Last year, I remember doing CoP 4-2 as a BLU and having one heck of a time doing it. Our set up then (for those unfamiliar with my CoP adventures), was BLUx3, PLD, WHM, and BLM. Even though my brother was late, he was one of the reasons I was envious of him: he always managed to save the day with his nukes. Kind of like a super hero, but not as cool since he’s my younger brother.

Since an old friend has returned to the game, we decided to help him through CoP. Unfortunately, he was last on 4-2 and it was the same mission I remember panicking over before and during the mission. But then I remembered that my brother was awesome as BLM, Oro and I had BLM leveled, and proceeded to ask Mekare if we could take BLM instead of BLU this time around.

Now, I was pretty damn nervous. I had only played BLM (recently) just by AMing pets, and the last time I remember playing BLM with other people was… when I started Calaera? Yup. Eons ago. Couple that with some other things that were going on, and I was pretty much a mess going into this. In fact, I don’t even know what the hell got into me when I did this:

Sad, no? Anyway, Oro told me to do light nukes throughout and close up with AM. We talked the guy out of starting out with 2HR and then waltz in doing our job. Unlike last time, there were no deaths and I could actually see what was going on instead of blindly praying “PLEASE DIE ALREADY.” I even landed the killing blow, which was really awesome. Probably not in the same cool and wth’ish fashion my brother did it, but at least it went down by my own hand and not someone else’s.

After the kill shot on Ouryu. The damage on this one was a little over 500. My highest Freeze dmg was well over 800. Didn't think I would get more than 500 - 600...

Playing BLM is really satisfying in a way. Maybe because I’m actually seeing myself make some kind of dent on the mob in one huge chunk. I don’t know. Whatever. It was fun and omfg I can’t wait to finish up BLM and do more sexy things. Unfortunately, I won’t get much playtime on July due to real life things, but when I return hopefully I can pick up and finish BLM by the time summer ends. :3

As a former WHM, I was always so damn annoyed when more than half the party would announce that Protect just went down as though I couldn’t see the lines of text that just announced that Mr. or Ms. Melee-With-A-Stick-Up-Their-Damn-Ass just had their Protect wear off. Same goes for status effects which I was usually on top of when I was playing my best as a WHM. Sure, way back when (and even at present) there were some really horrible mages than needed to be told this, but when it came from players you partied with several times or even for a dozen of levels? It would drive me nuts! Had they been paying attention, they would have noticed I was actually on my game and not picking my nose going “dur… lets see this here purty mob go boom with a ball of this here light!” or that I had cast Finale or that Bar spell even when I was a BRD or… heaven forbid… just trust that I am actually doing my job.

I play my job how I play it, and I let people play their jobs how they see fit unless: a.) they ask me to critique them or b.) something bad is going on, and I’m totally spazzing out. And, no, I don’t mean bad as in you have Protect down for a few seconds but something like the mob smacking someone’s head around and the only person who has Provoke isn’t Provoking no matter how many times we ask them to.

I think that is why it really grates on my nerves to see when other mages are being treated like they are slaves to melee, since I see it (and your experiences may vary) happening more often than not. If you are demanding a Haste or a -na, then my answer to you is to go buy yourself another account, dual box it, and have your own personal healer that you can do with at your disposal instead of having the audacity to send a /tell to the person demanding a Haste because you did not have it RIGHT AT THAT VERY SECOND LIKE OMG. Even going “Haste?” in LS/Party chat is damn rude. If that’s the game people are going to play, then I claim the right to flood people’s /tell stream with PROVOKE PROVOKE PROVOKE when someone isn’t Provoking when they should.

My point? Be kind to people. Pay it forward. Mages don’t treat Melee like shit, and Melee don’t treat Mages like you are  the Goddess Alatana’s gift to the world. I don’t care how damn important you are at x, y, or z or if you do a, b, c, and maybe even z; there are people behind those screens and they aren’t your damn bots! /rant

I know I am late on the ball with this, but with a busier than normal schedule last week it was really hard to find time to really sit down and collect my thoughts without wanting to bang on head on something.

Anyway, FFXIV formerly known as Rapture is the hottest topic lately and I can’t help but get giddy with excitement with the thoughts and ideas of what could possible be with the new MMO. Firstly, I am incredibly thrilled that there will be no leveling up via experience points. I’m personally exhausted of this system, and it always seemed so daunting even in WoW when you would look to see your EXP would be… a lot. Sure its fast to level up, but its still kind of a pain in the butt to see how much further you have to get to in order to get to the next level. But now the bigger question is: what will we be striving towards? Orophen/Derrick informed me that a lot of talk has been going on in the forums of weapons having learnable skills/traits/spells, possibility of needing to increase weapon affinity to get ahead, or maybe the introduction of a sphere like grid system into the game like FFX and FFXII. I’m ok with the first two, but the later? Ugh… I know a lot of people like this sytem, but I for one am not very fond of it at ALL. It won’t be a deal breaker for me, but I will most definitely not be in strong favor of this unless it was changed to curb my tendency to be really OCD about these kind of charts.

But since its really late for me and I’m practically running on fumes, here are some hopes/wishes I have for the new MMO:

• Return the Mandragora and give us a “boss” style of him.
• Please give us a better “guild” system. As much as I like the Linkshell system and find it useful, I also want a more intuitive Guild system that really helps us know what is going on (attendance, guild banks, etc).
• Allow us to interact with the environment more. I always thought it was crazy that we couldn’t lay on our own beds or sit down on chairs. Even RO allowed people to sit on chairs! Which is even older than FFXI!
• Mini-map. Seriously. This would make my life easier if I can see I am near my marker instead of having to always do /map or whatever. I get lost easily. Let me see where I am going on a mini-map! That way I won’t have to go in the wrong direction for 2 minutes or lead my entire linkshell in the wrong direction only to go “oops!” And, yeah, the later has happened to me before… /blush
• Let us have more customizable features. I’m worried that this won’t be possible. The game so far looks really gorgeous, but I have no idea if the Crystal Tools will actually give us the capability to customize our character a little more than the pre-set designs given to us in FFXI. Though its convient, I sometimes wish I had different color hair and/or eyes.
• Get rid of the senseless time sinks. Mostly the pauses inbetween synths and stuff.

And that is all I have in mind for now. Need to sleep now before I start to go crazy dreaming about Gremlins again…

Of course, people who aren’t really familiar with Seattle would think “Where is the f’ing Space Needle or Pike’s Place Market?!” Well, this is also a very prominent feature in Seattle especially if you are like me and come in from the bay. This is the Seattle viaduct that you can see from the ferry as you come into Seattle and as you head into the heart of downtown either by car or by foot. Too bad its supposed to be going away soon because of the earthquakes, and will be replaced by some kind of underground tunnel. Ick.

The, uh, background is kind of being worked on at the moment (neither myself or Orophen are really happy with it), but… its finally done! I seriously hope that in FFXIV, they continue to bring in Mandragoras. I would hate to give up my epic fight with my arch nemesis…