Highs and Lows

Like the flowing tide, you get high days and then you get low ones. Roll with the punches and keep on moving, right? I do admit that it makes things easier when you have a day full of bad shit followed by a pretty awesome day, but what happens when you get both good and bad things in the same day? Damn it, I am way too emo. See, this is why Dark Knight is not for me. Anyway, on with the story.

Yesterday's run in Nyzul was full of fail, and I was ready to just sign off and call it a day. Judgment asked if I would put together a 60 run, and since I still wanted the askar hands and had 3 tags to use, I figured what the hell. No run will ever be as bad as the one I just did. So we got a party and went to work.

The boss was Hydra, and I do hate that damned thing. First move it did was Polar Bulwark, and some of the party members mistook that for the physical shield. I told them that this one wasn't a big deal, it's Pyric Bulwark that we don't want to see. No sooner than I said that, the bastard put up the shield. We got down to the 5 minute warning with 50% HP, so we were good to go as long as it didn't spam the shield.

Luckily, we won the fight, and some groovy askar hands dropped. Only two of us were lotting, and I was wishing my ass off for a decent lot. 947, in yo face foo!! I'm now 5/5 on a sexy Askar set and pretty happy about that. This is a high point. ^_^

Then Judgment had to leave and other members headed out too. I still had two tags left, so I later jumped on an 80 just for the hell of it. I figure I'd lot Denali for Corsair and use it as town gear to be cute in. I like looking good, sue me.

I happened to be a Corsair the moment I was accepted into the party, and they even asked me to stay on that job. Pretty surprising, and I did enjoy myself. I didn't have my melee gear on me, so I was running through bullets quite a bit. Thankfully, I was tp'ing in some low level bullets and used steel for my weaponskills. I'm not totally dumb when it comes to these things.

The boss is another Hydra, and we proceed to /pwn. I'll be damned, a Denali Jacket drops. w00tage. Once again, two people to lot, and my rival rolls a 438. I can beat this. Hell I just rolled a 947. The gods of random let out a big "F you" when I chose to roll, and I got a 400. Bastards. Still, we did good on the floor, and that's one more point towards a rank evaluation for First Lieutenant.

We decide to do another run, and it was amazingly fast. I even switched up and went as a Dragoon this time. I was going to do Samurai, but I figured this would be fun. We get to the boss and it's the flaming dog. I didn't have Tiel in the party for a last minute rescue, and although we flew through the floors leading up to the boss (15 minutes or so remaining when we reached 80), we ended up wiping to Cerberus around 25%. Hate was an issue from the onset for some reason and we ended up losing our RDM too early in the fight. I knew I should have listened to my gut reaction and went as SAM. At least then I could've 2hr'ed and done something. Dragoon 2hr is pretty meh in comparision. So I lost out on Denali for the first run and wiped on the second. Both tags gone and I have nothing to show for it. /emo low point.

Fast forward to today.

Work was an absolute nightmare. I don't normally talk about real things here, and I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say the day started on a low point.

I sign on and things are pretty uneventful to start with. Although, an extra scroll of Mage's Ballad sold and that made me happy. I got a message from Ally asking me to come PLD/NIN to sky tonight too. You know I like tanking, but I have *never* tanked a sky god before. Not even close. Hell, I've never even gone as a DD to a sky god. Just RDM or BLM. Being right in their face made me both super excited and damned nervous. I don't really try to gear a job to its fullest unless I'm really going to use it a lot, so PLD fell on the wayside due to the lack of any practical use beyond exp parties and silly-ass campaign battles.

The first boss was Suzaku. I sat back and watched the first run, then got in on the second. Holy shit, it was awesome. Paladin does crap for damage, but knowing that I'm one of 2 people acting as the only real barrier between a win and a wipe is exhilarating. I'm all about SAM right now, but I can truly see myself doing more things with PLD if this keeps up.

I didn't get any drops, but this was still pretty fun and exciting. I'd consider this a semi-high point, just for reference. We then went on to Seiryu, and W.Hands dropped! Of course, I thought I was still on probation, so I didn't attempt to lot them. Another run was done, and this time W.Hands AND S.Kote dropped! Holy hell, this is freaking awesome. After talking with our leader, I found out that I actually had just enough points to lot one. Since no one was lotting, I asked for the W.Hands. Groovy stuff for Cor / Rng / Rdm. I got to lot and now I just have to get some cursed gauntlets and be on my way. This is definitely a high point. Here's the only thing:

I wasn't in the alliance at the time, and the items were about to autosort. I got in and lotted the abjuration, which immediately went to me. S.Kote were still in the treasure pool, but I didn't have enough points to lot and I didn't have much time to do anything even if I did. Ready for some really depressing shit? There was an East Wind in the pool and I was 69/70 on space. I didn't check the alliance to see if anyone passed on the kote, which everyone did. The wind dropped to me and I didn't notice. The next thing I see is that great message:

You no longer meet the requirements to obtain Seiryu's Kote. Seiryu's Kote lost.

Son of a bitch. Had I noticed that damned wind in my inventory, I could've got a free pair of S.Kote for Ranger. That, my friends, is a goddamned low point.

After kicking myself in the ass multiple times for my lack of inventory space, we moved on to fight lolGenbu and then Byakko. After searching forever to get my Autumnstone and then getting a Gem of the West from Davik, it was finally time to get some groovy kitty pants!! The first pop wasn't for me, but the pants did drop for another LS mate. Things are looking up.

I jump in on the fight and we drop Byakko with few problems. A couple of deaths, but nothing major. I got a few "good luck" messages from people in the LS, and I was excited as I watched the kitty fall. Guess what he dropped? E. Feet.

No pants. No Neptunal gear for DRG. Not even an axe. He dropped E. Feet. Gear for a job that I don't have, don't want, and if I can help it; won't ever have at 75. Still, this little bastard decides to drop some E. freakin' feet. All that time searching for stones went straight to shit. Dizzmal offered to give me the Behemoth Hide to ease the pain of losing all that money I spent on pop items, but they helped me out of kindness and I'd be a jackass to take things away from them just because this fucking cat decided to drop a load of bullshit on my run. Once again, a low point. As you can tell, I'm not pleased.

Looking at all of it though, I should be happy today. As a matter of fact, I should be freakin' ecstatic. In two days, I got some pretty awesome gear by my standards.

I finally picked out my ACP body that I've been putting off for months. I actually won a pair of denali legs a couple of days ago, and the Cor AF body doesn't match them so well. So now Corsair is looking pretty damned sexy. On top of that, I'm finally 5/5 with Askar. I've been aching to get this set, and now I have it. I got to tank the gods of sky, even though my gear is less than ideal for it. I'm one step away from having some real endgame gear with those w.hands.

These should all be things to be pleased about right? So why the hell am I feeling so meh about it all? I blame Byakko and the shitty drops. Damn cat.

Worst.Run.Ever.

I had a lot of stuff happen yesterday, but I've got to talk about this one separately. Roaming around Whitegate depressed at the fact that we lost the damn astral candy...AGAIN! I swear, we are the laughing stock of Besieged. Anyway, someone was shouting for Nyzul 80, Denali/Goliard up for grabs. I've been saving up for some 60 runs because I really want those askar hands, but I figured this couldn't hurt.

Note to self...it can hurt, and it did.

Last time, I saw the signs of a less than ideal run, but it was a bit late to do anything. This time around, it was a bit different. I still went, so shame on me for being the optimistic idiot. I sent a tell to the leader and said I'd go SAM and wanted to lot Denali. It's pretty, and the last body piece to collect from there. I got geared up and headed to the ruins.

Judgment (from my LS) happened to be there too, so it was nice to not be in a total group of strangers. We still needed a 6th, and one appeared a few minutes after a got to the ruins. Then we waited for awhile. A long while. I'm talking 20 minutes or so. I have a serious problem with sitting idle. Ask anyone. If I sit still for more than a few minutes, I fall asleep. Mild narcolepsy or something; I don't know. After I woke up from my nap, I noticed that 45 minutes had passed from the time I arrived. I expected to be kicked, but everyone was still waiting because the entire party wasn't in the ruins yet.

The leader said that he and his friend needed a few more minutes. By this time, I was getting annoyed, but some LS chatter kept me distracted long enough to not blow up at random people. The leader returned, but our thief was still away. When I asked where he was, it was revealed that he was feeding his child. Now, I'm all for baby care and whatnot, as reality takes precedence over FFXI. However, I do believe that you should let your party know that you're going to be gone for awhile so we can all wait it out or get a replacement. Finding out what you're doing 30 minutes into your task is just a bit late.

We decided to go in and just leave him at the rune of transfer when everything began. This is where I should have disbanded. We get inside and start getting ready. Everyone does the implied "/" so we can move forward, but the leader doesn't move. After about a minute of waiting, I get really impatient. I start to ask what's going on and then I look at the screen.

I'll be damned if the red dot of doom didn't appear. 45 minutes of waiting to enter, and the moment we go in...our party leader and sponsor for the run loses connection. Well now I'm not happy because my tag was used as soon as we got in. We're down to 4 people cause the thief is still afk and we're all standing in the waiting room like idiots. Now I'm really frustrated because if I used my flies, I'd completely waste a tag. So to hell with it. I paid for the run and we moved on. That was so stupid of me.

Our first task was a "family" and avoid gears. As luck would have it, or not, the enemy of choice was none other than Racing Chariots. I knew I should have just left. So it's up to Judgment and I (BLU and SAM) to drop these things and try to move on. We had two RDMs for cures and all, which was definitely helpful. Midway into the second fight, the leader shows up. He comes in and now we've got to get through to the rest of the chariots. Unfortunately, one we saw was in a room just across from us and had 3 puddings, a mousse, and two Archaic Gears. Guess who was the only one with a ranged attack since the thief was gone? Yeah. Aggro city and I died. I tried to pull them away and just die so they'd depop or something, but I was healed and we ended up wiping.

We all got raised and then the thief manages to return. After we unweaken, we proceed to kill the remaining chariots and salvage what we could of the run. Not surprisingly, there wasn't much left. When the last chariot was nearly dead, we got a 5 minute warning. 25+ minutes on floor 76.

We cleared the floor and promptly got the hell out of there. 105 token reward. Ladies and gentleman, Jaci was pissed. Mostly because I was too damned stupid to just leave when I had a bad feeling. I need to trust my gut reaction more.

Family Reunion and a dose of Humble Pie

Well, the first event of our reformed LS was pretty exciting. Actually it was just Dynamis, but the fact that I haven't done that with my shell in almost half a year makes it more exciting and fun than normal. On top of that, guess what?

I TANKED...AGAIN!!

I am on a freaking roll. It could just be due to our best Paladin, Ameyna, being gone but I'm going to believe it's because they like it when I tank. So I've been able to tank Kirin and now I'm tanking iceland zones in Dynamis. How cool is that? It's damned cool, thank you very much.

As usual, I was nervous. Thankfully, Hamichin was there to help out with tanking whenever I died or had to unexpectedly go afk for a moment. I died quiet a few times during the run, but I guess that's a good thing when you're a paladin. Better me than the rest of the ls, right?

I don't know which was more exciting: the fact that I was tanking in Dynamis, or knowing that my old shell was finally back together again. Regardless, it made for a great night. On top of that, the night was made even more awesome because one of my closest friends, Yokorye was invited to the ls too. The only thing that could've made the night better was if I got the RDM body that dropped, but I'm not RDM main. I'll get it eventually though.

Of course, when you have an awesome night, it's inevitable that you will run into a night that's less than awesome. This just happened to be yesterday, at Xarcabard. I showed up as a SAM but was asked to change to Paladin. I don't know what got into to me, but I was fumbling at every turn. The only pld there, and I just froze up. I started provoking the wrong enemies and had to disengage to get to the right one, or I would just blank out at random times.

The thing that got me the most was the provoke order. I've been going over the wiki page and memorizing the enemy names and corresponding jobs so I don't mess up the next time, but it would've saved us all a headache if I had done that prior to the run. Of course, I wasn't expecting to tank, but that really isn't a valid excuse.

As we moved further in, I got the hang of it and was doing better, but the screw ups of earlier just wouldn't get out of my head. I kept seeing our Japanese mates typing the usual squiggles followed by "w", the equivalent of "lol" in English. Thanks to my infinitesimally low self-confidence, I immediately assumed they were laughing at my performance. The urge to just say hell with it and leave was definitely there but that would not have done any good, for me or my ls. So I brushed it off and kept moving.

Thankfully, a bit of focus and advice from some ls mates made all the difference for the rest of the run. I got my act together and we went on to finish farming the zone until the time ran out. We did get a few groovy drops, but no head pieces unfortunately. I felt pretty damned stupid last night, but I suppose that everyone has a bad day. Just means I need to practice dynamis tanking more. ^^

Despite my mistakes, my ls helped me through. *warm and fuzzy moment*

I hate pickups

I don't get it. Why are pickup groups so damned horrible most of the time? I understand that a pickup party in Valkurm Dunes has a high rate of failure, but why are event pickups even worse? What the hell gets into people?

I did two Nyzul 60's today, and they failed. One fail was because we only had 5 minutes left just as we finished floor 58, and the other was because we ran out of time on 59. Yeah, we ran out of time.

HOW THE HELL DO YOU RUN OUT OF TIME IN NYZUL ISLE???!!!!

I mean, we weren't even at the boss floor. How does this happen? I'm a bit more understanding on floors 1-5. You more or less rid your mind of expectations and just go with the flow, but on 56-60? We're going to get some bs floors, and I understand that. Really, I do. At the same time, have we not all done Nyzul Isle enough to learn to adapt to a shitty situation? Do we not know the enemy behavior and the things that we should be doing when we're wandering around the place?

Oh but it gets better. At least I got credit towards my next Rank Evaluation for Nyzul, and my two deaths could easily be recovered when I go play in the sandbox. However...

I did it again. I went back to that goddamned ISNM and tried my luck. I'm starting to seriously hate this event. It's not that fact that I get crap for drops; I'm use to that and more or less expect it. Besides I get 24k just for going, and that's pretty much a winning deal for a poor person.

What I hate about the event is that I die every time I go there. I just don't understand this. If the whole party is dying, then I can't expect anyone to focus on me. However; if the rest of the party is at 90% or more, and I'm sitting there with 147/1337 HP...yeah, I kind of expect that maybe I'd get a heal. Since I am the one with hate and on the verge of dying, it would be nice to toss a cure or more my way (for the record, I do NOT mean Cure III). What I don't expect, is to see my healer casting a damned Dia II spell midway through the fight while I'm one hit from dying. To hell with dia and heal me damn it!

/sigh. I'm obviously frustrated today. Been bored as hell all day and when I am finally able to do something other than Fields of Boredom and soloing yet another job, they all fail.

Maybe I should just go buy Bayonetta and take a day off of FFXI.

Insert meaningless title here.

Fancy title huh? Actually, I was skimming through my posts and realized that we haven't had a random picture post yet. So here we go! You're welcome. ^^

Shikikoyo Happiness

As usual, I tried to get something more than a chocobo egg from Jade Sepulcher. No such luck, but I did find this amusing. While we were waiting in the lobby for our Bard to run to the staging point (she was out of Imperial Standing.. ouch) one of our Sams decided to share his TP with our Taru RDM. He was just a tad excited to get a chance at using some TP:

Don't you just love Tarus?

General Failure

Siren server currently holds the FFXI Besieged record, well over 2000 wins and zero losses. Hades; on the other hand...well, we don't have that record. I think either the developers like screwing with us, or we just have a lot of players who don't give a damn and simply wait for the Japanese to retrieve the astral candy whenever we lose it.

Sucks being alone in Besieged.

Merits; or lack thereof

You know what's worse than not going to merit parties? Having merits and never using them. Yeah, how many of you can check your exp screen and see this one?

Is there a G1 for a merit limit increase? {I'm interested}

iTank, again!

I started doing Sky with my new shell, Shields of Valor (they aren't recruiting now, sorry) and on my second event, I got to be a Paladin! w00t! I dressed in my my shiny armor and Shield Bashed a pretty kitty in sky. Well, wait. I guess Byakko is the real kitty of sky, and Kirin is just...hell I don't know. Either way, I hit him in the face and it was awesome. I do enjoy my tanking moments, however brief they may be.

That's right, Jacinda CAN tank!

Collecting dust

Somebody. Anybody. Do some BCNMs with me.

Creativity {Can I have it?}

Hey, where are you? I am....Everywhere. >.>

Dragon Fodder

Know your enemy, or end up being a part of their stuffed doll collection.

I'd post more, but today is supposed to be an awesome day for the members of Epic. We're getting back together! It's like a family reunion without the chicken and beer. Still, it should be a blast!

Unshakeable Resolve

We hear a lot about things people do that make you say wow in an MMO. Camping NMs for days at a time, being the first to own some cool gear, reaching incredible numbers with weaponskill damage, and so many other things that can make a person feel a little intimidated. Almost as if you are in a world of players who have reached a level that you can only dream of.

One of the seemingly common dreams of many players is having a fully upgraded relic weapon. Wielders of these divine creations have a sense of accomplishment that few others will ever experience in their MMO lifetime. The process involved in taking a Stage 1 relic to its final phase is a grueling experience that challenges the most die-hard player. It's a process so long and difficult that some people simply give up long after they begin the upgrades.

It usually takes the help of an entire linkshell to raise the money involved in buying materials or defeating the enemies that harbor necessary items along the way. I say usually because today I was able to see a weapon that was upgraded in a completely different way.

This one was done alone.

100% self-funded relic weapon. Not one of the ultra-rich players with billions of gil to throw around, and not a gil-buyer or one of the lucky Rank 1 Mog Bonanza winners. Just someone with a vision, a plan, and determination that carried him from start to finish.

I saw him in Whitegate, hanging out in his usual unassuming RSE that you start out with. We normally greet each other with a hurray or a smile, and then we chat for a bit on the progress of his weapon.

There wasn't any chatting this time though. He smiled, and the cheerfully said "I've done it!" I took a look at his side and saw the symbol on his great katana. I checked him, and sure enough, he was now wielding the Samurai relic.

I remember seeing it while in phase 4, so it was only a matter of time. Still, seeing the completed weapon was even more impressive.

Not only did he start the journey, but he took it to completion...and he did it alone. That's serious dedication. Congrats to you Neo, you most certainly have earned it.

I can be helpful too (sometimes)

With the lack of an active LS, I've found myself bored and longing for excitement in-game for a long time. Leveling is fun and all before you reach 55 and you pretty much accept the fact that you may never use a weaponskill again because Colibri reduce your TP and Imps lock your abilities, but leveling gets old after awhile.

Nyzul Isle is fun, although shouting to find people for hours at a time makes the event more stressful than it should be. You're tired of shouting and you hope you have a group that can function or you've just wasted time, exp, and a tag that takes 24 hours to renew.

I'm personally afraid of merit parties and there's no excitement in that anyway. Helping out friends through CoP is nice and all too but, really, how many times do you want to see the inside of a cermet tower?

So last night I was hanging out in a party for something. I can't remember if it was more time in the sand or something else, when I got a tell from Mili asking if I could give her a hand with an event. Now, Miliani's been busy since our shell went on break, and when she does an event, it's usually something good.

Naturally, I was curious. Actually, I was pretty excited. Having her ask for help is like getting invited an awesome party. I know it's going to be cool and fun. Turns out that my curiosity and excitement was well placed, because she needed help with Salvage.

I've only done this event twice before, so I don't have a clue about the details of how this event works. I just know that we enter naked, can't do a damn thing, and we have to kill enemies quickly. Also, you can get awesome stuff there.

Flaunting our nearly-naked bodies, we roam through the ruins in search of adventure and cells to get our abilities back. For a while, I just got to stand around and look pretty since I couldn't cast anything. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: Mili asked me to be a WHM. I like her, so I said ok. As for the rest of you, take a good look cause it's a rare moment that you will ever catch me as a WHM unless I'm teleporting myself somewhere.

Anyway, our targets seemed to be members of the Ashu Talif. They were surprisingly weak when you consider what we had to fight them with. I imagine that a fully unlocked party in Salvage would just wreak havoc all over the map.

We ran into a few NMs that were pretty nasty, to include one chickenshit imp that ran away from us every few hits, so we had to scramble to aggro again and resume the fight.

I do admit that I had a lot of fun in there, and would like to go back. I'd need to find a way to make a lot of money though, because the stuff in there is expensive as all hell to upgrade. I don't know about you, but unless I find some rich friends who decide to quit soon, I don't think I'm going to have that type of gil.

When it was all said and done, Miliani got her last piece of a high end and very sought after piece of body armor. Congrats Mili on your Morrigan's Robe! ^^

Sometimes, you just have to wonder...

I'm broke.

Amazing, right? Not really. Anyway, I decided to try my luck with the lovely Jade Sepulcher ISNM again. As usual, I got a chocobo egg and a bunch of junk. However, that's not what this post is about. No kiddies, today we're going to talk about knowing your jobs.

What's this have to do with an ISNM, you wonder? Wait till you get a load of this one.

So here I am in Whitegate, doing the standard shout for the event. Thankfully, this one doesn't take nearly as long as a CoP 6-4 shout or something, so it wasn't long until we were 6/6 and on the way. Our group was a little different from the normal setup. We were SAM, WAR, RNG, BLM, BRD, and WHM. Now while this doesn't go with the "approved setup" of wikipedia or whatever, what we had was fine. Except for one tiny thing.

Our White Mage. Not because she was level 72. That's of little consequence in this ISNM. Not because it was a Japanese player amidst of a bunch of English speakers. You find that quite often. No, the thing that was so different about this particular level 72 White Mage is the fact that she didn't know what to do.

Before you think too hard on that, let me clarify. I mean she didn't know what to do as a WHM. Oh wait...a level 72 WHM. I should have seen the signs. They were so blinding that I had to turn away from my TV screen.

Sign 1: Level 72 asking to join an ISNM.

In all fairness, I didn't think this would matter. I'm not one to judge people so quickly, and all we needed was cures and haste. What's the worst that can happen, right? /slap

Sign 2: The cryptic /tell

Before the fight, she sent me a tell:

"My WHM {Experience Points} 0 {Please assist}"

I had no idea what the hell she meant. I thought she had just leveled or something and didn't have a buffer into 72. I now understand that it means she didn't know what she was doing.

Sign 3: Cryptic /tell v2

This one wasn't really all that cryptic. Instead, it was flat-out scary. Imagine that you're seconds from entering an ISNM with a creature that is very capable of whipping your ass into oblivion in a couple of seconds and your only healer sends this to you:

"{White Mage} {How?}"

That's right, a Level 72 WHM just asked a 75 SAM how to be a White Mage. The amount of fail in that short exchange is beyond measure. Of course I'm also a 75 WHM, but she didn't know that. Still, the job isn't really all that complex. Even if you don't know about Afflatus Solace, Flash, or any of the many tools a WHM has, the basics are pretty straightforward. Heal the party. Don't let them die. Pretty simple, no?

By now, it was too late. We entered the arena and the fight began. I was crying inside as I watched this mage. Personally, I'm gimped to hell and back in every job I have, but I'll be damned if someone ever says that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I mean, come on...somebody help me understand this.

What is your thought process when you see a party member at less than 10% health and you're casting Cure III? What the hell people? Cure III? That might work when you're level 30, but not at 75. I'll tell you the end result of that one though. Death and lots of it.

Or how about somebody dies and you haven't raised them 5 minutes later? Oh wait, even better. You drop to low health and your WHM is busy casting Banish on the NM. That's right, Banish. Not Banish II or III. Just good old Banish. A spell that is 7000% useless on its own, unless you're casting on undead for the after effects. I'm not even going into the amount of times we had to ask for Haste, or the fact that she recast Protectra / Shellra IV at the start of every single match (they have a duration of 30 minutes and each fight we did lasted 3 or 4.)

I can go on but I feel my blood pressure rising as I type this. In the end, I was left wondering if she is the product of an Astral Burn or bought account. In the case of the latter, we just got hit with bad luck. If it's because of the former, then I hereby petition to have an atomic bomb dropped on Korroloka Tunnel and shut that damn place down.

What's in a name?

Help me out here. We are more or less living in a fantasy world when we sign on to FFXI. It's an escapism for many. A place where we can forget about reality for a short time and be immersed in a wonderful world of make-believe and adventure, where we are limited only by our imagination (and game mechanics).

One of the things that helps create a sense of immersion is the people around you. A bit of role play would be awesome but, I think that's probably more than your average citizen of Vana'diel is willing to participate in. On the other hand, if there is anything that knocks the feeling of immersion in the ground, it is the ridiculous character names that some people have.

Seriously, I have to ask some of you: What the hell were you on when you picked out your name?

There are thousands of people who play this game, so it's understandable that someone might have beat you to the punch when you wanted to pick out the rare name of "John", "Mary", "Jim", or even "Susan". You know what though? There are millions of names to pick, and an infinite amount that you can create. Names are like Legos; you can break them down and add some letters to create something even better.

Noooo, we can't do that. It takes too much thought. Let's just go with xXSephirothXx, or better still, let's just get completely stupid and make our name so long that people will spend the next three hours trying to figure out the pronunciation or remember the spelling.

Why do you people do this? What's so hard about coming up with a name? There are online repositories of names that you can just go to and randomly pick something if your creative genes are a little dormant. You could drop all creativity and use your real name if you wanted to. I'd venture to say that the majority of people you come across wouldn't think twice that it's your real name anyway, and it's even safer for girls because as we all know, girls don't exist on the internet.

This is going to be your online persona for the next week, month, year, or several years that you choose to exist in Vana'diel. It's kind of hard to take someone seriously with a name like MCBubbliciousFisheyes, even if you are wielding relic weaponry and fancy gear.

Stuck

Damn it, I have no idea what to do now.

I made it to 75 with Dragoon earlier in the week, and I used some of my saved merit points to get Angon. In addition, I spent some time in the sand and unlocked Drakesbane cause it's pretty. The job is very fun, but I don't have anything to use it for. As a matter of fact, I don't have shit to do with ANY of my job classes right now.

You know why? Cause I don't have a damned Linkshell anymore!!

Our shell essentially went silent back in August. It's still alive in the sense that the leader didn't destroy the pearl, but no one is there. We've been on an official "break" since October until the start of the New Year, which was yesterday. As a side note, Happy New Year.

I don't know what's going to happen now, but I hope that things can get back on track. I'm going to start doing sky again soon, and that's a plus. However, I like my old LS. It took forever and six weeks just to feel comfortable with them, and I don't know how well I'll do with trying to fit into another one.

I guess time will tell.