Friday, February 20, 2009

FFXI & WoW update/schedule

Wow, looks like my little off-topic post about organs has gotten the most feedback so far! Most comments from different people, and off-blog conversations :D Maybe I should post off-topic more often.

However, this is an on-topic post :)

Funny thing about having both WoW and FFXI at the same time... people on FFXI think I'm off playing WoW, people on WoW think I'm doing events on FFXI and meanwhile I'm off watching TV without logging onto either game :D Watching a little TOO much this season, both in terms of TV & anime... Current weekly watch list is:
TV: Heroes, Knight Rider, Lost, 30 Rock, The Office, Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse, Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad
Anime: Gundam 00 Season 2, Rideback, Sora Kake Shoujo, Tytania, Viper's Creed, Marimite Season 4

So, erm... ya, that's a lot to watch. I'm also behind on playing a ton of non-MMO games. I have a small stack that I've bought but not played or finished yet including: LittleBigPlanet, Valkyria Chronicles, Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia, Fallout 3, Street Fighter 4, and more coming on the way >.> Game developers are becoming smarter, always releasing limited or collectors editions of games which I can't resist ; ;

Taking a break from MMOs is quite welcome!

Meanwhile, here's what I've been doing:

FFXI
FFXI is pretty dead in terms of AP activity. On an average day, I see... Utaru and Raselin on. During event days I might see Connie, Dexie, Fuuji and Wu as well, but that's just a small fraction of the week.

Looks like my FFXI playtimes have evolved to:
- Monday: ZNMs all night
- Wednesday: Limbus late night, after TV
- Saturday: Dynamis & Limbus all night
- Sunday: Meriting with Vanh, sometimes helping Wu with KS99

Sadly, no Nyzul, which is the event I actually enjoyed the most. (even with horrible drop rates)

As expected, the drop rates for all events are horrendous. I can't remember the last time that we took an item off the ZNM wishlist anymore. Dynamis drop rates are horrible from every time I've shown up, and I keep on hearing about Dancer or Scholar AF that drops on Wednesdays which I can't make it due to school. It's making me consider dropping Dynamis. Horrible drop rate, only making 1/2 of the events and the event itself starting at an inconvenient time for me makes me feel that Dynamis is a big hassle not just for me, but also for the organizers.

Utaru is doing his best to keep Limbus going, and he's doing a really good job at it too. We've cancelled quite a few runs in the recent months due to low attendence, but Utty has managed to recruit more people and get a sizable force going again. We have one Omega pop set, and most of another now. Whether we can start doing Omega again... well, we'll find out this weekend!

As for meriting... Vanh seems very persistant about leveling on Sunday afternoons, so I'm tagging along. I'm in the process of finishing up my Dancer merits, 4/5 on Fan Dance now. I just need... I think 9 more merits to finish category 2 merits on Dancer, then I can move onto other things like HP or attributes.

Ironically, I haven't been playing Dancer all that much lately. While I prefer being on Dancer for any healing role, I won't come Dancer if it's a kited fight, if there is any amnesia involved or if it is mainly a nuked fight. Interestingly, I've been asked to come SCH for many events now as mainly a nuker. Healing is a little too dangerous for me as SCH since I do like to do a lot of AoE Cures, but I'm fairly effective at nuking. Spells hit for about 3/4 the strength of a BLM for 1/2 the MP. My gear is horrible (mainly AF plus a few random pieces I've picked up), but if that's what people want... Easier on me anyway since SCH doesn't take as much concentration as DNC!

Since I'm doing a lot of nuking on SCH, I'm starting to wonder if I should pick up some nuking gear... if you have any ideas on what might be good (and cheap) to pick up on the AH, post in the comments!

WoW
Level... 46 Blood Elf Warlock as of last night, but that will probably change really soon. 3x exp makes it easy to level, except I don't really find that many reasons or opportunities to level. I'm getting bored of WoW (again), which isn't too surprising since the last time I played I got bored and quit at level 47 ^^;; It seems that WoW hits a rut at around this level since I don't get any new abilities, and it's basically been the same routine for the last 10 levels or so... quests are the same with similar objectives, no interesting storyline or characters to get behind.

WoW schedule seems to be:
- Thursday: Dungeon crawl with Ghir, Vargie, Aqqy, Zu and sometimes Fro
- Friday: Quest with Ghir (3x exp ftw!)

I might try to sneak some WoW time in on Tuesdays, Saturdays or Sundays if I'm int he mood. A few weeks ago I was in the mood, but more recently I haven't been in the mood to run around and do quests. The good part is that at least this gave Ghir a chance to catch up a little in levels :)

Tonight I'll probably switch my minion around a little and try a different playstyle for Warlock. I've been using the Succubus as damage + crowd control, but I'm realizing that she doesn't do that much damage anymore relative to my spells, and I don't really need crowd control when I can just attack them all and kite mobs around. Maybe this will help break more boredom with WoW :)

I'll continue playing for at least until the 90 day 3x exp thing expires... by then I should be at (the very least) level 60 and also have my zebra mount! Ironically, but then I should also get my free month of gameplay, so... I guess it's at least 120 days of gameplay coming up in WoW? Maybe things will change at higher levels...

Off-topic:
One more month until I'm completely done with grad school... and coming out to a world which is in shambles. I'm considering putting together another off-topic blog post to talk about the economy and world situation, but it could be a little contraversal, so... I don't know... do you want to hear about my thoughts on the world situation?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll save you the post on the economy: IT SUCKS. I got nothing back on my taxes. I had to give up a decent raise because I need health insurance more. I'm literally driving my pickup around w/o legal plates (using my eclipses plates. Ironic an L200 with DSM GSX For plates.) Because I cannot afford them, the truck isn't even insured. And I was damn lucky my friend up here with the Kenosha G-Scaler's group was kind enough to let my hubby and I and our friend Dave and his wife come up and crash in their hotel room because we needed to beat the damn snow storm.

I know the stimulus is passed but until I recieve my part of the damn money to help put back into my job, We're basically screwed. I'm not at cash in the NS Railroad stock Stage yet, but we're heading there pretty fast. And that won't survive us til death for 2 reasons. A) NS Stocks are dangerously dropping. B) We have roommates we need to let some of that money go to help.

The world economy is collapsing. The Euro is at its all time low. UK never got rid of their Pounds. so the gold the UK Has backing the Euros can back the Pound. As for the rest of the world, we're so interconnected that it's hurting everyone.

I'm about right were you are right? Sorry if I seem grumpy, 3 hours in a small truck and crammed into a hotel room with 5 people. I'll be more chipper when I'm in the Alliant Energy Center.

Ascule said...

Hmm... if anything, Karou's post explains to me why I really do need to have a post on the world situation.

Actually, no, you're not about right where I am... this is all old news, and you're not looking at how much worse it's going to be in the near future, and how much even more worse that it'll be in 10 years. The stimulus is not going to work, and all it's doing is ensuring that the people of the U.S. will have too large of a burden to ever regain their former lifestyle.

I'll write something up next week :)

Anonymous said...

You know, they said in the 30s the situation would only get worse, but it got better. There is a small glimmer of hope things will get better. But I don't want to predict yay or nay. I've learned to take things one day at a time. If worse comes to pass, then I'm out of the job. I'm already near minimum wage levels now. Our boss asked us if we wanted to lose money or the health insurance. Unanimously we voted to keep the health insurance. My boss isn't like other bosses and he takes care of us the best he can. But I would truely hate to see his business, his employees stripped away. It's not fair that we do what the bigger chains can do but get less money for it. We take pride in our work, something autozone doesn't.

But I digress. If we can raise our economy a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, the rest of the world will be able to. That's how closely the world's economy is connected. If one can build back up, then the rest will follow. I just try to make sure I don't go overboard on spending anymore. Well, Discover hasn't been used in about 3 months now and they're concerned that I might have 'died'. The only thing the mastercard is used for is FFXI.

I will be dropping Xbox Live Gold at the end of my year in January next year (12+1 Gold Card). Just cannot afford to buy those 50 dollar subscriptions anymore.