thistlechaser | Entries tagged with ffxiv

Most people playing male characters won't wear subligar (armor that looks like panties), even if the stats are better. I proudly wear them, and the women thank me.

I love how I seem to be thrusting my hips out at her... *rolls*

So Happy Thing #4 is ~~men who aren't afraid to run around in panties~~ FFXIV. I played for nearly twelve hours total today, way way way more than I intended. XIV isn't a clone of my beloved XI, but that's actually a good thing (see also: I had fun). XIV is such a nice game -- easy enough not to be frustrating but interesting enough to not at all be boring. Beautiful graphics (I can barely stand to look at WoW now), tons of cutscenes, and the quests so easily feed from one into the next -- it's so hard to stop playing! I swas smiling so much today.

I can never go back to FFXI, but FFXIV is familiar enough that it feels like an acceptable substitution.

Current Mood: tired

- I got FFXIV installed. I had to use my work email address, which I really, really did not want to do, but the game is so pretty I can nearly forgive that. After playing WoW for so long, a pretty game makes me want to cry. I spent almost a half-hour customizing my character just right. Which is something of a joke -- which "Thistle" do I mean at this point? Anyway, I made him look as much like FFXI Thistle as I could, but there's a lot of WoW Thistle in his background/personality (mostly moot, since I'm unlikely to ever RP there).

- I got my review at work. Being new to the tech writing group, I was expected to get 'gaining competency', which is what all people new to a job/position get since they're ramping up to speed. Instead I got all meets or exceeds competency. o.O Woot! Thanks RP for all the writing/editing skills I picked up through the years. Kids, if parents tell you computer games are a waste of time, point this out! But seriously, it was because of my engineering background as well -- I'm a lot more technical than the other writers, so I'm handy in that way.

- The hospital sent me a bill for almost a thousand dollars ($992). While that's a lot better than $144,000, I'm still unhappy. I sent them a reply asking what/why my insurance wasn't covering.

- Toe is healing? It's still red, but my instructions say to gently scrub off the scab three times a day, so... that'd make anything red, I'd think. The swelling is gone and it only hurts a little now and then (see also: removing the scab three times a day). I still have two days left of the antibiotics though, so we'll see what happens after that.

- Way too many medical appointments next week. x.x Tuesday is the nutritionist, Wednesday the doctor for my leg/toe, Friday my car to the shop, then Monday is the dentist. My cat needs to go to the vet soon after (delaying that as much as I can), and two other new appointments for myself, along with that darned sleep study.

- Still need to do my taxes. Every year I have to pay hundreds of dollars, so I always drag my feet. Blah. I still want to get it done with though.

- I bought a panini maker. I debated for a week, since once I have my surgery I won't be eating sandwiches anymore (I think?), but it was only $30 so if I enjoy it for four months or so it should be worth it. Eventually I'll find a new home for it and the Soda Stream twins.

Current Mood: tired

Dear Square-Enix,

I swear to god, you are the WORST company to deal with. I dealt with you for the five years I played FFXI. I should have learned. But noooo. FFXIV was on sale for half-price, $15 with a free month of play, and I had fun in the beta (until my account mysteriously vanished), so hey, $15 for a month. I could do that.

So I bought the game. Of course, for lord knows what reason, S-E requires you to make an account with the company. Should be easy enough, right? We make accounts all the time, it's simple as pie and takes minutes.

I've been trying to make my S-E account since yesterday evening. I tried to make it within the game window (as recommended). I tried to make it directly on your site. You never send me the confirmation email. I've used three different email accounts, over ten attempts total so far. (And of course I checked my spam/junk folders.)

Your instructions if I don't get the email? Try again using a "valid" address. So the gmail account I've been using for years isn't good enough? Well, how about the second one I've been also using for years?

Bah. I swear to god, I hate S-E. I want to play the game. I bought it. You have my damned money. Why, oh why, do you make people jump through such hoops? And hoops that DON'T WORK! Because you know what does work? Google. I googled this issue. Lots of people have it! It's not just me!

24 hours. If I cannot make this work tonight, I'm contacting Steam about getting a refund. (Er. Or, well, crap. "As with most software products, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on games, DLC or in-game items purchased on our website or through the Steam Client.")

I haven't even played the game yet, and I'm soured on it. Nice going, S-E.

Not a single drop of love,
Thistle

Edit: To contact S-E support, you need an account. $*()#_*(@#_$*@#()$*_2-

Edit 2: Exact wording of the error message, for hilariousness "If the e-mail does not arrive even after waiting a considerable amount of time, the e-mail address may have been entered incorrectly. Please try again with a valid e-mail address."

Current Mood: annoyed

FFXIV is in open beta now, and the NDA is lifted, so we're free to post about it. Unfortunately, while last weekend was a beta weekend, I wasn't able to log in. Turns out you needed to make a new account, and somehow I lost my beta registration numbers. I have no idea how that happened, since gmail doesn't delete your mail unless you tell it to... maybe I misclicked? Whatever the reason, no June beta testing for me.

The game goes live in August, I guess I'll just wait until then.

I wrote the below part of this post in April, but I couldn't share it until now:

FFXIV: This is the first weekend I actually played the beta (instead of dabbling at it while in WoW or outright forgetting about it), and I enjoyed it. It's like the good parts of FFXI, the good parts of WoW, and (parts? the good parts?) of Guild Wars2 put together into one game.

It's easy, which is so very not FFXI-ish. It's got those "active quests" (like GW2, I think?) where attacks just randomly happen and you can take part to make nice XP. It holds your hand like WoW does. It also "stacks" quests like WoW does, which is really handy (one quest to kill 7 of X mobs, while another quest wants you to kill 10 of those same X mobs, and what do you know! Another quest wants you to get a drop from killing that same X mob!).

I hit level 10 in archer, so I ran to the leatherworking guild (because what else would Thistle do?) ...only to find that (of course) there's something like the old G1/G2/G# system that FFXI had. No where near as hard/bad, but still a frustrating pause. The quests would have been easy as pie, but I have SERIOUS trouble with the game-maps and have a really hard time getting from one place to another. I spent an hour trying to get to where I needed for the second quest of G1, then had to log out and take a break. Of course once I got there, the quest was easy as heck.

So, finally finishing the G1 quests, I was able to open leatherworking. Would you believe it took me a good 15 minutes to figure out how the heck to synth? I googled, but of course there's little info out there right now. I finally found a video about crafting, loaded it up, glanced down at the bit of FFXIV window showing below that one, and spotted a button I hadn't seen before.

I can't say I like the crafting system. In FFXI, it was bad enough to have to hit one button for every synth, now we have to hit a button multiple times per synth? But we get XP for it, so I guess they don't want it to be too easy.

----

Rereading that post now, I can say I have fond memories of the beta testing. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was in one of my "I'm quitting WoW" periods, which means I was able to concentrate on FFXIV more than I otherwise would have. (That's also part of why I'm not very distressed at missing out on June beta, I have stuff I want to do in WoW.)

I'm unsure if I'll buy it in August or not. The graphics were amazing. I've been playing WoW for many years now and I still hate their graphics to death. I think the gameplay was better than WoW's, but WoW has RP. RP means more than most anything else. (Will FFXIV have RP? Who knows, but FFXI didn't.)

Current Mood: hungry

I jumped right into Ghost Brigade after finishing Old Man's War. I suspect I'll finish it tomorrow (40% left to go), then put a review post up for both. Next week I have mandatory, unpaid OT at work every day (and half of the next week too), so the third book will be much slower to finish.

... You know, I had this long post written up about playing FFXIV beta all day, no real info on the game, just my opinions and such, but then I looked up the beta agreement to try to see if I would be breaking the rules by posting it or not. I wonder if the agreement would stand up in court? If I wrote "I (liked|disliked) it" and nothing else, that would be considered confidential information. It's odd that my liking or disliking of something could be confidential. Posting a screenshot of a mob? Sure, I could see that being an issue. "Oh, that mob is so cool!" doesn't seem the same.

Oh well, not much of a post without that section. :/ Well, to flesh this out a bit: I spent maybe a half-hour total on WoW today, and hated every minute of it. This morning I didn't do my dailies, and when I logged on in the evening a gold beggar was waiting for me and whispered me the moment I connected (and bugged me for the next 15 minutes, until I finally logged).

There's a RP opportunity tomorrow on WoW, but I don't think I'll take it. I need to get off my butt and look into closing my account.

Current Mood: tired

What a night last night was. Four TV shows on at the same time that I wanted to see! Yay for Tivo and downloading.

Walking Dead: Watched real time.
Game of Thrones: Downloaded, will watch tonight.
Celebrity Apprentice: Recorded.
Big Brother Canada: Downloaded.

( Cut for spoilers on last ep of the Walking Dead season )

Before all the shows started, I watched Lion King. I've been avoiding watching it again. It's probably been 10+ years since I last saw it. I loved it so much that I didn't want to watch it again and maybe ruin my memory of it. But I was watching Mulan and Lion King started next, and before I could change the channel the first song caught me, and there was no escape.

Watching it again, I found that the movie stayed the same, but I had changed. I had backed Scar so intensely, I had thought he was the wronged one, that he was justified in everything he had done. Now I'm wondering what younger me had been smoking. Scar could have had a place. Second place yeah, but that's better than nothing. He could have been a good uncle and helped raise Simba to be a good king, but instead he tried to kill him and Mufasa.

I still very much disliked all the Timon and Pumbaa parts. The "humor" (which didn't amuse me one bit), felt out of place. (Though, kids movie, so I know why they did it.)

Oddly, though it's been so many years since I last saw it, I was able to mouth all the dialogue and songs nearly word for word. I knew when characters would raise their head, look that way, all the details.

Games! My first attempt to get into a beta succeeded! I'm in the Final Fantasy XIV beta. :D FFXI has been on my mind so much lately, I'm hoping I'll really enjoy XIV. I'm going to download it tonight after work. :D

Edit: Wow, and today's Awkward Stock Photo:

So much for after Easter discount candy sales?

Current Mood: pleased

Two posts in two days! I'm on a roll!

The whole world is talking about FFXIV (FF14), so I should probably post about that, too. I wouldn't want to be kicked off the world!

I'm very torn about it.

On one hand, I don't want to play another MMO ever. I said 'never again' after FFXI and now I'm on WoW, but I mean it! No more!

Related to that hand, I'm not really interested in playing another FFXI-ish game, even if it's only the races that remain the same between the two games (and I don't believe that).

Semi-related to that, I do not trust SE. Period. They claim 14 will have soloing content in it, stuff that you can get done in "40 minutes" (why 40? that's an odd number to use as an example). However, they claim that now about FFXI as well. Unless this game lets you reach the highest level while soloing (fairly soloing, not FFXI BST or BLM soloing), AND lets you do all missions, quests, etc solo, then I am not interested in it.

Now, on the other hand... it's FFXI. A fresh start! And, while I have no interest in putting another five years into a MMO, especially one made by a company I do not trust... it's tempting. (Why's it tempting? I don't know!)

Related to that hand:

Eeeee! It's me! My character model, hair, hair color, everything! Just seeing that picture is enough to make me want to check it out.

When word was it would only be supported on the PS3, I had zero interest in it -- I would not buy another gaming system for just one game (like I have five times before!), but... it's for PC as well.

*sigh* I hope I can be strong and not even buy it just to see what it's like, I do not trust SE and I don't want to get hooked again, but... but...