June 2013 - Page 3 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Lenovo Y500

June 22, 2013 by Belghast

Today we return to the normal morning routine of blogging after I wake up. Sadly this morning it just took me a really long time to get up and around. Yesterday when I got home from work I was feeling awesome, and made all these plans for today. This morning it feels as though the world has been dropped on top of me… and I want to do exactly nothing. Here is hoping a revisit from my old friend caffeine will jump start my systems. I had been trying to stay away from caffeine since I had been having heart palpitations, but this morning I need to use and abuse my old friend.

Lenovo Y500

At this point I have had roughly half a week to get used to my new laptop. My last three blog posts were written using it in fact. I have to say overall I am absolutely loving it. I had been concerned about whether or not I could get used to the smaller form factor, but right now I am finding I greatly prefer it. I loved my Asus g73sw but it was really heavy laptop… when I carried it in my backpack it was a noticeable strain on my back. Additionally it was a pain to try and balance on my lapboard as I barely had any room for my mouse.

The Y500 on the other hand I have worlds of room and could bump up a larger mousing surface and still have plenty of room on my lapboard. Additionally it doesn’t feel as heavy on my legs as the Asus was… after using it for awhile on the sofa while reclined, when I got up my thighs would be almost cramping. The fact that the Y500 packs all of its power in a 6 lb package… I would say 8 if you are carrying the power brick with you… is really remarkable. This is no “ultrabook” but it is seriously compact for the gaming juggernaut it is.

The Performance

Laptop graphics will always be slightly worse than their desktop counter parts. This has been my experience with every laptop I have ever owned. So if you can run the game at high on your desktop… the equivalent card will likely only be able to run it at medium in a mobile form factor. However I have been pleased with just how well the dual video cards in this model perform together. In the past I had one of the early SLI configurations, and I was not terribly happy with it. It always felt like I got far better performance with just a single card and SLI disabled than I did with SLI mode engage in most games.

That luckily seems to be in the past as I have gotten really solid performance out of all of the regular games I play. Rift runs happily on very high settings and the game looks amazing, and I am able to run around smoothly in the content at 1920×1080. Additionally a bellweather for me has been Star Wars: The Old Republic. My desktop has always run the game on high settings and had plenty of graphical processing power to spare. However the Nvidia 460m in the Asus laptop struggled with the game mercilessly.

I could never quite find a setting that made things feel smooth, even on the lowest of possible graphical settings. That said I have heard a lot of problems with the 460 and that game even on desktops. This laptop however runs Star Wars: The Old Republic happily at high settings on 1920×1080 resolution and a framerate that fluctuates between 45 and 60 frames per second. Quite honestly every game I have thrown against it, it has done well with. I feel like the last few days have been mostly taken up by downloading a game and seeing how it runs on the Y500. But I guess that is pretty average when you have a new toy to test out.

The Features

lenovo-laptop-ideapad-y500-4side-15L

12 GB DDR PC3-12800 Ram
15.6” LED Screen – 1920×1080 max resolution
Intel Core i7-3630QM 2.4 ghz Quad Core Processor
Windows 8 64 bit
1 TB 5400 rpm hybrid hard drive with 16 GB SSD Cache
Dual Nvidia GeForce GT 650M Video Cards with 2 GB DDR5 Ram per card
lots of other little things that wont seem nearly as important

I have to say it is the dual video cards that really peaked my interest. The concept of a SLI setup in a laptop just seemed grossly improbable. But so far the laptop does an amazing job of what it does. You would think that it gets absolutely molten hot with all that processing power. However the cards run relatively quiet and while it gets warm it is nothing uncomfortable. This is in a large part due to the massive cooling system. If you look in the above picture the big trapezoid shaped grill is loaded with fans.

The panel can be removed for easy cleaning… however the Y500 goes one step further. The other day when I was fiddling around in some of the preinstalled software, I noticed a power control system that had something interesting… fan cleaning mode. It is exactly what it sounds like… your system fans turn backwards for a short period of time extremely rapidly… sounds kinda like a jet fighter taking off when it happens… but it spins free any dust clinging to the blades. I thought this was pretty innovative and a feature I wished I had seen in other laptops.

The Price

The laptop is definitely not cheap, but it is a bargain for the features included. This performs as well as entry level Alienware laptops for like half the price. Essentially you have two options for buying the laptop. You can get it from one of the various discount resellers… I ended up getting mine for Tiger Direct, but you can actually get it cheaper overall from Lenovo. The problem with ordering from Lenovo they are currently having like a one month lead time before they actually ship your laptop.

Lenovo Y500 Series Laptop

Additionally I decided to order my laptop refurbished. I have always had good luck with refurbished products in the past. Some people shy away from it, but realistically it is the only time you can purchase electronics and know for certain that thorough testing has been performed on it, and that it will be guaranteed to power on. usually electronics are unit tested, and your individual unit may or may not have had a full battery of tests performed. Anyways… usually buying refurbished also knocks about 100 bucks off the price… and since this was a replacement for a dead laptop… and not a planned expense, dropping the price in any way I could is a huge plus.

This is the precise laptop I ordered, and it has actually come down in price a little bit.

That is always the way it goes. You buy something and it drops in price, but fortunately it was only like $50. So far like I said I am really loving the laptop and it has been able to do anything I can think to throw at it. Essentially if you are looking for a solid gaming laptop I would highly suggest it. I know a few other gamers in my little circle have purchased them and had similar glowing reviews. I never really would have considered Lenovo capable of creating a solid gaming machine, but they somehow have. I would be interesting to see if they follow through and start releasing prebuilt gaming desktops as well.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully I did not just bore you with a lot of hardware review… but I thought it would be good to do a deep dive into my experience. Also as I said I have mostly been testing the laptop rather than seriously gaming the last few days. I hope you all have an amazing weekend and I hope I manage to get up and around and productive. At this point I am going to go back to more testing of the laptop and maybe even a little actual gameplay.

Bel VS F2P

June 20, 2013 by Belghast

I am breaking the mold yet again tonight and knocking out a topic that I have been kicking around in my head all day. Quite honestly the topic is not my own, it was suggested to me by Syl of MMO Gypsy. There is a really interesting discussion on this weeks Cat Context podcast between Syl and Liore about their feelings regarding free to play games. I started the discussion up on twitter as well, because I tend to align more to Syl’s thought in that free to play is generally a good thing.

The Non-Believer

The funny thing is… I did not always have this opinion. In fact there was a time I was pretty vehemently anti-free-to-play model. I even believe at one point I wrote a blog post about the fact that I did not believe the industry pundits that all games would be switching over to free-to-play in order to survive. I really disliked the thought of a pure free to play game.. and in part this was due to some bad experiences with early games in the genre.

My first real taste of the free to play genre was with the blatant wow clone Runes of Magic. During one of my bored with WoW phases, I ventured out… downloaded it and tried to get into it. The problem is, the game at its core was this fairly horrific grindfest, that could only be sped up by spending “diamonds” on the in game store. It had some other fairly egregious money sinks in that most of the mounts that were available were “rental” only, giving you it for a fixed number of hours at a time. Some of the only permanent mounts came from… you guessed it the cash shop.

Later on I had gotten into the closed beta for a pretty nifty game called Allods. It was essentially a very unique looking russian/steampunky wow like game. I played the heck out of it in beta and really enjoyed it, and was looking forward to launch. Then towards the end of the test period they introduced their take on the cash shop. I don’t remember a ton of details other than the fact that so many things were pay-walled behind real money transactions. One of the mini-games i refuse to play in an MMO… is inventory maintenance… and the only real way to increase your bag space was through dumping cash into the in game store.

Both of these games served to give me an extremely negative impression of what this whole free to play genre was. Combine with the fact that the servers I was playing on seemed to be entirely populated with kids… aka people unable to buy their own subscriptions to games… I thought subscription gaming was the only way to maintain a thriving community. As new free to play conversions entered the market, I would give them a spin, especially if it was a game I had played before. Every time I would walk away disgusted by the horrible community I found there.

What Changed?

When Everquest 2 first launched its forray into free to play, I really paid no attention to it. Essentially it held nothing for me. Gameplay was essentially corralled off to its own dedicated server, so you could not play with your friends currently subscribed to the game. Additionally the various tiers of access felt extremely punitive, locking away functionality behind numerous paid gates. However after a period of time they decided to open up the free to play options on all servers. This is the point at which I started to notice changes in the game.

Firstly the station cash shop is pretty amazing, stocking all manner of things from nice cosmetic armors, mounts, amazing houses, and various buff potions. With my 500 station cash a month stipend from subscribing, I was able to pick up all sorts of things that improved my enjoyment of the game. Additionally I noticed the server populations start increasing, and these players were not necessarily the “unwashed masses” I had seen in my earlier ventures into free to play games. Some of these folks were really solid community folks, that just lacked the ability to commit to a month subscription.

The game was still extremely limiting for free to play players, but at least you got to play on the established servers with existing players. The guild I was a member of saw a massive influx in recruits and at one point we had 20-30 players on some nights during the peak of this influx. Additionally it felt like we were seeing a faster speed at getting cool features out to the players like the dungeon creator, eqemote, and new content areas like sirens grotto and skyshrine. It felt like there was a new kind of free to play player that I had not seen before, one that just wanted to play the game without commitment and had no qualms about spending money at their own pace.

Eventually recently they have completely dropped all race and class restrictions from free to play players, and we have seen another big jump in people in the game. There are still some functionality locked away, but the game is at its most playable state for a subscription free player. The game feels more healthy in every sense of the word since the free to play conversation happened. The cities are bustling, the zones have players available for grouping, and the brokers are completely loaded with goods.

Changing My Opinion

After watching the transformation the free to play model has had on the Everquest 2 community, and seeing the numbers released at just how much better Star Wars the Old Republic has been doing since it made its jump. I started to turn my opinion around on the payment model as a whole. While there are still some pretty egregious practices going on, I think for the most part these games are doing better under the new pricing schemes. I will always prefer the option to subscribe, but having free access to my characters gives me the ability to boot up a game I have not visited in months on a whim and spend a few days without feeling the need to fire up my account officially.

I feel like as the conversions happen, each game gets a little better at the model. So far Rift seems to be the best conversion I have seen, in that they chose the route to give subscribers bonus “premium” perks… like increase in coin, token and mount speed. Additionally they have taken the cash shop model to heard and provided hundreds of cosmetic armor available from day one. Sure there are lots of questions about whether or not they took things too far… but really I don’t believe any game has come even vaguely close to “play to win”. No cash shop has offered something so amazing that better cannot be attained in game through grinding out whatever passes as end game content.

Ultimately at the end of the day the real question is, do you want your favorite virtual landscapes to stay alive and well… or are you willing to see them suffer just to make sure they stay away from a free to play model. I don’t think it is about success or failure anymore… but more about survival. These games cost a significant amount of money to keep up and running and keep staffed. These are old figures, but it was reported that between 2004 and 2008 Blizzard spent 200 million dollars on upkeep of the World of Warcraft servers. Dividing that out it ends up at over 4 million dollars per month in upkeep and maintenance fees.

Granted most of the games that have gone free to play don’t have the number of servers or staff that Blizzard has, however I am sure it is still a fairly staggering amount. If they can get 5 players that are willing to pay 5 to 10 dollars on cash shop items per month, instead of 1 player that pays their 15 dollar subscription fee, they end up well ahead and have more money to invest in the game. The games that have gone to free to play seem to be doing well with the model, and that income gets invested in making new content. When Vanguard made the switch to free to play, the influx of new money allowed them to invest the first month in half a decade in development. As a result the players got the benefit in the first ever holiday event, and major server patch.

The Last Starfighter

Right now realistically there are two subscription model games left: The World of Warcraft and Eve Online. Eve is kind a bubble in itself without any real competition in that space, however World of Warcraft has been losing subscribers on a regular basis of late. After the successes of the Star Wars the Old Republic conversion, and if Rift ends up being as successful as it is looking just by the server activity and players returning with a vengence… I feel that before the end of the year we will at least hear about plans for a free to play conversion for WoW. We know that Titan is a long ways off, and their development cycle has always been prodigiously slow. They lack the hook of new and fresh content to keep players engaged.

I feel like the big announcement at Blizzcon will be a conversion to some form of a free to play model, or at least a tiered payment model. There is a huge part of me that mourns the subscription era, but I think it has been shown that the hybrid model ends up wildly successful. The folks that want those premium features are still willing to pony up for a month subscription, whereas the folks that are not wiling to have the monthly commitment are still going to buy the occasional doodad or account unlock.

For me the real takeaway is that whatever keeps these companies healthy, and keeps developers and support staff in their seats instead of hunting for jobs is going to be better for the players in the long run. Right now it is seeming like the free to play model is doing that. Rift for example has had to roll out a couple of new servers just to handle the influx of players. Personally I have had at least 8 friends start playing the game again, with more waiting in the wings to see just how successful the first volley is. When we are talking about MMOs that are not blizzard… we really are not talking about a lot of profiteering going on there. Ultimately they are fighting for survival, and if the free to play model gives it to them… I feel we are more likely to be able to keep playing the games we want to play.

Wrapping Up

This post ended up far more rambly than I intended it to. I can’t say I am really passionate for or against the free to play model, but at this point I feel like i understand why it is occurring so frequently. I love playing MMO games, it is the one thing I always fall back on. I am in theory embracing free to play, because it seems like the most likely way for these companies to continue getting the money they need… to keep supporting the worlds I care about. Ultimately none of these companies make these games out of the goodness of their hearts. They need our money to make sure they can survive and grow, and at the end of the day… how ever that happens I feel is pretty much fair game so long as it isn’t done in an exploitative manner.

Five Favorite MMOs

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Tomorrow is going to end up being a super busy day for me, as I need to run a few errands for work… so I am doing this post a little differently. I don’t feel like I will have enough time tomorrow to bang out a post like normal, so I am working on this topic tonight. I thought it would be interesting to do a post about my top five favorite games and why I like them so much. I figured i would do this in count down style with fifth leading down to number one… of course you can just cut ahead but lets pretend it is a surprise!

#5- World of Warcraft

I went back and forth several times on what should be my 5th spot, but as I thought about it… for sheer longevity of me playing the game, I had to give a nod to World of Warcraft. I have essentially outgrown the game, but it does a lot of things well. I feel like WoW is the junkfood of MMOs… so long as you do not think about what you are doing… it is extremely enjoyable. I played WoW as my primary game for roughly 8 years, and during most of that was the leader of a large social guild. I have so many amazing memories and have met so many life long friends out of the game. All of these reasons are why it at least had to make my list.

Best Features

People – WoW is still the game that most of the people you know are playing.
Colorful and friendly graphics and a world that matches them.
Lots of systems that allow solo players to engage in group content.
Game overall is extremely polished, they provide a consistent experience.
Roughly a decade of content and a wide variety of activities to do.

#4 – Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is one of those games that I really enjoy every time I get the bug to play it. It is extremely immersive and brings the player into the setting surrounding the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love the way that you are set up in the game as characters that just happen to be in the background of the activities of the fellowship. Each step of the way you are doing events that are helping out the world, but also keeping tabs on the activity as the fellowship moves through the novels. They do an amazing job of bringing the world to life and filling it with copious amounts of LOTR lore.

Best Features

One of the best communities – Landroval is amazing
Music system… you can play instruments in game, and players give performances regularly
Simple instanced neighborhood housing system
Hands down the best horses in any MMO… they move right
Breathtaking landscapes straight out of the novels
Intricate system within system… I admit it… I love deeds
Subscribing for one month permanently unlocks most features

#3 – The Secret World

The Secret World is such a unique experience that I feel like everyone needs to play it at least once. Not only it is a unique system, but it also has extremely different game play mechanics. I have always been a fan of the whole occult and Cthulhu mythos, and this entire game is essentially a love song to H.P. Lovecraft. It also has some of the best writing and storytelling, and additionally some of the most imaginative quests. The only negative to me, is that it lends itself to very periodic and episodic gameplay. Each time new content is released, I run in like a locust and gobble it up. I believe enough in this game however that before its release I became a lifetime subscriber.

Best Features

Unique setting and amazing storytelling
Unique classless game play
All players can learn all abilities in the game
Nightmare modes are some of the most challenging content I have experienced in an MMO
Does not hold your hand… almost to a cruel end. Very difficult quests.
No Subscription Fee – buy the box play forever
Single Server Infrastructure – play with anyone on any dimension freely

#2 – Rift

Rift is likely going to be one of those games I always cycle back to playing. Essentially it is WoW, but improved in every conceivable way. That is probably a massive disservice to the game to say that… but unfortunately that is usually what I think of in my mind. Since the release on a monthly basis they have improved the gameplay so that it includes some extremely innovative features. It has really engaging content that varies from epic quests to quick fast food push a button and get into the action features. Additionally it just went free to play, and it feels like one of the better implementations. The cash shop has a truly staggering number of things to purchase, but all of it is completely optional. You can pretty much experience every bit of the content apart from the Storm Legion expansion… completely free.

Best Features

Most customizable out of the box UI that I have seen
Awesome non-intrusive add-on support
Awesome passive grouping content like Rifts and Instant Adventures
Most detailed housing system – you can literally build anything
Extremely flexible class system with ability to have more than 6 different specs
Great Wardrobe system allowing for tons of custom outfits
Extremely interesting and challenging raid encounters
Really fun holidays and in game events

#1 – Everquest II

The world I will always be the most nostalgic about is Norrath. Everquest was my first real MMO experience, and it bit me hard with a vengeance. The big negative however is it was very unfriendly to players, and caused a massive commitment of time to get anywhere. However with the release of Everquest II, it took the world I loved and brought it into a much more player friendly frame of mind. This is one of those games that I have played off and on since release.. and no matter where I am mentally… this is the one game I can always play even when I don’t really feel like playing anything. I feel like EQ2 is the most underappreciated game on the market and has so much to offer players. It just doesn’t look as shiny as other games, and the engine definitely feels dated at times. The game takes of commitment to understand its systems, but you will not find a more intricate and rewarding game on the market (except maybe Wurm Online).

Best Features

25 unique classes
20 unique races
Massive scale zones, dungeons, and raids
More content than I have seen in any other game period
Massive epic quest lines… one I worked on off and on for 6 months
Extremely detailed housing system with the ability to have 10 per player
Extremely unique crafting system
Guild housing that actually supports guild activities
Antonia Bayle is one of the best RP communities – Tons of Live Events

The Runners Up

There were several games that almost made the list. I contemplated Star Wars: The Old Republic… because quite honestly it had some really engaging content. It however has probably the most egregious free to play conversion I have seen, so its exploitive nature knocked it off the list. I thought about Guild Wars 2, because there is something undeniably enjoying about the game. However there are an equal number of issues I just cannot get past to really find it something I want to play on a regular basis. Dragon’s Prophet is a game I am really enjoying these days, but I don’t feel like I have played it long enough to really give it a spot on the top five list. Additionally Vanguard is a pretty amazing game, but I just have not played it enough to really know its ins and outs.

Essentially I picked the five games that have shaped me the most as a player. I hope you enjoyed my little rundown and even more so I hope it inspires someone to give one of them a shot. Of my list only World of Warcraft lacks a free to play option. So I guess this is really telling about where we are currently in what is a viable payment model. I find myself cycling between the two four on a regular basis. Right now I am mostly in a Rift mode… but I am sure I will cycle back to the others before too much longer.

I hope you have a great day, and I hope you don’t mind the change in format. I wanted to create this post, and I knew I would not have enough time tomorrow morning to complete it all. Additionally I am busy tonight downloading things to load up my new laptop full of games. So essentially I had time to kill and devote to this. I hope I get all my errands in the morning done, and get to work on time.

Return of the Queen

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people… this is my first post without the aid of coffee. I am trying to taper back my caffeine intake because the whole heart fluttering/palpitations thing has been back with a vengeance over the last few days. I honestly figure it is mostly stress induced, but I am willing to cut back on a few things to help the process along. It is not exactly an enjoyable feeling, so if I can stop it from happening… I will be happier. As a result without aid of coffee, I may not be entirely cogent at 6 am.

Return of the Queen

So yesterday was my birthday, and I have to say I was overwhelmed by the birthday messages I go from all sources. Logging into twitter of G+ was like hitting a wall of happy birthday… it was pretty awesome. You guys made what would have been a pretty crappy day not one. Essentially my birthday was slotted to be pretty awesome. I had a replacement laptop arriving sometime midday, and my wife would be flying in at noonish and I would get the spend at least half the day chilling out with her.

I got up pretty early yesterday, and when I got upstairs to catch up with the world my wife had messaged me telling me that her flight had been cancelled. Apparently there was “weather” in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and they were re-routing all flights. So instead of her 7 am flight… she was being placed on a 3:30 flight… on standby. At this point she was not slotted to actually get back to Tulsa until 9:30 that evening. So that left her having to do the awkward chilling out at the airport thing, and me to be alone on my birthday.

I would have driven up to get her, since she was in Kansas City, and it is a roughly four hour drive from where we live to the airport… but with the laptop coming, neither of us wanted to leave that out on the porch. We have a little pack of hoodlums in the neighborhood, that have been suspected for the flurry of car break-ins that I wrote about awhile back. Mostly they are bored teenagers with no real parental guidance to give them a moral compass, but they have been known to have sticky fingers.

So it became a waiting game… if the package arrived quickly enough it would be possible to run up and back and get home before the flights would have. However since my laptop arrived at 1 pm, that slotted her still getting home around 9 after you factored in both directions of the drive… and a lot of unnecessary stress in the process. Somehow along the process she managed to get juggled to an earlier flight, and in the grand scheme of things landed last night in Tulsa around 8 pm. It is really awesome to have my wife back, but honestly the impact has not quite hit me yet. We got home in time for her to unpack and pretty much go to sleep, since she had been up since the crack of dawn.

Laptop Resolution

Yesterday I had regaled you with the tale of the guy flaking out on me yet again, and me giving up and just ordering online. As I said above, yesterday around 1 pm I had a doorbell ring and my laptop was there on the threshold. Since it was too late to try and drive to pick up my wife, I decided to unbox it and play with my new toy. First off, for having dual SLI cards the laptop is remarkably quiet and cool. There is heat emanating from the heat sinks on either side but it is no way as hot as previous laptops have been. I am guessing this is the massive air intake on the bottom of the laptop causing the thing to stay cool.

I have not honestly had much time to really game on the laptop, I spent most of yesterday downloading stuff. I got in and played a little Dragon’s Prophet and it looked gorgeous. My previous laptop did not like that game at all, and this one funs it pretty much on high settings fluidly. Additionally I played a little Rift as it was patching and it also looked gorgeous and ran well on ultra settings. The sad thing about the digital age however is it still takes a long while to download multiple 16 gig game installations. For whatever reason League of Legends was taking the longest… which seems insane considering how simple a game it is… and how low tech the graphics are.

The keyboard is going to take some getting used to, but so far I really like it. Keyboards are a huge thing for me… and this is as best as I can describe it a mechanical chicklet keypad. It has the low key height of a chicklet style laptop keyboard, but you have the satisfying mechanical feedback of an old school keyboard. It reminds me a lot of a half height version of my Microsoft sidewinder keyboard that I use on my desktop. The important thing is it feels extremely responsive but like I said it will take some getting used to.

The biggest feature that is going to take awhile for me to adapt to is the fact that this laptop is Windows 8. I have to say, I still have no idea what Microsoft was thinking by defaulting a desktop operating system to the Metro interface. I realize that I likely use my computer differently than most people… I tend to do everything through the run prompt… but even for day to day use… the Metro interface seems worse than useless. The very first thing I did was download Stardock’s Start8 giving me back my start menu and run prompt. After that it feels much like using Windows 7 with a strange skin on it.

I will slowly get used to the forced minimalist interface elements… but I find the whole “we only use solid colors” movement of recent years a bit chafing. Our graphical designer at work seems to have been bitten by the same bug… and white frankly this whole only using bright solid colors thing looks a little “Fisher price” to me at times. All in all I am very happy however, I like the feel and form factor of the laptop, and what I have seen of its graphical powers are excellent as well.

Downtime Fiesta

While I was installing software yesterday, I had my PSP going and was playing through Final Fantasy 5. So far my biggest problem with this game is that it does a fairly poor job messaging what you are supposed to do next. There is always a certain element of roam around until you figure it out to every mission. Now that I am well past the point at which I had played previously… I am in virgin territory and often times struggle to follow the logic behind the game. Luckily I have veteran resources to rely upon if I get stuck, but for the most part I have figured out things.

I believe previously I had been just about to enter the moogle village after arriving at the second world. Yesterday I managed to play through Castle Bal, Quelb, Drakenvale, Ghido’s Island, Surgate Castle, Xezat’s Ship, the Barrier Tower thing, Forest of Moore, and am now just about to storm Exdeath’s castle. There were numerous difficult encounters along the way, but I managed through them and did not hit any major roadblocks like Soul Cannon was. Atomos was definitely a pain in the arse with his huge hitpoint pool, but I managed through it.

I feel like I have a super low maintenance party with Black Mage, Red Mage, Ranger and Samurai. My good friend Ash that talked me into this madness has a Blue Mage… so it seems like his entire play through is dictated by trying to get the right abilities off the right mobs. There was some madness last night about needing to have a level divisible by 3 to get some ability off some boss encounter. Right now the biggest thing I need to worry about is keeping my characters in the best gear (which I would have done already) and grinding mobs to get job levels ((which I would have done already). After making the swaps this party feels like my kind of party… simple and effective.

Wrapping Up

Well it is that time again, I need to wrap this up so I can finish getting ready and head on in to work. Going to pack up the laptop this morning and bring it for our noontime gaming excursions. It should be considerably lighter since it only weights 6 lbs. I hope you all have a great day, and I want to say again how much I appreciated getting all those birthday wishes yesterday. Now time to return to the real world and try and finish out this week.