"Life is a cycle, No beginning, no end."

[thistlechaser]

On 9/28/2005 I joined WoW.
I left FFXI for it, after much foot-dragging and months of lingering on the game long after I stopped having fun.
Today, 4/13/2014, I quit WoW for FFXIV.

Want to see something scary? This is the amount of time I spent online on WoW on one character (I had ten total).


More than a year spent on WoW, on just one of my characters. It's a boggling thought. I can't believe how many years I've been playing. I can't believe it took me this long to quit.

As when I quit FFXI, I stayed on WoW too long. Outside of RP (which is player-generated, not something offered by the game), I haven't had fun in two expansions (so about two years). And, as my friends kept leaving for other games, there were fewer and fewer reasons to stay.

I don't know if I'll ever go back. I worry I might run out of things to do on FFXIV. I'm only in my second month, and I'm almost done leveling all the craft and gathering professions (and I don't really like leveling the battle jobs).

I sort of wish I had sold my gold. Doing that is against the rules, but what would they do, ban me? I would have liked to have gotten some RL money out of all that time playing. On both FFXI and WoW, I quit the game as one of the richest people on the server. I've always kicked myself for not giving my FFXI money away (or selling it), so I gave a good deal of my WoW money to a few people.

I'm a little sad to let it go, but I'm sad over the loss of what could have been more than what really was. I had some very good times in the game and some very bad ones, but lately it was mostly all bad. The game felt like a job, something I had to do, which means it was time to go. FFXIV makes me happy. I love the lore, I love the artwork, I have new and old friends I'm playing with. WoW was a part of my life for a long time though, so there will be a hole for a while.

Key for the non-gamers on my friends list:
FFXI = Final Fantasy 11
WoW = World of Warcraft
FFXIV = Final Fantasy 14, A Realm Reborn
All are MMOs/online games.

(Quote in the subject line came from a random online person, though it's hardly original to her.)

Comments

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Been pretty good. Working more with schooling on the side to get better jobs and what not. Started reading again after finishing off A Dance with Dragons. About 4 books into Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar stuff, it's just too hard to stop reading it.

Been hanging around on Ultros with a bunch of people from FFXI. Got my PLD (naturally) and MNK to 50 but haven't enjoyed any of the other battle classes to really get them past 35 or so. Have all DoH and DoL at 50 which was fun to get through, although I'm not a fan of endgame crafting/gathering so nothing has any materia in it.

I'm hoping the crafting rebalance scheduled for 2.3 makes it less "Find your favourite flavour of broken macro and cross class skills" and more free flowing. Although having said that I really enjoy fishing so I might get around to going "Big Fishing!!" sooner or later. Funny the only gathering or crafting I really enjoy is the one that is essentially just a big time sink.

Working towards the housing right now. FC is at about 10mil and aiming for a medium Limsa house. So we have between 5-9mil left to go depending on which we go after. Hadn't really started saving until a little before 2.2 so we are moving along at a decent clip given a few people don't really farm gil and are just holding onto a mil for 1 big investment.

I imagine you'll be able to garden with the single player housing and we'll probably see a bunch of other stuff added just for that. I do hope they distinguish the two types of housing though. As opposed to just having FC housing and then "FC Housing-light" for people who are solo or want their own house. Maybe incorporate your retainers in some way, like it's a house where you live with them or something, that'd be nice.

I need to stop thinking about it because I'll come up with a million possibilities of what they could do and then they'll just be like "You can make a house shaped like a chocobo!" and I'll get really disappointed. I know how you work SE...

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about fishing. It was my first 50 and I'm sorry I don't get to do it more. (There's really no reason to, on my server fish are vendor trash with almost no exceptions.) I haven't done Big Fishing!! yet, because it seems kind of pointless. You get a title from it sure, but titles don't show up the same way they do in WoW. (That's one of the only things I hope they adopt from WoW, but I'm pretty sure they won't.)

Our FC house is small, but we're thinking about upgrading it/moving to a bigger one. I'll admit that the size doesn't matter much to me -- I don't get to decorate it, rearrange it, or anything, it's more like I'm a guest in someone else's house than it being my own place. I'm one of those "don't donate, holding onto a million for investment" people instead (because of the feeling like a guest thing), even though I haven't quite hit a million yet (900.7K was my highest, then I spent 100K on damned materia which was silly because I'd have to invest 200K+ more to reach the next cap and I'll never mine enough to make that money back anyway...).

I've done very little high end crafting (I made some fireplace that sold for 75K, that was the biggest). I do better with low level gear and such.

Yeah, I'd love to have my retainers be in my house. I have high hopes for personal housing, I hope I don't get disappointed. I'd like more than one room, gardening at least like FFXI's if not better, it'd be great to bring mannequins back, and so much more.

Speaking of mannequins, it tickles me so much when something appears straight out of FFXI. Beastmen, mobs, whatever, it makes me grin so much!

Heck with a house shaped like a chocobo, I want a house shaped like a fat chocobo!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I think we'll see personal housing be more like it was in XI. At least in terms of ability to store your items there. Since there isn't really much in the way of storage at this point in time. Ya there is a bunch of retainer space and the armoire but the latter can only story certain things and it's annoying to be constantly be making it so people can't buy my stuff from the marketplace getting items off the former.

Ya, I love seeing things from XI show up again. Although MNK annoys me for that reason since, apparently, things like Haymaker and Bootshine actually translate over to Counter and Combo from their Japanese names ("connecting strikes", but close enough). The localization team did a great job actually localizing the game as opposed to just translating it but I think they fell short on some of the ability names. I know they weren't obligated to do it but I would have liked to have seen the nod to the predecessor. Heck apparently the JP client uses Rare/EX as well, but I'm sure that would have just confused the hell out of anyone not from XI.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

YES! I hate that your stuff is taken off the marketplace each time you want to get or store something! Forget about taking time to organize your stuff, I just use the auto sort now because I don't want my stuff off the market for longer than necessary. It would rock if your house included items with +storage on them.

Yeah, I had to level monk (er, pugilist) to 15 for bard, and I really didn't like the ability names. Also, after playing a ranged DPS for so long, melee was so annoying! I basically just never did fates because it was too much of a pain to have to be nonstop moving to stay out of bad stuff on the ground.

Aww! I'd love to see rare/ex again, though agreed it might confuse people. Still, I'm so happy to see goblins, Qiqirn!!!, and others again. Some areas seem straight out of XI. There's some town, one just outside of Ul'dah I think it was, that seemed a strong nod to ToAU. NPCs dressed in COR AF knockoff outfits all over the place! I loved it.