The Digital Continuum: Week two of vacationing in Vana'diel
My second week returning to Final Fantasy XI has come to a close. It's strange; I thought I was going to be a lot more frustrated with the game by this point, but apparently, I'm not. In fact, I've gotten halfway to level 16 on my Warrior. Check out week one if you'd like to read these in order.
It probably helps that I'm listening to podcasts and chilling on my bed/floor as I play. Having a wireless controller really frees up my ability to move around while playing an MMO. Sure, there are nice things about getting your groove going on the PC, but you can't prop up some pillows and kick back while killing some Clippers.
Now that I mention it, I killed so many Clippers this week that I could make a mountain of crab cake and live atop it as a king wearing a crown of crab claws.
My first play session was on Wednesday with my static group. We ventured out into Konschtat Highlands and completed a few Fields of Valor pages, garnering some fairly decent experience. We also did our fist Bastok mission, but it was rather easy. There aren't any harrowing tales to share, other than the fact that we did get a little lost in a cave. Of course, much of our time was spent getting to know each other and bantering a bit. There were some technical difficulties with Skype, too. But overall, I had the most fun on Wednesday than on any other day of playing -- that says a lot considering what did happen.
Thankfully, nobody in my static grouped died on our first run as a group, and I attribute that to a lot of luck since we didn't have a White Mage in the group. We certainly have someone playing a healer, but he was busy trying to catch up and thus we decided to play aggro ping pong. I'm really looking forward to next week, partially for more play time but also just for the chance to hang out with the group again.
I skipped Thursday and Friday due to work and other games getting in the way, but on Saturday... oh there was much playing. That day, I played most of the afternoon without even realizing it. Hell, I played while eating nachos and drinking a beer, which should tell you how involved I got -- but I'm getting ahead of myself, let's rewind just a little.
It started off the way most higher level Final Fantasy XI playsessions begin, lots of time spent waiting. At this particular juncture, I was waiting in the zone beyond Konschtat, known as Valkurm Dunes. If you were wondering, this is where I killed enough crab to supply the entire franchise of Long John Silvers for a whole year.
First, I waited a good fifteen or twenty minutes with my "Seeking Party" flag up, hoping that someone would invite my poor lonely Elvaan Warrior. Not too long after that, I began to wonder if I'd ever find a party. It was then that I decided to take a look at other people looking for groups. To my surprise, I found a White Mage, Samurai and Dragoon with their flags up, too. With myself as the tank this was the perfect foundation for a strong party. Why had nobody scooped us up? Where was the party leader? Then it hit me -- in my eagerness to play, I forgot that handling a party was something I used to do a lot with this game. I was (and still am, by the way) really good at forming and maintaining a party.
