Exclusive Insanity

So, besides the fact that I love the game and find it very fun, it turns out there was another good reason to stick with FFXIV so long!

Recently, they announced that all players who have paid to play for 90 days or more between January and the beta for version 2.0 (the re-release, which will redesign a lot of the game) will be paying the discounted rate ($10/month) for as long as the game is still going! The new comparable rate is going to be $15/month, so that's a $5/month saving. And since I plan to continue playing for as long as the game is still going and still fun, this is a pretty awesome deal for me!

Another thing: the Final Fantasy MMORPG games (FFXI and FFXIV) typically give you one character, and you pay extra for each additional character you want to make. This is because FF lets you play every class/job (like warrior, black mage, etc) on one character rather than making you pick only one class for your character like just about every other MMO out there. However, the new pricing system will allow you to make 8 characters per server without any extra charge. So I get to play with character creation more!

There's an option for new players to pay $13/month and only have 1 character per server like before, but I don't know if many people will go for that. For $2 more you get 8, after all. As a legacy player, though, I pay $10 and get 8 characters, so I win either way!

FFXIV is also doing a "welcome back" free trial, so anyone who had a character but is currently deactivated can come back and play for free for 10 days to check out the game and see if they want to pay for 90 days and qualify for the legacy program as mentioned above. I think that's a pretty good idea too, because there's a lot of good stuff in the game now as opposed to back then.

All the details are here: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/campaign/campaign.html

Things that are still on my to-do list:
- get the last three Moggle weapons (must fight Good King Moogle Mog a bunch more times!)
- challenge and defeat the Aurum Vale (I haven't completed this dungeon yet)
- get the last achievement for Cutter's Cry (need to get all five chests on the way through)
- level weaver and leatherworking, and try to make gil off of them
- put more materia into my gear
- get the rest of my fighting classes to 50, and do the job quests for them

I'll have more on my list after this Thursday as well, because we're getting another patch with more things to do. Garuda fight FTW!

Cody drew my character from FFXIV again! Here: http://messenjari.deviantart.com/#/d375t1a

Now that FFXIV is out, I've changed the top banner on my site, and I think it looks pretty cool.

Cody and I spent pretty much all weekend playing. It's a fun game.

( More on FFXIV )

So on Friday I got a 120GB solid state drive and Windows 7. My old 1TB drive is still in my computer, so I could boot into Vista if I wanted and I still store all my data on there, but I pretty much moved over to 7 now. It's very nice and smooth, and (probably mainly because of the solid state) much, much faster.

I spent most of the morning yesterday installing some of the programs I use on a regular basis. The FFXIV beta was one of the first. I'm still missing Office, Photoshop, and Diablo II (and probably a bunch of things I haven't thought of, but will later), but I've got my virus protection all set up and running scans at 3am every day, my adware and malware scanners installed and ready, and my video and audio players and codecs downloaded. Also iTunes is good to go with my iPod Touch, although it was a pain to get it using my previous library. But yeah, all good to go now.

Business as usual, pretty much.

Cody drew pictures of my characters with his. The first is Athynn and Messenjari, and the second is Brynne and Messenjari. They look awesome! When they're finished, I'll link them here. We gave Athynn an axe for a weapon since I he sucked at black mage so bad. Heh. Brynne has a sword in the picture. Despite both of those, I think when I actually play I'll be going for hand-to-hand combat. Punching stuff is such fun! And easy to rank up, since you hit so damn fast.

I'm still not totally sure, but I think I'm leaning towards playing as Brynne. I have about a week to decide, but it looks like that's what I really want to do, so... yeah.

I also downloaded and watched the first OVA episode for the Tales of Symphonia ~ Tethe'alla Arc. It's good - I liked the first set of OVAs, but this one is even better, I think. I've read the manga, so I know the storyline. I'm looking forward to seeing it with all the awesome music and mood-building and development that the anime can bring to it!

And yeah, the music is AWESOME, as usual. The opening theme has more punch to it this time around (I liked Almateria, but it was very slow and the video accompanying it wasn't that exciting). The background music is lovely, especially that haunting tune near the end where Yggdrassil shows up. It sends shivers down my spine.

I've downloaded the second episode, and I'm going to watch it today while doing my workout. Unfortunately, then I have to wait until Sept 23rd for the third episode. Oh well.

Opening theme is here for those who are interested.

So, the Final Fantasy XIV beta is open to anyone now - yay! Cody was chosen as a tester in the closed beta, and I got to try it out on his computer, but now we're going to get to play together, which should be pretty cool.

If you haven't been introduced to the awesome that is FFXIV yet, take a look at this lovely trailer.

The graphics are actually like that in-game. Even on the lowest setting, they look gorgeous. I also adore the music and will most likely be buying the soundtrack. Character creation is a lot of fun; very customizable.

Gameplay is different... I like it! I'm fond of the leveling system they're using, too. Everything is weapon-based. If you change your weapon to something used by a different job class, you are basically switching over to that class. You have a physical level and a skill level; the skill level relates to how good you are with the weapons or abilities, and your physical level relates to your basic HP and MP amounts. You have a limited set of abilities you can access, and you can change and customize which abilities go in that set - for instance, if you have leveled your magic high enough to learn Cure, you can add that to your abilities even if you are playing a melee job and still be able to cure yourself.

It's cool. I really like it.

If anyone else wants to try out the beta, it can be found here. You need to register for a SquareEnix account, but that is free and not too difficult. I recommend putting the game on its lowest settings, as it's pretty graphics-intensive (as you can see from the trailer).