A week of vacation and a week without the game makes things a lot more clear when it comes to the relative importance of frustrations caused by the game. We all want to "beat the game" but in the end it is nothing more than a game. People will play it until they no longer enjoy it instead of taking a week break from the game and getting a bit better perspective on just how important in game achievements really are.
It was very nice to be out of touch. :)
Anyway, lets do a quick recap on what happened while I was gone.
Elfie got a Merciful Cape.
Hiryo got Usukane 35 Head (he also got a Faith Torque which I didn't post about yet I think). 
Izman got Skadi 35 Feet.
In Salvage we are going to be focusing on some of the bosses, mostly Zhayolm and Bhaflau. Since we haven't really done boss runs on those runs since we have really picked up the pace in Salvage I am going to limit the amount of time spent on NM's until we get the 25 pieces that we really need. I missed a bunch of Salvage so I am really ready to get back into the swing of the event. :)
A few more things before I wrap up today. First, never mess with me. 
And second, if SE can put this kind of effect on a weapon: 
Why can't they do it for player weapons? Particle effects or even just blurring like this would add a ton of flare to the new weapons. :)
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wonderful perspective.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
What is wrong with you?
So, last night I was in a party for my BLM, my dreaded BLM, oh how I loathe BLM. Anyway, I picked up a regular party which started with BLM, WHM, THF, NIN and with a MNK and SCH on the way. Things seemed just peachy until the NIN asked if more people were coming after about 30 seconds. To which I replied, of course. The SCH showed up just a few minutes later and I after I invited them then NIN demanded to know who the sixth member was going to be. I informed him that it was a MNK and inquired as to why he was so insistent on knowing the party make up. Mind you, his was not a curious question, but a demand to know the 6th member. The NIN told me that if I was going to invite another mage that I could find another tank, to which I responded with a laugh. And we were quickly off to camp, but things continued to spiral out of control when the NIN asked about the mobs that we would be fighting, and I responded as the 31 BLM I was at the time that we would be fighting Beetles and Bats in the Garliage Citadel. Our NIN who obviously was big on earning the respect of his peers stated that he did not want to fight Bats. Did not want to fight Bats in the Garliage Citadel. Did not want to fight Bats. Bats. In the Citadel. I regretfully informed him that there were limited options for him at this point and that in all likelihood he would be just fine. To which he responded that if he died he was going to leave. Now up until this point the party had remained generally passive in regards to our particularly whiny level 32 NIN, but in response to this remark the party, almost universally, went bat-shit crazy on him. There were indications to the NIN that he should not be leveling a tanking job if he did not want to tank, also it was noted that dying was inevitable in the game, and that perhaps another game would be better for him if he did not wish to die. I believe Parchizi was suggested at one point but I may be mistaken. The NIN then proceeded to inform us that he was in fact a high level player, a 68 BLU to be exact and he was just leveling NIN for a sub. Again statements were made to the fact that it didn't excuse the level of complaint that was issuing forth, nor did it justify bad play. Sadly, things spiraled, comments were made to capability of the NIN's tanking prowess, and during a pull our poor NIN friend decided to blow himself up and leave. For better or for worse, it was not really noticed to much effect besides a few trailing jokes at the NIN's expense. The NIN for some reason then sent me a tell attempting to explain the circumstances under which he left...
I informed him that he was a douche.
He said that there really was no one to blame for the situation...
I informed him that there actually was someone to blame, himself.
Why, oh why, do new people feel as if they do not have to learn what so many others have learned about the game? Why do they feel special as if they rules somehow do not apply to them? Why do they feel they are exempt from having to pay their dues like everyone else has? I know another person like this, and it kind of leads to LS hopping then eventually server hopping as they try to find the cheapest route to their "rightful" reward. In the end they end of glomming on to other people for a while until they have annoyed them with their lack of personal action but huge expectation of reward. The leach is a typical part of the game, but even most leaches just leach onto the initiative of others, but this kind of person is even worse than that, they are the kind of person that tries to subvert other people when they are not catered to, then make them feel guilty for not catering to them. The problem is that it only takes one or two times before people figure out that this kind of person is just total slime. Can you tell I don't really like the person in question? LOL Ah well, another day, another diatribe.
As for my BLM, it is now 33, only 4 more levels of hell. :)
By the way, you might get a token entry tomorrow, but I am taking a half day and heading to the beach for a week, I won't be posting until I get back.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
And I thought I was emo.
Clarification for my more paranoid readership: My reference yesterday about not getting Assaults done was for those that don't do anything regarding Assaults. This does not include Nyzul Isle or Salvage or things like that. It is for the lazy people that didn't keep up with them over time and now don't have anything to show for them and would rather play sour grapes than get them done. :) You can get to FL using just Nyzul. It would take forever but it can be done. My preference is to balance the pursuit of something Assault dependent with getting Captain rank, which I have done, but to each their own, just don't be lazy and then whine about it.
Anyway, I got BLM to 31 last night, leaving me with only 6 more levels of Hell. And Omoi completed Skadi feet...
Yeah...
I didn't type that wrong...
LOL...
Anyway, really she did. She got the 35 feet on a very small Rakuen run over last weekend when they were free lot, then we got double 25 feet from LBC last night, and she just had the 15 feet lying around already. Those Skadi feet will be awesome for her level 40 RNG. LOL Well, actually, she will probably get good use out of them because Omoi has two different kinds of jobs, ones she needs and ones she loves. Omoi needs WHM, Omoi loves DRG. I get the impression that she could definitely enjoy RNG more than need it. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw Omoi running around with a bow and arrow plinking things left and right in the very near future.
I feel an Izman mind-stabbling of Omoi coming on. :)
I am kind of disappointed that there wasn't an update today on POL. :( I guess that is what we get when they announce the update early. I just want moooooooooooore... LOL
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Why so soon?
I find it interesting that SE already posted about the coming version update when it is over a month away. The optimistic part of me thinks that it could mean that the next version update is going to be huge so they need lots of time to give us information. The pessimistic part of me thinks its just so that they can cover their asses because the last update took so long and they didn't say anything about it for a long time. I am also a bit concerned that they said that this update will mostly be about the missions for Wings because even though it is definitely needed I prefer for the updates to be more balanced. They also might just be telling people that the update will focus on missions because there has been so little in that aspect up to this point. I mean of course the lottery and the new relics are a huge announcement but honestly they are actually a very small part of an update. The lottery is just get your 10 tickets, then forget about it for a couple of months. The new relics are the exact opposite, they in all likelihood take a long time to develop and won't be available immediately. So the content from the relics won't be having a major impact either.
I am really interested in the missions though, but I know people will complain that there is no "content" in this update and it makes me wonder what they mean by content. To me, content is the collective whole of things that are put into the game. In this case, even though the new expansion felt a little hollow at the start the shear amount of programming time and effort that went into creating Campaign had to be huge. But for some people, because there was no one piece of jaw dropping gear, there was no content. This is utterly ridiculous to me. I do agree that there was not a lot of gear made available in expansion, and that is something that SE should know by now that they need to include, but it does not mean they are not diligently working to make the game better. Campaign is unlike anything else in the game, and if you compare it to Beseiged in its complexity, design and quality, it is far superior. I love the fact that you can go and get a little XP or a lot and do it on your own time. Also, I look at the Campaign ranks in much the same way that I look at Assaults, people are not doing them now because they do not see the immediate rewards. That is retarded, because this time SE is starting by showing us some of the rewards already. The Iron Ram gear is amazingly good tanking gear indepedently, the other gear is also very good and strangely decent filler gear for leveling in the late 60's, early 70's. This gear is obviously tiered in a fashion that makes it accessible to those that at least keep up with Campaign ranks. I think we will again find people that will never get the highest gear because they refuse to do something that they should have done long ago but have now fallen far behind on. Well, they can keep paying the 200 ISP for Runic Portals too. LOL
Campaign is a ton of content, and my argument is that it was so much content that it explains why the rest of the expansion was relatively empty. Just the programming time that had to go into creating the Campaign battle because of the AI, the XP system and other factors is huge. This is all before they added Campaign Ops which vary widely but are hardly used, and further the other parts of Campaign that barely anyone uses like Recon, Headhunting, etc. The Campaign battles themselves are an amazing addition to the game creating a huge new ability to solo or do something while waiting for a party, but the other areas of Campaign have at the same time too much and too little explanation. There are NPC's that will rattle on endlessly about the status of the fort in North Gustaberg [S], but there isn't much help at all in figuring out what you have to do to complete Aegis Scream III. There is definitely a lack of balance in that respect.
I hardly ever mention anything about Windower, but I wanted to mention that the next version is coming out soon and people should grab it when it is released because it is a bug fix edition and with how good 3.3 is already, 3.4 should be even better. I very much am of the opinion that SE should official sanction the Windower people. They provide a great service to the community and since I would guess something like 80% of PC users already use it, and SE tacitly accepts the use of it for non-haxing purposes. The only reason in my mind for not doing so is that it is not available for PS2 and Xbox users, which is true but at this point is functioning as nothing more than an albatross for the PC users. I really hope that the next generation of Windower functionality will move beyond the base functions but included a more integrated look into the game. Currently, everything is basically just text on top of the game, but it would look much nicer of they actually created a nice UI that blended with the FFXI interface. I have seen some screenshots of people using so kind of Windower plug-in that looked very nice in that they were not just test but actually appeared window-like and were easy to read and understand quickly.
In actual game news, I got my BLM to level 30! I can not wait until this horrible job is finished but I am going to ride Bg's RDM till 37 if I can, and if I can't then so be it, but Bg and I are going to do RDM and BRD to 75 once he gets to 37 (or higher since I am going on vacation next week) and that should take about a week. LOL Probably more BLM leveling tonight after Salvage. I will keep you informed. :)
Monday, May 05, 2008
Earning ire.
Very interesting weekend. Salvage resulted in absolutely nothing of interest. I now have a level 25 Macha's body piece for all the good it will do me right now. I hate Salvage slumps. I also have perfect Salvage hindsight, we should have done Bhaflau last night instead of SSR. We would have been fine, and easily beaten the boss. Akanea still needs the 25 Usukane legs from LBC and Skur could have used the Macha's body too. Instead, I tried to do SSR again because everyone needs something from there, not the least of which is me. It may even have been a bit self-centered to go to SSR last night because I am interested in two items from that zone. It's just that every NM has someone that wants something and it could be used almost instantly. The other thing is that our SSR runs are too much of a crap shoot. We have Arrapago down pat, and depending on drops and set up we can do everything. Bhaflau is a close second and I mostly credit Rakuen for this because we have increased our efficiency there great with just a few tweaks. We don't do a whole lot of Zhayolm right now because we don't have a whole lot of priorities there right now, but it is actually relatively easy to do because of how the drops work. SSR for some reason is much more random for us, I don't know why, because it is rather easy and straight forward. Also it is the only zone that just in general refuses to drop.
Anyway, this is what earned my ire this weekend.
1/1 
1/1 
Well, I didn't didn't earn Blaize's ire, who has a new X's Knife, but I still feel bad for Skur who has wanted this for a while.
In other news, we did another Love this weekend and we got another Novia Earring which went to Hiryo, and a Love Torque. 
The Love Torque went to Darkdawn who has been on quite a roll recently too. :) We had a tough time at the beginning, because we had screwed up our tanks positioning, so we couldn't get the DD's on it as soon as they could have been, but once we had them on Love it went down with relatively decent speed.
I also spent a little time leveling my WHM this weekend which is now 57 and again one level from being gimp with a BLM of level 28. :/ But my BLM is only about 100 XP from 29. At some point I am just going to say fuck it and spend a couple of days leveling BLM, I am just so busy in the game in general. Most of my extra time is spent in Salvage, or running around doing other things. Meh. Probably time to concentrate on leveling what I need to get done.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Everyone just calm down please, ok?
Ok, calm? Good.
Now you can spaz out.
Aymur:
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Burtgang:
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Carnwenhan:
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Conqueror:
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Death Penalty:
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Gastrapheter:
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Glanzfaust:
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Kenkonken:
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Kogarasumaru:
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Laevateinn:
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Liberator:
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Murgleis:
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Nagi:
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Nirvana:
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Ryunhige:
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Terpischore:
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Tizona:
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Tupsimati:
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Vajra:
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Yagrush:
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The Myriad Arms of Balrahn (02/05/2008)
By now the name of Balrahn, great restorer of the Empire of Aht Urhgan, has resounded throughout Vana’diel, reaching the ears of all in the form of both history and legend. Blessed with multifarious talents and gifted in nearly every field of human endeavor, the tales of his exploits and travels have become an undying source of entertainment and delight. The restoration of the reign and dignity of the throne which he ushered in has earned him recognition as the greatest hero that empire has ever known. Though, we would of course be getting ahead of ourselves to posit that his grandeur or regality was on a scale with anything approaching that of our King Ranperre.
During his time on the throne, Balrahn garnered enormous respect amongst the people for his utter lack of interest in the superfluousness of royalty. The magnificent structures, the lush garments, the grand banquets… Rather, Balrahn was obsessed with, and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to, the amassing of rare and powerful weaponry. Indeed, the vast majority of valuable weapons stored in the Imperial armories are from his personal collection. These are weapons heralded to be unparalleled in their artistry in form and efficacy in battle.
However, according to an Imperial spy, the official ledger containing the list of those weapons, though guarded to the utmost and never permitted to pass through the palace gates, was obtained by subversive means and made known to the public. What degree of truth and significance can be ascribed to these entries? Could it possibly be some clever scheme on the part of the Empire to leak false information for its own ends? Or could this truly be an instance of espionage unprecedented in scale throughout history?
But for our purposes here, this is a moot point. The information has been made known, adventurer. Whatever action that knowledge may lead to is entirely in your hands now.
History teaches us that the misuse or misappropriation of weapons of this magnitude can only lead the most disastrous of consequences. We can only pray that a threat so great as to warrant their consideration for use will ever cast its shadow over our Aht Urhgan.
Halver M Borel
Pretty neat, I would say. Spent half the day, getting good versions of these pictures. LOL You better enjoy them.
I can still here that evil turtle laughing at me. It's cackles haunt my dreams...
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Playing catch-up.
Honestly guys, I have no idea what motivates you to comment on some blog entries and leave some others without even a peep. I try to make my posts interesting and sometimes even semi-controversial so that you have something to read and enjoy and maybe make a comment. I love reading the comments, but you people, you mean, mean people don't leave comments enough! :) I do actually care about what you have to say. Sometimes this blog is just about what I want to say and I don't care if you read, but sometimes its about providing information that may be helpful.
And hopefully this will be helpful. Go get your WS Gorgets now, and don't sit on your organs for months like yours truly. They probably have a huge accuracy bonus, so much so that I have now considered shifting around my WS gears. There is also a rather large caveat here though and that is one-hit WS also have some kind of accuracy buff on them, and that may also effect the outcome of the results that were reported. For my SAM though, that is largely irrelevant because all of the WS of interest are only one-hit. In the end here were the results test by Rukenshin and reported here:
- 413.35 accuracy in melee gear, resulting in an 85% hit-rate.That is a huge amount of accuracy. Even if single-hit WS were buffed so that their accuracy was boosted, there still has to be a very large accuracy bonus from the WS Gorgets. Well, because I had been lazy about getting my WS Gorgets and with seeing this information, I finally got off my ass and picked up these:
- 374.45 accuracy in WS gear, resulting in a 96% hit-rate.
So I now have I have my Gorgets for Gekko, Kasha and Yukikazi (I already had a Breeze Gorget) and I also spent some times fixing my SAM macros. Normally on other jobs I have my macros set up so my WS gear and the actual WS in two different macros, but for SAM, this just doesn't seem right so I have added the WS to the gear swap macro just for SAM. I still don't know where to stick Sekkanoki on my macro palette yet. If you are curious, this is what my WS gear looks like now. 
Anyway, go out and get your WS Gorgets now. :) Don't be lazy like me.
You know someone has had bad parenting when they turn out like this:
Good day, sir! I said good day!
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
Teabags and KY Jelly
The Bloggaru!
