Proud to be Ul’dahn

Progress on Imperator

This morning I am struggling in a big way at getting anything started on my blog post.  As I run out of time to actually write I decided to just dig straight in.  Last night was our normal raid group time, and we cleared everything up to Imperator, and took some attempts on him.  I joked before the start of the raid that since I would not be there Thursday due to Pax, that they would totally defeat him while I was gone.  After last night I seriously think that is probably going to happen.  Essentially I feel like we have one last hurdle to get through which is the second intermission when three adds spawn.  We had one really amazing attempt where no one died at all until 15% or so… when the adds spawned and we got excited and sloppy and caused a bunch of bombs to blow up.  To the best of my knowledge no one died to the mark of chaos bullshittery, so all that is really left is getting through that one bit and we have a boss downed.

My general theory is that pending they have full attendance (minus me of course) that they will totally kill Imperator Mar’gok Thursday while I am driving.  I would love to be able to pop in for a bit but I am not sure I will even be in my hotel room before the raid ends.  We are stopping off in Austin to eat dinner with a friend of my wife.  I am a mix of excited and nervous about the whole PAX thing.  One of my goals today is to start on lists of things to pack so that I don’t forget anything.  I ran out yesterday to Target and picked up a few supplies that I had intended to bring like Beef Jerky and Cliff Bars.  Tonight will be devoted to a whirlwind round of cleaning just to make sure things are as nice as we can get for our neighbors to come down and maintain our animals.

Proud to be Ul’dahn

The other big happening yesterday is that Final Fantasy XIV was back online after an extended downtime for the 2.5 patch.  My general theory was that I would get into game and get caught up on the new content that just released.  However it turns out that I did not actually finish off the story content from the last patch.  I guess I ended up never turning in after the big boss battle so I spent most of my time before the raid last night working through the tail end of the 2.4 patch content.  The odd thing about Final Fantasy XIV is the way it makes you care about the characters you interact with, and even the characters that are largely in the background of your conflicts.  There is not a single Scion that I don’t like, and while there are some that I am more fond of… like Y’shtola and the ever adorable pair of Papalymo and Yda, there is not a single one that I dislike.  This is an odd thing for me considering I am only a few hours into Dragon Age: Inquisition and already dislike Vivienne.

More important than that… I like the leaders of the various city states.  While my character is technically Limsa Lominsan, as that was the city state that I started my citizenship in…  I draw the strongest connection to Ul’dah.  Now I am going to try and tread lightly to keep from delivering any spoilers, but I am a huge fan of Nanamo ul Namo and the leader of the Immortal Flames Raubahn.  I’ve long though they were interesting characters, but the tail end of the 2.4 patch content has made me proud of both in different ways.  There were moments I honestly wondered if I would tear up with pride while going through the quest content.  If nothing else finishing that storyline has made me proud of be an adopted Ul’dahn and proud to be an Immortal Flame.  That is the magic of FFXIV, to be able to create factions that you care deeply about… without the feeling of needing to somehow be “against” another faction in the process. I wish more games could manage to do that one.

Subligars for Everyone

Another quest series I seemingly did not wrap up was the 2.4 Hildebrand quest chain.  While trying to work through the first few steps of the new main story quest, I stumbled across a turn in for Hildebrand and just ran with it.  I have to say this is one of the more ludicrous conclusions of a Hildebrand quest in the series.  I am not really sure how much I can go into it, other than once again Godbert saves the day.  I was able to snap a questionable screenshot.  I will let you try and decode what is actually happening here.  Once again it was humorous, and a series of extremely well staged in engine cinematics.  The only thing that bums me is that more than likely I will not get a chance to play any of the additional content from the patch until after I get back from PAX.  Right now it is looking like tonight will be a packing night, and then during the actual convention when I get back to my hotel room I will be furiously working on blog posts.  The closer this gets, the more I realize this is going to be a working convention.

Right now the plan is that Friday I will be roaming around the booth space, trying to talk to as many people as I can.  I currently have a media appointment around noonish, but other than that my day is going to be devoted to playing demos and talking to the folks behind it.  Saturday there are a few panels I intend to go to, and that will be the day that Ashgar arrives.  So more than likely we will hang out a bunch since we have never actually met.  In between all of these happenings I am going to try and meet as many folks from the twitter/blogosphere as possible.  I plan on taking lots of photos with my cell phone, and jotting down lots of notes either the old fashioned way on a notebook or with my chromebook.  Battery life is a concern so probably going to use the chromebook sparingly throughout the day.  I kinda wish I had the forsight to arrange a spare battery.  I did pick up one of those extra cell phone power packs yesterday so I should be good from the random twitter aspect.  Similarly I am sure my 3DS will survive the day because they seem to have insane battery life.  Tonight I will most likely prep the post for tomorrow morning… because we plan on getting up early and getting on the road.  So much to do!