Confused in FFXI

So I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XI since US PS2 release back in April/May of 2004. It’s been a long time, and a lot of changes have happened.

It hasn’t hit me how different things are now until recently. Several of my good friends in game have quit, no one does Campaign or Besieged anymore, servers have merged, and I’m still level 76 when everyone else has already hit level 90. Even how people level their jobs has changed. Before it was about grouping into a party of 6 and beating up mobs outside of cities. Nowdays, it’s all about Abyssea. Experience points are easy and fast to come by there.

It’s just not the same anymore.

That said, I’m not quitting the game. I felt a tad sad when I was looking at my friends list of all the people I know in game that have quit. It made me feel like an aged dinosaur. I didn’t know what to do. I pretty much sat there, chatting with people while my character sat in my Mog House waiting for the Besieged that never happened because I had to log off.

I guess that’s just how it goes. Changes happen in real life, so why should I be surprised when the same happens in a virtual world?

Leveling SCH

I decided to level scholar in Final Fantasy XI (while I wasn’t playing MW2). I got it to level 11 by Sunday night. My dedication is still up, so I need to log on and kill some more before it wears off. That and update. Good thing I waited to update, otherwise I’d be doing it twice!

Karaoke Skype

So a group of my FFXI friends have been singing over Skype for the last two nights. We’d take turns picking a song and belting out our best (which in reality is probably our worst). I’d google the song lyrics quickly before I start singing. Last night, I had to help a newb (or RMT, I wasn’t sure) get to Jeuno, so I ended up singing Life is Like a Boat by Rie Fu since I knew that song well enough to not need lyrics in front of me… I wonder if we’re going to be singing tonight? …

San d’Orian Tea!

Final Fantasy XI inspired drink called San d’Orian tea. It’s really just black tea, sage, maple sugar (substituted with maple syrup), and half & half creamer. The tea came out tasty and rather delicate.

Ingredients
– fresh sage
– black tea
– half and half creamer
– maple syrup

1) Put sage and tea in tea pot. Add hot water and let seep.
2) 1 tbsp creamer and 1 tbsp maple syrup into each cup
3) Pour tea into cups.

Almost to RDM 75

Spent most of Sunday leveling red mage. I went from 72 to 74. Not bad. I’m about 14k into the level. After I hit 75, I’ll probably pad the job before I switch to gain merits. I spent most of the time trying to level up my gimpy dark skills by spamming Bio II as much as possible.

The white mage we got for the group near the end was really good. She was really on top of everything. Nearly all her spells landed, which made me jealous as a red mage. Subbing scholar helped her a lot.

Final Fantasy XI 6th Anniversary!

I got my new anniversary ring! Along with my new ring, I got updated stats.

Chat Frequency: 197487
Conversations With NPCs: 28277
Parties Joined: 1248
Alliances Joined: 212
Battles Fought: 18454
Number of Times KO’d: 512
Enemies Defeated: 15445
GM Calls Made: 3

Current play time is at 173 days, 10 hours, 43 minutes and 17 seconds.

My stats from last year can be found here.