Here’s a quick, mid-week update, just ‘cause.  Shut up, I don’t have to explain myself to you!

…I think the longer I keep this blog up without any actual readers, the more schizophrenic I am going to become.  I am okay with that.

Anyways, my free log-in period under the current returning player promotion is just about up, so I have been thinking about the best way to start spending money on the game.  For a while I had been trying to decide whether to buy Heavensward now, or wait and just get Stormblood once it releases (it comes with HW); as excited as I am to play through the HW story quests, I am leaning towards the latter, it is just too cost effective to pass up.

I was also on the fence about whether to re-sub immediately, or wait about a week for my wedding to finally be done, and allow my bank account to recuperate after all of the wedding spending.  At first I was going to wait, but then SE announced its Amazon promotion with the new glamour items and cloud mount.  Dammit SE, just shut up and take my money! 

I thought I was going to have to pass up the promotion because I couldn’t justify spending the money, but to my surprise one of my work supervisors gave me a $50 Amazon gift card for completing a big project we had been working on together!  To be honest, I feel a little bit weird accepting gifts for the work I am already getting paid to do, but at the same time I was really excited to use the gift card to purchase some game time and also get the promotional items.  And the only thing more awkward than receiving the gift would be rejecting it, so I guess I should just make sure to thoroughly express my gratitude.

I am a very lucky person.  I was raised by a good family; I was given enough advantages to be successful, but not so many advantages that I never learned how to be self-sufficient; I am healthy and (relatively) young; I am not just employed, but on an actual career path with room to grow;  I am in a healthy relationship with a beautiful woman who is willing to spend the rest of her life with me…these are all the things that run through my head and actually make me feel a little bit guilty when even more good things fall on my lap, such as an unexpected Amazon gift card.  At least I know I am not taking all these things for granted.

Hello again, reader!  Not sure who you are or why you are reading, but I am willing to bet that you are a very cool person.  Let’s be friends, mkay?

Sorry, that was cheezy, but I like the idea of addressing the “reader” in the same way that Mr. Rogers used to greet his television “neighbors” after changing into his sweater.

Anyways, I was able to log-in and make my grand return to the game on Thursday.  Allow me to introduce to you Ixxiana Ikslawok, this blog’s main protagonist:

As you can see, I have already made a good deal of progress with her, so it won’t be as if I am starting with a 100% fresh character.  My overall goal with Ixxiana is going to be “horizontal” progress rather than “vertical” progress, i.e. I will be trying to reach the level cap for every class rather than becoming a max ilvl raider with one or two classes.  In that sense, I have a good start here.

My first day back in the game was spent picking the main questline back up where I left off, which was after completing the Leviathan trial.  I ran through some quests until I was able to beat Ramuh, or rather I got carried through Ramuh by a DF party :P.  I did a bit of research and found out that you should really save these main story quests until after acquiring the expansion, so that the experience you gain isn’t lost on a character that has been capped at 50.  Since HW is included with SB, I will probably wait for SB to drop before resuming the story quests.  Or at least I am going to try to be patient, which might be hard because the story is actually really good and it provides a really nice break to the grind.

After setting aside the story quests, I decided to level Conjurer for a bit.  I ran a couple levequests to warm up, and then tried to run Thousand Maws with a DF group.  Unfortunately, I got hit with a disconnect right in the middle of the boss fight and didn’t get credit for completion L.  I hope that won’t become an ongoing issue for me!

Now that I have this initial dabbling out of the way, I think it is time to set some hard goals that I can work towards.  I think my two main goals will be maxing Mining and maxing Conjurer.  For Miner, rather than grind leves I think I would prefer to actually farm mats that I can sell on the market board as I go.  I am going to want a big nest egg of gil to spend on mats and gear when leveling the other crafting classes.  I really love crafting in this game, even if managing items and storage is a bit of a slog.

On a separate note, I was browsing the FFXIV subreddit and I found a post from a player who was looking for music to listen to while grinding their gathering classes.  I absolutely LOVE listening to music and building playlists, so I put something together for them and sent them a link.  They never replied, and even though they are a total stranger to me I was kind of disappointed.  Is that weird, to be invested in what some total stranger thinks of me, or to even want to do that for them in the first place?  In any case, here is the playlist if anyone else wants to listen to some sweet tunes while they play:

https://open.spotify.com/user/1229395444/playlist/5adbg8Vr0OJFKOK0AHmdXo

Also, my dear phantom-readers, if you are ready to coalesce into existence and reveal yourself to me as a concrete being, please let me know if you would like me to build a customized playlist for you!  I listen to literally every genre under the sun, and I love trying to tailor playlists to a person’s tastes or personality.  Just one more way, besides playing MMOs, that I like to try to virtually connect with people.

    

Hello reader!  Welcome to my blog.

The purpose of this thing is to create a log of my progress in FFXIV, and use the act of logging progress to muse on life and other things.

 

A bit of background about me:  I am an adult male, and long-time casual MMO player.  I have dabbled in a lot of games, but the ones I spent the most time on were FFXI, WoW, Guild Wars 2, Wildstar and most recently FFXIV.

When I describe myself as casual, I mean that I usually play through a MMO’s main story content, tour its areas, maybe sample a bit of its endgame, and then quit it entirely.  This is what I did with the launch of FFXIV; I created a Bard, leveled it to the cap, finished the main story quests, dabbled in some crafting and some end-game content, and then cancelled my subscription.  I am excited to pick it back up and play through the expansions, particularly because I heard the story in Heavensward is quite good, but that’s not my only reason.

I have never been a very social player, mostly because really getting to know people in-game requires logging a lot of hours, becoming a familiar face, getting involved in end-game progression, etc.  Unfortunately, I have never been able to commit myself to a game to the point where I make real connections with other players, but I think one of my goals with this blog and with FFXIV is to find a way to do so.

The inspiration for this blog, and for picking FFXIV back up, all started with a dream.  I won’t go into details, because details about dreams are dumb.  Have you ever listened to somebody describe their dream, and immediately felt annoyed?  I think this is because nobody really remembers details from a dream; rather, they remember vague impressions and they fill in the details on the spot, which for some reason almost universally strikes other people as disingenuous.  In any case, I had a dream where I was playing FFXIV, and the general impression was that it was a fun and meaningful experience – probably more so than it actually will be, because nothing can ever be more entertaining than what is coughed up by your subconscious.  But I have always liked acting on my dreams, so I began to plan my return to the game.

 A big pertinent detail of my life that will probably come up a lot in this blog is that I am very recently married.  In fact, my wife and I eloped first but are still throwing a wedding for the sake of our friends and family in about two weeks!  So, I obviously haven’t had a lot of time to spend playing games at all, and certainly not enough time to justify subscribing to a MMO.  However, my dream inspired me to do something to reconnect with the MMO experience, so I began browsing FFXIV blogs and found a really good one by a player that started logging her experiences going all the way back to playing FFXI.  I might give her a shout-out and a big “thank you” if I ever work up the courage to admit to her that I obsessively read through all her old blog posts like a total creep. 

Anyways, it was reading through her blog that inspired me to blog my own gaming experiences, and this whole project is going to be roughly modeled after her approach.  On about a weekly basis (maybe more, maybe less), I will describe what progress I have made in the game, the players I have befriended (hopefully), post some funny or interesting screenshots, talk about what’s going on with my life outside the game, etc.

Hopefully I can make some in-game friends by sharing this blog, rather than entering the end-game scene.  To be honest, that’s the biggest thing I am worried about, i.e. getting frozen out of the community because I don’t have time, or really even the inclination, to join a static raid group and make “vertical” progress.  Really, I am going to be trying to make “horizontal” progress instead; my ultimate pipe-dream goal will be maxing out every class, which is something I know a lot of players have accomplished pretty easily.  But the first step will just be playing through the story content of Heavensward, and then Stormsblood.

Well, this has turned into quite the long-winded first post, but thanks for reading…that is, if someone out there is actually reading this…to my phantom reader(s), more to come soon!  Thank you!