It has been quite a while since I have written in here. RL is again to blame; however, now I have a job -- a job in which I now have the time to take some breaks and um...well...write in here. So this might actually see a regular updating schedule somewhat.
Considering my track record, this would be beyond shocking (especially if I actually stick to it).
Despite the holidays and other RL conflicts for my rank mission static, we finally achieved rank 30!
...well kinda...two people couldn't make it so we still have to catch them up eventually...rank 29.5 maybe?
Either way, progress is definitely being made in the mission department. Now all I am looking at personally is taking down my remaining ToA missions and AN, and for the first time ever in this game, I will be completely caught up in major missions. Now if I can just find a way to get through assault, I'll be golden. Plus our static is going to stick together for anything WotG throws at us, plus most likely we will do some of the other random quests out there that you just can't complete on your own. I'm definitely looking forward to all of that.
That really leads me into the main topic of today's posting. Really, if you think about it, these aren't the "huge" things people shoot for in the game. Once I found myself trust into the endgame world, I found myself with a shift of mind. Item wish lists, dyanmis runs, limbus runs, battling big bad NMs, and the such. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy all these things a ton. But damn is it a grind -- doing the sky and sea farming alone can really suck the joy out of these fights. Plus, the reward at the end? Maybe an item off your wish list if it either (a) drops and/or (b) you are actually in line to get said item.
New pixels and stats on my character? Yay?
Hell the fight itself is more fun half the time I think. I'll get excited for sure if I do see one of my long awaited items drop my way, but the joy is fleeting. It isn't like I'll be the only Paladin running around Valefor with say, a pair of W Legs or M Head on. In, the end all I've really done is make myself statistically better in those fights. That's what the endgame really lacks in my opinion. The tangible rewards are a little lacking in this humble Paladin's opinion as far as accomplishment goes. I treat those fights like a boss fight, and at first that was the big deal to me...but it is slightly so odd when said bosses keep resurrecting themselves in a never-ending string and you continuously beat them down. Then you have the issue of expecting to kill these baddies, and it is surprisingly odd to have this mindset after a while. While yes, we should set a high expectation for our skills as a Linkshell, we can often times find ourselves with undue and unwarranted frustration in being beaten by mobs that SE made to be hard just do to a couple screw ups.
With the completion of any mission line, and even some quests, you get a little bit more. You get a great storyline, and a sense that few things in this game can offer. A sense of completion. Not only that, you get things like a nation's flag, a fancy ring, and a nice crown just to name a couple things that serve to remind you of said conquering glory. With the gods and HNMs, the item you get is more a show of the repetitive killing of the bastard and the patience to finally have the luck of being the next in line or finally having a winning lot. I don't care how much you love this game or even the endgame fights, I highly doubt a single person can say they just get utterly thrilled with repeating the same thing over and over again. Just imagine how much further the endgame would suck if the fights weren't entertaining too!!!
I love being able to tank in endgame, being involved in the fights, and having the shots to get some pretty badass items. But I think it should be well noted just how much fun some of the little things in this game really are and how easy it is to loose total sight of that in the grind of endgame. Hell, all I did after I logged into the game last night after work was do the Christmas event, messed around decorating with my MH (and trying to get more storage and not screw myself out of my CP enhancement), and fished for a little bit and I had a blast. In the end, I wasted quite a bit of gil, a ton of time, but loved every minute of it.
Take a breather every now and then. It's a big game out there.
--Stiker
December 20, 2007
October 23, 2007
It's All Downhill From Here
And in more ways than one.
Yeah, so I haven't updated my blog in a while. I'm lazy and have been traveling a bit in RL. But anyways, I'm sure no one cares about that.
Anyways, I have had quite a few accomplishments in the game since I last wrote. First off, I have been doing quite a bit of the starting nation missions with some of my LS mates. I was already rank 10 in Bastok, but made the switch to Sandy and cranked out rank 10 in about a week. By the way, the rank 10 final mission for Sandy is fun as hell (I enjoyed it a lot more than the Basty final fight which surprised me), so if you haven't cranked out those missions, I highly suggest it. We are now on rank 5 for Bastok as a static and thanks to a few snags we have been stuck there.
And by snags I mean some asshat fucktard decided to hack one of our static members and server transferred her while stealing her gil and gear.
Thank you, asshole.
Seriously, is this the new RMT trend? This is the second member of my LS that has been hacked and had gear/gil stolen. And these members don't even share passwords at all. Just mind boggling.
Anyways, thanks to some serious bitching by her and her boyfriend, SE wet their pants and moved her character back to Valefor and took away the $25 server transfer charge. Plus, she was able to get a decent portion of her gear and gil back. Some of the gear wasn't sold so she got that back, plus I believe she was able to get some d-boxed gil back. (If you are curious about our other member, he wasn't server transferred and we had a gil making event to help get his gil back.)
So it would appear as if we will be able to get our static going again. Most of the Basty missions are cake (save for 9-1...) so we should be done with that soon. Plus, I decided to go ahead and switch to Windy and I am rank 5 there at the moment. So I will be rank 6 quite soon, leaving just 4 more ranks to go until I can hang all 3 nations flags in my Mog House.
But that isn't all that is "downhill" in my FF life at the moment. I have finally gone past the halfway point in my quest to get the Lu Shang's rod. I am currently sitting at just over 5.5k moat carps, and believe me, it feels a lot better to look at how many I need to finish now. And even though I'm not playing and fishing everyday, I still believe that I should be able to finish this quest in about a month.
My original goal was to have it by Thanksgiving, and I might come close to hitting that. So we shall see.
That pretty much sums everything up for now. I'll try to throw out another update in about a week or so.
--Stiker
Yeah, so I haven't updated my blog in a while. I'm lazy and have been traveling a bit in RL. But anyways, I'm sure no one cares about that.
Anyways, I have had quite a few accomplishments in the game since I last wrote. First off, I have been doing quite a bit of the starting nation missions with some of my LS mates. I was already rank 10 in Bastok, but made the switch to Sandy and cranked out rank 10 in about a week. By the way, the rank 10 final mission for Sandy is fun as hell (I enjoyed it a lot more than the Basty final fight which surprised me), so if you haven't cranked out those missions, I highly suggest it. We are now on rank 5 for Bastok as a static and thanks to a few snags we have been stuck there.
And by snags I mean some asshat fucktard decided to hack one of our static members and server transferred her while stealing her gil and gear.
Thank you, asshole.
Seriously, is this the new RMT trend? This is the second member of my LS that has been hacked and had gear/gil stolen. And these members don't even share passwords at all. Just mind boggling.
Anyways, thanks to some serious bitching by her and her boyfriend, SE wet their pants and moved her character back to Valefor and took away the $25 server transfer charge. Plus, she was able to get a decent portion of her gear and gil back. Some of the gear wasn't sold so she got that back, plus I believe she was able to get some d-boxed gil back. (If you are curious about our other member, he wasn't server transferred and we had a gil making event to help get his gil back.)
So it would appear as if we will be able to get our static going again. Most of the Basty missions are cake (save for 9-1...) so we should be done with that soon. Plus, I decided to go ahead and switch to Windy and I am rank 5 there at the moment. So I will be rank 6 quite soon, leaving just 4 more ranks to go until I can hang all 3 nations flags in my Mog House.
But that isn't all that is "downhill" in my FF life at the moment. I have finally gone past the halfway point in my quest to get the Lu Shang's rod. I am currently sitting at just over 5.5k moat carps, and believe me, it feels a lot better to look at how many I need to finish now. And even though I'm not playing and fishing everyday, I still believe that I should be able to finish this quest in about a month.
My original goal was to have it by Thanksgiving, and I might come close to hitting that. So we shall see.
That pretty much sums everything up for now. I'll try to throw out another update in about a week or so.
--Stiker
September 28, 2007
So Where Do I Begin?
I promised a detailed intro post, so time to deliver.
First off, we'll start with where my name came from. I'm sure some of you are wondering, "How in the hell did he come up with Stiker?" And if you aren't...well skip this part. I love my name, mostly because it reminds me of being a total n00b. Seriously, just by looking at my name can bring me down to earth as someone that can always, and very easily screw up.
I bought FFXI when it was released for PS2. I also had no USB keyboard for my PS2 at the time. I had heard it wasn't required, so being a college student, I decided to save money and not buy the keyboard.
Mistake #1...
So then I started the registration process. And I immediately regretted not having a keyboard. I seriously got so frustrated filling out all that damn info with the PS2 "soft" keyboard. So I kept pounding through all the crap SE felt that they needed to know about me, and finally got to character creation. I set up my little Elvaan dude, and I had decided on the character name "Striker" being a big fan of FFVI (for those that don't know Striker was the name of one of the best weapons for Shadow), and since I also had used it in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.
"But wait!" You may say. "You're name is S-T-I-K-E-R right?"
Yes...my name is a damned mistype...
The best part was, I didn't even friggin' notice that I had screwed up so badly. Not until I had a friend come by my room watching me play and pointing it out did I even realize it. I was just so glad to be done with all the registration crap, I completely didn't check my spelling/typing. So I made my first n00bish mistake before I ever set my virtual Elvaan ass in the game.
Either way though, the name has stuck with me, and I like it now a lot. And like I said, I can always remember my first mistake by just looking at my name and give myself a chuckle.
My mistyping rear ended up on Valefor thanks to a world pass from a RL friend, and I also set my home nation to Bastok because my RL friend was there as well, plus I was interested in possibly taking up Smithing at the time. I started grinding my way through the levels, and set of on my quest to become a Paladin. I ended up picking this job because I loved Cecil in FFIV and the concept of tanking sounded like a lot of fun. Thankfully, I have absolutely loved the job and am very thankful I do not need to be switching my main job anytime in the near future.
I am currently a member of the CrimsonToothBrush (CTB) linkshell. I've been in there for about half a year or so and it is my second shell. My first one, the TruthSeekers merged with them about half a year ago. So I've been very lucky to be playing with some good people for pretty much my entire FFXI career. CTB is an endgame shell. Right now, we mostly do a lot of sky, sea, and limbus. We are trying to look at the HNM scene, but are being quite cautious about it, due mostly to all the drama that goes into it. We really like to take a laid back approach to things, and are definitely trying to do all that we can to keep it that way as much as possible.
As far as missions go, I have completed all of the Zilart and Promathia missions (save for the Apocalypse Nigh quests). I am also rank 10 in Bastok, but have recently switched to Sandy since I'm now in a static with some LSmates to get rank 10 in all nations (and it's going quite well as I've reached rank 8 in Sandy in under a week). I am also nearing the end of the Aht Urghan missions and am currently on ToA 35 right now.
In crafting, I am a 89 cook (+1 with a chef hat) and am also a level 42 fisherman. I also am a 41 smithy, but I haven't touched the craft in forever. I figured that my main expenses are food (you die enough, and you tend to burn through the damn stuff fast) so I have stuck with cooking to lower my food expenses and make some modest profit. My big project right now though is fishing and getting my Lu Shang's fishing rod and currently have just over 4k moat carps out of the 10k needed. My hope is to have my fishing complement my cooking to increase profits since fish can be quite expensive ingredients in many of the dishes I use as well as some of the more popular dishes in the game.
And that pretty much wraps it up for who I am in this game. The only other thing of note would be my user page on the new BG Wiki which has some of the equipment and mission goals that I am currently after.
Thanks for reading the wall-o-text,
--Stiker
First off, we'll start with where my name came from. I'm sure some of you are wondering, "How in the hell did he come up with Stiker?" And if you aren't...well skip this part. I love my name, mostly because it reminds me of being a total n00b. Seriously, just by looking at my name can bring me down to earth as someone that can always, and very easily screw up.
I bought FFXI when it was released for PS2. I also had no USB keyboard for my PS2 at the time. I had heard it wasn't required, so being a college student, I decided to save money and not buy the keyboard.
Mistake #1...
So then I started the registration process. And I immediately regretted not having a keyboard. I seriously got so frustrated filling out all that damn info with the PS2 "soft" keyboard. So I kept pounding through all the crap SE felt that they needed to know about me, and finally got to character creation. I set up my little Elvaan dude, and I had decided on the character name "Striker" being a big fan of FFVI (for those that don't know Striker was the name of one of the best weapons for Shadow), and since I also had used it in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.
"But wait!" You may say. "You're name is S-T-I-K-E-R right?"
Yes...my name is a damned mistype...
The best part was, I didn't even friggin' notice that I had screwed up so badly. Not until I had a friend come by my room watching me play and pointing it out did I even realize it. I was just so glad to be done with all the registration crap, I completely didn't check my spelling/typing. So I made my first n00bish mistake before I ever set my virtual Elvaan ass in the game.
Either way though, the name has stuck with me, and I like it now a lot. And like I said, I can always remember my first mistake by just looking at my name and give myself a chuckle.
My mistyping rear ended up on Valefor thanks to a world pass from a RL friend, and I also set my home nation to Bastok because my RL friend was there as well, plus I was interested in possibly taking up Smithing at the time. I started grinding my way through the levels, and set of on my quest to become a Paladin. I ended up picking this job because I loved Cecil in FFIV and the concept of tanking sounded like a lot of fun. Thankfully, I have absolutely loved the job and am very thankful I do not need to be switching my main job anytime in the near future.
I am currently a member of the CrimsonToothBrush (CTB) linkshell. I've been in there for about half a year or so and it is my second shell. My first one, the TruthSeekers merged with them about half a year ago. So I've been very lucky to be playing with some good people for pretty much my entire FFXI career. CTB is an endgame shell. Right now, we mostly do a lot of sky, sea, and limbus. We are trying to look at the HNM scene, but are being quite cautious about it, due mostly to all the drama that goes into it. We really like to take a laid back approach to things, and are definitely trying to do all that we can to keep it that way as much as possible.
As far as missions go, I have completed all of the Zilart and Promathia missions (save for the Apocalypse Nigh quests). I am also rank 10 in Bastok, but have recently switched to Sandy since I'm now in a static with some LSmates to get rank 10 in all nations (and it's going quite well as I've reached rank 8 in Sandy in under a week). I am also nearing the end of the Aht Urghan missions and am currently on ToA 35 right now.
In crafting, I am a 89 cook (+1 with a chef hat) and am also a level 42 fisherman. I also am a 41 smithy, but I haven't touched the craft in forever. I figured that my main expenses are food (you die enough, and you tend to burn through the damn stuff fast) so I have stuck with cooking to lower my food expenses and make some modest profit. My big project right now though is fishing and getting my Lu Shang's fishing rod and currently have just over 4k moat carps out of the 10k needed. My hope is to have my fishing complement my cooking to increase profits since fish can be quite expensive ingredients in many of the dishes I use as well as some of the more popular dishes in the game.
And that pretty much wraps it up for who I am in this game. The only other thing of note would be my user page on the new BG Wiki which has some of the equipment and mission goals that I am currently after.
Thanks for reading the wall-o-text,
--Stiker
New Home, Same Blog
Well I have decided to move my FFXI blog from a certain Wiki that had a lot of drama. I'm not going to talk about it at all, but if I'm starting up my blog elsewhere, I'm sure you can figure out where I stand on the issue in general.
Anyways, this seems like a much better interface overall anyways (being able to archive and publish from Google = win). So at least it would appear I am moving to greener pastures.
I'm probably not going to do a copypasta job from my old blog. Basically, I think I'm just going to start the whole thing over again and start from scratch. So expect to see a fairly more detailed intro post in the near future and I'll get this ball rolling again.
--Stiker
Anyways, this seems like a much better interface overall anyways (being able to archive and publish from Google = win). So at least it would appear I am moving to greener pastures.
I'm probably not going to do a copypasta job from my old blog. Basically, I think I'm just going to start the whole thing over again and start from scratch. So expect to see a fairly more detailed intro post in the near future and I'll get this ball rolling again.
--Stiker
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