Tag Archives: Random Thoughts

If Servers Were Cities

Last night, a friend and I were discussing which city best represents each server.

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

A Spork in the Road

Why a spork?  Because I’ve always been amused by that word.  As my first aside of this post, do a google image search for “spork in the road”.

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

Looks like I am playing again – well after I get updated

On a side note, photoshop doesn’t appear to be handling my screenshots anymore.  It is really slow when opening anything over 6MPix in size.

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.

Not shown -- me letting everyone die

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…

Pictured -- everyone dead

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.

Its like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, except it isn't.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…

eesI 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 FFXI-ification of WoW

Many people in the FFXI world talk about how the game has become too WoW-ified.

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

In Light of Recent Events, No More Politics Here — After This Post

Due to what is sure to offend far too many people, I’ve decided not to continue the Pyra vs Syd ‘election’.

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.

Continue reading

Hey Guys, Getting Experience Points as a Reward For Completing a Quest is Not a Bad Thing

I was reading a post on BG (I know, mistake #1 right there) about how the new beginner quests actually give *gasp* experience points for completing certain tasks (but no fame). In total, they give you 1800 experience. Not really gamebreaking.

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.

I Really Laughed At this one

Background on the name ‘Sydonia’

At one point, a long time ago, there was a character on Diabolos (my original server) named ‘Sydonia’.  I’m admitting that the name is not original, and was picked in honor of my friend.

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.

syd_message

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.

Feelings on WoW after 4 Weeks of Playing

First thing is first, this is a link to my character in the WoW Armory. It will show many of the important stats, and is rarely more than 30 minutes behind actuality. It will also give me a place to start. I’m sure most of this information is old to many people, but to some people who read here, it is a look at something they have never played before.

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

I’m Tired: A Rant

As I’m sure has been obvious lately, I’ve been playing a lot less FFXI and a lot more WoW. No, I’m not quitting, but I am taking that vacation I needed from the world of Vana’diel.

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.