Persius posted his story a while ago, and this is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
I started this game in July 2004. A couple of friends came down to my area for the weekend and convinced me to buy this game as I was checking out of best buy w/ my DVDs. I fully intended to return it the next day.
After I installed it, my computer died. So, not wanting to waste my 30-day trial, I bought a new computer, which I needed anyways. Then, I needed a new video card too. Fun times, but a side effect is that I didn’t know what my character actually looked like for the first couple days I played the game. I had often wanted to change the face on Ata, but never had the guts to start over.
As to the name. Atalantia was the name of my iPod, and I knew of the name from greek mythology, but didn’t know the entire story. Also, it was one of several names I used for multiplayer games. One of the alternate names I thought about was “Ducky”, which was my character from Diabolo II (Sorcerer). Looking back, Ducky wouldn’t have been a bad name.
Anyways, Ayslain and Zealboy (my two friends) showed me some of the basics right away. They mostly decided for me that I should be a hume warrior, even though I wanted to be one of those cats. But they also gave me a stack of pickaxes and showed me where to go mining in zeruhn. I ended up with about 10K after my first all night mining session. I thought I was rich.
Ays and Zeal also gave me a pearl to their new linkshell, TonberryKings. I still have my pearl sack, but the clam holder, Ayslain, has since been banned.
I took warrior to level 20. I had a party in Qufim, but needed to run back to town to feed the chocobo so I could ride it. I didn’t know that you could wait as long as needed between feedings. Oh well. I took Warrior out twice more, once for a party with a friend (where I hit lvl 21) and once for a BC20. It has not been used since.
Since all good players need a subjob, I started leveling red mage (I admit it, I wanted the hat). I went war/rdm for a couple levels, but started going rdm/war until about level 25.
As my red mage hit 25, I noticed I needed more mp. My obsession with higher max MP continues to this day, but not as much since ata’s whm has over 1K and her smn has over 1200.
Anyways, I started reading up and saw that subbing Black Mage gave the most +mp (of anything a level 25 could get) and started leveling BLM. Once my RDM hit 32, I had to take a break and farm up for dispel (the massive 64K price tag was a lot more than I could afford).
I also started fishing, mostly to pay for Dispel. A friend named Kairos loaned me 15K to buy some fishing gear and a rod. I was able to pay him back in a couple days.
Anyways, I ended up taking blm to 40 for BC40’s and for warp 2. Since I hadn’t leveled whm, I went blm/rdm.
Once I had blm at 40 and money for dispel, I went back to red mage.
Around this time, Kairos formed a ls called BastokElite (not to be confused with BastokianElite, of which Chronas was a member), and offered me a pearl. In here I met some people who I still miss today, Kcbing and Betrayal especially. Also in BE was Bertuzzi, who still plays from time to time, and Jkillah, who was the ‘high level’ 54 pld, and has just returned as Jkillahreturns. This ls did not last too long as Kairos hit the 60+ levels and went to join his ‘end game’ linkshell (which I later found out was DarkStatic, before they were total assholes).
It was time to find a new social, as TonberryKings went in and out of popularity. But we had some fun times in that ls. Only a couple people still play, myself, Tetedeau, and Garic have stayed close for a couple years now.
I found a linkshell named PrimeElements, led by Vang. Some of the other members were Catscradle, Sprinkles, Dandelyon, Benji, Demesia/Dreadnought, Mizuhito, and of course, Cookies/Chewy.
I don’t remember why this ls broke, but it eventually did. Demesia went on to join Mercury, Benji found a girl and vanished, Cookies just vanished, Sprinkles went onto ElementRush, Dande also joined ER but mostly quit to care for her child.
I kind of wandered for a while, took rdm/smn to 60 (yes rdm was my first lvl 60 job), then started on whm. At lvl 50 whm, I began to sub smn, even when everyone said I should sub blm — mwahaha, I was right! When I hit lvl 60 whm, I found a static with Draiganadi, Hellblazer, Trawnie, Kora, and someone else. The static fell apart by the time I was lvl 70, but it didn’t matter much at that point.
Around lvl 63 whm I was briefly in a ls named ‘Pantheon’. We mostly camped the 3 ground kings against Enigma (Darksaiko’s ls) and won the claim on Simurgh for a week straight (my first camp I got claim with flash). We sold a pair of strider boots for 20 mil. Yay money!
When I hit 72 whm, I joined an end-game ls called Namida (now Victim). It was an interesting experience, but it was horrible. The leaders scheduled most events at 4pm EST due to several Europeans. I eventually left when I found out that the leaders were using the ls as their own piggy bank, which was denied for a while. The ls broke when it turns out, the leaders were stealing from the ls. Most of the former leadership went to join Poisoned, which should say about all that needs to be said.
Around this time I started playing with a mule, who was a Mithra mnk. I had a lot of fun.
After about another month, I was asked to join Ethereal. I had known Nahla from PrimeElements, and he asked me to Eth.
I stayed in Eth for a while, leveling my smn whenever I had time, as well as my mithra mnk.
When my mule “Figarow” hit about 47, I found I was liking it too much, and wanted to have both her and ata on at the same time. Figarow had to be replaced, even though she was lvl 48, rank 5, and had Tav Safehold access.
Figaro was the name of the cat I had growing up, who was named after the cat from Pinochio (the movie), and the Marriage of Figaro. I later found out that Figaro was the male lead of that story. Oops.
And thus, Pyra was born. Originally going to be named “Meowmix”, then “Pyewacket”. But, Meow was taken, and Pyewacket had the suffix ‘wacket’. So, I shortened it to just the Py- and stole the ending of my friend “Myrra”‘s name for Pyra. I think it fits well.
I had most of the gear I needed, and Pyra was leveled at a blinding speed.
I left eth in July of 2006. It has the uniqueness of being the only non-social ls I left that still exists. I hung out with the group at UniversityFFXI for a while. Since I was leveling a new job, it worked out well, since most of them were newer players.
Towards the end of the summer/early fall, I was asked to join PhoenixPinion. To be honest, PP sucked. Everyone was greedy, but would argue all day that they were not. The entire leadership was corrupt and would only do things that were in their own interest. The one leader even lied about being pregnant to excuse her behavior.
Only good thing that came from PP was I was able to reconnect w/ my friend Demesia, who found me a Mercury group on CoP 6-4. In a little over a week, I went from 6-4 – 8-4. I was actually sad when we finished b/c the people in that group were amazing. Fleance, Silvez, Jessi, and Hemorabe. Because my smn was needed for CoP 8-3 and 8-4, I finally made the push for lvl 75.
After PP broke, I stayed in UFFXI for a while. I had been in UFFXI the whole time, but switched over to the PP pearl for dynamis and the likes.
Around December 06, while leveling my then 72 mnk, I ran into an old friend named Mizuhito, and a new person named “Hussie” (twice in the same week, he was leveling his rng). Miz said he had this ls (that I had only just heard about a couple days earlier when I saw Hussie), and after thinking it over for a bit, I ended up joining. That was AmericanIdol.
My first week, I got Pyra sky access (Ata had had sky since summer 2005, and actually finished ZM17 in Winter 2006). I was excited, even though I had to pay for dynamis, I usually ended up with a couple coins to sell, which would more than pay for it all.
It was fun to do some of the newbie things again. When I first joined AI, there were 2 days a week dedicated to getting CoP missions complete. When I joined, I was 1 mission behind everyone, and was quickly caught up. But then we started to lag, and what used to take a week now took 2, or 3.
It was around this time that I took over the website. Previously, we were hosted on a slow shared (but free) forum service. I found that ai-ls.com was still available and grabbed it. I hosted it on the spare space of my existing hosting account. Duke exported the old database, and I managed to import it into our new one, with only a couple issues (duke was listed as the author of every post, which is still entertaining for me to read).
I think I suggested to Persius that we cancel all events for a week, and just push to sea. We did, and the first group hit sea 3 days later (after a couple all-nighters). We didn’t get our CoP rings for another month or two, but we had sea, and for the first time I had a group to explore it with. Although Ata had gotted sea several months earlier, I hadn’t spent much time there, and really did not know my way around.
A few weeks later, in April 2007, my friend Zealboy started a limbus group. We decided to start it with half his friends, half mine. In the original group were Shotya, Jblizzle, and myself. Eventually, the others left until it was just the AI group and Zealboy. Then Zealboy left the group for Apocalypse, leaving just the AI people.
I also hit 75 thf, but do not remember exaclty when. Hey, its my 4th lvl 75!
Around this same time, the old webhost starting hitting its capacity, and the website would load unacceptably slow. So, one weekend, it was moved to a new host, where it still is now, and I could not be happier.
Most recently, the AI crew beat Bahamut v1 with 9 people. We’ve also beated Proto-Omega, and Kirin, as well as all of the lesser sky gods. Most of the people who were a part of the ls when I joined are still a part, or have quit the game.
That’s the story in a nutshell. I might make some slight edits as I re-read this over the next week or so.
-pyra
