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!