Since my last post here, I finished Endwalker just before year’s end and am current caught up on Final Fantasy XIV Main Scenario Quest (MSQ) up to patch 6.18! So I find myself in some strange uncharted space on a number of fronts.
Losira is having a great time clubbing with friends and so many in our group have paired up and gotten Eternally Bonded (in game Marriage)! I love the in game wedding ceremonies! So our group is going through some changes. It’s really interesting to see how this all plays out and evolves, but I can’t help but feel maybe just a little bit jealous. That in itself is absolutely fascinating to me.
There are a lot of things to do yet in the game, but the social stuff is really where I spend a lot of time, especially now that Data Center travel is live. So Losira can finally go to the other Data Centers, Aether and Crystal. So far she’s only been to Crystal to visit Teraflare and Pluto’s Kiss, and the infamous Billboard Party on Balmung! I even made a new friend over there talking and dancing for hours!
But closer to home, the doki doki moments just keep on coming. Oh shoot, it’s way too late at night for this!
I am really enjoying my play through of Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward! The story has totally sucked me in and I’m spending a lot of enjoyable time doing other things in the the world as well. My anxieties about playing group content are a receding memory as I routinely jump into dungeons and trials of the main story as a tank, blind rather than viewing a guide first! I must say that this game has stolen my heart.
But the heart wants what it wants, and I guess some hearts may want me, maybe? This past weekend, I was at the Rave Weekend parties at the Allure Lounge. Friday night was great! Music, dancing, and I got some good videos recorded too! I was really excited about doing it again on Saturday. By this time I was back to mostly being on my own and not part of a group as the group I had been with had gone through some romantic realignments and such. This wasn’t a problem for me, things come and go. And I’m used to going to all kinds of things on my own anyway, story of my life, lol.
Saturday, I’d no sooner got into line before I found myself in two separate conversations with two different people, both wanting attention. Then further behind me I spied two more friends who I’d also be talking or dancing with later. I was feeling a little overloaded and wasn’t sure how I was going to manage all of this. I like all of these people, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But I didn’t really want to be anyone’s steady girl friend either, at least I didn’t think so. I’m a Tank main, but GF main? Could I even play that role? IRL, I’m taken, but does that even matter in Eorzea?
I ended up dancing most of the night with two of the four friends and having a good time overall. A third danced elsewhere and I had a chance to talk to him before he left. It was his first time at the lounge, and he said it was fun. The fourth danced near us for a bit and I think was trying to get my attention, but I was torn between an ongoing conversation with one and also in the middle of recording video. But mostly I was worried about how to manage the other guys strong interest in me. Eventually the fourth guy left and I have not heard from him. He’s one of my Free Company mates and one of the first friends Losira made, so he’s special to me. But I think I did a bad job of showing it.
Losira started as my main character in Phantasy Star Online 2, little over a year ago. She was named for Losira, last of the Kalandans from the Star Trek original series episode, That Which Survives. And she was part of a larger project of mine to project more of my own characteristics, race, gender, etc., onto my game avatars. This was something I had avoided in the past so as not to be a target of harassment in the games I played.
From PSO2, Losira was reborn on the Island of Kalanda in Animal Crossing New Horizons and then later catching them all in Temtem. Most recently, Losira has found a home in Eorzea in Final Fantasy XIV. It is here in FFXIV that Losira has been having the most fun of late. She came to be here because I wanted to experience the party scene in the Primal data center, but my main character is in Aether. So the only option was to start a new character in Primal and level her enough to attend the parties.
Losira loves to dance!
So am I a party girl yet? Hmm depends on who you ask I guess. My Free Company mates probably think a resounding Yes! Leveling Losira has been so much fun and I’ve learned so much! I feel like there’s a lot of me as I am, and as I would like to be inside of her too. So I guess The Losira Project has been something of a success! I’ve had a lot of fun with the parties and it’s brightened the whole leveling process giving me even more motivation to play the game better and better.
Losira knows how to party!
She’s not just an alt, she’s 2nd Main. Her big sister, Loressa, and I go way back though, all the way to Vanadiel, and will always be 1st Main. But that’s a tale for another time.
It’s been quite a while since my last post! Since that time, I am not only still alive, I think I might in some way be thriving! There’s been plenty of trouble to lose sleep over, but I found more refuge than I had expected to weather the storm.
In particular, I’ve been spending a lot more time in the online game, Final Fantasy XIV. Progressing through the story, placing in the top 100 on my server for the Ishgardian Restoration rankings, and even attending in game dance parties! Eorzea has truly been a refuge for me.
I thought I was pretty lucky to avoid the installation hell that many experienced with the North American launch of Phantasy Star Online 2 on the PC. I guess you can run, but you cannot hide! The game yeeted itself right off my PC while I was looking dead at it! Wow!
So I manually uninstalled it following the instructions here, and am now reinstalling it using the PSO2 Tweaker. Sega and Microsoft really dropped the ball on this launch. I’ve never had any game just uninstall itself like this one did.
The last couple of months I’ve been giving Star Trek Online a lot more of my gaming attention and it is paying off, so to speak. It’s a challenge to play more than one MMO regularly. I played Star Trek Online from the very beginning pretty much, but at that time the game had a subscription and I was playing one other subscription game at the time, Final Fantasy XI.
I didn’t want to be paying two subs per month, so after about a year of Star Trek Online, following some good job news and better pay, I treated myself to a lifetime subscription which cost about $240 at the, April 2011. About a year later, the game went free to play (F2P) and work and life demanded more of my attention, so I stopped playing regularly for a bit.
During that hiatus, the game underwent a number of changes as its expression of the F2P business model evolved. By the time I got back to the game, I was greeted by lock boxes and starships for sale. I was also greeted by an accrued balance of 20,000 Zen or so. I had not realized that I was getting a Zen allowance as a Gold lifetime member. This was nice, but not really anything I was going to use, at first.
Long story short, I got caught up in the Discovery Lock Box craze and decided to try my luck. I burned through a lot of Zen buying lock boxes and keys. After opening 100 boxes and failing to get the ship I wanted, I decided that was enough. And I felt a bit foolish having spent so much Zen. But then I realized that I had essentially gotten back the money I had spent on the lifetime sub in the first place. So not a bad outcome at all. And I’m still having fun playing the game.
I never really get the random fleet or guild invites I get in MMOs. I usually ignore those, not really offended, just puzzled why someone would invite a total stranger into their group.
At least in Final Fantasy XIV, if I get a Free Company invite, I can look up some info on the FC before I decide. But Star Trek Online has no apparent function for that, at least that I know of and could easily use. But following me around after I’ve rejected your fleet invite 3 times will definitely not win me over!
As the new year begins, I find myself contemplating the Steam Holiday Sale, which is ending soon on Jan 2nd. I’ve already picked up a few games I’ve had my eye on, like Skyrim, and Final Fantasy XIII. And I may pick up one or two more. But now I’ve resigned myself to the reality that I’ll probably never play through all of the Steam games now on my hard drive.
I guess I’m turning into more of a digital game collector rather than hardcore gamer. My days of playing Pac Man while receiving electric shocks, or staying up all night to finish Civilization, or that time I had to keep playing Shenmue because I literally forgot how to exit the game, are long past. LOL
Oh well, collecting is fun too, and the Steam sales make it cheap. So I regret nothing!
The end of the holiday season will find my hard drive littered with a variety of new games, mostly bought via Steam. When I was younger, I could imagine spending hours, days, weeks, completing a new game. But those days are over. Now, I just don’t have the time with work and family. Of course that’s a good thing. After all guys like me are usually expected to be living in their mom’s basement. I’ve been blessed with far more than I could have imagined when I left home all those years ago.
So now, I am a dim sum gamer. As the cart of new, and often discounted older games, comes by my table, I am happy to just eat a small serving here and there. I know that most of my games are not going to be beaten. But I can still have fun with them nevertheless. That was the real epiphany for me. Getting older doesn’t mean I have to stop playing games. I just play and enjoy them differently than my kids do. In the end, it’s all good!
It’s been a long time since any PC game made me rage, but rage I did last night in Diablo 3. Though saying I was raging in the game might be an overstatement as much of my time was spent getting disconnected. Maybe the gods of the internet just hate me, but time after time I’d start playing the game only to have the latency jump up and bite me in the ass.
I checked the forums and did it all. Upgraded my router firmware, forwarded ports, and updated Windows. All to no avail. And of course I was getting disconnected during battles, so I died, a lot. Eventually I guess the game showed me some mercy by not letting me connect at all. Instead, I was treated to a dessert of Error 3007. Oh you!
Hey look, the Diablo III installer downloaded overnight. Thanks Santa! LOL, can’t install it yet, but soon. I don’t usually get swept away with the hype, but I did play the open beta a bit and I think on this occasion I’ll make an exception. I think my work over the next few days is going to be waaaay distracted.
A week ago I was feeling adventurous and decided to give Final Fantasy XIV a shot. It was only $19.99 and while I had heard that the launch was a total disaster, the game had undergone a lot of changes, fixes, and improvements since that time. I figured that the 30 day free period would be enough time to see if Eorzea was a place I’d be taking up residence.
One week later and I am totally frustrated and disgusted. I can’t even get into the game past the opening tutorial level because it keeps crashing with a Direct X error. I’ve tried running windowed, full screen, and turned off anti-aliasing to no avail. While I suppose there is some solution that might allow me to continue, this is just ridiculous. I can’t believe Square Enix started charging the monthly subscription again for a game this broken.
Regardless of their reasoning with the big 2.0 relaunch coming up, you can just let bugs like this stay in the code and charge money for it. At this point I’ve lost all hope and respect for Square Enix. I won’t likely be returning to this game, and I’ve also canceled my Final Fantasy XI account.
I really wanted to play and love this game, but it won’t even let me get started.
The last PC I built, Defiant, is pretty long in the tooth these days. It’s a pretty much maxed out XP box that I have no further plans to upgrade. But it does play older games fairly well, so I still get on it from time to time. It’s also the box I use to read JManga books on my iPad.
Anyway, I’ve had the itch to build a new gaming PC for a while and started to spec and price parts today. I’ve decided to call the new PC, Constellation, and build it around the Intel i5 2500K. Why the i5 rather than an i7? Well, Constellation isn’t meant to be a cutting edge gaming PC, just something with decent performance. Though I am choosing a motherboard that will support an i7 once its cost comes down.
Right now, Constellation is weighing in at about $800 which I’m not ready to spend just yet. So I’ll be doing some bargain hunting on the components I’ve listed in my spreadsheet so far. Not sure when I’ll finish this, but it feels good to have started the project!
With the holiday and the promise of some good bargains this weekend, I’d been revisiting my plan to build a new gaming PC. The guys I work with are big gamers, so I’ve been looking to up my playing time.
I had initially thought about building a new rig last year in order to play Final Fantasy XIV, but by now, anyone who follows gaming knows how big of a disaster FFXIV proved to be. Square Enix is still hammering out the bugs, but it still isn’t ready for me to take that plunge.
Since that time, I’ve been playing Star Trek Online, which has been fun, but just not the same experience that I had with FFXI. I really missed Laureta, my main character there and the world itself. So while cleaning up my old PC and optimizing it for the games it can play, I decided to see if I could get my old characters back. I also wanted to see if SE had a payment system compatible with the way I wanted to pay.
Long story short, I’m back! It took nearly 4 hours of updates, but I have returned to Vana’diel! Swinging a sword with Laureta has never felt so good!
It was never easy being black and being a NASCAR fan, but I loved fast cars and the colorful personalities of the racers. Many a fan will tell you that the quality of the competition has suffered for a variety of reasons, and viewership is in decline. I started getting bored with it once Jimmie Johnson started walking away with one championship after another.
But in the end, the thing that ultimately made me turn off the TV were the racist fans. During the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaigns, the hostility towards Barack Obama, solely because of the color of his skin, the same as my own, from NASCAR fans and the right wing leaning teams, drivers, and the organization itself was just too much. I just couldn’t bear to watch anymore on TV. And my dream of attending a race in person was abandoned. Why go somewhere where people will hate you?
Still, I’d keep an eye on the races, albeit only through Monday morning news articles on the web. But booing the First Lady, Michelle Obama, is the last straw. I’m done with you NASCAR and your pig-headed, racist fan base.
