Not so much a falling out with them as moving on. Fatherhood had me campaigning for measly Allied Notes until I reached 150,000—
—then, after testing it on BRD/DNC with Joyeuse subbed
and Hymnus instead of that second March and promptly storing it, camping a
stingy motherfucker from
my immediate past any chance I got to login from my
3G connection for weeks (enough of a dick was this mob, why, he earned some dope rhymes:
♪I’ve waited days on Taisaijin
To drop that worthless hat
Then I got the Lv.30 cape
From a weak-ass lotto bat♫
♪So you’d think there was nothing to speak
About a pipsqueak who they named Chaneque
Whose loot the upgrade’s made antique
Whose physique requires no technique♫
♪So you wonder what’s with the mystique
Why the experience has been unique
And hope is bleak, no, up the creek
That I’ll ever move on from Chaneque♫
♪See, for all that shiny new gear
People are still camping out there
Every freakin’ person on the server
(Double that, after the merger)♫
♪Now I’m not saying the world’s all mine
Or telling others where they belong
Then again, that guy standing beside me
Could he be writing his own song?♫
—before
giving up another prize worth more to my obsessive-compulsive disorder than anything.) Now, after leveling BRD to the temporary 80-cap in various EXP outings, Abyssea being the most rewarding, I’m left with nothing but anticipation of creating an Oldboy in
DC Universe Online who can fly.
Always happens, I return to Boyahda after months slacking in group efforts, feeling quite invincible, and am clobbered on my very first goob. This time it was 1 EXP from Lv.76, requiring half an Emperor’s charge to recoup. Reminders for next time: get Reraise up, fool; try to keep hate on Korrigans for those binding 500+ Beatdowns; Stoneskin when not Antiphased; and don’t forget the three merits spent on Feral Howl. Elders and flies still con up to tough, so save the mandies who prove themselves on the higher end of the DC scale. Little monks are still hitting harder than my pet-buff build, but that might not last much longer and put an end to my Wisteria Lumber farming. Looks like 74-77 Den of Rancor Pucks on 75-79 Tormentors next, then Spongillas (78-79) vs. imps (79-81) in Caedarva.
A week of maybe an hour a night of this and I’m only a quarter into 76, though almost 100K richer; of course, half that goes to paying back Will for my Ebony Harp +2 fiasco, but it still should leave me enough to buy those last two songs (on AH this time, stupid) and some new jug pets: the
sheep looks like an Abyssea favorite, while the
monk I want to throw against
Elel for his
wake-up hat.
Getting bored leads to trying different things. The toughs I Familiar then go to town. Didn’t Sickle Slash used to kill EXP PT tanks? Highest so far: 717. I could make a game of it,
like Skinner did seeing how many times he could “bounce [a basket]ball in a day, then trying to break that record.”
News of bonuses for joint accounts will probably keep me grinding here for another year or so, which just might be how long it’ll take to reach whatever the level cap is then. Then what?
Forgot to get one during the actual Nyzul 96-100 runs, unused to screenshotting as I am, but fail to flag the quest with the NPC as I did for Atonement, and who knows how many times over the 250 weaponskills required I’d be at again.
Back to the Aery for me (spiders don’t petrify and AOE bomb like lizards, anyway), where the prey are consistently tough and the challenge is not linking the entire corridor. Maybe I’ll get lucky and happen to be around for an
opportune rot?
There he is! Should I try commenting, エーギスヒャールム
{Do you need it?}
Been at it for over a week now, and I’m still re-downloading the first XIV file (though today at a discernible speed) for a reason only they would know.
Reason for my rush: getting BST to 80 in another Abyssea party this weekend has just about convinced me that XI is done. Instead of nerfing “flow” EXP, they just opened it up to everyone. Where once there was the challenge of party mechanics, all that’s left is a faster grind. That, and locking in a cool name for a character who yeah, won’t have the same longevity, but may make for some nice screenshots. “Old Boy” is the obvious choice, but the upgrade to a two-word convention opens the door for many others, such as “King Mob”, “Golden Arm” and “Number Six”.
Sean Connery is no more; welcome
Keith Szarabajka? I was hoping for Mickey Rourke. (Scar’s moved between updates, become a hack-job like Jack & Kate would give each other, and I bet the stitches will never come off over the life of the character. You’d think the skin on such a youthful face would heal like X’s acne blemishes. But most disappointing are the hair options, which seem as limited as their ten-year-old game’s.) Just as well that’s about as much as I’ll probably have time for in the beta, as it appears I chose a gay back alley as my starting point.
CSS isn’t cutting it for these 1280×720 screenshots, wouldn’t you agree,
Will’s ex? The storyline so far is quite engaging, even if my first foray into Eorzea has all been instanced and I haven’t seen another soul. Still can’t sit in chairs.
Mustered the effort to complete the registration process, during which I might have
sold a house—and still it says my serial code is expired—only for this reward:
XI is looking mighty good right about now.
Decided now I made the wrong choice to
pre-order DCUO for PS3, because
screencaps really are the best way to preserve these fleeting digital experiences, and while I’m sure they’ll make
some accommodations, the accessibility and
logistics can’t compare. (Notice how I limit this to games; I maintain that real-life experiences are best recorded with your immediate senses. Perhaps that explains why there’s something alienating from all the readily available
playthroughs. Maybe it’d work holding a SNES controller while I watch?) Then again, could be I’ve let a short jaunt through a newb area make me overconfident in the ASUS lappie.
Mules in this game populate their own instances, like different floors in a department store. Not sure if their nicknames are unique, but just in case:
I’m perfectly cool with my son sporting the Vulcan ears, as long as he also has the
super-strength and IQ off the charts. Would help against any bullying.
Haven’t played either game (would be
any, if not for a free Bejeweled 2 download) for weeks, and not missing it. Figure the less I move in XIV the longer my clothes will last, and XI, well, what’s the point anymore. Not quite
さようならスクエアさん, but the impact of the
DCUO delay has been, I’m actually tempted to install STO.
FFXIV has since become
the laughing stock of the MMO
worlds, and deservedly so, and logging back into XI would be like doing so with just as lowbie a character, I thought, I might as well join everyone else in Call of Duty… that is, until a beta invite arrived today for DC Universe Online. Here’s how that paid off:
That’s all it does. And the beta forums are empty. Or not working, who knows. It’s not like anyone will say, as afraid as they are of the NDA. So, Black Ops it is.
Turns out I needed to update Flash, and for this day-long ADSL download:
Sorry, Chris (and everyone else on PSN), but daddying has me holed up this weekend, anyway, so you’ll have to get your
amusing kills elsewhere.
Character creator is straight outta Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, circa. what, 2006, so I went with the biker jacket (which I figured if I really had woken up one morning with super powers, as the premise goes, I probably would, for the road rash; as if a shop with garish patterned costumes opened up the same day, too), and the camera control from Mario 64—
‘s predecessor, but I can’t say it wasn’t a thrill to beam aboard the Watchtower and gaze down on Earth-um, whatever. Was nice, too, when
Supes showed up and helped me out with all the button-mashing.
I can play this.
My only refuge from the everyday routine nowadays, if the boy sleeps for long enough in the morning before the nanny arrives, or I have the energy at night.
I might want to rethink the costume come launch (all-Black’s got to be one helluva a flight hazard in the all-nighttime Gotham skies, isn’t it), and I still don’t know how to distribute skill points, but it’s been the most fun grinding to Level 5 in recent memory. I just wonder if there’s a check system, so that I can heroically gauge my chances of success against the bad guys I swoop down upon?
After getting primed for some Gotham City patrolling by
this preview of a game I more than likely won’t have time for, anyway, I cracked open a can of the good stuff (two cases of White Out at the rare 4/$10 price nowadays, and I’m eager to return to the original) to accompany the three leftover slices of a deplorable pizza from a Domino’s which must have confused the word “pepperoni” with the singular for the three hours of freedom I earned soloing the baby during the wife’s family-unfriendly company Christmas party, only to be notified of an 8.6GB update.
And at these speeds, it won’t even be a quarter of the way after three hours of It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve seen this how many times, and I just noticed
Ernie & Bert?
北斗の올드보이 presses on (mostly the square button) another level, beating the Scarecrow boss with NPC Batwoman. Might not have required me to “flee” so often had I some teammates, but at least the death penalty’s negligible for the MMO genre. Turns out the skill tree wasn’t even visible all this time, and not adjustable for another week or so, at my rate. And nowhere is the desperate need for a power-up to flight speed more apparent than in the expansive Metropolis skyline. I had hoped for a nice picture postcard atop the Daily Planet, but it’s encased in a fancy plotline bubble, so I settled for one of the big guy’s statue in the park.
Long day with the kid yesterday, but somehow felt up to playing DCUO until 12:30am, i.e., his mom dare not give me any grief about it, and held out to my first flight power-up at Level 9. I even partied up with a “Mar El” and “Hidden Agenda”, though as completely unfamiliar as I am with the chat functions, not to mention the settings for the in-game voice comm, I dropped out from the terrible feedback. (Probably mine.) Shouldn’t have, either, because the Bane instance doesn’t appear to be soloable, at least not without better camera control and learning how to map health items to the macro keystrokes. Good thing: dying puts you back to the start of the fight. Bad: you can retry only for as long as your gear retains its durability. Better than FFXIV: NPC repairs all of it to 100% at little cost. Crafting can still be valuable to provide the service out in the field, S/E.
남재’s attempt at a
Kintaro-inspired avatar shows just how limited DCUO’s character designer is. Even Ace & Gary wouldn’t work with the lack of an emblem editor or uploader (much less a male analogue to STO’s breast-size slider):
If the servers are being separated anyhow, then why force the console version on PC users? For all its flaws, FFXI may be the pinnacle in cross-platforming.
