Endgame Viable

Here’s my feedback to SOE regarding Landmark’s proposed monetization plans: Hey can I just pay you and not get spammed with advertising for potions and costumes? That would be super. Oh, and by the way I already paid you. Maybe factor that into your plans, too. Also, are you ever planning to increase the percentage of your game that is finished? It’s been at 60% now for a month. (Okay, that probably wasn’t fair. But I still think it’s ridiculous to claim that Landmark is anywhere near 60% finished.) (209 words.)

This thought occurred to me one night while I was running around in a FATE group in FFXIV: Why am I enjoying this zerg but when I play in a GW2 zerg in Escape from Lion’s Arch I want to gouge my own eyes out? When I’m in a FFXIV zerg (or Rift, or most any other), I have a feeling of control. I’m filling a specific role, and when I execute my part of the plan, the whole group experience is better. I feel like I’m part of the team, one of the people working together, following some unspoken telepathic plan to reach the collective goal of loot and experience. When the enemy is killed, I have a sense of a job well done. (280 words.)

I don’t have a problem with Blizzard’s $60 for a level 90 character. It’s within reach, but high enough to keep it from being an impulse buy (for me, at least). I think I would only pay to level a brand new character. It seems like a waste of money to take a mid-level or higher character up to 90. If you’re a person who can play all day and night, I could see where $60 seems high, because you can probably level a character to 90 within a month of subscription time, which is $15 I think. Even I could probably level a character to 90 in less than four months, which is $60 of subscription time. (Not counting 3-month discounts.) (312 words.)

Hrm, well, this is the first day I haven’t had a workday post scheduled in advance in a long time, and I can’t find anything among my Drafts that is both finished and interesting. I can report the fascinating news that I reached White Mage level 50 in FFXIV last night. I had been buying Darklight Healing gear for a while, so I was able to quickly jump from around item level ~40 to item level ~60 in a span of moments. I only need to buy the Darklight robe to complete that set, then it’s off to Crystal Tower to farm iLevel 80 gear. (270 words.)

Amazingly, I completed Titan Hard Mode in a PUG! Finally. It took around three weeks of trying. I stubbornly refused to use the Party Finder because, since I had spent so much time attempting it in a PUG, I wanted to finish it in a PUG. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make much sense. :) He's gooooone!! Yay! So I finally got my Relic Weapon. And I upgraded it, too. Yay. (83 words.)

I tried out a service called Pingzapper that might be useful if you’ve experienced weird lagging in MMOs or I guess really any game. The alleged problem is that your ISP might be “traffic shaping” your data in a way that interferes with games. They are almost certainly messing up your streaming videos as much as they can get away with, so it makes sense that they would extend that policy to other areas. Because god forbid people should have high-speed Internet that they can use for whatever they want. (376 words.)

Still wanting to want to play GW2 more, but falling short. Here’s a summation of the new GW2 content: Same chaotic zerg fights, different location. I will give them credit for blowing up Lion’s Arch though. That’s cool. But the stuff you do in the blown up zone isn’t enough to pull me away from FFXIV. I still have no idea who Scarlet is. Or why Lion’s Arch got blown up. Only in this last update was I able to put a face to the name, because it’s the first time I can ever remember seeing Scarlet. At least I assume that was her up on the ship looking diabolical in the cut scene. (223 words.)

So yeah, somehow two whole months have disappeared and I haven’t done much writing. It’s actually more intimidating to try to revise existing manuscripts than it is to try to write new manuscripts. Anyway, in order to spark some positive momentum, I challenged myself to write a 100-word summary of the plot of The Sovereign of Tel. That probably sounds trivially simple, but for me to zoom that far out from the story and give such a super high-level overview of it is quite a challenge. I have tried to write “pitches” of my books before, but those only included the setup for the story. For this, I wanted the entire story arc from start to finish. (459 words.)

When I was leveling the Archer/Bard, I often looked at Thaumaturges and Black Mages and wished I were them. They always seem to do more damage, and they just have cooler spells with their fire and ice and whatnot. And even more importantly, they actually have a useful Limit Break. (I would not wear the silly Gandalf hats, though.) Then I actually played a THM through level 15, and quickly changed my mind. It’s not often that I actively dislike a class, or find it so annoying to play that I actually wish harm upon the developers who created it. But THM was definitely one of those classes. It was very aggravating to solo with, because every time you move out of an enemy telegraph, you stop casting. And the casting times are really, really long, so by the time you’re ready to get another spell off, the enemy is forcing you to move again. Once I got to 15 I was glad to park that class. It will probably be the absolute last class I ever get to 50. (490 words.)

Yeah I pre-ordered the $79 Imperial Edition of ESO. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it? I didn’t do it for the Imperial race, which I don’t care about. I fully expect Zenimax to make that available for purchase later anyway. I didn’t do it because I’m an Elder Scrolls fan boy and I think ESO is awesome. (I tolerate TES and I merely think ESO is better than average.*) I mainly bought it for the horse. Because I happen to remember how much gold it took to buy those things in the beta, and I was able to calculate the amount of time it would take to buy one based on the rate that I was accumulating gold. (Hint: Infinite.) (671 words.)