Year 2

I can hardly believe it but FFXIV has been out for 2 years! Yet I've only written like once or twice in this blog. Shame on me... but then again I've only been playing sporadically. Well, dear diary (I guess), a lot has happened since the game began. I've gained many new friends as well lost a few due to a server reorganization, some drama, and more. All in all though, it's been a good year. Some people still remember me from the first linkshell I was in, Viva Eorzea, and it makes me very happy to see some of them alive and kicking. Yes, this means you too Grover because you're probably the only person who knows about this blog. Perhaps someday you'll read it too. Thanks for saying hi every so often! 2.0 is coming soon so hoping to see more of you guys! Unfortunately, I got into a fight with one of the members and felt like I should leave rather than cause drama. Buuuut I think he actually ended up switching servers so that's a slight relief.

Anyways, I also spent a short time with Lailiyah Mihli after she created a social linkshell known as the Ninja Pirates. We had a few members of Viva here too and for a time we were a pretty tightly knit group. That is... perhaps until we got a little too large and acquired a few new members who I didn't really know very well. If anything I should say that I'm someone who will tolerate no injustices (I once talked down a bully at school in front of a crowd!). So it made me very sad to see someone treated badly by another member of the linkshell. Unfortunately, had I lifted a finger to do or say anything, it may have caused a lot of trouble for Mihli and perhaps caused some of her friends to leave the shell. Seeing as how I'm not exactly integral to the shell and probably not on as good terms with Mihli as the other person, I decided to leave once more. I'm probably going to get a bad reputation for this but as long as nobody else does! All I can do is shake my head towards elitism and hope everyone else can deal with it better than I can.

That said, I was recently invited to an endgame linkshell. I'll leave the name out in hopes that this post doesn't get googled and the members find out about my disapproval of elitism lol. So far I've enjoyed it and the members are actually much nicer than I had expected. But it's always good to have old friends here to prop you up when you feel down. The two I'm most familiar with here are the leader: Taru Taru (another Viva vet!) and Aurnia Thymes. Without these two I don't know how long I would be able to last emotionally because this is seriously the tiger pits of the above mentioned subject that deserves so much of my ire and resentment. However, though I may be progressing more towards endgame activities, I swear I won't let it change my attitude towards other people.

Slight Progression Screens of Dalamud

Ok, enough of the negative and more positive. Hmmm... Let's see. 2.0 is around the corner and things are heating up, literally! Eorzea is nearing impending doom as a giant red ball of unknown origin and composition, known only as Dalamud, draws ever nearer by the day. Many of the new missions included in the recent patches are excellently written and I was actually tearing up when the three nations finally agreed to an alliance. This was because just like how the three nations themselves endured and overcame many obstacles, we as players did the same alongside them. From a shaky and nearly unplayable game to the XIV of today; we really had to struggle to like the game and even pay for it; this finally paid off with the recent announcement of 2.0. I cried for both the formation of the alliance and everything we (as players) had gone through over the past two years to ensure the safety of Eorzea. Many thanks to Yoshi-P and the team working on FFXIV!As for the recent relic system: It's an interesting random number generator game but it helps to have a long term goal to dull the sharp edge that is the wait until late September. I'm pretty sure I'll work on the black mage artifact since it references Shantotto; anything with Shantotto must have comedy involved so I'm looking forward to seeing the quest! Now if I were only lucky enough to get there... Well that's all for today!

Lastly... some of my favorite collected screenshots throughout the two years! Click to view full size, otherwise they look really weird.