Either way, let's try to get me back on a schedule. Daily if possible, if not, at least weekly. I originally wanted to do daily, so let's start off with that shall we? So, what's been going on lately you may ask? Well, if you've looked at my twitter feed lately, you'll note that I've been playing a fair bit of Final Fantasy XI again. You may also note that I've switched from XFire instant messaging to one called Raptr.
On the messenger change: There was an update forced to windows 7 users a while back, that of a new internet explorer version. Granted I don't use IE in the least, unfortunately some programs default to use that rather than using the current default browser (why? I don't know but it's pretty flipping annoying). The problem with this, is that XFire does just that, and apparently there was a bug somewhere along the lines in the coding for this IE version that would cause XFire to crash once it tries to load the buddy listing. The fix on XFire's forums? de-grade IE to a previous version, re-download XFire, and hope for the best. I should probably note that this problem only existed for Windows 7 64 bit users...which I am. I found somehow, this Raptr friends listing. Where you can use it to log into Xfire, Steam, PSN, XBL, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, ICQ (who still uses that?!?!?) and a few others. Wait, that's not all! It will update time played across all platforms, track your achievements earned, and even import your playtime from xfire if you've used that before.
The insurance sales thing fell through the floor. I attempted to take the test for licensing another time, and didn't get any better. I take that back, I did improve, by less than 2%. The site I was using for study told me that I should study specific sections, which when I went into the site and took the tests for those sections, I got 100%. This means, that the content on the site, while great, either didn't have the content that was asked about on the test (which was about 60% of the test), or I froze up on the test hard-core. I studied a bit more and still, couldn't seem to grasp things, and was still confused about others. Why in the world do I need to get the license if 90% of the stuff is going to be changing in the near future, and I wouldn't need any of that information once I started? Oh well. On to other things I suppose.
In light of me basically giving up on that venture for now, I've gone back to playing Final Fantasy XI. I've been gone for some time, just after they announced that they would be upping the level cap past 75. This is fine for me, except the fact that I didn't have the 3 latest add-ons. I went ahead and got those, and logged back in to many welcomes and hugs. This is the community I loved and missed. I was promptly taken in and shown some of the rough ropes to the new areas, which are still confusing, but I'm learning. There are still hard things, but that's good. The thing that pleases me the most? The fact that they made summoners (my main love of a job) gain some desire to have in parties and are allowed to BE SUMMONERS rather than being a crappy main healer, that they really aren't fit to be. Where someone got the gall to say that a Summoner could be a healer, I don't know. I mean, white magic = MND stats; summoning magic = .... yea, that's right, there is no stat that affects the strength of summoning magic. A Summoner could have just as easily been deemed a backup black-mage, but everyone knows a sub black mage can't do much damage at all...but somewhere everyone figures that a subbed white mage works just fine. Half-leveled heals + sub-par skills due to being a sub = healer? No, the big thing back then was the fact that Summoners have the highest MP pool, so even if they were subbed healer job, they'd have more than enough MP needed to continually dump heals on everyone because the heals wouldn't even touch 10% of a person's HP bar. Granted, sub white mage has it's own bonus's for a summoner, that of reraise, auto-regen, raise ability of allies, and the sneak/invis. I just never liked White Mage anyway. I can't keep a party alive for anything, even with great macros. The only way I can get myself able to cure even slightly, is to use the unofficial windower, and get a plugin to use my G-Keys on my G15 keyboard.
So, I get back get into the new areas, get some exp, within an hour or two, I'd gotten almost capped on merits seeing as I was already 75 on my SMN. I go, unlock to 80 and 85 fairly easily, get back out and get to 83 or so before logging that first day. Over the coming days I'd gotten merits, uncaps, and eventually reached the current cap of 90. This, caused my sub jobs to be "gimped". I now had to re-level those jobs I could use as a supporting job to my summoner. White mage being the least favorite. Luckily though, the new areas can be leeched upon by level 30+. Granted they won't be much use, but they can get some great EXP and level fast. The only problem I faced, was the fact that I'm too nice of a person I suppose. I'd come out as my Summoner to burn things to the ground, get myself to 20 merits (max able to hold for those that aren't FFXI players), then state that I'd like to swap out with one of the current leeches to get them on a productive job so that I could then leech my white mage up so it's not gimped out. I'd always get declined, end up coming back out on my SMN. I didn't mind, as I really still needed to get more merit points to be able to get all the merit skills and things for my SMN anyway.
Yesterday however, I got fed up. I got myself to 20 merits in a kickin party that had been going on for about an hour before I got into it. Somewhere along the lines I ended up with the alliance lead position. I refilled the alliance from those people that were leaving, ran back to town to dump my merit points, then, came out on my white mage. I took it within a few hours, from level 44, up to 63. I only wanted to get it to 50 originally so that I wouldn't have to touch it when the cap got raised again to either 99 or 100. Experience was flowing too fast for me to want to go change. Then we needed black mages, so that we could get time extensions and stuff for the newer people that were coming in, also to send people home that forgot stuff to do such for themselves. So, I warped back, changed to black mage main, which was level 44 ... and ran back out. I warped the people home that needed, re-filled the party as needed. Then proceded to soak up the exp from everyone doing things. MANY hours later, I had gotten up to level 76 before I started getting tired. So much fun was had yesterday that I completely forgot about the new web game that had garnered my attention.
Yes, I've found a web game that I think is actually worth playing! This is a shock as most of them are inundated with advertisements, sales ploys, junk mail, and other stupidities that cause the game to fail. Where does this game go right though? Well, the fact that it's not combat driven in the least! Everything is story-based. Sure you've got stats for your character, that you build up by doing these story missions. But you aren't required to fight at all, well, not in the traditional sense of the word. You may get into a "fight" in a story, but you don't have to use skills on the fly, or have the best gear just to do the quests. It's all handled in the storyline. If you fail, you fail, if you win, you win. Easy as that. Sure there is a "pvp" section of the game, but you aren't required to take part in it at all. In fact, if you decide not to do the PvP part, you won't ever be attacked by anyone that IS doing the PvP stuff. This means you can sit in your little part of the game, do it's stories, and enjoy it. You connect to this with either your Twitter account, or Facebook, either way, you can link the two as well, and it can use your friends list (on facebook), and your follower & followed listings on twitter to allow for extra interactions so to say. There are quests and things you can do that you can invite friends to help you with in the game.
So, what is this new game? It's called Echo Bazaar! and can be found at: http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com ... Of course, if you wanted to partake in doing things with me in game, just follow me on twitter. I don't really frequent going to Facebook that often (maybe once a month or so), seeing as all the changes on there seem to be geared for advertisements, and a cess pool of crappy games that seem to have the solitary goal of taking all contact information from you and on your friends, possibly for junk-mail listings. So, if you desire to add me on your facebook friends, contact me either via Twitter, or well, if you're not a friend on there already, and you really are a friend of mine, you should have other contact methods to find me.
