The Best Expansion

Ambiguous screenshot time! Really I feel like there is almost nothing that I can actually talk about from Endwalker itself without somehow being at risk of spoiling something. This is definitely the sort of experience that you don’t want to spoil for anyone. I am now sitting at level 90 and have what feels like quite a lot of story left to go. There is one entire end game zone that I have yet to discover, and I am guessing that this sort of flow was planned as I am already wearing my set of artifact gear that I obtained at level 89. Instead of talking about the story itself I am going to talk this morning about a general thought process running through my head. I am very drawn to calling Endwalker as the best Final Fantasy XIV expansion to date, but I find myself questioning if that is even a fair designation. It feels like if you had skipped the story all the way through A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers… would this one expansion be capable of standing on its own? I think it would still be a very interesting story being told, but so much of what is happening stands upon the shoulders of a decades worth of experiences. There are moments that draw back to Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 and major touchstone moments that draw upon our experiences from every subsequent version of the game. As a result the Endwalker story cannot realistically be divorced from the decades worth of content that brought us to this point.
I had very similar thoughts when the Marvel Studios movie arc resolved itself with Avengers Endgame. If you were to ask me the single movie in that series that I enjoyed the most… then I would say Endgame without a doubt. However it is also a movie that cannot possibly stand on its own merit because by the time we reached that conclusion a decades worth of prolific movies had taken place. Twenty two movies lead us to the conclusion of Avengers Endgame and so many moments within that movie only really make sense if you were there for the entire ride. Is the story itself interesting? Sure especially if you have watched its bookend Infinity War, but will it have near the impact if you were not in it from the beginning? Hell no, there is no way you could feel the summoned feelings if you did not at least experience the majority of the films. So ultimately if you ask me my favorite Final Fantasy XIV expansion, I am going to say Endwalker. It is the pay off that comes at the end of a very long and winding journey. If you are NOT caught up with Final Fantasy XIV then I implore you not to rush the process. The payoff that comes in Endwalker is worth the wait and you need to have experienced the roller coaster of emotions that led us to this point in order to really appreciate the totality of this journey. Those of us who have been on this journey are finally getting so many things explained… that would have probably felt cheap if we had just jumped to the end of the novel and read the last page. This resolution is well earned and I cannot count the number of times I have found myself weeping tears of joy and pain over this game. By the time we reach this point it feels that we are adventuring with old friends, and not random characters in a role-playing game. I look forward to reaching the actual conclusion of the game and seeing how all of the loose ends get tied up into a bow. I am also extremely curious what the .1 through .3 patch cycle is going to look like this time around. Lastly I am extremely interested to see what new story arc is spawned out of this expansion. It really is the close of everything that came before it and the beginning of an entirely new era of Final Fantasy XIV. The post The Best Expansion appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Thoughts for Kenzie

Good Morning Friends. This isn’t exactly the sort of post that I am going to be syndicating but also since this blog often acts as therapy… I am going to talk about it. This is Kenzie, she is my partner in crime and has been my baby since we rescued her in 2014. She is not doing well and as soon as the vet opens I will be taking her there this morning. Saturday and Sunday she acted like her normal mess of a self, and then starting Monday she was extremely lethargic showing no real interest in food. Yesterday we called and were able to make an appointment for this morning, but I am scared to death that I did not make the right call and should have tried to find pet urgent care yesterday. She is not doing well this morning. It seems like everything takes a lot of effort for her to do. I made her a water dish so that she didn’t have to go far for water, and she ended up knocking it over this morning. She relocates periodically and seems to be moving okay when this happens, but it is like she has no energy at all. I am scared to death as to what might be going on, and thinking we should have taken her somewhere sooner. This morning she has her appointment so I guess I kept telling myself that we already had that and that she would be okay until then. Her breathing isn’t labored and if you did not know that she was in normally constant motion, you would think she was just tired.
I just want my baby girl to be okay. she has a lot of complications and some years back she developed diabetes. So I give her insulin every morning and evening through one of those clicky pens. That could be getting worse and I noticed she had been losing some weight, which was what had accompanied when we needed to increase her dosage last time. We needed to get her into the vet anyway but life has just been rough lately. I am scared that I fucked up and that my indecision will have caused permanent damage. This is a deeply personal post, but I would greatly appreciate it if you keep her in your thoughts today. Now that I have finished with this I will be bundling her up in the carrying cage and taking her to the vet hoping and praying that maybe just maybe they can help her out. The post Thoughts for Kenzie appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 7 – Featuring Jaedia

A Discussion with Jaedia
Hey Friends! This morning I woke up and realize that I had committed a travesty and am trying to right that wrong. Almost two years ago I had this grand idea of rebooting Bel Folks Stuff… and had even recorded a few new episodes as part of the process. I had this entire plan of re-releasing all of the original content since it never existed on YouTube and then this giving me a ramp to start recording new content. Then like everything that happened early in 2020, it was derailed by the pandemic. I mean on one hand being stuck at home should have been the opportune time to record something like podcast episodes with so much of the populace now working from home. Instead I personally found that the pandemic and the constant fear of death… pretty much sapped whatever creativity I had in me and left me this hollow shell. The end result is that I never actually got around to re-releasing the episode featuring my good friend Jaedia, and since today is her birthday I thought I would fix that today. Her blog Dragons and Whimsy is now on its third revision and quite honestly there are so damned many accolades I could throw out here. Many of you specifically may know her from her work that she did on MMOGames.com from 2015 through 2018. I would provide links to profiles, but it is grossly incomplete because the site seems to have a habit of replacing “by lines” and several articles I know she wrote now show up as someone else. I may or may not have pent up bitterness about my brief time writing for the site as well. Not at all where I intended to go with this discussion, but here we are nonetheless! This episode was recorded in May of 2015, so an awful lot of things have changed in those six years. The discussion that was had though is just as relevant today as it was when it was first recorded. I hope you can enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy revisiting it in my memories. Here is hoping that this will also act as a catalyst for me actually releasing some of the episodes that I have recorded already as well of the new rendition.
The post Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 7 – Featuring Jaedia appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Silence in Lieu of Spoilers

Friends… it is becoming progressively harder to cherry-pick screenshots that are vague enough as not to be filled with spoilers. Truthfully it is also becoming progressively harder to talk about Endwalker without massive spoilers as well. This expansion keeps changing on me when I am not looking, and the places it is going… are shocking to me at least. So this morning you get this gem of a screenshot which taken completely out of context doesn’t really spoil anything at all. Last night I unlocked the level 87 dungeon and dinged level 89… which means I will hit 90 well before I have come close to finishing the Main Story Quest. This means I am going to taper off doing any of the side quests, even though they were bringing me an awful lot of joy… just because it will feel real bad to be sitting at the level cap but not able to do any of the level cap things. I vaguely remember going through a similar situation where I hit the Tomra area of Shadowbringers and feeling like I needed to push forward the MSQ because I was just about to ding 80. It has been a pretty phenomenal expansion other than the whole “scared to death to actually log out” aspect of it. I was kinda hoping that as we got into the actual launch week that things would have calmed down a bit… but that doesn’t appear to be the case. In fact today is the day that anyone who did not get early access for some reason… is going to be starting the game. Like I was uncertain that Square could create a better expansion than Shadowbringers, and pending they stick the landing… they have absolutely accomplished that feat with Endwalker. As I said I am just about to do the level 87 dungeon, which means I still have a lot more main story quest to go before I see the end of this… and an entire area I have yet to discover. So we could be going anywhere now because we have already gone places that I was not at all prepared for. That is about all I feel like I can say… but lord am I looking forward to our AggroChat full spoilers show at some point in the near future. Which reminds me I really need to work on getting the few FFXIV spoiler shows that pre-date me putting things on YouTube up on the site so I can create a proper playlist. If you are curious in our spoiler shows you can find most of them linked in this post. I think our first show was for the ARR post expansion content, and then have done one each expansion going forward. With that I am going to bring to a close this morning’s post because I feel like there is a whole lot that I just can’t even talk about because spoilers. There may just be an unexpected gap in content for awhile because I am not sure how I am going to keep up these daily posts if avidly avoiding spoilers. The post Silence in Lieu of Spoilers appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.