So over the past couple weeks in-between raids, and farming what I need in order to maintain myself for said raids… I’ve had an awful lot of downtime. Motivating myself to play my rogue is basically non-existent, I pushed her to 20 one night so she could buy her mount and haven’t returned since.
I’ve been slowly pushing myself on the Loremaster achievement. Comes down to, that I can only really do about 100 quests a week before I feel like strangling myself; and have been primarily focused on getting Kalimdor done first… but after a couple quests from Winterspring sent me to the Plaguelands, I couldn’t resist knocking a few that I’ve wanted to do since 2005 out of the way while I was there.
One I was most excited about doing was the Battle of Darrowshire. I had the quest flagged and ready to go back in 2005, but since it was classified as a raid quest, and my old guild at the time wasn’t too keen on coordinating help… the quest item to start the event sat in my bank till actually just last December. The entire story behind it was what intrigued me. I’m generally not a fan of ghosts, zombies, and the sort… but few things know how to tug just right at my curiosity in history and psychology. I recall when playing Warcraft III in 2007, I squeed just seeing Darrowshire marked on the map.
Have run Zul’Gurub a few times with guildies (I’m not solo in that picture) trying to coax the mounts to drop. So far nothing, then again, we’ve also not been very consistent with our attempts. We made a couple shots at Hakkar as well, but partly due to my inability to resist the urge to kill my guildies when they’re mind controlled, the shots were utter failure. Fun at least!
And as of three days ago, Nadzia went bear. I’m still pretty tentative about it. I only spent 1500g roughly buying gems for her gear… which is a fair amount, but not bank breaking by a long shot. But after about a dozen instance runs with me tanking, I’m really on the fence if I felt the effort was worthwhile, and if maybe I should convert her gear into kitty instead.
And due to spending so much on the gems, I started farming Shadow Labyrinth solo as bear; both to try to get used to my abilities, and mainly to farm materials for Mongoose. Have sent all the marks and fel armaments to Dom, and after three solid SL runs, I netted over 10k reputation with Aldor. Nearly exalted now.
How it stands with me and bear right now is, I’m very confident in my abilities to single target tank. It’s the AoE tanking that has me pounding my head on the wall and questioning if I should have fully revived Felka, my pally, instead. Wrath instances are very brutal to bear tanks, and they’re a very rare breed now. I’m extremely frustrated and don’t know what decision I’m going to make about this yet.
Good news though, is my guild has finally downed Rotface. He’s so far been our most difficult fight for us to persistently pursue. Blood Princes we’ve brought down to 20% on our second attempt (late at night, so we ended there), and Valithra Dreamwalker has been healed to about 80% before we wipe, and so far only one go at Putricide, as again… was late at night. The longbow off Lady Deathwhisper still continues to elude me. Armory counts 8 10-man kills and 4 25-man kills. I even carry a scope with me every week in hope I’ll get to use it right then and there; but of course… it doesn’t drop with me there to claim it (dropped once on 25-man, and the other hunter from our partnered guild took it while I was too sick to log on that night).
Now a step backwards for a second.
How do I feel about the level cap being raised to 99 in FFXI? Well, for starters, when I saw the link this morning, I spent about 10 minutes staring at the URL and looking up other sources just to make sure it wasn’t a hoax. I can’t say I’m happy about it at all.
The primary thing I have revered and loved most about XI was the fact that, my equipment didn’t get outdated and pushed to the side/completely ignored after every expansion. I loved the fact that my Kirin’s Osode was still desired five years after it was put into the game. Sure there were alternates and it wasn’t such an “omg gotta have!” piece anymore, but it still had a lot of weight to it. It was a good piece to own, and something to be proud of.
The impact that this will have is staggering just to think about. Merits will be invalid, the economy is going to be turned upside down (even more so due to the server mergers), and any unlucky sap with a lot of 75s like I had… have a lot of work set out in front of them now if they wish to level them all up.
I quit with having a little knowledge that I achieved something on my elvaan, and the comfort that how I left her on my last log out… was how she’d stay. Reading that Seraph will become Bismark, everything in her delivery will go poof, and most likely her name will be taken… really disgruntles me.
At least I have the comfort that because I quit when I did… my head could be held high.
SquareEnix has me severely disappointed and has me questioning if XIV will ever be worthwhile.
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