings about either of your answers?

In other news, a supermarket near where I like to have lunch decided to tow people who park there and do not go inside.  It was done out of spite because they told the place next door that their parking lot would not be large enough.

The supermarket’s parking lot is never even close to half full, so parking there does not block an actual customer.  Also, those parking there for lunch park in the spaces furthest from the supermarket itself.  The few times I have actually gone inside (mostly because it was close to where I went for lunch) the store was empty.

Today, they were threatening to tow everyone.  So, I went inside and found the cheapest item I could possibly use.  It was a container of Tic Tacs, 85cents plus 2cents tax.  I charged an 87cent item for spite.  Credit cards take 25cents per transaction plus 5% of the overall sales, meaning they would take 29cents out of the sale, leaving the supermarket with a sale of 56cents to cover cost of the item, plus keeping it there, plus expenses.  Was that wrong?

If I say it was a Safeway supermarket, does that change your feelings?

I’m sure I’ve worn some absolute crap over the years, either because I thought it was good or just didn’t know any better.  But these people should know better.  Then I saw a thread on BG and couldn’t stop laughing.  So I’ve decided to share my pictures of ‘odd’ gear choices.

This first is from a while ago, and while I can respect that they probably sold everything they had to buy the drops, this just makes me sad every time I see it.

(names and linkshell names have been removed, as have references to which server it was)

A black belt, and a NQ Amemet, NQ Vendor’s Slops, and a Pixie Earring.  The second ring was a sun ring.  Their title was “Black Belt”, so I have to assume its new.

<edit removed>

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And finally, my favorite ‘odd’ choice for gear of all time.

Its a flame ri… oh wow.  Why would anyone actually use one of those for (of all things) sky farming.  At level 70, you need all the advantages you can get, and he is wasting both ring slots with two of these rings that I had never seen before.

The lack of a strap is expected, this screenshot predates straps by about 5 months.

And its time for sleep.  Way too tired, but dying laughing.

(This is an edited version of its former self.  I took off two of the pictures because it was the right thing to do.  The two that remain are well over a year old and those people have presumably learned by now).

I’ve added the value to the two peaks just to show why I’m confused.

If you look at the long running trends, I rarely break 50 views in a day.  But for some reason wholly unknown to me, I have this new found popularity.  I’m not really sure why, I’m not that great of a writer and there has to be more exciting writers out there.

The big peak is on 6/10, the day of the big patch (WordPress stats start at midnight GMT, and I made a post around 6pm EST, or 11pm GMT).  I listed some of the equipment from the patch on a page, and traffic just spiked.

Ok cool, I can deal, and I can understand this one.

Including 6/9 (day before), my hits per day go 52, 254, 72, 33, 24, 23, 25, 38, 69, 179, bringing us to midnight GMT today.  Considering that before 6/9 my highest hits per day was 54, I’m sure you can see why I find this odd.  4 days in the last 10 days are my highest 4 days since I started this blog April 2007, with one more day being nearly my highest.  Looking at what was clicked on, some of these visitors went as far back as last September.  Many of my search hit terms are not even related to the current items (in reality, most of the hits are related to people trying to figure out how campaign exp is calculated towards your rank up.  The answer here is that no one really knows).

So I’m going to ask, what did I do to deserve this?  A math and computer science major from a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania (Ursinus College) working as a systems admin does not make a good writer.

Oh well, time for Limbus.