I've been trying to think of what to write about without a whole lot of luck. I've got some things to say about Stellaris, but I don't really have my thoughts totally organized on that. I don't feel like I've done anything else in Final Fantasy that warrants more discussion of that. And that's really all the gaming I've been doing recently. I suppose there are a couple of mobile games, but I don't have a lot to say about them at the moment.
So I'm going to share with you today a couple of videos that I was reminded of thanks to a conversation about Star Wars Galaxies. SWG was unique in a lot of ways when it came out, one of which was the entertainer system. There were whole skill trees for dancing and music that unlocked dance moves and the ability to play different instruments as you advanced. The moves could be chained together and even synchronized with other players to let you perform as part of a band. Nowadays, Lord of the Rings Online is probably the game best known for its music system, but when it was new SWG had something different that I had never seen before.
Using those systems a player going by Balgosa Windspire recorded some of the first machinima I ever saw; a number of music videos using the Star Wars setting. The graphics look a bit dated now, of course, but you have to remember this was around 2004, so well over 10 years ago. At the time these were all very impressive, and they're still pretty entertaining. Bringing them up in conversation got me wondering if perhaps they were on YouTube. As it turns out, Balgosa has a channel and all of his old work has been uploaded to it. So that's what I'm bringing to your attention today. I hope you enjoy them!
Once upon a time I used to do “hardcore” raiding in WoW. The best parts of that time were during the Lich King expansion, and the very very best was Ulduar. While we were raiding Ulduar, the shards for the healer legendary were funneled to our holy paladin. I got a couple from the rare times he wasn’t there. I was so excited and so jealous when he finally finished the quest and got his hammer, after weeks and weeks of us working together as a team to clear Ulduar. Then, as is usually the way of these things, that pally took a break from the game not long after getting this prize. He came back at least, but Ulduar was around for such a relatively short time that we never finished a second legendary. I spent the rest of the expansion being jealous of the shiny bubbles that came from this mace.
I had ventured back into Ulduar a bit after that expansion ended, chasing fragments and the mount. But I never fully put my mind to finishing this thing until recently. At long last, I completed it this week. This legendary didn’t have nearly as cool a quest line as Shadowmourne, but it will always hold a special place in my heart. I’m glad I can finally call it mine.
For a little bit now there have been rumors about the impending announcement of Rift 4.0, namely due to some data-mined zone names floating around. Nightmare Tide and I had a bit of a rocky start and it was only recently that I managed to level through the content and hit the level cap. Originally I thought that this expansion might be based on the Plane of Fire, given a few of the leaked zone names. However it seems like this expansion ties directly into the last raid of Nightmare Tides the Comet of Ahnket. Based on the teaser information on the Starfall Prophecy promotion page, it seems as though the Comet Ahnket has been picking up bits and pieces of the planes as it hurdles towards Telara, and as a result this inhabitable world has been created that we now need to go to in order to find a way to stop it. This combined with some of the artwork shown on the site makes it seem like this expansion will be an amalgam of elements, or at least Life and Fire.
I have to say some of the new assets that are seen on the site are really damned cool. Prime example is that I have zero clue what sort of machine this thing is, other than it seems to be themed with a similar face to the Comet of Ahnket content. It looks amazing and I will be more than happy to fight it, and I am hoping that this is some sort of zone event boss. Mostly it seems like this expansion is going to be a huge world with lots and places to explore. I think one of my big issues with Nightmare Tide is that in the grand scheme of things… the color palette was extremely difficult to get used to. It isn’t nature to see a landscape of violent purples and oranges everywhere, and trying to read that as something to roam around in. While places like Goboro Reef eventually grew on me with time, it was a long adjustment period. This on the other hand seems more familiar, like the same sort of zone treatment we saw in Storm Legion, but this time instead for a much more fire influenced setting rather than death. Between now and launch however I either need to actually find a group to do Comet of Ahnket raid, or watch a play-through so I can soak up some of the information about what is happening there. One of the things I love about Rift raids is that they are so full of story, that plays out around you as you move through it. Unfortunately there is not a “Chronicle of Ahnket” or Intrepid Adventure for it… so that means I will actually have to try and find a pick up group to see the story-line.
New Features
On the promotion website it lists a whole slew of stuff under the title of “Claim the Power of Ahnket”, and some of them are pretty interesting sounding.
Increased Level Cap: 70
Legendary Powers
New Zones
New Dungeons
New Raid
Planar Assault Adventures
Fortress Sieges
Looking For Raid
Individual Reward System
Active Upgrades
Eternal Item Rarity
Planar Fragments
These all sound interesting, but we don’t really have a ton of information to go on yet. It is my hope that between now and the expansion release, they start showing off various features of the expansion during the Friday streams. Unfortunately I have other plans today, and the time shift means that it is happening while I will be in the middle of a family dinner. However I am fully expecting this weeks stream to be epic, showcasing a lot of new features but in limited detail. Of the above list the two that stand out the most are “Looking For Raid” and “Individual Reward System”. Now these have caused drama in games that implemented them, but I have to say after having lived with them for awhile… I’ve become a fan. There was a time when I was strictly against the whole content of LFR, and probably said some things against it. That was also a version of me that had a dedicated raid team, and access to the best gear said raiding could provide. The current version of me however just wants to experience the content and play all of these various games that I want to play. For example in Rift I don’t really have a large group of friends who happen to be playing the game, or at the very least not in the density that I have elsewhere. As a result it is extremely hard for me to figure out how to get anything started, and I would absolutely lean on LFR like a crutch the same way I do currently on the Intrepid Adventure system. Because of this.. the Individual Reward system only makes sense, that way you are not trying to roll against other players but are instead getting your own personalized loot.
The other things on that list that really interest me are Planar Assault Adventures and Fortress Sieges. The Planar Assault Adventures sounds like absolutely something that would be down my alley, and I am hoping these are somewhat like chronicles in that they can be completed solo or with a group either one. I mean I know nothing about it other than the name, but they give me ideas about leading a strike team of NPCs into various planar tears to complete objectives and get back out. Hopefully the reality is even half as cool as my imagined version sounds. Fortress Sieges on the other hand seem like they might be able to go one of two ways. If they are a PVE siege of a fortified position held by Planar forces, essentially a Planar Stronghold taken to the next level… then they sound completely amazing. The other direction I could see something named like that going is some sort of open world pvp objective, and that is the point where they would lose me. I have enjoyed world objective pvp in the past, but generally speaking when a game does this… it almost always degrades into deathmatching and ganking rather than focusing on objectives. Essentially right now I know next to nothing other than a bunch of names, but regardless I am extremely excited about the prospects of what this expansion might bring. As you can see from the above image.. I have already proudly put in my pre-order and am now riding around on my very awesome drake mount.
Now that I'm back playing Final Fantasy XIV, I will of course be participating in any limited time game events that come along. Of course there are the holiday events that we get every year, the next one of which starts tomorrow and has a Super Sentai theme this time around. But right now, there is a collaboration event going on with Yo-kai Watch. And I love it.
Okay, so the event itself is pretty much just a long FATE grind. Earn new Yo-kai minions by grinding FATES wearing a Yo-kai Watch, then earn weapons to use for glamouring by grinding more FATES with those minions summoned. The event runs a little over two months, and that's good because it'll take a lot of FATES to earn weapons for every class. So far I've got the Bard, Summoner, Scholar, and Paladin ones and am working on Machinist.
Each minion is a character from the Yo-kai Watch games; there are a number of cat spirits, a couple that I believe are bears, a nine-tailed fox spirit, and so forth.
And then there's Manjimutt.
Gaze upon his awesome countenance and be humbled
Yokai are Japanese spirits, some of which were once living beings. For instance Jibanyan, one of the mascot Yokai, was a normal cat that got run over by a truck. Manjimutt was a salaryman who died alongside a poodle, resulting in the two being merged into a single Yokai. He's actually based on a Japanese urban legend, the jinmenken. This is the kind of fascinatingly weird Japanese mythology I just love.
So that's what I've been up to in FFXIV when not raiding. Collecting weird ghost pets and weapons associated with them. Manjimutt is probably going to my go-to pet summon for the near future, because he's just hilarious. And as I discovered when learning more about him to write this post, he's also quite the dancer.
