When playing BLM, I can’t help but think of 1.) Mr. Crazy in Al Zahbi (Gadalar) and 2. Dilandau from Escaflowne. And every time I think of those two, I think of もえる (moeru). It was something Dilandau said a lot when he pretty much burned things up, and pretty much means to burn. Which is why another reason I hate playing BLM and was glad to be one step closer of getting rid of it after the introduction of Level Sync.

Level Sync, in short, is a god send. I can play with my friends for a quick, fun exp and not stress out about this or that. I already trust the people I am playing with, so I don’t have to worry about a mix bag of goods. I even managed to get my BLM from 32 to 35 in a day! Which I couldn’t be more than grateful to my friends for, especially staying until I got my level 35. The fact we had Bubumuri to ourselves sans the Leech farmers were a blessing to boot. Especially since many of the other camps are maxed out at the moment…

During the course of my bitter ranting towards BLM I found it funny I have been considering leveling DRK. Yeah, don’t choke on your food/drink/whatever there… its true. I really feel weird about it myself, but I have found that so far I kind of like it. Sure it takes a mighty LONG time to swing a weapon about and don’t even get me going on how long it took me to unlock the job (I’ve had the quest for so many YEARS I lost count), but I found it cathartic to swing my sword around and watch the mob die either in one hit or in two. Well, as long as I wasn’t fighting something that could seriously kick my Aketon and Beret wearing Taru butt.

My LS has pretty much agreed to do a get together set once in awhile to work on subs and jobs that we want to, but are typically too busy to get a pick up party for. I’m sure I will get sick of seeing the mugs of some of those boys, but at least I can count on them for some good fun without stressing out too much. I just wish that we could use our emperor bands more frequently so that we could get all the charges we want in one day instead of having to wait 16 hours when we most likely will be busy doing other activities or attending to other obligations outside of FFXI. :

Over at JP Button, they have some questions asked by NA players for JP players that were posted on an anonymous BBS. Some of the answers are pretty consistent with what I remember reading from Dreams in Vana’diel a few years ago (primarily concerning /check and why Japanese go JP only), but there are some other interesting things in here too!

Personally, I also feel the same way they do about communicating in party. I know some people do not mind it, but as someone who has elementary understanding of the Japanese language, it is very frustrating to see a wall of kana fly past your screen and not fully understand what is going on. Or when you ask a basic question in alt-tab and the question goes ignored (which the one who was able to understand and communicate in Japanese exceptionally mad…). Then again, who knows? Maybe what I asked didn’t come out correctly on the other end. Kind of like how it took ages for S-E to release a (|Reward:|) tab to replace the BST Command (|Reward|) to make sense to JP what the heck EN were going on about.

I also agree with the rudeness that is sometimes in NA parties and I sometimes wish things were different. Sometimes I am also guilty of it! I caught myself a few times, and as someone who is always trying to teach 2 – 6 year olds to say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, I try to remember to do the same even to those people I am close and familiar with (Haha, like Orophen). It is a hard pill to swallow, but I also don’t think it helps with the culture differences. The Japanese are pretty high on the politeness scale, but many NA don’t quite understand all the distinct mannerisms or what could be offensive or not. I think more could be done to harvest some understanding, and I kind of wish that S-E could have given us tools to help understand what might be offensive or not instead of letting us run loose and letting chaos ensue. But I guess that would require a whole class on etiquette and mannerisms that I doubt many players would have the patience for…