Musical Steeds

Muscle Memory

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The tale of our run in Final Fantasy XIV has been interesting, namely we played for roughly two years straight… and then after the launch of Heavensward that original group more or less faded away from the game.  When we played the game at launch, I was towards the end of the pack when it came to leaving, and this time it seems like I was among the first.  I had split priorities when it came to FFXIV and WoW raiding… and to be truthful I was burning out intensely in both.  I last played regularly in December of 2015, and for whatever reason I’ve just not had much drive to dip my toes back in.  As additional story content was released, I made a college try to come back and consume it.  Unfortunately however I never actually made it all of the way through the 3.2 content.  As a result I admit I had more than a little trepidation upon returning, because I wondered how much skill I would have lost.  It turns out “muscle memory” is ungodly strong, and for the most part I was able to sit down and begin rotating through abilities and hitting hotkeys by reflex.

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What also helped however was the content we were doing.  Now our raid group met on Tuesday nights for two years, and it seems as though the current batch of Greysky folks have kept up that tradition.  This time instead however it has been turned in to a pony farm night.  Now back when we were doing the Extreme Primals legitimately, I had managed to get the whistle for the Leviathan pony, and counted myself damned lucky.  In the meantime however it appears that Square has increased the drop rate, and getting those musical horses seems to be a pretty regular occurrence.  What shocked me was just how quickly the boss fights came back, even in their currently abbreviated state.  For example I instinctively followed the normal tank queues for Titan… even though I initially stood on the wrong slice of cheese.  I was happy to know that I could in fact still apparently tank in this game, and I think I will feel significantly better actually doing some duty finder for gear currency.

A Good Night

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It felt really great to be back, and equally great to be playing Lala-Bel again.  There is just something about this character that makes me happy, and maybe some of the funk I have been in has been due to the fact that I haven’t been playing him lately.  After the raid my friends Tzi, Rylacus and Nyte helped run me through The Antitower, the first of the 3.2 dungeons.  I poked around a bit afterwards trying to figure out where all the other dungeon quests started, but sleep claimed me pretty quickly.  I know I will be doing Destiny raid tonight, but the hope is to return to FFXIV in the coming days.  I mean maybe the answer is to simply play all the things.  Right now I am getting enjoyment out of WoW and FFXIV again… so maybe the idea is to simply ration them both.  I know I have a lot of catching up to do in FFXIV so it serves as an excellent game to grind away while downstairs.  When I left in December I was one of the better geared characters in the Free Company… and now I am probably one of the worst geared.  I know this… because in running the Antitower I managed to pick up no less than two upgrades, which is generally a good sign that you are way behind the curve.

I managed to get the Garuda pony which was an easy drop since everyone else in the raid had one, and was quite literally just farming it to get me one.  Then I rolled on Nightmare that dropped from Titan, and managed to get the lucky roll.  The only thing there is… I guess I didn’t fully realize that this was a rare drop from any of the first three primals… even thought Ashgar said as much.  I didn’t quite grok it at the time, or I would have probably passed on the roll.  We did not however see any of the ACTUAL pony that is supposed to come from Titan.  We did however manage to get at least one person a Leviathan mount, and I believe one other mount…  but I am drawing a blank.  All in all it was a really fun night and I am going to try and juggle my schedule so I can start making this a weekly thing.  Hopefully I didn’t do anything that pissed anyone off too terribly.  I felt a little bad falling right back into my overbearing tank mode… but like I said I was largely relying on instincts to get through the evening and that comes with the tendency to pull.  Ashgar however pulled for me a few times expecting that I would provoke it back from him, and I did like a good lalatank.  It was kinda great getting to hang with Tzi and Rylacus again, even thought poor Tzi had no voice at all.  Maybe I am over my mental block against MMOs, or maybe I just happened to choose the right nights to play again.

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