Magic Fencer Report

TERA is a game I was never certain I would play. It’s not that I thought it was a bad game at first, I just didn’t feel like playing it as I was still figuring out what game I wanted to play between FFXI, WoW, or FFXIV since I finally had a computer capable of playing Unreal Engine 3 games.

So far I am having a blast! I tried Lancer, got it to 12, then rerolled as a Warrior, which I got to 24, but I kept reading forums and stuff, so I rerolled yet again as a Lancer. This, coupled with the Kingsguard skin off the cash shop, cements it as my main. Tank 4 lyfe, yo! …or something like that.

I’m Level 44 and having a blast. One of my good friends is playing a Sorcerer, and now that I’ve caught up with him, we are duoing quests and other things, but I’m not totally up on taking care of BAMs. Now that I’ve got a strong weapon, I might go back to lower levels and slag those.

At any rate, the leveling experience in this game is vastly different from other games I’ve played: it’s the usual quest-to-cap-with-dungeons-thrown-in that WoW started, but it also has the auction house interface in every city or town, instead of just the capitals, which is awesome. The journey really does feel like one where you only return to “home” (i.e. the capital city) on occasion instead of every other day to make sure you have materials for crafting or new armor or other similar.

And the story isn’t bad either, though somewhat predictable.

As for being on a role-playing server, it’s interesting. I occasionally see people role-playing in the field or in the towns, and a few of the more RP-oriented guilds have events. In time I’m sure I’ll acclimate myself to a story or similar, but for now I’m just trying to hit 60 before the FFXIV beta starts.

It’s been a while since I blogged here, hasn’t it?

Since last July, I’ve waffled between FFXI, FFXIV, and Guild Wars 2, which I picked up on release date. GW2 was fun at the start and I actually enjoyed doing some PvP as a Guardian. I quickly got a little tired of it, however, once work trips returned, so I answered Vana’diel’s siren call once more in addition to logging into FFXIV on occasion.

In XI, I ended up joining what Petezag@Phoenix had created as kind of a new HomingMissiles, Neosutra@Phoenix’s LS, comprised of members from HM and a few people like myself who knew people within HM from ages ago and had returned. We started hunting ADLs and doing other events. The ADLs were late in the evening, around 11pm my time, so most days I was up far too late and had started going to work tired like back in ’06 when I was a Kings Hunter. Eventually things came to a head and I decided to just log out in between ADLs and go away from the LS.

At that point I basically decided to just play offline games and occasionally pop into XI to hang out with a friend and her LS, slowly working on the VNM phase of Almace and the fire trials for the STR Shikargar, both of which still lie incomplete, though the latter is on the gil-sink phase.

I’d deactivated XIV once I got Legacy status in anticipation of 2.0. I actually liked the game and the graphics are truly amazing, but while playing it I had this urge to overclock my CPU… Not really the best idea with the stock cooler. Plus I felt like I was too far behind to get things done like AF, job quests, and a Relic. I’d chosen Paladin as my job as Red Mage doesn’t (yet?) exist in XIV, and I suppose I’ll go back to that once 2.0 comes along.

Somewhere in the past few months, however, I reinstalled WoW and found out my old friend Yael@Ragnarok was playing Alliance on Runetotem, so I decided to roll a Death Knight there and goof around. I moved my Paladin over as well, but once I got to Zangarmarsh in Outland after the always fun DK intro, my friends from Phoenix XI had finally convinced me to give the Mass Effect Trilogy a shot, which I did in spades.

I’ll say that the Mass Effect Trilogy has one of the best stories of any game series I’ve played in quite a long time. Plus, Tali is insanely cute. One vote here for renaming straws emergency induction ports.

So here we are 8 days into the year that wasn’t supposed to exist: 2013. What’s on my agenda for this year? First and foremost is the soon arriving A Realm Reborn: FINAL FANTASY XIV Closed Beta, Phase 1, which as a Legacy member I am eligible for. I am quite pumped for this and can’t wait for the client to be released.

This will be a great year, I’m certain!