A Month Away From All MMO’s

Its been about a month since I had an active MMO account at all, and about 6 1/2 months since I had an active FFXI account.

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 :).