WoTG - Sandy Quests
Big big big thanks to Vanh who caught me when I was bored/down on Friday night. Thanks to him, I'm up-to-date with all the Sandy mission-quests that have been released in WoTG so far. We completely wiped the floor with the "Price of Valor" fight with Vanh kicking butt on SAM, when me helping to finish the job with ultra-fast "SCH-hax" nuking.
The "Bonds that Never Die" mission was a lot of fun. We went as 2x PLD/NIN (and RDM supermule) spamming Atonement going up against a single Young Behemoth. I think this is the first time I've ever really used my Justice Sword effectively since Atonement was the main source of damage. The fight was surprisingly easy in this combination, and we finished with loads of time to spare. I think that the innate defense of PLD to reduce damage taken, plus having a RDM to Dispel made what looked like a hard fight much easier.
WoTG - Windy Quests
On Sunday, Fuuji gathered "those still interested in missions" together to do Windy quests. Fuuji, Vanh(+Ark), Cronus & I went to finish the fight for "The Long March North", a hectic fight against 3 demons and 2 eye-type mobs. We finished the afternoon by farming the items needed for the next quest: a bottled pixie and a testimony, as well as met a... an... an... alien... in the ruins... or something... out of this world o.o;
Annnnnyway... that also finished up all the released Windy quests as of this time. One thing I noticed is that both of these questlines have... a significant incident that occurs at around the same missions. Not going to spoil too much, but... I think that the Windy version was a lot more touching compared to the Sandy version... maybe cos I can't tell the difference between the characters in the Sandy one since they all wear the same outfit x.x; In any case, I'm wondering who will be affected in the Bastok storyline :o
WoTG - Bastok Quests
For the Bastok storyline, I'm currently three quests behind on the "Fire in the Hole" battlefield. I think both Zurar & Tasya are on this quest as well, so we need to find some time to get together and finish this questline. I don't think anyone else is doing Bastok... if you're out there, put something in the comments or let me know so we can coordinate!
WoTG - Continuing on
Fun part about getting past the quests is that I can finally progress in the main WoTG storyline... which currently consists of running around with Lilisette and Portia! I'll probably put some pics up later this week of us 3 dancers running around in 3 different outfits xD The minigames are amusing, but... also frustrating to do... at least the cutscenes are pretty funny. Took about an hour to finish the minigames, most of which was spent sneaking around the glacier x.x
Currently stopped on Mission 19: Betrayal at Beaucedine. This is another big fight, one that is done in the open so other people can help. Hopefully we'll be doing this next Sunday. After this fight, there is one more annoying quest, then two more instanced fights before we have to wait until the next update again.
Other FFXI stuffs
Let's see... other FFXI stuffs that happened this weekend included:
* Getting Valor Coronet -1, the ONLY drop in Saturday's Dynamis Valkrum o.o;
- Just a little amused that I actually got it... seems like other people are passing up the -1 pieces because they want to be able to store their relic sets? I have no intention of storing any of my sets... I use all 4 jobs weekly in different events...
- Another side note: I now have the +1 relic hats for all 4 of my jobs xD
- Hoping for more -1 drops for the other pieces... especially Dancer... and I'm also hoping to eventually finish the SCH and PLD relic sets... 3/6 for SCH, 2/6 for PLD at the moment xD
* Tanking Alexander (TOAU44)
- Sunday afternoon, Tassy asked me to come help her for the final TOAU fight :o
- I still remember the pain of this mission when I did it... back then, I only had BLU leveled, so I was relegated to the backup/helper healer... I don't remember how many times we attempted it, but it had me as frustrated as when I did the CoP airship fight, or for my BLU final limit break fight x.x
- This time, I was PLD/RDM and we won it easily with over 10 minutes left. I don't think we did anything that significantly differently compared to when I was doing it... except maybe that PLD/RDM made for an incredible tank for holding hate
- Simply using my Dynamis experience, I was able to hold hate even though the nuking phase for the Blue Mage by simply spamming Dispel/Blind/Flash. I know the theory behind PLD/RDM hate holding, but seeing it in action still surprises me xD
- Had one wipe against Alexander right after he 2-hr'ed and we were out of MP... Tractor, Reraise and finished the fight with I think maybe 1 person using 2-hrs :o
* Dancer /check
- So... I've been /checking every Dancer I see to see if they have some gear that I may have missed in my search for gear... After all, that's how I discovered the existence of the Scouter's Rope
- This weekend, I found one piece of gear that another Dancer had that I didn't know about... the Elusive Earring has +5 evasion, which is 1 more compared to the Velocity Earring I currently use. Intrigued by this, I went looking for more evasion pieces and was reminded of the Novia Earring (Evasion +7, Enmity -7) which is dropped by Jailer of Love x.x Rooks did tell me that I should consider getting some sea stuff when I first started coming to help out... I guess I found an item that I really want now ^^; Not sure that the Love Torque is any good for DNC, and I already got a Justice Sword... so... guess this is up on the list ^^;
- Also ran across one DNC that was... fulltime in AF with nothing but +chr equipment in all slots... really... while meleeing :o
Other MMO News - FFXIV
Looks like Gamescon in Europe has brought out some new media for some next-gen MMOs. First up, I'm sure most of you have seen this, but here's a link to some FFXIV footage, including gameplay and showing off of their graphics engines and lots of emotes
So far, not too impressed on XIV... looks like they're still being lazy, taking the XI concepts, races and basic gameplay, putting a WoW interface around it and updating the graphics for modern hardware. Quests seemed to be the usual "bring me X items that drop from Y mobs". In fact... in an interview with one of the XIV developers had this little tidbit:
Q: Why does FFXIV look so similar to XI?
Tanaka: (Laughs) I think it's simply because the same people are making the game.
Mmm... same people, same basic character designs (different names), updated graphics engine... I guess they're being eco-friendly? Recycle & reuse? I mean, I'm sure we'll see Chocobos, Moogles, Cid all over XIV... that's part of the fun of the Final Fantasy games... but... does this mean we'll have all of the same problems? Same gameplay?
Oh, here's another fun tidbit from the interview:
Tanaka: The main thing we learned from FFXI was that once we launched the game, we communicated with our players to receive feedback and improve the game and improve the game experience. So we really believe that communication with our players is the most important thing, and that is something we would like to continue for FFXIV as well.
So... they claim to believe that communicating with players is important... does anyone buy that? I believe there's an old saying "actions speak louder than words". I guess they *did* improve the game after enough people whined... but how long did that take? Actually... can any old timers say... how long does it take for SE to take feedback from their "customers" and actually implement it? Are we talking multiple years? Maybe someone should ask if they intend to have a customer-service division... or hire any QA staff!
Other MMO News - Star Wars: The Old Republic
A series of videos came out this weekend regarding the upcoming Star Wars MMO: http://kotaku.com/5343638/the-old-republic-20-minute-developer-walkthrough
Interesting gameplay mechanics... especially the Smuggler class with the cover system. Bioware is definitely using many tricks from various games, including their own games to make this an interesting looking MMO. I really like how they did the cutscenes... fully voiced over, with the Mass Effect-type dialog choices. That your choices will actually affect the game would be a nice change from FFXI's current method where your choices basically mean either nothing at all, or that the wrong choice would mean you have to try again ~.~ Having other players in the cutscenes also has a huge potential. In other MMOs, it seems more like... well, you're playing a single-player game story-wise, and you have to get these other NPCs to tag along... except they're not NPCs... but you never interact with them inside the story/cutscenes. I mean... *I* was the one that saved the world from Promathia! The rest of you just happened to be there to cheer me on!
I never played Knights of the Old Republic, but I did play Mass Effect... that was one of the few RPGs that actually kept me interested till the very end in both story and gameplay! Hence, I have high hopes for this game. Only the Final Fantasy series, and the Xenosaga series were able to do that. Almost all other RPGs I've played, I've lost interest in the middle x.x
I just hope they can live up to their "epic hero" goal. It seems that every MMO out there starts off with an awesome intro cinematic, then they drop you off in the middle of town with an onion sword and tell you to go poke some rabbits outside of town (and have those rabbits kick your butt).
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