dılɟ#
A little over two months ago, as a few of you may know or have guessed, I decided to quit WoW. Primarily, my reason for doing it was because after five years I was sick of the life I was living. Going to bed at around 10am and waking up at 6pm was just too much for me to take after so long. Similar to what Bert did with me, my hope was to be able to pass the guild onto somebody else and have them carry on without me but it wasn't to be. Any guild losing their main tank is a huge blow but while leader I took everything on board myself. There was no real hierarchy in place, no subordinates I burdened with anything so when I walked away there was just a small amount of power diluted among those left.
Still, even if I would've handled things differently I'm not sure the outcome would've been any different.
By the time I quit, we'd been farming Black Temple and Hyjal for absolutely months. Pretty much everyone had pretty much everything and people were tired of what the game had become to them. Those that didn't outright say as much showed it in their raid performance or attendance. I think a lot of people had gotten to a point where they just felt obligated to log on and raid despite not enjoying it and were happy when I quit as it was a way to quit themselves without guilt or drama. Off the top of my head, in the two months that have passed, eleven people (not including myself) have completely quit WoW, several have sold their character. I've never been someone who treated people I met online as just another screen name and I cared about every single person I ever raided with so knowing that I essentially destroyed everyone's home, no matter how stale or frail things were, is a burden I'll carry. I still hope that people can empathize with my reasons for quitting as I haven't had any snide comments or animosity passed my way in the interim.
So onto the next part of the story - Final Fantasy XI.
I don't know why but since being gone from WoW, the urge to play FFXI just built and built inside of me. Last week I finally asked Bluetonberry what his thoughts on going back were. Surprisingly, he was quite enthusiastic. I checked to see if my account was still there and it actually was. I was half-expecting it to be banned for third party tools or something similarly retarded. The reason I say that is I logged on POL at some point around Christmas '06 and saw I'd gotten a 72 hour suspension despite having not played for two months. Anyway, yeah, it was there, and so was BTB's so I fucked around in JP POL and reactivated my content ID's.
Upon logging in for the first time, a few things hit me.
- How much it fucking hurts my hand to play with the movement keys on the numerical keypad.
- There's no keyboard shortcut to bring up the map.
- I can't look at a map for somewhere outside of where I am.
- It's not possible to invite someone unless they're in your region (I actually facepalmed at this one).
- It took me over twenty minutes to get from Mhaura to Whitegate.
Obviously I knew about all this stuff before I decided to play again but it wasn't until actually experiencing them again after two years of WoW that I was amazed at how primitive FFXI is. I just felt so constricted and limited in what I could do...
Anyway, I dealt with it and decided to carry on. BTB had 21 million on him (a phenomenal amount in todays market) and gave me 3 mil to help gear myself up. I did that to a decent standard and got to thinking on what we could do. Naturally, Goblin Wolfman for a Parade Gorget was the first thing on the agenda for how involved I thought I was in trying to unravel the enigma back in the day. Three attempts to get mine at a total of about an hour then another four wasted trying to get one for BTB. It really was as if the game was giving me a "welcome back" in making us use three hours of our time to get me one trivial piece of gear and him one wave of disappointment.
In thinking what else we could do, we decided to try and catch up on the ToAU missions that had come in the time we were gone. That amounted to a ton of running around Whitegate, Caedarva and Aydeewa for some lengthy cutscenes then a trip to Navukgo Execution Chamber where we duo'd the Khimaira 13 BC. I'll give FFXI one thing, it does do missions and storytelling extremely well and I quite enjoyed myself here.
The only other thing I could think for us to do was to grab Awoir and attempt Assault. For whatever reasons, we didn't get that done but in the waiting for someone I decided to go through the lists of rewards for the five sets of Assault's we're done in the past and saw they'd added nothing extra in nearly two years. Nyzul Isle seemed pretty interesting and had some surprisingly good rewards but then I found out you need a full, well-balanced party of six to stand any chance of succeeding at it. As someone who wants to play casually and fit the game around other aspects of their life for once, it doesn't seem like something I'd be able to adhere to on a regular basis.
Even if my time did somehow allow it, the one thing I ruled out before I'd loaded up the game for the first time was rejoining a HNM LS. At some point during my WoW career, it dawned on me what an elitist douchebag I had been through the majority of my FFXI time. The way I treated Chikami in particular disgusted me and I couldn't even bring myself to open a window and make an apology to him. The nature of FFXI as a game when mixed with my unrelenting desire to excel didn't mix well. In WoW, time and effort are guaranteed to pay off and I think that standard of reward helped level me out in all sorts of ways.
While watching iMPACT on Friday, I did some reflecting and wondered why I was playing FFXI again. I initially went back because all the offline games I was enjoying ultimately lead to an end whereas an MMO doesn't. Ironically, I couldn't see what my main aim was in FFXI. Why merit when I have no desire to put them to any real use in endgame? I was sick of Dynamis two years ago, Assault is a way to kill time with no true goal and making money still sucks even if the ratios are better.
I simply don't feel like FFXI can reward the level of time I'm willing to give an MMO at this stage in my life.
I haven't completely closed the door on FFXI but I'm not far off. I feel really, really guilty that BTB came back with me and bought the expansion pack only for me to realize it was a mistake a few days later. We'd even discussed transferring to Bahamut to play with Kytele but alas...
I've ordered the EU version of WoW. I really want to still be able play an MMO but I need to be able to manage my time in doing so. WoW is an excellent game and I love pretty much everything about it. In WoW I can log on, play for two hours and log off having achieved something, no matter how minor. It pretty much is everything I need from an MMO at this stage in my life and it'll be in my timezone. I don't think I'll be able to convince Ky or BTB to play EU WoW with me so I'll be on my own for the first time in a while. I don't actually know anyone who plays WoW on EU servers but I think being independent might just be okay. I love tanking and I became pretty obsessed with what a a Protection Paladin was capable of toward the end of my time on Mal'Ganis so I think that's what I'll end up rolling as. Server or faction I don't know, I'll decide that at another time, but I'll aim for a primarily English speaking PvE one on GMT with medium-to-high population.