Bots

Yes, let's delve into that controversial subject shall we?

So back to square one with KA, been camping him for a few weeks now and then suddenly SE fucks something up and BAM maintenence, that means everyone now knows KA ToD and thus, shit ton of people at camp.

What do I get pissed off with? The bots of course and I will name names, Diavolos and his crew, Kellyn and no doubt many more, what pissed me off most was I was hitting voke too fast and voked too early meaning I had no chance.

Now the huge problem with bots is this:

1) They get an unfair advantage
2) SE does fuck all about it.

Now it's fucked up that the best gear in the game goes to those who use botters, I was always told as a child, "Cheaters never prosper", well that law doesn't apply to FFXI, yes occasionally someone will be caught with evidence and something may be done but it's so rare it's not even worth getting your hopes up.

It's like they condone botting, yeah i've claimed KA before but more often than not it's claimed by the botters so I will summarise this rant in my final sentence.

Fuck you SE for allowing the botters, fuck you excellence, fuck you VV, fuck you Armada and fuck you all the individual bot owners.

To quote Jacinda "Q fucking Q"

Time to vent

So today I was in a alliance of 8 people to do abyssea NMs for AF seals but after a couple minax bugard kills we went after the spider, should have been fine but something got to me.

Now i'm not good at venting on FFXI largely due to the limited writing space, I tried but it didn't help so I will explode here.

Basically i'm getting bombarded with orders for silena, erase, haste, this NM can draw you in and slow you, I say he can do it...he spams it, so by about the 5th time of doing it I understand that you're gonna need erase and haste afterwards.

The problem here is he can also silence and I forgot to re-stock on echo drops so I ran out quickly, bitch at me if you will but the NIN didn't have echo drops, the brd/whm didn't have echo drops, so if you don't bring them do you have right to bitch at me for not bringing them?

Anyway this is what got to me, it's not all that was said but with no chat filters, stuff disappears fast:


Now most of the people in that alliance were people from Prestige who i've started doing stuff with so maybe what I did next was ill advised but I just left, it was a case of either stay there, do nothing because i'm silenced and potentially shout my head off at them or leave and calm down, I chose the latter.

So yes, I fucked up, I should have had echo drops and I don't know why I reacted how I did, maybe it was being the sole healer for an alliance of 8 constantly getting hit by slow, silence and gravity but that's how it is.

Call me a whiney little bitch but i've done what the title of this vent implies and vented.

Vultures?

So yesterday myself, Jacinda (sorry, just can't get used to calling you Carinde ^^), Dierdren and Dizzmal went to get some revenge on Chukwa.

Our first attempt there didn't work so well, another group were already there killing it but we stuck around, at around 20% they let it go yellow so I hit it with Bio II but unfortunately it didn't claim it and they had it claimed again, same thing happened again at 5%, I hit it with Bio II again, Dizz hit it with Stun but still we couldn't claim it, shame.

However the interesting thing, after they killed it we got called "Vultures", now yes you would get angry if someone stole your claim but the general rule is that yellow is fair game, I know in the past we have avoided claiming NMs that go yellow in sky, even killed NMs for people and given them the drop if they ended up wiping but what about this situation? I certainly had no qualms in trying to steal the NM, would they have done the same if it had been us fighting it? Who knows really.

So anyway, we come back later and there's a rdm there, I question how he really plans to solo him but w/e, Chukwa pops and I claim with Bio so we work him down, I suppose me and Jacinda get bragging rights because we didn't die but i'll point this out, not once did we let the NM go unclaimed, maybe we rock? The other groups kill was certainly very sloppy.

Ah well Seige Bow dropped, I wanted Creed Collar but we can't all be so lucky can we? Grats on your prize Jacinda!

As for Dynamis this week, up for Beaucedine and as we're gathering there our good friends from Vana'dielsFinest start showing, only a few at first but they must have got the "Quick jack their zone" siren because they started appearing out of nowhere. So we just entered with 10, in the end we only had 14 once everyone arrived but I wouldn't have liked VF screwing us over again.

Generally the run went well and we did brilliantly for low numbers, Teusday will be interesting, at the start of the run there's potential that I may be the only sackholder at the start of the run, depends if Negaa and Shammus show up...this could be interesting.

Why?

Stupid title I know but the question here is, why do I make a blog? I found out this year when I was meant to make a blog for my course at University that I don't bring myself to update it and when I made a blog for my FFXI exploits did I think it would be different? Maybe but now almost a month without and update shows I may have been wrong!

I can't argue nothing has happened, Dierdren left AC and SoV for Excellence hence why i'm now doing ENM with Allyrose and Dizzmal (sorry i've cursed the drops btw). We've also had horrible Kirin's in SoV, shortly followed by an awesome Kirin zerg and then we've done interesting stuff like DM and a few of us broke off and did Celestial Nexus after.

Well that's my musings done for so I will now ask another question, is it alright for games to make you cry? (or almost in my case). I'm talking about Red Dead Redemption, since the game has only been out for a short time I won't get into details but anyone who has completed the game will know what i'm on about, people cry at movies so why not video games?

We get attached to the characters so for tragic things to happen to them surely must hit some nerve in your body? FF fans must know this through events such as Aeris's death in FF7 and Tidus disappearing at the end of FFX.

It seems sad in a way but the last time I remember a game to do that to me was Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, where at the end one of the main characters Xion sacrifices herself to save the protagonist Roxas all with her theme song in the background which is incredibly depressing.

Which got me to thinking, why don't I cry? I always feels my eyes water up at times but then nothing, do I hold it back? I didn't even break down at my Grandad's funeral and he was perhaps one of my most loved family members, the last time I remember I properly cried was the last time I really lost my temper which I haven't done since school, it takes a lot to push me but it usually ends up with me beating the crap out of someone, then when I stop I usually just started crying, it confused the shit out of me.

Ah well sharing time over, I bet you all enjoyed that!

Zone jacked, bad connection and gender faux pas

Interesting enough title? It better be!

Well since I haven't posted a blog since the 6th I had to look through my screenshots to see what interesting stuff i'd done, let's start with this picture:

I took that picture right after casting blizzard on purpose cause I thought it would look cool and...I was right! So you guys may or may not know who that is with me, their names are Xclouds (formerly Xcloud on Hades) and Storrmcloud, strictly though it is just Xclouds dual-boxing, he is a friend, one of the first people I met on Hades when I was still a nublet and that day 8th of May he asked me to help him trio this chap here; Suu Xicu the Cantabile.

Honestly a real fun fight, he basically pulled it to the entrance and tanked it on Xclouds with his Ares's Cuirass (jealous) while he had Storrmcloud keep him buffed and healed and I was on nuking him down. At 50% and 25% he summons 2 helpers, during the first phase me and Storrm both nuked down the helpers and in the second phase we both chainspelled them down, afterwards just smooth sailing, to make it sweeter the Failnaught dropped!

It was good to do something with Xclouds though, we talk a bit now but rarely ever do stuff so it was fun.

In the spirit of getting my screenshots out of the way, I present to you my next picture!:

This, ladies and gentlemen is the true, horrific power of the Allied ring, now bear in mind that I actually wanted a few fights to make sure this was the max exp I could get in this area (Mamool Ja staging point merit pt) that's a whopping 637 exp on that mob, now I think I managed to get 6 limit points in that pt through a combination of: Allied ring, Anniversary ring, Emperor band it almost got my PLD merits finished (group 1 done, 7/10 on group 2), then i've got the simple task of meriting enfeebling, elemental, strength and all rdm merits (yes my rdm is completely unmerited).

Finally to move onto the topics in my title which ironically I have no pictures for! So let's start with Dynamis, we were supposed to be doing Dynamis - Xarcabard on Saturday and so far I guess with Cerberus's foolishness to not use the calendar we have gotten lucky with no competition, not that day though. Two shells were there, we had about even numbers so I guess it was a case of who got there members to show first.

Then something happened that annoyed me, Shammus tells everyone to get to Xarcabard and then 10mins later I look at linkshell and I see people in the past, people in completely random areas, this is coming up to the time we're meant to be entering, why are people not already here? Ultimately Vanadiel's finest show their colours again as they did in Sky and take the zone by rushing in with about 10 members, ooh fun! Then we tried to get Beaucedine but an LS was gathered there too so ultimately we did Jeuno, we had fun laughing at Dizzmal for agreeing to a bike ride with his wife so he could "zerg" a zerg of course which never happened...of course when it came to megaboss plenty of people were glad to remind me of the last Jeuno run...

Anyway...next! Bad connection, pretty much speaks for itself, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday my internet connection obviously felt I had abused it as it had a tantrum, it would crash, sometime later spring to life and then a minute or so later would crash again, this problem wasn't so bad on Friday as I have no events then but on Saturday it made me miss Limbus and Einherjar. Einherjar wasn't so much a big deal as it was a T1 and I already have that feather, but I missed Ultima! Now I wouldn't have had enough points to lot anything but it's still a nice experience...boo! Pretty much at the end of Einherjar my connection then played along and sorta decided it would let me attend Dynamis.

Finally I get to the last one, gender faux pas a la Dizzmal. Reimii today joins us on vent for the first time, now for a long time we've assumed Reimii is a girl and today we hear her voice, granted it she didn't sound the most feminine but I told myself "That voice could be a girl's", Dizzmal on the other hand wasn't having any of it and said "For a long time Remii, i've always thought you were a girl" and the response "I am a girl". Cue the hysterical laughter (mostly from me) and Dizzmal probably was in the process of digging himself a hole right there.

Ah well it gave me a good laugh and got me going for KS99, we all /random and the thing I didn't want, to win the right to go first...no one wants to go first in BCNM/KSNM's just by instinct, you normally start doing BCNMs in a shout group so if anyone is sub-par then the first guy's orb is gonna go to waste while the rest can pull out, now SoV is a great shell but nothing can dispel this fear!

Anyway the fight went smoothly and I got it! Dragon Heart and Siren Hair...woohoo, most went smoothly but in pure SoV we had to fail an orb I guess, dunno why but we get one unfortunately and today was Koroki, dunno what happened really, my only assumption is the whms may have dropped the ball, unfortunately we rely on Dizzmal when it's up in the air as he has the fire resist set so when he's dying, no whms rushing into cure him something has to be up, I was just about to get up and run in, I was hesitant, no idea why and I probably should take some blame for it too.

So down Dizzmal went so I run in and try to gain control of the situation, I got hate on the Wyrm and the whms did their job to keep me alive but then he landed and I don't know what happened, he must not have had any form of slow on as he was attacking rapidly so I was struggling to get shadows up but I had no outside cures coming in either, like people had shut off when he landed, danger over now he's on the ground? So I went for Invincible but i'd left it too late and wasn't quick enough, I was dead too.

So we try to recover, Dizzmal attempts to tank it weakened, tells me to sit out and recover but it doesn't work and the final nail in the coffin was people panicking when they grabbed hate and running, there's a reason you stand on the feet and if they weren't aware of spike flail's destructive power then they are now.

At the end of it though Koroki got a Wyrm Beard off Nega's run so I suppose he's somewhat appeased, despite losing 99 Kindred Seal's, he got an item worth 2m.

So I think that's everything in the 12 days since the last blog so...peace out!

Long time no blog

Well what do I say? I haven't posted because...well...nothing's bloody happening!

I need excitement! All i'm doing on FFXI atm is going through the same old routine, majority of my time actually playing is spent doing the weekly events, otherwise i'm in an occasional merit pt or just standing in WG afk while I do something else.

Over the last week i've been trying to get Nyzul 6-10 done but still it continues to annoy me but I gain some understanding of why, the people who need 6-10 are the ones who don't actually have a decent job for nyzul! Going in with RDM (me), WHM, SCH, WAR, SAM, THF was just weird, ok out of those THF is the only one that isn't really needed in a floor climb but 3 mage jobs was certainly not the best set up but I was desperate.

We did well I suppose, got to floor 10 and timed out...just had a code lamp to go....if only we hadn't killed that gear and lost a minute...

I suppose the only thing of interest lately was Dynamis and only because I unintentionally MPKed everyone (yeah I know...) basically Shammus always tries to get a clean pull on the 4 statues in front of megaboss but they always link, this time it looked really good and for a moment it looked clean so I yelled on vent "NO LINK!".

Unfortunately just after i'd said that loads of mobs then appeared and zoomed past my screen, it was too late and the damage was done, Shammus was already at camp and they were doomed, so in all my courage and bravery...I hid.

When I went to camp some people were dead, a lot of the mobs didn't get attacked so had moved back to their start positions and I attempted to help control the mobs at camp, too many mobs and too much death already and I guess I got the death I deserved.

As for excitement, well I was hoping we'd be doing "Splitting Heirs" all week but we didn't take La Vaule (S) back so that's a no, i've also been trying to get Alfsta and Linnd to do ENM with me for a while but it never seems to work out, I blame different time-zones, added to that Dannik has suddenly shown up and stolen them, saying they owe him a Hagun so I guess ENM is out of the question for a while too...

PS Adding to this gloriously boring week we are farming in sky right now and trying to pop temperance in sea...awesome. Well at least we have a lot of Icelands coming up in dyna and an Ultima in Limbus.

AAAAAAAAAAARGH!

That sums up my feelings towards Execute right now.

Look i'll put it straight up right here, my main job is Paladin, i'm sure most of you realise, in fact, the only reason I leveled Red Mage was to benefit my Paladin (eg Merit Pts, Nyzul Isle) but I also understand that sometimes I will have to come red mage to events.

Now the problem arises when I ALWAYS come red mage (take note Execute) I have made it clear on countless occasions that I absolutely love everything to do with Paladin so much so that I arrive at events with execute on Paladin as a huge hint, today I guess I reached a breaking point as I got told to yet again come red mage to an event, this time Sea.

So you let someone who has gone AWOL for a long time come PLD but I have to go on my least favourite job? They do have RDM too you know, how about Einherjar? I'm not gonna name names here but you've got a PLD there who tries to be a DD. Now if you're gonna come PLD do something useful, get hate on some slept mobs so that when they wake up they go after you and not some squishy mages.

Or even better how about you just turn to me and say exactly how you feel, you think my Paladin sucks fucking elephant scrotum, I am the poorest excuse for a Paladin to have ever existed so you will make sure your good DDs are on Paladin just to keep me off it.

Basically it got to the point today that when I got told to come rdm I just warped out, went /away and watched some TV.

Now that's off my chest...

Move onto better stuff...sort of;

Thursday we were doing Ouryu Cometh, now the moment this was announced I was really looking forward to it, haven't tanked this bad boy in a long time and that time I was still kinda poorly geared and it was my first time, so obviously what happens? Yep couldn't connect to FFXI, worse yet is we ended up wiping to Ouryu, oh well bring on Monday, looking forward to it...cue another internet crash then.

Aristocrats hit another milestone this week, we beat Dynamis - Valkurm! Now back in it's hayday i'm sure AC would have pwned the zone but we have a lot of members who have done few to no Dreamlands so it took some adpating, however we only minorly lost the last Valkurm so it was nice to get it done yesterday.

Also I had a weird revelation during the week, how much I owe to AC and SoV, I joined AC first, when I joined I had only recently started playing FFXI again after a long break, I think I had one gear set and not the best grasp on endgame tanking. During my time in AC I improved as a player and developed Idle and Enmity gear sets.

However I feel I owe most to SoV and especially Dizzmal, he is certianly one of the most helpful people I could have met on FFXI, my PLD wouldn't even be half of what it is today without his and SoVs help. I came into SoV with my Idle and Enmity sets and little sky experience.

I now have my haste gear, all that sky gear (W legs yummy!) when to be honest I could easily have been turned away from SoV when I applied which just makes me even more grateful.

Ah well, had to end the post on a high note I suppose.

Interesting week

Ok first things first, when you decide to update your blog weekly, write everything down! I'm now having to torture my memory for when stuff actually happened!

Anyway let's start with Saturday a week ago, the setting Einherjar, we're doing a T1 and Seigan has just decided to join the same shell as me, obviously it's all going smoothly since it's a T1 after all then we get to the megaboss, a big ass buffalo so what does Seigan do? Summons Odin! 9999 damage! IT'S OVER 9000!!! Wish I took a screenshot of that...

Anyway, now I bring you to this picture here, it's nothing much really but I and I suspect many others couldn't help but find Sylnome getting trounced by an Aura Pot incredibly funny, after all what are these? EM or Tough? Just remember kids, Aura Pots can and will still kill you!


Also I would like to add that with regards to Dreamlands, those zones aren't easy but I suspect we're getting the hang of it, almost had the Dunes but there was a minor mishap at the end...I won't name names!

Finally I bring you to probably my favourite point of the week! Hell if I remember what day it was but I ended up doing ISNM, ANNM and Splitting Heirs with other members of SoV. ISNM went smoothly...as it should the Puk is a joke and especially for me since I got the only ore! :)

ANNM also went smoothly, this obviously in comparison to a time I remember before where we got eaten by all those tigers, I was actually worried that I was being relied on to sleep, ES sleepga = 90secs of sleep compared to ES sleepga II a blm can give but hey ho, we still won and dun dun dun! Shitty drops!.

Last but by no means least, Splitting Heirs! After our previous attempt...5 people and it went horribly, we went in with 6, Neojuggernaut (pld/dnc), Dizzmal (mnk/nin), Allyrose (drg/sam), Alfster (sam/nin), Dierdren (whm/sch), me (rdm/whm). This one went so much better, we kept the pld and mnk minis killed and I slept the blm (magic resistance on a bunch of DDs? BFD!) and just proceed to chip away at the big guys health and he eventually drops! WITCH SASH!

So those who want it to proceed to lot, I roll a 532 or sommin, no way surely? Dizzmal and Alfster proceed to do poor lots and I start getting excited, the only person standing between me and a witch sash is Dierdren...she rolls...520! WINNER! Suddenly i'm so excited and then boom kicked from pt, except I don't realise it for a good 2mins and they're laughing away on vent and i'm perplexed, I proceed to call them douches, yeah they're doing it for a joke but they still are ;)

Anyway Dier trades me the Witch Sash (which kills her inside I think) and I am a happy man again! Unfortunately we then proceed to lose La Vaule at the end of the week much to our surprise and I guess my punishment was to come to sky to "test out" the Witch Sash, you guys suck...

Douche hats stay firmly ON!

Well that was the term coined to us by Dizzmal when we appeared in sky one fateful Monday night to see 3 other linkshells + us fighting over despot.

So anyway i'm getting ready to go to sky, this is about 30mins before gather time when someone says "I've got Despot", so now there's several of us rushing to sky to help only to discover what could well be one of the most bizarre situations I have ever seen, seems a guy was trying to solo Despot but couldn't, got desperate and started inviting random people, at one point I saw Allyrose and a wings member both pounding on Despot (sorry no pic).
So that party was disbanded, people begun to die and low and behold Despot turns yellow! Claim, claim, claim! I remark, probably to everyone's annoyance, we get it and bam Gem of the West woohoo!

So we continue into the run, i'm told to drop pt so we can reform the alliance, do so and put up my flag, i'm on Paladin with my flag up so what do you think happens next?

Yep a random pt invite, begs the question, do people look at the person's location when they send you a /tell for a pt? Oh I dunno, also, yeah I appreciated Negaa's joke invite too.

Anyway, back to the run, next moment of interest was when we decided to check up on Faust, wasn't there so we checked the kite room and low and behold (i'm using that a lot) there was a rdm attempting to solo it, we waited in earnest for him to drop, people started to lose confidence, arguing that he had it nothing to worry about but we stayed put none the less.

Wouldn't ya know it we were right to stay because at around 50% he loses it, Faust clearly pissed off at constantly being bound, gravitied, DoTed and nuked hits back and slaughters him, easy Summerstone right there!

Finally i'll wrap up this blog entry with another point of interest, after Sky I got given a pearl to Shamus's linkshell "Giggity" (already got 4 damn linkshells why'd I need a 5th dammit!) anyway Auxilium was interested in killing Flockbock...for the crafting item I guess so I agree to help even though i'm tired as fuck so we have: PLD/NIN (me), NIN/WAR (Auxilium), WHM/BLM (Peitha), SAM/WAR (Caldar), we promptly fight him and wipe at around 50% (again no pic of that, shame).

So we pick ourselves up and Negaa decides to join us on SMN/WHM to be out refresh bitch, scrappy fight again and just when it looks like he may be dying he starts bullying us, low on MP, HP getting slaughtered it looks bad but then @7% health Caldar and I both have TP so I open a Swift Blade and he closes with Tachi: Gekko, Darkness SC and Flockbock is downed! Our reward for our efforts?


Yup, 3 sodding Earth crystals, should have expected as much really, we all died (except Negaa, fucking bastard) and all for 3 bloody Earth crystals...ah well.

First post of hopefully many

Today I begin blogging about my Final Fantasy exploits, the blog name itself I feel is quite apt to my in game experiences.

Anyway I will be keeping this one short and sweet, really want to accompany my blog entries with screenshots in the future and alas I have none right now!