Looking for Party – Welcome Home?

One evening, after coming home from a friends house, Kody turned to me and asked “Do you fancy playing Final Fantasy XI again?”

I honestly did not expect to hear him say those words but here we are, two months later and playing (albeit in a remodelled Linkshell from before) with some dear old friends and new acquaintances.

Does it feel good to be back?

Well… kind of. It certainly is nice to be back on familiar grounds once again and hitting up friends whom we haven’t really had a chance to see in a long time. And I have to admit, it is really nice to have Parubati back, as much as she is a bit of a honker to look at I have a soft spot for her.

But, my God, how things have changed and I cannot say it has been for the better.

Believe me when I say I am not an old-school player by any stretch but even I have noticed that the game is really starting to peel away and become nothing more than a level up fest with little to no skill required for anything in game. We walked back into the game with little to no trouble, our equipped gear admittedly was not the most outstanding and some parts were dated but around us were jobs and characters that had been ‘power levelled’. This is a strategy where you take a mid level character, say level 30, you take them into the Abyssea expansion and have them sit on the sidelines whilst the higher level characters kill the monsters and they essentially ‘leech’ the experience points. Only problem with this is you must also skill up your weapon/magic abilities separately as this does not reflect in the leeched exp because they are not physically attacking anything.

So having a level 99 Ninja is all good and well, but if your katana skill is at five then you have one massively gimped character!

I am not an innocent party, though! Yeah I am guilty of power levelling a few of my own jobs in this game but it was more morbid curiosity than anything! But seeing so many people with jobs they have levelled but not sunk time and effort into skilling up makes for a very sad situation indeed.

There is no sense of danger any more…

I also noticed events that were once were rigidly planned out to the letter are now walk in, kill and walk back out again. There is no sense of danger any more, I really liked the challenge but it seems to be non-existent now. Taking part in the Shinryu dragon fight used to be pretty intense but now it is easily done with three-four players. It feels like a fall from grace in a way.

For fear of sounding bitter, I am enjoying being back with good friends and messing about on events with them. Been missing the utter nonsense on Skype too, so that made a welcome return to the evenings once more!

Right now I am working away on Blue Mage – this is a class where you have to ‘learn’ monster’s magic abilities (it is a wee bit like stealing really) and then use them as your own. It was a complete arse to unlock but I think I got lucky! You have to play three goblins at rolling dice. If any of their rolls are higher than yours then you have to start the trial all over again. Not fun at all.

Thankfully, I rolled high each time, otherwise it would have been resigned to the ‘aye, bugger that’ pile forever more.

I don’t plan on chucking Paru the BLU into a leech party though, I really want to level it as ‘authentically’ as I possibly can. There really is no gain from this but I thought why the hell not, its not like I am doing anything else!

We plan to play this alongside the Beta for Final Fantasy XIV (I got my confirmation email today, the joy of holding a Legacy account!) but for how long I am really not sure. The changes have been a bit of an eye opener as to how this game has changed since we last played. Final Fantasy XI also has an update and a new job coming in March which I might look into but I am on the fence about it. Not fully convinced I want to shove any more money into an expansion I have no desire to play.

That and I just got my hands on a Nintendo 3DS and I fancy grabbing a few games for it too… namely Animal Crossing: New Leaf! Proper excited about this game, I was a huge fan for the first outing on the original DS but never really got along with the Gamecube/Wii version. It is the perfect game to be tucked up in your bed and nice and warm, chilling out and making your town super awesome.

Wow…I am a pretty lazy gamer…