Wish I Was Proud

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Fatigued and Forlorn

My wife and I have very different online circles.  She is super hardcore into mathematics, and I pretty much only following gaming folk.  As such we don’t actually follow each other on twitter, since there really is very little overlap between our communities.  The math conference that I helped out with over the summer has lead to a bit of overlap, but it is still super minimal.  The other day she hollered into my office at me “What is your gamers gate shit doing in my feed?”.  Sure enough the madness that has infected what used to be my happy place, had spread over into other communities.  These were not folks choosing sides in the battle…  they were folks shocked and dismayed at the death threats and hatred being directed towards women.  Once again reinforcing a very negative stereotype against our community, one that I feel we have fought really hard to get past.

I’m 38 and have been a gamer my entire life.  There are things that I have done through gaming that I am extremely proud of.  I am proud of the days of trying to make 25 people that have no tangible connection to one another work as a well oiled machine… or at least an oiled enough one to take down a boss.  I am proud of the community that I built from the ground up that over the course of its existence has housed literally thousands of “stalwart” gamers.  I am proud of the blog that I have built, and my two podcasts (one of which has yet to see the light of day).  I am proud of the events like Blaugust and the Newbie Blogger Initiative that I have been involved in.  I am proud to know so many awesome people, some of which have actually transitioned into my day to day life… or that I have hired because of their awesome non-gaming abilities.  All of these things took lots of effort to make happen and were all pretty cool things that I SHOULD feel proud of.

Wish I Was Proud

The problem is I can only feel proud of these within certain “safe” circles because the world as a whole still sees us as basement dwelling troglodytes.  The problem is… as much time as we have spent trying to change this image with really awesome things like Extra-Life…  Gamers Gate is proving them completely right.  It is proving to the world that we are not quite ready to crawl out of the primordial ooze of our basements, not quite ready to exist in normal society yet.  Chris Kluwe spun up a pretty incendiary rant yesterday about how the whole situation pisses him off, and I feel everything that he is saying…  I just wish he had chosen to write the article without the same sort of aggressive language that I expect from the GG folks.  Ultimately that article itself somewhat proves we are not quite ready to pull ourselves up out of the muck.

While I work for one of the coolest bosses in the world, I am still part of a society that seems gaming as an aberration.  I live in flyover country, and here gaming is still viewed as something “kids do”.  We were inching closer and closer to being able to get people to understand that going home and raiding with our friends is no different than going out to a bar with theirs.  We had reached a point where just maybe folks were starting to understand that waiting in line for a video game release is no different than waiting in line for a midnight showing of the latest movie.  Our culture was slowly grafting itself to the mainstream… and this was a good thing for those of us still dependent upon the mainstream for our livelihood.  Every day that Gamers Gate exists, and makes the press about their impotent “movement” and the harassers that freely associate with it…  is a day that chips away at the progress we have made towards being “normal”.

Tried to be Neutral

I honestly did not sit down this morning and intend to write this post.  Sometimes you sit down at the keyboard and and your words develop a life of their own.  I started out this GG madness trying to stay in the middle, and remain supportive to those who needed supporting, but unaligned to either Gamers Gate or the Anti-Gamers Gate camps.  The events pretty much made this an impossibility as the assault on the already under represented sections of our community continued.  The thing is… the longer this went on the more it pushed me into the Anti-GG camp.  So much so that I have systematically pruned my social media of anyone supporting it.  The problem is…  there is just as much negativity going on against it as well.  Over the last year and a half I have worked seriously to limit the amount of negative feedback I keep in my loop.  Its not that I am trying to be a Pollyanna or anything…  I just find it healthier to dwell upon the good things, and avoid the bad ones.

The problem is I don’t feel like I can avoid Gamers Gate, because it has become so attached to every part of this community that I love.  It is like this disease that has spread, and I am uncertain how exactly to cut it from these limbs without sacrificing the things I care about in the process.  Ultimately I just want it to go away, and I want the hatred and the fighting to stop.  I want people to treat each other with basic human decency.  Because really at the end of the day that should be a basic thing.  Since the golden rule of “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself” is woven into every single religion and culture on our planet… you would think that it shouldn’t have to keep being explained.  There is nothing that can be salvaged at this point from Gamers Gate.  The media has spoken, and they have rightly chosen to focus on the real harm to actual lives that is being done with this “movement”.  It is time for it to go away, or it might literally succeed in destroying the games we love.

All Saints Wake

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Path of Madness

ffxiv 2014-10-21 06-07-17-337 For the most part I have willfully ignored the crafting systems in Final Fantasy XIV.  By all accounts it is a black hole that is easy to fall hopelessly into.  The reason behind this is that pretty much every craft… relies on every other craft.  Blacksmith might require something from the Goldsmith, or Leatherworking require something produced by Alchemists.  The folks in my guild who have fallen deep into the system, have ultimately ended up leveling every single craft.  As a result we have at least two “Omni-crafters” as they seem to be called in the community.  Over the weekend while watching the live stream I started tiptoeing down this path by working on Mining.  I figured raising Mining to 50 would be a good entry point, and needed to gather materials for pretty much everything else.

As of last night I am closing in on 30, and I figure that now is when it actually starts to become difficult to push forward.  The positive is that  the fruit of my labor actually sells really well.  For a bit I was grinding ore nodes near camp drybone for Alumen, because I could sell it on the Market Board pretty much as soon as I posted it.  This apparently is needed badly in leatherworking, and since it is crazy easy to get I won’t mind gathering it up again later as I actually need it.  I am finding that you can actually level crafting professions pretty quickly using leves, but unfortunately you have a limited number of these available at any given time.  Thankfully I started with a stack of 99, and am slowly depleting them as I push up mining.

Level All The Things

ffxiv 2014-10-21 06-14-08-813ffxiv 2014-10-21 06-19-20-432 When not working on mining, I have been working on my pugilist.  Since they announced that the Rogue and Ninja would be Dexterity based, I have been wanting to level the Monk so that I can get rid of all of the low level strength gear I have clogging up my bank.  This is the last of the Disciple of War jobs I have left to level considering I have a level 50 Paladin, Warrior, Dragoon and Bard.  Granted on the 28th this will no longer be the case with the release of the Rogue/Ninja but I can work on that eventually as well.  I have this goal that I am setting out before me, to try and level all classes to 50 before the expansion hits next spring.  Right now you can see on the little image to the right what I have left to level.  My intent is not only to level the battle classes but also the Disciples of the Hand and of the Land.

Of course this is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time, but I am just crazy enough to do it.  As such I feel like I am mostly going to focus on this game.  I will of course go off on tangents and play other games like I always have, but this is something I would really like to accomplish, so that I can be ready to push up any class I choose come expansion time since all of them are getting upgraded to level 60.  Not only do I want to level all of my classes but I would like to gear out all of them as well.  Right now I already have the relic starter for my White Mage, but it is my intent to get that started for the others as well.  Not to mention as soon as Syrcus Tower unlocks from its single item per week limit, I expect to be in there a lot soaking up gear for various classes.  Quite honestly the idea of leveling all of the battle classes doesn’t really phase me… I was going to do this anyways.  What worries me is if I will lose my sanity trying to level all of the crafting classes.  Mostly I just want to be self sufficient.  I am tired of buying things off the Market Board… and even more so I am tired of having to inconvenience other players to craft things for me.  In World of Warcraft I had max level crafters of ever type in Mists of Pandaria, and I really liked being able to take care of whatever I happened to need… and I really want to get to that position here.

All Saints’ Wake

ffxiv 2014-10-20 19-00-56-57 Tis the season for Halloween events in games, and generally speaking these are my favorite events.  By far the king of Halloween events is the Nights of the Dead over in Everquest 2.  If you have never experienced that one, you should totally fire up an EQ2 account just to do it.  My intent is to do it over the weekend in honor of the holiday proper.  In Final Fantasy XIV, this will be my second year doing All Saints’ Wake which is their version of this venerable tradition.  One of the cool things I am finding about FFXIV is that each year they change the events completely.  This is both a positive and a negative.  It is positive in that you have a whole new set of rewards to collect and brand new quests to keep you entertained.  This is a negative in that you can no longer get the past years rewards, so players new to the game are at a disadvantage… at least from a nifty cosmetic baubles perspective.

ffxiv 2014-10-20 19-38-06-96 However during the Fan Festival they announced that they planned on offering the previous years items on a limited time cash shop, allowing folks to buy the ones that they had missed.  The two ghost costumes from last years event are among the first two items on the shop, and I believe they listed the price of each as $5 which is reasonable if you actually want that item badly.  I personally missed the Christmas events, so I am more than likely going to use the cash shop to catch up on the previous years goodies.  In any case…  things are still attainable, but the individual quests can only be completed during a specific years event.  This year the All Saints’ Wake runs from Monday, October 20, 2014 at 1:00 a.m. (PDT) to Monday, November 3, 2014 at 6:59 a.m. (PST).  Which should give players plenty of time to get in and do the quest chain that starts in Old Gridania, but ends up winding through all of the cities finally finishing with a FATE that occurs in Uldah.  One of the highlights of the event is that you get illusions cast on you by the NPCs, and among them are all of the various city leaders as well as Minfilia.  You can see me above doing the manderville as the ever adorable Nanamo.

ffxiv 2014-10-21 06-07-02-071 The rewards for doing the entire quest chain is the costume that the NPC is wearing in my first screenshot.  It is a really cool looking traditional witch costume, which works perfectly for casters.  These of course are cosmetic items and can be glamoured over pretty much any item.  To get the other rewards you are going to have to do a little grinding.  The FATE in Uldah is a parade, where you have to cast a seasonal cheer buff on Citizen NPCs that appear along the parade route.  You have to avoid casting the buff on the Thaumaturges, or they will dispell your illusion.  What makes this a little challenging is that the Citizen npcs run around in a specific area, and the buff is a ground targeted AOE.  The purpose of the fate is to collect Demonic Cookies which are then used as currency to buy the last two rewards.  Getting Gold in a fate earns you 6, silver 3, and bronze 1.  The two purchased rewards are the Eerie Barding as pictured above, and the demonic Pumpkin Earrings.  Both of which are really cool so it is worth the time spent doing the fate, to get both items you need a total of 16 cookies which really isn’t all that much “grinding” at least nothing compared to the various grinds for WoW Holiday items.

Heavensward

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Fan Festival Was Amazing


Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on Twitch
There have been several community events that I have watched over the years for the various games I have been into.  I’ve watched SOE Live, and Blizzcon… so I guess I was expecting the Fan Festival to feel pretty much the same, but in the end it felt considerably different.  With Blizzcon there is always the feeling that the folks from Blizzard are imposed upon to be up in front of the fans, especially during the question and answer sessions.  SOE Live on the other hand feels more like a gathering of loyal fans to a long running franchise, but even it felt different.  When one of the members of the FFXIV team was on stage, they were practically glowing with excitement at being there.  If you think about it, I guess it makes sense… because this is a game that was so bad during the 1.0 launch that they simply could not charge money for it.  These team members have through a monumental effort turned the listing ship around and not only stopped it from sinking but made it the second most successful subscription MMO on the market.


Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on Twitch
I think it goes deeper than that however.  Each time a developer of any stripe was on stage, they were almost vibrating with excitement about talking to the fans.  Naoki Yoshida aka “Yoshi P” the producer of Final Fantasy XIV and the man mostly credited for the games resurrection… was only actually scheduled to be on stage a few times.  However he ended up sitting in on damned near every panel because you could just tell that he was having a blast at the festival.  The man however that needs the lions share of the credit for pulling off this event as smoothly as it ran is Michael Christopher “Koji” Fox.  Not only was he a constant bundle of enthusiasm over all matters lore, but he spent the majority of the conference live translating for every dev panel.  This is a pretty monumental feat, and his localization and lore panel is one that everyone should see.  Right now the twitch stream are these two 10 hour blocks of video… but I am hoping that these get broken up into individual panels.

Since the release of the game my friends and I have talked about just how awesome the localization and quest writing is for this game, and come to find out…  that is almost entirely the work of Koji Fox.  The Japanese version of FFXIV apparently lacks almost all of the flavor that the English version of the game has.  During the Lore panel they gave a few examples of a Japanese quest that was extremely utilitarian contrasted against one of ours that is all about amazingly bad puns.  I feel like the game would not have been nearly as successful were it not for all of this diligent work during the localization process.  Apparently it has been noticed, and the Japanese version is going to be much more closely related to style of the English client from this point on.  It almost sounded like things would even start in the English client and get translated to Japanese, but I might have misunderstood that bit.  In any case Koji for me at least is the reason why this game is so damned sticky.

Heavensward

heavensward It is safe to say that I have not been this excited about an expansion in any game since the months leading up to the Burning Crusade.  There is just so much that I am looking forward to in Heavensward, not the least of which is the unlocking of Ishgard.  I am in the minority among my friends but I love Coerthas, and not because I particularly like the elves that inhabit it.  I love snowy climates, and Coerthas is like the king of all snowy climates because it has Dragons and the Dragoons.  I am looking forward to having Ishgard be the fourth city state and am hoping that it has a grand company associated with it.  I am also hoping that the political assholery that is the Coerthas quest chains…  does not represent all of Ishgard as a whole.  The other thing that I am completely pumped about is that we don’t have to wait over a year to see this expansion.  It is currently slotted for Spring of 2015 which could mean as early as March, but potentially as late as May.  This is the way that you announce an expansion…  a few months before release so that your fans have enough time to get excited about it, but not so much time that it feels like it is extremely far away.

I think the thing that excites me the most about Heavensward is the potential for new classes.  It has already been stated that there will be several new classes and jobs to learn with the expansion, and over the course of the Fan Festival there were a few leaks.  During one of the panels Gondai the battle team developer held up a Batman shirt, verifying one of the long held rumors that we would be seeing the Dark Knight.  During another panel it was leaked that Samurai would also be included.  Between those two I am pretty much in heaven.  Both are two of my favorite jobs from the Final Fantasy series, and you can damned well bet I will level both of them… and depending on the particulars will likely switch to Dark Knight as my primary job from that point onwards.  I have loved that job since Final Fantasy IV and always found it so damned disappointing when Cecil changes to being a Paladin.  My theory is that Dark Knight will be the DPS half of Warrior, and likely use Two Handed Swords…  but who knows.

2.4 and Beyond

The most exciting bits for me however had nothing to do with the expansion.  We have been waiting anxiously for the 2.4 patch to launch, and during the Live Letter managed to get a definitive date.  Next weekend will be the London Fan Festival, and a lot of the job related information is being held back to reveal during that event.  However the Tuesday immediately following London, the 28th we are getting the patch that introduces Rogue and Ninja, the Final Coil of bahamut and a bunch of Quality of life tweaks.  What I am really hoping is that since Second Coil of Bahamut is getting uncapped in the amount of loot you can get from it each week… that they might be doing the same for Syrcus Tower.  If nothing else the Soldiery gear should be considerably easier to get since once again they are introducing a brand new Tomestone category “Of Poetics”, which means they will be converting existing tomestones and lowering the price of items.

Triple_Triad What is awesome is that Heavensward is not terribly far away, but they have a whole bunch of stuff that will be going into the game in the meantime.  They confirmed that the Golden Saucer area will be going in during 2.5 and with it Chocobo Racing, various mini-games and the thing I am absolutely amped about…  Triple Triad.  This was a card game that existed as part of the Final Fantasy VIII game where you collected various cards throughout the world and dueled other Triple Triad players.  The game play was extremely simple to pick up, but hard to master.  I am so ready for this to be in game and expect me to duel a lot while hanging in our housing zone.

Community Spirit

There is a massive rundown on Reddit of all of the things mentioned during the Live Letter during the show yesterday.  I highly suggest you check it out if you are wanting more information.  Needless to say it is a super exciting time to be playing Final Fantasy XIV.  If I was not already enamored with the community I would have been after the Fan Festival.  The community spirit was constantly apparent when they dealt with players.  There were a number of events set up for players who were attending the show to compete in.  Among these was a preview of the as yet to be released Odin Primal fight.  Teams of players had 15 minutes to defeat the encounter, which pretty much meant at maximum they had two attempts.  The end result was not only bragging rights, but also an “I Beat Odin” shirt only available during the convention.  What sprung up around it was an atmosphere of folks cheering on other teams as they tried to get their own shirts and the sharing of tips and pointers.  As you talked to players that were defeated by the encounter, all they wanted to do was get back in line and figure out how to tweak their strategy for the next try.

Watching the crowds and watching folks on twitter talking about the experience… it was like the entire group was this big family.  I was so happy to see that this same spirit that we seem to have on the Cactuar server, apparently exists on all other servers as well.  I feel like each player that has made a home on their server, feels the same way about their own server as being truly “awesome”.  The most interesting thing was listening to the various social channels in game during the event.  It felt like most of the community was tuned into the festival and sharing tidbits of information they just saw.  There was so much cheering over various things, not the least of which was the announcement that the Atma drop rates would be more than doubled starting in 2.4 and the Animus books themselves would be considerably cheaper after the Tomestone conversion.  Folks are amped about what is coming during the next few months, and I feel like there won’t be a single dull moment until we arrive at the launch of Heavensward in the spring.  If you could not already tell… I am extremely excited.

#FFXIV #Heavensward

Extra Life Marathon

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AggroChat #27 – Ice and Ishgard

Last night we recorded another episode of the AggroChat podcast.  This week I was joined by the regular lineup of Ashgar, Rae, Kodra and Tam.  Since the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival is going on right now in Vegas we had lots of news spilling out from it.  The most exciting is the official announcement of the Heavensward expansion that is targeting a Spring 2015 release.  I have to tell you developers, this is the way you announce an expansion, when it is only a few months away.  Final Fantasy XIV has been a model for how to release content in general, with a lot of other exciting news coming out about the 2.4 Dreams of Ice major patch introducing the first new Class/Job combination since the release of the game.  Most everyone I know is really looking forward to playing the Rogue/Ninja and I fully expect that every group that I run after a certain point will be full of nothing but Ninja dps.

We did not ONLY have Final Fantasy XIV news however, and we talked a little bit about the Trove Halloween event going on right now.  Additionally Kodra and Tam talk about their experiences playing Borderlands the Pre-Sequel.  I was pretty hesitant about this game because quite frankly they did a really bad job promoting it.  It was made clear early on that this was the “B Team” working on the game, and the trailers seemed to lack any real effort and did not sell me on why this would be a game I wanted to pick up.  Additionally most of the classes that were playable didn’t really interest me.  However apparently the game is pretty damned good, albeit considerably more buggy than BL1 or BL2.  My biggest complaint about the borderlands series to be honest is that we keep having to get new characters to play.  I kinda wish that each game release would simply ADD more characters to play, without constantly removing the last games set.  At the very least I would love to see DLC that adds back in the other characters released after the launch.

Finally since we did not talk about League at all last week, I let Rae loose to discuss whatever she wanted related to league.  This is generally the point in the podcast where my eyes glaze over and I try desperately to follow the conversation.  I find League and interesting game, but just not as interesting as my other podcastees do.  It is a fun thing to play, but considering it seems to have its own language that is not entirely related to english I struggle to follow it.  Additionally there is my whole problem of not really following e-sports in general.  However if you are into league, and into e-sports I am sure this section of the podcast will make perfect sense to you.  I generally wait patiently until the league storm winds down and we can move on to the next topic.  We ran a bit long last night but I think there was quite a bit of really awesome conversation especially about Final Fantasy XIV and its current direction.

Extra Life Marathon

Another topic we discussed is the upcoming Extra Life marathon.  I wanted to break this out into its own topic this morning because of its importance.  Months ago several of the Alliance of Awesome community started talk about organizing a team for the 25 hour Extra Life marathon.  I personally have always wanted to participate in this event, but doubted if I could actually make all 25 hours.  As such we have formed a Hitbox Team, which allows us to all stream to the same shared page.  So next weekend we will have 25 hours of Alliance of Awesome gaming, and I really hope that you tune in to check some of it out.  Right now the schedule looks a little something like this.  All times are in Eastern Standard Time

  • 8 am – 12 pm – Stargrace
  • 12 pm – 2 pm – Arislyn
  • 2 pm – 4 pm – Ashgar
  • 4 pm – 7 pm – Kodra
  • 7 pm – 9 pm – Zelibeli
  • 9 pm – 11 pm – Scopique
  • 11 pm – 3 am – Belghast
  • 3 am – 6 am – Scarybooster
  • 6 am – 8 am – Cav

As you can see from the list three of the AggroChat hosts are going to be streaming, but more likely than not a large number of us will be hanging out on the Alliance of Awesome teamspeak streaming channel at any given time.  I know I plan on doing this for most of the day, apart from when we end up recording the AggroChat podcast.  I guess that too is still in the air, if we record an episode that day or not.  In any case you should tune in and watch the festivities.  If you want to do more than just watch…  any of the streamers would greatly appreciate your donations.  Right now the team as a whole has raised over $700 but since it is ALL going to an awesome cause we are hoping to get that number a bit higher.  I personally would love to see us hit $1000 but not sure if that is feasible or not yet.  If you are interesting in donating here are the links to the various team members.

AggroChat Hosts

Other Alliance of Awesome Folks

Something of note… Kodra is doing something special with his stream.  Basically he is letting you choose what game he is going to play.  When you donate to his stream, you can vote for him to play ANY game he has in his stream library…  or if you are truly a griefer… you can gift him a game and then donate towards him playing that.  There are certain games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent that he has only played a few minutes of…  and it freaked him out too much to continue.  All of these games… are totally fair game.  In fact I think we should probably make him play something truly disturbing.  In any case I hope you guys tune in next Saturday to watch the festivities.