Mine4Fish

how u mine 4 fish?

On the plus side, there’s only a month until Aion…

Aug 25

Posted by Dan in FFXI, FFXIV | 1 Comment

With the constant lure of Final Fantasy XIV weighing so heavily on the horizon my attention has been even moreso flakey than normal.

I levelled Bard up to 66, decided I really couldn’t be bothered putting up with retarded parties, and switched to Beastmaster, currently level 32. Fun times…

Gamescom has come to a close now, and there was actually some reasonable information out of it relating to FFXIV, I was pretty surprised to see a playable version of the game there actually. Overall what we know so far sounds very promising, we just need SE to pull through now.

Blizzcon was also last week – and the WoW Cataclysm stuff that was posted up, frankly, looks fucking terrible. I am pretty disgusted with what they’re doing with the game now, it’s pretty much been dumbed down so much there’s not much of a game left. Being a Blood Elf Warrior would be pretty cool though. Can I be arsed levelling 1-85 though? Very unlikely.

Between now and “2010″ (or whenever we finally get FFXIV) I’ll generally be filling my time with dossing about, and playing Aion when it’s out in a few more weeks.

I would give my first born child to get into Beta for FFXIV, also.

Spook: 1 – Esti & Petale: 0

Jul 8

Posted by Dan in FFXI | No Comments

San d'Oria

San d'Oria

In our first night of adventuring, we revisited some highly nostalgic areas!

We chose San d’Oria as our starting location, previously we had both played out our time in Bastok mostly, and a little in Windurst. So this was a bit of a change for both of us.

We followed the introductory quests, I was surprised how good they are now! Got handed a nice exp boosting ring, some gil, some exp, given a (very) basic introduction to the game.

After doing our own things for a while we met up and decided to go ahead and do the San d’Orian mission that sends you into King Ranperre’s Tomb. Now, remember that neither of us have played the game in a good few years – I was quite impressed that I managed to remember my way around inside. Having said that it did take us a while to remember where exactly the place was in the world…

Once inside we realised we didn’t really have much of a clue what we were doing. We killed mobs all through the tunnel, eventually finding the tomb we had to click on to trigger the cut scene. We thought that was it, so killed our way back out again… While chatting along the way we decided we must of missed something, so Alex did a bit of digging and we realised we were meant to kill some Ding Bats for a drop as well. These guys apparently only spawned at night, so that’s why we missed it. Fuckers. Who does that?

Trees. Grass. Rabbits, somewhere...

Trees. Grass. Rabbits, somewhere...

So, slightly annoyed, we turned around and went back through the tunnel, again.

We were happily killing Ding Bats and skeletons along the way when we came across the area the Spook spawns, unfortunately he took interest in us before we could run away, our low health made some more skeletons take interest as well.

Splat.

We decided to give up at this point and come back another day.

So that was our first evening back in Vana’diel, we ended up around level 10 which isn’t bad going all things considered. I highly doubt there will be any dunes parties for us… But you never know…

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The return to FFXI

Jul 8

Posted by Dan in FFXI | No Comments

Esti & Petale

Esti & Petale

Last night saw my return to FFXI. Technically it was a few days ago, but I didn’t do much due to waiting for Alex to get his copy and patch it and such…

It all came about mainly through boredom, and somewhat through a rekindling of Final Fantasy interest due to FFXIV news, or lack thereof.

So after much debate over which jobs we should level, I have decided upon levelling Red Mage, and Alex has gone with Samurai. I’ve always been highly tempted by Ninja though, so there’s definitely potential for flaking there ;) Unfortunately it would be stupidly expensive for a newbie to do. Sigh.

I was pretty impressed by the changes they have made, lower level mobs are giving more experience now, and there are these awesome Training Regimes that give additional experience once per Vana’diel day.

This will certainly make it easier for us, we’re intending to duo (potentially trio) our way to level 75. Obviously we’ll join parties if the invite comes, but for the majority, we will be grinding our way there in much smaller groups.

Gavin has also decided to give it a try, I’m not really holding my breath on how long he will last, WoW took his virginity, FFXI is going to slap on a gimp mask and double penetrate him. I don’t think he really knows what he’s getting himself in for. He died to his first mob because he had no idea he had to equip the weapon in his inventory.

Oh the joys!

On with the adventuring.

Final Fantasy XIV – Could this be perfect?

Jun 13

Posted by Dan in FFXIV | 6 Comments

Oh so hot...

Oh so hot...

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to delude myself that FFXIV is going to be perfect in any way, shape, or form. I am however, a massive Final Fantasy fan. I have fond memories of having a neighbour who patiently translated the original games when I was young for me as I watched him play, on through playing them myself on import, to getting my first console and having them all neatly lined up on my shelf.

Final Fantasy XI was my first proper MMO that I actually played seriously, and likening your first love to your first MMO is not an uncommon analogy, and rightly so. You’ve (generally) moved on from it, so you can reflect on the bad points, but they’re often shaded by the memories of the good points.

This is a surprisingly difficult topic to write about, people who play FFXI will no doubt have their own opinions on matters, and people who haven’t played FFXI will not really understand it.  Not because they’re incapable, but because they haven’t experienced it first hand.

Ask any FFXI player, any one at all, what their favourite aspect of the game is. I 100% garuntee that they will answer you thus: “The Community”

Final Fantasy XI: Community Edition

The reason for this immense feeling of community comes from many aspects of the game.

Firstly, your reputation is absolutely, 110%, TOTALLY the most important thing there is. You invest so much time into a single character, levelling different jobs, meeting different people, and the inter-networking that exists on a server means if you fuck someone over, everyone is going to know about it.

For this reason, everyone is pretty much reasonable. That’s not to say that everyone is friendly, but generally the people you group with, and the people you do interact with are going to be aimaible – why? Because if they’re not, you’ll complain to your linkshell (guild) and in turn their reputation will take a down. Think of it as real karma in a game.

Secondly, you rely on people for everything. To level. To gain your AF armour. To level your weaponskills. The list is endless, there are very very few things you can do alone in FFXI.

Thirdly, there are generally fairly niche communities on the various servers. The Japanese generally keep to themselves, the English speakers generally keep to themselves, and on Bahamut, eventually the Europeans generally kept to themselves in forming their own End-Game linkshell.

This interlinking network of niche communities, all relying on each other to co-exist and make progress leads to the game becoming totally community focused.

Final Fantasy XIV: Casual Edition

Picture this: You get home from work, sort out dinner, get around to logging in to your favourite MMO about 7-7.30. You decide tonight you’re going to get some experience points on that class you’ve been working on…You put up your LFG flag, and you wait for an invite that may or may not come. While you wait, you do some fishing, some crafting, or some farming for peanuts. You could technically log out 4 hours later having achieved nothing.

Games have developed over the past 10 years away from the strictly Eastern MMORPG methodoly of grind-central. Us Western folk decided we wanted our grind disguised and made a little more engaging. Even Aion, which has a very clear Eastern feel to it, is littered with quests from what I saw of the recent beta weekend – so maybe all MMO’s are swinging this way nowadays.

Square Enix have stated that they will be aiming to move away from the very time-intense gameplay of FFXI. They have said that people won’t be forced down the party-for-exp route… Excellent news for people like me who moved on from the very hardcore gameplay of FFXI. Though I think the general concensus of the people who still play FFXI is “omg noobs crai” etc.

Final Fantasy: Online

Now, these two aspects, in my opinion aren’t going to mix to recreate FFXI. This is a good thing, but I won’t try and convince anyone of that fact right now – especially an FFXI player.

How are they going to make the game less group-orientated and maintain the community feel that FFXI nurtures? I certainly don’t have the answer, but I’m sure some will argue that the community nurtures itself. All I know is that FFXIV is due to bring in a much larger crowd, and if they keep on making some of the promises along the same lines as what they have been, then they’ll probably be keeping that crowd too.

Character affinity + Casual friendly = Win.