[none]?

Couldn't think of a good title, so meh.

Anyway. I've still been playing Dungeon Fighter Online, and it's been a blast. I've been commended ... or ridiculed? ... I dunno. Either way, I do my normal thing while playing MMORPG's ... and that's LEVEL, and fast. Granted, the holiday exp bonus' has helped out quite a bit, but still. I've also made a fair bit of money, although it's a fair bit harder to do here, as you're limited on the amount of areas you can go through in a day.

I also read a great deal of different web comics, game review sites, and other... miscellaneous sites. One in particular I go to regularly is "The Escapist Magazine". It's the home of Zero Punctuation. If you're a gamer, and have never heard of this man ... you need to be slapped, and HARD. Anyway, on this site, they also have many other things that are interesting reads from time to time. Just the other day however, one person had done a compilation of different posts on the theme of learning from mistakes or something like that. One of the posts was "The best games you never played". In this list were some that I wasn't too thrilled to read about, nor interested in downloading, even though they were free. One however, piqued my interest.

See, I've always loved games that were full 3d movement environments. Games like Decent. Yea, good old Decent. ::cough:: Anyway, back on subject. Apparently back in 1999, there was a section of Micro$oft that was used to develop ground-breaking technologies. Things that could be modified and put out full-scale via the main company. This section had it's own name, but never put anything out under it's name, seeing as it was just a sub-section of the big-wig. The crew there thought up a nice 3D space shooter, but of an MMO variety. Well, not so much MASSIVE as we know it today, but perhaps just a regular Multiplayer-Online. When it initially launched however, the only way to play it was to of course, purchase it. Then on top of that you had to pay for the monthly service charge to be a part of the "Zone", Micro$oft's gaming hub thing of the time. Unfortunately it flopped, and M$ pulled the plug on it. Shortly thereafter M$ made the Zone free rather than Pay to Use.

This game I'm talking about, has been alive and kicking with a good group behind it apparently for the last 10 years or so. The game is called Allegiance. You can download it there, and sign up as well. Be fore-warned: This game has a HUGE learning curve. The training missions are buggy (at least to me all but one was completely buggy and couldn't be finished). The one mission that does work, is the last one, it's also the only training mission that will account for any custom controls you may have set up before playing. This means that for the other training missions, you are forced with the default keyboard/mouse setup to do stuff. Oh, and that last training mission? Yea, it was created by the community.

The game is pretty unique. You pilot different space craft around a network of areas, wherein upon the initial spawning in the map area, you don't know where all the wormholes (alephs) are, and you have to actually go and find them. You have a commander that will research different techs, and build stuff to take over portions of the map so that you can get more tech and everything like an RTS. The difference is that your little people that are doing the fighting? Yea, they're all real players. Granted the miners, and constructors and stuff are NPC's they have a pretty good AI, for what they're there for at least :). The movement through the environment can be best summed up by me as: You're piloting a hovercraft that has 360 degree movement capabilities. You're flying along in one direction, going 100 KM/h, you make a hard bank to the left and up 90 degrees ... you're momentum still has you going in that initial direction, so, you'll slowly make an arch around until you're finally heading true to the direction your ship is aiming. It's not one of those, turn and instantly have 100G's but you're going in that direction now. It's actually quite nice as far as I'm concerned. It behaves how I think it would really work in space.

I've not attempted to command yet, nor will I attempt to any time soon. I want to learn how to pilot things, and figure out where stuff is for easier detection and map revealing for the commander. Also learn all the lingo.... heck, when you install the game, it puts two icons for you on the desktop, one for the game login itself, and another that links to the wiki.

One bad thing I've not liked yet, is the fact that on the wiki it suggests you connect to the TeamSpeak server that's dedicated for the game (as it doesn't have built in voice-chat functions). Why is that a bad thing? You'd think it was a smart move? Well, sure, it would, if there were more than two channels. No. Wait. Make that ONE channel. See, that second channel? Yea, that one where everyone's chatting in? You're not allowed in there unless you have the password to it. Where's the password? No clue, and the people within the game that are in the TeamSpeak server don't answer. Oh well.

Oh, one last thing. Minecraft has gone into beta now, so, the price is supposed to have jumped up as well (I've not gone to look, as I've already got it so I don't need to pay again). There have been some interesting bugs that have come across, but he's ironing them out supposedly. My classic server is doing as good as before, although at times I get inundated with massive amounts of griefers... most notably when my server ends up in the top 10 for some reason on the main minecraft site. Glad I'm running a custom server software wherein I can undo the griefer's ... oh wait... it's got bugs in the custom software, wherein sometimes, even after immediately kicking someone, or them logging off, it can't find them in the database to undo their stupidity. ::sigh:: Oh well.

yet another new game!

So, I'd gotten kind of far in FlyFF, which I'm still upset that the time I spent there wasn't added to my time in xfire due to it's stupid anti-cheat crap not liking 64 bit OS's. Then... I got bored. I got to AOE Billposter level, and ... it just went boring for me again.

I then watched a review thing on Escapist Magazine, and it had mentioned something about how innovative and simple and catching so to say, that Dungeon Fighter Online was. So, I looked it up. Lo and behold, it is simple. and catching . and ... not so innovative ... but still quite fun and easy to play.

Basically you start off and choose one of currently 5 classes, even though two are just a male and female variation on the same class... differences between the two are ... minor, but some things make people prefer one over the other. I currently play the female version of this class.... that of a gunner ... at level 18 though, you can choose from many different variations (between 2 and 4 depending on class you chose at the start) ... then later on you get to 'awaken' and get some really cool skills, but only one awakening per advanced class. My advanced class is mechanic, it's quite fun, as I put out little bots that either shoot stuff, or are just walking time bombs LOL.

Well... it is fun, it's free... and ... it's got a 'limiter' on it so that you can't just get absorbed and play all day... it basically forces you to get off the game ...unless you thrive in PvP land ... which to me, I say it sucks royally in any MMO, especially when it's a pier to pier connections for PvP arenas.... All it takes is one person in the room to have a shoddy connection, shoddy computer, or a lag-switch to mess everyone else up.

So, what else has been going on? Well, just yesterday, we went to Disney. It was a nice family gathering. My wife had gotten holiday tickets, that of being able to get up to 6 more than her normal 5 from her main gate pass. So, we invited my parents, and my siblings with their children and spouses. Much fun was spent going through Magic Kingdom, and then Epcot for some stuff. We unfortunately didn't get to do everything we wanted, all due to the simple fact that the place was flippin packed, and the kids were getting tired. most of us then went to dinner out at Sonny's and that ended the night pretty well.

Unfortunately for me though, all the walking (while was good for me to loose a small bit of weight, and was able to do all day without riding an ECV or my cane) ... caused my back to sieze up by the time I got home. So, today I've been spending most of my day in my chair... immobile for the most part. Luckily I was able to get up to have a nice hot shower ... which loosened my back enough to be able to get dinner for the kids ... then promptly was dispatched to my chair to rest up some more.

And with this... I'll end off... expecting on the 15th a couple presents I ordered online for the kids (and myself to play with them :) ). ... also, wishing I could get one of these lovelies ...

just wow?

So, lately I've gotten a few job interviews all over the place. One that I wrote about earlier, that of the tech center job in Maitland ... Well, they called me back as they had some more openings. Unfortunately I won't know until possibly Tuesday, if I got chosen or not.

I've also finished the course on insurance sales, so am now able to take the state exam for my license ...

On other fronts, my Minecraft classic server seems to be doing well enough... almost 1k unique visitors so far ... of course, there's also about 100 or so that were banned for being jerks to other people's builds.

I have to stare sometimes at my playtime on XFire ... that of NO GAMES PLAYED IN THE LAST 7 DAYS ... yes, that's right... nothing logged. But, how is that? Well, two things, one ... I've been busy with trying to solid in a job; second, I've decided to give FlyFF another shot. Unfortunately, with the nProtect anti-cheat stuff they have going on, and the fact that I'm running a 64 bit OS, it locks up some stuff... notably of course, XFire ... also, my keyboard software for it's LCD display and macro keys. So, while I have been playing stuff, it's just not clocked.

The last time I played FlyFF was when it was in version 7 ... I'd slowly started going away from it back then and had started with Gpotato's "Space Cowboy" ... when they lost their rights to run Space Cowboy, I went back to FlyFF for a short time, and it was just starting into version 9 ... but I quickly went away and found other games ... Anywhos, FlyFF is now in version 15, about to be version 16. They've added a lot of things, changed a lot of things, brought some stuff back from version 7 (only largely changed), added a TON of events, oh, and subsiquently, gotten a LOT of RMT people ... in case you don't know what that is ... it's Real Money Trading, and technically is against the terms of service agreements. Many of these end up being scams so that they can steal your account, but in the end, it's still against the rules.

Oh well, time to do some stuff around the house now...

JOY!

Ok, so, here's the dealio as to what's been going on lately.

I FINALLY got to have my kidneys checked out ... took 'em long enough. Turns out, I have MULTIPLE kidney stones, in both kidneys ... FUN. Now I'm waiting on an appointment to see a urologist about getting them broken up.

I've passed my pre-study course for the insurance professional bit, which is cool. Now I just have to get a test date, and pass the state exam.

Of course, just when I finished the pre-study final test, I get a phone call. At first I thought it'd be like a "congratulations" thing, but it ended up being a call about a job interview. See, that job I wrote about for the tech support thing that was to be for $13/hr? ... yea the one that filled all the positions the day before my interview. That's who it was, they were doing another hiring session and wanted to get me in on the first wave out of respect of where I was before LOL. So, here I am, with the potential to have two jobs ... one would be making me major money if I can get it down immediately ... while the other will be at least some money at the start, but not really go anywhere more than likely. I'm going to take the insta-money job if they accept me ... and see if the major money job will either take me part-time, or wait a couple months for me to get some money at least for Christmas (seeing as if I were to start today with the insurance thing, their next training isn't until the end of the month anyway ... and then I'd only be able to start selling next month, and the first paycheck (IF I sell anything) wouldn't be until the month after that ... so yea ... new years LOL) ...

In the mean time, I'd gotten rather hooked on doing the Minecraft thing ... so much so that I was building on one server so much and having such great fun, I'd applied to get a 'rank up' on their forums ... lo and behold I was belittled and told to go away. So I did ... and I made my own server! ... the last two days it got so busy that I ended up having to make forums up for it, and I'd banned almost 120 people in 2 days! ... crazy ... Luckily I've got a guy that has been around from the start that has helped immensely and is basically my right-hand person right now. Either way, it's stressful! Oh well, they're having fun.

another break?

So, last time I posted it was about how to make money in retail World of Warcraft ... and I did get absorbed like last time. None too pleased with myself, but once I hit the cap I could get to (60, as my US acct side only has vanilla WoW), I got bored...In three weeks, I had leveled up 4 characters (2 druid (on diff servers), mage, and shaman) to level 60, and each had well over 7k on them ... enough to get CW flying and stuff if I were able to get uncapped and continue. Then, I just ... quit... I still had all of October to play, but I didn't...heck, my time card lasts until the end of October and I just won't play.

Anywho, what else could have taken up my time? Well, I finally had a job opportunity come my way. Went in for an 'interview' and everything. Now, why the quotes? Because it was a mass interview, with 7 other people. The company is Banker's Life an Casualty. They wanted any number of people to become Insurance Professionals ... AKA: Insurance Salesperson. The offer is great, except for one small thing... that of needing to be certified in the state of Florida to sell insurance. To get certified, you have to take a 40 hour course on the insurance business, then pass the state exam, and also get fingerprinted (as you'll be going into people's houses). I've started the whole study for the exam, and things were going great for a while...

Then I got distracted again ... I got sick as shit...and studying has been hard at best. Granted, some of the material is easy to remember, but some is like ... wow! Also... well, in my daily browsing of comic sites, and game-news sites, I found a new game...

MINECRAFT!

Wha? Well, it's a simple game. Think of good old fashioned DOOM graphics ... highly pixelated. Now, imagine LEGOs the size of people almost. Now imagine a large open world to build whatever you like. Got it in your head? Well, that's Minecraft, to a point. See, there's a few different 'modes' of gameplay. One being just creative, wherein you've got access to most blocks, and have unlimited supply to craft whatever you like. Another being that of the single-player game, of Survival. In Survival you start with NOTHING but your fists. You have to go chop down trees (yes with your bare hands LOL) to get wood, so you can make a workbench, to then turn even more wood into your first crude tool of a pickaxe, axe, sword, or scythe. More on this later.

In creative / online mode, there's a bunch of servers you can go to and build things. I happen to have taken an affinity to Vapid Flats. Inside which, I helped design some aspects of a game arena of sorts called Sleef. What's Spleef? well, I've not played myself, but apparently you and another person try to walk around and destroy bricks on the ground, and mostly attempting to break the ground underfoot of the other player so they then fall into the lava below.

I also decided to try my hand at other buildings, and on one of the guest flats, I had built a nice size tree house. Of course, I didn't get to take a picture of it before the guest flat was wiped, but meh. I had a bedroom with a nice bed in it, a pool table, and everything. Then I took my building stuff to a normal builder's flat (flat14)(as I was given builder rank while helping with spleef). In there, I found a nice empty spot, and built:

Yes, that's a mock Scrooge McDuck bank vault from back in the days ... it's got a glass roof I know .. but that's to let the light in and full-light the pixel art I did on the inside 2 days later ...(Yea you can see black and red mage in the background that was made by someone else, but still)

There ya go... scrooge in all the pixelated glory ^^. Behind the counter I'm standing at there, is a hole, that leads to a basement I dug out, it's quite large. Wherein I've built and destroyed a few things, but left a couple up. One of which is a waterfall of sorts, and a lava fountain. Neither of them are flowing, as I don't have the rights to create flowing water/lava (yet).

So, off on the left is the lava fountain, and waterfall. In the center is my water elevator of sorts to get back up to the vault. And off to the right of that, is a giant head. Why? ... well, there's someone on the server that wants to build a giant person, being drug down by some demons of sorts, into hell ... or at least a large pit of lava. I had made a hand so he could see what I thought the hands should look like that were digging into the ground, but he decided on something different. I just built the head to see if he liked it, and if he wanted to take it for the project, which will be multiple builders helping on it due to it's large size. I also created a small demon of sorts...

So yea, not sure if that's what he was goin for in the demon thing, but I thought it looked nice either way for a simple little thing.

On to the survival mode. Granted, you can make a survival mode type of thing within the online construction mode, but it's not the same. With the alpha version that you can purchase and download, you can connect to other servers as long as you know their ip/host name, or you can go and do it solo offline. As I stated earlier, you start off with nothing. You begin by breaking down trees (that don't fall down when you take their base LOL) then you take that raw wood and create refined wood, then you can create a work bench, and then make sticks and make up other tools as mentioned before. The goal of this? .. survive! There's a time passing bit in this mode normally (unless you're connected online with a server that has it set to be permanently night/day of course), at night, baddies will come out depending on the difficulty. Peaceful difficulty means no monsters, easy means a few come, normal is of course normal, and hard means a ton come.

Your wooden sword will only defend against so much and do so little damage. You'll need better gear! Well, how do you get better gear? By MINING! ... with that wooden pickax, you can now take out stone, and of course, then make stone gear, including a furnace to refine some ore that you may get down below, or cook meat with, or make glass out of sand... you can also make a stone pickax, which can take and mine iron ore that you can melt in the furnace to get iron bars, to then make your first metallic weaponry. This entire time you could have been killing cows that wander around, gotten enough hides from them, and made a set of armor as well. Gradually as you delve deeper and deeper into the world (or higher and higher if there's mountains around you and you wanted to explore upwards), you may run into dungeons where monsters spawn at, or vast caverns with lava, or water spouts, or both.

You can make all sorts of fun stuff too. How about a boat? A mine cart? any number of things you can do, really, it's all up to your willingness to dig deeper/wider. In the alpha version of the game, the world can be HUGE, almost endless...something like 3x the surface of the world I think the developer said? So, reaching out and finding things is super easy. You could limit yourself to a small area, or you could branch out and try to find new lands to explore and delve into. So far I've just stuck with the area I have spawned in, and dug down to as far as I could. I've not gone and made enough mine tracks and mine carts to then start making a large 'train' to take me to a different place to start digging there, but I may eventually. Granted, there's not much mineral veins throughout, so finding enough materials to make, say ... diamond armor, and equipment ... at least not in the area I limit myself to.

That's it for now, I'll get a map editor and fool around with the possibilities of diamond gear, and maybe even building a roller-coaster of sorts to have fun with. I think the world I'm in currently has a HUGE mountain beside me I could find a way to climb up on top of, and make a nice long track. maybe I'll even make a glass roof and have a lava-lighting system so it's more evenly lit rather than the current torches I've got going on. If I'm going to cheat, I might as well do it with style LOL. Anywhos.. back to studying for me for now though, really wanna get this certification and get this job...the opportunity to make buku bucks is high ... I just have to stick to my guns and keep working at it.

Gold problems in World of Warcraft? Free advice!!

Ok, so, I said yesterday at the end of my rant about FFXIV beta ... that I'd write this guide of sorts.

This guide can be used by both the alliance and horde sides.

First: a little insight as to my past. I have played World of Warcraft numerous times. The first time I played was on the US servers when a friend wanted me to join him and some fellow co-workers to have fun after work. When I first got in, it looked good, I was impressed with the graphics compared to the graphics of FFXI that I was playing at the time. I got up to about level 35 or so (solo mind you), and tried my hand at a dungeon. I unfortunately was a warrior, and as I didn't have any money making skills, and my friend that got me in refused to help me whatsoever, I didn't have skills that I should have had. I was built around doing DPS, not tanking. But this group that got me in expected me to be a tank. I didn't have taunt ... yes you read right, I didn't even purchase taunt. Mainly because I had no money, and was budgeting myself so that I did have a little cash. I got bitched at and told I was a noob and was told I should just quit now. So I did.

Then some friends in the UK told me that they'd pay for me to play on the EU servers with them, as long as I got my own copy of the game. This proved difficult as I live in the US and basically the only way for me to get the EU copy was to find it online. GamersLoot.com proved to be helpful in that. Shameless plug yes, because their stuff is discounted from retail for the most part. These friends actually helped me out, they got me in their guild, and helped me level up. At first I started a hunter, and that went well, until I ended up in stormwind and saw that the server population for hunters was about 75% LOL ... I had to take a break for a while, but that went well, I wasn't hurting for cash, but I wasn't rich either.

Later on, when I had more time on my hands (when I lost my last job) I got to play on the EU servers again, this time with Wrath of the Lich King. I started up a new character, a Druid. I found some specific hints on the net randomly that helped me start my gold-making prowess. Not enough information out there to make me swim in gold with what I found, but enough to get the gears turning in my head about how to make money. By the time I got to level 70, I had enough money to purchase the cold weather flying ability, and still had money left over.

I stopped playing EU WoW when my friend lost his job and couldn't pay for me to play anymore. Just recently however I decided to get a game card for the US servers. I started just 4 days ago, and am currently level 27, with over 400 gold on me, and over 800 made thus far.

So, how did I do it?

Easy: The auction house!

Firstly, you'll need at the very least, two addons. Gatherer and Auctioneer. Well, Gatherer isn't really NEEDED per say, but it's nice to have, especially if you have co-guildies that use it as well, so you can get the nodes that they gather put on your map.

From the start of your character, if you're new that is, do the starting quests. Equip whatever you can get from the quests that is better than what you pick up off the mobs. If you can't equip whatever the reward is, pick whichever will sell to the NPC for the most, or on the AH for the most (auctioneer helps with this, but in the beginning you probably won't be selling this stuff on the AH). This is the very basic basis of the tactic I use... Use those quest rewards! If it's not usable, sell to a vendor the best thing there. Once you leave that initial starting area and go to the mini-town between where you started and the main town... skip it. Go straight to town, do not pass go, do not collect 200g .. well, not yet at least.

Once in town, open up the auction house, and scan it with auctioneer. This may take some time of course, as there's just so much that may be listed. Once it's scanned the first time, your auctioneer is set for some fun down the line. Next, you have to decide your gathering skills. Yes, skills... two of them. Look in the Auction House, and look under the supplies for the different gathering skills. Look specifically at stuff from skinning, herbalism, and mining.

What are you looking for? Full stacks of materials. Look at the buyout price for the full stacks of things. What one is giving the most bang for a stack? How many stacks of that are available? Do some other research on some sites about what skill level is needed to gather that item. You may be surprised to find that some of the expensive things may be low level gathers. I would suggest picking up one map-able gather ability, with skinning to back it up. Why? Well, with skinning you can hunt beasts and then skin them for their materials, while having your tracking watch for the other gather skill you chose. I myself am on Lothar on the US servers, on the Horde side, and right now, stacks of Stranglekelp were going for roughly 40 gold a stack of 20, and only 3 partial stacks were on the AH. Granted, I'm also partial to doing herbalism as my other gather skill, purely for the fact that the herbs are out in the open with the mobs I'm killing for skinning, so I don't have to visit the edges of the maps or caves where the mining nodes are, and not the beasts. I see the use in mining though, as you can get gems as well, which are for jewelers, so you can hit up two markets easily, but those gems are few and far between, while herbalism also caters to two markets, it's the same stuff so you don't have to hope for that gem when you're mining so you can get money from the jewelers.

Find that niche in the market you could set yourself up at, and get those gathering skills. Now go back out to that mid-town area, and continue your questlines. Whenever you get through them and end up back in town again, scan that AH with auctioneer. The more times you scan, the more reliable the results can be, and you may have auctioneer catch something that you normally wouldn't look at for making money. Grind up those gathering skills, and sell everything you get on the AH. Auctioneer has a nifty tab at the bottom called "appraiser", you can set those gathered things to be batch-posting, so you can post up all those gathers real easy. The other nice thing with auctioneer is that it will automatically undercut the market by a small fraction (10% default) so yours gets sold quicker. Granted, if there's none on the market, it tries to put it up for the average that it's seen.

There's other tabs in auctioneer that can be useful. I don't remember what it's labeled as, because I've only been on the server 4 days I haven't gotten a lot of info for some items, so I haven't looked beyond the appraiser and browse tabs LOL. Anyway, there's a tab where you can do a search of the auctioneer database (useful to go here right after scanning the AH) for items that are seriously under-priced. On the EU servers, I managed to spot a book that was being reported as being 500% under it's normal price. I looked at it, and it was only 1 gold buyout. The normal selling price was over 500 gold. I quickly purchased it, ran to the mail, picked it up, and put it back on the AH. Within 5 minutes, it sold, and I just made almost 500 gold. This kind of thing won't happen often, granted... but that's still awesome to find sometimes.

One more thing to note: other skills. There are other skills you can pick up that aren't limited. These are cooking, first aid, and fishing. Many new players fail to realize that you aren't just limited to two skills, and only find out about it much later. Most of the time this comes in the field of first aid. They are then forced to grind through the stuff they've already passed by in levels. They either will try to save money by going back and slaughtering the monsters that drop the low level cloth, or they purchase it off the AH ... This is another small niche. Linen cloth is dropped off some low level humanoids, so you could find yourself a nice spawn place that has lots of humanoids and grind on them to your bag-space's content. Granted, you'll also get a lot of grey items, but hey, it's easy money too. There is one spot that has been in the game since the beginning, that is special. This special spot is in Westfall. Along the western side, up on the cliff, is a windmill, with a small shack next to it. This area has an endless spawn of Defias people, and they drop linen. What does 'endless spawn' mean? Once you kill all the people in this area, another couple will pop, sometimes 3 (when the shed repops). There is NO downtime. Even if you go and gather all the mobs into one big group, then AOE kill them all at the exact same moment, a single group of 2-3 will spawn instantly. Grind that linen cloth up, then sell it on the AH. Granted, it won't sell for much, but if you spend 30 minutes slaughtering that spawn, your inventory will be full of stuff to vendor-trash sell, and cloth sell.

There you go ... simple? yes. Easy? yes. Not a lot of info I'm sure, but, even if you're a high end player, you can figure out, the best way to make money? Off other people's pocket books.

Oh yes... Vanity pets ... or just pets in general, go for a ton on the AH, no mater where you go / come from. Find a pet that's not there, or is selling for a lot, and find out how to get it. Then go get it LOL. There is one pet that I know of that is only available to the alliance to purchase, and that is of the white kitten carrier. In stormwind, there is a small boy that spawns, and walks around town (path below in the pictures, starts at the top left, goes counter-clockwise), then despawns where he spawned at. He spawns with a SINGLE white kitten carrier, for under 1 silver if I remember right. He spawns 4 hours after he despawns. If you catch him at the start, you can grab that cat before anyone else. To get a feel, or just want to see if he's out, walk his path in reverse whenever you hit town. On the EU servers, that cat was going for 40 to 50 gold. On Lothar right now, on the horde side, that same cat is going for over 100 gold... but of course, that takes two accounts to get it transfered over to the horde side, but still. Another big vanity pet would be that of the tiny whelplings ... they've got a shoddy droprate (0.08% at best) but they go for over 1k gold each if you can manage one.

Liked the info? consider possibly donating to me on the right over there... I still have to purchase Burning Crusades and Wrath of the Lich King for the US servers, seeing as Blizzard can't transfer the expansions I had on the EU servers to the US. ... or drop me a line on US Lothar @ Kinam saying you liked it, or that it helped.

Proof? From the EU servers:
My gold acquired ... most notably look at average gold/day ^^

Lil-timmy's path:

I'm done..

Yea, you heard me..

I'm done.

With FFXIV beta that is .... since my last writing, I've played 0, yes ZERO time on it. This is not because of getting absorbed into SC2 or anything else. This is simply because theres stuff that's still broken that they refuse to comment on, or fix.

Reasons NOT to play FFXIV:

1) You can't grind a single class up to wherever you want without interruption

Reason) Surplus. This stupidity has not been explained why it's there, or what it does. All the tester's have found out is that it's a method of them to slow down your leveling so you don't end up getting max level on day 1 of launch

2) Only 2 mage classes at start

Reason) As you may or may not know, as you level your physical level, you get stat points to distribute on your character. 3 of the different stats are made for melee classes (of which there's like 5), and the other 3 are for mages. Why is this bad? Because of surplus, the only way to smoothly level, is to then switch classes and level a different one for a while when you start getting surplus on one. With being able to hit surplus so easily (you can start getting it from new character / class within an hour), you have to swap jobs very often. With only two mage classes, you really shouldn't swap over to a melee class, as you have no stats for it. So you're semi-restricted to go to a gathering or crafting class.

3) Menu driven EVERYTHING.

Reason) Quests tell you 'go touch this'...first instinct in a mouse + keyboard game? Click! ... nope, you've gotta open the menu, then choose to interact with whatever it is you're supposed to do something with. Heck, there's an elevator in the starting town that we're able to start in in beta, you have to interact with it to use it. Doing so causes you to go into a cutscene of sorts to ride it up/down...the animation of which may take longer to load and play than it would be to just walk down the stairs nearby. The other reason this is bad? Because the menu is LAGGY AS ALL HELL. Hit menu, wait 2 FULL seconds for it to come up, choose something, wait another 2-5 seconds for the next screen to come up ... yea that gets annoying. No, this is not a graphical problem, this is the fact that the menus are displayed from the server. So when you hit an option, it sends a request to the server "hey I am opening this thing here, what do I see?" ... this goes over the net however slow it may be on the servers, then the server's gotta send back everything you see.

4) Solo Play Required

Reason) They say they want to push party-play, but it's just not conducive to the experience gain method they have currently. As you go around, the only way to gain skill points for combat classes, is to do an action while engaged in combat. This means, that for you to gain a level, you have to be in a fight. You get experience based on the difficulty of the fight granted, but that's another issue. So for those of us that enjoy playing mages, we don't get experience for healing that tank after the fight is over, even if it took us 5 casts to get them full.

5) Mages get more shafts than an archery contest target.

Reason) MP ... simply put ... MP ... that's the main thing. See, while out fighting, you have two modes (I've written about them before) ... active and passive. While in active mode you can cast spells and everything, but your HP doesn't regen. When you go into passive mode, your HP will start to naturally regen. This means that your 'resting' thing is actually just passive mode. While in passive mode though, your MP doesn't regen at all. The only way to regen your MP is to touch a crystal / node. So mages are pretty much bound around these crystals and nodes when they're out grinding. The fact that there's only 2 mage classes was described about above. The fact that even if damage is healed on someone, if our heal lands after the fight is over, we get no exp for it, or if we're being friendly and decide to heal someone while passing by ... yea we get nothing for helping them out. So, power-leveling is out of the question for sure, as mages get nothing for it. Oh, yea, both the mage classes? yea they're both considered healers. At level 5 you get a healing spell on both classes. Nuke class? yea both are nukers, but with the lack of MP regen, you're only spending your MP on heals, not nukes.

6) Active / Passive mode stupidities

Reason) Short but sweet, HP but not MP regen while in passive. TP that you gain in a fight will drain at a rate of 300 every 5 seconds while not actively engaged in a fight. Granted, TP is fairly easy to get, and you have a max of 3000, if you're at max, this means if you don't pick another fight within a minute, you're starting with 0 TP. Why so much TP? some moves are only 250 TP, while big hitters are 1k ... so meh.

7) Crafting stupidities

Reason) I hate crafting as it is, unless it's easy. I'd much rather be able to purchase a recipe from a shop and then just be able to pull up my 'menu' of recipes that I know, and be able to make something from that. As it stands now, that whole menu driven thing? Yea, it makes crafting near stupid seeing as each ingredient box acts just like the menu in when you click on that box, it query's the server for what you have in your inventory. Firstly, you have to know the recipe for something to make it. Recipes can consist of up to 8 items, much like FFXI. But this time you don't choose what crystal to craft with, this time you put in the ingredients, then hit craft, and if it's something that's in the system, it'll pull up a menu with what those ingredients could make. Yes, you read that right, COULD make. See, the same recipe of ingredients could actually be for 3 or 4 different things.

8) Inventory un-intuitiveness.

Reason) You've got your inventory right? equipped items still count towards your backpack limit, just like XI granted, but with other issues which I'll list next, it sucks. See, there is no sort method at all. Your inventory is populated in the order that things came into your inventory. So, you go out, start questing / killing, get drops, get into surplus, then go to town to sell (again, menu stupidity), and pick up a new main weapon/item to start leveling another class. That item you just purchased is now at the bottom of your list, with whatever you didn't sell in between your other equipment and the new stuff you purchased. Granted, I'm not sure if they've added a sort option in, I'm not going to go try and see, and with the way they've pushed patches out, I highly doubt it. While you're out killing things, you can barely see when something gets dropped, and that's not the only problem ... see when something drops, even while solo, it goes to a loot pool. Gradually it'll get to your inventory, but you won't know it until it may be too late... you may get some great item dropped off a mob, not notice it, then see a message saying "not enough room, item UberSexy lost" later on down the line. Oh, that loot pool? yea it's not a true pool. While partied up if you kill something, and it drops something, it's assigned to someone's pool, it may not be your pool, and when you go to look at the pool, you only see yours, not everyone that's in the party.

9) No safe

Yea, you read right, there's no house for you to go store your stuff you're not using right now. So if you're like me and like mages, you're then left with having to pick up a gathering class (again, menu driven to harvest nodes LOL). So, you gather all this nifty stuff! What are you going to do with it? Craft it up? Sell it on the AH ... no, you can't do that, they're not doing AH in this at all...more on this later. Well, you best craft with it, or sell it to a vendor, or find someone in your linkshell that is using that item and give/sell it to them. Oh, you could stick it on your rented retainer person to sell it, or hold it, but that's another issue LOL. With 80 slots in your backpack (at least in beta ... who's to know, that may be the max whenever you do quests to increase it's size) you run out of room real quickly.

10) Rented retainer

What's a retainer you may ask?? Well, in beta, they're free to 'rent', but in live I'm sure it'll cost some money. These retainers can hold a limited amount of items, and you can set up only 8 of those items to sell stuff for you. There's market wards (which is menu driven to get into from a specific part of the city) where your retainer can be summoned to give items to, and set up a bazaar. This is pretty much a money sink for you to just constantly have a money drain. If your stuff doesn't sell, you still have to pay for the retainer I'm sure.

11) No Auction House

Yea, no auction house, they're not interested in it. They said they'll possibly make an option to search the market ward's retainers that have bazaars, but that's not going to be very good. See, every item may have different materials that were used to make it ... so you may have a desire to get a woolen robe for it's stats, but there's going to be like 10+ versions of that same named robe, just because one may be a different color due to the materials that were used.

12) No inspect

Yea, that's another thing we can thank the JP's for. They considered 'inspecting' to be rude in their culture. So, rather than just take out the information sent to the player saying 'so and so is inspecting you', they took out the option to inspect all together. There were some people that were walking around in an awesome looking robe, but we had no idea what the name of it was, or where to get it ... and go figure, they were JP players, so they didn't understand our questions as to where to get one of our own.

13) Alpha goodness

What?!?!? See, the beta forums had in them the alpha version threads for issues. What was in them? many things that are still in being complained about. Of course, the menu-for-everything is top of the list for many. MP regen is another. Loot pool is yet another. AH is another. Crafting is another. Yea, pretty much everything I'm complaining about in this post? yea, it was bitched about in alpha. Other things: Mouse... it's software, so it's laggy as all heck. Keyboard? you can't configure it at all, so you're stuck with what they give you for layout. Got a controller? great, you can configure every button on that no problem.

With all these things, it's clear to see, that even though the game will be released by many months on the PC before they release it for the PS3, it is being made for the consoles, or they want you to go out and get a controller regardless. There are other issues that I have with the game, but I'm tired of complaining. So, on to good things?

Bah, I've not got any good things going on it seems... I mean, I just sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of something good that I could write about for a bit to counteract the rant above...Ok, perhaps just one thing: My gold-making skills in WoW have not decreased at all. I think I might make a blog post and tag it for people to see easily and make use of it. Yea, I think I'll do that tomorrow?

oooooooo

I've been sucked in ...

Starcraft 2 ... granted the single player campaign was pretty nifty, the multiplayer is where I'm at currently ... no, not ladder matches, or skirmishes ... hell no ... I can't play RTS's for crap, especially against people that have absorbed their life into playing them and knowing "if I move this group of people at this frame in their animation, then order them to do this action on this frame of their move command, they can fire another round of bullets faster than if I let them do their own animations". I'm sorry, not my deal. I prefer the lovely maps people make for custom reasons.

Things like RPGs, multiplayer scenarios if you will. I mean, that's all the single player is, an RPG where you're given a task to complete, not always will it be "go blow up every other living being on the map". A couple that I find myself popping into are the tower defenses, just because I've always loved them. Also I've been seeing some promising 'mmo' type of games where you save your character data while you're playing the map. Granted the character is saved on your computer, it doesn't matter much...It's still fun to pop in with random other people and see that they've worked hard on their characters, or are fresh into it ... now, for the work hard, that could mean playing solo with cheats, or straight up hacking the character file ... I've not tried either, as it just seems silly. Half the fun is found in actually learning the map and leveling up off it.

There's one RPG that's out there that's been in development still for some time. Recently they opened up a new area for you to go into on the map (it was there before, just no access or monsters in it). In that area the monsters are crazy hard, and the boss in there is bugged (it only has 1hp LOL)... oh, not to mention the dev put in a new armour that isn't described what all it does, but at the very least it doubles the shield power you've got ... that and the new god-weapon ... thing has a range more than that of the character's line of sight (fog of war dissipation). So if you've got someone else running around ahead of you, you can shoot at the stuff that's fighting them, without any problems.

So, yea, I also go through my normal array of webcomics daily...and on one in particular, they mentioned something about Portal 2 ... I knew it was coming, but haven't been watching for anything. After seeing that little blurb about it, I went on Steam and looked up, and subsequently downloaded all the videos they've got for it. I can't believe some of the things they're adding in...but it will definitely be rich on the storyline...much more so than it was before. I mean, the original Portal seemed to be mostly a training grounds to teach you how to do certain things ... granted the second version will have some of the same teaching parts, but one video in particular shows a series of jumps and portaling that will more than likely take numerous attempts and subsequent deaths before getting it right.

In light of this, I went in and tried to go through the first Portal ... it seems they've added a new achievement in it, wherein there's radios strewn about... no, not just a few... like 26 of them?!? Sure, finding them is one thing, but then, you've gotta carry it around, through whatever area you're in, to try to get it to 'tune in' to some frequency thing. I've found quite a few of them, while some are easy to get, others are just plain a pain in the arse. The main problem with some of them, is that the radio is in an area that's either just out of reach, or you've got to figure out where the true point is for the radio to pick up the signal ... a couple of them exist way up high, so you've got to portal up to then hold the radio out the other portal to have it get the signal. I'll be going back into it later to try to find the ones I've not gotten yet. Luckily the ones you've taken to the proper spots have a green light on them rather than a red one as is the default. I'm hoping that one of them isn't the one in the fly-through path after you beat GLaDOS, 'cause you've gotta cheat to get to that one. Oh, and this time through the levels, I noted that they changed some of the areas. They added some new cubby holes and things like that just for extra flavour ... and possibly for where the radio needs to be brought, or is found. This, and I need to find out why my mouse isn't showing up in game, it's kind of hard to shoot portals without the reticle...or do menu stuff without the mouse either.

::sighs::

So yea, lots of things going on.

First of all, I've still not gotten a job yet, and am actively still seeking. I applied online to a place called "the Internet Company" ... it seemed promising at first, as it was a simple little job of inputting data that people were calling in about. Unfortunately it was a work-from-home thing ... well, only unfortunate as I don't have a quiet area to take the calls without interruption. Granted on Monday the two eldest children go to school again, I'd still have the littlest one to keep watch over and everything. Not to mention the two puppies that tend to stay inside, and like to wrestle and make lots of noise.

So, I've also been back in contact with an old high-school buddy (who was also my best man in my wedding). Apparently he's getting ready to be on a civilian contract to assist the army to change their financial systems ... over in Afganistan. He used to be in the Army himself, so he already knows what they're working with. They were looking for, not only the financial experts, but also IT people ... like myself. Seeing as I worked on the DOD networks already while I was in the Marines, I figured I might as well try my hand at possibly getting a job and getting on the same team as he was going to be. I called the girl that was the secretary for the recruiter that he got hired from, and she send me an e-mail with the info of what they were doing and looking for...and requested for me to send my resume along with. She had told me that the recruiter would get back with me that day, but it didn't happen ... I figured maybe the recruiter was busy or had a lot of applications to go through. I sent that in on Tuesday ... so, I'll probably e-mail her back today to find out what the deal is, perhaps the recruiter is looking for someone that really is interested in doing the job.

This same friend of mine also wanted to stay in contact just in case I didn't get the job. He figured the best way would be to get me into the same games that he's got... Of which, he plays World of Warcraft, and Starcraft 2. Seeing as I don't have the money to afford to get either one, and especially don't have the money to pay for the monthlies on WoW, he thought he'd be generous and get me Starcraft 2, on the stipulation that I re-activate my battle.net account that has my US WoW applied to it already. He said that if the job pays him well and everything goes great, he may pay for the addons for my WoW account and pay for the monthlies so that I could play on the same server as him.

This takes me to Starcraft 2. I played the original SC and had fun at it, but my main problem is that I'm not much of an RTS fanatic, especially online combat vs other players. I'm more of a scenario / use-map-settings type of player. Mainly because triggers are much easier to play against compared to a living being that knows how to micro-manage their troops to the best of their abilities. I mean, what I've seen some people able to do with 5 troops, takes me 15+ troops to do the same damage with the same loss percentage. As such, I usually play just the single player version and break the scenarios by overpowering completely. There were a few maps that had some time-constraint where I had to survive to the end, that I just went crazy on and annihilated the enemies on the map and their bases, the game would then tell me "the (race) are no match for us and have retreated", and then end the map in victory. Of course, some were funny that would end this way, and the ending scene was of the enemies still assaulting. The ending left me a little confused in that I didn't know how they'd be able to do one of the other race's storyline whenever they released it (not going to say which, just in case you're like me in the fact that you haven't gotten the game yet due to whatever reason).

Final Fantay XIV's NDA (non-disclosure agreement) has been lifted. So technically I'm allowed to talk about what's in game and release information ... Granted I've already done some of that LOL. As it stands, right now, even if I had the money to get the game, and money to pay to play it ... the only reason I'd have to get it would be the nice crew of people that I've met during beta. The constant crashes that have yet to be fixed, and the new crashes that have been popping up lately have made this beta version impossible to do much of anything. A patch went out just the other day that fixed the major exp gain that was caused by the opening of beta-3 phase. The exp gain in guildleves (the quest system in XIV) used to be major, but now it's back to normal. The system is till broken and highly favours the melee classes for exp/rank gain in a fight. Casters still get the shaft on multiple fronts. All classes don't get rank exp on every move, but with melee sitting there constantly attacking, they get more chances to get rank exp. All classes also only get exp while there is a fight going on. This means that casters, with their casting times, and the borked agro right now directed towards casters, don't get much chance for exp in a fight. Healing the melee after a fight before the next one also doesn't grant exp seeing as there's no fight going on. As casters also don't have passive-mode regeneration of MP, pretty much all casters are forced to take up the thaumaturge line at the very least to 16 for stigean spikes, which give MP to the caster for damage they take from melee strikes from mobs. Granted, with the current agro crap that's going on, casters definately will get hit in a fight if they decide to cast anything. Right now, the agro / threat system is messed up to the point of, when a caster STARTS casting a spell, not when they finish whatever spell, they get massive agro.

The party system is counter-intuitive to a point... you don't want a party more than 2 or 3 people, as fights will finish too fast for anyone to get good experience. Partying is only productive for doing guildleves. Partying for regular grinding? Not so much ... it's much better to just grind on your own. The surplus system that's in place is also completely stupid. If I want to grind my thaumaturge up to cap first, without touching any other classes, I should be allowed to. I shouldn't be forced to take up another class once I get my first class to 13.25 ... I mean, if the max level is going to be 90, I should be able to maybe grind to 50 before the need to switch classes comes up. Granted, there is the ability to mix class abilities, so it is good to level multiple classes, but I shouldn't be forced to, especially before 20. With only 2 caster classes, the current system basically forces casters to take up both caster classes, and with how fast it is to get any class to 13, the first class would still be in surplus...so the casters then have to take up craft skills and/or gathering skills. I myself was in surplus by a long shot, I took two days off and finally got out of surplus on my thaumaturge. This means that while it only took me two days to hit 19, and have a tonnage of surplus, it took two more days of not playing to get rid of the surplus. With the latest patch, the guildleve system is fucked up as well now, in the fact that now while going out there, you'll crash, and with the fact that if you crash / log out / whatever to loose connection, that guildleve will fail and you can't do anything about it for 2 days server side.

That's the other major problem with guildleves ... from the time that the server pops up, the guildleve system will start... the timer that is. You have 48 hours to complete the (up to) 8 guildleves before you can turn in what you've completed/failed and get more. This isn't 48 hours from the time you pick it up, or finish the quests, but on the server when you're able to turn them in. So, those two days I took off, I had some quests already checked out. I tried to get them done but with the new crash system that came up I wasn't able to test to see if I could have completed those quests and turned them in as I had gotten them before the turnover time. So yea, beta is now completely unplayable by many, and the server population has completely died down compared to what it was before this latest patch.

As for my relationship frontage, yea, still looking for someone. Perhaps if I get the job in Afganistan I'll meet someone while I'm there :).

why,

First:

Windows 7 update ... WHY THE HELL did you put in some 'sticky keys' thing by default to be on. You hear the keys being typed out which is annoying as all hell for one... and second, if you're a fast typer like myself, it would prevent you from typing double letters at all unless you either hit another random key (shift for example) or waited a (default) 1 full second before hitting that same key again.

Second:

Why is it that when you set up an auto-payment thing, that when it doesn't go through properly it takes 3 months for them to inform you that "oh hay, you owe us money for the last couple months that we couldn't get money from your set up account ... and you owe us for this month too" ... I now have a bill of almost $400 due because they didn't turn off the service in question after the first month of not getting a payment.

Third:

Why, when you go apply somewhere, if you don't get any reply back, even automated, does the company get upset when you show up a few days after applying, just to see if they got the application? .. well, maybe it was just that guy. I dunno, but still ...

Fourth:

Why haven't I gotten hired over the last 4 years of seeking and constantly applying everywhere... heck, I've resorted to having friends look up jobs as well in places that I may not have thought about myself. I've applied at so many places that if my resume gets printed out at all of the places, that would be a couple dozen reams of paper (glad I don't have to print that many out m'self, that'd be some expensive ink expenditure as well)

Well, let's see if we can't improve the attitudes around here a bit...

1) I stopped in at a small computer store that has been in the area for 2 years already. This store though, is new to the area. They stated that they're not looking for people right now, but in a couple months they will be. They suggested I go ahead and plug in my resume to them so that they have it on file and everything.

2) The person at Universal I did get to speak with said that my application did get in, but has not been looked at yet. There were too many people there when I showed up or he would have had me see someone while I was there. He said that the recruiters usually look at the applications that come in over the web within 5-7 business days ... granted I applied on Saturday, so today was technically business day 3. Hopefully I'll be able to get the job there.

3) Sticky keys was fairly easy to turn off ... albeit stupid that they'd put that on by default and not pop something up initially when you restart that says "hey we turned this feature on, and this is what it does ... do you want to leave it this way? or did you want it off".

-=-=-=-=-=-

4) FFXIV Beta 3 is now live, ... well it went live last night at 10pm eastern ... There have been some major improvements, some unwanted or 'over the top' improvements, and some fixes that we have found to be very major.

Major improvements that were wanted: New classes ... this includes the craft skills that were not implemented in the previous version. Software mouse is now much improved, mainly due to the following improvement ... uncapped FPS from 30 to 120 !! yay! now instead of walking around and seeing a solid 30 in the corner from FRAPS running ... I see it jump up into the 70's and usually steady around the 40's for my card and the settings I've got everything on (which, actually are the standard 'high' settings).

Unwanted / over-the-top improvements: Guildleves are now ... crazy. Before they were a great way to get money for everyone ... now, with the faster combat times, the skillups for people are few when you're in a big party (that they want you to do anyway by the way). If you're alone however, sure you won't share the wealth in gil for other people in a party, but the experience you get from a single kill in a guildleve is extraordanary. Before the exp in leves were about as much as if you were just grinding away on mobs. Now it is like 10 times better! I went from a 1/1 thaumaturge/physical to 5/8 thaumaturge/physical just by killing 6 monsters that were part of the initial storyline and included guildleve. This is MUCH improved over the original method where I was 2/5 after doing a full 8 guildleves and grinding on monsters for 3 hours. But that's part of the problem ... it's way too fast. Now with how fast you level, you don't get as many crystals to be able to craft.

Also in this list is the thing that they implemented towards the end of beta 2, and that is surplus ... they have not told us what this is for, but if you start off, and level up on one class, once you get it to 13, and about a quarter of the way into that level, you start getting surplus experience. This causes your experience at first to be cut by about 10% or so. Granted it doesn't seem like much, but as you go, it can eventually get as much as cutting off 100% of your experience, and all of it go to surplus ... again, we're not sure what it's for, but some people have tried to 'push through' it and actually gained surplus levels. How to avoid it? ... level another class. Sure this works in theory, but some people (like myself) are not too keen on doing the whole gathering or crafting scene. Also those of us that are hardcore caster class users ... we're limited to two jobs then, and that's not that great especially when you get both classes into surplus, then you're just SOL until you decide to take up a craft or 5.

Fixed things: Healing people now causes agro -.- Awwwww there goes our trick ... was in a party initially with about 8 or 9 people just to go from the get-go and from level 5 or so for everyone, start doing the level 10 ranked guildleves ... this would normally give us a good amount of money by doing this. But when I as a caster, came and healed people, the mobs ripped right off, and hit me once, and I died .... yay squishy ! . . . And the heal? ... only healed 10 HP ... granted this was a very low level group, so no provoke abilities were in play, and I didn't wait until good agro was established by the DD's up front ... but the monsters were also dying so fast that I wanted to get my turn in the class experience ... so yea ... partying, great ... for melees ... casters, not so much. Especially if you're a healer.

Also kind of strange that was added: option to change a spell from AOE to single target ... granted this is great, default was always AOE ... although AOE damage spells never target things that are not claimed red name for you or your party (this means even though you could gather 5-6 low level mobs around you and cast an AOE, only the current target gets the damage, and the red named (claimed) mob is always the first one you started attacking). The other problem with this: to change it from AOE to single, you'd have to click the little button that says Area of Effect .. after choosing a spell ... this means that people like m'self that play strictly with the keyboard for this game ... can't change it from AOE to single target ... Oh, and the simple fact that even if you do click it, it doesn't change it to non-aoe when it is cast. This also means that when you hit a spell to cast, you have to confirm the aoe-ness to actually cast the spell ... an extra click that wasn't needed before.

Also, now the battle regimen thing cannot be arrow-ed over to in combat, you have to click it as well to get into the battle regimen mode.

-=-=-=-=-

Still lookin for a potential female friend / partner too ^^

-=-=-=-=-

I'd love to be able to afford to get FFXIV retail, especially the collectors edition preorder, but, yea ... this surprise bill, and lack of a job really doesn't allow for it. So, if you're a super kind soul, that would love to donate anything to help me pay for this stupid bill first and foremost, and even better, if enough came in to get the FFXIV retail, I'd be forever thankful.

Beta 2 over, now to wait for beta 3

Yea, a few days ago the beta 2 version of FFXIV ended. I had gotten in on the beta 1 version, and that was basically a VERY limited time slot type of deal. Beta 2 was the first time that they turned the servers on for 24 hours straight for about a week or so.

So, now, there are a few sites out there where you can get in on Beta 3 keys. I'm not looking for one so not sure where they are. If you are on twitter, look up the hashtag #ffxiv and you should see some people posting about it. In beta 3 we can expect some nice things... but here's the official post from FFXIV devs on the forums:

Thank you for your continued participation in the FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Test.

Phase 2 of beta testing will come to a close at 17:00 (PDT) on Wednesday, August 4th, with phase 3 (Beta 3) scheduled to begin mid-August.

In Beta 3, we will be adding new classes, new features such as linkshells, and a host of other adjustments and changes based on the feedback we've received thus far. The following is just a selection of what's in store for the next phase of testing.

[System-related]
- Significant adjustments to mouse controls
- Changes to the item menu display and controls for equipping gear
- The implementation of the following features:

• Linkshells
• Text commands
• Auto-complete/auto-translation dictionary
• Player macros

[Event-related]
- Local levequests will once again be available
- A sound effect and on-screen message will accompany the completion of a quest
- Completed quests will be recorded in the quest journal

[Battle-related]
- Changes to animations, effects, and combat speed
- Passive /Active mode will be toggled automatically when speaking to an NPC or locking on to a monster
- Players will be able to select either a single target or an area effect when casting spells
- Adjustments to balance guildleve rewards versus monster strength
- Various adjustments to overall battle balance

Full details will be announced in the Version Update Details section of the Beta Test Site on the day Beta 3 commences. Related updates to the manual will also be posted on the Beta Test Site.

We look forward to your continuing feedback and support.

NOTE: All character data will be deleted at the end of Beta 2.
All character profiles, images, and blogs on the Players' Site will also be deleted at this time.
Testers can continue to provide feedback on the Beta.

So, yea, those of us that were in beta 2 had our char's wiped, which isn't any big deal, some of them were pretty messed up with bugs LOL.

I myself am extremely happy to see that they're fixing things that have been complained about since alpha. Pretty much everything that they announced that they're fixing or making adjustments to are much needed.

As for the 'new classes' ... we can only assume they mean the cooking, fishing, alchemy, goldsmithing, and perhaps some new caster and fighter classes.

A little insight as to what you may want to do if you get in on this next step of beta testing ... before the servers go live ... which, we all hope they will either push back, or show some drastic improvements to the gameplay that would otherwise kill the game at launch. First and foremost, the more you use an item, the more it gets wear and tear on it ... all weapons must be repaired via blacksmithing, and possibly other crafts depending on what the weapon is made of/with...at least that's what I understand, as I've not tried the craft skills. Your weapon will be the most used of course, with armours being used less especially if you're a back-line fighter/caster and not getting hit. So, you'll more than likely want to raise up your different craft skills as you go.

Sure you could go to an NPC to repair your stuff, but they can only repair it up to 50% of it's max durability. Granted, that's good enough, but why spend that much money if you could repair it yourself ... or perhaps find someone to do it for you. I myself, as a caster, didn't see the need to repair my stuff that often...mainly because I wasn't getting hit unless I was soloing, and my weapon didn't get much wear on it that I saw.

There are some tricks that some of us beta testers had found out, that we'll more than likely attempt when the servers re-open, and hopefully they'll still work. We didn't see any way they could change the system to make our trick go away, but to us, that's all good. When and IF you get into the beta, make sure to search the forums for the Vent server that's set up for us, and being paid for by a fellow player. There are channels for the different servers, and channels for other things as well. It is a GREAT and possibly the BEST way to get a party set up and get in on some of the flippin great stuff if it's still working.

I myself will be going with a caster class again, although I may take up thaumaturge first, as it's abilities, while nifty, are only a CONE casting ... so in order to heal or do anything with anyone, you have to be facing them. Conjurers are complete sphere, so it doesn't matter if I'm facing away, towards, or off to the side, my stuff will still go off. This, and the fact that the thaumaturge heal spell is awesome in that it does a bulk heal, then applies a regen effect as well, this means that you get two chances to get experience for the class.

Each class, when you do a move, you have a chance of gaining skill in that weapon type you're holding at the time. This means that you could start of on pugulist, get to level 4, get the second wind skill (healing), go to lancer, be leveling that up, and whenever you use second wind, you'd get exp on lancer...even though it's a pug skill. Now, not all skills can be used by other classes. There are some that require that weapon type to be equipped. I believe the thaum heal skill can only be used by casters, while the conj heal skill can be used by either caster or melee.

The craft and gatherer classes are not really used in fighting monsters at all. Seeing as they get no real fighting skills, you can't even leech in a party. As stated before, you only get experience for using the skills while in that class...and the only combat skill that the crafters and gatherers have, is "throw rock", which is just throwing a rock, that does only 1 ... yes ONE ... point of damage. That doesn't do much of anything but piss off the monsters of course, and they like to go to kill whatever squishiest creature damaged it is.

I do hope that they keep the healing abilities off hate list, as that is one of the best things I've seen thus far... I can heal a party member that doesn't have taunt yet, let them be the one holding melee hate, and I can just keep piling on the heals getting skill ups and keeping them alive ... all while the creature doesn't turn to me. But, if they change that ... well, it'll suck some, but I'm sure I can work it out.

it's been a while again..

So, what has been going on? Get ready for a big wall-o-text!

Well, for one, my wife and I have smoothed things out as much as possible for the smoothness that can come from what's going on between us. We're not planning on getting any divorce at all... at least not yet. We are firm believers that children should be able to see both parents without a hassle. Our relationship has grown into just being good friends. To our family and friends that may read this, it may come as little or great surprise, depending on how much in the loop you are. Basically we have both agreed that the love just isn't there anymore. We are classifying ourselves as being "separated" even though we live together still of course. This is for multiple reasons of course, not least of which are the kids. But we have other things that depend on us being married... my disability for example, and the fact that we actually still like each other and support each other the same.

This also means that we're both available for dating, but that is one thing that would be VERY difficult to do on both sides. For her, she's not wanting to get into another marriage right away at all. For me, I don't get out much, and admittedly I'm in no shape to be approached. The other thing that we've agreed upon is that whomever we get together with has to know that we're still married and don't plan on getting a divorce until we know each other are going to be financially stable. They also need to know that if they plan on moving in here, that they would have to mesh well with the entire family that is already here.

On the good side of all this, is that all of these things we desire to make sure each other is happy, could be helped along with a new house. Now, it's no secret that our house sucks royally in more ways than one. I mean come on, I fixed up the underside of the house with duct tape not too long ago. The lot we're on though, is slated for multi-family living. So we could technically build here, and make a little duplex type of deal, or some specialty home wherein there would be two master bedroom / baths. Either way, we'd still like a unit for renting to be able to have some form of income while I'm not working.

Speaking of which, I don't remember if I posted this, as I've been kind of pissed about everything and not wanting to do much. That job I know I mentioned that I got a call about getting an interview? Yea, that fell through the floor. The day prior to the interview, the regional manager called me and said that they had filled all the positions and were canceling all the rest of the interviews. So, here I sit, still with no job. But wait! That same friend that I went to Orlando with to check on a couple places, he's got a contact for some job based in Afganastan ... Yea, overseas. He told his contact about me, and they had said that they might be able to find something for me. Unfortunately I've not gotten a contacting from this other person as of yet.

So in the mean time, I'm looking around on multiple sites trying to find jobs, trying to find a date that'd mesh well (Don't think I'll find one online but meh, who knows ... also not too thrilled that these 'date' sites want to charge you almost $50 a month just to be able to e-mail someone else to try to get more information from them). I've also been playing a variety of different things...

And thus comes to the gamer part of me...

FFXIV Beta(2) -=-=-

So, previously I had posted that there was no way to change jobs in FFXIV, well, I was wrong. Apparently you can get a weapon that is designated for another class, and once you equip it, you are now that class. This means that you can have one character for everything ... well, maybe not everything. There are two levels in the game ... a physical level, and a class rank. The class ranks are for whatever class you are at the time, and the physical level is a static thing that goes up as you level any class. Each physical level, you gain some stat points that you can distribute amongst different stats, and another set of points to put into elemental resistances. Each physical level, you also gain some HP and MP, which doesn't seem to be dependent upon any stats (you don't get more HP for having more Vitality type of deal).

With this, you can basically go around and start with one class, get up a ways, then grab a new weapon, and start leveling up another class. Now I say weapon, but this could also be crafting tools, or gathering tools. Yes, there are separate classes for crafters and gatherers. Currently everyone is grinding up smithing, as that's the one class that can repair weapons, and I'd suppose metal armor...not sure about cloth or leather armors though, possibly from those respective craftskills of course.

This brings us to repairs. No previous Final Fantasy game that I know of has introduced the idea of your items degrading over use. To me, this seems like just a main money sink for people to just pour their gil into. Although it is also a method for them to basically flood the market with blacksmiths seeing as they're the only ones that can repair weapons. The durability of the items seems to degrade the more you use them, so if you're a caster (like me), your weapon will degrade the more you cast spells. Your armor will degrade the more you take damage as well of course. This means that weapons are the most used, and would be the ones most needing repairs. Once an item is zero durability, all of it's stats that it may have are now not in effect, and you are now considered to be wearing the most basic of items. Thus causing less damage, and taking more damage.

The craft system I've not tried yet, but have listened in to those crafters in the ventrilo server that is open for beta testers. There are no recipes given in game that I've heard of yet. There are some that are in the forums. But the rest... it's a matter of trial and error. This isn't a case of "open up this crystal and throw some random stuff in and see if it goes" ... this is a case of "equip your crafting items, start the crafting interaction, plug in different items, including the possibility of some kind of crystal"....this could actually be MORE THAN ONE crystal in some cases. Also, the crystals... yea ... there's now 3 types. The smallest being a Shard, next being a Crystal, and the last being a Cluster ... Currently there is no way to break down the different crystal types, or combine them to make them bigger. Once you've put in your items into the craft thing, and tell it to craft, it will tell you what it MAY produce. Some recipes can actually produce different results as the end product. Again, I've not tried the crafting yet, so I'm not sure how it all works, but apparently as you're crafting you have different skills or choices to help your crafting progress. There is a durability count that if it reaches zero, you fail the synthesis... There's also some other bar that is for quality I think, where if your quality is high enough when you succeed, you could get a high quality result. And of course, there's the progress bar, that once it's full, you have possibly created the item ... again, that's a possibility, as if the durability is too low, or the quality too low, you don't get anything.

Enough FFXIV for now... other things that have been taking my time up when I'm not in the mood to fight with the controls in FFXIV that still are horrible at times.

Web Games -=-=-

Tansformice ... a lovely little flash game concerning mice, physics, cheese, and holes. Well, there's a LOT more to it that just that... See, you really should register there, as then you'll be able to get different titles which is cool. They don't send any spam or anything, heck, I don't even think they require an e-mail address... it'd just be there to be able to keep record on the server as to what you're doing and stuff. Of course you can just sign in and try it out.

Each stage (of which there are currently 96) can have up to 80 mice in it (though when a room has 25, any new login person gets shoved into a new room, so the only way to go above 25 is to have people actually switch to that room). Many stages have a shaman mouse, possibly two. The shaman mice can build things to help the other mice get to the cheese, and then return to the hole. This includes things from simple bridges, to complex catapult (mousapult?), or even floating 'boats'.

Hilarity ensues as the physics of the stages sometimes acts completely goofy. There are some stages that have lighter gravity, while others completely reverse gravity after a short time of the stage starting... forcing the shaman to have to build fast before this happens, a roof of some sort to keep the mice from flying away. There are other stages that have the flash flipped and rotated, so while pressing right, you head left, but on top of that, you're upside down, so you have to think like as if you stood on your head to play it.

Some stages have 'traps' that will kill mice fairly effectively. That's the nice thing... you can crush a mouse all you want, but that doesn't matter... the only thing that matters is going too far off the screen in any direction. The 'bottom' of the screen is really the death point, while the sides and top are a bit further off the screen than what you can regularly see. This means that when that shaman builds a boat and it flies off the top of the screen, you could be a while before you come down...The most notable 'trap' is the 'anvilgod'. This creature is dangerous... one stage in particular (sometimes with different wind directions playing in too) will have an anvilgod staged in the center, it's center point anchored to the world, with a bunch of force-anchored anvils attached side to side in either direction of the center one. At the ends, are a bunch of rotating anvils, with all of these things attached, the rotating anvils cause the snake of anvils to flip, flop, and knock mice around wildly, as you can't ever tell how it's going to go. These rotating parts can be used in other stages for fun, but mostly when there's nothing else to do but make fun of the system.

You'll get some hackers here and there, flying about, insta-building when they get shaman ... no distance too far to build ... overall just really poor players that don't know how to use the game to it's true method and have fun with it.

More information can be found at the wiki, including the different stages, how to do things as a shaman, and how to wall-jump ... a nifty tactic that takes some getting used to to be able to do, but is useful at times.

Next up ... Shooters !! -=-=-=-=-

Two words: Alien .... Swarm .....

Another word? ... FREE

Where? Steam.

What is it? ... a third person shooter, that plays much like Left 4 Dead, and I'd suppose Left 4 Dead 2. You start off, having up to 4 players on a team. The objective is to get to the end of the stage without dying of course, and shooting many many aliens along the way. Unlike L4D, the 'director' isn't in it's own mindset to send swarms whenever it pleases (although there is a console command to make it that way), rather, it sends swarms at set points in the storyline as you go through the levels.

There are 4 difficulty levels. Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane ... If you're new to third person shooters, and to the game, I'd say go through on Easy just to get the lay of the levels, learn what different parts bring swarms, and overall get a feel for being in third person. The view is at a 60 degree angle, not completely 90 over the top, so you're actually looking somewhat down (again, there's a console command to switch this if you really want a pure over-the-top look). Just as a fore-warning ... do NOT go into insane levels unless you really want to die and see the game in the most insane of conditions. Things will pop out of floor vents that you didn't see on previous difficulties...parasites are in every stage... and overall, there's a TON more things to shoot and kill (and they all have more life so you best be good at conserving your ammo).

As you go through the levels, you'll get experience points at the end. Depending on the difficulty level you chose to play in, this may be at a reduced exp gain (easy mode), no change (normal) or some good gain (hard and insane). There's also achievements for doing different things in levels, some of which can be re-earned and gotten points for (like dive-rolling under a certain alien's shots, or getting the killing blow on a shield bug). There are 27 levels total, and once you've reached that level, you'll have access to the full armament of weapons and extras ... up until you decide to promote to the next rank... then you're back at level 1, but you've got a nifty icon next to your level, signifying that you've gone through and gotten level 27 at least once. There are three promotions over all, so once you've reached 27 the fourth time, that's it. Of course you could just sit at any of the level 27's and use the weapons to kill aliens and get the different achievements for killing with those weapons.

There are maps that some people are making to be able to have some more fun with the game, but while in these add ons, you won't get any actual experience towards your levels ... this prevents someone from making a level with say ... a single objective to hit a button right where you spawn, and thus get a ton of experience for basically doing nothing. But these levels are sometimes greatly built. A few of them are just survival tactics ... start off, find a place to set up a defense from, and go to town. Some of these survival ones are just that... survive as long as possible without dying, and when the last person dies, you start over. I was in one of these (called office) ... I was the last person standing ... and I was just walking around, torching aliens as I walked around the stage, never being in one place too long to make the director that was programmed for this map, send any big baddies that I couldn't take out. I was around for a good 3 minutes before the other 3 that had died previously, finally started complaining saying "you're too good, now die... let's start again" ... I agreed it was getting boring to be alone, plus I was running low on ammo finally...When I finally died and we went to the next ready room, they kicked me out LOL ... oh well.

-=-=-=-

Thus ends the massive wall-o-text ... I think ...

I'll end with these requests: If you know of (or are) anyone that is a building designer that would be able to take in some information about my property here, and things that I'd like to see in a house, for free mind you ... send 'em my way. ... If you know (or are) a woman that would love to be with a caring 32 year old guy with back problems that prevent him from loosing some unwanted pounds, but loves to live life to it's fullest...direct 'em my way too ^^