Good Morning Folks! Yesterday I did something that I did not think I would actually manage to do… and that is get back into the Final Fantasy XIV Main Story quest. I’ve been saying for months that I left off at Rubicante but in truth apparently, I had played far enough to get right up to the Barbariccia fight. Look all of the vaguely Italian archfiend names from Final Fantasy IV have always flowed together in my head. When I last played the game I was apparently sitting at the Trial fight, so yesterday the very first thing that I did was dive into that. I feel like it is Pandaria Remix that is to thank for breaking my mental block against grouping with other human beings.
I’m actually somewhat into the storyline at this point. I did in fact play through to the point where I just finished fighting Rubicante and have plans to do some nonsense. The other thing that I did not expect is that I am now really invested in the character of Zero. I feel like I had just been very much locked in ARPG gameplay mode and coming back for Pandaria Remix has flipped a switch in my brain so that I am once again in “MMORPG Enjoyer” mode. I had been bouncing pretty freaking hard on anything that was not Guild Wars 2, which sort of sits in a happy medium between the ARPG and MMORPG genres. I figure that I will without a doubt catch up on the story before the Dawntrail head start begins at the end of the month. I am now actually finally in the mood for it I think.
Speaking of Pandaria Remix, I’ve now dinged level 70 on my Tauren Paladin over on Drenden. I’ve tanked a few world bosses at this point but have not gone so far as to tank any of the raids. I feel pretty weak at only having around 500k hitpoints. I still have a number of gear slots that I have not upgraded to the maximum dropped item level and in theory, I should probably do some more questing in order to get some more raw stats on my cloak. I really feel like blizzard screwed up on the cloak because they should have made the stats account-wide. It would have felt significantly better to play alts if everything you played was contributing to the same nonsense stat bomb.
I’ve also created a Viera Hunter over on Eonar that I am now starting to level. I named the default Cobra pet that you get “Smooples” but I think I am going to have to venture forth into the Isle of Giants and tame me some cool Dinosaurs soon. I’ve not had much desire to grind out bronze for the purpose of gearing, but I am enjoying leveling alts which in itself creates a large stockpile of bronze. At this point I am pretty close to buying most of the mounts, and then will start handpicking my way through the cosmetic gear sets that I want to collect. The only thing that I do not really care about in the least are the toys. Toys are one of those things that I completely forget exists in the game 99.9% of the time. However, I did see one that I would love to have so I need to figure out where it comes from… essentially it was a portable ocean allowing you to fish from anywhere.
The new summer-themed mounts and cosmetics are up on the tender store… and I am honestly not sure how I feel about them. Firstly I am throwing some side eye at this mount because it feels pretty much exactly like my memories of a mount that was available in Wildstar. I am weirdly against Fantasy characters wearing “real world” gear. Like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV have a bunch of non-adventurer citywear and it sort of bugs me anytime I encounter someone wearing it. The other day I saw a Charr in a T-shirt and Cargo shorts and it sort of broke my brain. I don’t talk about it much because I don’t want to harsh anyone else’s fun… but I sort of hate the Fortniteification of World of Warcraft at times. I get that the Korean P2W MMORPGs did it first… but Fortnite was really the game that popularized in the West the “anything goes” style of cramming everything into a single game. Side note that is the preview on the Tender store… I did not buy the mount and likely will never buy it. It just is not my vibe.
Now that my brain seems to have had its switch flipped… I also want to get back into Guild Wars 2 and finish out the Secrets of the Obscure content. I’ve not unlocked Inner Nayos but I think I am getting pretty close to doing so. Hopefully, your week is amazing. We have a bunch of thunderstorms over the next few days but hopefully, they will not produce “twisty weather”.