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Friday, February 4, 2022

Distractions, Distractions

Today has been a day for LoFi music.

Part of that is dealing with the unexpected stuff at work, part of it is the ice storm that's currently trying to switch over to snow right now. 

This is what it was like around mid-morning.
That's ice and ice pellets on the ground and
road. Not snow or slush. And I was not crazy
enough to go driving in it. (Photo from the
Cincinnati Enquirer.)
 

And part of it is just dealing with the hand I was dealt with in Classic.

***

I got on Card this morning, when nobody else was around (and at work there was a (very boring) all hands meeting talking about sales), and killed some mobs for the Frostsaber questline. I never really did any of those quests because I never really wanted a Frostsaber*, and to be fair there's a lot of quests up in Winterspring that I never did on Card, so there's plenty of quest opportunity there. Because of that, Card is about halfway to L63 right now, still not having gone to Outland, and at this rate I think she can make L64 fairly easily before the grind starts to get extreme.

But it's something to do, you know, when I'm not on Neve.

I did get on Season of Mastery for a bit, but I discovered that quick leveling does have one big problem: you outlevel your ability to make gold for training purposes very fast. Since you then have to spend time grinding crafting so you can sell it on the AH and make gold that way, it slows you down a bit on an artificial basis. Still, the pace of leveling is actually, well, fun. It's faster than the old Classic servers, naturally, but it just feels smoother, I guess. I haven't gotten to the mid-30s, which is where Classic really started to slow down (before TBC Classic gave leveling a boost with XP tweaks), so we'll see when I get there.

Those two things serve as a distraction, of course, because the big question mark is what to do with Briganaa. 

I've thought about taking her to another guild's raid that fits in more with my time slot, but some of the guilds I'd have considered either left the server or blew up and don't have much of a presence at all any more.

"What happened to Conquerors?" I asked when I heard that another guild, Midnight Souls, blew up a few weeks ago. "I haven't seen any of them around much lately."

"Oh, they imploded several months ago," someone replied. "No big loss if you ask me."

Considering I'd never had any bad interactions with them, I was kind of surprised.

So.... Scratch off two potential guild landing spots.

Even so, I'm not exactly sure if I want to just go raid somewhere else right now, anyway. I did raid with another guild's alts on Az for a while back in Classic, but when that raid stopped being able to down Ragnaros due to geared people leaving, I found out that other guilds don't have it as well as we did. And with people not really spamming LFG (or using the LFG tool) to set up dungeon runs as much these days, there isn't as much of a chance to get to know people before I'd consider joining a raid opening.

Plus, there's that little matter of running the gearing up rat race should I join another guilds' raids, and.... No. I'm good for now.

So I'll just pull Brig out of the garage on Fridays, and occasionally help out when my questing buddy needs a second for making spellcloth, but I think that Brig is going to just not be my focus for a while. I'm just not into the complexity of her rotation, and I'd rather not be told how to up my DPS by people I barely know. 

There's always the option of server transfers, but I'm not really interested in that right now. If I transfer anywhere, it's faction transferring rather than server transferring.

***

There is at least one option available that I've not fully explored: Final Fantasy XIV.

As nice as it has been seeing FF XIV kind of stick it to WoW without really trying, and that FF XIV has a ton of story that's (apparently) well done, there's a lot about FF XIV that makes me uneasy. The whole "stick a leaf on your name so people know you're new" does kind of bother me when you're trying to just kind of blend in and not be noticed. FF XIV does encourage people to help out newbies, but you know, I'd rather not be helped if it means everybody knowing you're new.

And there's the art part about FF XIV. You know, the part that screams "anime": bunny people, cat people, tiny people that have a vaguely childlike look about them. Thankfully, that last group don't make me feel as dirty as when I see the Elin in TERA.** There's the anime look of the humans too, which simply doesn't do it for me, because the little anime I watched were first generation anime, like Speed Racer and Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato. I don't have that generational connection to the genre and art that it seems a ton of people do now, so it's just not my thing.

Still, it is a possibility. If I can find a server that works for me. I already poked around enough to try to create a toon on my son's server only to find that they're not accepting new toons there now.

Oops.



*I did the raptor grind on Quintalan back in Wrath, so I knew what the grind meant.

**I still cringe when I think about it. The fanservice to the outfits in TERA aside, the Elin alone --as well as the players who "dress" their Elin in the most revealing outfits possible-- make me want to vomit. There's a reason why I uninstalled the game, and it has nothing to do with how my Elves looked while playing.


EtA: Frostsaber, not Wintersaber. Oops.

10 comments:

  1. I usually have no problem with anime-style games but I lasted half an hour in Tera, the one time I tried it. It is literally the only mmorpg I've ever played that had the effect on me you describe. And they toned it down for the Western release, if I remember right.

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    1. I just simply can't believe that the developers didn't realize what they were creating. If there was ever a game designed to attract that sort of... uh... "human", this was it. You can't "but the story!" away visuals like that.

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  2. The "raptor grind" in Wrath was just doing dailies for a couple weeks though! While the original Wintersaber Trainers were endless mob grinding forever and ever... then again, I think they already nerfed that somewhat in BC with the greatly increased reputation gains from everything.

    And nooo, not Final Fantasy! XD I have nothing against the game except that anime is also really not my kind of thing, but I gotta say the way people were proselytising for it during the height of the "play FF not WoW!" phase was quite annoying...

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    1. I noticed that the trainers are a rep grind on the Alliance side, rather than dailies, but the rep grind works out well for just going out and killing mobs for rep plus XP. As far as I can tell, however, the rep grind is still a grind, as it's not that much reputation per quest turn-in.

      I'm not a big fan of the proselytizing fans of that or any game, really. I did notice that some of those folks have dialed it back a bit, however, now that there's major issues with creating characters, never mind logging in over there.

      Another big problem I have with FF XIV --one that is shared by Elder Scrolls Online-- is that you become the Anointed One practically from the beginning. Which is a bit nutty, if you ask me. I much prefer starting from nowhere and slowly working my way up the food chain, rather than jumping the line.

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  3. As far as Final Fantasy goes, I think if you are on a server in the Data Center you can group up with your son. You just wouldn't be able to join his guild. At least, that's my understanding. Right now is a bad time to try to join with the massively successful release of Endwalker. About all I can suggest is to try different times of the day with the server. Sometimes you can sneak in if server isn't full. That's what I did pre-Endwalker to join the server some of my guildies are on.

    That said, I didn't get very far in the game as it didn't grab me immediately. Part of it is the art style, part of it is that I wasn't ready to commit to working through the main story quest with the trial account. Still, give the free trial a whirl. It might be the escape you are looking for.

    I did the Winterspring Frostsaber grind back in BC. I remember it taking about 24 hours play time worth of effort to grind it all out. I think I did part of it while the Thanksgiving rep buff was available so that would have been a good help. Once you get to the point you can kill the frost giants for the rep turn ins, things felt like they went much faster.

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    1. Yeah, I... uh... kind of noticed the impact of Endwalker on things over there. I'll probably try it out at some point; there's a certain appeal of the Lancer as a class which speaks to the historian in me. But yeah, like you and Shintar, the art doesn't really grab me that much. If I were raised on Nintendo and Playstation it might be a different story, but I cut my gaming teeth on Atari and Intellivision (and the TI Home Computer).

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  4. I did like Final Fantasy when I tried it aside from my disapproval of my characters outfits. She looked about thirteen and insisted on wearing inappropriately short skirts, lol.

    My problem with them was that the front end was awful. I finally gave up as it was pretty annoying. They got a D in account handling from me. Getting grumpy in old age I guess! but I could see going back. TotA

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    1. Ancient, you're making it sound like Final Fantasy is a Nair commercial from the 80s ("We wear short shorts.... Nair for short shorts....")

      The front end is, well, clunky. They're apparently working on that, but still it isn't the greatest for sure. I can see why it would drive you nuts.

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  5. Interestingly, FFXIV doesn't register as "anime" for me, really. I mean, I do think WoW is a bit comic-y, but somehow I don't think it's that level in XIV. Then again I played Ragnarok Online with its 2d sprites as characters...

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    1. Having seen anime become the dominant non-Disney cartoon style over the years, I can pine for the "old days" when Hanna-Barbera ruled the landscape. But yes, FF XIV does have a heavy anime feel to it from my angle.

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