Bored with WoW, FFXI update, other things

On WoW:
Quick update on WoW... the reason why I haven't been on as much is... simply... I'm bored of it. I reached level 47 (which incidentally is the same level as my Night Elf Druid) and I got bored of repeating the same quests over and over again in another zone. Gathering herbs and grinding alchemy hasn't been that interesting so far, and combat has basically been the same 4 spells over and over again with virtually no excitement. Got to 50 by being guided through dungeons with 3x exp active, not much has changed.

WoW really does need some other hook to get past this "dead" zone... that is, if there is something else on the other side of things. At least FFXI had missions and quests that were more than 'go collect 15 rat tails' as a nice distraction.

On the "good" news is... because I referred Ghiren this time around, he can grant me levels whenever he is ahead of me. This means that I don't have to play to get out of this dead zone, which is good since I haven't been motivated to play at all. If there is something more interesting in WoW beyond level 60, hopefully I can get there to find out.

FFXI:
So, one nice part about the whole cutback on FFXI is that it makes things a lot more relaxing... No more rushing from event to event... still, I am doing stuff, sooo... what's happened recently:

- Limbus: Finally got an Omega win... it's been a while since we've defeated Omega :( We also have two half-sets now, so hopefully we can get some more Omega done and finish more sets.
- Dynamis: Finally getting bored of doing the whole DNC/SAM thing in Dynamis where I'd have to keep on switching mobs and healing a party full of DDs... so I've switched to SCH where I can fool around with Aspir-ga spells! Nothing like filling up my entire MP bar by Aspiring 7+ mobs for more than 100MP each! I think I have a screenshot or two of this somewhere. Plus I can actually do something when it's time to nuke the boss instead of stand around and look pretty.
- ZNMs: We're progressing nicely along with ZNMs, with people showing up more on time than before, and we're getting things done. We have a really high number of Tier IV pop sets, so we really need to get full attendence for the next few weeks so we can use these pops and start the paths again. I think our recent recruitment has gotten us at last to levels where we can do this again.
- Nyzul: On a whim, we started this up again last night. Main changes are Vanh filling in for Kurai and me coming as SCH instead of BLU. Vanh's normal Thursday group was on hiatas for a long time due to Fuuji's move, so he agreed to come with us... we can share him, right? He's good luck!
- Merit: Done with Fan Dance now... that is... I have the merits for it, but I keep on forgetting to upgrade it. 5/5 on Fan Dance, which gets the recast time down to... I think 3 minutes. I still have to get 4 merits to upgrade Saber Dance once before I'm complete done with Dancer merits. After this will be HP merits, then we'll have to see... I may do some elemental magic merits since I'm nuking a lot on SCH. For merits, I'm mainly just doing merits with Vanh on Sunday afternoons when I'm around.





Other:
Meanwhile, I've been playing... Star Ocean: The Last Hope! Wow... an offline JRPG! It's really pretty on the 360 with HD, though maybe a little too bright and colorful. Gameplay is kinda weird... fast action-type with lots of button pressing. I've never completed a Star Ocean game before, so we'll see if the story can draw me in. So far it seems like any other JRPG, kid somehow becomes the focus of a plotline and has to go run around different towns(planets) doing various little quests.

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?

WoW update - Warlock 35

Let's see... a fast update in what's happening in WoW.

Level 35 Warlock now. I'm enjoying this job a lot more compared to Druid, which I took the last time. While Druids are very flexible, able to shift between the tanking bear form, to the heavy damage feral form to the flexible spell-casting form, all the shifting did was confuse the heck out of me. WoW is also significantly faster than FFXI, where split second decisions need to be made. Spell casting time is either instant, or measured in a few seconds, where in FFXI, a basic cure spell casts 3-4 seconds to cast. As a Druid, I'd often screw up, not healing in time or worse, switching forms at the wrong time and using up all my MP for nothing!

Warlock is surprisingly fun... Basic strategy is simple: Throw up as many DoTs as I can against the mobs I'm facing, then drain their life to keep my own HP up in a technique known as "Drain Tanking". It's surprisingly effective, and even though I don't have that much HP in the first place, I can easily take on 4-5 mobs that are equal level to me just by throwing up DoTs and keeping myself alive this way. On Druid, I'd be lucky if i can take on two mobs that are the same level.

So... grinding through the levels through quests. I'm moving a little slower compared to last time since I'm actually exploring the zones this time instead of blowing through levels like the last time with Vivid, and I'm holding back so that Ghiren & I can quest together and take full advantage of 3x exp. Still, WoW is reaching the point again where it is starting to get a little boring as we do basically the same things over and over again... Aqqy, Varg, Ghir & I are trying to mix things up a little by doing dungeon instances every Thursday night for a change of pace. I'd also like to drag Ghir out to try some PvP again! Maybe a Warlock would be a little more fun compared to a druid!.

Oh yeah, so here's an update on my interface. I've finally figured out a good balance between 3rd-party add-ons and how I want things laid out:

Basically I put all the text in the bottom part of the screen, giving room for actionbars to go just above the chat box on the left, and the combat box on the right. Unfortunately, my actionbars have been growing upwards recently, and the interface is taking up almost the entire bottom 1/3 of the screen. I still use a 4:3 monitor, so moving things to the left or right sides of the screen isn't really an option.

Addons I currently use:

- Titanbar (top bar) -- Mainly for a status on my current ping time to the server + how much gold I have

- Necrosis (weird circles in the middle) -- Warlock management tool. Keeps my Soul Shards under control and gives easy access to common, and rarely used Warlock spells. Also has really cool verbal prompts to tell me whenever I can trigger certain spells, like when Shadow Trance procs

- QuestHelper -- I'm pretty sure EVERYONE has this

- ActionBars 4 -- Easy to move those bars around

- Omen4 -- Threat level gauge... though with drain tanking, I'm almost always at the top of the threat list

- Gatherer -- Keep track of where I've gathered herbs... also lets me find out where my AP guildmates have found things!

- Auctioneer -- Helps me easily manage auctions. I think this, or another addon also lets me know how much things vendor for, making it easy to figure out which item I should toss when I'm out of inventory

- Chatter -- Formats the chat boxes nicely. Also prevents chat from fading away and alerts me whenever someone says my name.

- BuffBars -- Changes buffs from being icons to bars with durations remaining. 

Truthfully, I'm not sure if I'm even playing Warlock "correctly" since half the game I'm soloing and experimenting, and the other half I'm with Ghiren, who is even more of a newbie to WoW compared to me :) We'll have to see what happens when I go for some real fights!

Level 7 Blood Elf Warlock

Got to level 7, and picked up my little Imp pet along the way! He doesn't seem happy to see me again, but he's always grouchy when I send him to go kill things... or to die as it may be since I do have a tendency to find death easily!

Let's see.... only two deaths so far! That's really good for me! One was me jumping from a high tower thinking I could dive into the water... Weird. I thought that I was safe since I was diving into water, but... maybe the river was too shallow? xD Second was when I tried to help a blood elf hunter that was being ganged up on by a group of skeletons... whoops! I got their attention instead! Killed one of them, but the other 4 beat me up!

Still, that's a much better average than I had before ^^;

Tonight, aiming for level 10 so that I can get my Voidwalker pet. Also, once we get to around 15-20 or so, it'll be time for us to group up. Kurai has a Paladin going, and Zurar might pick up a Priest. Ghiren's power is out right now, but once he gets on his 10-day trial, he'll probably be going for some sort of Warrior.

And... no intro post is complete with some sort of picture!

Let's see... some basic UI enhancements were added:

- Quest Helper

- Titan Panel

- Cartographer

- Diamond Threat

These go a long way in figuring out where to go for quests, and how close I am to pulling aggro from my pet when I'm going all out nuking!

Finally... a note on college courses! If you go to UC Berkeley, you probably wanna register for this: http://kotaku.com/5141355/competitive-starcraft-gets-uc-berkeley-class

College credit for StarCraft! Geez... I wonder if someone could do something similar for MMOs.

PS: For those of you who want to join us, we're currently on Hyjal, but we will be transferring servers to Winterhoof tomorrow night as soon as they start the free transfers! If you have a new character to make, make it over at Winterhoof!