Yesterday was of course a holiday here in the United States… and as such I allowed myself to go into holiday mode and sleep in super late. We really didn’t do much of anything to celebrate, in part because having a single carved out day in the middle of a week is kinda butts. Sure when I go back today it is Friday… and thus the weekend-eve but it still feels jarring. I could have in theory taken the day off, but we already had the director and another manager gone… just leaving two managers to cover everything. That said I sincerely doubt there will be much going on as probably the majority of the workers took the day off if they could.
This weekend was the weekend of the great server split. I happened to get up to use the restroom and get a drink, and when I got back my client had cashed. This began a sequence of getting the 2002 Lobby Server error until I finally made it back in and was plunked in an over 2000 person queue. This was effectively the reality of Wednesday night, and I managed to fight through two of these queues, when finally I got disconnected again and simply gave up on making it through a third one. This seemed to be some localized issues to that specific night, as they did some maintenance in the wee hours of the morning and things were back down to 15-20 person queues all yesterday.
As far as the story goes… I am now stuck up against the pre-77 wall. The one that I hit at 76 seemed to be pretty short and was able to do my daily hunts and a few rounds of FATEs to get through it without much issue. This one unfortunately has me hitting it well before I have hit the halfway point of 76. That means tonight I am probably going to need to buckle down and grind it out in random queues of the 75 dungeon. That said I am mostly okay with this… as it contains my new spirit animal… the Batsquatch.
All in all I am still digging the story, but the flow slowed down a bit once I cleared the forest moon of Endor. When the game devolves into the more political stuff, I struggle to stay engaged. When it is all big damned call to action… I am fully on board with whatever nonsense it seems to throw me in. I feel like we are in the third act lull before things start to get really good again. I’ve officially got context for what the big trailer reveal presented, and I have to say I am feeling really weird about that sequence of events. I do not know who I can trust in this world.
The above screenshot is being shown without context, but I am happy to see it. It is a place I hope we will one day visit. I am sorta jealous of the side group that is operating there. In truth the Wednesday night server apocalypse is as close as we have gotten to seeing real problems with the Shadowbringers launch. All in all it has been a really smooth experience and hopefully I am not cursing myself… but I have yet to see anything similar to Raubhan Extreme. I look forward to getting off work and grinding my way past the wall I am against and seeing hopefully the 77 dungeon.
I never hit any wall at all. The duty finder roulettes give a crap ton of xp. Double xp if you are the class archetype in demand. I was at 80 around lvl 78 MSQ quests and I did not even do all the DF roulette options. Then again, I was a healer so double xp was everywhere.
I was wondering what happened Wed night. I was at 2700 on Jenova. It was … kind of fun. I kept wooping and telling sarah that 500 more people had been let in.
I got my Dancer to 70 yesterday so all my jobs are 70 again. Then I finally did the 4.3 trial vs the evil lady primal and moved through the rest of the MSQ and unlocked Shadowbringers. I’ve made it to Crystarium and gone through all the unlocks and tours there, but haven’t headed out to see one of the twins yet. I’ll start on that tonight.
TBH, I’m still not sure what job I want to use. I mained BLM in ARR, then changed to SMN in HW, then SB saw me using RDM but eventually migrating over to PLD. For SHB so far I’ve really only played GNB and DNC, with a dab of trying out SMN and finding I don’t know how to play it anymore with the changes made in 5.0. I should probably load up each job and do a level 70 dungeon or something so I can see how they each play out after the changes and make my decision then, I suppose.
I enjoyed GNB quite a bit. DNC is also pretty fun, but it makes heavy use of the “your combo depends on a 50% RNG proc” thing which I hated with MCH and tbh don’t really care for on DNC either. That said, I love the range and mobility. Perhaps I’ll go back and give Bard another go? Or rumor has it that MCH was much improved, so… I dunno. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.
They’re doing such a good job with the intrigue, and the feels, God this game.