#I realised before the game loaded so at least I didnt feel like a complete idiot- just a half idiot instead

[sapphire-rb]

So, turns out, whatever google translated from korean as 'Rick' is not, in fact, Pastor Al, but Warwick instead. Who would have thouuught....

Anyway on a completely unrelated note, here's albino Warwick on a post Khrumbul-Dun save.

So, you know how monsters have white hair when you use the mod rod...?

*Spoilers from Furrowfield here* (I don't think you can revive Al. Unless there's a list of all non-story npc IDs somewhere, 'cause if you add Al with his story ID he just lays on the ground half-dead.)

[tumblunni]

AWW C’MON FFXIV

one of the biggest barriers to me getting back into it is just how SLOW the beginning is when you don’t have any friends to help you out like it legit took me a whole week of constant grinding just to reach level 15! FIFTEEN! IUts really fuckin slow even by usual mmo standards! and like.. all that slow is supplimented by huge amounts of quests and story and being required to do that main story in order to access goddamn ANYTHING, such as (for example) the additional hairstyle customization options you get at level 15 which I KINDA GRINDED SIX DAYS FOR, ONLY TO FIND OUT I NEEDED TO FINISH 8 MAIN STORYLINE QUESTS FIRST.

Like normally i would be HAPPY for an MMO that has loads of well made story scenes and ties progression more to quests than to grinding. But its just.. so unappealing to me?? Its That One Style Of Storytelling That Turns Me Off Immediately. I fuckin hate pretentious fairytale stylings. like not even when its told in the nostalgic writing style of a kids’s story or has a fairytale art aesthetic, those are some of my FAVOURITE THINGS. Nah when its the nostalgic writing style of fuckin specifically shakespeare and the only aesthetic is fuckin tolkein AGAIN. Like its really fuckin noticeable that the entire FF series has a bazillion original species in every other game but as soon as they made an mmo its Now Only Elves And Dwarves And Giants. And like.. the one anime addition of catgirls, and also making orcs/demons fuckin boring bishounen people with ‘all men are dragony and all women are 12 year old lolis with hair decorations’ as a fuckin species trait.o r I guess maybe the roegadyn are both orcs and giants combined and the au’ra got all of the leftover terrible traits..? And that’s 80 times more obnoxious when everyone talks like YE OLDE FUCKIN LITERATURE CLASSE AYE MY BOY YONDER DAWN DOTH BREAK OVER BIGASS FUCKOFF MOUNTAIN, HERE TAKE A STICK AND KILL 5 SLIMES like they literally fuckin sub ‘nightsoil’ for ‘shit’. this is an actual thing that someone thought would sound clever and fantasy-ish, instead of like an internet parody... And as far as I know the japanese version doesn’t even do this?? And neither did japanese FF12?? I FEEL SO LIED TO! Like these two worlds are still the most simultaneously cliche and overdeveloped ever, but i would at least enjoy my experience marginally more if the wall of text didnt stretch out every word to its maximum syllable potential..

BUT YKNOW DESPITE THAT DESPITE THAT BEING MY PROBLEM I AM NOW SAD AT FFXIV MAKING EXACTLY THE FIX FOR ME

They added a REALLY interesting and Dear God Relief feature where you can literally buy your way to the start of the latest expansion, story-wise. Which is a really great idea tbh, it kinda sucks to see ‘level requirement 80 must have beaten main story’ on this entire separate thing that you just bought. Kid me was dumb and didnt read all the conditions on old FFXI stuff... And I mean, anyone who complains about this being pay to win is being a dumbass, since all it does is promote you to the base level required for that storyline. Like the maximum here is level 60 with the equivelant job quests finished, so like.. there’s at least One Thing that makes you less than horribly underprepared compared to everyone else, but you’re still just a newbie wearing big boy pants. You can never pay to win for any level anywhere near the cap, it’s just pay to skip the more boring beginner sections. And probably get your ass kicked after cos all u hav is base equipment and none of the optional sidequets content or learned experience from the actual story...

BUT STILL I’M MAD BECAUSE there’s no way to do this without skipping the story!! your 60 levels of beginner quests are flagged as complete and you can never even see what you missed unless you watch someone else’s lets play i guess

and I know I just said that the story is really cumbersome and slow and badly written and cliche and i have no investment in anything but like that’s only 99% true, I actually WAS interested in the job training plotlines! a smaller self-contained sidequest with a cast of mentor npcs and story directly tied to your combat strength, rather than having to mop up loads of way underlevelled quests arbitrarily just to unlock the ability to actually exceed that level. gahhh Also i have a soft spot for the thieves guild- umm i mean the ‘seamstresses’ (or what was the actual joke about it? i think that was the discworld version XD) Mostly because they don’t talk like overly fancy pricks but also dont have too much of an over the top fakey oliver twist poor person voice. have I mentioned how its double annoying playing this game as a brit and hearing EVERYONE as some american guy doing the most stereotypical accent? Its a japanese game, why did you even do this!! srsly, this and ff12 have so many of the same dub fail. Oh, but also i like the thieves guild cos their plot is actually somewhat interesting, with the secrecy and stuff, instead of just I Am Mentor Man I Am Good At Job But Probably Tsundere Or Something For Six Hours. Also nice that there’s a full cast of this piratey crew and you get to interact with bossman’s admin guys sometimes, and get a general sense that he’s the comedic bumbler that’s only kept alive by their competance. (I call it.. the Plumeria Principle..)

Oh and lol also even if i could skip the story bits I hated, i probably wouldnt cos this thing is so fuckin Lore that i’d be completely lost... T_T But aaaa its tempting!! Cos I picked a bad starting town that had a plot and mentor npc that I didnt really care for, and now i really wanna switch to (weirdly enough) the one for gridania the land of the most boring elves and none of the job classes I want to use. She was just a really cool character! I can’t remember the pirate town equivelant tho, I just think that was my fave town aesthetic and fave jobs and stuff but the npcs were boring. I want elf mom!!! But seriously after fuckin SO MUCH WORK getting to level 20 before i decided i wanted to restart AAAA and then i wasted a bunch of my money on appearance change coupons to try and sate the restart temptation but then i realised No It Was Elf Mom I Miss so now i have a bunch of that cash shop content on that character and its impossible to transfer or somethin?? i couldnt even figure out how to send money between your own characters, which sucks cos some really nice guy gave me 30000 gold for no reason when i first started up the game and i legit DID NOT KNOW HOW TO USE CHAT YET so i was like running after him all WAAAAIT LET ME FIND THE KEYBOARD TO SAY THANKS xD But then i was just using that character to check out some of the other intro towns, it wasnt my main so i never used the money :(

so yeah anyway now I’m stuck here grumpy and debating whether i should buy this aaaaa and i cant even remember the name of the clearly-a-thief-but-dont-call-it-that class so i can pick the right thing to buy... And also i dont know if this only skips job training quests and not main story quests? or if there’s any way to recap main story quests at least? so it might not be as bad as I think. And maybe i could just pick whatever class I hate most to get all the exp in, and then i can have the level requirement to use my damn expansion but still go back and restart another job questline. and it’d probably be easier lol with all the boosts of having some other job high levelled! wonder if there’s a job with a terrible plotline that jus coincidentally lines up as a great thief supporter...?